Life and Death

As a hospice volunteer I learned that the dying have a way of teaching us about life -- about patience, gratitude, appreciating little things, understanding what matters.  Death is so personal -- something we do alone -- and to be invited to share in the transition is a gift of love and a profoundly humbling experience.

Lucky Timing

This story began when my husband bounded up the stairs one morning and said, "Houston, we have a problem."  We needed our passports for our GOES interviews (to obtain passes that speed up the process at airports for international travel, and also at security).  And our passports were with the outfit handling our visas for Brazil.  We got on the phone, and thanks to extreme good luck, our visas were back from the Brazilian embassy and in the hands of the visa service company in San Francisco.   All we had to do was leave in enough time to drive into the city and pick up our passports before our GOES interviews at San Francisco Airport.

When we got into the city, the traffic on King Street was backed up for miles and we soon realized that a Giants game had just let out. Our route went right past the stadium and the street was blocked off.  The minutes ticked by as we sat in stalled traffic going nowhere.  Finally, after about 25 minutes, we were able to make a left turn and get around the mess.  My husband stayed with the car while I ran into the building on Montgomery, took the elevator to the 7th floor, got our visas and passports (saving them the mailing fee), and was out the door in two minutes. Getting onto the freeway again took a bit of fuss, as usual, but we both heaved a sigh of relief, realizing that we would make it to the airport on time. In fact, we were early and they were running behind. So we had about a 45 minute wait. The interviews went well, and we decided to celebrate at a restaurant we like in Redwood Shores called Mistral. 

We called the restaurant from the road to see if we needed a reservation. We were told they were packed and we couldn't get a reservation until 7:45, which would've meant a wait time of an hour.  So, we considered other possibilities as we drove. Finally, I said, "Let's call back and tell them we'll take the 7:45 reservation."  We looked at the number again and realized it was an 818 area code.  We'd called a different Mistral in Hollywood, hundreds of miles away. Although the Mistral in Redwood Shores was also very busy, they had room for us and we had a great meal. Had we made a reservation at the Hollywood Mistral, much confusion would have ensued. So, our day turned into a lucky one all the way around. 

A Happy Birthday

Duma Tau camp is located in the private 290,000 acre Linyanti Wildlife Reserve that borders the western boundary of Chobe National Park in Botswana.

The facility is lovely, the staff outstanding, food great. Our guide named “Name” (short for Nametsecha) was friendly, personable, and an excellent tracker. The morning game drive at 6 am came too early, but was worthwhile as we had a rare sighting of wild dogs. They are beautiful animals with brown and tan coloring in a patchwork pattern, and large round ears. We watched them for a while as they played in a mud pool and lounged around. When the alpha male and female left, the others soon followed, and so did we—on the chance that we might see them hunt. Wild Dogs are the most successful hunters of all animals—more so than lions or leopards.  But the dogs weren’t that hungry, so we left them and scanned the horizon for more animals, finding giraffe, zebra, impalas and numerous birds.

In the afternoon a thunderstorm came out of nowhere, and a horrendous gale shot sheets of rain through the screen windows and flooding the inside of our tent, as if someone had lost control of a fire hose. The bed was drenched, our clothes, the floor, everything. The worst of ‘everything’ was my husband's computer, which he’d left open on the desk.  We weren’t the only victims, of course. The whole camp looked as if a hurricane had struck (which it more or less had). Over the next hour I moved us into to an unoccupied dry tent next door while my husband went to the managers to get help for his drowned computer. They filled a box with rice and stuck the computer in the box in the hope that the rice would soak up the moisture.

And after all, how many people can say that their birthday began with a sighting of a leopard chowing down on a newly caught kill? Name tracked a female leopard to a tree where she’d just hauled up a baby impala for breakfast. Impalas are everywhere in the bush. It’s said that if you go on safari and don’t see an impala, you get your money back. And since the babies hang out together, like a pre-school class, they’re extremely vulnerable to predators. The rest of the morning drive included sightings of gorgeous lilac breasted rollers, blue kingfishers, a colony of red and blue Carmine bee-eaters, crimson-breasted shrikes, as well as a huge herd of elephants sloshing through a pond.

Later in the day my husband was presented with a cake—chocolate—and the staff sang Happy Birthday in English, which I thought missed the point of celebrating a birthday in a tent camp in the middle of the bush in Botswana. He received a nice present, though: The power button on his computer functioned again—a step in the right direction.

Living Vicariously

There is a little ham in me.  When I was in 7th grade I announced to the school administrators that I wanted to give a vocal recital to the student body.  I did it, too.  When I'm in a musical (acting, singing) or in a choir no matter how big or small (one year I was in 3 groups at once - a mixed chorus, all-girls' group of 12, and a quartet) I'm a happy camper.  I've sung in several master chorales performing classical works, and a competitive all-female barbershop group. My favorites are Broadway show tunes and old standards. I applaud the invention of karaoke! In another life, I might have had a career on the stage.

Self Love

A friend's ex-husband left her after 40 years of marriage to take up with a 20 year old.  It would not be easy to recover from such a shock when you had the expectation of growing old with someone.  We never know what is around the corner.  And we may not know how we're going to handle it.  The most we can hope for is to make it through with integrity, forgiveness, and love of self. I came across a plaque years ago that read, "The only prison is the prison of self." We can lock ourselves in, or free ourselves.

A Change in Perspective

I was driving toward the farmer's market, and came up behind a car stopped in the middle of the street, not signaling, just stopped.  I waited a minute, expecting the driver to move.  When he didn't, I tapped on the horn and he pointed to the side of the street, as if he was waiting for a car to pull out so he could park.  But no one sat in any of the cars, no backing lights.  By this time two cars were behind me.  I maneuvered around the guy -- an old man in a blue cap with a red plaid shirt -- and as I passed by my expression said, "What are you doing?"  He gave me the nastiest scowl, shouted at me (though I couldn't hear what he said through the closed windows), and gave me the finger.  Yeah. When he was the one being inconsiderate and rude!  Later, when I was walking around the farmer's market I saw the same man pushing a woman in a wheelchair.  His expression was much more pleasant.  What he'd done before was rude and inconsiderate, but I could understand it better.

Normal vs Perverse

If we agree that what one culture sees as strange is another's norm -- i.e. that the "norm is a spectrum that varies from culture to culture" -- where do we draw the line between 'normal' and 'perverse'?  On which side, for instance, does (tribal) genital mutilation fall?  The purpose of the practice, though certainly cultural, is subjugation. Sensation is for men only. Women are baby factories.  The mutilation is done to all girls in the tribe.  If a guy cuts his penis in half, there may well be a 'culture' that regards his mutilation as admirable, but it is not something everyone in his culture is forced to undergo.  And while I might consider his choice strange (and probably an expression of some mental illness), he has the right to do that to himself if he chooses.  But a girl who's mutilated by force, against her will, without even anesthesia, has no choice.  Is this perverse?