Coping with Death - Memorial Day 2024

Another person from my childhood just died and his cousin sent me a text. That makes four people who have died this month within the circle of my friendship or acquaintance. I think it is natural on Memorial Day to consider all the many wonders of a long life that we who survived have enjoyed, falling in love, having a family, going to college, buying a house, the many many family parties and celebrations we have enjoyed, while those poor young men we remember on Memorial Day, died in the prime of their lives and never got to participate in these celebrations of life. Buy we know there is a price to pay for this long life that we have been given by some mystery of good fortune. We have to say goodbye to so many we have loved, first our parents, and then our friends as they precede us one by one into the great unknown, which might be the great nothing - it is a mystery until we get there and maybe after as well.

So this month, two classmates died, an old teen years friend, and a young man related to my sister through her grandson and I had to send this young man's mother a consolation card though there is no consolationt for a mother who has lost her 42 year old son, as there is none for the two children he left behind. That mother and those children have to go on with the greath sadness inside them, a part of them for the rest of their lives because their loss is, as my grandmother said "unnatural" - children shouldn't lose their father and mother before they grow up and a mother shouldn't outlive her son. But it happens.

We get to live, and we get the reminders of the brevity of our lives and we carry the sorrow of the loss of those we have loved. An old friend of mine, Marguerite, who died in her nineties, once said that everyone she had ever loved had died and she was alone in the world. And it is true. She had new friends, but it isn't the same as the ones who knew your family, and grew up with you, the blood relations who shared the family memories of all the relatives who are gone. Or your lovers, husbands, wives. These can't be replaced.

But our task is to find the good things around us and to carry on even with our burdens, the burdens of the great good fortune of a long life: disability, fear, the deaths of our loved ones. We can't stay too long in the shadow of sorrow because we are wasting the great good fortune of the days that have been given to us to enjoy in this wonder filled life we have now, in this world. So we have to pay our respects, shed our tears, share our memories and move on into another day, another week, another year, perhaps another loss, and for certain, another joy and wonder. To paraphrase something the Dalai Llama said, we can't get over some things, but we must not let them pull us down. Just as age weakens us, we have to find the strength to carry on.

My love goes out to all who sorrow - Jo Ann

wrightj45@yahoo.com

The extraordinary in the ordinary Monday May 27, 2024

I am a huge fan of the ordinary. The way this interest manifexts itself has been in my lifelong interest and research into journals, diaries and such personal accounts of ordinary lives. In each area of my passions, I have read whatever diaries were discovered in that subject; for example, I LOVE the diary of Frida Kahlo, whch I read regularly on her birthday (July 6 - 1907) or on Hispanic Heritage Month and because of my interest in the lives of women artists.

When I was a volunteer at Red Bank Battlefield in National Park for several years, I read Diary of a Hessian Soldier, Johan Conrad Dohla, fighting here as a mercenary for the British, as well as the diary of Joseph Plumb Martin, American Continental soldier. I have read the diaries of writers, all of Anais Nin, many others, and of war correspondents like Marie Colvin, who died in Syria. Actually, when I was a college student, I took a course in the history of diaries and journals and we began with Samuel Pepys, written 1660 to 1669.

As a volunteer for the Gloucester County Historical Society, I had the honor of transcribing the diary of Anne Whitall, whose family farm was the center of the Battle of Red Bank in 1777, a pivotal event in our Revolutioary history. It had been hand written in about 1762 and another volunteer had transcribed it into typewriter manuscript and I took her typewritten version and put it on the computer so others could read it. I did the same for an anonymous farm woman of South Jersey who joined the Mormons and left to make a new life in Utah; she was from Elk Township and married a Mormon missionary. I can't at the moment remember her name (Ruth Page Rogers) but it may come back to me.

I think it is especially interesting to read of the quiet days just before something significant happened, or the time just after. I read a fascinating 1945 diary of a German woman about her survival right after the defeat of Germany in World War II. She lived in Berlin and survived the Russian occupation as well as the bombings and the door to door street by street fighting during the end of the war. Her name was Marta Hillers, a journalist. It is "Eine Frau in Berlin," first published anonymously in German and later translated into English.

