Ronnie and Oregon 

August 28-31, 2015

Friday

Ronnie, Kordt's brother and my dear friend, was sick up in Medford, so Kordt and I jumped into the car with Lottie and Paul and headed north. It's a measure of how concerned we were that we were able to pack and pull things together so quickly; we were on the road less than an hour after I got home.

Just as a reminder, Kordt is my lifelong friend; my husband, Scott, stayed home to tend to the pets and get his fantasy football picks. If this sound snarky, let me assure you, it is not - it's just a better situation all around if Kordt and I can do things in our haphazard Darcy/Kordt way, especially when under stress, rather than trying to fit into the Scott way. So, anyway, off we went.

As we drove, we assured ourselves that we didn't have all the information, yet. The little we had heard had been filtered through Susan (Ronnie's ex, and the mother of his grown child) and distilled down into tense phone messages or texts. Susan has been known to be on the dramatic side; perhaps,we said, this depiction of Ronnie as gravely ill was just "a case of the Susies."

We passed the airport, and looked over to see a stretch of grasses that were soft and green - inexplicably so, in this third year of harsh drought, with its ubiquitous sepia tones of the dead, brown lawns. We marveled at the lush green meadow.

My ten-year-old son Paul said, matter-of-factly,"I want to frolic in that."

We laughed and he continued, "I could totally frolic in that shit. I want to run through that with flowers in my hands."

We forged on toward Oregon, tired, concerned, but laughing...

Saturday

We got to Medford in the middle of the night, made our way into one of the nicer hospitals I've been in, and found ICU. Susan came out, exhaustion and dread blunting her normal effusive manner. We left the kids with her and went in to see Ronnie. He was out, on Fentonyl, and he looked bad, but we expected him to look bad. They were checking him for pneumonia, of course - he smoked forever, having been handed a cigarette by Uncle Bob when he was 7 years old.

We went back to Susan's farmhouse, slept, ate, made more attempts to visit Ronnie, but whenever he was brought up out of the Fentonyl haze, his heartbeat went crazy - he was experiencing anxiety, they said. They were waiting on blood gasses and tests, but he seemed to be responding to the antibiotics. I know this road, I thought. If he can just get a leg up on that pneumonia, things will be a lot easier.

Sunday

Kordt and I took the twins and Susan's son Ian to Fun Center. It should be named something else, maybe Loud Center or Ripoff Center or Oh Dear God, I Just Gave You Tokens Center. The kids had fun, though. We were stumbling through Sunday; we were going to have to leave soon, and we still hadn't been able to make sure Ronnie was okay.

Then Susan left a message at about 2:00, just as we were thinking of checking in one last time and hitting the road for Sacramento. Come to the hospital now, she said. Ronnie's dying.

Ronnie didn't have pneumonia. His COPD was just to the point where there was no function left in his lungs. They put him on care measures and he just...started slowing down.

We were finally able to talk to him. I told him Bevvy, my mom, wanted to bring him Whitman chocolates, just as he had done for her when she had pneumonia. When Ronnie heard Bevvy's name, he figured out I was there, fought his way up to look over at me, and he said, "DOR-rie!" He had a nickname for everyone. When he heard Kordt's voice, he stirred and said, "Carlyle! When did you get here?" We told him he had given us a scare. We told him we were going to bring him back to his farm soon.

Ronnie and Susan have been broken up forever. It didn’t matter. Whatever side she sat on, he slowly edged his way that way, like the tide following the moon, until he could breathe her breath. She held him as his respirations slowed and her voice, as she told stories of their good days, held the tone of a lullaby.

His daughter Mira was heartbroken and strong, surprisingly calm, but deeply sad. She had forged the bond with her father after he had let her down, repeatedly, with his drug use and irresponsibility. She had urged her mom to bring him to Oregon years ago and had begun doing the work with him that led to their renewed relationship. She was supported by her friends, young people who blundered in and tried to do all the right things, so painfully inexperienced in the world of dying, so awkward and well-meaning. Ron, if he could have stirred himself, would have been pleased by how well they cared for his daughter, and he would have been touched by their sadness.

His breathing slowed, but he hung on hours longer than I would have expected, from my experience of watching people die. Finally, Kordt and I looked at each other.

