The Oppenheimer Report - 10/28/13

R.I.P.

The Friday before last I attended this month’s Burk’s Falls Coffee House series. Having missed the last three sessions I wanted to see what was brewing on the local talent scene. Turns out, quite a lot. The musical talent was pretty good this month, and as a special treat, the last show featured the youngest performer I have yet to see on that stage. Singing I believe a Shania Twain song, the little girl was about 4 years old. She nailed it. One guy did a karaoke set, which I’ve also never seen at one of these open stages, and all his music and lyrics were in a karaoke program on his laptop. He had a pretty good voice, but while he was singing one of my (only) favorite Elvis tunes, Suspicious Minds, there was a technical glitch – something to do with a connection on his computer – and it caused his musical accompaniment to go haywire. The poor guy was up on the stage twisting in the wind. At one point he was trying to sing almost a cappella and it wasn’t pretty, especially considering he was supposed to be singing a rather complicated harmony to his own muffled voice. The sound man eventually fixed the problem, but the guy was so flustered by that point that he never really regained his groove. It was a shame, I thought he was pretty entertaining. Having experienced technical problems on stage myself, I know how humiliating and off-putting sound problems can be.

One of the performers that night was a professional musician named Sean Cotton, who lives in Burk’s Falls and who hosts an open mic in nearby Huntsville every Wednesday night. He bills his open mic as an “acoustic karaoke,” which means he will accompany singers on the guitar, but he does not provide the lyrics with the bouncing ball (or whatever those karaoke machines do). He also welcomes anyone who wishes to perform solo, or with his accompaniment. He had a long list of songs he can play and it amazes me what some of these open mic hosts will do to entertain. Oftentimes, bar audiences are unreceptive and to get their attention takes a bit of doing. Hosts must be diplomatic, and delicately negotiate the inebriated egos of their would-be performers. It is not a gig most professional musicians would choose to do and I’ve experienced some abysmal hosts. Sean was pretty good, and he can play anything from Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On to Blow at High Dough by The Tragically Hip. His rhythm section sounded like a drum machine but in fact was simply his boot tapping his guitar case, to which he had taped a tambourine. It was low tech for sure, but it sounded pretty good. Long ago, before I wallpapered my house with rejection notices, I had it in my mind that I would make my living “doing what I love,” playing music for the masses. That was also before I realized that the seventeen year old parking lot attendant in our office building had more talent in his pinky finger than I would ever have. I am constantly amazed by the number of talented musicians and songwriters out there who have hit the wall, pounding the pavement to make a living in music.

 If the past week is any indication, this might be a harsh winter. It has snowed up here for the past three nights, and while none of it stuck, it may be portents of bad weather to come. Seems to me the weather used to be nicer in October. Up here it’s hit or miss, because on our little lake, we often miss the lake effect streamers that blow off Georgian Bay. Every so often those squalls shift a little to the north and then we’re in trouble. My dock is still down and I’m waiting for the dock guy to come and fix a worm gear before I hoist it up. One year, shortly after we had the retractable dock put in, we were held up in Toronto because my father-in-law had contracted c-difficile and ended up in the hospital for a month. That year the weather turned bitter cold practically overnight, and before we could get home to lift up the dock, the lake froze solid. We had to have one of the guys building our house chain saw it free so we could lift it out. Nature can be a mother. 

We had another flying squirrel in the house the other day, and we found this out because the alarm company called us 4:30 AM to tell us the little bastard had tripped one of our motion sensors. Jasper and I finally got him (or her), but it wasn’t easy. A moment of silence for Lou Reed, legendary singer songwriter and founding member of the seminal rock band Velvet Underground, who passed away this weekend at 71. A lot of people probably remember Reed for his song Walk on the Wild Side, but when I think of him I am reminded of my six month university stay in Ireland back in ‘77. One particularly debauched evening, while we were drinking and smoking up a storm, and playing music at the Irish home in which I was living, I remember listening to a live Lou Reed album. That was the first time I ever got his music, and I remember how cool it was hearing him break into a live version of “Sweet Jane.” That moment, and the events which ensued, were my inspiration to write one of my all-time favorite songs. So thanks Lou, count me among the countless songwriters who have been influenced by your music.

 

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 10/21/13

It’s almost World Series time again and, as always, I don’t care. As any of you who know me can attest, I do not enjoy the game of baseball. An avid Blue Jays fan, my mother-in-law assures me this means I am un-American. I realize that my aversion to baseball places me in a very small minority of sports fans, and I wear my shame proudly. I simply have never been able to embrace the game of baseball, or football for that matter, and I find them excruciatingly boring to watch. The aversion to football may be more a result of following the Buffalo Bills for about thirty five years. I admit any live sports event is more exciting to watch in person, but give me hockey any day. I heard a statistic on the news the other night which made me chuckle, and the general fact applies to both baseball and football. Basically it stated that in the average 3 hour baseball game there are less than 15 minutes of actual playing, and the rest of the game is close-ups of guys in the dugout, spitting out tobacco, or managers looking worried, or discussions on the mound about whether to yank the pitcher, or some other non-action nonsense. Shauna assures me that I don’t like baseball because I don’t understand the intricacies of the game. That’s probably true, and perhaps if I was more in tune with why this or that pitch should have been a curveball, I’d be more into the game. Nevertheless, I go back to that troubling statistic: fifteen minutes. That’s a lot of waiting around for something exciting to happen. Give me hockey any day. Even if it’s a lousy game, there is a lot of action, the players move around for at least 60 minutes per game, and there is likely to be at least some blood. I’ll likely watch the last game of the World Series, but will probably only pay attention to the last few innings.

The one time I actually got somewhat excited about a baseball game was during a World Series, back in 1993. I was in a sports bar watching the game with my future wife and avid Jays fan Shauna, and I saw Joe Carter knock in the legendary winning home run to win the Blue Jays the World Series. That was fun to see. The city of Toronto exploded in fandamonium for the next 24 hours and it was something I had never before experienced. I was in downtown Toronto on Yonge Street that night along with one hundred thousand Blue Jays fans and it was quite a celebration. At one point I actually feared for my life, not because anyone was violent, but because I found myself in a crowd surge and was pushed up against a car with nowhere to go. Toronto fans are very enthusiastic. I also attended one of those Yonge Street fan parties when the Leafs uncharacteristically made it to (I believe) the semi-finals, over a decade ago. I cannot imagine what the city would do if they became Stanley Cup contenders. They may be knocking on the door soon, because they looked strangely competitive at the end on last year’s abbreviated season. That is something Leafs fans have not seen in a long time.

Big earthquake in the Philippines. Typhoon Wipha hits Japan, the worst one in ten years. They recovered that Chelyabinsk meteorite from a lake in Russia - the one that landed recently and from which the shock wave injured about 1600 people. All those injuries were caused by a chunk of rock that is about the size of a coffee table. This leads me to wonder, what happens if a really big one hits? While the odds are low, it often strikes me as amusing and ironic that human beings assume it will be a manmade disaster that takes out planet earth, when in fact it might be something uncontrollable, like a seismic catastrophe, or a big meteorite, or a cyclical shift in our climate. Certainly, we can and probably should rethink poisoning our water supply by fracking, or invent some more earth friendly solutions to ozone-depleting energy production, but come on, we are one cosmic burp away from annihilation. Won’t all those pandas, and rhinos, and snow leopards, and Appalacian snail darters be laughing in heaven when the big one sucker punches mankind. It’s the cosmic Darwin Award waiting to be presented. And speaking of the laws of natural selection …

Stateside, financial crisis has been averted, that is until February. Everyone in Washington has agreed not to agree and they have kicked the can down the street a few blocks, raising the debt ceiling to some newly ridiculous level. We live to procrastinate another day. Did any of you catch the 60 Minutes segment last night, dealing with the onerous issue of campaign finance reform in the U.S. government. I leave you with my righteous indignation – in what universe is it ok for elected officials to abide by a set of rules that would be considered criminal behavior in the civilian sector? I guess none of this will matter when the cosmic hammer comes down. I hope it happens during a baseball game.