I have personally kept diaries since I was in my 20's, over 50 years. They have become more boring over the years as I recount mainly the chores I have done, but also, the mundane events in my ordinary daily life. Actually I believe at one time, such diaries were titled Commonplace books. I rarely write about politics or the news, sometimes reviews of books or movies.

So for today, the things that interested me enough to make me decide to do this entry are: We are awaiting a big storm that has battered and swatted its way across the continent over the past several days pelting with softball sized hail and flooding rain. So far theree are 21 dead and hundreds left homeless ann the storm generated massive tornadoes as it travelled East. It is supposed to reach us this afternoon about 5:00. The weather at the moment is still, overcast, humid and on the cool side, and it does feel as if the yard is waiting for something to come. My personal fear is that the trees in the front of my yard that were devasted last year by the Chinese lantern fly invasion will drop their dead limbs on the wires just below and in front of them. I should have gotten them removed but it costs thousands of dollars which I do not have.

Lethargy and pain: lately I have been experiencing more than usual days of lethargy, some of which I attribute to the pain in my hip that remains after the disaster of a month ago when I tried to turn over to get out of bed and something went terribly wrong. My hip seized up and the horrendous pain of some kind of pinched nerve kept me trapped in bed for hours and terrified to move. Since that night, I have slept on the recliner, afraid to get in bed, and I have gone to my gneral practitioner and had x-rays, blood and urine lab work, and tomorrow I see an orthopedic doctor. The x-rays just say "moderate osteo/arthritis. Something else must have happened however to cause that - some kind of jammed bones over a nerve, or bursitis, or some tendon thing.

Anyhow, today, again, I woke up so lethargic, I couldn't get my last basket of laundry up from the basement, so I gave in to the nearly foolproof remedy of going to Dunkin Donuts and getting a caramel latte' which I only do as a last resort because they are both full of sugar/calories and expensive -$6 for a large coffee - outrageous. But I wanted to get a couple of things done - I wanted to cook and eat a bunch of really expensive mushrooms I had bought along with a group of salad vegetables and I didn't want to let them go bad because I was too tired to wash and prepare them. The mushrooms were "Lion's Main" mushrooms that I had learned about from a fabulous documentary called FANTASTIC FUNGI.

The Lion's Mane mushrooms, I discovered, had to be cooked and shouldn't be eaten raw. That was a surprise. I thought I could put them in the salad but they have something called chitin in the skins and so should be cooked. They had to be sautee'd with garlic and should be served on bread like a sandwich item.

The latte' worked. I bought the latte' from a particularly morose and un friendly counter woman at the drive-thru window at Dunkin Donuts, drank it and voila! I got my laundry from the basement, cooked the wretched mushrooms, and made a big bowl of salad good for two days. The mushrooms were a most unpleasant tactile experience. I was used to the regular white button mushrooms with their pleasantly bread like texture. These had a kind of furrry-loose-sack of jelly feel, not that easy to slice either. But I did it, and I ate them in a sandwich on toasted bread. I forced myself to finish them so as not to waste an expensive item and a notabley heathful food. I would never buy them or eat them again. Then I ate my salad which I also found unpleasant. Sometimes I just don't like tomatoes in salad and lately not so fond of broccoli florets anymore either. But it is all done now. I have one chore left - to wash out my almost empty blender pitcher from yesterday's blueberry smoothy and get ready to make a new one, tomorrow perhaps.

