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My own worst critic..

I've been an artist all my life. Sure, I wasn't always as good as I am now. I can still to this day look back at dismal morning in kindergarten when our teacher assigned us the task of making a paper ghost from construction paper. In front of each kid lay a piece of white construction paper, those dull-ass  rounded safety scissors, a black magic marker ( the kind that stains.. that washable shit wasn’t invented until later when kids couldn’t be held accountable for getting shit all over their school clothes).My teacher had drawn a "ghost shape" on the chalkboard for us to copy. Rounded top, squiggly ethereal shape that looked like a mutated cross between a genie and that spermatozoa.

I glanced at the chalkboard.. looked at my paper, and began to sketch out the shape with the precision of an epileptic sniper. "Oh no" I thought to myself as I stared down at the irregular shape that donned my paper. It looked nothing like what was on the chalkboard, let alone anything that even the kindest of mothers could decipher as being a ghostly shape. I had a plan though. I’ll just flip the paper over and try again.  I had to see how this whole "marker" thing was gonna play out. That first one was just a trial run.  After all, you don’t learn how to drive by entering the Daytona 500.

I focus once more, laying pen to paper. My tongue sticking out the corner of my mouth in a Zen like state of concentration as I follow my mind's eye. However, once again, there surely must be a communication error between my hand and my brain. Instead of a ghost, my work resembled that of an amoeba with a curly pig tail.

Devastation washed over my 5 year old face. How could this be?  I clamored for an explanation, questioning everything from chronic marker malfunction to slight nerve damage obtained from that big-wheel accident that I was in weeks before. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. After all, my mother was an extremely gifted artist. So the slightest bit of genetic favoring should allow me the ability to render this ghost as well as any of the other non-gifted kids that sat in my class. Maybe I was adopted?  What if my family had been lying to me all along, and this lack of ghost rendering skills has exposed the family secret!.

Defeat hung over me like a rain cloud as I sat there staring at the scribbled mess. My teacher was making her way around the classroom as most of the others had already begun the cutting process. The clock was ticking away, and craft time was going to run out if I didn’t do something quickly. I raised my hand and asked for another piece of paper. The teacher handed me a fresh canvas, but not before saying "If you can’t draw the shape, just make a circle."
A circle?? What the hell? Was this the ghost of some fat kid? I can’t just draw a circle. That’s admitting defeat, and I'll be damned if I'm going to have this black mark on my otherwise exceptional artistic record. After all, just last week I drew a huge tank battle that included rocket shooting jets and a fort with a giant cannon. If I start trying to pass circles off as ghost, I will surely lose respect in the kindergarten art community.

I once more put pen to paper, and once again it was an utter disaster. Now, I'm pretty sure if anyone else could hear the torrent of expletives and threats of violence against my teacher that were streaming through my head at the time, I would have been committed to a boys home until I was old enough for real prison. I was almost in tears. Surely arts & craft time was near the end, and I only have one good side of paper left. There is no way I am gonna get another shot at this. I could feel the tears begin to well up in my eyes. I had to decide to either miss my project deadline or turn in low quality work.

I flipped the paper over, and drew a less than perfect circle. I quickly cut him out and pasted on some googly eyes.  The fat ghost had been born. As the glue dried, I stared into the plastic bubble eyes of my tormentor. Even though it resembled a snowball more than a ghost, it haunted me nonetheless. The teacher had placed everyone’s ghost up on the bulletin board for Halloween decoration. Mine sat at the very end, like punctuation. I had to stare at that damn thing every day for 2 weeks. Taunting me. I thought about taking him down on my own. Accidents happen you know. Maybe the cleaning crew mistaken my ghost for a coffee filter or something and threw it out. Suddenly it occurred to me. Thanksgiving is upon us, and regardless of your artistic abilities, anyone can make a turkey out of a handprint.

Be prepared for ANYTHING..

I have been getting this strange pain in my forearm and fingers for the past few weeks. Usually I let shit like that slide, but it’s been getting worse so I decided to get an appointment with a doctor.

Now my usual doctor has left the practice, so I had to get established with a new one. I found one that came highly recommended by some friends. Being a new patient, you have to go through the battery of questions..