Go Leafs.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 10/14/13

It’s that time of year again, when the boats go in for storage, the docks come out, and the fallen leaves make our front lawn look like a Van Gogh painting. It is also the time that I desperately scramble to get in as much warm weather toy time as possible. Before we know it winter will descend upon us in a tsunami of snow, and all toy usage will require a parka and snowmobile pants. Friday, about an hour before dusk, I got a call from my friend the plumber, who wanted to return a CD I’d lent him. I told him I’d run over to his place to pick it up because it was a nice, warm evening, and I thought I’d get some use out of the ATV. We live on a system of three lakes, and he lives on the southern end of the furthest lake south, about a fifteen minute ride from here. I figured I’d be down and back before sun down. The ride down was great, zooming down the twisting back roads a little too fast, with the spectacular pink dusk sky to light my way.

When I got to his place, he started talking about an old tractor he’d just fixed and used to start clearing a road on his land. People up here get very excited about their farm equipment. Would I like to see what he cleared? Sure I said, if it won’t take too long. I waited five minutes while he finished stacking his wood, then he hopped on his ATV and said “follow me.” This guy has 140 acres of land, and where he took me was to the opposite end of his property. We looked at the land he’d cleared, and I was duly impressed, but noticed it was starting to get dark. I said I’d like to see more, but perhaps in the light of day, so we walked back to our bikes to head back. Then, he couldn’t get his ATV started, and it took a few minutes for him to determine that he was out of gas. I drove him the mile or so back to his home on my ATV and he said he’d take care of his ATV later. Ever my mentor in bluegrass music (we was a good banjo picker himself before he had a stroke) he wanted to loan me a CD to take home with me. By the time I left his place, it was now dark, and cold. Remember, this is rural Ontario, and there aren’t a lot of streetlights where he lives. The ride home was a little uncomfortable, because all of those dirt roads I’d travelled on the way down were not so much fun to travel in the dark. I barely missed two deer crossing the road, and the lights on my ATV only lit up about twenty feet in front of me. Although my night vision is still pretty good, for the same reason I never liked riding my motorcycle at night, I didn’t enjoy driving the ATV in the dark. Something about open air riding in the dark makes me feel more vulnerable. Besides, if anything goes wrong, there I am out in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, with dodgy cell service. Let’s just say the ride home took a little longer than the ride out. 

 Back when I was in my late twenties, I bought a 1967 Triumph Spitfire off a frat brother in college. This was hardly a classic – I think I paid $400 for it- and when the frat brother bought it, it was painted red. Turned out that red was watercolor paint, and when he took it through a car wash, it came out green. I really enjoyed that little bucket of bolts, and spent the next two years fixing it up, mostly on my own. This is something I heartily recommend doing, once. I had just rebuilt the motor and the car was running great. The next item on my repair list was the suspension, but one fateful night, before I had a chance to fix the suspension, I flipped the car on a country road. Operator error. I was tooling down a particularly twisty road near our summer place in Ft Erie, and I took a turn too quickly. I lost control, went up an embankment, and the car flipped over on me. People seemed impressed (by my lack of driving skills) when I tell them I flipped my Spitfire, probably assuming that this was a high speed crash. In fact, I was probably going 35 MPH when the crash occurred, and had it been properly suspended, the car might have been more forgiving of my incompetence. Luckily the windshield acted as a roll bar and I was able to kick out the broken windshield and escape. I could have been trapped very uncomfortably until someone happened by. This all occurred around 2AM and this was not a well-travelled road. I can still remember hearing the sound of car giving one last sigh as it expired, and I remember the sound of one hub cab rolling down that deserted country road. Maybe this is why I don’t like open air rides at night.

Well it’s been more than a week now and the government shutdown over Obamacare is still going strong. Did anyone see The Daily Show early last week? Clearly, Jon Stewart is no friend of the Republican Party, and he made an amusing point. He basically said to the elephants, look, if you think this health care plan is a big enough threat to the country that it is worth shutting down the government, then own up to that conviction. “Don’t fart and point at the dog.” I love that. Once again partisan politics paralyzes the U.S. government, and whether you are a donkey or an elephant, you are probably in agreement that this is shameful behavior on the part of the jokers we elected to lead us. Who is really failing to negotiate? We all think we know, but are not both sides guilty of playing the spin/blame game?  Regardless, today is a good day, and I am truly thankful for my freedom, for my health, for my beautiful wife, and for all the good fortune I have known these many years. Happy Canadian Thanksgiving !   -Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 10/7/13

Shauna and I drove down to Toronto last Wednesday for a concert at Massey Hall, and also to look in on her mom. As much as her mom was probably relieved to see us leave her house after we’d been there for two and one half months, I imagine it was also difficult for her to be there, absent the man with whom she had spent the past 68 years. With some protest, she accepted our strong advice that she should retain the 24-7 caregivers we had hired for Syd. Clearly she should not be alone, and we convinced her, at least for the time being, that even if she did not need them right away, she might need them soon. They have been trusted and loyal employees, and those are not so easy to find these days. As I have learned from experience, it is better to be proactive about such things. Whether or not Mom Taylor decides to stay in that house will of course be her decision. By my logic, everything has been repaired or replaced in the past ten years, including the electrical, the major appliances, the plumbing, and the roof. The basement is again dry, which took some doing.  Why not remain in the familiar surroundings of one’s own home? That was what my parents wanted, and what I think I will want as well, but perhaps the memories will be overwhelming for her.  

As Shauna and I drove back up north after the concert, we stopped for gas somewhere around Orillia, and Shauna pointed out an unusual vending machine at the gas station. There right outside the door to the convenience store was a live bait vending machine. While I see live bait advertised all over the Great White North, I was not aware that one can buy it 24-7 from a vending machine. I was so amused I took a picture of it.

Tomorrow, with any luck, I will turn 58, and as the Grateful Dead put it so eloquently, what a long, strange trip it’s been (so far). I remember at the time thinking to myself that 40 was not such a traumatic event, though everyone told me it would be. I saw a photo recently taken of me on my 40^th birthday. In it I was grinning like a fool and making a 4-0 gesture with my hands as Shauna and I cruised down the Magnetawan River in her father’s boat. I remember the chocolate birthday cake Shauna presented to me that night, with a colorful racing motorboat design on top. Then Poof! The candles go out, eighteen years blow by, and I find myself wondering in clichés … where did the time go, it seems like only yesterday; how did I get this old? A little creakier, perhaps a bit wiser (but probably not), I have in the past few years become a little more conscious of my mortality. When I get on a tall ladder to wash the windows, or I carry a heavy load of wood from the woodpile, or I pull up the dock for the winter, I wonder to myself, how much longer will I be able to do these things without help? If the codgers up here are any indication, I’ve got another eighteen years at least. Harvey, the guy who plows our driveway in the winter, and whose grandson now works for us, is still going strong, and he’s almost 80. Every winter, in the worst kind of weather, we count on Harvey to come rumbling down our driveway, usually at night, with his big plow rig, accompanied in his heated cab by his hound. Guys like Harvey put “cidiots” like me to shame. I love that derogatory expression, used by the locals to describe a particularly onerous breed of big city jerks who come up on to cottage country on the weekends and spread their unique brand of anxiety and stress.

