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17 November, 1927-2 February, 2011

Trudy is survived by her son, Roger Green (Carol) of Albany, NY; two daughters, Leslie Green of Lemon Grove, CA and Marcia Green of Charlotte, NC…

Writing an obituary is often a negotiated exercise when more than one person has to be satisfied with it. The one below I started writing. The mechanical stuff – who she’s survived by, e.g., – is easy, but I was having trouble with the middle section. So one sister wrote a bunch of stuff for that, then the other sister and I had to trim that down, not just for length (and thus cost), but because it was a bit disjointed. This is the Thursday night draft version, not yet approved by the first sister, but it’s close enough for the blog.

Incidentally, the website of the Charlotte Observer has annoying instructions for submitting an obit. It tells you to either call or e-mail for more information.

Interesting/strange thing about the photo to the left: my mom cut the neutral background out of the picture about two weeks before she died, and no one knows why, possibly not even her. It’s not as though there was someone else in the shot.

I suppose it is quite obvious, though probably inappropriate for me to say, that my mom was a real babe when she was younger.

CHARLOTTE – Gertrude Elizabeth (Trudy) Green, 83, of Charlotte, NC, passed away on Wednesday, February 2, 2011 in Charlotte, NC. Born in Binghamton, NY, she was the daughter of the late Clarence and Gertrude (Yates) Williams, and the widow of Leslie H. (Les) Green, who died in 2000. She was a member of C. N. Jenkins Presbyterian Church, having served as a Deacon for multiple terms and on various other church boards and committees.

Trudy graduated from Binghamton Central High School, and worked at a number of jobs dealing with finances, including at McLean’s department store, and Columbia Gas & Electric in Binghamton, and as a teller at First Union Bank, from which she retired. She also participated in several family-owned business ventures, including President’s Club and Avon.

She was a loving and supportive wife, mother, grandmother, and surrogate parent, who found joy in helping her family, her church, her community and others. She was a God-loving, long time member of Circle #3 group, where she was the Treasurer, Presbyterian Women, and various Bible studies.

Trudy was a very social person, caring and honest, with a beautiful smile. She loved cookbooks, calendars, clocks, boxes, and bags, and in later years, developed a love for word puzzles. She used to participate in bowling leagues and Bingo.

She is survived by her son, Roger Green (Carol) of Albany, NY; two daughters, Leslie Green of Lemon Grove, CA and Marcia Green of Charlotte, NC; three granddaughters, Rebecca (Rico) Curtis of San Diego, CA; Alexandria Green-House of Charlotte, NC; and Lydia Green of Albany, NY; and several cousins.

Funeral services will be held on Tuesday, February 8 at 2 pm at C.N. Jenkins Presbyterian Church, 1421 Statesville Ave, Charlotte, NC 28206. The family will receive friends at the church from 1 to 1:45 p.m.

Contributions in her memory may be made in lieu of flowers to University Adult Day Care, 1324 John Kirk Road, Charlotte, NC 28262, (704)510-0030.

The third pic shows my parents – damn, I’m an orphan – at my graduation from library school in 1992. The fourth is at my mother’s 80th birthday party in 2007.

Arthur of AmeriNZ, the guy from Auckland via Chicago who I’ve certainly mentioned in this blog, wrote a blog post about my mom and me. Best pair of sentences: “The largely artificial Internet life is all too often detached from real life, and we lose sight of the real-life humans we’re interacting with. Yet the Internet can also deliver connections we’d never have had otherwise.”

Amen.

Super Bowl rituals QUESTION

Back in the 1980s, I had these friends who hated football. In particular, they had a particular antipathy towards the secular holiday known as Super Bowl Sunday. So in retaliation, they would all go out together to eat, not in front of the TV, but at a nice restaurant. Then they would go to a 7 p.m. movie, as the game was going on.

Me? I’ll watch the game AND the commercials. But I have no designated snacks or particular apparel I wear.

Do you usually watch the game, and will you be viewing this year? What will you actually want to see – the game, the ads, the halftime performance of the Black Eyed Peas? I actually have that thing you can pause live TV, which is good, because, sometime during that evening, I’ll need to put the daughter to bed. Do you have a rooting interest? Mine is with the Pittsburgh Steelers, who have been installed as the underdog, even though they’ve been to the Game twice in the past decade, and the Green Bay Packers, not in 15 years.

