What a Song Can Do

In the sixth grade we were introduced to the idea of rotating classrooms in order to prepare us for Junior High School, when we would have different teachers for each subject. Every day at 10'o'clock we had to gather our textbooks and notes and shuffle across the hall to Mr. Hoffman's room for Math and Social Studies.  Mr. Hoffman was a gruff middle-aged man who smelled of cigarettes and occasionally brought baked goods to share on Fridays.

One day, Mr. Hoffman said he would not be lecturing.  He would be playing music, one song: The Sound of Silence, by Simon & Garfunkle.  I thought he was joking because the name "Garfunkle" sounded funny to me.  Some of the students had heard of Simon & Garfunkle and some of us, like me, had not.  But I am pretty sure I had heard their songs on the AM radio.

Anyway, he announced the song, telling us there was a lesson to be learned from the lyrics of the song.  I'm reasonably sure he simply meant for us to be quiet.  The Sound of Silence was meant for us, as sixth-graders, to shut us up.

The song begins with a haunting acoustic guitar riff, and the voices sing in perfect harmony: "Hello darkness, my old friend..." and I am gripped.  My imagination is soaring, and the worksheet I am working on lies forgotten on the wooden desk.

I remember thinking, what is the sound of silence?  That doesn't make any sense.  Yet there they are, singing it.  Is it another joke by Mr. Hoffman?  Does he just want us to shut up and be quiet today?  If you are surrounded by silence, do you spontaneously begin hearing something like music?  This music?

I am energized by the mystery of it all: "And in the naked light I saw, ten-thousand people, maybe more..."  My mind is wondering about the silence.  My mind is captured by the melodies, the harmonies.  The lyrics do not make sense to me, but it must mean something to someone.  I want to know what it means.  I want to know the Sound of Silence, and be able to answer, nod my head with that serious look in my eyes when someone mentions the Sound of Silence.  I want to be in the crowd that knows what you are talking about.  Yeah, man, groovy, the Sound of Silence, you dig?

People bowing and praying to Neon Gods, words of prophets written on subway walls, yeah man.

I can't say for sure what Mr. Hoffman wanted us to learn, or what he was trying to say to us, but I can say I learned something.  I learned that I love music, songs in minor keys, two-part harmonies and songs that are mysteries, songs that say something, anything.

Yeah man.

Marcus Visits Me in Dreams

My deceased brother has visited many times in my dreams.  Most of them have been vision-like, in a Biblical sort of way.  He is usually wearing white, something like a Tai Chi uniform with the columned rows of ties across the front.  He is also barefoot or sometimes wearing leather walking sandals.

We once walked along the fairway behind Mom and Dad's house and he told me what Heaven was like.  He said his back felt better, and that there was no pain in Heaven.  Nana and Russel are there, along with other friends and family.  While I am with him, sometimes an image of him being held in the arms of Jesus or God flashes in my mind like a vision, and Marc would smile.  "Yeah," he said.  "It's like that."  These images are a lot like the drawings you might have seen in the religious tracts so common 30 years ago.

In some of them we have spoken, and it has been very much like it was when we talked when he was alive.  Sometimes when he appears we don't speak, and he flashes images to my mind.  Like that of him playing golf in Heaven, wearing his Tai Chi uniform.  He can drive the ball further in Heaven than he could here.

Recently I had another dream.  One that was different than the dreams I had right after he died.  In this dream, we met up outside the house we last shared on Golden Circle in Escondido.  I was happy to see him and he was happy to see me.  He was wearing a tan Tai Chi uniform, not white.  He said it was time we had a proper hug goodbye.  We embraced and I could feel him tense up a bit from the pain.  His back was hurting again.  I looked at him and he was standing with his hands on his hips, chin slightly elevated, dipping his knees as if trying, and failing, to get comfortable.  There was a little sweat on his brow and upper lip.

"How is your back?"