Final notes. A substantial amount of snow fell on South Dakota last weekend (really, already?), a big typhoon is pummeling southeast China, and it rains cats and dogs up here in the Great White North. Video of the week award goes to the footage of that Indy crash in Houston yesterday which sent racer Dario Franchitti to the hospital. I can’t believe Franchitti survived relatively unscathed. I’d like to see that new movie Rush about Formula 1 racer Niki Lauda. I count myself among the posers who have at one point in their lives been intoxicated by the thrill of speed, but these days, maybe because I am now so freakin’ old, I don’t go quite as fast as I once did. I watched a motorcycle race the other day, and for me that is one crazy sport. UN weapons inspectors have begun to destroy Syria’s cache of chemical weapons. Violence has once again erupted in Cairo, just as two Canadians, detained without charge, were about to be released.

For my birthday this year I think I’d like some Ibuprofin and perhaps a case of Pepto Bismol.

 

“Lately I’ve been thinking that my time’s passing faster, and I feel some sense of dire urgency/ In a month or so I’ll usher in my fifty-first year and I’m nowhere near where I thought I should be/ Over halfway through my life with nothing much to show, and outside, the wind begins to blow …”

 

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 9/30/13

We have been back up north for a little over a week now, and re-entering this house was a bit like opening up a short term time capsule. It is as if summer was put on hold July 6th, and everything froze. We left here in a hurry on that day and short of throwing out some leftovers from the fridge and cleaning up a bit, we did not really close up properly before we left. There is a bathing suit still hung over the post on our bed to dry, plastic flower containers still litter the property, bags of peat moss are stacked on the porch. There is a can of stain lying near the front door, because I had been in the middle of staining some of the porch furniture. I drove the ATV into Burk’s Falls the other day just in time to see what was likely the peak of Fall colors on that route. So much about the past two months is out of focus, a flash of time.

Back in 2001 when Jordan passed away, I made a makeshift flagpole out of a narrow pine, and from the dock we flew a flag of the planet earth at half mast. Jordan had a company called Planet Earth Productions , and the flag was something we found while we were cleaning out his apartment in Florida. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone else flying such a flag, much less at half mast, from a dead tree, but we did. Because he was a veteran, Syd had a Canadian flag draped over his casket, which was presented to the family after the service. A few days ago, I bought a proper flagpole and installed it on our dock, and we raised that flag to half mast to commemorate Syd. I do not know if we were even supposed to use that flag, or what the proper protocol is for flying it at half mast, but that’s what we did. As we did with Shauna’s brother we will scatter a little of Syd’s hair on the lake and recite The Mourner’s Kaddish. This property was his favorite place in the world to be, it is only fitting that a little of his DNA should remain here. I suppose everyone has their own little ceremony for their departed.

For the past week we have been receiving correspondences from people from all over, expressing their condolences and talking about what a good man my father-in-law was, and what happy memories they have of him. Some were patients, some were old friends who knew him from his childhood days. A lot of people have paid their respects. Shauna was worried that, as her family shrinks, it will be forgotten, and I remember raising that existential question when my father passed away four years ago. To me, my dad was an exceptional man, and I think a lot of other people felt the same way, but who would remember him in 20 years? He did not invent a cure for polio, he did not end the Cold War, there are no monuments to his greatness. The same is true of many other good people, destined to be forgotten as generations pass; but that is how it has always been. Unless some gifted author choses to tell their story, many great people are forgotten after they die. When Jill and I went to the Forest Lawn mausoleum in Buffalo to inter my dad’s ashes, we were handed a blue cardboard box to place in the crypt. I remember thinking to myself that we should have bought a fancy urn, but thinking about it, a cardboard box was exactly what my father would have wanted. No fuss. For the same reason he chose to be cremated, not something sanctioned by the Jewish religion, he would have eschewed all ceremony and unnecessary expense. Why pay for the fancy urn when it will be placed behind a stone and never seen by anyone?

I had a stormy relationship with my dad in my early teens, but he and I worked it out, and I grew to love and respect him very much. The same is true of my mom, although I don’t think I gave her as hard a time. Now that they are gone, I feel their life lessons indelibly burned into my soul. Who they were is in me now, and how I choose to lead my life from hereon in is the legacy that will either honor their memory or sentence me and my family to the anonymity I fear. The same is true for any family member or friend I have loved and respected and who is no longer here. How do I best honor the dead; certainly not by grieving incessantly? Whether I believe in the afterlife, or re-incarnation, or that nothing at all happens after we die, it is my life with which I am concerned. Do I matter, can I make things better, have I done more in my life to make my parents proud than ashamed; have I known love; more important, have I given love? I feel the influence of all these departed, and I hope I do not disappoint them.


“I am a shadow on the coat tails of fame, you’ve seen the face but don’t know the name/ I guess in some respects we’re all the same, when we play the imposter’s game …”

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 9/23/13

 

The service for Shauna’s dad was last Monday, and given the short notice I was impressed with the attendance. The fact that he died on the Eve of Yom Kippur is I understand considered to be a great honor in the Jewish religion. I found it somewhat amusing that he passed at 11PM, because Syd always stayed up to watch the 11 o’clock news on CTV. The service was beautiful and meaningful. His wife Ethel spoke first, telling the story of their 73 year love affair, and of their 68 years of marriage. Shauna then got up and spoke. She read a poem about a nickname that her dad had picked for himself in jest over 50 years ago. When she asked, he told Shauna to call him her “Handsome, rich, clever daddy with the big brown eyes.” The eulogies were emotional and heartfelt. Then I got up and said something. To follow is my attempt to honor this man I grew to love over 20 years …
 

My Eulogy for Dr. Sydney Taylor - 9/16/13

 I have much to say and little time to say it, so instead of trying to put my many feelings about Syd Taylor into words, I’m going to talk about photographs.

 The last two months have been extremely challenging for the Taylor family, as we struggled to make Dad Taylor as comfortable as possible, knowing that his demise was imminent. One day last week, after we drove home from a particularly long day, I opened up my laptop and, as I often do for diversion, I started looking through old family photographs. I have A LOT of old family photographs from both sides of my family. Many of the Taylor photos show happier times up north at the old cottage in Katrine. Fishing was one of the things Syd loved to do up there. He was an excellent fisherman, probably one of the best on our lake, and he almost always came home with a string of presentable fish. In one of my favorite photos of Syd – he was a young man probably in his early thirties – he is standing next to his father Ike, and Ike is proudly holding a string of big fish, with a huge grin on his face. Next to him is Sydney, with an embarrassed smile on his face, holding up one of the puniest fish he would ever dream of keeping. You know Syd caught those big fish. The loving son, with a great sense of humor.