And a question for you folks outside of the US: CAN you watch the game? By what method? Is it carried on a local network, or can you access FOX in Finland?

My Rail Adventure

There’s this guy who looks terribly familiar. He and this woman introduced themselves to each other. He had a small entourage; I peg him as a politician, but cannot suss out who he is.

[Written before my mom died.]
Sunday, I went to church primarily because I was teaching adult education.

Odd dichotomy: I was going to put my mother on the prayer list, yet at the same time, I didn’t want to hear several dozen people individually telling me they were praying for me and my mom and my family and/or they were sorry. [Yet, subsequently, getting several dozen e-mails – or a reading a post like this has been comforting.]

But there WERE people who already knew – my wife had told her Bodacious Bible Babes (R) group, which included one of the pastors, so it was already written in the concerns and announced at the early service. One church member asked what she could do to help. I requested that she take me to the train station on Monday a.m., if possible, so that I didn’t need to take two buses to get there, and she did.

Those living in Albany area know that the Albany train station is not in Albany, but rather across the Hudson River in Rensselaer. There used to be this dingy* building directly leading to the platform. But now it’s all spiffed up.

For years, train travel was the way I got to Charlotte, but it had to be well over a decade since my last trip. It was before the commonality of laptops and cellphones, that’s for sure. Opted not to bring a laptop – well, it would have been my daughter’s cute pink one, but that’s not why I didn’t bring it.

It was a sociological experiment. I did bring my cellphone, only because I needed to be in touch with both my family in Albany and Charlotte. And I brought something called books; I figured that being unplugged, I’d have a better chance to read them. Also had three magazines to finish.

The train was the 10:05 a.m., but the board said it was going to be 10 minutes late. No big deal since I had an hour and forty-five minutes to wait in Penn Station in New York City. Then it was 20 minutes late, then 30. Still feeling OK when the train did arrive 45 minutes late. I was feeling grateful that I wasn’t counting on another train that was scheduled to be 2 HOURS, 45 MINUTES LATE.

For reasons I don’t know, the people on the train I took were transferred to another train. We took off, but we didn’t get too far – we hadn’t even gotten to the next stop, Hudson, when I, and presumably others, literally smelled something wrong with the brakes. The train stopped, the train personnel investigated. After a few minutes, it was determined that we had to leave that train, walk across a narrow platform to another train, and then travel to NYC.

The train arrives at 2:30, 15 minutes after the train to Charlotte had departed. Pardon my language, but CRAP, what do I do?

I ask some Amtrak person who directs me to the wrong place, and I’m bouncing around in a mild panic when I hear three names over the loudspeaker, including mine, “go to dgvfc 8”. WHAT? “dgvfc 8.” I thought it was gate 8, but it turned out it was Amtrak ticket counter 8. Just in time, I get a ticket on the Acela train to Washington, DC.

The Acela train is particularly nice. I see how we’re going to catch up with the other train. The Acela goes from Boston to New York to DC, the best part of the system I think.

About four rows in front of me, there’s this guy who looks terribly familiar. He and this woman introduced themselves to each other. He had a small entourage; I peg him as a politician, but cannot suss out who he is. He gets off at Philadelphia. Finally, as I’m getting off the train in DC, I ask the woman. She tells me that he’s US Senator Tom Harkin, who I correctly recall is a Democrat from Iowa. Nice green tie he’s wearing.

I do, in fact, get to board the Crescent train to Charlotte, which ends up in Atlanta. (The stretch from Atlanta to New Orleans is closed Monday through Thursday for track repairs.) I call my wife and daughter, my sister Leslie, get something to eat, finish my first book (more about which, eventually) So it’s about 8:30. I’m tired, a little melancholy. I call my old friend Mary (she’s not old; I’ve just known her a long time), and talk a bit before my connection suddenly died. I thought to go to sleep, but never really do until about 12:30, for about an hour. Train pulls into Charlotte at 2:40, only 20 minutes late. My sister Marcia picks me up, and we go to the house. Eventually, I fitfully go to sleep in what has been my mother’s bed.

*When I wrote dingy, I almost wrote the word “dinghy”, which somehow seemed appropriate.

A Peculiar Synchronicity

The funeral will probably be on Tuesday, to accommodate her out-of-town relatives, and the burial on Wednesday.

