The inevitable

January 17, 2006


And just like that, the inevitable happens.

My grandfather, Donald Wayne Boyer, a man that was ravaged by cancer over the past year and was given only two to four months to live, succumbed to the disease today. My grandmother called me to tell me that my grandpa had gone to heaven, and I was the one to tell my mother.

I’m without tears at this moment because I’ve shed them all in anticipation of this day. Instead I feel strangely stoic. I prepared myself for the worst, and when it came I wasn’t surprised. I am sad, but a little relieved. He’s not in any pain anymore. He never will be.

Once we left Idaho this past week, my grandfather’s condition worsened drastically. He lost nearly all of his ability to function. Hospice was brought in, a hospital bed was set up, and he prepared to leave this world.

The two to four months became days, and the days became hours. I was talking to my mom on the phone about his condition when my grandmother beeped in and told me the news.

I feel incredibly blessed to have been there for his final cognitive days – to be a memory to him before his memories became fuzzy. I know now that heading out west this past week wasn’t in vain. As I expected, those were the last moment I ever spent with him.

The mourning process begins now. I’m having a hard time thinking of him in the past tense, but I feel that I’m ahead of the curve; a little guilty even for not feeling sadder. But, with him out of his misery, the only person I feel incredibly sad about is my grandmother, a woman who adored him and was adored by him – as she said on the phone, her soul mate of 48 years was gone.

She said to us: “I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.”

Regardless of what we plan to do without him, it won’t be the same. Life will go on, but it just won’t be the same without him in our lives.

Damn it, I already miss him.

I love you Grandpa. And I always will.

Tags: Grandpa Boyer |

9 Comments

Frey’s big “lie”

January 14, 2006


There’s been a lot of talk lately about James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces (a book about drug addiction and the path Frey took to overcome), and his alleged transcription of misinformation therein.

By which I mean this: he lied in his book.

What? A drug addict and former-“total fuck-up” lied in a book to make money? Say it isn’t true!

There are two sides to this argument, obviously: one side is appalled that a book of such importance, a book that has saved thousands of lives from the perils of drug and alcohol abuse by forcing them to look in the mirror, has some possibly fictitious (or at least hugely exaggerated) passages. This, according to some, is unacceptable for something that is passing itself off as a memoir.

The other side doesn’t care. It’s a book; a well received, possibly well-written book. I haven’t read it yet, so I can’t comment on the content or technical prowess featured. Still, I have a few thoughts on the validity, or lack there of, of A Million Little Pieces.

I read two of Augusten Burroughs’ books – Running with Scissors and Dry. Both were promoted as memoirs. Both were based on Burroughs’ real life stories. Both were written as part-fiction; however, the author combined certain characters and stories, presented people and places out of context, and used his capability as writer to create a better memoir that was still based on his true life but was not fully 100% accurate.

James Frey did the same thing. He exaggerated the story. He threw things in that weren’t there, that didn’t happen or happened at a different time or place. He used his capability as a writer to create a better memoir that was still based on his true life but was not fully 100% accurate.

Those were meant to sound the same. The difference?

Burroughs preceded his book with a disclaimer. He acknowledged that some characters were smashed together, that some events were out of context and out of chronological order. Did it change the meaning? Did it make the book any less worthwhile? No. In fact, the book would probably have been a little less than satisfactory if it was written exactly as it happened. The liberties that an author takes with his or her subject are crucial to making a book commercially viable and interesting.

Really, we’re just arguing about a disclaimer, here – a two sentence phrase that would have stopped all of the overreaction that even brought ire from Oprah Winfrey, the book’s personal cheerleader (though she did forgive Frey during a Larry King Live interview.)

What can publishers do to help stop situations like this in the future? Really, nothing.

From an AP article:

“I think it changes nothing,” Jane Friedman, chief executive of HarperCollins, said of the Frey scandal.

Grove/Atlantic president Morgan Entrekin said: “It’s impossible to establish with certainty the factual accuracy of every piece of nonfiction we publish; we would grind to a halt. “I don’t know what we could do. It’s just the nature of the beast.”