He said, "Not good."  He twisted his arms and shoulders to show me, and his back cracked all the way up.

"Isn't there no pain in Heaven?" 

"I'm not sure that's where I am," he said.

"What do you mean?  You mean you're still here on Earth?  Or that other place?"  I couldn't say the name.

"I'm talking to you, aren't I?"  He reached out and put both hands on my shoulders, something he would never do when he was alive.  "I think I'm stuck on Earth."

"Maybe your back is getting worse now because you're supposed to go to Heaven.  All the way."
He pressed his lips together and nodded.  He looked at nothing for a minute.  He had his hands on his hips and bobbed up and down a little.

He started looking around as if he trying to find something, something he lost or knew should be there but was not in pain sight.  He looked around like he was going to see a Stairway to Heaven, there in the driveway.  He looked across the driveway to another house and said, "Which one is taller, our house or that one?"

"I think that one," I said.
He didn't reply but walked over to the house and opened the garage.  A woman named Kathleen lived there and she was backing her car out of the garage.  Marc walked right through it like a ghost.  She never saw him.  It was then I thought that he wasn't all that stuck on Earth.  He was half-here, at the most. He entered the door that led inside.

A moment later, Marc was on the roof.  I had a crazy moment of dread that he was going to jump off the building and end his life again, like dying in the dream would jump-start his journey to Heaven.

"It's not high enough," I yelled.  "If you're trying to break your neck, you need to go to Oceanside."  This was said in the manner of dreams, and might seem a strange thing to tell a guy who was already deceased.  But Marc and I were once at the top of a 22 story apartment building in Oceanside, holding on to the railing and feeling the frantic wind blowing in from the ocean and across the coast, wondering in a manic, tequila-fueled rush what it would feel like to plummet those 22 stories to the earth.

Just how would it feel?  Would you enjoy the feeling by the end of the ride?  Or simply be scared?  We asked these questions and many more, and these questions seemed so sacred at the time.  We were being profound, on top of this building in Oceanside.  We were thinking of possibilities.  This possibility of dying.  There were so many possibilities out there, and dying was one of them.

Marc laid down on the ridge of the roof, along the terracotta tile.

"Is this high enough?" he asked.  But he wasn't talking to me anymore.  He was talking to Jesus. 

The Slide

When I was a kid, The Slide commanded respect.  Not every child rode The Slide.  Not every child was brave enough to ride The Slide.  Some kids would face ridicule and shame, rather than ride the slide.  Ridicule and shame were worse than a Hot Vulcan.  (A Hot Vulcan is being punched in the ear.)

At the Thomas Jefferson Elementary School playground, The Slide had its own section.  It was set apart from the jungle gym, monkey bars and swings.  It sat in a gravel rectangle, bordered by treated 4x6 pine.  It was tall.  I don't know how tall, but it was twice as tall as our Principal, Mr. Crissmas, who was the tallest person at school. It was held up by sturdy galvanized steel poles, it had a long ridged descent, marked with dimples where children had thrown rocks, and buffed to a chrome shine from the bottoms that rode its slope.  It had 14 steps to get to the top, and at the top there was a rounded handrail on either side.  There was no platform at the top, it was just stairs up, and slide down.  No room for error.  I believe this is the reason David Pittman broke his shoulder falling from the top of the slide.

The question you feared when you went to the playground was, "Are you going to ride the slide today?"

If you were asked that, you had to ride it.  You couldn't say no, or you would face ridicule and shame.  You had your pride to worry about.  And from the ages of five to eleven, your pride is a hungry beast, untamed and untrained.  If someone asked, you had to ride the slide.

I believed for a time that the slide actually talked to me, taunted me, laughed at me for being scared.  "Muahhahahahah!  Ride me, I dare you!  But remember the paralyzing fear you will feel at the top of the slide where the ladder runs out and the fast trip to the bottom begins!"

