My parents are both still with me at the age of 86. I am very lucky in that regard. My father is doing relatively well; living in senior living but still able to meet life on his own terms. My mother has a dementia that’s likely genetic in nature. It seems to be a variant on a condition known as Pick’s disease. If you read back in family papers the older women all ‘become mute’ and lose their functioning as they enter late life. My mother, for the most part, doesn’t speak or seem to recognize much. But she’s healthy and flashes of her old self pop up from time to time. I’m very much my mother’s child. My brother is very much my father’s child. My sister marches to the beat of her own drum and always has. I miss being able to talk to her.

Dateline Seattle, Washington –

I was able to sleep in a little bit this morning before a leisurely breakfast in the dining room at my father’s senior living facility. Breakfast is not a popular meal there so it was practically deserted other than my father’s routine breakfast club that arises early. We then went out to see my mother at her facility. Her dementia has progressed to the point that she is often somnolent but today she was bright eyed and bushy tailed and seemed to recognize me as someone important in her life. She doesn’t speak, doesn’t usually have a lot of purposeful movement but today she kissed my forehead and held me and stroked my back of her own volition and it meant the world. I’m thinking that on some deep level she understood one of her chicks is in pain and needs a mother’s touch.

Ran a few errands this afternoon and have decided that this city has become far too crowded for its infrastructure. It’s nigh on impossible to get anywhere without a major traffic tie up. More and more apartment buildings are going up everywhere signalling even more people arriving. I think it’s turning into one of those ‘nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there’ areas. I had thought about retiring here in another decade or so to be close to what family I have but I don’t think I can afford it.

Spent some time with both my brother and my sister (who is working on a tattoo design. The black widow spider has been discarded) to catch up and saw the nieces who are both turning into elegant young women. Both sibs and my father are making the journey to Birmingham for the memorial next month so the locals can meet them if they so choose.

I am conking out early tonight. (The single malt may have something to do with this). I’ll try to think of an entertaining memory or family story to post tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll put up an old MNM column.

And I managed to arrive in one piece in Seattle… It also happened to be the day of the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry to Meagan Markle. For whatever reason, I used that as a springboard to a family story. In writing that, something clicked in my need to tell stories. I think it was the realization that, without Tommy, I had somehow lost what little local family I had and that if I did not start to tell stories of me, my life, Steve, and Tommy, that the stories would die with me and I didn’t want to see that happen. And once I opened the lid to this particular box, little did I know what was likely to come out.

Dateline – Seattle, Washington

2800 miles and 5 days of pretty continuous driving later and I have arrived at my destination. I am currently ensconced in bed in my father’s senior living facility apartment. After six years of visits (and free lectures on elder health to the residents), I am fairly well known and allowed to more or less come and go as I please without comment. I can think of worse places to retire. Two bedrooms, view of the creek and walking distance to the shopping mall, cineplex, transportation hub to downtown, and multiple restaurants.

Today’s drive was pretty uneventful. Rain throughout the mountains of Western Montana which made the views rather dull and gray. The Idaho panhandle and Eastern Washington were sunny and warm, but unexciting other than the Columbia River gorge which is somewhat grander than I remembered. I used to cross it routinely in med school, particularly the year I spent in Pullman at WSU but it seemed rather ordinary then. Having been away for a while, the scope of the west becomes much clearer. It grayed up again ascending the eastern slopes of the Cascades and I could have done without the hour delay at Snoqualmie Pass while we had to wait for blasting as part of the enlargement of I-90 around Lake Keechelus.

Not sure what all I will be doing the next few days. Still have some old friends in the area whom I may get together with and the whole family is getting together Sunday night at my sister’s place. My sister (the tattoo artist) is becoming pretty insistent that I should get some ink this trip (I have resisted so far) and a permanent memorial to both husbands of some sort may be in the cards. If it happens, it’s going somewhere where it only gets shared with those who need to see it…

I’m vaguely thinking of heading to California middle of next week, then working my way back to AL across the southern US in a great circle route, but that may change.