…Age?

..family history of heart disease?

.. allergic to any meds?

.. Smoke, Drink?

tap tap here, cold metal stethoscope there..

Then he hits me with

"Ok, disrobe. I need to check your testicles"

WHOA.. Wait a minute. I’m just here for my arm. What the fuck does that have to do with my testicles??
I don’t care how many times you hear it, but when a man says "Let me check your testicles", it can be a bit of a shocker.

To be honest, it kind of freaked me out. I mean, if you are going to have your junk jiggled by a doctor, you at least want to know this before showing up for the appointment. Maybe I could have prepared myself for the event. Psyched myself up or something. I had nothing though. A fucking deer in the headlights. I was totally speechless.

So there I stood in all my glory as the doctor moves the Frank out of the way to check my beans. I did my best to mentally distance myself from the situation. “Go to your happy place” I thought to myself. However, this wasn’t a solo effort. OHHH no.. apparently checking my junk is a team sport.

"turn your head and cough please", the question rips me away from my lucid state, forcing me back to the harsh reality of his latex covered hands gripping my balls.

I squeak out a meager "eh he.. " as if I had the lung capacity of a asthmatic church mouse. My only chance to profess my manliness was lost.

"Again", his gloved hand inspecting my other bag buddy.

Once more I squeeze out something that could only be described as the sound an emphysema-ridden giraffe would make. Fuck me.. I should have just asked him for a pap smear while I was there.

"Everything looks good, go ahead and put your clothes back on"

I don’t think Superman could have dressed himself faster than I had at that point.

OK. I’ve made it through the gauntlet. Let get down to business. "So doc, about my arm"

He does a quick check on forearm.

"just take some Ibuprofen, we'll order a few test and check it again in a few weeks to see how it faired"

What? I just got fondled by this guy for some fucking aspirin??
He signs a few things on my chart, shakes my hand with his ball covered mitts, and sends me on my way.

I walked past the receptionist trying not to make eye contact. I could hear them thinking “He just got his balls juggled by a dude”.

Fear not. I am an optimist at heart. As I drove home, all I could think about was how lucky I was that I haven’t turned 40 yet.

What a difference a day makes..

There are those moments in your life that are so profound, so “life-changing” that you would think they would be embedded in your mind forever. The reality is that your mind will likes to change the details over time. Little things go first. Certain people involved, miniscule events leading up to the experience; the memories erode with every passing day. In an effort to keep this specific moment in my life as crystal clear as possible, I have decided to let you all in on the single most profound moment of my life so far.

August 7th 2008

Just another day in the rat-race that was my life. I had a rather large 3D job that was in the throws of deadline hell, and I was doing my best to utilize every waking moment of free time in order to get the job completed in the time frame that had been promised. Our son Austin had not been sleeping well for the past few months, and subsequently my wife Amy & I haven’t either. His lungs had been filling with fluid more and more everyday, and the evenings were dotted with either seizures or vomit-producing coughing fits. He was in a lot of pain, and the lung issues only made the muscle spasms that much worse. Despite being only 10 and in the clutches of severe Cerebral Palsy, he was always in pretty good spirits. We always managed to get at least a smile or giggle out of him no matter how bad he was feeling.

I quietly left for work that morning, doing my best not to wake anyone. Austin slept next to our bed on an air-mattress. It was the only way we could keep an eye on him at night. Otherwise he could have a seizure, or choke to death in the middle of the night and no one would know until morning. Austin’s doctor had set us up with a room at the local Hospice House to help with his pain management. Hi intentions were to have him there for a few days max so that they could get the right mixture to allow the poor kid to sleep.

That day at work, I buried myself in my job like I usually do. It was just another typical day as a graphic artist. I was hoping that we wouldn’t be spending the night at the Hospice House, because my 3D job deadline was right around the corner, and I really couldn’t afford spending the evening away form the computer. I got a call from Amy around 2:00 pm telling me that they were checked in, and that she needed me to go home and grab a few things and bring them to her. “We just need enough stuff for a few days” she tells me. I left work early to get a head start.