The slide was like every bully at school rolled into one.  Taller than me, faster, stronger, more dangerous.  I was deathly afraid of the slide until I was about ten years old.  If you rode the slide in shorts, you had to remember to pick up your legs off the surface for two reasons:  First, it might be hot as a griddle from baking in the sun, and second, your slightly sweaty legs might act like a spike strip and slow you down or even stop you halfway down.  Then you were stuck, too high to jump, too scared to move.

But what a ride!  Nothing compared to the slide for thrills.  I suppose a big part of it was the fear.  The whoosh down the slope was fast and fun mostly, but I think it was the fear of the slide that made it the most fun of the stationary structures.  It was dangerous, but it beckoned.

Marcus's Memorial Speech Notes

A year ago this week I had to write some notes so I could speak at my brother's memorial.  I had so much to say and nothing seemed profound enough.  But Marc and I laughed a lot together, and I thought it would be fitting if we could all laugh together at his memorial, honoring him.

Here are the notes, unchanged from a year ago.

There are 6 other people here that knew Marcus longer than I did.  They are Mom and Dad, Aunt Crystal and Uncle Jim, Shelly, and Kelly. 

Perhaps only one other person that spent more time with him than I did, Heidi.

I don’t remember a time without Marcus because there wasn’t one. 

He was always there to push me over when I was learning to walk. 

He was always there to make funny faces at the dinner table during grace.

He was always there to make me giggle in church and school when we were supposed to be quiet.

He was there as a roommate when we were finally adults.

He was there to stand as my Best Man at my wedding, and he was there to ask me to stand as his Best Man when Heidi and he renewed their vows on their 20^th wedding anniversary.

It’s been 4 days since my brother’s passing and the hole left by his absence is large.  All those close to me will know that already.  Marc and I were very close for all of my 41 ½ years, and he was my very best friend during most of that time.  There was a brief period during my teenage years from 12 to 16 where I lost my way and became very close with Jeffrey my cousin, but Marcus eventually straightened me out.

Most of what I learned about life, I learned with Marcus at my side.  Or at my back.  With one hand on my shoulder and one hand pointing forward, and him quietly saying, “Come on, you won’t get in trouble... who’s going to know but us?”

·        I don’t know what it’s like not to have someone to look up to.

·        I don’t know what it’s like not to have someone looking out for me. 

·        I don’t know what it’s like not to have someone I can call, any time, for any reason, to talk about any subject, however mundane. 

·        I don’t know what it’s like not to have a Big Brother.

But I do know what it’s like to have have someone to admire.

I do know what it’s like to have someone looking out for me.

I do know what it’s like to have a best friend I can call any time, for any reason.

I do know what it’s like to have a Big Brother.

And I am so thankful I do. 

It’s an experience that can NOT be explained, Brotherly Love.  It can only be experienced.  It’s a beautiful and fulfilling type of Man-Love that God intended for the men in families to share.  Brotherly Love is so great, it could only be a gift from God.  And what a wonderful gift I had with Marcus.

          Formative Event

Early in our lives we shared a learning experience that is a distillation of our relationship through our formative years.  We couldn’t have been more than 5 or 6, and we were playing in the mud in the back yard after a rain storm.  We were not allowed to walk in the mud with our new shoes, so we took them off. 

Squishing around in the mud barefoot reminded us of something else we knew, even at our young age: Poo.  The mud looked like poo.  We weren’t so young that we didn’t know the four-letter-word for poo either. 

So Marc proposed a deal: We could use the four-letter-word in our description of the mud to each other, but we must agree not to tell Mom and Dad.

It was an agreement between two brothers.  I learned so much from that agreement:

·        Working together: using four-letter-words and playing barefoot in the mud.

·        Sharing: Sharing the use of foul language, and sharing the squishy-gritty-wet experience of mud moving between your toes

·        Trust: Sharing the secret of using foul language, and not telling Mom and Dad, or even Kelly, who was a figure of considerable authority to a five and six-year-old.

