Category Archives: Friendship

Little League Legend

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Sometime in the middle of my recent California cycling adventure, I wondered, what are we even doing, turning the pedals, for hours, every day?

The only thing I could come up with was extending our childhoods. We were men and women consciously choosing to be boys and girls of old.

Then, my peabrain shifted to my earliest memories of cycling in Louisville, KY in the late 1960s. When first learning to ride a bike, I remember someone, guessing an older sib, holding the seat and running alongside me until they weren’t. And then I remember swerving bigly, a few times right into metal mailboxes that dotted the edge of the road. Like Louisville’s own Cassius Clay, down goes Ron! Eventually, I swerved less and less.

My earliest, most vivid, fullblown cycling memory, was a year or two later, when I was dominating the kickball field at Zachary Taylor Elementary. It was this exact time of year, April, and Little League baseball tryouts were right around the corner.

Six or seven years old, my pals and I knew we needed a few hours of spring training before tryouts, so we laced our gloves onto some Louisville sluggers and laid them across our handlebars which we balanced precariously with balls bulging from our pockets. And then headed to a very nice, very large park, about a mile or two from our dented mailboxes.

Once we got to the park, we noticed the tennis courts sat under about 10 inches of water that had, until recently, been snow and ice covered. Maybe, we thought, as we took off our shoes and socks, we should splash around the courts a bit before officially starting spring training.

Within a few minutes, I sliced the bottom of my foot by stepping on a metal twist off beer top. The water turned red and I grew faint-headed. Someone hurriedly called my mom who lit into me. Since I’m the youngest of four, she was DONE with emergency rooms. On the way to get ten stiches, she got all up in my grill and said, “IF YOU EVER TAKE YOUR SHOES AND SOCKS OFF AND CUT YOUR FOOT AGAIN, DON’T CALL ME!” Which is pretty damn funny now, given how kind and caring she normally was. Everyone has a breaking point.

I think this was a Thursday and tryouts were all day Saturday. Even though Spring Training was cancelled on account of blood, I rallied, and showed up at tryouts on crutches. Shagging fly balls like a young Ken Griffey and even chucking the crutches and hobbling into the batters box to take some ferocious cuts like a young Andy Pages. A legend in both Louisville Little League history and my own mind.

Needless to say, the coaches were impressed with my pluck. I vaguely remember a bidding war breaking out. I told the coach that finally landed me that I didn’t want a bag, but if he could do something nice for my mom, like maybe comp her snow cones for the season, I’d greatly appreciate it.

The legend, with a scar on the bottom of his foot, fourth from the left.

Solo Travel For The Win?

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I’m sure you feel the exact same as the Huntington Beach, CA PressingPauser who texted me during the crossing, “I do hope you’ll continue with hourly updates on your journey north.”

Told him my laptop was proving a very helpful distraction, but the truth of the matter is the Strait of Juan de Fuca chop wasn’t nearly as bad as I anticipated and I avoided any feeling of imminent death.

Checked in early and am now sitting in my room reflecting on just how freaky deaky solo travel is. First, I’m happy to report, I am capable of filling out a customs form all by myself. Who knew?

Did you know when you travel solo, and you have two queen beds, you can use the spare one as an open dresser. Clothes, cables, all sorts of travel accoutrements spread across it?! Pretty groovy. Grab and go.

And if you want to sit in a chair by the window, and let the sun cook you, all while reading and sipping green tea, you can! For as long as you want. Mind blown.

And you can decide where to go to dinner yourself without any conferencing or changing of minds. At all. The Fish Market for the win.

And, you better be sitting down for this. Turns out you can use both sides of the bathroom counter! Just sling that toothbrush one direction, the contact lens case another, and spread out all the beauty products as if you are the Grand Poobah of the Water Closet. Because you are! And twice as many soft clean towels!