I’m working on various things for Tommy’s memorial while I am gone. If any of you have pictures or video of him to share, please pm me and let me know. I’m scouring various archives and computer files as well.

A family story for the Royal Wedding day… (My Saunders cousins are more than welcome to offer corrections as my grandfather was well known to stretch and embellish the truth..)

My grandfather, John Bertrand de Cusance Morant Saunders, was born a British colonial in South Africa during the Edwardian era. His father, Frederick Anastatius Saunders, was a physician from a large Victorian family in suburban London with a knack for self reinvention and marrying well, who had originally emigrated there after his first wife developed Potts disease (TB of the spine). Her health required a more salubrious climate so off they went on a steamship to Grahamstown, South Africa. She eventually succumbed and he returned to England in search of a suitable replacement. His second wife, my great grandmother, came from a prominent Scottish family and went out to South Africa to get married after the usual 19th century arrangements had been made.

World War I ended when my grandfather was 15 and, the following year, he was called into his father’s study, told his trunks were being packed and he, like all relatively wealthy colonial boys of good family, was shipped back to England to boarding school and further education. He did not see his family again for more than a decade.

During that time, he matured from a gawky teen into a handsome athletic man. He was tall, well educated, just exotic enough to be interesting and became the sort of extra man that was invited to country house weekends to fill out the numbers and he mingled with the Bright Young Things set in Edinburgh and London. He was a prodigious golfer and placed highly at the British Open several times.

He continued with his studies, at the University of Edinburgh School of Medicine (where he eventually met and married my grandmother, but that’s another story) and through his Scottish family, mixed and mingled with his various cousins, including two of his generation, Oliver and Margaret Messel, grandchildren of his Scottish grandmother’s sister. In his comments to me in later years, he quite liked Oliver (who became a famous London stage designer), but found Margaret a bit pretentious and a calculating social climber.

Margaret did well in the marriage department. Her first marriage produced a son, Anthony Armstrong-Jones and her second marriage, to the Earl of Ross, produced a title. Little Anthony grew up to be a bad boy photographer in swinging 60s London where he caught the attention of Princess Margaret Rose, the Queen’s sister. They married unhappily ever after in a 1960s royal wedding where nobody got what they wanted other than Lady Ross who saw her social ambitions realized.

The devastating portrait of her in the Netflix series, The Crown, is quite accurate as far as I can tell.

The moral of the story: Royal weddings are not always the end of the fairy tale. See Act II of Into the Woods.

Rolling along, rolling along… I’ve always loved the mountains. And by mountains, I mean the mountains of the west. The smell of the air at high altitude, craggy snow capped peaks, alpine lakes, stunted trees giving way to meadows at the treeline. You just don’t get that in the Eastern US. Perhaps someday I’ll be back in the west and more able to take advantage of that landscape, but not today.

Dateline Butte, Montana –

Four days of ten hours plus driving. One more day to go. North Dakota ended with some rather picturesque badlands which almost, but did not quite, redeem it as a state. Then it was across the border and into Montana and the Big Sky country of the East (which looked suspiciously like a continuation of North Dakota…) Around Billings, I-94 became I-90 and began its ascent into the Montana Rockies, rolling foothills, bright green from the spring rains backed by clusters of snow capped mountains. The Great Red Hope trotted on past Yellowstone and cheerfully crossed the Continental Divide and descended into the Butte valley where, after 640 miles for the day, I said no more and got out of the car.

I’ve crossed the Rockies plenty of times in the past, and so had Tommy but I can’t remember ever doing it together, other than at 35,000 feet. He was not really a mountain person. Scenic beauty for him was important in how it formed and informed local culture, not something to be enjoyed for its own purposes.

The last time I was on this road, I was headed the opposite direction in 2000 Mustang convertible with the top down on my way from Seattle in Chicago, part of my last major cross country trek after Steve died. I also remember coming through here in 1986 when I went to Yellowstone and Grand Teton for a few days before starting my OB/GYN rotation in Boise that summer. All of those babies I delivered are now in their thirties. Where does the time go?

Tired tonight, so signing off for bad television and an early bedtime before tomorrow’s last leg.