·        Companionship: The simple pleasure of playing in the mud together.  I highly recommend it as a bonding experience for the target age group.

From then on, I knew this could be a great partnership.  I had someone I could trust, someone I could count on.  Some one who knew how to have a good time, and knew not to ruin it by saying too much.

We had been stomping around in the mud so long that our feet were caked with mud.  We called them our Poo Shoes.  When we got back to the house dressed in our Poo Shoes, Mom was at the back door with questions.  When she asked us what we had done to our feet, Marcus and I looked at each other and laughed, like we would so many more times in the future.

We learned so much together.  We acomplished so much together.  We had so many good times together.

We learned how to golf together as teenagers, taught by our Father.  Keep your head down!  Swing through the ball!  Think about the next shot!

We learned that our parents loved us long enough for us to really love them back.

We learned how to change diapers together, and I quickly decided the job was best left to parents.

We learned how to camp and fish together in our 20’s, making many trips per year to the Sierra’s.  We also decided together that, like golf, being good at fishing and drinking beer were things that were going to take a lot of practice.

We learned the construction business together, calling each other many times per day for the five years we worked together at Royal Pacific.  I would never have survived it without my brother. 

Those phone calls were precious to me even then.  I knew while he was alive that we had a special relationship; an open line of communication for both of us.

Marc was a very understanding person.  For me, he was always there.  It didn’t matter what time of day it was, morning, afternoon or night.  It didn’t matter what day it was, weekday or weekend.  It didn’t matter what time of year it was, summer or winter.  It didn’t matter if he had made plans already.  He was always, always, ready to share… a pizza.

Did anyone know someone who ate as much pizza as that guy?  I submit that we establish an Honorary Lifetime Achievement award for pizza consumption in his name.  The Marcus Russell Shadrick Memorial Pizza Award.

Sure, we would all like to have more time with Marcus.  No one guessed that he would pass on that day.  The truth is, no amount of time would have been enough.  I believe God knew that.  No one would ever have been satisfied with the amount of time they spent with Marcus.  That is why I truly believe he was a special gift on loan from Heaven.  We got to borrow him for a while and now he is back home. 

The beautiful thing that we all must remember about this man, this son, this brother, this husband, this father, this friend, this one true gentleman, is that we all still have the good times we spent with him.  We still have them in our memories, in our hearts.  Death can’t take away the good times we had.

We must honor him by remembering the good times we shared. 

My final communication with him- he sent me a text that said:

“Almost home-marathon day.  Everything is great.  No one could believe I was walking!”

And my response:“you call THAT walking?”

What a positive attitude!  Even 24 hours before he passed, he wasn’t dying, he was living!  He was never dying, he was always living.  He lived up until the very end. 

Let’s follow his example.

Changing the Diaper

It usually starts like a lot of life's crises, with denial.  You catch a hint of flatulent aroma, and you deny that it's a Real Poopy.  Nah, you think, it's just a fart.  The baby even looks embarrassed, smiling behind her hand and saying esqueeze me, her vernacular for excuse me.  Yep, probably just a fart.  See how she is still walking normally, not the wide-stance duck step of a full load in the trunk?

But the aroma reaches your nostrils once more.  This time denial is becoming defiance.  Your denial is like an eight-ton African elephant.  Hard to move and even harder to kill.  Your denial is substantial because you know what is coming: you must Change the Diaper.  Denial evolves to anger.  Why me? Why could the baby not have waited one more hour until Mommy gets home?

Now you must form a plan.  The plan must be simple: change the diaper.  You can not stray from the plan.  You can not vary the plan.  You must execute the plan.  Your goal is a clean baby, even at the expense of a beshitted parent.

The reason we do this is to practice good hygiene for the baby.  If you have ever cleaned dried waste off of a baby bottom, you know what a difficult and unfortunate thing that can be for both parent and baby.  Poopy, when dried, can be akin to pine tar.  Imagine removing pine tar from your delicate underside with a wipie.  OK, stop imagining.