Altogether, there’s a bizarre absence of friction. But sports fans, while that no doubt is highly enjoyable initially, over the medium, and fo sho’ long-term, it’s detrimental to someday making another relationship work. Because friction is the lifeblood of relationships, and the more intimate, the more friction. Feeling out what your partner wants and needs, negotiating differences, and ultimately striking repeated compromises is the name of the game.

So as I do exactly as I want, what is happening to my banger interpersonal skills? I’ll tell you what. They’re atrophying.

Dear (dis)United States of America,

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I’m off to Canada tomorrow. I know you will miss me. Gonna be rough, so many fond memories with Lynn. However, I am taking two friends. Seth Harp, in the form of his book, “The Fort Bragg Cartel: Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces”. And James Rebanks, in the form of his book, “The Place of Tides”.

Maybe I won’t run to Oak Bay. Maybe I won’t swim in the salt-based 25-meter pool underneath the hotel. Maybe I won’t sit in the steam room after not swimming in the pool. Maybe I won’t go to my fave restaurants or Victoria’s REI, MEC—Mountain Equipment Coop. Maybe I won’t go to “our” theatre. Maybe I’ll just cocoon with Harp and Rebanks. No outdoor equipment required for that. You know, just lean into the grief and Howard Hughes it.

If the Canadians look at my application for asylum, and conclude, “Oh, they don’t send their best.” I’ll be back midweek.

If I do have to return, I hope you will have used Monday to rethink your plan to completely disrupt the global world order and Tuesday to put it back together. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

Reverse Psychology

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This morning, on my final Lynn CaringBridge post, I wrote, “Lynn’s memorial is going to be lit.” The truth of the matter is I’m dreading it.

Largely because almost all of Lynn’s most special friends will be there, but she won’t be. What she would give to be able to look each person in the eye, smile, and hug them one more time.

If you’re at the memorial and wondering what I’m thinking it’s, “I really, really wish Lynn was here to see everyone whose lives she touched and to enjoy their company.” Remember, she loved parties.

Last night, Alison asked me how I’m doing. I explained that it all depends upon the level of distraction. Like most people these days, I’m pretty damn good at distracting myself from the permanence of the loss that I wrote about previously. Landman, estate executor details, Facebook reels, UCLA portal comings and goings, U.S. imperialism and related bullshit, etc.

When someone thoughtfully checks-in, like Ali, and I’m forced to stop and remember all that’s been lost, I’m immediately overcome by emotion. I cried in the kitchen.

For me, Saturday afternoon will not be lit. Absent any distractions, I will be a complete and total mess.

I’m approaching the event mindful of what basketball analysts say an offensive player should do when going against a fearsome shot blocker/rim protector. The inclination is to opt for finesse, maintain a safe distance, and lob something high arching up and hope for the best. Counterintuitively, the advice of the best basketball minds is to negate their strengths by driving right into them. Or as the kids say, “Getting up in their grill.”

That’s what everyone coming together Saturday afternoon is going to help me do. Get up in the grill of grief. Jumpstart it. Press “fast forward” on the process.

Prob, so much so, I’ll be fine Sunday morn. Right?

Adrift

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Alternative title. Winter of Grief III.

I’m pretty good about keeping my peabrain psychological theories to myself. Por exemplar, I would never ever try to interpret someone else’s dream.

But my own. . .

Last night I dreamed I was someplace like the Forty Foot which I discovered watching Bad Sisters. I was mesmerized by its beauty. I guess so much so it was etched in my consciousness.

Last night, my ocean swim was a little diceyer than at Forty Foot with taller, more jagged outcroppings to negotiate before relaxing into open water. Steve Wright, a Cypress High School water polo legend, won’t be surprised to learn Kevin Babb, stud teammate of ours, and another SoCal bestie, was already in the water waiting for me. Steve and I were always the last in the water, typically getting airborne into the early morning steam clad water only after Coach Drent threatened us with additional yardage.