Last night, I watched a brilliant though deeply disturbing series on Netflix called "Unbelievable." I had seen it advertised on Netflix before but I passed it up because it is about a serial rapist and I avoid shows I think will frighten me, but a friend I respect told me it was well worth my time and that it was brilliant - which it was! The acting was superb and the cast was some of the greats of this period including Toni Collette. It deals with the true story of a serial rapist in Colorado who is so skilled at erasing all clues to his presence that he gets away with raping and robbing 25 women until a duo of dauntless detectives dig into every detail to find out who he is and capture him. There is an interesting socio-dynamic theme too in the way a poor young survivor of the foster care system is bullied by two male detectives in the beginning of the series into recanting her report of her rape. They bully her into saying she lied and made it up and then they make her a criminal by charging her with false reporting with a fine and threat of jail time. I won't spoil it by giving away any more of the plot. It did scare me for awhile but my big dog and her large formidable incisor teeth always reassure me. She went berserk when the amazon delivery man left a package on the porch in the evening, and I thought, no one would try to enter a door with this polar bear behind it.

She lets me sleep at night and I feed her and offer her shelter in return and we both love one another as well. We got our walk in early today before the storm began its threat. I will let you know tomorrow how it all turned out!

Happy Trails - stay safe in the storm! Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Tom Nicholas, Death Notice May, June 2024

A Classmate of mine from Merchantville High School, class of 1963, just e-mailed to tell me that an old friend had died. Tom Nicholas. Tom was actually the best friend of my ex-husband, Mike Schelpat. They were friends from their teen years and stayed close over their entire lives.

Tom would have been about 80. He died behind the wheel of his vehicle, which I seem to think was a pick-up truck, but it wasn't an accident. Apparently he pulled over; he must have felt something going wrong, maybe a heart attack? A stroke? Anyhow, I can't help thinking this is the way he would have wanted to end it.

Tom was a brilliant man, an artist who graduated from what was then Philadelphia College of Art, now the University of the Arts. He was a painter but I think his real art was in domestic architecture because he built exquisitely beautiful cabins in the woods of upstate New York where he went to live as a young man and stayed until he died. My ex-husband and I often went to stay with him during the 1970's, in the beautiful forests where he built his cabins. I remember two of them very well, a large roomy one story where he lived with his then partner whose name I thought I had forgotten but I just remembered, it was Sheila. She worked for a group home for teen girls. At that first cabin, the spacious one story, we would sit and smoke pot and I would weave baskets from the shed bark of the white birches that fell all over the woods. It is a beautiful bark, white on one ide and a creamy peach color on the other side.

Tom was a wonderful artist and I remember him making graceful and delicate botanical drawings of plants and leaves from the forest. We three often hiked in the woods and I remember one time we crossed a rocky fast moving stream and I found a perfectly spherical redish colored rock, perfectly smoothly round. I still have it.

In his youthful college days, Tom lived in Powelton Village, Philadelphia, with a wonderful woman named Elaine Simon, whom he jokingly nicknamed Nomis, and they had a dog named Alice. I don't remember any longer what took Tom to the deep woods of Schuyler Falls, above Plattsburgh, but I think it may have been an art teaching job at Plattsburgh college. Anyhow, once he got up there, he never came home.

Tom and I went to the same high school, Merchantville. He probably graduated in 1961. He was two years older than I am, roughly. His sister, Joanne Nicholas, married a classmate of mine, Ron Williams. Joanne was two years younger than I am and it is her husband, my classmate Ron Williams, who got in touch and told me about Tom's death. Joanne had been worried about him for years, worried that he didn't take care of his health and that he didn't have anyone nearby if something should happen. Tom died on Friday, May 17th, and I have no idea who found him. His dog, Brutus, who was in the truck with him, was taken to the pound, sadly.

Each year at Christmas, I would receive a hand made card with a lovely pencil drawing on it and a haiku poem. Tom loved to write haiku poems. I would send him a card as well, but we never really conversed that much and we NEVER telephoned one another. After all, he wasn't so much my friend as my ex-husband's friend, and they kept in touch regularly. I only saw Tom once in the 40 years since I got divorced, and that was when he was down visiting his siter and Ron, and picking up a case of wine (as he told me) because it was so much cheaper down here! He also sent me some photograph of elegant and beautiful furniture he had made. He was gifted.