You practice good hygiene for the baby by removing the soiled diaper, no matter how aromatic and soft, and cleaning the baby bottom, then installing a clean diaper.  Sounds simple.  But those blessed souls in this world who have had the opportunity to change the diaper of a healthy and powerful 18-month-old baby know it can be complex.

First, you must get the baby to the changing table.  This assumes you are at home, where the majority of the poopy diapers you change will happen.  I do this by tossing the baby over my shoulder, wrapping my arm around the back of her knees.  It is important to use this hold as it keeps the pressure off the fresh poopy, especially if your baby is a girl baby.  You do not want pressure on the poopy.  Poopy is warm, wet, and gushy, and can be smeared into all sorts of nooks and crannies.  You don't wish to make a sensitive and aromatic job any more difficult, do you?

Lay the baby down, and be ready to fend off the leg.  Your baby is curious, and kicking the parent at the changing table stimulates her sense of wonder and delight.  I remove the baby pants by grabbing them at the heel and pulling them off in one swift tug.  If they don't slide off easily, consider buying larger sized clothes for your child.  If your baby has a physical sense of humor, she will laugh when her legs flop on the changing table, and immediately begin to kick for your chin, as her legs are longer than they were a month ago, when she could only reach your neck.

At this point I like to remove wipies from the wipie dispenser.  Wipies can not be removed with one hand.  If I remove them now with two hands, they will comply, sliding gently from the dispenser with ease.  If I wait until there is a soiled baby with no diaper, one hand holding the kicking leg, the wipies will no longer comply, and will stubbornly remain in the dispenser, exiting with much protest.  I suspect that the wipies know what's coming and resist the task at hand.  I remove at least four wipies for each fresh poopy.

Now, this next step is critical: you must evaluate the type of poopy.  Dry tootsie, moist roller, smooth mushy, or pure chaos.  You must also gauge volume.  You must do all of this by taking a peek inside the diaper while still fastened to the baby.  DO NOT remove the diaper without knowing what type of poopy you have in there.  If you have a pure chaos, consider donning latex gloves before proceeding.  Say a prayer, and make a reasonable covenant, like promising to feed the next stray dog that comes to your door, in the hopes that you are changing a dry tootsie.

Let us assume it is a pure chaos, since that is what most of them become anyway.  This is where you might take a moment to put the baby in her crib for a few minutes and lament the task before you.  Set up an air-purification system, like a HEPA filter or two candles and a fan.  Some parents use a gas mask to ensure they remain standing and focused at the task.

Next, unfasten the sticky tabs and remove the diaper.  Again, beware the kicking leg. She may feel freedom of the leg and give a spirited flex. Discourage arching of the back at this point.  Be persuasive, as the last thing you want is for the baby to gain advantage when there is so much uncontained poopy at hand.  I usually use the front of the diaper to wipe to the back, so that the baby is now laying on top of the entire diaper.

Again, evaluate the situation.  Too much poopy for wipies?  You have another decision to make.  Take the baby to the shower and proceed in a warm water environment, or take the whole operation to the back yard and use a hose.  I don’t know about you, but I have good water pressure at my house so a fierce stream of cold water on my baby’s hiney would get the job done, at the expense of a red bottom and troubled baby when finished.

poopy.  Wiping poopy is a common and decent task.  Poopy must be wiped.  You must do the wiping.  Your baby is counting on you to be there, wipe the poopy, and do a good job.  Roll all the soiled wipies in the soiled diaper.  If you have a Diaper Genie (a glorious diaper disposal unit that makes large and grotesque plastic sausages out of shit) put the dirty diaper in it.  If you don’t, try not to think of the fecal matter that gets on your hands, the counter, the door handles, and the trash can outside as you carry the stinky soiled diaper around.