And the drive continued. Fueled by Starbucks Caramel Macchiatos in the morning and Dr. Pepper in the afternoon. (And a supersize bag of Jelly Belly jelly beans courtesy of Anne Brisendine.) I had decided to take the Northern route across the country as it was one of the few roads I had never driven. It wasn’t the most exciting of drives…

Dateline Bismarck, North Dakota…

The drive today was nicer than yesterday as the weather cooperated. No more rain showers and instead sunny and 70s all day long. I slept in a little bit this morning and got a later start than I wanted so decided 500 miles was going to be the limit and that took me from the wilds of Wisconsin through Minneapolis/St Paul, St Cloud, Fargo and into the middle of North Dakota where I have stopped in Bismarck for the night.

Bismarck seems to be the same general size and shape as Oxford/Anniston with the cultural amenities of Eufala. It may be a state capital but Montgomery has it beat by a mile. I can now cross North Dakota off my bucket list (it was one of four states I am missing) and can think of no reason to ever return.

After checking into the local Hampton Inn (keep those Hilton points coming), I walked to something called Space Aliens for dinner. It seems to be a high concept TGIF/Chilis type place only decorated with plastic ET dolls and built around a circular dining room with a planetary mural on the ceiling. Neither my caesar salad nor my chicken tortilla soup was overly appetizing so I cannot recommend you stop here for dinner unless you have a seven year old going through a sci-fi stage.

On to Montana tomorrow. Trying to decide if I am going to detour through Glacier National Park. I spent my Family Practice rotation in medical school in Whitefish, Montana, right outside of Glacier, and Logan Pass is one of my favorite spots on the planet.

Maybe… and maybe I’ll save it for a trip when I’ll have more time to savor it. At the moment I just want to get to Seattle and hug my family.

I still hadn’t quite gotten into the rhythm of my Dateline posts yet on day 2 but things were beginning to develop a bit.

Dateline Eau Claire Wisconsin –

I can’t say that today’s drive was especially pleasant. It consisted mainly of Indiana farmland, stop and go traffic all through the greater Chicago area (which put me off my time table so I did not stop), and rain throughout rural Illinois and Wisconsin. Interstate driving in the dark and in the rain, which was the last hour from Wisconsin Dells to Eau Claire, is not one of my favorite activities but Hope handled the road with aplomb. Large indoor water parks seem to be all the rage in Wisconsin Dells. I did not stop to investigate. I think I’ve gotten to the lazy river age rather than the screaming spiral.

So I find myself going back to my roots in an odd way. The stretch of Wisconsin between Madison and Eau Claire that I-94 runs through is the area of the country that my immigrant Duxbury ancestors migrated to around the time of the Civil War to become dairy farmers. There are still Duxburys in central Wisconsin who are distant cousins. I have no idea if they are still milking cows for a living. My Duxburys all pulled up roots en masse around 1910 and moved to the Pacific Northwest for somewhat obscure reasons. I’m sure there’s a good story there but I don’t know it.

You forget how big this country is until you have to drive thousands of miles and realize that one interstate exit is very like another and that Hampton Inn is about the same in every state (and my Hilton Points are mounting…) Not much else to say about today. Finishing up volume 13 of The Wheel of Time on audio (my third time through the complete series) and should be well into the final volume 14 by the end of tomorrow. Not sure where that will find me. My guess is somewhere between Bismarck ND and eastern Montana.

I will add one short story here. There seems to have been a general exodus from central Wisconsin to Washington state just before World War I. There’s a rather creepy book called Wisconsin Death Trip full of morbid news clippings and photos about the area at that time and it makes it all sound very Gothic horror so maybe they were all running from something. My Duxbury fore bearers all ended up around Southern Puget Sound in various small towns (my grandfather’s family choosing Olympia). My grandmother’s family, the Crandalls, also from this part of Wisconsin independent from and not knowing the Duxbury clan, ended up in Everett. They had originally chosen Spokane but when it came time to make the journey, none of them was sure how to pronounce it so they made a last minute decision to head to Everett instead. They could pronounce that one. Odd to think that my existence depends on a hundred and some year old moment of geographic illiteracy.