Well, if you read the latter comments to yesterday’s post, you know that my mom, Gertrude Elizabeth (Trudy) Green, died yesterday morning. She was 83, had suffered a massive stroke (9 cm, as opposed to the usual 2 to 3 cm) on Friday. And still I was surprised, and yet not.

Mom with Lydia

I’ll ~~probably~~ undoubtedly write more on this event over time, but I do want to make a couple of observations.

Thanks for the outpouring of kind words and thoughts and prayers that I have received.

Before each of my parents died, they each had a stroke, though my father’s was less severe. I was the last of the three Green children to arrive in Charlotte, and shortly after each of them saw me, they died. It was as though they were waiting on my arrival so that they could let go. there’s more than a little ambivalence in that.

I think this is interesting. When my father died on August 10, 2000, my sisters were by his side. Marcia had stayed over the night before and Leslie had come to relieve her when he was getting ready to pass. My mother and I were stuck at the house until I found a neighbor to give us a ride, too late.

I had stayed in my mother’s room Monday night, and Tuesday morning, I was amazed how quickly she died, at 8:50 a.m. I called my sisters but she had already passed by that point.

We’re meeting with the mortician this morning, but
the funeral will probably be on Tuesday, to accommodate her out-of-town relatives, and the burial on Wednesday, next to my father, at the veteran’s cemetery 40 miles from here.
***
I’ll probably continue to blog about what I had planned for a few days. Tomorrow, the actual train ride down.

Take The Train to Charlotte

So, it’s Sunday morning when I’m writing this. I note it because, usually, I allow the magic of posting ahead of time give you the (false) impression that I get up every morning and write some purple prose. Actually, some days I write nothing, and others, such as this past Saturday, I might compose three.

I mention this because I may be offline for a while, not responding to comments, not visiting other blogs. Or not – I don’t know yet.

Friday, my sister Marcia called me at work. She said that our mom seemed fine that morning, took a shower and started getting dressed. Suddenly, she started complaining about a severe headache. She was screaming, like she did when she was in a car accident a few months ago. Marcia decided to take her to the doctor, but by the time they were trying to get ready, my mother had become listless. So my sister called an ambulance, and Mom went to the hospital.

It turned out Mom has a brain bleed. Apparently, this layman has discovered, there are two types of strokes: one in which the blood vessels are constricted and one in which a vessel can burst; my mother has the latter.

Some factors: my mom is 83 years old, with high blood pressure plus other medical issues, and possibly most significantly, does amazingly poorly with the various anesthesia she’s had in the past. So calling Dr. Derek Shepherd of Grey’s Anatomy to do some sort of surgery is not a high percentage option.

Marcia called me Saturday. ~~Mom has developed a full-blown case of pneumonia, from a little spot on her lungs to much worse merely hours later.~~ My sister Leslie flew into Charlotte, NC from San Diego, CA on Sunday, for an extended visit she had been anticipating doing for a while anyway.

I’ve decided to go to Charlotte, too. But taking the plane is not only expensive, it becomes more so because I don’t know when I can come back. I can book it for a week, but then I might need to change it and incur a $150 change fee; no, Southwest doesn’t fly to Charlotte. Moreover, the best deal on a flight from Albany, NY to Charlotte, NC goes through Detroit, MI, an airport I HATE, HATE, HATE. Going through Atlanta, GA is not much better. The one direct flight is way more expensive.

Most of all, I really have come to despise what now passes for air travel in America, where I get to toss my four-ounce bottle of shampoo because I could be a terrorist. (More ranting at another time.) It’s become a flying bus, and I’m just not fond.

That leaves taking the train. It’s 15 hours, and I’ll either have to leave Albany or get to Charlotte in the middle of the night. Still, I like the train. I like walking around on the train, going to the dining car and meeting people on the train. The train is civilized; the plane is a meat market. At some point, quite probably by the time you read this, I’ll be in Charlotte, and I don’t know for how long. Since there is no real round-trip ticket, the return is more flexible.

All of this to say that I’ll probably be posting every day for the next week or so, stuff already written, or perhaps not. I’m sure I’ll be blogging from Charlotte once I figure out what the situation is.

Fiddlin John Carson And His Virginia Reelers-Take The Train To Charlotte