Upon the occasion of the death of my friend, Jim Costa.

I do not want to say the long goodbye.

To have it short and sweet is my wish when I die.

I say no to COVID but yes to all of you

No to lymphoma, glioblastoma.

But yes to your eyes and heart and your goodbyes.

We will not get what we want,

our desires wishes thwarted inopportunely.

To meet our end with peace can be a most difficult thing

but love and morphine can ease the path.

I'll take a modicum of gracefulness and ease

surrounded I hope by love,

support, cradling arms . . . .

as we bid the other the long goodbye.

and ease, ever so gently . . .

into that long good and graceful night.

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/09/eagles-hotel-california-tour-review/619973/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

 

Hotel California

This music, this song is inevitably tied to my friend Jim Walsh who died in an overloaded light plane crash in Sacramento around 1982. One of the last and best memories of being with Jim was a warm Sacramento summer night out for a drive to who knows where (and that was the very point). The drive took us into the foothills up near Sierra College. Back then, 'in the olden days' it was not as built up as it is now - of course of course.

We were in our young 20's, our very young 20's and the night, like our lives, was ours with nothing between us and a bright long future. We drove his silver shining Honda into that night with all the windows and sunroof open to the stars and moon. We talked of nothing but everything that lay between us and the universe racing by. Hotel California played on the radio and we sang with it a bit, lifting our voices in sync but little knowing of life's travails then or what was to come. Not many of us do I guess . . . but even at a young age I had seen some amazing things and Jim . . . he had some stories to tell too, some much darker, some much brighter.

It is good, this memory. I hold and cherish, nurture it close to my heart. I shared it over the years with Jim's brother, Mo Walsh. He is one of the finest men I know on this planet. We carry this mutual sorrow, he for the brother lost and I for one of my best friends. In his dying, Jim gave us the gift of our friendship. From death comes many gifts even if I could not see that in the making. This song is many things to all of us who heard it back in the day. But to me I will always remember that night speeding along in the darkness of a full moon with a best friend, in a silver Honda, on a warm summer night, long long ago.

My day thus far . . . .

I am outside COVID testing people in a line of cars.  Older patient drives up.  Says she is worried that something that happened today may affect her ability to take the test.  I can see the emotion building in her face.  I tell her that we have time, no one is behind her, is she ok?  Does she want to talk?

Then the tears begin to flow at last and she can unburden her sadness and grief for these all too brief moments  Her 5 month old granddaughter just died who had been born with a terminal medical condition.  This woman had just picked up the death certificate that is lying in the front right seat.

What can one do?  Except to hold her hand, hold it with silence and acceptance, with empathy and love.  Sometimes our greatest gift is to help in the relief of great suffering.  Thank god I had the time, that I was able to make the time.

Our own suffering comes back to us in these moments.  I was able to use that to understand her suffering.  Although the two are so different the human experience remains.  The shared suffering so to speak.

There are no heroes in this story - except perhaps for this person in front of me and the parents of a dead baby.  Just people, all these people surrounding me, holding me up making it possible for me not only to do my job . . . . but to hold the hand of a grieving woman.  I am grateful and humbled.

 I had wine and conversation with a good friend last night.  He is older, served in Vietnam as a combat photographer.  

The taliban, a world and decades away from Vietnam over ran Kabul two days ago.  So our conversation may have have been prompted by this because the parallels are all too familiar.

Our conversation did not devolve into drunken reminiscing of war stories, his war stories (for I have none to share nor wish to).  But it did touch upon the endless repetition of wars this country has seen, initiated and those brought upon it.

To this day the memories of combat are crystal clear.  Sometimes, when you are a good friend, you learn to just shut the fuck up and listen.  That is what I did.  Took me long enough I guess. 

I have memories like this.  Crystal clear.  From fire fighting days, medical calls in the field. Horrific scenes etched into times frozen memory that clutches and claws at you at the most inopportune times! How inconvenient suffering can be at times.  

Yet again and again, I also have these moments but of my lovers touch and kiss,  Haleys comet in the Fijian South Pacific skies in 1986 as I lay on the deck of a boat crossing the midnight sea.  I watched Haley's Comet all night . . . and I wondered who will be watching it when it circles back to us again in 2061?  I may be alive against the odds.  If I am alive I will gaze toward the heavens in wonderment, awe but most of all gratefulness.

Grateful for being alive every day, to have had the love of my life with Victoria Wright and the peace and deep intense satisfaction she brings to living, for the friendship of my friend and his wine and all the friends I have scattered around this lovely warming planet.