When the Crandalls arrived in Everett, they were just in time for the Everett massacre and my great grandfather was deeply suspicious of the Wobblies and labor violence. He packed the family up again and they high tailed it to Oregon after just a few months. My grandmother and grandfather ended up meeting in the greater Portland area about fifteen years later. They married there before returning to Olympia. It takes generations of mistakes, coincidences, moves, social movements, and historical events to create every one of us.

And so, like that, the day came when I decided to drive out of Birmingham on the first of what would be a couple of road trips. I had originally thought of leaving for six or more weeks on one long continuous trip. (That’s what I did after Steve died). But there were some practicalities that required me to be back in Birmingham in early June – a couple of weddings I promised to attend, a work obligation around a legal case. And I decided as long as I would need to be back, that would be the right time to plan Tommy’s memorial service so I set that date in early June as well. As I wasn’t able to leave until mid-Afternoon as I seem to have had something to do at church that morning (I can’t for the life of me remember what it was…), I didn’t plan on a long drive that day and made it as far as Louisville. I then published the first of my dateline posts so that the world could keep track of me as I headed cross country.

Dateline Clarksville, Indiana, just across the river from Kentucky.

I left Birmingham about 2:30 this afternoon after church and some chores and some final packing and I am on my way on the first leg of the trip. I used to come up 65 somewhat regularly for business purposes but it’s been some years. I think the last time was in 2008. Tommy had just had one of several back surgeries and was moving slowly and we had to go as I had a speaking engagement in Chicago and then meetings with the mineworkers in Kentucky. I think we stayed a little bit north of my current location on our way to Chicagoland but I remember very little about the trip other than having to help Tommy in and out of the car with his cane.

Tomorrow, I should hit Chicagoland, then head up into Wisconsin and Minnesota. I have no idea how far I am going to get. It will depend on whether I detour into Chicago at all. I might, but I have a business trip there in late August to give some lectures at a conference so I might save it until then.

The new Prius is running smoothly and I have a name… Tommy had no nostalgia or regrets and always looked forward, no matter what. Therefore, the car, after the legend of Pandora, is Hope, The Great Red Hope. (Thank you Betty Tackett for the suggestion).

I originally thought that these would be relatively simple updates but the germ of the idea of storytelling was already there and it was going to take full form over the next few days. I’ve always been interested in story and narrative and, as I have aged into what is the grandparent generation, I have become keenly aware that this is the role of the healthy younger elder. Tell the stories. Make those younger than you aware of what has gone before so they can take some of it and use it and create a continuity with those who will come after them.

The closing number of Once On This Island encapsulates this as well as anything ever has.

Life is why – we tell the story

Pain is why – we tell the story

Love is why – we tell the story

Grief is why – we tell the story

Hope is why – we tell the story

Faith is why – we tell the story

You are why – we tell the story…

My birthday happened over the weekend. 56… Tommy and I tended not to make a big deal about birthdays. He was very anti Hallmark holiday occasions in general but we would usually acknowledge them with cake. He spent his last birthday in the hospital and wanted Continental Bakery carrot cake. I obliged even though it was definitely not on his diet plan. Various people made sure that this one of mine did not go unnoticed and I was taken out to dinner by some people from work. I have a good work family and we all watch out for each other and always have. It has to do with the mind set of those who self select for Geriatrics. We tend to be nurturers and a lot of us, like me, are INFJ (if you believe in that sort of thing).

And so, the time came to begin my trek and I let everyone know…

Birthday weekend is nearly over. Several very nice meals with good company. Packing tonight in preparation for leaving town tomorrow. I’m heading for Seattle to see the family. I am driving for maximum flexibility. Not sure exactly what route I’m going to be on or where or when I’ll stop. I’m going to make it up as I go along. I did something similar after Steve died and long hours in the car with audio books seems to have a calming effect on my nervous system so I’m going to try it again. I have some things to do tomorrow morning and early afternoon but I should be on the road by 2 or 3 and I think I’ll head north so I should spend tomorrow night somewhere around Louisville to Indianapolis. I’ll update everyone and post pictures as I trek about and, if you notice I am in your neck of the woods and would like me to stop by, send me a message and maybe we can work something out.

