On Grief.

Louis Shalako

My dad died about four years ago.

The worst of the grief lasted about six months. The first year was pretty rough.

My father was eighty when he passed away.

He had lived a good life.

I knew he had Parkinson’s disease in about 2002, and he passed away, I’m thinking, about September 2012.

I think about him every day, and yet the pain, the loss, the regret is much diminished.

My grandmother, who was 100 and a half years old, died two months later. I don’t know why, but the effect was a lot different.

Maybe it was the two of them leaving so close together. The passing of my grandmother affected me so much less.

I was already numb.

The funny thing is, that my cat was killed by a car. That would be about 2011. The grieving process was exactly the same—the first six months were sheer hell. The first fucking year was pretty bad—and we’re talking a God-damned cat here, not my grandmother…

I had the cat trained.

He would lay flat on his back, sort of under my armpit, laying in bed, his head on my shoulder, purring away and looking up at me with love in his eyes, until I said hey!

You little bastard.

And I that's when I rolled over and went to sleep.

That’s just love or something, and yet I must have loved my grandmother too.

A hundred years is one hell of a long time, and so is eighty years.

But that fucking cat wasn’t even full grown when some poor bastard hit him going down Kathleen St.

It’s all right, Bud.

It can happen to anyone.

END

On Smoking, and Sublimation.

Louis Shalako

When I got up this morning, I had two smokes left.

Normally, I wouldn’t leave the house until around ten o’clock.

I’ve developed quite the routine. To go to Seven-Eleven, get a cup of coffee. To drive down to the rez, and pick up anywhere from one pack to a carton of smokes…to take back a few empties to the beer store and pick up a few more beers. I go to the grocery store for one litre of milk when it really is cheaper to buy the bag of three litres. It’s a matter of killing time.

It’s a make-work project. It gives me something to do.

Let’s face it. I live alone. I’m not married, I don’t have a girlfriend or boyfriend. I don’t have kids or grandkids. I don’t have a job.

I don’t have any hobby outside of writing, although at one time I did.

Smoking is accessible—anyone can afford to smoke. You can buy a pack of shitty smokes for two bucks. You can get a can of beer for two bucks. It does bring a kind of relief—for what it’s worth and for how long it lasts.

A lot of the time we don’t even get any enjoyment out of it. It's a kind of sublimation of some other personal desires, at least that's my theory.

It's possible to look back to a time before I smoked. I was happy enough in not smoking...

What in the hell happened...???

How many times have I squinted through the smoke, choking and gagging a bit, as I tried to put in my password to get in to the email account?

It doesn’t make any sense.

Today, I skipped the shower, got dressed and rushed off to get them damned smokes.

So far today, since 7:30 a.m., I’ve had thirteen cigarettes. It’s about 4:30 p.m. and this is actually pretty good for me.

Normally I would have been onto that second pack by now.

It is true that I have spent many happy hours, in front of the computer, with a pack of smokes, a cold beer and working away on yet another story.

Part of it, I think is boredom—sheer, unmitigated boredom. It’s like I don’t quite know what to do with myself.

At one time, this might have seemed like the perfect life.

I also think that quitting—especially smoking, cold-turkey, would be a little too traumatic.

The time to quit is while I still have money!

That might be a good motivator.

It’s a question of how long I can keep it up.

There is the question of what I might replace it with…

Some question of where do I go from here, I guess.

But almost anything would be better than what I’m doing right now.

END

Dealing With the Memories.

Fokker D-7, flying condition, photo by Julian Herzog, (Wiki.)

Louis Shalako

When my dad went into the old age home, I had to clean out his house. Part of the job involved packing up all of his radio control aircraft and equipment. I burned a bunch of planes out behind the garage after removing motors, fuel tanks, hardware, servos and radio equipment. My sister has a plane in her basement. I have a plane, my brother ended up with a couple of planes.

The real problem is, or was, that I also had a dozen boxes of tools, spares, electronic equipment, hardware, fasteners, engines, fuel tanks and wheels. Everything, in fact, to get started in radio control. There’s enough stuff there to keep a small air force in action for quite some time, if you had any idea of what you were doing…

And I moved that stuff four times in four or five years. Every time I opened it up, my heart kind of sank and I closed the boxes up again. I just couldn’t deal with it.

My dad taught me to fly, and he also taught me how to build an airplane. One thing my old man could do was build an airplane. Anyhow, it was something we did together much of the time, for about seventeen years, longer for him as he started first. He was in his fifties. He’d built rubber-band and free-flight aircraft starting at about ten years of age—in 1942, with WW II all over the front pages.

It was something he’d always wanted to do. The last time we flew was in 2006. He had the training box and I had the kill-switch. When he lost it, I simply let go of the spring-loaded switch and took over. His Parkinson’s had progressed to the point where he was unable to fly on his own.

(I’m sort of emotional writing that, but not crying or anything. It’s just a heavy, emotional feeling, ah, grief, loss, regret. Something like that…)

When my brother started asking about that equipment, I had my reservations. The trouble is, that I’m not likely to do anything with it. My nephews are thirteen and sixteen. It’s now or never, most likely, for boys like that to really get interested in flying…

Shit. But flying really is a good thing—I can’t stress that enough.

So. Why the fuck not, eh?                                    

I do have some concerns.

The transmitters are old. They wouldn’t be allowed at the club field now. Setting up an electric airplane for radio control has its dangers. A banger engine won’t fire itself up at top revs. An electric plane, if the servo switches on the transmitter are set up wrong, ‘off’ might in effect be full-throttle. They don’t know a damn thing about battery charging, not walking away and burning down the friggin’ house…all the same damn worries the old man probably had. In the end I guess we did all right.

If my brother really thinks radio control is cheap, he’s probably mistaken. It takes, time, money, commitment, and knowledge. You only get that knowledge from learning—training, practice, reading, listening, and really thinking shit out on your own.

Let’s hope the fuckers can learn it.

So basically, I’m going to dump all of that stuff on him!

I have my own radio, my own Fokker D-7, my own charger, batteries, transmitter and receivers.

I hope they have some fun with it, and get some good results with it.

Otherwise, as far as I’m concerned, he can go through the boxes and see if he can get a buck for this and a five-dollar bill for that.

Because frankly, that’s about all most of that stuff is worth.

As far as me teaching my brother and the two nephews to fly, yeah, sure.

That sort of depends on you—whether you’re capable of being taught or not.

I had lessons. I had to put up with it! That was the price of admission, submitting to the notion that someone else might know a bit more than I did. I was also bankrolled to a certain extent, and I always appreciated that.

I crashed, sooner or later, every aircraft I ever flew. It took a good two dozen real flying lessons, out at the club field, before I was competent enough to go solo—and ultimately, to go flying on my own, no instructor, no father there to save my ass if I got into trouble.

That’s not to say I didn’t have fun, and make some great memories, because I did.

We did.

Maybe that’s why I gave it to them.

Hopefully, they will get something out of it.

Because otherwise it’s kind of a waste.

END