Saturday and Sunday

Even in the barreness of the desert you can find new life. It struggles it's way up no matter how poor the soil. Hang in there Eileen.

2/4/06 Saturday
Woke up with the sinuses dry and painful with lots of kind of solid flem I am coughing up. This started after the funeral showing when I spent some time out in the rain talking to Bobby about how things were going. I have also been sneezing allot. It seems that a headache is lurking in the background and I hope it is from the sinuses. Am running a 7 on the Bob scale. (By the way, I know many of you don’t care to hear my descriptions of flem but understand this journal is to record medical things so I can inform doctors of what I can’t remember)

I went back and got the saying Virginia E mailed me. I will start on her present now. Got to design it first. Wish I could tell you what it is but won’t till it’s done. That always takes me a while.
"It's not what you've got, but what you give, that measures the worth of the life you live."

2/5/06 Sunday
Well it’s Super Bowl Sunday. The six to eight inches of snow turned out to just be a dusting that has already melted off the pavement. That works for me cause I’m not planning on going anywhere. I really haven’t kept up with my journal entries but things have been busy with the funeral activities and a few slowdowns. On top of that this body is fighting off some germs that have set up camp in my nose and are trying to homestead as much territory as they can. It’s snot city now and my constant sneezing has the potential of being quite messy.
I am worrying about my good friend Eileen, knowing how much must be going on over there. I haven’t called because I think she probably has enough on her hands and I also think that some in her family resent my presence. If you read this Weenie give me a call.
One of the things I didn’t get to write regarding the funeral is how lost I was. When Cherie and I parked the car for the funeral procession we sat in the car and then figured out we were supposed to go in when we saw everyone else going in. After I didn’t know what was going to happen. Was there going to be some kind of dinner or what. No one else seemed to know and poor Eileen was just sitting in the car to keep warm waiting for someone to tell her what was going to happen. When I went to my grandmother’s funeral there was no procession or dinner afterwards. Kind of quick and plain. Up here in Ohio funerals and weddings are dramatically different than out west. At least as far as I know but I haven’t been to much of either down there.
I watched the wide range of people who came to this funeral. There were a wide range of cultures represented here. Only a few could be classified as upper middle class. Most of them were the ones I call “real” people. There was no pretense with them. They were blue collar folks and many would label them as poor. I don’t consider the label of “poor” to be a put down in anyway. In fact these are the people I am the most comfortable around. There are no “airs” about them. Many do not own a suit or if they did it was only brought out for funerals or weddings. It is the poor who have the biggest heart in many cases. Like a fraternity they look out for their own and will help despite the level of cost to them. Of course there is also the occasional desperation that comes with living close to an edge. I couldn’t help but think of how some of my family and others in Texas would react to these folks. There were tattoos on both the men and women. Some of them were quite spectacular and again demonstrate the lack of pretense here. Each one was proudly displayed like a billboard saying “This is who I am”. You can’t hide a tattoo that surrounds your neck and goes up the side of your face. Lots of Harley Davidson represented here.
I may have said it before but it bears repeating. The mark of a man can be measured by the length of the funeral procession. I don’t have a clue how many cars were in Glen’s but I would say it stretched a half mile long or longer. We went through downtown and then got on the highway to get to the gravesite. The funeral home had marked vehicles that would scurry ahead to block off major intersections and even entrance ramps to the highway. It was something else.

Right now it is 2:51 in the morning. The Super Bowl was a good football game and there were some good commercials but not as many as in previous Super Bowls. It all kind of bored me and I would flip over to watch the Nuremburg trials on PBS allot. Watching Goering, Hitler’s right hand man, was an illustration of what I hear Dr. Phil say. “There is no reality, only perception. When Goering turned himself in he came with seventeen truck loads of his prized possessions and thought they would just let him go on his way after congratulating him on being a worthy opponent. Even when it became apparent at the trial that was not going to happen he still didn’t get it. It said that his wife thought he might be exiled to an island like Napoleon. Goering went on for five days bragging about how he had rearmed Germany and had done “great things”. It is the same with all in this world who believe a thing completely. If you believe it, it is the truth for you no matter what the rest of the world thinks. The Muslim extremist believe that they will be rewarded in heaven by Allah with virgins and other stuff for strapping themselves with explosives and killing others with their self destruction.
I suppose that’s enough for now. I wanted to write more about Glen and Eileen but like most things I want to do I don’t quite finish. My heart goes out to Eileen who now has a big hole, a huge emptiness as her other half is gone now. On top of that there is all the other junk that goes with death. All the legal crap, the dotting of the i’s and crossing t’s and the relatives who have their own ideas on what’s to be done. But mostly waking up every morning alone. There is no life without death.
Good night guys.