About three weeks before he was hospitalized, Tommy totaled his car. He wasn’t injured and had no idea what happened. One moment he was headed south on the freeway, the next he was in the ditch with a busted axle. In retrospect, it was probably an early sign that something was terribly wrong and he may have had a TIA or a mild syncopal episode that caused the accident but, as he was unhurt, we just went on about our lives. He had been driving a Prius V so we went down to the Toyota dealership and we found a 2017 Prius V in bright red that he liked. Unfortunately, the car was in Florida and had to be shipped up to Alabama. It arrived two days after he was hospitalized so I drove it home from the dealership and parked it behind the house so he’d have his new car when he came home. He never got a chance to see it. I found a good home for my old Acura and will be driving the Prius in Tommy’s honor. I need to think of a good name for it. I don’t always name my cars but I think this one deserves one.

I came back from the beach and walked into our house, feeling somewhat overwhelmed by it all. Anyone who knows us knows that my house is furnished in Early American Theatrical Prop and everywhere I turned was a reminder of a theatrical project that Tommy and I had been involved with over the last fifteen years or so.

So I’m back from the beach and starting in on all of those unenviable tasks that must be done when someone dies unexpectedly. I’ve made the business rounds and now I’m looking around this house that we bought together, only two years ago, intending to drive each other mildly batty in it for a few decades while we kept up our crazy life of medicine, music, theater, wigs and civic engagement. Now I have to decide what fits my possible futures, what does not and where to rehome those things that have value but which won’t fit into any of my forseeable paths.

Having been through this before, the hardest thing about widowhood is losing the keeper of shared memory. There are very few objects in this house that don’t have a story to tell and the only other person who knew those stories is gone. This has all been so sudden a change in my life that it all still feels very unreal. I found myself making mental notes at the beach about the things I needed to tell Tommy when I got back and then remembered and had to tell him silently then and there.

Many of you did not know me before Tommy. I was a very different person in my 20s and 30s when I was with Steve and after he died, I felt lost and could not imagine life having much meaning. Tommy found me and, when I thought it was not possible, he taught my soul to sing.

I continue to do OK. The grief bombs continue to explode at inopportune moments but my sleeping patterns are better and my appetite has improved a bit. I will be at home this week, and then heading for Seattle sometime after Friday and will be back in Birmingham by the first of June.

I don’t have a lot of needs at the moment. Mainly company. I eat better with other people around. Text or call me if you want to hang out at all this week.

People took me up on that last one. I think I had dinner with someone every night before I left on the first of my road trips. I had decided that I was going to get out of town for a while but I still had a few business things that had to be taken care of before I left.

I picked Orange Beach at random from the various Alabama Gulf towns and made a reservation for a long weekend at the Hampton Inn, splurging for an ocean front room. I packed a suitcase, through some other necessaries in Tommy’s new car, bought a long historical novel on Audible for the drive and headed out. Frankly, I don’t remember a whole lot about the trip, the beach, the hotel, the audiobook, or anything else. I know I was there and I spent a lot of time on the balcony listening to the waves. The one thing that I do remember was sleeping a lot. The last six weeks, I hadn’t been sleeping well at all between worry and spending as much time as possible with Tommy. I didn’t write a whole lot that weekend. My major Facebook post only consisted of the following:

The beach was the right call. Slept for nearly ten hours last night. I don’t think I’ve managed more than about six since Tommy got sick.

I’ve long believed in the restorative power of the beach. My only major beef with Birmingham is its distance from open water. Perhaps it’s my childhood in Seattle where water is everywhere. Perhaps it’s my young adulthood in California where trips to the beach were a routine occurrence on the weekends. I just know that when I get around sunshine and salt water, I feel more attuned to myself and the world. Steve also loved the beach. He spent a lot of his young adulthood living in Venice Beach outside of Los Angeles. We used to talk of our retirement together in some beach community, walking on the sand, watching the waves roll in. That was not to be but there’s still a chance I might retire to San Diego or some other such place. A small chance, but still a chance.

