It's not like Wrasslin' or anything.  It's more like a video game come to life. With names like Roxy Contin, Hilda-Beast, and Rocky Slamboa it's all very tongue in cheek and very crowd oriented.  They don't get paid.  They collect food for the food bank. And it's a place other than a bar for Gay people to get together and have a little hoot. They have half time competitions (even though there are three periods). We got free t-shirts for donating canned goods but we also bought several. They make a really big deal out of it.  The Roller Girls make all kinds of charitable appearances and it is just plain fun.  Next time we will sit in the "suicide seats" right down front and hope that we don't end up with Slammy Lou Harris in our laps. Or perhaps some of the girls will wish for that,lol! Anyhow, it is just a great way to have fun with youngins without having to try and be one of them. The costumes and personas are just outrageous and it's all in good fun.

 

Oh my.  Look what he happens to be wearing. He gives Vox a good name. I had on my Crusty's Pest Control shirt.

Yeah, it's me and I'm still here.  You all know I've been going through some losses lately and we tried very hard to face a big loss yesterday and I think we succeeded.  We had my friend Sue's Memorial Service yesterday and it went off with only a few hundred hitches and it was just as she would have liked it.

I spent a few days trying to get this thing together but was missing a key ingredient.  The person we were arranging this for was the person who would normally take care of this type of thing for me. I was a big, fancy wedding planner in Beverly Hills but it doesn't mean much when you are doing something for a friend and have no help (because she was the help).

I wrote words down several times and met the the Hospital Chaplain and the Pastoral Care Department a few times last week.  I bought parchment paper and photo paper an discussed a few readings and musical selections. In our inimitable style we freeballed and just ended up letting it happen as it would and it therefore happened just as it should have.

It's hard getting thousands of people to abandon their work stations when life and death are on the line.  Nurses can't usually sneak off for an hour in the middle of surgery. Most people in a Hospital take their breaks, if they take one, rather on the fly and when they can so scheduling something just doesn't work.  So we decided to set a book out in front of the Gift Shop in the lobby so that all Sue's friends and collegues would certainly pass by and get the info they needed and be able to jot a quick passing memory for Sue's family.

I sat up Monday night with a picture of Sue opened in my photofilter, airbrushing shadows out.  Erasing wrinkles.  Faux tanning my friend.  You always want to make people look good.  They would want it that way.  So we do, right?  So I decided to give Sue a facelift because she was obsessed with having one.  We would tell her she didn't have a wrinkle on her face but she insisted she needed one and would get one when she could.  So I gave her one.  I tanned and toned her.  I raised her cheekbones. I puffed her lip up a hair and then I rubbed out spots and shadows and enhanced the color and the clarity of the picture. She would have loved seeing the picture so I did it for her.

I got to work and was sick as a dog.  Migraine.  Nauseating, eyesplitting, sound sensitive migraine. And a bad one! I was so close to throwing up for so many hours and the kids just said "You're just stressed Mr. Myke.  Relax, we'll take care of everything". And they pretty much did.  Flowers.Check.  CD Player, CD, sound check. Check. Photo. Check.  Pastor. Check. Guest Book? Ci. Alright then.  "You guys go downstairs, close the store and hang a sign up and I'll make a few calls". It was about ten minutes until the service began and I saw Sue's Sister-in-Law and brother come into the lobby with her niece Laura, their daughter. I had a chance for a quick hello but before I spent a minute with them a Nurse came careening across the lobby and asked me if this was Sue's family.  She and Sue knew each other as good friend's for so many years without ever asking each other what their names were. You do that at work when it's a really big place.  It's a really big place. I found her personally to share the news when we found out Sue had died.  She was very winded, almost jarred when I told her initially.  But for her family to see such an immediate response from such a busy and critically needed person to rush across the lobby to great them and share a quick moment to me was the pace for her service being set.  It was just as I would have written it if I was given the chance to.  So I showed them the Chapel and excused myself briefly.

I ran up to the Gift Shop to check on the kids.  Marian had been putting cold compresses on my head to relieve the pain and the other wee ones and old gals ran around closing shop for the very first time in over three years for Sue's service. We close at night but are open every day year round.  Their idea. They don't want people to not be able to have things on holidays.

Okay, so they all scurried downstairs and shooed a few people away (nicely). And I followed and stood in the lobby looking around for attendees.  You want there to be people there.  I was scared we wouldn't have enough room but you always want a full house to remember people with.

The Chaplain opened with a few messages from well wishers from the Memory Book we provided a day before. By chance he read mine first.  It went to the effect of "I look behind me and you're not there. I get confused and people don't recognise me without you there". Then another one from a student who said how scared she was when she first started there but Sue made her feel comfortable from the minute they met and she has loved this place ever since.

The Chaplain read from Proverbs about the Lady Merchant and her dedication and her desire to get things done, and correctly.  We picked that together. 

The room was very quiet and I started thinking "if nobody gets up soon we will have dead air time and it will feel awkward".  I jumped up and stood at the podium and froze like stone.  Then I shook a little.  Then I sobbed uncontrollably and when I finally could force a few words out the best I could come up with was "this is finally real, isn't it"? (muffled and whiney and tearie).