In other words, authors should be truthful about their memoirs, or at least put a little warning at the beginning, but if they aren’t, they’ll only have the public to contend with.

Frey has agreed to put a self-written disclaimer at the beginning of all future printings of A Million Little Pieces. People may not trust him anymore, but what did they expect? The message is the same regardless of what he did or did not do in real life. The book is still important for the same reasons.

Don’t worry, though. Frey isn’t hurting because of this. His name has been thrown around quite a bit in relation to this, but his sales haven’t gone down. In fact, according to Technorati, blog mentions of A Million Little Pieces have expectedly gone up.

Let's talk about Frey!

And, as they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

Tags: Books, Writers |

2 Comments

On being there near the end

January 12, 2006


Things haven’t been looking up, it seems.

I’ve just gotten back from a five day stay in Victor, Idaho, home of my grandparents, only twenty miles from the valley that my ancestors founded: Jackson Hole. We went because my grandfather is very sick – lung cancer from years of smoking. It spread to his liver. They stopped chemotherapy; the cancer had become inoperable. We started medicating for a painless way out.

I went because my grandfather, regardless of how well I realized it growing up, had become my hero. I started to appreciate all that he had done, all that he had said and taught, when it was too late – years after the fact, when I was in college and I came to understand the lessons that age and experience bring. It took me 20 years to look at my grandfather as someone to respect and not just the fun guy who lived in Wyoming.

It took me until this year to realize how much I love him.

Our trip wasn’t meant to be fun. We knew what we were doing – we were going to see him before things got too bad, before we were left wishing that we’d gone to visit him one last time before it was too late. We knew that we were going to be exhausted upon leaving, drained from the act of taking care of him and sapped of all words after seeing him for what may be the last time.

This summer Kerrie and I headed out to the same place, but it was under the guise of vacation. We loved the area, and we loved my grandparents, and it only made sense to go visit. We were still optimistic then. He was going through treatments, and he was very sick but fighting for his life. We delivered him to the hospital once, and we saw him at his most vulnerable, but we were positive that the cancer in his lung would go away. We knew that he would be okay and this would just be another chapter in his long and storied life.

It wasn’t to be, though. The cancer shrunk, yes, but it also moved. The lump in his lungs was nearly gone, but it had moved to his lymph system, to his liver, to other points it had no business being. It defied the chemotherapy. It ducked the radiation. It was taking all the routes possible throughout the body and was going to stick the treatment out.

So, with that, they gave up. There was no point in keeping it up. He wasn’t going to beat the cancer.

This brings us to now. My grandfather is weak. He’s been the strongest guy, both physically and mentally, that I’ve ever known, but this disease has torn him apart, cutting through years worth of built up strength and left him bowing on the couch with waning cognitive skills.

He’s on medication – drugs to help his shoulder pain (from an infection), his bulging liver, and his slowly spreading disease. He even needs a pill to eat – to help the nausea that comes over him whenever he smells food. Despite all of this he was incredibly alert when we were there. He knew what was going on. He was happy to see all of us. He wanted nothing more than to be around his family, and we were brought out to make that dream a reality.

I took pages of notes while I was there, documenting every feeling I had. By the last day, though, I just couldn’t write anymore. I was exhausted. Every day was a roller coaster of emotions. I moved from the relief of seeing him looking so deceptively healthy, after having a mental picture of him emaciated and barely alive, to a gentle depression that came with knowing he was not going to be around much longer. I cherished every moment with him, but found myself shying away from him for fear of having to actually deal with his death. It’s hard to watch someone you love become so sick – I don’t have to remind anyone of that – but it’s harder to watch it when you know there’s nothing that can be done.

Every morning I woke up, walked to the breakfast table, and took a good look at my grandfather. Each day he was getting worse and worse. We blamed it on the medicine – we gave him too many pain pills, or we didn’t give him enough and he was feeling the blinding ache in his midsection. We found reasons to think that he was going to stay the same, that he’d be okay. We knew this was false, but we believed it.