The dream was short, simple, and hella scary. The second I succeeded in getting out past the farthest outcropping, I was immediately swept up in the strongest current ever recorded. In seconds, I was gone, out of Kevin’s earshot and sight, headed no where good. No doubt to a dark, cold, watery death had I not woken up.

Here’s the image I keep returning to when I think about having lost Lynn.

Same as when my mom died. I’ve never experienced unconditional love like my mom’s and Lynn’s. Their love kept me moored. Among the synonyms for “moored“, fastened, secured, anchored.

Now, I feel completely unmoored. Unfastened. Unsecured. Unanchored. And especially susceptible to strong ocean currents.

Postscript. Cypress (California) High legends in their own minds.

Wholly Unprepared

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2025 was the most challenging year of my life and it wasn’t even close. And 2024 was the second most difficult.

Being educated, white, straight, and male in the wealthiest country the world has known made the other sixty one largely a breeze. Especially when you add a successful hardworking dad, an extremely loving mother, and an extremely loving wife into that mix. I was pedaling downhill with the wind until I wasn’t.

Occasionally, until Lynn was stricken with Multiple System Atrophy, I found my privilege so extensive as to be disorienting, wondering, “Why me?”

Was the cosmos playing catch up? Not even Steph Curry can make 63 straight free throws. The odds had to be against me running the table.

And of course, 2024 and 2025 were way, way worse for Lynn. I was just collateral damage.

I spent nearly all day, every day caring for Lynn during the first eight months of 2025. Never travelled anywhere, rarely saw anyone else. I knew that type of intense, nonstop closeness was really bad for our relationship. For us, absence, whether for a few hours, days, or weeks, always, always, made our heart(s) grow fuller and fonder.

I felt like I was suffocating in the house doing the best I could to stay on top of Lynn’s multiplying symptoms. The few times I lost it and told her I was worried about my mental and physical well-being, she said I just needed to figure out how to get away for a weekend. Which was hugely deflating.

I understood that to mean she was way too overwhelmed by MSA to appreciate how far I’d slipped from my normal contented, happy, healthy self. I told her and A and J that what I needed was months with no responsibility to rest, recover, and heal. And I knew that was a pipe dream, so I kept grinding until I couldn’t anymore. Which turned out to be late summer, at which point A and J realized the seriousness of the situation and we pivoted to finding an adult family home, which of course, initially at least, added to the family’s trauma.

Like a burglar inside a vacant second home, MSA took its time taking everything from Lynn and me. Over a few years we lost the ability to be active in nature together, to travel, to go out to dinner, to be physically intimate, for Lynn to do anything for me, to work together to accomplish anything, to communicate, to know something of what the other person was thinking and feeling. And to add insult to injury, any ability to plan for a shared future.

Intensely sad, painful, compounding losses, but spread out over enough time I was able to fool myself that I’d be prepared enough for Lynn’s inevitable death that I would be alright and somehow piece together a new life.

But strangely, as it turns out, I was wholly unprepared for the most obvious thing of all, the permanence of the loss. I was deluded to think a break was possible. Now that the movie is over, forever, it’s jarring. To say the least.

It’s devastating to think that I’m never getting back any of the amazing, life-fulfilling things that were lost. Ever.

What Now?

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My best friend took her last breath Monday afternoon surrounded by Alison, Jeanette, and me. It was peaceful and we’re relieved she’s no longer suffering. However, even though we had a long time to prepare for this, we don’t know how we’ll pick up the pieces seeing that she’s left a Grand Canyon-like hole in our family.

In the middle of the five last hours we spent bedside, Ebony, a Certified Nurse Assistant, who helped Lynn shower twice a week, joined us around the bed and held her hand. She only met Lynn three months ago, but she loved her like Abigail, Olga, FuFu, and all her caregivers did. Ebony talked about how loving and special she was and all I could think is how Lynn connected with all these women while at her absolute lowest point.

There’s no humanly explanation for that.