 One picture speaks a thousand words…

I paged through the volumes of photo files, through the old holiday pictures of the Taylors, at the dinner table, at family gatherings, during holidays, at the cottage, at bar mitzvahs and weddings, etc., and I was for a moment distracted from my current distress over Syd’s declining condition. I was instead reminded of a man who had lived a long, happy, and mostly healthy life, who loved nothing more than to excel at his chosen profession, to spend time with his family, to travel, to eat good food, to fish, and to laugh and joke. You could see in his face how proud he was of his family, how much he adored his children and his wife. That kind of love is not hard to spot. I particularly love one picture of Dad with Shauna perched on his lap grinning – she must have been about two or three -- and she was looking particularly adorable. In that photo I see the protective, nurturing man I came to know so well. He loved Dean Jordan, Shauna, and he loved me. The loving, protective father.

One picture speaks a thousand words.

 As I was paging through the family photos I came across one in particular that made me chuckle and then I teared up. It was dated September 17^th 2010, almost three years ago to the day, and it is of a day I remember very well. Syd and Ethel were up visiting us in Katrine. In large part due to their generosity, Shauna and I built as our primary residence a beautiful log home on the site of the old cottage, and they were visiting in the Fall. Syd was still ambulatory but was beginning to have difficulty walking. We knew he missed fishing, and we were not sure how many more chances he was going to have to fish, so I suggested we go out. Of course that meant driving fifteen miles away to find the minnow bait he required. We then rushed home to get it in the lake before the minnows died. Then, because he wanted to troll, we decided to take the little dingy. As he was stepping into the boat he slipped and got wet enough that he needed to change into dry clothes. Finally, after some difficulty, I got him into the boat, and as I was getting ready to start the motor, I heard a crash, to see that he had lost his balance and fallen backwards off the seat. In so doing, he had managed to get a fishing hook caught in his chin. Now he’s bleeding, and as I got him back on the seat, he looked at me with a sheepish grin as if to say, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea … wherein I gave him the Jewish pep talk: “look you SOB, I didn’t just drive all that way to Magnetawan, then race back here, then wait for you to change your clothes, then struggle to get you in the boat, just so you could wimp out on me etc. Here’s some Kleenex now cowboy up, we’re going out!

 Long story short we did go out, and Shauna photographed us, Syd all bundled up in a winter coat, both of us grinning as we trolled around the lake. We didn’t catch anything that afternoon, but we watched a beautiful fall sun set together, and we joked and enjoyed our putt around the lake. My memory is of a man who despite the ever increasing limitations of old age, was willing to embrace life, with a smile on his face and a light- hearted insult for his beloved son-in-law. One picture speaks a thousand words.

 I spent many, many happy times with Dad Taylor over the twenty years I grew to know him, and what I will always remember is how completely he embraced me as one of the family, and treated me like his own son. And I treated him like a father. Whether it was closing up the cottage, or attending a Leafs game together, or just sitting around the dinner table laughing, I felt that profound and indescribable sense of family and I loved him, and I love Mom Taylor, more than they will ever know … He was a kind, gentle, intelligent, wonderful man – the best dentist I have ever had -- and an inspiring role model for his love and dedication to his adoring family.

 I was blessed to have known this good man, and I expect that he is now reunited with the departed family members he so cherished, now that he has been released from this world. Thank you Dad, it was an honor.

 That was my eulogy.

One final note. There was a baby monitor video camera in the Taylor’s bedroom, pointed at their ensuite bathroom. The caregivers used the wireless monitor to keep an eye on Syd when they left the room, and while Syd was in the hospital, and Shauna had the monitor turned on in our bedroom. Shortly after Syd passed away, the night she was writing her eulogy, Shauna looked in the monitor to see three, clear night vision apparitions on the screen. One was Syd, dancing around joyously, clearly happy and fully ambulatory, no longer a prisoner of his body. To his right was his son Jordan, grinning and pointing to his dad, as if to say “I told you there was an afterlife!”, and behind the two of them, with his head sticking out between them, a hand on both their shoulders, was Syd’s father Ike, grinning proudly. All of them looked younger, and very happy. I suppose a skeptic would say this was a wishful hallucination, but Shauna has many times before astounded me with her prescience. I prefer to believe what she saw was how it really is, and that the suffering we endure on earth is but a whistle stop on a very long journey. So far it has been an interesting one.

 

“Some people say they saw you, and you were dancing in the clouds/ Who knows where the illusion ends when the spirit cries out loud” 

                                    - excerpt from “Jordan”

 

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

 

Yom Kippur 9/14/13

 

Last night, at about 11PM, my father-in-law Dr. Sydney Taylor passed away, peacefully in the Veterans wing of Sunnybrook Hospital, with his wife and his daughter by his side. He died at 11PM on Friday the 13^th, 2013, on the Eve of Yom Kippur. I don’t think I am going to have a problem remembering that date. How appropriate that he should pass on the eve of the Day of Atonement. Syd was 88.

For all who knew him, Sydney Taylor was a wonderful man. He was humble, intelligent, funny, and generous to a fault. I was his patient for about ten years, and he was hands down the best dentist I ever had. He had patients who routinely flew in from Vancouver and Italy to use him because he was that good. He was the best father-in-law any son-in-law could hope to have, and I will miss him dearly. So will a lot of other people.  

His service will be at Benjamins Memorial Chapel at 2401 Steeles Ave. W., Downsview, Ontario  this Monday at 2:30 PM.

 

Right now I suspect he’s eating his mother’s apple pie up in heaven. May he rest in peace.

e#:

 

The Oppenheimer Report 9/9/13

Out for a Great Burger at "Holy Chuck"

A belated L ’Shana Tova to all the members of my tribe! Last Thursday was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and like so many events of this past summer, I learned of it the day of. As I sat in Warrior’s Hall last Thursday night, alone with my mother and father-in-law, and Dad’s caregiver, a group of young Jewish gentlemen walked by carrying shofars, ram’s horns blown like a bugle on this High Holy Day to herald in the New Year. The sound emanating from a shofar is a wonderful, unique sound, and to me it has always symbolized hope for a good future. We asked this group of Jewish men if one of them might sound the shofar for our little group, which one of them did willingly. It was a moment of joy and humor in what has been an unhappy period in our lives. In keeping with the challenging nature of the past six months, Rosh Hashanah was another deep trough on our roller coaster of hopes. The previous day we had learned that one final attempt to insert a feeding tube had been unsuccessful, and that short of comfort feeding, there was little more we could now do for Dad Taylor. The sad part about all of this is that his vital signs are generally good, but without nutrition he cannot survive. Unlike the sad but definitive prognosis of a standard terminal illness, the uncertain and ever-changing future of stroke victims is full of confusion and emotional pain for the family.

 

Lines are being drawn in the sand, one behind the other. The big news last week focused on the proposed U.S. strike on Syrian targets to retaliate for Syria’s use of chemical weapons on her citizens. This is when international politics baffles me. Most of the world has publically decried the use of chemical weapons, and considers this a war crime, one that should be punished. Yet, when we have (allegedly) clear evidence that Syria has committed this crime, gassing and killing 1400 of her own people, and when the U.S. threatens to retaliate, everyone backs away and says, “well, let’s talk about this.” I found it interesting to hear former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, opposing the proposed strike on Syria. Largely blamed for mishandling the conflict in Iraq, and stung by bad intelligence on his own watch, perhaps Rumsfeld is gun shy. Of course it is politically opportunistic of him to claim Obama lacks leadership, but what IS the right thing to do? Since there is no international consensus, it puts Obama and Kerry in a precarious position. Back Israel or back down. Politically this is a lose-lose for Obama as most Americans clearly do not want another protracted involvement in an unwinnable Middle East conflict. Most of the Free World does not support this strike, and there is a very real danger is that the powder keg will erupt into a much bigger fight. Russia and Iran back Syria, so this could escalate. Obama will make the case for a “limited action” with no boots on the ground, but if the U.S. is sucked into a bigger conflict – and there is plenty of history to prove this is a distinct possibility – he then becomes the guy who started WWIII. Assad is not Hitler (yet), but perhaps a symbolic gesture should be made to drive home the point that some weapons are off limits. Meanwhile, the Arab Spring is turning to a harsh winter, and Egypt is unstable right now. If you figure out a peaceful solution to all the conflicts in the Middle East, let me know!