“Ronnie. We’re leaving,” Kordt said. “We’ll see you at the farm tomorrow. See you there.” We left the room.

Monday, just after midnight

Later, Susan, who couldn’t bring herself to leave the room, who couldn’t take her eyes off Ronnie, finally said, “Ronnie, I’m getting some sleep,” and she set her head on his chest. He stopped breathing.

And ever after

Ronnie didn't get the support he needed or the breaks he deserved. His stupid uncle gave him cigarettes and then booze at a young age. His father and his mother, wrapped up with their own turmoil, somehow didn’t see or didn’t know what to do. Kordt, now one of the kindest people I know, bullied his younger brother, and nobody stopped him, nobody protected Ronnie. They didn’t teach him enough about being something besides a kid, a kid who used substances – alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs.

But Ronnie knew how to grow and build things. He knew how to make things better for people. He worked hard and kept going, even as his body suffered, from untreated hernias, or a hurt back, or arthritis. He made people laugh, he forged friendships, with Darrell and the Ball Droppers and the Markowskis and Max Fitzpatrick and Bradley, with Todd and Maggie, Sabine and Charles. He fell in love, with Susan, and later with Daisy, and he became a father whose little girl worshiped him. He pleased all the people for whom he worked, Candace and Sister Libby and Mrs. Hazen and Mrs. Hebert. He delighted my mother; she loved him so.

When we lose someone important, there are always things we regret. There are so many, many things I wish I had done for Ronnie. But even as that thought crosses my mind, there is a part of me that rebels. After the death of his father, Ronnie packed up his belongings, including Pickles, his chicken, and Wendell the turtle, and he moved up to the farm to live the last few years of his life. He was where he wanted to be. He was living the life he wanted to live. He had his beautiful daughter and grand-daughter, and the love of his life, Susan, who had changed into a friend, but who knew the full content of his heart.

When my own father had cancer, he said to me that it sucked to be dying at 59 years old – better to be 79 or 89, he said – but he told me that he had had something few people ever had. He had married the love of his life - and many people, he said, go their whole lives without ever experiencing the joy that he had experienced, as a husband and as a father to my siblings and me.

In that vein, I say, yeah, it sucks that Ronnie died so young, at 53. And it sucks that his life could have been extended if someone, anyone, could have been able to influence him make better choices along the way. But I also know that he experienced true love, and the joy of bringing a beautiful girl into the world, and the fulfillment of being a mentor for Susan’s son Ian and Daisy’s son Christian, and the deep satisfaction of seeing the happiness continue down through the years in ethereal presence of the lovely Alice, his granddaughter.

And all of that, while tending his animals, and growing his pot and picking tomatoes and huge zucchini squashes. The sun has set on Ronnie’s farm in this dimension, but in another place, a golden light bathes the vegetables and the waving grasses, a sweet breeze stirs the leaves against a blue sky and Ronnie is breathing it all in. And he is free.

Riders

Sometimes I invite dead loved ones to ride along with me as I drive somewhere alone.

"Hey, Daddy," I'll say out loud and he's there with me. "Folsom," I'll say to him, "It's built up. I'm not going by the lake, but it's really low from the drought."

I tell him how mom is doing, and my brother and sister. I tell him about my wonderful kids and my husband, and my friends. I tell him the Giants won another World Series. I work my way into telling him how much I miss him, and how much I love him. I bring up stories of times we all had as a family and tell him how important that was to me, and that I know how hard he worked, and I know he was shy and that he always tried so hard.

When my dad was dying, he and mom talked about their first kiss, and, although he was almost too weak to talk, he said to her, "We'll go on kissing in the shade..." I tell him that mom is fine, everyone loves her and we all move around her like she's at the center of our universe, a beautiful silvery moon instead of a garish sun. I tell him how scared I am of losing her, so scared I think I sometimes distance myself from her even now, even while she's still here to laugh with and hug.

When I finish talking, I tell my dad that any time he wants to come back and look at the world, or find out about the family, he can come ride with me. I always let him know that if this is disruptive to him, that he doesn't have to come. But he can come when he wants to and I'll invite him when I think of it. 

And I don't believe any of it. Not even for a second. Unless maybe it's true.