A bit North of the Lost Coast

 

We are seldom given such opportunity . . . .

Engaged.  January 2020. The Love of my Life.  Right there in front of me and I had no idea.  Someone that is love personified, smart, giving, caring,  beautiful, crazy, funny and thinks of me in her actions and I think of her in mine.  I have never been so honored to be loved and to love.  We are so seldom given these opportunities.

Coming inside after COVID-19 testing August 2020 at the Santa Rosa VA Clinic in California.  You can see my Powered Air Purifying Respirator (PAPR) that I am holding (I had just removed it).  In 100 F heat it gets very warm and humid quickly.  The air coming in is also quite hot.  We are now at the end of August and it is much cooler but also much smokier due to the many fires that we continue to endure.

To The Sea I Went

To the sea I went
To touch my face and toes and hands
In the cold upwelling pacific ocean
So far. So very far. 

Inevitably
Always. 
I look West and South again
Finding my way
Seeking my bearing. 
A compass needle ever moving

I look for Hawai'i nei,
For Levuka and Viti Levu
Always searching my minds eye
For what I cannot see yet have not, 
Cannot leave behind.  

These are the islands of my past and dreams they come to me and I to them
It is not perfections paradise
But a breathing living history
Walking forward in time
But always looking back. 

These are the islands of my dreams
Forged in fire
Not forgotten
People loved 
In the perfect village of my mind. 

I may never return to them
It is not known. 
Only a guest- taught so much and 
A life well spent 
Reckoning, searching, dwelling
For the islands in my dreams. 

David McCullough
June 20, 2020

Remembering Shelby my White Lab

You were the best dog a man could have had in life Shelby.  It is about a year now since you died and left this planet.  

But in my wanderings around this earth and specifically the Ridge there are not many places that do not remind me of you, my four-legged buddy and pal.

In so many ways it seems crazy to me to write a letter to you when you are dead . . . but I have done it with people.  And sometimes I think, you may deserve more than some people.

I think of you so often.  I am with a woman named Victoria now Shelby and you knew and met her.  She helped me with you so much and has held me in my grief at losing you.  What more can one ask of another being than that simple thing?  To be present and witness the grief and joy of losing a fellow being?

At long last I had to move on because as you know so well the suffering had become too much for me to bear.  You were witness to it and held my heart in your paws more than once and absorbed my tears into your beautiful soft furry head so many times.  That is what friends do.  

I hope I was there enough for you in life but especially in your final days.  I had to leave when I did or I was going to die.  So I left you in your final months with someone I trusted till someone returned home. I hope your suffering was as least as it could be.  Forgive me if that is needed.

So many times, humans let their own pain, suffering and drama become the sole focus and are unable to be fully present in the lives, suffering AND the joy of those closest to them.  I have been guilty of this.  It is my strongest hope that your suffering was attended to and alleviated as much as possible in those final days of your long doggy life.

Whenever I am at the spring I remember the fun we had there . . . barking at each other, wrestling in the leaves, running through the water and then you would break for Shelby’s Spa, the best watering hole for you to roll around in and get muddy.

I always remember that Shelby and let it comfort me in my times of sadness and joy.

I remember too the many hours of you and I riding in Red Rover our truck.  It seems to me that is the way it should be at times, a man and his dog, a dog and her man in a Red Truck, a white lab named Shelby with her human Man David . . . riding along through life, loving the doggieness, the humanness of our lives with your soft furry head on my lap and me rubbing your ears.  I miss you.  

Romp on Shelby . . . you made me a better human and a better man. Thank you for giving me the life we had together.

 

 

What Foto When I am Dead?

What Photo of me will they use?

When I am dead

To say goodbye. 

What picture of me will be found,

After I am gone

Smiling and eager to be so alive. 

If it's black and white 

Or technicolor 

I'll still be dead

And I'll miss your goodbyes. 

David McCullough

2019

Shiloh Park. Sunny day. Thinking a lot. 

Searching for Tomales Bay

                Searching for Tomales Bay

Having lost our way, we found ourselves searching for Tomales Bay . . .

With its whipping winds and calm inlets,

The blue of skies reflected green eyes. 

We took our refuge in each other’s safe harbors.

We journeyed there one day’s night,

you and I . . . together at last.

Love building and growing in each of us

In two years of laughing friendship.

I told you once I loved you as a friend (so long ago it seems!),

that attraction factored in . . . 

and I’d not transgress our friendships love.

Then love woke – it devoured us both!

One year on we moved on and in . . .

Moved into each other

On to, around and enveloped the other,

Hoping against hope we may last.

Tis an unknown course we chart - searching for Tomales Bay

The wind whipped waves of time and tide,

endlessly reverberate with you and I. 

In a sure and wondrous place to start

Where first we met to wed our hearts. 

                David McCullough

                Febrary 26, 2018

Unexpected Joy

Unexpected Joy

It lives in us you know.

Unexpected joy.

Waiting to be released into our hearts.

To be set free and roam among the sea of stars and spinning galaxies . . .

Then again live in and take residence in the start.

The start of love, of joy, of fulfillment and tender holding takes us by storm.  

We are tossed upon the sea of longing where danger lurks.

Yet we choose in this moment to sail on, full sheets to the wind.

To set a course with thee and thine heart to uncharted space . . . where dragons and love live.

This choice we make . . . not for the faint of heart or mind.

Yet tis a choice a choice when love speaks and bodies meld?

I think not,

I know not,

Care not . . .

when joy charts our voyages course . . .

Side by side . . . sailing our seas of loves tossed swells.

February 23, 2018

A Poem for Your Heart but Not for Mine.

Memories provoked by Over the Rainbow

I was just listening to a version of Over the Rainbow.  One of the greatest and most well known tunes of what is called the Great American Songbook and certainly iconic.  There are not many times I can hear this tune without my mother, Vesta Brownell coming to mind.  The movie that this tune first debuted was of course, The Wizard of Oz.  She grew up with that movie as did so many of her generation and the sense of sadness, danger and wistfulness engendered by the movie I think permeated her life.  When you are a child of the depression it is an experience that never leaves you but I think has an especially stronger impact than other childhood experiences from other generations. She was born in 1934, the movie came out in 1939 so she was only five years old.

One of my strongest memories is the excitement of seeing The Wizard of Oz with my mom every Fall when it appeared on television (it first showed on TV in 1959).  At times I think she enjoyed it more than we did.  What amazed me was her sense of childish delight that she took in so many different things in the world.  More importantly she was unafraid to show this sense of wonder and delight - not that she was without her faults that could drive a son crazy.  I miss being driven crazy by her - at least little bit!  Wwho among us would not give something to have one last long conversation with our mother and father? 

David McCullough

October 11, 2016

Pogo 1968

1968

Florsheim am Main

We took leave of Deutschland

But I left myself behind

Little boy that I was

And lying in the driveway lay

My red springy pogo stick

Why do I think of this now?

In brown hot California hills

Forty eight years later sometime ago when I was a boy not yet a man

It was my dreams of what it meant to be a boy. Then …to become used to what it means to leave things behind. 

To grow up and become a man …So it bounced … so I did … from country to country and state to state in ceaseless quest. 

So now I remember with some certainty,

A red pogo stick

And a childhood left behind. 

Roundstone, Ireland.

We are in Roundstone Village, North of Galway, Ireland. Super nice fishing village and damn small. Just a few B&B's and good pubs.  Not overrun with tourist like us …at least not now. In the distance, the Buren a gigantic outcropping of limestone, calcite and other minerals. Fantastic rock specimens abound and fossils. Last week we saw footprints over 385 millions years old in a ledge above the ocean. I'll want to come back here. You should too. 

Great coffee cafe in Lisconnor, Ireland

I'm in Liscannor, Ireland at a wonderful cafe. 

Go to it. Sit. Enjoy and let Irish envelop you. We've had an unheralded 24+ days of no rain or fog. A record from what the Irish are saying. Its a wise man that carries a coat in good weather as a farmers wife remarked to yesterday. 

Thoughts on Ireland

Tis a bit intimidating to write anything at all about Ireland after the like of Samuel Beckett, James Joyce and others of course.  But if everyone let that stop them we would all be screwed out of much fine literature.  That being said . . . I'll move on.  We have been on our first and far too brief sojourn through this lovely and lively country and is is not enough to take even a month.  I think we shall have to live here for a few years at least to get a sense of the place, it's time and lovely people.  Others have said it far better than I but underneath all the laughter, jokes and limericking around there is, it seems to me, a deep vein of sadness and tragedy that permeates the land and people who have so tenaciously inhabited it so many thousands of years. Not that it curses them by any means but it makes them who they are of course . . . Just like the rest of us.