I arrived at the Hospice House around 3:30 that day. Austin was in the hospital bed, laughing and giggling as Ms Jean (his assistant at school) was reading him a book. He loved books. No matter how bad he was feeling, he would sit quietly for hours if you read books to him. As soon as you were done, you would get the pouty lip though; that kid knew how to work a room. He seemed to be in pretty good spirits for a while. We had been down this road so many times before, and it had become kind of routine. What was really bad was I was more concerned with getting home and finishing my work that hanging out there. Like I said before, this was all so routine for us.

Our other son Avery was with his cousin at Disney that day so we didn’t need to worry about him. He wasn’t due back for several hours, and he was planning on spending the night with them. That was one of many coincidences that evening that were “small blessings” now that I look back. It wasn’t until around 5:30 that the gravity of the situation really started to come into view. Austin had started to slow down quite a bit. He was getting very lethargic, and his color had gone from a healthy pink to more of a grey. Several friends and relatives had come by to visit him, but he really didn’t respond much. I wasn’t sure what was going on at this point, but the last thing I thought was that he was on his way out.
One of the nurses assigned to him had come in to talk to us about his medications. They hadn’t gotten his seizure meds sent down yet, and they didn’t seem too worried about getting them. Amy actually got very angry about this, because she felt that they thought he wouldn’t be around long enough to take them. I actually feel bad for the nurse when I think back. Those people have seen death on a daily basis, and they notice the subtle signs long before we do. Also, Amy was getting worried about her baby, and she needed someone to be angry at in order to vent her frustrations and fear. That nurse was to be the target of that frustration. Amy left the room for a few minutes to compose herself, and I explained to him and the Hospice coordinator what was going on. I told them they really needed to handle her with a bit of compassion, because she had spent the past 10 years fighting tooth and nail for that little boy. She was not to be taken lightly, and if getting a little bit for medicine for him would comfort her even just a little bit, they had better do so. I was not one for confrontation, but I hated seeing her struggle like she did. That moment was a turning point for me. I knew that he was not going to be here much longer. I started making the phone calls to relatives.
I held it together for quite some time with the phone calls. I don’t think I ever started crying until I spoke with my Mom in Maryland. I was feeling pretty helpless at this point. I think once the words “You might want to make arrangements to get down here” came out of my mouth, everything became VERY real.
Over the next few hours, lots of people came by to see Austin. I ended up taking him out of his bed and sitting with him in a recliner in the room. He was always most comfortable curled up in my arms, and I figured if this was to be our last time together it shouldn’t be in a hospital bed. I was the first to hold him when he came in to the world, and I was going to make damn sure I was holding him when he was going out.

His coughing was getting worse, so they started to administer morphine to help ease his pain. He was pretty much out of it for a while, barely opening his eyes when someone spoke his name. I couldn’t even get a smile or giggle out of him anymore. One of the Hospice nurses had a pet skunk, and brought it in for him to see. He actually opened his eyes and smiled when we put his hand on the skunk’s fur. That would be the last time I would see him with his eyes open.

Several hours had past. Austin’s breathing had gone from a slow rhythm to long pauses between breaths. They had a catheter in him, and he hadn’t produced any urine in the past 5 hours. His kidneys had already shut down. Avery was on his way back, so they called to see how things were going. We asked him if he would like to see Austin, because we weren’t sure if he was going to be here much longer. Avery really didn’t understand the severity of the situation, so he asked if he could just talk to him on the phone. We put the phone to Austin’s ear, and let him say his peace. I have thought about that moment many times. I wondered if we had made the right decision, or if we should have had him come by and see his brother. The problem was that at this point, Austin looked like he was dying. His fingers, lips, and nose were blue from the lack of oxygen, and he was pretty much passed out. I didn’t want the last memory of his brother to be that image.

My cousin Chris showed up to help out. The strangest thing is that he was the one that drove me 45 minutes to the hospital when Amy was airlifted to Arnold Palmer for an emergency C-section. It seemed that things were coming full circle. His wife was with Avery and his cousin, so he figured he would come down to help in anyway he could. Other people that were part of Austin’s life when he was little had also come by. One of his first teacher assistants, and our parent advocate for the school also showed up. These are people that we haven’t seen in many years, yet they were there for the duration. Austin had been such a big part of their life, and they wanted to be there for our family in this very dark time.