The last day of our trip was hard. My grandfather was slurring his words like a drunk on New Year’s Eve. He could hardly walk; hardly stand even. He had become progressively more and more incoherent as the five days passed. We found out today that they admitted him to the hospital, where they found the cancer had moved to his brain.

We’d been fighting with him to accept hospice, if only to give my grandmother a little help in taking care of him in his last days. Today, finally, he agreed.

I know now that my grandfather can never live forever. Though I may have considered this notion when I was younger, I realize that people age, that their bad habits catch up with them, and that the human body, while strong and pliable, is also as fragile as thin crystal.

The last night I spent with him was hectic – he was running a fever, was unable to speak clearly and was constantly fighting to stay up and visit with us. He was a handful, for sure, but he always had been in the past and this night should be no different. My grandfather didn’t want to go to sleep because he was afraid we’d get up in the morning and leave without him, that we’d sneak off like thieves.

As I reassured him that we would stick around and say goodbye before we left, he turned to my grandmother and said “This guy, he’s my buddy. He’s a smart kid, and he’s my buddy.

“Corey, you’re my hero.”

Regardless of his state, whether he was in full possession of his mind or not, whether he lives on for years or only until the end of the week, that will stick in my mind. I’ve taken those words and locked them inside.

You could say, in that case, that my grandfather will live forever.

Tags: Grandpa Boyer |

5 Comments

Millions, a blog about books (now featuring ME!)

January 10, 2006


Yup. I’m back.

And really, I don’t want to talk about it yet… but I will soon.

So, in the meantime, head over to Millions — my favorite book blog and now the site of yet another Vilhauer book column — the Corey Vilhauer Book of the Month Club.

Read the intro here: “Introducing the Corey Vilhauer Book of the Month Club”

…and then read the first column here: “The Corey Vilhauer Book of the Month Club: January 2006″

Yay me!

Tags: Books, Literature |

Comment

Excerpts from the Bill Simmons Glossary

January 8, 2006


Bill Simmons, my favorite ESPN.com writer, has been spitting out hilarious columns since 2001. Since I’ve only been reading him since 2005, I’ve missed a lot of his greatest columns, and therefore miss a lot of his “inside” jokes.

Well, thankfully he threw all of us casual newcomers a bone: the Bill Simmons Glossary.

I bring you some of the best terms that Simmons has come up with – and not all of them are sports related for those of you that skim the sports stories. I do this because I care, and additionally, because I’m currently out of town and I have this set up for “auto-post.” I also do this because I’m seriously considering entering these terms into my personal vocabulary, and I’d like everyone to know exactly what I’m talking about.

I’d link the original posts, but they’re only available to ESPN Insiders, and I still have a problem with having to purchase words over the internet. Here is the actual Simmons Glossary post.

Thanks to Bill Simmons for this, but no thanks to him for never posting my e-mails in his “Mailbag.”

- - - - - - - - - -

• How to Spot the Guys Who Wield Just A Bit Too Much Power
The bouncer at any snooty bar … the deli counter guy who only gives samples to people he deems worthy … ice skating judges (especially the French ones) … softball umpires … the guy at Best Buy who checks receipts before you can leave the store … sixth-grade gym teachers … bank tellers … bartenders in crowded pickup joints … condo association presidents … sports radio hosts who hang up on callers when they don’t agree … everyone who works at a video store … stewardesses on long airplane flights … movie theater ushers … the maitre’d at any restaurant in Vegas or Manhattan … and the hotel worker in charge of the volleyball games at any resort.