Blessed be the fact that MSA never broke her spirit. A few days ago, when a former caregiver came to visit, it didn’t matter that Lynn had stopped eating and drinking, she lit up, and flashed the smile that warmed people’s hearts.

A friend forwarded this message today from Lynn’s former student Miriam.

Her last of a lifetime of selfless acts was donating her brain to science. If you want to honor her memory please consider a gift to the Brain Support Network.

A favorite poem of hers.

The Winter Of Grief

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What the hell am I going to do when I can’t make Lynn smile anymore?

My go to when her lips are barely moving and no sound is coming out is to say, “Not so loud.” She likes that one.

Six months ago, I had a whole morning routine featuring her, the Slo-mo Turtle. That got pretty elaborate with the log she lived on, her forest friends, and all kinds of silliness delivered with the staccato of a nature documentary. That routinely got not just smiles, but guffaws.

Early in the week I told her I got stuck in the driveway waiting for a gaggle of Garfield Elementary students to walk by on their return from downtown. And how some of the umbrella-less boys were drenched. The former elementary teacher smiled widely at that image.

What a difference a week makes. Today, I needed Jeanette’s help to get her to muster a slight smile.

She is not in pain and was quite peaceful when I left. But she’s waving the white flag.

We’re at mile 26 of the marathon.

It’s Happened

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A large part of the rationale for the move to the Adult Family Home three months ago was that I could recover, and therefore Lynn and I could heal and get in sync, and spend whatever time is left as positively and peacefully as possible.

I am not in a good place, but a much better one. Way, way less stress. FuFu, Alison, and Jeanette, among many others, have saved me.

As a result, for the last two months, Lynn and I have enjoyed my visits. We look at photo albums. We listen to music. I tell her about my day. We loop the hood.

Most of all, we touch. I hold her hands and massage her calves. She hugs me tightly as if she’s not going to let go. We press our foreheads against each other. I caress her head as she falls asleep. We kiss.

It’s how we communicate.

I’ve never partnered with someone who is dying, so I’m improvising. All the time. What to say?

Last week I kneeled on the floor next to her hospice bed as she cried before napping. I told her I loved her and that she was okay, which of course, was untrue. Then I told her how sorry I was for what she’s experiencing. And that she’s been fighting it every minute she’s been awake for a few years and that was why she was completely exhausted. And that I wanted her to Rest even if that meant being alone. I told her how much I am going to miss her. More tears.

Then I told her she wasn’t alone and wouldn’t be alone. That she is bearing the fruit of having built such a caring and loving family.

We have had a much more intense relationship than you would probably guess. Intensely good most of the time, intensely bad some of the time.

I told her I was skimming an old Apple Note I wrote from when we were in marriage counseling five or six years ago. And how my one regret is all the time we wasted being mad at each other. I asked her to forgive me for being so stubborn and selfish. More tears.

I suspect she wanted to say something similar, but I was okay with her not being able to because I wanted to take most of the responsibility for our epic, sporadic struggles.

Even though we wanted to at times, I told her we never quit, and that was something.

In hindsight, we probably wasted 10% of our time together being too mad at each other to thoughtfully interact. Even though we learned to repair things, 10% of 38 years is almost four years! What we would do to have four years back.

More than Lynn, I accepted that we were never going to coast conflict free like some couples seemingly do. That the heartache was part and parcel of the intense intimacy. Again, in hindsight though, I wish we had far fewer, less intense conflicts. Fewer days where we couldn’t even talk to one another.

My unsolicited advice. Don’t take whatever committed relationships you’re in for granted. Be as proactive as you can. Trust one another enough to talk about what lies below the surface so that resentments don’t build up. Learn to listen and get more comfortable probing your partners’ feelings. If possible, by yourself, or together, enlist the help of a professional to learn to have fewer, less intense conflicts.*

Most of all, don’t assume you have many years and decades left, because you may not.

*LOL, I’m gonna get slammed for that wee bit of hypocrisy. :)