My Favorite Things: The Tek Bracelet

This is my most-worn piece of jewelry after my wedding ring, which makes it one of My Favorite Things. I call it the Tek Bracelet.

"Tek" is short for Tekla, and Tekla was Tekla Allen, a family friend since I was a child. She was always called Tek for as long as I knew her, which I found strange as a child, though I found the fact that it was a nickname for "Tekla" even stranger. Tekla was one of those names like Opal and Edna and Ethel that children of the 1970s would encounter only on grandmothers and great aunts.

Tek is from the small town where I grew up, and she was an amazing woman. She married well, to a local pharmacist who also owned his drugstore which, incredibly, still had an operating lunch counter through the early 1980s. (I assure you it was quaint even back then.) They had a nice 1950s-era ranch home filled with original mid-century modern furnishings. Antiques at that time still trended toward the Victorian and the Depression eras. The nice Danish modern stuff Tek had was considered too recent and unfashionable in the late 1970s when she became a widow and sold the house and much of its furnishings to move into a senior apartment complex. I'm sure a lot of it went for a steal and oh, how people including my parents would pay through the nose for that stuff today!

I met Tek when she was still incredibly spry for a woman in her 60s--one whose mother was still alive, living independently in her late 80s and almost equally spry. Tek still dressed to the nines, wearing little heels and stockings, with scores of handbags and incredible jewelry. Lots of chunky bracelets, big bead strands and pendants and fancy clip-on earrings. I saw pictures of Tek from the 1950s, doing upper-middle-class housewife-ly things like shopping downtown and attending charity social events. She was always wearing fox pieces, little hats and white gloves.  Style was important to her and seemed to come naturally to her.

She gave birth to one son who was also a friend of my parents (and much closer to their age), which is how we all met Tek. The son died young--at just 42--of MS, but Tek was such a neat lady that her daughter-in-law would continue to take care of her for the rest of her life, even though they were no longer related and even after she had married a second husband. Tek moved to live near them when she got older and eventually moved in with them when she was in her 80s.

By chance, her death happened just a few days before I had planned a visit home. I lived hours away by that time and I don't know if I would have driven home to attend the funeral, but I was happy it worked out that I could attend. My mom was helping the ex-daughter-in-law clear out some of Tek's things after her death, and the woman sent home with her a big bag of costume jewelry from one of Tek's many jewelry boxes.

We each picked a few pieces and wore them to Tek's funeral the next day, to honor her. The Tek Bracelet is one of the pieces I chose.

I wore it (and still wear it) often and it always brings complements. It goes with any outfit and adds a touch of class to even t-shirts and jeans. The bracelet is not a precious metal and appears to be stainless steel. It has no brand markings on it but is probably something like Sarah Coventry or Avon or something that would have been sold at the local department store. It has a spring hinge and is actually a little snug on me since I gained weight, though it still fits. It would probably fit as an armband on a skinny-armed person. I like the design so much I considered getting an armband tattoo of it at one point.

My mom saw how often I wore it and when she later found a yellow gold-toned equivalent at a garage sale, she bought it for me.

I like and wear both pieces, though I don't wear yellow gold jewelry very often.  And of course, the yellow gold-toned bracelet is not the Tek Bracelet, so it's less special.

The Circle of Life

I have been haunted all weekend by some sad news I received on Friday--the deaths of two people.

First off: the father of my high school boyfriend passed away. He was a photographer by trade and was also the guy who took my senior pictures. I haven't been in touch with the ex-boyfriend or his family in more than 20 years, but it's always sad to hear about the death of someone you knew. He was 68--a little on the young side nowadays, but he lived a good full life: two marriages; children, step-children and grand-children; assorted careers and fulfilling work.

The second one is the one I can't get out of my head. I doubt if any of you who read this blog knew her so I'll go ahead and include her first name--Courtney--as well as pictures and some other sad details I found.

To begin, this is a senior pic of Courtney, from 1982 or 1983.