• The Four Beer Analogy:
”…Let’s say you’re hitting a sports bar with your buddies for “Monday Night Football”. You could have two or three beers, throw down some chicken wings, play some Golden Tee, wager on the home team, bond with your boys, then head home when the outcome has been decided. Or you could do everything from above, but keep throwing down beers until you’re bombed and someone has to drive you home. Either way, it’s going to be a good time. Well, unless you have four beers. That kills you. You’re not sober enough to drive home. You’re not quite drunk enough that you feel like you really let loose; if anything, you’re more groggy than anything. And you drank just enough that you’ll have trouble getting up for work/class the following morning. The next day, you always end up wishing you had more beers or less beers. Just not four…”

• The Cheers Corollary
”…Great teams are like great TV shows — sometimes change can be refreshing, but you never want to rattle your nucleus too much. That’s why “Cheers” remained lively to the bitter end, because they successfully integrated new characters (Rebecca, Woody, Frasier, Lilith) while maintaining their core group of stars (Sam, Carla, Norm, Cliff). Shows like “Oz,” “ER” and “7 Lives XPosed” couldn’t say the same…”

• High Horse Factor”
…It all comes back to the High Horse Factor. You know how sports columnists and radio hosts love hopping on high horses and villifying targets like Tyson, how they get all carried away and start gunning for the Pulitzer, how they write lines like “He’s the monster in all of us” and say things like “They could be fighting in my living room and I wouldn’t watch it”? Nobody rated higher on the High Horse Factor than Tyson, the grizzled sports columnist’s wet dream. Just once, I would have loved to have seen one of these media people tell their editors or producers, “You know what, I refuse to discuss Tyson on the radio anymore,” or “Please don’t send me to cover this fight, because I refuse to write about such a scumbag.” Never happened…”

• The “I can’t believe you haven’t seen that yet!” movie
”…My buddy Gus has a theory that every person has one “I can’t believe you haven’t seen that yet!” movie. For instance, Gus hasn’t seen “E.T.” yet. Impossible, you say? I’m telling you, he has never seen it. And the more people tell him, “I can’t believe you haven’t seen that one yet!” or “Do yourself a favor and see it, would ya?”, his defiance becomes even more resolute. He’s never seeing “E.T.“…”

(P.S. – we all have this. Chris, king of Driscocity, has never seen Star Wars, and reportedly never will.)

• The MJ/Rodman Corollary
”…You can only take a chance on a colossal head case if there’s an alpha dog around to keep him in check. Just look at Dennis Rodman’s career — he was fine with Isiah and MJ and a time bomb with everyone else. Same with Vernon Maxwell and Hakeem; Dennis Johnson with Bird (everyone forgets that DJ wore out his welcome in two cities); Stephen Jackson with Duncan; even Cassell and Spree with KG last season. Crazy guys suddenly don’t seem as crazy when they’re playing with someone they respect…”

• Mom Status
”…My Mom has always been a sports litmus test for me. If she’s asking, it’s probably a big deal. And this Yankees-Sox rivalry has officially reached Mom Status…”

• The Over-Clapper
”…Is there anything worse than an Over-Clapper, the guy in a sports bar who feels the inexplicable need to applaud after every play?

(In case you’re scoring at home, I’d rate the most annoying people in a sports bar or lounge this way, in order: The Over-Clapper; the Inconsiderate Chain-Smoker; the “Guy Who Sits Down Right In Front of You And Blocks Your View” Guy; the Guy Who Keeps Taking Cell Phone Calls; the Over-Excited Guy; the “Guy Who Gives Running Commentary and Thinks He’s Phil Simms” Guy; the Drunken Idiot; the Guy Who Gets A Little Too Angry; The Guy Wearing Too Much Team Paraphrenalia; and the “Guy Who Won’t Sit Down and Watch the Game But Keeps Popping In Every Five Minutes To Ask About the Score” Guy.) …”

• Stouffer’s French Bread Pizza Syndrome:
”…Putting together a basketball team is like cooking a Stouffer’s french bread pizza — you have to preheat the oven, wait 15 minutes, slide the pizzas inside, wait another 35 minutes, check to make sure you didn’t burn them, let them cook another five minutes, pull them out, then let them cool down for another 10 minutes so you don’t burn your mouth … and then, and ONLY then, do you eat the pizzas. That’s how the good general managers build their teams. But these new-wave owners and general managers want to eat the pizza right away, so they slip them in the microwave, zap the hell out them, scarf down in three bites and end up burning their mouths, and the pizza doesn’t even taste good as it’s going down…”