 

From the sublime to the ridiculous, the Toronto International Film Festival, or TIFF as most Torontonians call it, was on all last week, and the stargazers were out in the streets hoping to catch a glimpse of the hundreds of pampered, overpaid celebrities roaming about. I listened with bemused detachment to the non-stop drivel reporting what red carpet event this star or that would be attending. I just came from the stroke ward where my retired firefighter friend George was rejoicing because he had regained some limited motion in his non-dominant hand, and I’m supposed to be interested in some bonehead bartender earnestly discussing the importance of providing “A List” celebrities with perfectly presented cocktails? What a joke. George was an underpaid hero; movie stars play people like George and get paid millions to do so. Go figure.

 

Did you see Matthew Cordle’s online confession to drunk driving, wherein he basically takes responsibility for his crime (“Because I Said I Would”), insuring he will serve a lengthy jail sentence? One side says he should have thought of that before he recklessly killed a man with his car, but another says that because his message has gone viral, maybe it can change the behavior of some heavy drinkers. Long ago, Shauna’s grandfather was killed by a drunk driver, so that message is relevant to her. I read that NFL has recently anted up $750 Million to compensate NFL players for crippling head injuries. And finally, here are two new expressions that have emerged from our hi tech society: zombie pedestrians: people who don’t pay attention to where they are going as they text, and “Gameboy Back”: an affliction of young video gamers hunched over their Gameboys. Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

 

 

The Oppenheimer Report - 9/2/13

Syd on left with his family

HAPPY LABOUR DAY!!

 

Here in the Veteran’s wing of Sunnybrook the inmates have it pretty good. I’ve been inside a few long term care facilities/ retirement homes/ nursing homes over the past ten years, and from my cursory observations, this one is near the top of the heap. What I like about this veteran’s facility is that there is always something going on to keep the residents occupied. Bingo is a big draw in Warrior’s Hall, the main assembly room for the resident veterans, and several times a week there is a full house for Bingo. One can always tell when another Bingo session is imminent, because the Bingo board and table come out, and the wheelchairs begin to assemble. The stakes are not particularly high – my mother-in-law won two bucks the other day – but that doesn’t seem to matter. I think the aids and companions get more excited about it than the codgers do. There is other entertainment as well. The other day, I watched a bit of a martial arts demonstration, there are old movies, storytelling sessions, and a lot of musical performances.

The first few “concerts” I sat through ranged from really bad to atrocious. I imagine some musicians volunteer their services, which is nice I suppose, but when I can honestly say I could do better, then those performances might be better left unheard. I found myself wondering what goes through the minds of some of those “C List” performers as they gaze out at the sparsely populated audience of wheelchair-bound listeners, half who are asleep, or slumped over in their wheelchairs unresponsive. Do they get discouraged when half of the audience wheels away before the gig is done? Do they think to themselves: “I’m only doing this until I get my big break?” Clearly, this is the foul underbelly of showbiz . The other day, as I was dropping Shauna and her mom off at the door, Shauna heard some music coming out of the hall and told me it sounded pretty good. Shauna is an excellent judge of music, so I parked the car and went in to hear half a set of a really good big band performance. I am quite sure those guys were getting paid. The thing that struck me funny about that gig was that their closing tune was My Way, which seemed a little grim for that crowd.

I suppose what is best about these gatherings is just that; they are social gatherings. However dysfunctional, demented, or damaged that aged population of attendees might be, they are in fact a little community, and in my opinion, any social life is better than none. For some reason, it reminds me of my boarding school days, and while that comparison may seem a little far-fetched, it’s really not. At my boarding school, there was a tight knit little community of sometimes dysfunctional inmates, who had limited freedom, who ate in a community dining room, and who attended many of the same events together – we all enjoyed our bus trips away from the school, as I am sure the elder veterans enjoy getting away from their facility – and we all tolerated each other to a greater or lesser degree. While the elder veterans suffer from varying degrees of senility, by comparison, some of my high school classmates evened out the playing field with their drug abuse (present company included). Some of us got along better than others, but we lived together, different as we were, with the same low base line of respect that is required of any community. The other day I walked in to the community dining room on the floor where my father-in-law now resides, to nuke my dinner, and one of the several women I call “the screamers” was in there, along with some other wheelchair-bound elders. These women made shrill, disturbing, blood-curdling horror film screams. And they scream a lot. As I was putting my congealed Mexican take-out from the supermarket into the microwave, she sucker punched me with a chandelier-shattering “GET OUT OF HEEEEEERE!!!” and it freaked me right out. I was so surprised I practically flung my fajita and rice at the wheelchair-bound gentleman closest to me. He just looked at me with a half-smile and shrugged, as if to say “whattyagonnado?” The people on that floor are so accustomed to her that they don’t even blink an eye. The nurses know she is not violent, which seems to be their benchmark for acceptable behavior. There is I think a tacit tolerance of dysfunction in any community. One of my girlfriends in college had gone to an experimental learning boarding school in Vermont for her high school years, and I’ll never forget one story she told me. All the students had daily chores, and one guy, we’ll call him Pete (not his name), was in charge of milking the cow. Early one morning, one of Pete’s classmates walked in on Pete as he was “having his way” with Elsie, and within an hour the whole school knew about it. The bizarre part about it: Pete lived down his scandalous behavior, and remained on campus. His nickname became “Pete the Cow-F-cker” for the rest of his high school career. Can you imagine living that down?! You have to have lived in a boarding school to know that infamy and scandal are embraced with the same kind of bizarre acceptance that your family accepts weird Uncle Bill at Thanksgiving dinner, the guy who has a collection of miniature medieval torture devices, and has an entire set of living room furniture upholstered in squirrel pelts.

 

You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family. Sometimes you can’t even pick the people with whom you reside.  

 

                                             -Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 8/26/13

To add to the joy which has been this summer, we have had flooding in the basement of the family home in Toronto. The heavy rains in early July made their way into the house, and when Shauna and I began to investigate it became apparent that this had been a problem for a long time. The finished basement was full of junk, so the moisture problem was not immediately apparent, but when we started to move stuff around, it was obvious that this was a serious problem. When we discovered mold had formed all around the base of the walls we decided that it was time to get the insurance company involved. This all happened about the time Dad Taylor had stroke #2 in December. At that time it become abundantly clear that house maintenance had not been a priority for Mom and Dad Taylor in quite some time.

The mold remediation guys came in and did their thing, and in the meantime we gave away three refrigerator boxes full of old clothes that were piled up in the basement. One of our caregivers sent them down to a charity in the Philippines coordinated by one of her family members. Some of the other stuff was ruined and ended up in the dump, and the rest, which included most of the personal property of Shauna’s brother, who had died in 2000, ended up piled up floor to ceiling in the laundry room. When Shauna and I arrived in early July (I had been down in June for stroke #3), all the drywall and paneling was stripped and removed, electrical wires were dangling from the ceiling, the floor tiles and sub floor in one room had been torn up and removed. In short, the basement was a somewhat organized disaster.