It is an all too common experience for me now, the death of people I knew, grew up with, was friends with. In another May, I lost my best friend Christine Borget (Gilbreath) and last month a classmate, Romeo Ventura. These are all writing on the wall, but what can I do about it except enjoy my life as much as possible and try to live as healthy a life as possible, which I do. >p/> Meanwhile, my heart goes out to those closest to Tom, my ex-husband Mike, his best friend, and his sister Joanne, who loved him and worried about him. As for Tom, I think he died the way he would have wished to die, driving down a country road in the woods with his dog, but I think he should have made better provision for his dog. I just called my brother Joe to remind him that he said he would take my dog if I died and he said he would take all my pets, dog and cats. Also my hope is my sister would move in here and take care of them. I should write a letter with that stipulation, giving my sister living rights to the house so she could take care of them. I feel sadest for poor Brutus who was Tom's loyal friend and ended up in the pound.

I am glad my memories of Tom Nicholas are from his younger and healthier days because I have heard he had descended into dementia in his last years. I remember him young and talented.

I hope wherever he is, it is a good place.

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Jo Ann

Two Topics: Things that Make me happy & things that make me sad

Just sitting on the porch after a delightful dog walk with a neighbor lady who walks with us every day. Also every day, after we drive our neighbor home, my dog, UMA and I sit on the porch and enjoy the trees and the breeze for half an hour.

Today, I was especially enjoying the walk and the porch because early this morning I had to go to Cooper Med on Brace Road for a blood test and urinalysis - annual. I always dread it partly becaue I can't have my tea and muffin first thing in the morning as I am accustomed to doing. Also, even though the blood test doesn't really hurt, those techs are good at what they do - I DREAD IT. Even a week or two before my appointment, I begin to dread it. And I have to change all my morning habits. I have to get up extra early to get the dog walked before I can go anywhere and I can't take my heart pill until after the tests so I have to get there early or my heart will ache.

So today, as a treat and reward for getting up at 7:00 and getting it all done by 10:00, I got a croissant breakfast sandwich and latte' at the Station, in Merchantville. When I got home, Uma got a second walk with the neighbor which I followed with a porch sit in the gloriously cool and fresh Spring weather we are enjoying today. And sitting there, I felt happy and I thought of the things that make me happy - not in order of importance but in order of immediacy: My House - the actual longest romance of my life, My Porch, My dog, and my cats who love me, welcome me home and keep me company, A delicious meal from The Station - and especially since I don't drink coffee anymore the occasional treat of a latte' sends a caffeinated jolt of energy and well being through me. I am soothed knowing I have my sister as a strong right hand in my declining years and good company too, My friends such as my dog-walking-neighbor all of whom make socials events out of ordinary days. It is wonderful to have them to talk to.

THINGS THAT MAKE ME SAD - DEATH OF AN OLD FRIEND Yesterday, I received an e-mail that an old old friend from my far distant youth had died on Friday night driving his truck with his dog in the car. The dog wasn't injured, but Tom Nicholas must have had a stroke or a heart attack His brother-in-law is a high school classmate of mine and his wife was a year or two below us in Merchantville high school, so Ron Williams, the classmate and brother-in-law, got in touch to let me know about Tom's passing. His wife got in touch with my ex-husband.

Because I hadn't seen him over the years, I never saw Tom get old so he will be forever in my memory as the young man he was when I knew him most in the 1960's and 70's. He was my ex-husband's best friend and probably ONLY best friend as neither of them were particularly outgoing or friend- making. Tom went to PCA and he was the first artist I ever met and he often showed me his paintings. He was also a poet and each year he sent me hand drawn Christmas cards with haiku poems on them. He lived as a hermit in the forest of Northern New York, up above Plattsburgh. He built his own cabins. He had had one or two lovers over the years but he was a difficult man, needy, demanding, and not particularly accommodating. My ex-huband, and I often stayed in his hand-made and beautiful woodland cabins over the years before our divorce. I have baskets I made from birch trees in the forest up there. I would sit and weave baskets while we all smoked pot and lounged around along a stream or in in a small sun-lit pasture in the woods. I have a perfectly round stone that I found in a stream one day when we were hiking and crossed a rocky, fast flowing, clear water stream. It is PERFECTLY spherical.

