Jesse ~ The End Of A Journey ...

You won't see it on the news...or read it in the paper. I wish I could put up a billboard to express all that I am feeling this morning.



From Two Lucky ....

“I love you.”

Jesse died this morning at 1.30am at the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York.

He was with me, and his mother, and died peacefully in his sleep.

Jesse has been battling melanoma for the last three years. He was a real fighter. Even at the end, he didn’t want to go home, and instead asked the doctors if he could stay a few more days to get well.

Love kept Jesse going for as long as it could. In these short years, we made the best of it. The more virulent the cancer spread, the stronger we loved.

His last words were: “I love you,” and he blew me two kisses before falling asleep.

Our love was extraordinary in the face of adversity. He is my hero, and will always be loved.

Two funerals are being planned. The first, a graveside service, will be held in Lovettsville, Va, next Thursday, where he was born.

The second, a memorial service in New York, will be held shortly after.

Details of services to come.

Jesse - I Begin To Say Farewell ~ Late Night Thoughts

I have been writing about and following "Two Lucky (people)" for some time now. During that time, I have been blessed to learn about Yen and Jesse and their incredible love for each other. It's a love that has been through a lot ... but as I have said before - it's a love that totally demonstrates the power of love as a choice. It also is a love that demonstrates the vows that are so often said at weddings - for richer or poorer, for better or worse, in sickness or in health ...

Those short phrases, packed with meaning. Those short phrases packed with truth.

Through everything that's been going on they both has believed, hoped and trusted. But through it all their love has never wavered.

Jesse had been taking treatments - some of which were quite toxic, but even those had to come to an end.

His prognosis, simply, is that the tumors in Jesse’s liver are growing too quickly.

“You’re carrying too much disease. Must be 10lbs in there,” he said.

But even through the sorrow of that moment, the hope/love shone through.

I cried hard today in the town car on the way back from the hospital. It did not last long, probably for less than a minute. The tears stopped as suddenly as they had come. It happened soon after we got into the car, when Jesse took my hand and said to me: “I am so happy to be with you.”

And I can admit that I wept as well. I didn't have someone to hold my hand and tell me anything. But eventually, I went back to what had been written - and dried my tears and continued.

Yen himself began to realize what seemed to be coming. He was walking down the street and saw a film crew working on a new movie.

"As the crowd grew, I walked away. I thought about Jesse. Thereupon, I wondered if one day later this year, or the next, I would find myself in a darkened cinema, waiting for the same scene to come on, with my hand on the empty seat next to mine.

And then on the 29th of April ... the doctor brought those vows full circle:

...For better or worse, For richer or poorer,
In sickness AND in health:
'Till death do us part ...

"I was told today that Jesse has only three to four more weeks left to live. When the doctors pulled me aside (”May I speak with you in private?”), I already knew....

My reaction was visceral, in spite of fore-knowledge, and unexpected in that regard. I sat in the toilet and cried. For the first time, in a very long time, I believed I would not be whole again. I felt my insides wrenched from me. I howled. I was also confused, which only proves how one, notwithstanding one’s intelligence, can reject logic in the face of grief.

Even though I already knew the answer, I kept asking myself: Can this really be true?

The last several days as I took time to look at all I have known about Yen and Jesse - and all I have been blessed to have shared of their lives, I realized that the depth of their love as shown in the writings has, in a sense, prepared me for whatever may happen in their lives.

On the 30th of April - Yen wrote "White Flag":

He sits at the top of the stairs, so still he might have been there forever and for always.

The air is capricious, however, taunting him with whispers of dead men’s philosophy. His eyes turn down, and he feels the weight of mortality from under his feet. Around him, the hallway seems equally frozen, as if a breathing picture, a fixed fragment of time fallen into itself.

All of this is nevertheless an illusion, a vision he sees where time has forgotten its relevance.

In fact, he doesn’t remember beyond the stairs. The breaths he takes are the same he exhaled only moments before. In the dark, he begins to stale.

But moments later, a gust of wind from below erases this vision. It rises like a clean breeze from under him, and from it, he rediscovers the certainty of movement. He lifts his eyes, and looks around, then, begins to make out a hill in the distance.

The force of its existence strikes him awkwardly, unexpectedly.

He decides the hill must have been there always, as he has. He hunts the horizon for more shapes: a river, trees, but finds nothing, until in a final instant, he sees a bird tracing a wide circle near the hill top.

The trajectory of the bird’s flight, like a cut flag, fills his memory of the sky. The bird descends, then disappears into the hill’s shadow. For a moment, he forgets he is sitting on the stairs. The simultaneity of its movement, with the swelling of his heart, leads him to cry.

