Category Archives: Last things

Broad Street

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Leah and I hardly ever go downtown any more, but we arranged to meet Leah’s hairdresser Sheila for dinner and a drink Thursday night.

Downtown Rome is very different today from the way it was when I was growing up. Back then, the five blocks of downtown had multiple dime stores, locally-owned clothing and furniture stores, multiple chain department stores even in the same block, a theater, shoe repair shops, a newsstand (where one Baptist minister was caught buying a copy of Playboy. Scandal!), banks, and two restaurants. The Post Office was one block off Broad, and there were two mail deliveries a day. Today, the biggest draw is the many bars and restaurants. There are a couple of tattoo parlors (do they still call them that?), a few sad boutiques, the history museum and more restaurants. Oh, and one local jeweler who still manages to hang on.

If the city fathers had had the sense to realize what they had in the original buildings, downtown would look like Disneyland. This is an example of the architecture.

This is the Masonic Temple, whose upper stories remain pretty much the same as they were when the building was constructed in 1877. The street front has changed. The tan building behind it is the old, old Post Office, where my father worked. I spent many a long afternoon parked in front of that building, waiting for my father to get off.

I have updated this post to show this image that was on display on the wall of our local mall along with a lot of other shots of Rome from years ago. If you compare this to the current building, it’s clear that the ground level of the Masonic Temple has suffered the same fate as most buildings in downtown Rome — “modernization.”

When we walked into the restaurant, I recognized the long, white hair belonging to Bob, one of a pair of twins who went to Darlington School one year ahead of me and two years behind my brother Henry. He’s now Leah’s eye doctor.

We sat right behind him, but none of us bothered him. When we were almost finished, Bob got up and Sheila patted him on the back and said, “You don’t remember me, but I used to cut your hair all the time.” Bob insisted that he did remember her. They spoke for a  minute and then Bob turned to us. Leah introduced herself, and Bob seemed to kind of remember her, but probably mainly her brother.

I told him my name, and after a short pause, he threw his hands into the air and said, “Soccer!” I said, “No, you’re thinking of my brother,” who played soccer. In my freshman year I spent a lot of time in our car waiting for Henry to finish soccer practice. Henry played soccer  and ran track and cross country. I never played soccer, or any other sport.

After we left, Leah and I meandered up Broad, where I took the previous picture, and then this one.

“Psycho kitty” has been in this blog before. He’s a book store mascot.

When we got to the car, I thought about Bob mistaking me for Henry, and remembering that Henry had played soccer 53 years ago.

I thought, “I need to tell Henry about that.”

Lucy

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We had to put down our little dog Lucy on Saturday.

We took Lucy five years ago after my mother died. My mother got her, at least partly at my urging, to keep her company after Leah and I got married. Leah and her father took my mother to a rescue organization and Lucy apparently immediately identified my mother as a sucker. So Lucy went home with my mother.

My mother had never been a dog lover, but they quickly adapted to each other. When I went over to visit my mother it wasn’t unusual to find her reclined, watching television with Lucy lying on her lap. Eventually my mother let Lucy sleep on the bed with her. She went to bed before my mother, which allowed her to pick her spot on the bed.

When my mother came to bed, she made Lucy get out from under the covers, but she stayed on the bed, pushing up against my mother’s back as they both slept there.

My mother overfed Lucy. She gradually ballooned to the point that she looked like a football standing on toothpicks. She was always obsessed with food. One of her favorites after we got her was peanut butter stuffed in her bong.

As they both got older, my mother had more trouble hearing and often didn’t realize that Lucy needed to relieve herself outside. That, combined with what I think were some behavioral issues, resulted in Lucy going into the basement and relieving herself inside. That was a problem that continued throughout her life.

She had been in declining health for a while. Our vet told us she had had a heart attack a few months ago, and she had been acting, let’s say, absent minded. She had started wetting her bed a couple of times a night a few weeks ago. She would wake us up scratching and pawing at her bedding, and I had to get up around 3 am or so and change her waterproof pillowcase and the towels we used in her crate. Her bed was also wet by morning.