This is one of the things that happens when you are my age - 78 - old lovers and old friends die and remind you that your time is nearly up. Someone recently mentioned a box in which you and others put mementos that have meaning and send it to another group which does the same and after it goes around to several groups, it comes back and goes on display. If I did that, I would put in the box that perfectly round rock and think of the stream and of Tom Nicholas. The dog was taken back to the shelter from which Tom had adopted him, sadly. I don't know anything more about the story - who found the truck with the dead man and the dog, whether it was heart or stroke that killed him, whether he will be cremated or buried. I may never know that chapter. I may never know anything else about any of it.

Happy Trails, Tom, wherever yours may be old friend. Tom wrote spontaneous haiku so here is one for him:

Old man dead behind the wheel at the roads edge Bright green Spring and yet an end.

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Alice munro and the Short Story

Alice Munro just died in her 90's after a long and successful career in writing which was celebrated with the awarding of the Nobel Prize for short form literature. Her most celebrated book is probably The Moons of Jupiter and her most famous short story is "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" which was made into a movie. She also won the Booker Prize and was praised for her work throghout her career. Her last book "Dear Life" talks about her life as a writer and how her short stories related to her life.

I have also written about 20 short stories over the years, in fact, I have written poetry (won a prize from Mad Poet's Society wherDearme of my work was published) and I have tried my hand at three kinds of novels: a historical novel set in 1937 called White Horse Black Horse, a relationship novel, and a memoir. My favorite form is the essay and I like the blog best of all because I can just pour out my thoughts which are like a hive of bees and occasionally must be released. Because I write for release and pleasure and because my school days and work days are over, I enjoy the freedom of the blog becaue I don't have to go back and shape it and re-shape it and edit and perfect it. It is like conversation, in a way, except I don't have the pleasure of the reverberation of a companion's stories and anecdotes bouncing back.

For a long time there was a fashion of people writing really short short stores which may be been incited by Ernest Hemingway who made a bet that he could write the sshortest short story and it would be a real tear jerker and he could do it in 6 words: "For sale, baby shoes, never worn." An interesting choice for a man like Hemingway, that most domestic of subjects. I have a shorter one for him which I think would have resonance and I can almost hear him snort with laughter and derision up in the cloud of universal consciousness or wherever we go when we are dead Here is my answer to his challenge, in 5 words: "It only took one shot."

I am wondering if I should read an Alice Munro book to pay homage to her life. The two stories she wrote that haunt me I can't remember their titles, but one is about a hobo who gets a job doing some odd jobs on an a woman's farm. She can't really manage it anymore. He is a hard worker, chivalrous and moves in and fixes things up for her, but she tries to make a romance with him and he flees. The other was about a young girl who is given the life work of her uncle, his manuscript of the history of the province, and she takes his work out of the protective metal box it is stored in for safety by his two adoring sisters, so she can use the box, and his work is lost in a flood. Alice Munro was known for her deep probe into the recesses of human psychology and the complexity of human relationships as well as for a nearly perfect craftmanship.

She had a wonderful life and a rewarding career and she did what she wanted and made a success out of it - that is a prize in itself. Alice Munro - I salute you!

Let's read a book of hers in honor of her life. Happy Trails, Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Mother's Day 2024 - My Mother said......