And again I weep. Again, I grieve. But again, I stand with them in this time - and I say - "I do not care if someone is gay-straight, black-white, moon-man or whatever, this kind of love is so deep and powerful, I maintain that great portions of the universe bow in honor of its strength."

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.


We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;

We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

Or rather, be passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.

We paused before house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.


Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.
--Emily Dickinson

I'm Confused ~ Early Morning Thoughts

I have been working on a post - and for some reason, parts of it keep "vanishing" when I save or try to publish.....It's a little late (early?) and I'll get the problem solved later this morning ...

In Memorial ~

Potpourri ~ Late Night Thoughts

I thought I would be able to move from a rather "silly" Saturday to a more sedate Sunday. However, a couple of friends decided I needed some puzzles and such to liven up my day. The first item, however, I found by myself ...

From a science post I found:

This compound, C4H5As, is known as arsole.

When it's fused to a benzene ring, it's called benzarsole.

And yes, the poster and I DID go there.



"In an old church in Westchester county, N.Y., the following consonants are written beside the altar, under the Ten Commandments. What vowel is to be placed between them, to make sense and rhyme of the couplet?"

P.R.S.V.R.Y.P.R.F.C.T.M.N.
V.R.K.P.T.H.S.P.R.C.P.T.S.T.N

(And you thought I would automatically post the solution? - I'll post it tomorrow)


Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfe­schlegelstein­hausen- berger­dorffvoraltern­waren­gewissenhaft­schaferswessen­schafewaren­wohlgepflege­und­sorgfaltigkeit­beschutzen- ­von­angreifen­durch­ihrraubgierigfeinde­welche­voraltern­zwolftausend­jahres­vorandieerscheinen­wander­ersteer- ­dem­enschderraumschiff­gebrauchlicht­als­sein­ursprung­von­kraftgestart­sein­lange­fahrt­hinzwischen­sternartigraum- ­auf­der­suchenach­diestern­welche­gehabt­bewohnbar­planeten­kreise­drehen­sich­und­wohin­derneurasse­von­ver- standigmen­schlichkeit­konnte­fortplanzen­und­sicher­freuen­anlebens­langlich­freude­und­ruhe­mit­nicht­ein­furcht-­ vor­angreifen­von­anderer­intelligent­geschopfs­von­hinzwischen­sternartigraum, Senior, was born in Hamburg in 1904.

It's not known whether he worked at the Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeam- tengesellschaft —
(the office that governed steamboat passage on the Danube)—
but he certainly should have.



A new bride was required by her husband to show him all her correspondence. She did manage to get important information to her best friend, with the following letter.

Revealing the Secret

I cannot be satisfied, my dearest Friend,
blest as I am in the matrimonial state,
unless I pour into your friendly bosom,
which has ever beat in unison with mine,
the various sensations which swell
with the liveliest emotion of pleasure,
my almost bursting heart. I tell you my dear
husband is the most amiable of men,
I have now been married seven weeks, and
never have found the least reason to
repent the day that joined us. My husband is
both in person and manners far from resembling
ugly, cross, old, disagreeable, and jealous
monsters, who think by confining to secure –
a wife, it is his maxim to treat as a
bosom friend and confidant, and not as a
plaything, or menial slave, the woman
chosen to be his companion. Neither party
he says, should always obey implicitly;
but each yield to the other by turns.
An ancient maiden aunt, near seventy,
a cheerful, venerable, and pleasant old lady,
lives in the house with us; she is the de-
light of both young and old; she is ci-
vil to all the neighborhood round,
generous and charitable to the poor.
I am convinced my husband loves nothing more
than he does me; he flatters me more
than a glass; and his intoxication
(for so I must call the excess of his love)
often makes me blush for the unworthiness
of its object, and wish I could be more deserving
of the man whose name I bear. To
say all in one word, my dear, and to
crown the whole — my former gallant lover
is now my indulgent husband; my husband
is returned, and I might have had
a prince without the felicity I find in
him. Adieu! may you be as blest as I am un-
able to wish that I could be more
happy!

"The key ____________________"
(Oh dear, I'll have to post this solution to this tomorrow also.)
– Charles Bombaugh, Facts and Fancies for the Curious From the Harvest-Fields of Literature, 1860

In The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical (1882), Frank H. Stauffer describes a letter with the following puzzling address:

Wood,
John,
Mass.

It was delivered to ____________________.
(Ah, once again the answer posted tomorrow!)