On Tuesday she had trouble standing up. I took her to the vet on Thursday. The vet said the symptoms I described were consistent with pretty bad arthritis and dementia. She had prescribed medication to try to control the inappropriate urination, but it wasn’t working. It was almost impossible for her to walk on our hardwood floors. She got up and skittered across the floor, falling several times on her way to the water bowl. There she would look around like she had forgotten what she was doing. When I picked her up to take her outside, she struggled frantically to get down out of my arms.

Saturday morning Leah found her headed into a corner of her crate, struggling to get out.  When I took her outside and put her on the ground, she staggered, fell, and wandered aimlessly. When she ran into something, she just kept trying to go straight ahead. She was confused and agitated. We brought her inside and tried to calm her. She would calm down for a while, but then try to get up and walk, again, aimlessly.

Our vet was not available so I had to take her to another vet we have used in the past. I put her in one of our cat carriers. She did OK until I got to the vet’s office, then she started wildly scrambling on her side, scratching at the side of the carrier. I put my hand on her to try to calm her, but she didn’t stop until she had exhausted herself. When I was waiting in one of the examination rooms, I had to hold her in my arms as she went into another fit of wriggling and scratching, and again she didn’t stop until she was exhausted.

The vet confirmed my feeling that it was Lucy’s time. She went peacefully. I brought her home. We buried her in the yard with her peanut butter bong.

No, woman, no cry

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If you knew my brother Henry, it wouldn’t surprise you to learn that not only did he write his own obituary, but he also designed the entire memorial service that was held last Saturday, including music, and he wrote the sermon. He asked that the sermon be given by his original pastor in Chattanooga, Joe Martin, who has since moved on to a church in Charlotte, NC. He gave the pastor permission to ad lib or edit as appropriate. Part of what Joe added was this:

“I presume that it is no surprise that the scientist/poet/architect/inventor/salsa chef/engineer/choir member/philosopher/Renaissance Man, Henry Paris, was the most theologically educated Presbyterian Elder with whom I ever worked well before he entered seminary. I really enjoyed all of the deep philosophical and literary discussions we had when staying here overnight with Family Promise; the long phone calls from the gulf coast to discuss the nature, health, and calling of the Presbyterian Church; and sitting around one of Terry’s meals, the longer debates on politics or culture or anything else in the world—that I never won. I wonder how God is faring in those debates right now. Probably just fine. But I bet you that Henry is giving the Apostle Paul a run for his money. A fair definition of ‘eternity’ might be waiting for Henry or Paul to let the other one finally have the last word.”

Henry got a BS and Master’s in physics and a PhD in chemical engineering from Georgia Tech. Then he did a two-year post-doc at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. After that he worked at various labs around the country before finally ending up at a manufacturing company in Chattanooga. And then, as Joe put it:

“When a preacher preaches a sermon, he or she hopes something will happen—that the words will matter. They usually do not have the desired impact in my experience. I remember one I preached here in which I recounted the dramatic life-changing spiritual experience I had on a Presbytery mission trip to the Mississippi Gulf Coast 6 weeks after hurricane Katrina. I was so moved by my experience that I was very close to leaving Chattanooga to move down there, but I was not bold enough to change my life that much. I at least wanted to energize the great folks at Northside (Presbyterian Church) to mobilize in mission with my descriptions of the disaster and stories about all the people down there making extraordinary commitments to help. It may have been the only sermon I ever have preached that made a real difference in the world because Henry went on the next mission trip there and then at age 60 he made a career change to work there with PDA (Presbyterian Disaster Assistance) fulltime.”

 

After Henry left Mississippi, he entered Union Presbyterian Seminary in Virginia. In 2012 he walked arm-in-arm with Joe to become an ordained minister while Joe got his doctorate from the same school.

When Henry came back to Chattanooga, he became a supply minister for a church in Soddy Daisy, TN, and then the minister for a very small church in Spring City, TN. I am proud to say that the small congregation was a part of a church that had split over issues around sexual orientation, and that it was the right part of that splintering. Henry also was director of homeless outreach for another church in Chattanooga.

I have spent most of my life following Henry, never quite catching up. He got his PhD first. His record in scientific achievement was something I could never match. He did work that he could not report in the open literature, but for which other scientists who did it later actually received a Nobel prize. He was always a better runner than me, too. In the end, he went where I could never choose to go. He was a Christian and I am an atheist. He lived up to the teachings of Jesus as stated in the New Testament. He fed the hungry, he gave water to the thirsty, he gave clothing to the naked, he helped take care of the sick, and he welcomed strangers. But I believe he would have done these things even if he didn’t believe in any god. He was a much better person than I am, and I cannot reconcile his life with his death.

