TERRY MOSHER
Sometimes I have a eureka moment when I discover something that has eluded me for years. I am often accused of being cold, and from outward appearances that is right. I don’t flinch much, or betray my emotions and a big part of that is I have become conditioned by a sportswriting code that you don’t cheer in the press box.
I’m not really cold, however. In fact, I believe I’m just the opposite. I am deeply sensitive. But, again, I don’t often show it.
Then Friday Mary and I went to see the movie “Still Alice” which won an Oscar for best actress for Julianne Moore. I don’t believe she deserved to win after watching the movie, but that debate is for another time.
While watching Moore as lead character Alice Howland, a Columbia University linguistics professor, slide into the latter period of early-onset Alzheimer’s it suddenly came to me: I hide my emotions expertly. I can reveal them in my writing, but in person I shove them deep down into my soul.
Mary started crying at this point in the movie and she turned to me and asked if I was crying. I said “no”, but inside I was hurting for the lead character, Alice. Alzheimer is terrible stuff. A neighbor died because of it and every time Mary and I misplace something we think we have Alzheimer’s.
As a side note, one of the leading characters of all time in downtown Bremerton is behind locked doors in an east Bremerton facility that cares for Alzheimer patients. That would be Cap DeMiero, who I have written extensively about.
Cap cut hair around 40 years in downtown Bremerton and attracted clients from all over because of his gift of gab and his love for just about anything, but especially jazz. Cap played the bass in about every joint and hotel from here to Tacoma and Seattle. He has an amazing background – a U.S Marine who fought in Korea, and was proud of doing it and being a Marine – plus countless stories of his life and this area and growing up in Pennsylvania.
I get a angry feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I drive across the Warren Avenue Bridge to east Bremerton because I start to think about Cap being in lockdown and nobody appears to care. Out of sight, out of mind.
Twice I have visited Cap, and the last time I did I don’t think he knew me, although he tried to pretend he did. I feel terrible for Cap and for the circumstances that he is in and know that he will not leave the facility until his heart finally stops beating.
I realized during the Alice movie that I have an abnormal feeling for people who have died or otherwise incapacitated. I can remember vivid details – often I see them – of people who I was close to, like my good friend Dick Scott who was killed in a car accident in 1962.
That was 53 years ago and yet I still see Dick giving me a big smile as he drives like the Red Baron on the Harbor Freeway in Los Angeles or stirring a lethal alcoholic concoction in a plastic pitcher we get to take to the nearby beach in Hermosa Beach (California) and enjoy the sun, body surfing and, most of all, the girls in bikinis while enjoying the fruits of his culinary effort.
Mary gets upset with me when I bring up somebody from the past that is no longer living. But I can’t help it. Last night I was thinking about an old girl friend who in her last 20 years was strapped in a wheelchair during the day and strapped in bed at night in a state facility because she had a severe case of MS. I can see in my mind my last visit to her just before she died in 1986.
I called my brother Ronnie on Tuesday because it was his birthday and we got to talking about his oldest child who has had MS for 35 years, has 24-hour around the clock care and can’t move an inch of her body, yet her mind is sharp and she runs her house (yes, she stubbornly insists on living in her own home) with strict authority.
But I feel her pain and how terrible it must be to be a prisoner of her own body. It’s terrible, I told Ronnie. And it is very terrible, and while I can’t suffer along with her, I can feel it to some degree.
I constantly think of how much in turmoil the world is and wonder why God doesn’t do something about it. As I sit in the comfort of my home I feel pangs of guilt because in places like the Middle East the slaughter of people and the destruction of whole cities continue unabated. I can’t ignore it even if I try, and I feel terrible about it and can’t do anything about it.
Then I read that the Republicans want to make the wealthy wealthier and want to make the poor even poorer. Most of the Rs. hate the president because 1) they think he is Muslin or 2) he’s black and isn’t worthy of his position.
I wish I could take away all the hurt. It hurts me that others are hurt, even if I don’t show it.
Inside, I cry for Cap and my niece and all the people who have been saddled with problems that I can’t wish away. I especially cry for Cap who meant so much to others and to the downtown area of Bremerton and life goes on as if he never was.
I guess that’s life, and death. Easy come, easy go. Life goes on and the sadness leave in time.
Except for me. The sadness is always present. I can’t forget.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.