• The Two Pacinos”
…Can you think of another actor with a career quite like Pacino’s career, where the guy from 1972-1983 (Godfather 1 and 2, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Cruising, And Justice For All, Scarface) seems like a completely different human being than the one from 1992-2005 (Scent of a Woman, Heat, Donnie Brasco, Insomnia, Devil’s Advocate, The Recruit). I’m not even talking about different actors; I’m talking about different human beings. Like how Pittsburgh Barry Bonds and San Fran Barry Bonds seem like two different people, right?…”

Tags: Sports, Writers |

2 Comments

What I’ve Been Reading: December 2005

January 6, 2006


Books I’ve Bought/Borrowed/Recieved for Christmas:
The Pocket Penguin 70th Anniversary Collection
Chronicles: Volume One — Bob Dylan
Holidays On Ice — David Sedaris

Books I’ve Read:
The Polysyllabic Spree — Nick Hornby
A Christmas Story — Jean Shepherd (not finished)
The Pocket Penguin 70th Anniversary Collection, books #1-30:

1 - Lady Chatterley’s Trial
2 - Cogs in the Great Machine — Eric Schlosser
3 - Otherwise Pandemonium — Nick Hornby
4 - Summer in Algiers — Albert Camus
5 - Innocent House — P.D. James
6 - The View from Mount Improbable — Richard Dawkins
7 - On Shopping - Which Gladdens The Heart — India Knight
8 - Nothing Bad Ever Happens In Tiffany’s — Marian Keyes
9 - The Mirror of Ink — Jorge Luis Borges
10 - A Taste of the Unexpected — Roald Dahl
11 - The Unabridged Pocketbook of Lightning — Jonathan Safran Foer
12 - The Cave of the Cyclops — Homer
13 - Two Stars — Paul Theroux
14 - Of Pageants and Picnics — Elizabeth David
15 - Artists and Models — Anaïs Nin
16 - Christmas at Stalingrad — Antony Beevor
17 - The Desert and the Dancing Girls — Gustave Flaubert
18 - The Secret Annexe (from The Diary of Anne Frank) — Anne Frank
19 - Where I Was — James Kelman
20 - Noise — Hari Kunzru
21 - The Bastille Falls — Simon Schama
22 - The Dressmaker’s Child — William Trevor
23 - In Defence of English Cooking — George Orwell
24 - Idiot Nation — Michael Moore
25 - Rose, 1944 — Helen Dunmore
26 - The Economics of Innocent Fraud — J.K. Galbraith
27 - The School Inspector Calls — Gervase Phinn
28 - Young Austerlitz — W.G. Sebald
29 - Borneo and the Poet – Redmond O’Hanlon
30 - Ali Smith’s Supersonic 70s — Ali Smith

—-

This is a direct copy from the Prime piece, but I wanted to throw in a couple of other things I recieved and tried to read this month. First, I finally finished The Polysyllabic Spree. After months of hiding it in a drawer of our coffee table, I picked it up and finished it. Hooray for me.

Second, I attempted to read A Christmas Story (the book of short Jean Shephard stories that were taken and lumped together to create the hilarious film,) but after reading two thirds of it I recieved my Pocket Penguins box set. Needless to say, I gave up on anything that I had been reading previously.

I did recieve two great books for Christmas: David Sedaris’ Holidays on Ice and Bob Dylan’s Chronicles: Volume One. The Sedaris book is a collection of his Christmas stories (all of which I’ve read before) and will be a great addition to our “Christmas box books,” those books we keep with the ornaments and break out during the holidays. It’ll be snug next to A Christmas Story and The Night Before Christmas (an Avon pop-up book special that’s nearly as old as I am.) Dylan is going to help me cope on my week long jaunt to Idaho, so he’d better have some sage words of advice for me.

So, with that, onto the column.