Just now, I finished reading an essay by journalist Tom Nichols in the Atlantic Daily, an e-mail daily news. The essay was moving, as you might expect from a professional writer. He writes about how, in a dark period in his life, after divorce, a drinking problem and several other sinking weights pulling him down, he adopted a cat from a veterinary office a few doors down from his apartment. As time went on, she kept him company and her purring and her affection helped him in his recovery and soon he had a new partner, a marriage, a home and children. His cat, Carla, adopted and delighted them all. As most cat and dog stories go, this one too had a sad ending. A quote I once saw said (and I paraphrase) “The only thing bad about dogs is their short life span.”) And that is true of dogs and cats. In my relatively long adult life, I am 78, there must have been at least a dozen serious heart attachments rent by the force of time and death. There is a small pet cemetery in my back yard for all the friends who have lived with me and died in this house over the forty years I have lived here. There are four dog graves and about the same number of cats, with white concrete statues and special plants to honor their final resting spot.

Recently, a couple of old high school classmates have been in touch with me via e-mail about their sorrow and grief over the passing of another of our classmates a couple of weeks back. He had severe diabetes and had suffered through several surgeries ending in infection and organ failure. i don’t know why these fellows chose me to contact, but I gave them both the same advice: Get outside into the healing properties of nature. If you can’t walk (and I recommend waking a dog), take a drive in the car and visit the closest historical site and/or park. Also I recommended reading and I realized I missed a really important one - adopt a pet. The best way to move out of your emotional pain is to help someone else. This, I believe!

Recently, in our Woodbury Quaker Meeting, I had mentioned one of my Mother’s sayings, well worth repeating here, “Goodness is its own reward.” And I have found this to be true. Goodness feels good! And it feels especially good to help others in need. The love you give, comes back to you enhanced, enlarged, expanded. And that is especially true if you rescue a cat or dog who needs a home. My dog makes me walk every day. Often, I don’t feel like it but it is my duty, as she reminds me, and through this, she is working to save my life. No matter what I am doing, at home, one of the triplets I adopted from my veterinarian, is always sitting beside me, or on me, or near me, purring to let me know I am loved, and their schedule helps give my day shape.

With this passing on of my Mother’s advice and my own little suggestion about adoption, I wish you a happy Mother’s Day. Remember, you may not have been a mother but we have all had a mother (and a Grandmother or two).

Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Salem County Art Tour

Today, after Chair Yoga at The Station in Merchantville, I went downstaies to the cafe' area and saw the display that proprietor Nicole had made of the many many 6 x 6 inch canvases of animal paintings donated by artists. She arranged them like a quilt! I loved it! >p/> So, this blog post is to tell you three places to see some art work this upcoming week, and in two of the places there are works of mine. First, do yourself a favor and get a lunch or a coffee at The Station (also known as Eiland Arts Center) 10 E. Chestnut Street, Merchantville, NJ and see the display of art that was made as a fundraiser for the Fishtails Animal Rescue of Philadelphia. You will be enchanted! Also on display until the end of the month in the gallery as well as the cafe' are some large fascinating photographs of musicians

Second, for one more week only, you can see the art display at Croft Farms, Borton's Mill Rd., Cherry Hill, NJ have a painting in that show which will be coming down on May 16th. You should look it up online to see the hours when the gallery is open. My painting is 'the blue rail stilt shack' on the Maurice River.'

third and final, there is a Salem County Art Tour Saturday May 18 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday May 19 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. This is a free self-guided art tour to the studios of several Salem County Artists. I have never taken the entire tour but one year when they had the tour, I visited the studio of Daniel Chard, who is not only a renowned artist, but has been a beloved painting teacher at Rowan for decades. This was advertised in SJ First AAA Magazine. For more info: www.salemcountyarttour.com

At the end of this month, I will be entering three paintings in the upcoming summer group show at The Station dedicated to the 150th Anniversary of the town of Merchantville. My two favorites out of the three, are of the train station when it still operated trains back in the late 1960's. The tracks along the Train station now are paved into 'Rails to Trails' and this is a great place to take a lovely walk and a wonderful place to bike or walk your dog, after which you can sit outside the cafe' and have a nice latte' or a smoothie.

Happy Trails my friends (as always, to contact me, please use my e-mail not the comments secion of this blog. Comments is poisoned by spam - wrightj45@yahoo.com)