The past week and a half have been such a whirlwind, I can hardly believe so much has happened so quickly. I’ve gotten so much done, and yet events will be moving even quicker now.
Things always change on a dime for caregivers because of the very nature of our work. We are always called in at the end of someone’s life. This is exactly what has happened to me when my dear friend of 40 years, Franklin J. Waller, was found dead in his mobile home a week ago Tuesday.
A tall, genial man built like a tank (we used to call him “Frank the Tank”), we also used to joke that because of his many health problems and the fact he was still alive meant that God kept trying to kill him and always missed. It is always in these types of cases that chronic disease is the final thing that takes them down in the end and that is mostly like the culprit in his case. We will never know since he was Jewish and no autopsy was performed to determine the final cause of death.
I cannot say I didn’t see this coming. He had undergone coronary bypass surgery May 5th (he went in for a triple and they ended up doing a quadruple) in which they also fixed a hole in his heart and an arrhythmia condition. Though he survived the surgery and went on to spend six weeks in rehab (after which he came out with the promise of being able to make a full recovery) it was not meant to be. I knew from our post-op discussions with his cardiac surgeon that they could not find a good quality of artery to use to graft to his heart. It could have been this in the end that killed him, only his God knows that for certain.
During his time in rehab recovering from the surgery, I’d enjoyed six weeks of downtime in which to tackle some much-needed purging, cleaning and reorganizing of my home environment. While my thought processes turned to what would be next for me in my writing and beadwork businesses, it was in writing on the Dragonfly Temple Chronicles that my prose took a quantum leap in writing quality that no one (least of all me) saw coming.
I attribute this to doing something I had forgotten how to do the majority of my adult life. I RELAXED.
This blessed quality and quantity of relaxation and meditation was only possible because the stress of taking care of my client post-surgery was now in the hands of professionals and not myself. It was the badly needed hiatus I never realized I had needed!
Yet little did I know how quickly that work would become the stepping stone for the next phase of my personal and work life.
So now, with the traumatic circumstances of his passing fading behind me, I have received a great blessing in that it is the best opportunity I have ever had to throw everything I have – heart and soul – into retiring from the caregiving business and devoting my time to pursuing my creative writing.
The fact that I and my husband have been able to bounce back so quickly from the shock of Frank’s passing and the trauma Dennis suffered finding Frank deceased, is 100% due to the love and support of all our friends. In all my life, I have never cried on so many people’s shoulders, been so loved and supported and encouraged through such a horrible experience. My wonderful, amazing friends are;
- First and foremost, my husband Dennis Amador Cherry, who insisted on searching for Frank and sparing me the shock of what I had already known was that we would find – not a living, breathing person, but one who had passed on long before we had discovered him.
- Elizabeth Carlie and Harold Goldstein. These two experienced caregivers were there for me in ways someone inexperienced with the dying process, death and its aftermath could not have possibly hoped to cope with nor understood.
- My soulmate Chrysta, who has also been a devoted caregiver and shares a few of my views and beliefs on what happens to us humans when we Cross the Great Divide (i.e. pass away).
- The science fiction friends Frank, Dennis and Liz and I share through LASFS – the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society.
- And lastly, but most important to my new journey as a paid writer, three people;
- My patron Lorenzo, who had resumed commissioning a King Sombra story we had started over a year ago and has pledged as my highest-paying Patron to date at the $50 Ascension Level. I swear to the Goddess, the universe is looking out for me as we had talked for the first time in a year and picked up this grand project a mere day before Frank’s body had been discovered!
- And also Gene Turnbow and Susan Fox of Sci-Fi radio. Gene is by far the coolest, most interesting and most intelligent boss-man I have ever had in the semi-corporate sector and I wish I’d had him as a boss when I had dwelled in the cube farms I had so despised for 25 years.
So for now, I will leave this massive update here and cover the new, upcoming changes I have planned for my patrons in another post very soon. I apologize if the subject matter has been too intense for those of a more delicate disposition. I think I am still in the process of talking out and sharing the intense feelings that overwhelmed me this past week and a half and now thankfully are rapidly fading as I heal.
I guarantee some wonderful things are coming, including a new Discord server and more regular posting not only of chapters in progress, but some behind the scenes supporting video and material as well. Stay tuned and –
Namaste,
)O( Luna Solare-Whoticore
High Priestess of the Dragonfly Temple of Whocate