Now that the toxic mold had been removed, and much of the water damaged debris removed, the next step was to ensure no more water seeped in through the foundation. After several bids we settled on a waterproofing company called Mud Monkeys to do the waterproofing, based largely on customer satisfaction reviews we’d read. So far, so good, but this is major construction work, which involves digging 5-6 feet down to the footings of the house foundation, installing proper weeping tiles (the original clay weeping tiles, designed to divert water away from the house had for the most part cracked or disintegrated, and were in any event woefully inadequate to handle the drainage for this house), filling gaps and cracks in the block work, sealing the blocks with concrete, covering that seal with tar and heavy duty polymer wrap, then back filling. It is slow, noisy work and I am sure our neighbors hate us by now. I hate us. Every morning at 8am the jack hammers and augers begin to pound out their cacophonous symphony, and we awaken un-refreshed and irritated. We don’t usually get home from the hospital until around midnight, usually unsettled from the latest unhappy turn of events, and so there is little time for restful sleep. Why, you may ask, did we not postpone this work until some less stressful future time? Two reasons. First, it took two months to get these guys here in the first place; they are very much in demand and we did not want to lose our time slot. When we scheduled the job, Syd was still walking and talking. Second, the improper drainage issue had to be addressed ASAP; we cannot risk another flood. As it was, we had two major rainstorms before Mud Monkeys did arrive, and with the bare cinderblock walls exposed, it was clear where and to what extent water was flowing in. When it rains it pours.

While all this goes on, I continue to ferry Shauna and her mom to and from the Veterans long term care facility at Sunnybrook, where we are in the hellacious limbo of juggling caregivers and sometimes negligent nurses to ensure Syd has the best treatment he can have. We have no idea how long he will survive, because so far he cannot ingest nutrition, but I understand that Shauna and her mom want to spend as much time with him while they can. We are not comfortable leaving Shauna’s mom alone in her house right now, but tensions are high, and this slow burn is affecting everyone. Mom Taylor is understandably distraught, but we are not going to leave her alone in her house without someone to make sure she takes care of herself, something she has steadfastly refused to do. I’ve been in this situation before, the only difference is that eventually, my mom did not have a choice. She fell ill and someone had to step in. Once again we are the meddlesome children, forcing an elder to deal with an unacceptable reality. We are the messengers. This is infinitely more difficult when the senior is of relatively sound mind and body, and adamantly refuses assistance. Some days I just scream into a pillow, or take a walk around the bucolic hospital grounds to remind myself what the past summer must have been like. I do believe there is a lesson to be learned from this tribulation. It concerns me that medical science seems to be increasing our longevity, seemingly in inverse proportion to our acceptance or understanding of quality of life ramifications. Next week, I will take a break from this morbidity and find something lighter about which to rant. To the two of you who are still reading this, you have my sympathies.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 8/19/13

What Dad Taylor Saw
 

We got a call Thursday morning that Dad Taylor would be transferred to the Veteran’s wing of Sunnybrook Hospital the next morning, and so the roller coaster continues. By hospital standards he has stabilized, and there was nothing more they could do for him in the stroke ward. We had applied to have him transferred to the Veteran’s wing as a long term care option, and he was accepted faster than we thought he would be. Now, we have no idea what to expect, because he still requires constant supervision and his care is complicated. Nevertheless, I am relieved to have him out of that crazy stroke ward, because that was an unsettling environment in which to heal. He is now in a large single room, which is infinitely quieter than the stoke ward double he lived in for the past six weeks, with a series of four or five progressively worse roommates. The last was an old Indian woman who spent most of every night moaning loudly and making some other very strange noises. A few days ago I found out from one of her daughters - without inquiring I might add - the probable reason for her discomfort. A chronic laxative abuser, the woman had not eliminated since she entered the hospital over a week before. I was afraid she was going to blow on my watch and I fully expected to walk in one day to find windows blown out and nurses in HAZMAT suits mopping up the aftermath of her eruption.

After six weeks of being in the stroke ward every day, it is strange not to be going back. Every day I saw many of the same people. I’d walk in and before I got to Syd’s room, I’d be greeted by at least five or ten people I came to know. Many of the nurses, family members, and patients on the floor became my friends over the month and a half I was there. There is an inmate bond that occurs when one is in the hospital for so long. Last week, Shauna introduced me to a guy named George who was a retired Toronto firefighter who had served for 35 years. George is a character. I became fond of him almost instantly, he knew everyone on the floor, and I could always get the lowdown from George on which patient or nurse had misbehaved in my absence. George was on the floor because he’d had a stroke, but he suffered from a lot of other ailments as well, many relating to injuries he sustained on the job. George just found out, among other things, that he has lung cancer, and is now waiting to see if it is operable. He has been a wake up call to me because he never complains and he has a great attitude. I know that any of you still reading this blog must be about ready to throw in the towel, so oppressive has been the subject matter. But this has been the most meaningful journey I have been on in a long, long time, and I have learned a great deal. No matter how much I blather on about becoming more thankful, there is nothing like an extended visit to the darker side of a hospital to really drive that feeling home. I am so much more aware of and interested in people’s back stories than I was before and it has made my life more meaningful. Indeed I have been jaded, but before I start humming Amazing Grace, rest assured I am still the cynical wretch I have always been … perhaps I am just a wee bit less myopic.

Now that Dad Taylor is in the Veteran’s wing, things are entirely different than they were in the hospital. He is in the section for the patients requiring the most care; nevertheless, they have had him up and in a wheelchair. Sunday we brought him, fully dressed, down through “Warriors Hall” and outside to the garden courtyard. I put his hat and a pair of sunglasses on him. We cruised through the flowers and the past a lovely rock pond with falling water. The sun was shining. Perhaps I was projecting, but I think he knew he was outside and in a beautiful setting. Birds were singing, pecking at the bread crumbs on the ground under the “Do Not Feed the Birds” sign, and for just a moment the family could imagine that we were heading out to a picnic.

The night Shauna and I learned that Dad had to go back into the hospital, July 6th, we were out on my boat for a sunset cruise. The lake was like glass and we drifted in the pink dusk light. Reading her book, wearing one of her colorful sundresses, Shauna was the picture of serenity. I took a picture on my cell phone and sent it to Syd and Ethel. Syd was able to see that moment, and three hours later everything went south for him. Last week, Shauna celebrated her 55th birthday, and as I always do, I wrote her a birthday letter. In it, I mentioned that July 6th, before the bad news came, was “a moment”. In the past 20 years we have shared many such moments, many snapshots of serenity. I know there will be many others, and I will store every one of them in the scrapbook of my mind.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 8/13/13

In the past four weeks I have watched some strange things happen on the stroke ward at Sunnybrook Hospital. One guy, who was at one time my father-in-law’s bedmate in a double room, was a “code blue” the other night. He was brought back to life and the next morning he was sitting up in a chair smiling and communicating with his wife and with me. I saw that guy when he was first admitted two months ago, and at the time I never would have assumed he would recover. I have now watched several people in recovery from severe strokes, and the progress is sometimes remarkable. My father-in-law’s brain trauma was seen to be so significant that the neurologist doubted he could ever again understand speech or communicate in any meaningful ways. Over the past four weeks he has done both and is showing signs of increased mobility. Although he had consistently failed the “swallow test,” Tuesday afternoon he successfully swallowed some applesauce, giving hope that he might be able to regularly ingest sustenance without a feeding tube. We do not know exactly what all this means, and understand he is still gravely ill, but it is proof that one should never give up hope. Doctors often cannot accurately predict if or how far someone will recuperate from brain trauma. My sister is one example; she made an almost full recovery. I have now seen at least four patients in this stroke ward who have amazed me with their recoveries. Having said all of this, there is such a minefield of complications we navigate every day in lobbying for Syd’s best care. Last Friday, he became visibly agitated, he was rigid, and started shaking. Obviously he was in discomfort, but he could not tell us what was wrong. It turned out he was running a fever and fluid was rapidly building up in his lungs. We dodged that bullet, but the ever looming question of when to throw in the towel and opt for palliative care haunts us daily. It is infinitely easier when the patient has made his wishes known, but Syd did not. Now we wrestle with the question,” what would he want?” The fact that he seems to be fighting to live drives us to believe we should help him try, but none of us is certain we are doing “the right thing.”

This past weekend I took a 24 hour break from my responsibilities as a devoted husband and son-in-law to drive down to Buffalo early Saturday morning and attend the Annual Western New York Offshore Powerboat Poker Run. This was my third year attending this poker run and by far this was the largest. This year over one hundred high powered offshore boats were in attendance, making it a record turnout. In our “classic” forty year old 27’ Magnum ( I LOVE that boat) we were dwarfed by a flotilla of newer, vastly more powerful (and expensive) super boats. The run basically took us to various checkpoints around Grand Island on the Niagara River, after which we made an open water run down to Angola, about 20 miles south of Buffalo. While not a rough day by Lake Erie standards, there was a healthy chop and we got some air.  In these lean times, when automobiles are getting smaller and more fuel efficient, this poker run is proof positive that wretched excess is alive and well in America. A LOT of fuel was consumed last Saturday on waters off Buffalo. One thing I like about this Western New York power boat club is that they donate a healthy portion of their proceeds to a charity called Excalibur, which provides boating experiences for the handicapped. This is a little, underfunded charity that provides huge benefits for the community. That is just one example of why they call Buffalo “The City of Good Neighbors.”

In the news last week, and speaking of wretched excess, it was reported on CNN last week that Japan’s debt has topped 1 Quadrillion yen; more per capita debt than any other developed nation. Former president George W. Bush underwent heart surgery for a blocked artery. See, he does have a heart, just no brain! Baseball star Alex “A-Hole” Rodgriguez got a 211 game suspension for alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs. Cheating in professional sports, who knew? Rodriguez will forgo $30 Million in salary and apparently now has a serious public relations problem for refusing to admit his indiscretions. Fess up A-Hole, it worked for Letterman. In other criminal news, gangster Whitey Bulger is presently trial in Boston. Also, they tore down Ariel Castro’s house in Cleveland. He’s the fiend who imprisoned those young women for years, torturing and abusing them. Strange that his neighbors and his own daughter never caught on. Will Russian anti-gay laws threaten Russia’s winter Olympics? As one humorist commented, there goes figure skating. Johnny Weirdo would be in prison faster than you can say “Would you like fries with your vodka?

 

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 8/5/13

A few weeks ago I mentioned a patient I’d met on the stroke ward named Betty. She is 88 years old. When I first met her she’d had what I think was her eighth stroke. Most of those strokes affected her eyesight, but left her otherwise relatively intact. I’d see her walking around the ward with her IV pole and occasionally I’d walk with her and chat. She’s a tall lanky woman, and I joked with her that she was a marathon walker. She’s very intelligent, and she didn’t seem to be put off by my oftentimes inappropriate humor. I have met a lot of humorless people in this hospital, so when I find a patient with a keen sense of humor, I tend to glom on. Last week, Shauna mentioned that Betty had been acting strangely, and was sitting in a chair blocking the entrance to her room, with her back to the hall. Later I went in to ask her how she was doing, and it became immediately apparent that she’s had another stroke, this time a bad one. Her speech was noticeably slurred and her coordination was off considerably. Most notably, she looked and acted dispirited.

Though we were not close, I thought she might want to talk about what had happened, and she seemed relieved to speak frankly about her situation. She has had visitors, mostly friends, who I think are not particularly interested in dealing with the reality of her situation. I’m no shrink, in fact I could probably use one right now, but this woman needed to vent and I was available to listen. She was clearly depressed and said she wished the next stroke would take her out. She hated the uncertainty, knowing that more strokes were imminent and that she would never resume anything resembling her life of three weeks ago. She felt as if she was simply waiting to die. We spoke for a long time, and because I have spent so much time watching people die of late, for some reason I felt particularly suited to offer my unschooled opinions on the subject. There are not a lot of people I know who will speak frankly about death, or quality of life issues, but with this stranger, who was facing her imminent or perhaps not so imminent demise, I began to discuss Dad Taylor and his situation. I think the act of getting it out in the open, not deciding anything, not coming to any conclusions, but still revealing the dark feelings, was cathartic for Betty, and perhaps for me as well. It was a conversation I had with my father, and one that I wished I could have had with my mother. Most people don’t want to talk about it, but living in denial worse. Taking stock of one’s life, no matter how compromised it becomes, and being truthful with yourself can be life-affirming. As I have said before I am not at all religious, but I have evolved into a more thankful person than I used to be. I enjoy searching for and finding the honesty that exists in all of us. If more people would get their noses out of their Blackberries, Droids, and IPhones perhaps we could once again develop a sense of community, something I think has been on injured reserve for a long, long time. There ends my self-righteous rant du jour.

Another roller coaster week of emotions for the Taylor family. Having met with the hospital ethicist and having heard all the opinions for Syd’s chances of a “meaningful” recovery, Shauna and her mom had conceded that palliative care was likely the imminent next course of action. That meant no feeding tube, no IV, and only comfort care to ensure Dad Taylor did not suffer as he drifted off peacefully. As fate would have it, the night of that meeting, he rallied significantly, creating legitimate doubt about pulling his IV. He is clearly communicating in a meaningful way, for the first time, and even I the skeptic want to buy him enough time to make his needs known, if he can. This is more complicated than I could possibly explain on paper. Weighing the risk of complications against the hopes that he can say goodbye; these are not easy decisions. We will certainly not let him suffer – there is no indication he is now suffering now, and his vitals are better than ever – but despite the hospital’s glaringly obvious inclination to free up a bed, I’m not convinced he’s quite ready yet. Denial? Probably a little bit. Hope? By its very nature hope it is beyond what we know. But there is powerful love in the Taylor family, and I accept the decisions that have been made, even when I do not fully understand them.

I went to look for Betty last night and she has been moved off the ward and into a rehabilitation facility off site. I wanted to show her a B. Kliban cartoon about which a friend reminded me the other day. The cartoon is of a woman staring at two empty boots with smoke coming out of them. The caption reads: “Due to a convergence of forces beyond his comprehension, Salvatore Quanucci was squirted out of the universe like a watermelon seed and never heard from again.”