I don't think this picture fully shows how beautiful she was, but you can see here that she was a pretty girl with creamy golden skin and a great smile. Her family lived down the block from my family back in our hometown. She was six years older than me, and had a little sister who was a year younger than me. I first met her when I was six or seven, and she soon became a favorite babysitter of me and my sister. 

Courtney was the cool babysitter who would bring her record collection with her when she came, or would sit and listen to our 45's and K-tel records with us all night and compliment our taste in music: "Oh, Tom Petty. 'Don't Do Me Like That' is my favorite song right now." She had waist-length hair in that beautiful kinky/curly 70s style and wore glittery and gauzy flowing blouses with her jeans and clogs. She taught us how to make snow ice cream. If she brought her little sister along when she babysat (which she often did), we would hold beauty pageants and make Courtney and any of her friends or boys who sometimes visited  be the pageant's judges. I remember a particular pageant that resulted in a three-way tie, so Courtney made me, my sister and her sister have a "dance-off" to "Shake Your Groove Thing" by Peaches and Herb to decide the winner. (I think her little sister won that one.)

She once babysat us during a horrible storm (maybe even a tornado?) that knocked the power out in the whole town, felled trees and peeled paint off houses and shingles off rooftops. Somehow she kept three scared little girls calm and quiet in the dark until our parents could make it home hours later. One of her methods involved the telling of ghost stories and an edited-for-kids re-telling of the plot of the movie "Halloween."

There were hints of trouble even then. Courtney would smoke my parents cigarettes (or bring her own) when she babysat. She was probably 13 or 14 at the time. I seem to remember some alcohol, too, from her parents' liquor cabinet or beers from my parents fridge, but that may not be accurate. For a short time, she was having some trouble with some kids in high school, and Courtney's mom started sending the little sister to stay at my parents' house after school, until she could pick her up after work. Courtney left town shortly after graduation, and one evening, her mom came to see my dad (a lawyer at the time) because Courtney had been arrested and was in jail out in Denver, the first of what would be a string of troubles across her lifetime. She was sent to Valley Hope (a drug and alcohol recovery center) not long after that. I saw her for the last time a few years later, and she still looked like the Courtney I remembered.

Flash forward to this.

Yes, this is Courtney. This is her mugshot from an arrest last November, in which she is alleged to have stolen enough goods to constitute a Class 3 Felony in Nebraska (this was no small theft). Since this wasn't her first arrest, she was likely looking at some prison time and/or a big fine

This week, she died "in her home," according to the obituary. I don't know what happened for sure, but I'm guessing she either killed herself, or the lifelong drug and alcohol problem led to an early death.  

It's hard for me to reconcile the pretty young woman I remember (like the first picture) with the more recent photo and news of Courtney. I don't know what prompted her early downward spiral. When she was a young teen, her parents went through a messy divorce that was very hard on the kids, but I think her difficulties were happening before that. I can see from her obituary that she must have had some good times, too--she went to business school, had children and even grandchildren and worked for her father for a short time. 

Did I mention she was only 48?

RIP, Courtney.

Famous Blue Raincoat

I have an uncle who is in very poor health, with multiple conditions:  pancreas removed several years ago, diabetes, COPD, amongst others. He takes more than 20 medications a day, and he's really been touch-and-go for the last year or so. He was previously rejected for a lung transplant due to his poor overall health, but he finally made small improvements over the summer, enough that a transplant center was willing to see him in October for a consultation on a possible lungs transplant.

He had several conditions which needed to be met in order for them to consider him a candidate: he needed to gain weight, he couldn't have any more blood clots and he could have no more hospitalizations for any condition before his appointment in October.

Unfortunately, he had another hospitalization in September, and between his medications and diabetes, he is unable to gain any weight. He went for the consultation anyway, but as you might imagine, he was rejected yet again. He's basically been sent home to live as long as he can in general failing health, or in other words, sent home to die.

I wonder what that feels like.   

