Before you start reading this, I suggest you start the following video at youtube in another window, due to its recurring appearances in my life as of late. It's Ryan Adams' La Cienga Just Smiled...a song I want played at my funeral, by Gnif if at all possible. You know, should the unfortunate need should arise. Anyway....

Today I was struck by something. At first, it would seem so simple, such an obvious sentiment, that would at first seem unworthy of even mentioning to another due to its mundanity, but at the same time so profound that it's hard to grasp. If you're wondering what on earth I'm getting at, I'm referring to the fragility of life as we know it. It is indeed a seldom occasion when I am smitten with this recurring thought, but as of late I am all but obliged to meditate on the subject. After Mr. Reeves blowing his head off...after seeing several car wrecks...after the Vietnamese shrimp boats laden with dead families in the storm debris left by Katrina. It's something that even though I am not constantly dwelling upon every waking moment manages to stay in a dark corner in my mind.

Last night Mrs. Gimp had a bad bout with the bronchial spasms that have been plaguing her lately. She is forced to sleep in a semi-sitting position, propped up with every available pillow and cushion (including my own, forcing me to sleep with a rolled-towel to support my neck). This position permits her to sleep without choking on her own phlegm. That didn't remedy the situation last night. She began choking with severe bronchial spasms at 01:00, 03:00, and 06:00. I held her hair and shook the albuterol spray and reassured her that she was indeed alive...

In case you don't know what a bronchial spasm is, do this -- exhale, and I mean HARD. Let all the air out of your lungs, then force the last few dribbles out. Now, pinch your nose and close your mouth and make a hard, determined effort to breathe back in. Fight, but don't let yourself inhale. Mrs. Gimp is doing this an alarming number of times as of late due to her bronchitis and previous childhood asthma. I feel rather helpless when I watch her fight so hard for the simple pleasure of breathing air. I sat in my living room the other night and silently cried because of what I had just seen. I've never lived in close proximity to an asthmatic, so I don't know how to take all of this...it's so overwhelming when I see her colour change and watch as tears stream down her face as she struggles. When the air finally fills her lungs I say a silent prayer of thanks. I refuse to sleep at night, opting to watch over her. I wet a finger in my mouth, and place it near her nose to reassure myself that she is still breathing. That she is still my wife, and that she's not dead.

The doctors have increased her albuterol to every 4 to 6 hours instead of twice a day. She's decided to stop the advair steroid due to the fact that it gave her a disgusting thrush infection in her throat (read: yeast infection in your friggin mouth) that necessitated another $50 visit to the doctor, followed by a $40 Rx for an antifungal mouthwash. (Is Ryan Adams hitting it down on the end of this song yet? It's awesome live. It's also key to this post, so start the damn song already if you haven't, and if you have, make sure it's still going).

I bought her a cushion with arm rests today, to keep her from having to use all those pillows. I also bought her 2 red roses surrounded by baby's breath, and a card that has a pit bull on it. It says "I like you so much that I wag my tail til..." and when you open the card it says "...my butt hurts." I also bought her a copy of Troy on DVD so she can get a Brad Pitt fix tomorrow.

I was thinking about last night and how scared I was. It began to rain this afternoon at around five, and of course my windows were down. La Cienga Just Smiled was on the ipod, and for some reason I felt gravitated to the cemetery where my grandpa's are, along with Holly (see my July post about Holly, my beloved cousin who has attained legendary status). It was raining, and I pulled up at Lake Park Hills, rolled through the iron gates where I skated and played street hockey at night so many times before. I drove past the spot where I downed my first beer as a teenager, and around the curve to the second lake on the 'back 40' where I played fetch with Crouton Sherwin recently. I drove past Devan's grave, with its black lab puppy statues on it (Devan was murdered by a vengeful husband who was too stupid to know he shot the wrong damn person), then walked past Dottie's brother Paul's grave. Paul went to sleep at the wheel coming home from Miss. State I understand...don't recall for sure but know for a fact it tore her up and I felt sorry but unable to express it to her at the time.

I walked through the rain, with La Cienga Just Smiled going in my headphones, and then I passed them. First grandma's vacant and morbid-as-hell stone waiting in silent testimony of how creepy it is for the living to purchase a stone beforehand...no deathdate, only the birth date. Then I passed TuTu's grave (my paternal grandpa)...and there was Pa buried right below him (my maternal grandpa). I thought about how both grew up in a difficult time, but one had a lawyer for a dad and the other one's dad made him quit school to pick cotton, something he always resented because it delayed him learning how to read. And by them was Holly...and the song in my ipod declares "How'd I end up to feel so bad for such a little girl? / I hold you close in the back of my mind / It feels so good, but damn it makes me hurt." It's a romantic song, but that one line in a familial sense just described my entire being in that given moment, then it goes "La Cienga just smiles and says 'I'll see you around'." I squatted down and cleaned some bird crap off her stone, it was covering the 4 of July 4, 1989. By then I had been rained on to the point of being wet down to the socks, but I still stood there, admiring my loved ones: Holly, Pa, and Tutu. I kissed two fingers and placed a tender kiss on each of their stones then walked back to my car in the rain, thinking about how a life can be snuffed out in an instant.

I would be depressed, but a close friend of mine is helping me to stop living for the past. I have stopped reaching back and purposely holding on to painful snippets of my life, striving better yet for the present and the unpredictable future.

La Cienga Just Smiled and said "I'll see ya around..."

Holly, I'll see ya 'round one day, and we'll have a whiskey sour with Tutu and talk about all the things ya'll have missed. Ya'll have missed my beautiful wife and my three kids who fell from the sky and into my life. Ya'll missed my first house, which I sold, and my second, which is less than two miles from where ya'll are resting, but only a mile from where we played football in Tutu's yard. I'll pick on you for the big 80's hair you had when you left us, and I'll tell you all the things I was too scared to tell you due to my youthful bashfulness, like how I wanted to tell you to stop hanging out with those drunk whores who you called your 'friends', and how I didn't like you drinking so much, or how I missed you on Saturday nights when you stopped coming over to our house to eat a steak and a salad like we had all done as a family since decades before you or I had ever entered into the equation. I'll tell you about how me and your little brother used to stay up all night watching music videos when they were still a novelty, and how much I miss him too ever since I'd lost touch with him and he'd gotten into the same drug trap that ultimately brought about your demise.


People, remember your families. If you have problems or divisions, it doesn't matter. One day you could wake up and realise that in an instant your loved ones are no longer a part of your day-to-day lives.

And, for the lazy fool that didn't bother to start La Cienga Just Smiled, here: