Good Bye Larry

So, Larry's funeral was today.

He died on Easter Sunday, the viewing was on Tuesday, his youngest daughter's birthday was Wednesday so they decided to wait until today for the actual funeral. He will be cremated so there was no procession to the cemetery. After the lunch at his wife's church we came home and slept for two hours. We were exhausted.

I think that the reason we were so exhausted was the sheer amount of raw grief that was expressed by so many at the funeral. The intensity was frankly surprising. I did not realize how strongly I would feel, myself.

Larry was sixty-five and he had been sick for several years. However, he rally started to go down hill rapidly just about three months ago. There were the trips to Cleveland for more radiation and chemo and then the very rapid decline which started about three or four weeks ago.

Larry's was the only bicycle shop in town for several decades so anybody who rode seriously, or who had kids who had bikes that needed fixed knew Larry. Also, since Larry was the world's premier procrastinator they would get to see him much more than they had at first expected or for that matter wanted. As one of his friends said today she started to work for him about thirty-five years ago on the restoration of the bike shop and that restoration is still going on today. Three hour lunches were not unusual and if you drove by the shop and saw the sign that said back at 2 you knew that meant 3 and if he wasn't back by 4, that meant that you should come back the next day sometime after 10 when he might be there.

Larry looked like your traditional red neck, but once you started to talk to him you realized that he was a guy who was not easily pigeon holed. He loved blue grass and they played it at the funeral with his brother in law playing a lap dulcimer and another friend playing a banjo, with blue grass recordings playing in the back ground other times. The banjo player told us he wasn't sure he could make it through, but he did.

Larry was a Quaker, but his wife is a more main stream Christian and the service was a combination of the two with people being encouraged to share their memories of Larry. One of the first people was a woman he had hired to work on the restoration at his shop and on the bikes. She was sixteen at the time and had been told that girls were not permitted to take shop in school because. He gave her the keys to his shop and his pick up and tools that were not those one would think of as being, well safe and told her to go to it. One of the last people to share was another girl who has been working at his shop recently, she is African American and does not look at all traditionally feminine in any way, but rather androgynous. When she started working for Larry she had been about to drop out of high school, now in larger part because of Larry's encouragement she is in collage.

I was unable to speak. I have been going to his shop more or less frequently, as I said for almost twenty-five years. When he said he was thinking of closing down last year I told him he couldn't because I would have no where else to hang out. When we first got our St. Bernard we had Larry watch him and the St. loved to go and hang out at the bike shop: "What happens in the bike shop, stays in the bike shop."

I think that people were surprised that he died, he was one of those you just expected to be there. So there was that terrible shock, even though we should have all known what was coming.

I don't know where I'll hang out this summer.

Three Briefs and A Funeral

Three briefs and a funeral. Or to be more accurate three briefs and a slow death.

A good friend of mine was diagnosed with prostate cancer about three years ago. By the time he was diagnosed it had already metastasized into the bone. He had had P.S.A. tests every year for several years and each year the numbers had come back high. His doctor told him not to worry and I do remember him talking about it at one point. Well, it looks like he should have worried. (My wife knows of another guy that the same thing happened to.) I wonder what the purpose is of either the tests or the doctor in question? I do recall that he asked me why, when he first found out. He said that he had done everything he was supposed to do, and it still happened. I still feel guilty, since I've done nothing that I am supposed to do (except not smoke tobacco, but that was because I needed the money for alcohol and more serious drugs).

At any rate by the time he was diagnosed it was already terminal. He took a very aggressive stance and some experimental treatment and I think it bought him about two good years. Then this January or February things started to go south. He got to where he couldn't walk and they found spots on his spine. Those spots were treated with radiation and then chemotherapy. About mid-way through the chemotherapy treatment he became so sick that he had to be taken to the local hospital (he was being treated at the Cleveland Clinic for this last round). That was about three or four weeks ago. He had an infection and they stopped the chemo because he was too weak for it. From there it was down hill the entire time with little or no up swings. by last weekend he was clearly beyond making any decisions about his own life or even understanding what was going on. On Sunday afternoon he died.

We've been up to his room almost every day since he was admitted. We didn't make it Sunday because when we went up there the nurses were doing something and we told his son that we would be back later. Before we were able to go back his wife called and told us that he had died. I doubt if it would have mattered he did not recognize anyone on Saturday although he did recognize me on Friday when I walked in.

Tonight I drove by his bike shop a place I've hung out more or less off and on for twenty-five years. He was a terrible businessman, but a great guy. If you took your bike in to have it fixed there was really a fairly decent chance that you might get it back before the end of the season, if you were lucky. I was shocked at how strongly I felt the loss.

One of his old friends had simply not shown up at the hospital, saying it was too difficult for him. I've heard other people say things like that in similar situations. I wonder just how that works? I do not perceive that one has any choice in these things. There are things that one does because that is what one, in fact has to do. One does not have a choice, I would think.

During this I was also working on three different briefs, not something I particularly like to do. I was finally able to complete the last one Sunday (also) and that will be filed today. So I am kind of tired and I think that maybe I can start looking at what I normally look askance at. Like Obama convicting Manning before trial. Some fun.

The Trial or a Reasonable Facsimile Thereof

So we had the divorce today. For some reason the magistrate did not seem to believe my client although I am not sure if she believed the wife either.

Nor did the magistrate want to hear about hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit card bills on my client's accounts (accounts he knew nothing about, or at least that is his testimony). The information I didn't get until yesterday evening. I managed to get yelled at by the magistrate which at least, I think, convinced my client and his girl friend (who is married to his wife's current boyfriend) that I was fighting on their behalf.

So here we have a couple who by all accounts made between a million and a million and a half gross each year for at least three years with nothing especially to show for it now, fighting over it. I do not think the magistrate was amused.

By all testimony the wife handled all the finances and by all testimony they paid most if not all of their bills in cash.

Nobody on our side is sure where the money went, some think the wife as into a Ponzi scheme which she attempted to get others to invest in. Otherwise, it would sure have been nice to get the witness who ran away to testify. My client decided not to make him come, because he was afraid for him. But it would have been nice to have him testify that the wife told him she'd taken twenty thousand in cash when she left. Oh well.

Now we just wait and see what the decision will be.