We will all face this at some point, in either our loved ones or ourselves. After watching my mother-in-law and another uncle die slowly from cancer, I'm convinced that those of us who go quickly--in a heart attack, stroke or car accident where we don't know what hit us--are the lucky ones. I'm not even convinced that the short sharp shock of a sudden death is any more traumatic to our loved ones than watching us die slowly over weeks/months/years from a terminal illness. There is a different trauma that comes with watching someone you love suffer so long and knowing you can't do anything to change it.  

Those of you who know me also know that I am ever the eternal optimist--Pollyanna, even. I get sad or mad for a bit, but the setback or disappointment or traumatic event passes and I move on and look forward to the next good thing that is sure to come.

Those good things will end at some point.  

Whether we go quickly or linger for weeks/months/years with a terminal illness, there will come a day where we've seen our last sunrise or sunset. Drank our last coffee.  Eaten our last meal. Had our last kiss or hug or words with someone we care about. 

Is it better to know death is coming, and sooner rather than later? What about folks who know the date and even the time of their upcoming death, such as inmates on death row? Would I have the courage to decide the date and time myself if I were terminally ill and it became clear there was nothing else to be done except be kept comfortable and wait for nature to take its course? 

Food for thought after receiving the news about Uncle Mike, on a rainy Friday, while listening to Leonard Cohen.

A Life in Pictures

Can't sleep. The lost photos are driving me crazy.

I think of all the crap that made it here somehow and which we probably should have thrown away before we even moved, compared with the few things that got lost, and I'm disgusted.

Why didn't we bring the photos along with us in the car? I don't know, and yet I sort of do:

A. We weren't very organized the day the packers came, and they moved through the apartment very quickly. A living room, kitchen, dining room, bedroom, home office, three large closets and the contents of assorted shelves and storage areas were packed, very safely and efficiently, in less than two hours.

B. We had limited room in the car, and we knew we would already be taking all our important papers (due to risk of identity theft and/or for documentation purposes in case of tax audits, etc.), my jewelry (of which I have very little, believe it or not--just two small boxes), things that the movers wouldn't take like my perfume collection and acrylic paints, five days worth of clothes, the cats in their crates and the stuff we needed for them, plus the awful airbed and some bedding. There was no room to spare.

C. Frankly, it just didn't occur to us that anything would get lost. We expected some breakage, perhaps, so we opted for Full Value Protection of our goods, minus a small deductible, but we thought all of our boxes would make it there.

And of course, photos have really no dollar value, only their priceless sentimental value.

The photos were in two photo boxes which we stored in the closet that also contained the items in the lost boxes. We believe the photos are also in those lost boxes.

One framed photo of Mr. 42's dad was somehow in with our craft supplies, and we are thankful to have it.

I am sad to lose things like my photos from childhood, our wedding photos, pictures of pets we used to have, etc., but some of those things I can possibly get copies of from other family members. And those family members are still alive.

I am beyond sad about Mr. 42's photos. Both of his parents are deceased and the photos are all he had left of them. When we brought the photos back from Mother-in-Law's house after she passed, he went to great lengths to get them all sorted and organized and neatly boxed, etc. It meant a lot to him (and to me) to have those photos, and for reasons I won't go into here, we are not able to get any photos from his other family members, if they even have any.

We had very few photos of Mother-in-Law to begin with. Her family's house caught on fire when she was 14 years old.  She was very badly burned and her young boyfriend was actually killed in the fire trying to get her and her little brother out of the house. Most of her family's possessions were destroyed in the fire, including family photos. When we sorted through the pictures, we found no childhood pictures and just two photos of her from her youth, both taken in her mid-to-late teen years.

There were photos of her from Mr. 42's childhood, but not many. She disliked having her photo taken, and there were very few photos of her taken after she was in her 40s. We have had a digital camera for more than 10 years, but somehow we have no digital photos of her, so at this point, we have NO photos of her. Not a single one.

Well, what's done is done. Unless they can find the missing boxes (and I really don't care about the missing clothes and shoes at this point), we have to accept that the photos are gone. I am creating this blog entry as a last ditch missive to the universe, with hopes that some kind soul will find the missing boxes, or at least the photos, and return them to us. Universe, do you hear me?