Happy Birthday Jessie, Vincent -- The Day Big Brother Jim Married

Wednesday, March 31st, 2004

"The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others."
So said that gifted artist – perhaps among the five most gifted in the history of humankind – and lonely man, Vincent Von Gogh, born on the 30th day of March (yesterday) in 1853, gone from the middle world in his thirties. Some say his life was a desperate search for love with few bright days – he condemned himself for whatever dark reason to being less than the "artist" be wanted to be because he could not find love.

'Tis not my problem, kola – if my little battle with this insidious invader, pancreatic cancer, which most lately has brought back a most curiously yellow condition, I have learned that nothing is so worthy of all one's energy and effort than accepting oneself and loving each other.

'Twas a long day's journey on Monday, day before yesterday (seems like more than a week) – from the comfort of my son's and Bobbi's home in Madison and the purring laziness of Mortimer and Oliver – to my appointment at the Midwestern Regional Medical Center, the Cancer Treatment Center and Dr. Robert Levin, chief oncologist, who continues to try to help me wrest weeks and months of useful passage here in the middle world. Aye, but what a glorious Sunday 'twas, what a grand and beautiful day! We arrived here by 10:00 A.M. for the preliminary stuff done before every session with the good Doc Levin – lots of blood drawn for tests from the arm, electrocardiogram, interviews with nutritionists and nurses about general health and welfare during the past week. I was eager to get on with things – for the afternoon wore on, and I wanted to join my lovin' spouse in that bastion of civility and the good life, the fabulous Hawthorne Suites across town

I new got there, for I was still more than the weest yellow-bellied – jaundiced from plugged bile ducts – with belly distended, general weakness, shortness of breath, and etc., etc., etc. Instead I was admitted here to the hospital facility to be treated – after a CAT Scan to determine just how plugged those vital little ducts of the bile were – and possible determine what the hell to do about it, anyway. One thing is certain – they're plugged enough so that body fluids isn't passing through – hence the distention of stomach that hasn't seen that much solid food. Next on the agenda was assignment to a room – a double, but I've had it to meself – right next to the nurse's station, so I get lots of attention. Since the gastroenterologist her at Zion is out of town, my crack team of caregivers had to wait to contact the group that sleeved the steel stents in my ducts up in Milwaukee last month. In the afternoon yesterday, about twenty-four hours after our arrival, I found myself on an operating table to have a hose stuck into the side of my belly to drain the fluid – I had sent my wife off at an office supply because I've not been about to connect to the Internet from this room – still can't, but I'm hoping to find a work around later this morning – so she was the weest surprised to see me return with a tube hanging out my side draining liquid – since then, 'tis drained gallons, and except for a sore side where the tube was inserted with a little help from a local anesthetic, I'm feeling quite a bit less full – on my other side, the antibiotics continue to pump, so getting up to go the bathroom is the weest bit of a challenge – grab the fluid bag, unhook the machine from the wall --- and get around the corner – asap. Now, in the thirty-sixth hour of all of this here at this fine facility, I'm feeling alive once more.

Aye, in fact, 'tis indeed the greatest days to be alive, aside from a few cramps caused, I'm told, by my stomach trying to readjust after its distention. Tomorrow, my lovin' spouse will join me in the back of an ambulance to take me up to Milwaukee where Dr. Olson will have a look at the situation and try to open the ducts from above – the old rotor-rooter routine – or from below – don't know yet how that works. One of the problems of staying alive so far beyond expectations is that I've effectively outlived the usefulness of the stents – and steel stents supposedly cannot be replaced. The other possibility is that the insidious invader has been more aggressive, getting inside the stents.

But all of that is this afternoon – and this is a morning's tale of the last day of March. I'm up and at 'em in the smallest hour of this morn trying to get connected over a phone line to the Internet – can't be done long enough to do anything – might as well string cans with strings to all of you I would greet this morning. Has to do with the load on the old phone system – not much oommmpf left when the signal goes out from one of these room – good enough for voice, but not for transmission of data. I haven't been able to send birthday greetings for the 30th of March to my darlin' niece Jessica Bleth, daughter of my lovin' spouse's sister Janet. Jessie turned four and twenty today – the age me own darling' daughter Gretchen will be a week or so. The two of them, along with my son, Albert, and his older cousin, Jay (Jessie's brother) spend a good deal of time together when they were youngsters – I have hours of wonderful (well, 'tis to us, of course) video of the four of them in constant action. Jessie graduates with a four-year degree in nursing from the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks this spring, so she's entering the great world beyond gloriously beauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful Dakota, where 'tis gonna be a truly great one to be alive. With all apologies to the great physicians out there – nurses are the heart and soul of medicine that works – have been since Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale. Jessie, my dear, you're going to be a great one. I hope for you as you begin your twenty-fifth year joy on this, your 24th birthday, laughter, love and happiness as you pursue the greatest of professions in the footsteps of your ever-carin' mom. You're beauty and brains – but even more important, you have that carin' way of the kind I mean when I talk about "looking out for each other" and "watching out for your neighbor." Happy birthday, Jessie!

I also failed to note one of the greatest March 28 nights ever, the day forty-six years past that my big brother Jim married Lucille Bickel out in New Salem, some nineteen miles south of the heart of the heart of the universe in our home township, Hannover, in Oliver County. Jim, who will turn sixty-eight this next Sunday, was on his way to Korea back in 1956 when he and Lucille decided to hitch up as a team. 'Twasn't easy, because it was during Lent, and there weren't marriages during Lent because you couldn't rent a hall for the mandatory dance. But people who knew people – and a premium for the rental of the memorial hall, I suspect, prevailed, and there was a wedding in New Salem – not in the Missouri-Synod Lutheran in Hannover or New Salem which in 1956 certainly had a corner on the one true way to heaven – but in a more flexible (and friendly) church named the big church, both because of its size and number of congregates. I was sixteen that day – and I did indeed get at least a taste of redeye, that area drink made up of grain alcohol cut with burnt sugar. My father, who was not a drinker, had more than one – after all, I think he bought some of it to hand out, along with the obligatory keg of beer to get people going. There was a dinner – and then plenty of food for a huge lunch after the dance. Finally, we started for home – Dad, Mom, sisters Faye & Linda and I – with my brother's 48 Ford V8 flathead, bought from a Barchenger from Hannover. Jim and Lucille were given the family Chevy to have a brief honeymoon. Well, kola, 'twas a long, long nineteen miles. My father drove about three miles an hour, just off the ditch on the right side of the road. He wouldn't her of allowing me drive – or, God forbid! – my mother. Women didn't drive back from wedding dances. I had had my license for three years and knew the road by heart, because I had traveled it back and forth daily as a freshman attending New Salem High, home of the Holsteins (I transferred to Center, just six miles from Hannover, in my sophomore year. But my father would hear none of any of this. He was going to drive. I think we got home in time to milk the cows in the morning – barely. And I do know that it was a long, long time before I saw Dad take another alcoholic drink. And I do remember that my mother spoke up a bit on that long trip home. Something about it being longer than the 28th of March in 1942 when there was this great blizzard and my father had to hire men to shovel the car to New Salem so that Mom could catch a train to Bismarck to give birth to me in a hospital – Dad even had to put the men up in a New Salem motel that night.

March will leave North Dakota and April begin this weekend with just maybe a flake or two of snow during the some welcome rain. Don't need a whole lot more rain in North Dakota – flood up in Grafton. But 'tis spring – time to flood the world with good cheer, good will, and love. Take care of yourselves, kola – and do look out for each other.

Ev Albers