I shared a few things I'm sure but what I can't remember. Then my boss got up and he was crying also. He said some nice things.  His Admin was next and she began to cry and what touched me was her sensitivity given she and Sue spent many years at odds with each other. You always clear up things in the end and they certainly did.  I did the things they used to so they didn't have to do accounting with each other any more, or payrolls, or invoices. I did half with one and the other half with the other and all three of us got along.  When Aileen cried my heart lightened.  Like the Grinch when his tiny heart starts to grow. Ping.  Full blown emotion was now in progress an I was realizing my friend really died and not only that but I lost the best Assistant I ever had.

Then we started hearing from friends and a recurring theme was about how there was no Myke without Sue or Sue without Myke. We were a team, or perhaps even a show.  We were both boisterous and laughed louder than everybody but it made other people laugh just to hear us laugh. It made us laugh too,lol! She was the quiet one. She was Teller and I was Penn. 

I acknowledged a few Dignitaries and pretty much everybody else by name.  As she would for me. I heard funny stories about pranks and sensitive stories about volunteering at "Children's" but I heard so much that I wanted her family to hear and that made me happy.  I wanted them to see the playful and funny but also the sensitive, well thought of, often times turned to sister/auntie that we knew. The Kathie's were there. And Connie (I reminded everyone that Connie was the only "hippie" Sue ever liked,lol)

After a few quiet moments of nice memories my friend Will came in the Chapel door.  Will is a Rapper. An MC if you will.  His group is called ATM.  Addicted To Money.  Will and Sue were friends.  He is a thug and she is a Princess and they met on common ground and decided to be friendly since they would be in the same vicinity much of the time.  And they did.  They would laugh.  Willie would ask Sue why she wouldn't go out with him.  She would swat him in the arm or just glare at him.  He should have frozen to death from some of those looks.  They had a "mutual understanding" and I was touched that he remembered to come or that he would come at all.  Big thug and all.

Cathy shared that we were trying to get Sue to go to Roller Derby with us.  We tried so hard and she would have laughed so hard if we could have gotten her there. Kathy Wheaton, a very well to do Boston Desperate Housewive came and we hadn't seen her for months.  Sue and Kathy talked fashion for hours because Kathy had money and Sue had a history with fashion. Kathy and I are Yankees. She laughs when she tells people she's from Nashville because she has the heaviest Boston accent you have ever heard in your life.

Then Marian shared the story about Match.com and how we gave Sue a fake name and were going to call her Geraldine Pope on her profile.  We would secretly arrange dates and have Sue meet people from the internet.  She was just terrified we had already done something and that people would find out.  I always took candid pictures of Sue smoking and she thought I found one of those and we had already posted them on the net. (We hadn't, but we considered it).

So, after some rememberences from the family and some of the ladies she volunteered with it was time for us to play our musical selection.  We picked Tennessee Homesick Blues by Dolly Parton because Sue always played Dolly in the morning.  People can't be mean if they hear Dolly Parton.  You know how grumpy people are? Well her strategy was to play it and like mind control they would have to be nice to us. I looked over to Darius, the appointed DJ and our troubled youth this summer and he was asleep in the chair. Uhm, timing?  "D" I shoutedd in a whisper. "DEEEE"!, I shouted again rasping an starting to move.  I finally tapped the CD player and got his attention and we finally heard the song and it reminded me, if nobody else, of every morning I spent so happily looking forward to each day at work with my dear Miss Pickett.  My whacky nut.  My sidekick and cohort.  My dearest friend. I had flashbacks all last week and I missed our routine. "Blueberry muffin Pickett"? "Got 'em".

And now she is really gone and for Christ sakes I'm crying again.  I'm just getting too old for all this.  I can't stand that everybody I care about is dying.  Mom.  Dad. Grandma.  Gulliver.  Et tu Sue? Et tu?

I'll miss you and I can promise you that your name will be mentioned every single day that I reside at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. ( A remarkable hospital according to US News and World Report). I am guessing that before I ever get to say a word somebody will come up to me daily and say "Remember when Sue...................."?

 

And I will Pickie, I will.

 

I know you loved Johnny Cash but I refused to let the kids play "A Boy Named Sue" at your memorial . But I hummed it to myself and to you Myrtle. I bet a few others hummed it as well.

America's Best Hospitals

Five days at an Honor Roll medical center

I just got back from Atlanta.  I went on a buying trip and spent tons of money. I like what I do. I just miss my family when I'm gone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a long trip I only need to see the little red tail wag and all the cares in the world just melt away. Of course I need to see her daddy's moustache also. It doesn't wag but it wiggles and curls. I had a good trip.  Productive and always fun.  I have fun at all costs. I'm getting weary and am planning on taking a few days off next week. It's good to be home.  It's where the heart is, isn't it!

Would anybody like to bet a plug nickel that John McCain returns home with hostages that were freed in Columbia today on his new plane?

Funny how all the news channels were trying to figure out why John was in Columbia. Later I heard that hostages had been rescued. Ingrid Betancourt was released after 6 years in captivity. She was a former Columbian Presidential candidate and had been captured and held for years along wth an assortment of American contractors and several other Columbian Nationals.

They are saidd to be going to a military hospital (Brook Army Medical Center) in Texas to be treated for any ailments and to be debriefed.

The timing seems very odd.  McCain was briefed by the Columbian President about the Mission.