They say there are five stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I have never really quite believed that, but I think I can now understand what “they” mean by denial, or at least what they should have meant. I do not deny that Henry died, but I can’t internalize it. I understand in an intellectual way, but when I approach the fact of his death, I just can’t get there emotionally.

Anger? No. No anger. There is no one and nothing to be angry at. You can’t be angry at cancer. It’s not fair to be angry at the doctors, and I am certainly not angry at Henry. Bargaining? Ridiculous. Depression? Maybe. Acceptance? Some day.

I had asked Henry to write his biography before he died so that his sons and any grandchildren he might have can know something about him, but he didn’t have time. Not long before he died I told him that since he didn’t, I would have to. He managed to say, “That’s your problem.” At that stage of his illness, I think that was all he could manage to say.

So, as the sole survivor of this Paris family, I have to write Henry’s biography. I don’t remember things as well as he would, but now there’s no one to dispute anything I write.

Henry’s plan for the memorial service had two hymns and a song by Bob Marley. Of course Henry wanted a song by Bob Marley played at his memorial service. It was “No Woman No Cry.”

 

“Mingle with the good people we meet …

Good friends we have, Oh,

Good friends we have lost along the way…

In this great future you can’t forget your past.

So dry your tears, I say …

No woman, no cry …

A little darlin’, don’t shed no tears.”

 

I’ll try, Henry.

Into the undiscovered country

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My brother Henry died today, Friday, April 6. His wife, his two sons, his daughter in law, and his wife’s son were there. Leah and I were not. We had been up to Chattanooga on Thursday. I thought there was a risk that he might die before we got back if we skipped going on Friday, but we decided to wait till Saturday. Now we will be going up on Saturday, the day of this post, to be with the rest of the family.

I said my goodbye to Henry last Tuesday when he was still able to respond. I told him I loved him and he said he loved me. By the time Leah and I went back up on Thursday, he was no longer communicating. He was a ghost of himself by then. He was wasting away. His arms looked like the arms of a 90-year-old man. He was nothing like the boy I knew many years ago or the man I knew from just a few months ago. It was hard even to make the connection.

Left undone: Clearing their overgrown back yard, making a cherrywood chest of drawers for his son and daughter in law, writing his life story, poring over the many slides our father took, seeing any grandchildren he may one day have, and living through a long, happy and productive old age.

I have not come to terms with the whole process of learning about Henry’s disease and his inescapable prognosis, and even less so with his death. It’s like my thoughts simply run into a wall. Behind that wall are all of the facts, but I just can’t get over the wall to them.

There will be a memorial service. Terry said Henry had already planned for that long ago. His body will be cremated. He wanted the ashes to be spread at the New River Gorge in West Virginia. We don’t have a particular connection to that place, other than driving over the New River Gorge bridge on US 19 on the way back and forth to Pittsburgh when Henry lived there. But it’s a beautiful place, and one day we will have a connection with it.

That is the land of lost content,

I see it shining plain,

The happy highways where I went

And cannot come again

Four months plus a day

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I drove up to Chattanooga Tuesday to see my brother Henry in the hospital. Before I left I called his wife Terry to get the latest. She said the doctor told them that the cancer was growing so fast in Henry’s liver that there was nothing more they could do for him, and they were going to send him home with hospice care. He should go home Wednesday, the day of this post.

When I got to the hospital, there were four people in Henry’s room in addition to Terry. One of them was one of Henry’s fellow pastors. I talked to him a little in the hall. He was familiar with Henry’s hope to make a cherry chest of drawers for his younger son, who was recently married. He also happens to be at least a semi-skilled carpenter. He suggested that maybe he and someone with a little more skill could make the chest under Henry’s supervision. I said I hoped that could happen. It won’t be the same as a chest made by Henry’s own hands, but it will be his design and his wood, and it will be an indication of the regard that Henry’s friends have for him. That will mean something.

Henry’s older son was going to drive up to Chattanooga from Atlanta after rush hour. He plans to stay a few days. His younger son and hopefully his new daughter-in-law are supposed to come down from Washington this weekend. I hope it’s not too late.