—-

Every once in a while an item is released that redefines a collector’s view of his or her media. It becomes the defining piece in a collection. Scott Hudson, Prime’s music columnist, considers Bob Dylan’s, The Bootleg Series Vol. 1 – 3, a three-CD set of unreleased Dylan songs – “almost the Holy Grail for Bobaholics,” as Hudson puts it – to be the greatest box set in his collection. I’m not sure if Prime’s DVD reviewer, Jeffrey Miller, would select the Stanley Kubrick Collection or The Complete Monty Python’s Flying Circus Megaset, but either selection, in my opinion, could fight to the finish for the “best DVD box set” title.

For me, it is the Penguin Pockets 70th Anniversary Collection, a seventy book set that spans the first seventy years of Penguin Books’ life by bringing together the best authors that the publisher has ever released. Nowhere else could you bring the mainstream mystery of P.D. James together with the incredibly thoughtful short stories of Jorge Louis Borges, nor have the many voices of Nick Hornby jostle for space alongside Richard Dawkins’ explanations for evolution.

In reality, these books were meant to be separate – a 55-page introduction to each respective author. But, with the success of the series in England, Penguin brought them all together inside a box and sold it to the masses. Well, to the masses of the United Kingdom, that is – this box set is unavailable in the United States: reason number one as to why I’m not reviewing every book in the set.

Reason number two, of course, is that I’m not sure Prime would allow me the space to rattle off my thoughts on thirty books. I’m also not sure that anyone would want to read such a diatribe. Really, this box-set wasn’t about reading and absorbing each of the seventy books individually. Instead, it was a quick-study in British literary culture, a way to expose myself to new authors and soak in the tastes of readers from across the pond. Since these books aren’t available in the States, I’m considering each review as a look at the author – the man or woman behind a great 55-page excerpt.

With that, I present “The Very Best of the First Thirty Books of the Penguin Pockets 70th Anniversary Collection.”

Nick Hornby – Otherwise Pandemonium
Hornby has always been a sort of personal hero for me. I love his ability to recreate different voices – that of an American rock-star, or a child tired of mainstream life, or even the mother of a suspected porn-star – and create fiction that doesn’t betray the fact that, well, he’s a balding 40-something for England. The two stories in Otherwise Pandemonium – one about a 15-year-old kid who gets to see six weeks into the future though the aid of his pawn-shop VCR, the other about the aforementioned mother of a suspected porn-star, helped me realize what a talent Hornby truly is. It’s no surprise that this is the same man who could so easily write from the guise of an unsatisfied woman in How to be Good and the guise of a pompous rich man in About a Boy.

Jonathan Safran Foer – The Unabridged Pocketbook of Lightning
Unabridged Pocketbook of Lightning, a title that Foer writes about always wanting to use, is an excerpt of his already published Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. My response to Foer’s writing was the same as it was to David Eggers’ writing two years ago: “this guy is really, really good.” In this selection Foer speaks through the brilliant mind of a nine-year old, the mute thoughts of that child’s grandfather, and the lost voice of the boy’s German grandmother – a generational span that is told in three distinct ways. Some of the books in the Penguin Pocket Collection introduced me to new authors who I may never read again. The Unabridged Pocketbook of Lightning introduced me to an author of whom I’ll run out and purchase everything he’s written.

Gervase Phinn – The School Inspector Calls
I’ve always been an anglophile, thanks in part to my mother’s guidance, and Phinn’s The School Inspector Calls drips with “anglophilic” joy. Set in Yorkshire, Phinn’s memoirs of his former life as a school inspector bring together typically cute exchanges with children and a dry sarcasm that is evident in many who have chosen the education field. It’s funny without being sappy, and it’s biting without being insulting. The characters, most of whom I’m assuming are real, are painted in a way that shows their faults in a humorous way without any possibility of upsetting their real-life counterparts. All in all, it’s a safe set of stories, but it’s mastered well enough (Phinn being a former English teacher himself) to make it entertaining.

Roald Dahl – A Taste of the Unexpected
Dahl, author of some of my favorite children’s books (James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) comes to the Penguin Anniversary Collection with a handful of very adult stories. As all good short stories should, they leave a lot to think about upon completion: A wine connoisseur is outed while trying to guess a wine, a woman who is always waiting for her husband discovers herself free without him, a man boards at a house and discovers a landlady well versed in stuffing animals (among other things). The stories are dark, just as (in retrospect) all of his children’s books. It’s amazing to consider what great writing was wasted on me as a child.

Jorge Luis Borges – The Mirror of Ink
This book has the feel of an ancient text, though it was originally published in 1998. Each story is crafted to recreate older periods of time – ancient Babylon (where a lottery system is thoughtfully compared to the cycle of life, religion, and death), nineteenth century Ireland (the location of a grand conspiracy that eventually resulted in the hero-worship of someone who could have easily been a traitor) and Africa in 1904 (an area that ends up being the location of a mysterious rock which should never be touched.) The themes are lofty, and the stories are unbelievable – that is, until you’ve reached the end. Borges forces the reader to rethink conventions, to the point that I found myself actually considering the thought of a grand lottery that dictates our place in life. It’s great, thought-provoking and mysterious, if you’re into that sort of thing.

There’s an air of mystery in reading authors you’re not aware of, in reading a collection of books for the sake of reading it in its entirety. I’ll say that most of the thirty books I read were unknown to me, either because I was unaware of the author’s existence or, in the case of a well-known writer, because of a naivety in the breadth of a person’s work.

I’ve immersed myself in what Penguin books considers its finest talents – the best writers that have ever been published for Penguin Books. I’ve taken on the styles of thirty different authors, nearly one for every day of the month. I’m learning to appreciate a wide array of stories, novels, and non-fiction writing.

Penguin chose a fine selection of writers for their 70th anniversary collection. But, after seventy years in the business of producing affordable and well-regarded paperback books, who am I to doubt them?

Tags: Books, Literature, What I've Been Reading |

Comment

Leaving, on a jet plane.

January 5, 2006


I’m not sure that I’m ready for this.

Tomorrow at noon I will be heading to the Sioux Falls Airport to take a flight to Jackson, Wyoming. From there, I’ll travel over the border to Victor, Idaho, where my grandparents live. This is meant to be a momentous occasion – a “Christmas” surprise for my grandfather. But I just can’t the notion of this as a happy time. It just won’t flow through my head correctly. I know that there is more of a meaning to all of this. I know that this could very well be the last time I see him.

All he wants at this point is to have his family around him. According to my mother he’s very sick, getting thinner and thinner except in his abdomen where the cancer is affecting his liver. He sleeps all of the time, and it’s impossible to know how much pain he’s in because he’s always been a very strong man – a man that’s never admitted pain even when it was necessary.

I’m not a weepy guy, but I well up every time I think about him in this state. I can’t imagine actually seeing him like this; weakened and fragile and close to the end.

There are some things I need to realize, though. He’s the same person. He’s still Donald Wayne Boyer, a man that has always been an influence in my life. He still enjoys the same things, regardless of how lucid he seems. He’s still got life to live, and he’s doing what he can in a lowered capacity to do it.

The only thing that’s changed is that his body is fighting against him. He’s trying to stick around, but sometimes nature doesn’t approve.

My time in Idaho, as much as it may seem, is not the time to say goodbye. This is a time to celebrate the life that my grandfather still has in him. It’s a time to experience all that I can in his company, to make him comfortable and happy, and to relieve some of the anxiety that he’s currently feeling in his condition.

Still, I’m not sure I’m ready for this.

But, as Kerrie said, I probably never will be. That’s the whole idea of it – no one is ever completely ready for something like this.

- - - -

The site will be on hiatus for a few days. The December What I’ve Been Reading will pop up in a few days (a little late, I know, but you’ll understand I hope) and quite possibly I’ll log on and post a little bit about what I’m doing in Idaho.

Don’t count on it, though. See you next Wednesday.

Tags: Grandpa Boyer |

2 Comments

← Previous Page — Next Page →