We should all be so lucky.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 7/29/13

 

Dad Taylor is still in about the same condition as he was in last week, with perhaps some minor improvements. While we keep our hopes up, he still cannot swallow and now the question becomes, how do we provide him with sustenance long term? Right now he has an NG tube running through his nose into his stomach, but this is only a short term solution for delivering liquid food (somewhat similar to Ensure). So far two attempts to insert a PEG, or feeding tube in his stomach have been unsuccessful. To complicate matters, his out-of-control roommate (who was moved after the incident) yanked out his NG tube a few weeks ago, necessitating the insertion of a new one. As well, he has tried several times to pull it out himself, probably because it is terribly uncomfortable. Inserting an NG tube is not an easy procedure, and has caused him some distress. He has had the procedure done three or four times now. The next option for the longer term PEG insertion is a more invasive surgical procedure, requiring a general anesthetic, and this is of course more risky. We are not even sure yet if a surgeon will consent to do it, and there are no easy decisions at this point.   

There is a distinctive odor which emanates from the stroke ward, and every morning when I walk through those double doors it hits me like a junk yard wind in summer. It is the subtle perfume comprised of human waste, disinfectant, medications… and body odor. I noticed the body odor the first day I was there and thought to myself, “don’t these visiting friends and family members wash?” Then it dawned on me. As I was running myself ragged, transporting people to and from the hospital, arranging for meals, dealing with household hassles, the banking, the bill paying, and the thousand loose ends which were left unattended to when we rushed down to Toronto three weeks ago, I hardly had time to eat, much less to take a shower. After a few days that caught up to me. One day, shortly after we arrived in Toronto, as I sat on Bayview Ave. in the humid summer heat, in what seemed like a never-ending maze of road construction, detours, and traffic jams,, I realized that I had BO, and did not have time to do anything about it. When I had the chance I addressed the problem, and put a deodorant stick in my backpack for future ten second body fragrance tune ups. While hardly a substitute for a shower, perhaps it would somewhat mask my future odiferousness (is that a word?). On the high crisis days – and there have been plenty of those in the past three weeks - an extra half hour of sleep trumps a shower. And yes, I have since found time to wash, as things have “settled down” to a nervous waiting game.  

It seems that there have been periods in my life when troubles converge in a perfect storm that threatens to drive me out of my mind. One of those periods was 1978 just after I had just graduated from college. My dad was diagnosed with colon cancer and was firmly convinced he was going to die. I began my new job at the family real estate firm, where everyone likely hated me because I was the privileged son of the then absent president. To ice the cake, my older sister, visiting my ailing dad from out of town, experienced a severe brain hemorrhage and fell into a coma for about three weeks. The neurologist told us that it was unlikely she would ever walk or talk again (she was driving a car within 18 months). My mother and I were left to tend to her two young boys, who did not understand what was wrong with their mom, as we dealt with my father’s myriad of post- surgical complications, and visited my comatose sister in the hospital every day. That was one messed up summer. I became something closer to a man that summer, and the experience steeled me against lesser travails to come. There were so many little annoyances that cropped up concurrently that summer. For instance, I remember the painters who were painting the next door neighbor’s house, dropped a bucket of white paint on our driveway which splattered all over my mom’s black Buick. In that time of family crisis, when so many things went wrong in s short period of time, I remember my mother and I laughing about this accident as we wondered, “What next?!”

In Royal news, it’s a boy! Kate had her baby boy, and they have named him George. Why not Tony, or Iggy, or Felix? King Felix has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? Two notable train wrecks in the past several weeks: First there was the Lac-Megantic, Quebec train wreck which involved the explosions of tanker cars, killed 47 and left a big hole in that town. Then, last week about 80 died and many more were injured when a high speed passenger train derailed in Spain. The conductor has been arrested for negligence because it was reported he went into the turn where the derailment occurred at around twice the speed he should have been travelling. Yikes! Was there a mechanical failure, or was this guy related to the captain of the Costa Concordia?

Back to the hospital.     - Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report 7/22/13

 

Dad Taylor has shown some miniscule improvement, most notably that he seems to acknowledge his loved ones. He is still mute, we do not know what he is thinking or if he is thinking, and he is still essentially paralyzed on his right side. This is a very confusing time for our family, because lthough the neurologist has painted a grim picture of Dad Taylor’s future, we have already seen clear evidence that he can understand us in some basic ways. Shauna and her mom are worn out, and there is little I can do to help them through this troubling time.  

After two weeks in the stroke ward, one becomes familiar with the inmates. There is a lot of down time for family members waiting in a hospital, and we have begun to talk to some of the other patients and their families. Tom down the hall, a man I’d guess is in his late sixties, lives up north not far from where we live. Shauna told me he introduced himself as “Lord Tom,” but lest I think he was a Royal, he confided that any putz with sixty bucks can buy a square inch of land in Scotland online, fill out some paperwork, and become an official lord. Sounds fishy to me, but it would not surprise me if he is right. Lord Tom was in the early stages of hip replacement surgery when he had a stroke during the operation. The doctors had to cement his mangled hip back together, the one they were in the midst of sawing apart. They sewed him back up, and sent him down to Sunnybrook. Needless to say, Tom was in excruciating pain and he was screaming and ranting whenever the morphine ran out, which it often did. I felt badly for his bedmate Boris. Then again, Boris was fairly well out of it and did not complain much.

Then there was the Notebook Couple a few rooms away from us. They appeared to be very old, and the man, who always wore those big, all-encompassing, post-eye-surgery sunglasses, hardly ever left his mate’s side. She looked as if she might be suffering from some form of dementia, and he always seemed caring and attentive. He was there in the morning and did not leave until late at night. On one rare occasion, when the man was not in the room, I watched her for several minutes as she stared blankly at an egg salad sandwich she was shakily holding inches away from her mouth. I wanted to help her, but on top of the fact that the hospital would not allow it, the man was fiercely protective, allowing only nurses to enter the room. I later discovered why he was insulating them when she called me into the room to ask who was in charge. She told me she got better food when she was living in the concentration camp. I had a déjà vu moment and for an instant saw my mom in her advanced stages of dementia. I suddenly felt bad for sunglass guy. It all comes down to the lack of control, and one quickly learns that, in a hospital, one is almost completely out of control. Living with dementia and brain trauma is extremely challenging.

I made friends with an elderly lady named Betty, who was in a nearby room. She was born in Timmons Ontario, in the Great White North. She’d had quite a few strokes which had left her half blind but in control of most of her other faculties. She was funny and intelligent and I think quite alone. She was also unfortunate enough to be in the same room with a guy whom we dubbed Ghandi. He really looked like Ghandi and chanted incessantly at full volume. Ghandi quickly won the most-annoying-patient award, prying the honor away from Lord Tom. I think one of the nurses must have killed him in the middle of the night, because one day he simply disappeared. Everyone had a story, most of them were interesting, and each was living in their own square inch of Hell.

Final notes on the nation-gone-mad department: I could not believe George Zimmerman was found innocent in the murder of Trayvon Martin! Once again justice is deaf, dumb, and blind, leaving me and a lot of other baffled onlookers more than a little concerned about the state of the criminal justice system in America. What is with Florida; if you decide someone is threatening you, you automatically have the right to kill him or her? Talk about a stupid law that encourages vigilantism. And Boston bomber Tsaranov is on the cover of this month’s issue of Rolling Stone Magazine. It doesn’t make him man of the year, but it does seem a little weird and yellow journalistic. Why give a misguided zealot so much press? Is anybody still covering the victims? In Great Britain, The Royal Bun is almost out of the oven, and Kate, the Duchess of Whatever is about to pop out a monarch. There are reports that the Queen has arrived at the hospital today with The Royal Catcher’s Mit.

 More notes from my altered universe next week. Hope you are all enjoying your summer.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED