Grief is an inconstant companion. It shows up at inopportune times, trailing the event that precipitated its arrival. Other times it lurks in the background, allowing us to get on with our lives, or at least pretend to. I was talking the other day to a colleague I don’t know that well, about my father-in-law’s murder. Something she said in sympathy set me off. Suddenly I was enveloped in a cloud of sadness and had to get out of her office as quickly as I could.
(If you’re just now arriving at this story, please go to these two articles: (http://garyborders.com/pages/harris-teel-always-a-fighter-in-his-biggest-battle/...
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A surgical intensive care unit is a solemn site. It can be a place of despair or of hope, of lives lost or restored. My mother’s life was restored in Good Shepherd’s SICU in 1995 after she suffered a massive heart attack while I was visiting her in the emergency room. She had gone there complaining of chest pains and nausea. As we were talking she went into cardiac arrest. Soon they were slapping her chest with shock paddles and ushering me out of the room.
Minutes later, I signed papers allowing a surgeon to operate and perform a double-bypass surgery. She bounced back from the bypass relatively...
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I last talked to my father-in-law on Sunday. Friends had bought a swing set and playscape that had for years sat in his Gilmer backyard. Our daughter Abbie had long outgrown its use. I was meeting them there to help load it.
“How are you doing, Mr. Teel,” I asked. I have always called him that, out of respect for the patriarch of this clan.
“Fine as froghair,” he said, as always.
Two days later, he was in Good Shepherd Medical Center’s operating room, the victim of a random stabbing attack in a waiting room at the hospital’s day-surgery center. He was there waiting to take...
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Like all of us of a certain age, I remember the moment I learned President John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. I was sitting in Mrs. Mahoney’s third-grade class in Allenstown, N.H. She had left the classroom on that early Friday afternoon. When she returned, Mrs. Mahoney was crying. She wrote on the chalkboard, “President Kennedy is dead.” Then she left the room again, leaving a dozen third-graders sitting in silence.
With my myopic vision, at first I thought she had written “Principal Kenney” is dead.” That was the name of the fellow who ran the school. I wondered what could...
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The other day we headed out to eat dinner to celebrate our daughter Abbie’s excellent report card. The sun was sinking low with the time change, though it wasn’t quite 5 o’clock. I looked down the street to check for traffic and saw the light catching the leaves on a tree in a front yard. That tree was ablaze with leaves glowing in the sunlight, so much so that I pointed it out to my Beautiful Mystery Companion. That tree made us both smile.
This is my favorite time of year — crisp mornings, intense light, brilliant foliage, blue northers sweeping through with gray skies, stiff winds...
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The opening of deer season reminded me of the first time I never shot a deer. We were living in the mid-1980s on six acres off El Camino Real — the King’s Highway — outside San Augustine in Deep East Texas, where I published The Rambler newspaper.
I had leased an additional 50 acres on which I ran a few cows. Mainly the cows ran me ragged, since they had an annoying habit of rambling through the woods, busting through the decrepit barbed-wired fence and ending up on the highway about a half-mile away. The sheriff would call and let me know my cows were loose again. I would call a local...
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My first at-bat in organized baseball was at age 7. I rode the bench all year in this ersatz league, which didn’t abide by any rule requiring kids to play. The town was so small that the team had players from my age up to about 12. The league wasn’t connected with any official organization like Little League, so there weren’t requirements to play all the kids. But in the last game of the season the coach took pity and put me in for an at-bat in the final inning.
I crowded in close to home plate, squinting out at the pitcher. My parents had not yet figured out I was terribly nearsighted....
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Benjamin Franklin is credited with saying, “In this world nothing can be certain, save death and taxes.” While that statement has stood time’s test, I would add a minor — and possibly uniquely American — corollary. Nobody gets out of an auto parts store in less than 15 minutes.
It doesn’t matter if you are buying a can of oil, an exhaust manifold for a 1977 Dodge Dart, or a set of floor mats. Auto parts stores are designed to hold their customers hostage for a quarter-hour minimum. Men have missed the birth of their first grandchild because they swung by AAA-Big Easy Auto Parts to pick...
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I saw a photo of myself the other day that a photography student shot as a group of pre-K children passed through soliciting money for St. Jude’s Hospital. They were cute tykes, all dressed alike in matching T-shirts. They had walked from the nearby Child Development Center. Several held cans with slits cut into the plastic lids. The children solemnly watched as I deposited two $1 bills in a pair of the cans.
The student showed me the photo on her digital camera. It wasn’t one we would use for the newspaper, me being the adviser. She just wanted me to see it. My first thought was, “Good...
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In 1946 a 23-year-old Pennsylvania man named Walter was mustered out of the Marines after serving in World War II. He was stationed in the Pacific front on a special base security force, shuttling supplies by plane to the Chinese forces fighting the Japanese. Walter returned to his job working on the Pennsylvania Railroad. Over the years, he worked just about every job available and operated nearly all of the locomotives available. One of them was a steam engine, fueled by coal and used mainly for passenger service and known as a K-4. It is widely considered the greatest steam locomotive of all time....
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