We visited a lot of places while here - must I even say that? I think not but it's done well there we are.  Among them, surprise surprise to those of you have been, was a circle of upright stones.  I forget where and I am not looking it up yet.  But over three thousand years ago people cremated and buried a female.  Around her, either before or after the burial they erected stones (think Stonehenge).  It quite touched me . . . Wondering who she was, was she loved, revered, hated or what was she?  I want to think it was love and respect but that's three thousand years of projection going into that.  Me, like many are prone to romanticizing the past thinking that people  were closer to the land or happier or somehow more in touch with something better than what we are or are Not in touch with.  I am guilty of this but I reject it's basic premise.  For what we know from all the evidence is that it was / could be a very difficult life under what we consider difficult and less than ideal living conditions.  All that and the complications of the threat and reality of conflict, disease, starvation and shall I go on?  None the less, three thousand years later I bear witness to what they left behind, stand where they stood, wonder at their lives and look at some of the same stars they wondered at (in far different positions though) I like to project and think.

In that same moment, selfishly I wonder who will build my stone circle and than realize I don't care and that in the end, three thousand years from now these binary digital bits of information will cease to have existed and it will not matter that they were written in the first place. It will not matter that I lived or died nor how many lives I saved or failed to save.  We are all dust comes to mind and the fleeting lives we live . . .it is good to be reminded of that, that our time is short and we better get on with it - whatever that means. I think what it means for me is that I want to cosmic good while I am rooted here and I think I have. . .for the most part!  I need to carpe diem baby and carpe diem fast now that I can see the end (I like to think) a bit more close than I have seen it in the past.  

Maybe the Irish and the land have a clearer sense of it than I or the Americans do because they are surrounded and permeated by it.  With the troubles not so far in the past and thousands of years of invasions by the Vikings and English they have known far worse than many of us.  It is reflected in their music, language (which I have come to love the sound of) and culture.

We have never felt more welcomed (except I have felt just at welcomed when I lived in Fiji from 1985-1987).  If you can - go to Ireland but go to just one to three places and linger in each as long at you can.  I respect and love this country and its people - they have taught me a thing or two and I am just learning what the hell that is and in a few years or so I just might know.  But go to Ireland, keep your mouth shut, your mind, eyes and heart open.  If your'e not careful - you'll turn into one of them, mind you . . . there are worse fates!

Outside of Dingle, Ireland

The view from my window …

Cashel Rock, County Tipperary, Ireland

Cashel Rock. Look it up. Been around for a long time. Damn the English for screwing the Irish but the Americans have done our bit too in many places. And so it goes far into the past and future. 

Ireland, Kilkenny, May 2016

For a city that has been here for over 600 years They sure as hell are doing something right! Would love to come back and spend a lot of time here thank you very much Ireland. Where observations to, as I've got quite a bit to say about our experience thus far but for now I'm too busy drinking to do any writing I'm glad of it if you asked me for I think that's what the Irish are mainly doing is drinking more than anything else. 

Poem: DO NOT FORGET

Do Not Forget

I have learned to love you more with each breaking day

and I tell you I love you more,

than I did the first year of our lives

we knew together.

now . . . . now that grief binds you tight

in remembrance of those who are dead or dying.

Try not let death seize you in it's embrace

to know that each moment you are alive to grieve

you are also alive to live

I am not here to bind you to me

but only to love you

and my loving embrace

in support of our lives

lived together (not alone).

Death reminds us . . .

make time for the living

let them love you

in the depths of your misery, love and pain

death reminds us that we are all suffering

in loss and love

in love and death,

in birth and living.

Do not forget me . . .

the dead whisper to us

do not forget

do not forget the warm lives and souls that populate your life

do not forget

I am here to support and love

we need each other

we need others

I have learned to love you more with each breaking day

I whisper to you do not forget me

do not forget them

do not forget

do Not forget

Shhh my love . . .

do not forget

to live.

David McCullough

November 21, 2015

Poem Number Six in a Year of Poems

Uncle Mine

My Uncle is mans man

Not my uncle by blood

But more than that me

More than that to me. 

99 now and maybe a hundred soon

He's a betting man on the horses

Born 2/11/16 betting on making a hundred shooting high

Till the Belmont Gates clank open

He'll be in the running. 

He's stood by ailing wife 

As she sank into memoirs hole

Memories burdens laid at our feet

To comfort and adore. 

So off on his journey

With lung cancer to bear

not seen in too long

We all have our own burdens to bear

Nothing of compare

He's part of who I've become

Made by how he has lived and loved

Cared for and by

He is the one

Who's stood by

While others stared

And talked

Faithfulness flowered and grew

Worked and labored

Under love but not lost

My uncle is a mans man

But more than that to me

More than that to me. 

Running his last race

Shedding illusions

Spilling them

Leaves in the sun

A man .… so loved. 

Some Poem in a Year of Sailing

I've long felt the need

For the wind on my face 

Beating to weather

Wind whipped wave and fate

Give me a boat

And a sail to drive her

I'll show you happiness and challenge

A microcosm of life 

Upon a floating point calculation

In an ocean of lakes of liquid

I'd rather be thoughtless

Upon sailing a far reach

Following seas may roughen my passage

But it's where I'd rather be

Time out of mind

It's the sailing life for me my love

Too long left behind

It beckons sirens arrow

Straight to my heart and soul

How much longer must I suffer

These slings and arrows

Before listening to the beating of my heart?

To give in to what feels inevitable

To feel the unleashed power of wind and wave

The lines thrumming in my hand

Vibrating with expectancy and hope …

How long…

Poem Number Five in a Year : Cleanup

Cleanup

I guess, I am thinking, that it is time for more
for more of a continuing goodbye
for I am trying to conclude and rid myself
of the detritus of yes, you guessed it . . .
paper and files and staples and old rubber bands
crackly with age and dissolution.

So I run into and run over the memories of you,
lingering traces of your life and others and mine
inextricably wound up in, muddled and woven
a midst each others.

What shall I keep and disregard?
what paper should I shred, read, not read and scan
scan into its particulate digits and electronic emphemera of
scattered bytes of ones and zeros that make up memories and lives?

so this is not goodbye but a way of remembering
that between the tears and melancholia there remains happiness
that I loved you, you loved me
and that this idea cannot be vanquished

even as the years dilute the things we collect
and they become other people's memories
dear to their hearts and so on and so forth.

I still miss you though.
I still love you.
It is nice to see you again
but I miss your voice
I miss your voice.
I miss your voice.


     David McCullough
     July 11, 2015

Poem Number Four in a Year

Knew this would happen
that I would be late
then I thought I just don't care
any
more
then I have to.

Because there are not Poem Policeman
except in my heart that judge so harshly
so it is a day late
so it is
so it is a day early

quantum chance just spins and spins
in the end and beginning
it is all the same
quarks wink in and out
singing of missing muons

You are late and early in reading this
Poem Number Four in a Year
written on day somewhere between
the beginning and the end
the fourth and fifth day

it is written
that is enough
to make me smile
and shiver.

     David McCullough
     July 11, 2015

Poem Number Three in a Year (Productivity Points)

Productivity Points

I'm sick of productivity points 

The endless bean counting bastards

Assigned me to hell .…

To take sacred care of dying patients

Expecting me to ask…

how can I love?

How can I serve?  

When the only question corporate gods ask is …

Why are your points so low?

Why aren't you seeing more patients?

Go faster, be better, be more efficient. 

This ain't bout love brother 

this ain't about serving sister

It's about bottom line profits in a supposed nonprofit world. 

I want to love and serve

Not be driven by corporate Machiavellian bean counters 

When their family lies dying in my arms should I rush to judgement and say to them that I have no time?

That my points are lacking?

That my corporate overlords are monitoring my implanted chip and movements across the cratered landscape of insurance ruled medicine?

My heart bleeds for their malfeasance and lack of compassion and cold hearted  practicality. I accuse them 

of NOT serving

of NOT knowing how to love

I'll weep for what we have lost and rage against the dying and loss. 

     David McCullough

     July 9, 2015

Poem Number Two in a Year

I wrote a letter to my daughter late last night. 

Late at night my thoughts turned to her and to daughter or son never had. 

Hours spent writing of the love we share

Of hopes and dreams

I want the best for her and whatever that means

But knowing nothing is not much

Or it is every thing. 

We get caught up in the knowing

Sometimes it's too much and leads us to ignorance of another's path. 

But knowledge is power

Freedom from oppressions chains

And I'll preach the power of that till the State executes me for the power of those words.  

All this I tried to say in love so she may listen. 

Knowing in the end that these words on paper or not may echo down the years to the woman she will become. 

Don't live in ignorance. 

Do not ignore history and think you are not OF it. All this. 

All this. 

All this and much more

Of the love we share. 

     David McCullough

     July 8, 2015

Poem Number One in a Year

I have been thinking now
for a year or more that I
must write more poetry
or something creative for god's sake
if not my own
lest I go crazy with noncreativity
sadness
and pain.

my bright idea of writing a poem
once a day
one a day
for a year.

Ah yes I can hear my wife now
muttering in the rafters of her mind
'he will not do this thing, he will just talk of it'
and then my sweet,
my own doubting begins.

Except for tonight
no doubts escape
smashing them flat as they scuttle . . .
and I write.

      David McCullough
      July 7, 2015