All right, you’ve got the diaper off and contained, you’ve got the baby bottom cleaned, and you are ready to put on a fresh clean diaper.  Do this quickly, because your baby is loosing interest in toe-tickling your chin.  Dress her quickly too, and take a hug from her as you move her from the changing table to the floor.  Congratulations, your task is finished.  For now.

Oh, and remember, you will never be thanked for this by the baby.  Not now, and not later in life.  At least not in words.  Have you ever thought to thank your mother for wiping the poopy all those years?  Didn’t think so.  Your thanks will be a healthy and clean baby.  If your baby can thank you in words, you should strongly consider potty-training.

Elementary School

Marc made a lot of people laugh by imitating others.  When I was in first grade, Marc was in second and Kelly would have been in sixth or seventh grade.  She would have been going through the changes from child to teenager, so she may have been slightly awkward with her new feminine equipment.  Marc imitated her walk constantly during second grade.  He would stick out his butt, lift up his arms, lazy wrists, and shuffle along pigeon toed, to the delight of all that saw it.  At least that's how I remember it.

In fourth grade, he had a teacher, Mrs. Meyers, who adored him.  He was all she wanted in a student, and she used to grab his cheeks in the hallways and stop just short of kissing him.  I suppose she would never get away with that kind of behavior these days, but in those days we didn't think much of it except it was gross.  But I secretly wanted to have the same attention he did from Mrs. Meyers.  When I was in her class, she told me I was cut from a different cloth than Marcus or Kelly. 

On the first day of fourth grade, I told her I should not be expected to live up to their academic achievements since I was only eight years old, half a year younger than my older siblings when they started the fourth grade.  Mrs. Meyers told me I wouldn't have received a "pass" from the third grade teacher if I wasn't ready for fourth grade, so I could just put that silly thought out of my head.  I spent most of my spare time in Mrs. Meyer's class drawing pictures of Kiss, and selling them to my friends for fifty cents apiece.  She told me I was a great artist doing the work of a garbage man.  Dad told me that garbage men made good money, had insurance and a pension.

Convict Lake part B

We stopped at Bishop, to load up on supplies from Schatz's Bakery.  This was the first European baker I had ever been to.  I won't bother trying to explain it here, but if you have been there, you know.

I noticed the towns south of Bishop seemed to come every half hour or so.  30-40 miles apart, just about the distance of a day's ride on a horse.  When you get to Bishop, you have been looking left at a tall, forbidding, primitive and sharp range of mountains for more than a hundred miles.  There was still quite a bit of snow on the peaks, reaching down into the valleys that see little sun for the steepness of the slopes.  Just outside of Bishop, the 395 takes a westerly course towards Mill Pond before turning North by Northwest to Mammoth, Mono Lake and beyond.

Boris took me to Convict Lake.  When we drove up the access road I took my first look at Laurel Mountain, something I have spent a lot of time looking at since that first drive.  He said he liked it there because it was like a little piece of Yosemite placed right here on the eastern side of the Sierra.  Yosemite?  I had heard of it and knew it was the home of El Capitan, something my climber friend Jimmy had told me about a few years prior. 

Now, once you have seen Convict Lake, you never forget it.  The lake is a mile long, and half a mile wide at it's widest.  It is 90 feet deep.  It usually has a brisk wind blowing across it, that comes from the towering peaks that surround it on three sides.  It is a deep dark blue green, reflecting the mountains that surround it.  A small creek, Convict Creek, flows out of its eastern side, and it is along this creek that many of the camp sites are placed. 

We camped in spot 61, one of my favorite spots to this day because of its privacy.  There is a short but steep trail down to the creek.  Alex fell down that steep slope, backwards, after enjoying much of what Jack Daniels has to offer.  He landed on a sapling after one head over heels tumble, and that little aspen might have prevented a broken bone or two.  We marveled at the thin little tree the next day, wondering how it could ever hold the weight of a falling man.  But it did, and Alex is still here to tell you about it.