It was around midnight, and Austin’s breathing had slowed down to a shallow breath about every 20 or 30 seconds. With each breath, we would all watch the clock to see how long it had passed, wondering if that was the last one or not. Just as we would all look at each other and think “was that it?” he would take a breath. It seemed like it was taking forever, and we all were on pins and needles. Amy’s mother was driving down from Virginia in hopes of seeing him before he passed. She was still 4 hours away, and we knew he wasn’t going to be able to hold out much longer. We called her to let her say her good-byes to him. I felt so bad for her, because she was trying so hard to get here in time, and you could hear in her voice the desperation.
One she hung up, his breathing had slowed down to almost 45 seconds between breaths. His breath had a very odd smell to it. I could only describe it as “death breath”. His skin had gotten very chalky looking, and he didn’t snap back when you squeezed it. The blueness in his nose and lips had spread to his cheeks and eyes, as well as his arms. The only remnants of pink were on his chest, but even then it was fading as well. Earlier, the Hospice people had told us they could give him a high dose of morphine to help “ease” things along. We had declined in hopes of her mother getting here in time, but it was obvious that that just wasn’t going to happen. Amy had begun to really lose it, and our friend Terry had taken her out of the room for a minute to help her get it all out. I told the nurse that I think it’s was time to just let him go. I asked them to ask Amy if she agreed, and we would give him the “final dose”. She said it was ok, so the nurse left to get the medicine together. Amy held his hand, and I whispered in his ear “Its ok buddy, you don’t have to fight anymore. You can go to sleep”. Amy kissed him on the forehead, told him how much she loved him. It was that moment that we realized he hadn’t taken a breath in over 2 minutes. Just then the nurse arrived with the morphine, but there was no need. He passed on his own. It was as if he did it so we wouldn’t have to live with the burden of knowing we gave him a lethal dose. I know it sound kind of silly, but it was actually quite a weight lifted off my shoulders knowing that I didn’t have to do that.

They checked for a pulse, and documented the time of death at 12:37 am. I don’t think I have every cried so much in all my life. I just held him as close as I could. I remember telling him I was sorry that I couldn’t do more for him. I felt that since he passed away, that I had failed to do something that could have prevented it.
He sat there on my lap for almost 40 minutes while we waited for the coroner. Once he arrived, we were told that it would be best that we didn’t see them put him in the body bag and wheel him out. I had him bundled in a blanket, and I remember seeing the mottling of his skin on his legs when I had to put him in the bed. That image will haunt me for the rest of my life. Death is not a pretty thing by any means.

My cousin Chris said that he would stay with Austin while they took him away. This one moment was by far the most benevolent act anyone had ever done for our family. I know that the image of them taking Austin out really bothered him for some time afterwards as well.

My friend TJ drove us home that night. Stepping foot into that house was like taking a shotgun blast to the chest. It was so quiet. We hadn’t had a quiet night in our house for 10 years, and now here we were. I lay there in bed, staring at the ceiling. Austin’s bed was still next to ours, yet I couldn’t hear the tell tale snorting that I had become so accustomed to listening to every night. I couldn’t sleep at all. I think Amy and I were up for a few hours until we eventually just passed out. A major portion of our existence had been taken away from us. Our very identity had changed that day. He was only supposed to be in the Hospice house for a few days, and now here we are just 9 hours later and he is gone. It all happened so fast.

One thought that always sticks with me when I think back on that day is this. When I woke up that morning, I never would have thought it was the last day I would ever have with him. He was so animated that morning, and Amy had even commented to me that during the drive to the Hospice house he was kicking and laughing as though there was nothing wrong. It just goes to show what a difference a day makes.

I have made it a point to always tell everyone I love them before I leave the house. I also take LOTS of pictures, no matter how insignificant the event is, and I never take time for granted. You just never know when the meter is going to expire. Having regret for not spending more time with your loved ones is something I will never have to worry about again.