The next day or two were taken up with business: trips to the attorney, calls to insurance agents, dealing with the bank. I had a more personal task as well, writing Tommy’s obituary. The funeral home had offered to do it but I wasn’t going to let anyone else try to summarize this wonderfully complex man so I sat down and this is what I came up with.

Tommy, as he was known to everyone but the IRS and various lawyers, lost his courageous battle with severe and sudden onset cardiac disease on Saturday, April 28th 2018 at the age of 53. Up until his recent illness, he had continued to function in his myriad of roles as a fixture of the Birmingham performing arts scene including being the Company Manger of Opera Birmingham; wig, hair and make-up designer for Red Mountain Theatre Company; Children’s Choir director for the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham; and running his own private studio in voice, piano and hair and makeup design. Tommy was born April 10th 1965 in Birmingham to Louie Tommy Thompson Sr. and Melvinia Dye Thompson. From a young age, he was captivated by music, making his operatic debut as the boy shepherd in Tosca at the age of 10 and singing for years with the Birmingham Boys Choir. In his teens, he was a member of the Summerfest ensemble and attended the University of Alabama Birmingham on, of all things, a track scholarship, where he majored in music, playing the flute in the Million Dollar Band and the oboe in the symphonic ensembles. After leaving UA, he showed his knack of picking up and mastering a wide variety of skill sets whenever something happened to pique his interest. He worked as a research assistant in linguistics. He obtained a culinary degree and worked as a professional chef and baker for such disparate employers as Continental Bakery, the Hilton, the Sheraton and Ralph and Kacoos. He even for a time helped run his own family restaurant. He enjoyed cooking, especially for other people, for the rest of his life and his cast parties and holiday open houses are legendary. When he got tired of restaurant hours, he went back to school and obtained his RN. His experiences in the early days of the HIV epidemic in Birmingham where he was helpful in the creation of such organizations as Birmingham AIDS Outreach and AIDS Alabama had wakened a life long need to help people in times of health crisis. After a stint as a pediatric nurse, he joined the staff of what was to become Birmingham Health Care, rising through the ranks to Chief Nursing Officer by the time he left the organization in 2005. Once again, it was time for self-reinvention and he returned to college in his 40s where he earned double degrees in music education and speech pathology from the University of Montevallo proving that it was indeed possible to teach this old dog a new trick or two. For the rest of his life, he took all of his inquisitiveness, his managerial skill, and his sheer love of the job well done to help better the condition of the performing arts in Birmingham. He spent countless hours in rehearsals, sang for many seasons with both the Opera Birmingham and the Alabama Symphony Orchestra choruses, stage managed, produced, performed in musicals, cabaret, and even the occasional play, and everywhere he went, encouraged his fellow performers and technicians to always improve their craft. Along the way, he picked up new skills in hair and makeup, helping give a more professional look to such shows as Annie Get Your Gun at Virginia Samford Theater, and The Little Mermaid and The Color Purple at Red Mountain Theatre Company. He even helped a few friends unleash their inner drag queen. He is survived by his husband and partner in musical/theatrical crime, Andrew Duxbury; his parents, Louie and Melvinia Thompson, his brother Pat Alan Thompson and wife Robbi, nieces Brooke Thompson Hedrick (Daniel) and Ashley Thompson Hubbard (Jeffrey), aunts, uncles, cousins, great nieces and nephews, and his huge extended Bohemian Birmingham family for whom he was a fixture both off stage and on. There will be a memorial service celebrating his life under the auspices of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham at a date to be announced later. In lieu of flowers, memorials can be made to either the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham’s Children’s Music program or to Opera Birmingham. The best way to celebrate his legacy, however, is by teaching your children to sing.

It could have been twice as long, of course, but the Birmingham News are not overly generous with their column inches. (They must be making most of their profit off the obituary page these days). I finished this up, packed a suitcase, locked up the house, and headed for the beach for a few days to just stare at the waves and try not to think too much.