DEATH

It was last summer that about 40 of my fellow classmates celebrated our 50 year high school reunion. It was a great time seeing everyone again. As we are all in our late 60s now, we have lost quite a few of our classmates. We had another classmate die yesterday. We all know that we will never live forever, no one has beat it yet. Out of a graduating class of 128 I know that about 15 have passed on. Naturally like, I am sure, our other classmates wonder when that day will come.

My father died young, age 59 from lung cancer from years of heavy smoking. My mother lived to be 92. She got dementia in the final months of her life. I was in the Philippines in the Air Force when my father died. I got home a couple of hours before the funeral. My mother moved into an apartment behind mine about four years before her death. It so sad to see a loved ones mind loose its function. Mom was good for someone of 90, but in the next two years she began to do things that at first I just thought it was old age. The last 6 months were real bad. I had to keep track of her medication, she would forget or take to much. Soon before her death I went back to her apartment one time and she was holding the phone in her hand. She was trying to turn the TV channel. It is sad to see, but a reality.

Mom spent a few days in the hospital and eventually 10 days in a nursing home. She gave up on life and refused to eat anything. I felt so helpless, knowing that there was nothing I could do. She had a living will, not to be kept alive if it looked like there was no hope. The day she died, was one of the worst days of my life.

I imagine you have all heard stories of people that have died and then wake up and say they saw the light. Also stories of people dying and looking down on themselves. It was in early 1995 that I was very ill. I had headaches that were extreme, so dizzy that I couldn't walk at all without falling down, terrible nose bleeds. For three months I went for every medical test under the sun and nothing was found. It was so frustrating.

I would lie in bed and it felt like my head was staying still but my body was moving back and forth. I was afraid to go to sleep because I thought I wouldn't wake up again. It was during that time when I was floating near the ceiling looking down on my body. I had died, I knew it. I felt strange, lifeless, motionless, pale. Was this the end? It seemed like forever that I was looking down on my body lying in bed. I knew it was only a couple of minutes, but I was dead. I then lowered and reentered my body. I could feel it like a jolt. I woke up and looked around. I was alive, I had an experience that I have heard and read about others having. I didn't see the light as some say. However, looking down on your own body is out of this world. God did not want me then, it wasn't my time.

That was 22 years go, but I can remember it like it was yesterday. I finally went to a chiropractor after 3 months of illness. Within two weeks I was feeling better. Medical science couldn't find out what was wrong with me, but it was the darkest time in my life. I have a lot of faith in chiropractors.

Life is a strange thing. What happens after we die? I believe in heaven and hell. I try to live my life like I would want others to live. I am far from perfect, there is no doubt about that. However, I care about other people. We are all going to die. Some like myself, get a second chance at life. After that dark time in my life I got a whole different outlook on life. Work and money used to be so important to me. After that time, family is now the most important thing in my life.


Copyright  Larry W. Fish  2017

DON'T RUN IN THE HOUSE

I have written a book of true short stories of my youth that is not yet published but I want to share one of those stories with you now. How many times did your parents tell you not to run in the house? Well my brother and I heard it often, but boys will be boys.

DON’T RUN IN THE HOUSE

In the corner of our living room, we always had a stove that was about two feet away from the walls. First, we had a coal stove. It was replaced by an oil burner and finally changed back to a coal stove.

     My mother was always fanatic about heat and I believe if she kept it any hotter the skin would have melted from our bodies. I do remember that our cocker spaniel used to lie in front of that first coal stove.

     I’m sure everyone has heard it and my brother Jim and I heard it many times, “Don’t run in the house.” Boys will be boys as the saying goes. One day after school, while my father was at work and mom was out somewhere, maybe shopping, I’m not sure. It was an afternoon of chasing each other around the house.

     On this particular day as I chased Jim, he ran behind the stove when the unthinkable happened. Jim’s butt hit against the sheet rock wall that had seen years of intense heat. The years of intense heat had made the sheet rock soft and brittle. As Jim moved away it revealed the perfect imprint of butt cheeks in the wall. I can still remember the look on our faces.

     We both knew that this wasn’t going to be good when the parents got home. I don’t ever remember being spanked, but the yelling still rings in my ears to this day. “How many times have we told you not to run in the house?” They kept repeating it over and over. I don’t know how many times we heard it, but I guess we should have heard it at least one more time that day.

     We would spend hours running around outside, but that day for some reason we just started running around in the house. It has been well over sixty years. When something like that happens and you are a little boy you just know it’s going to be a bad day. Now well over sixty years later my brother and I get a good laugh about it.

     I remember years later when I had a little boy and he came running into the kitchen telling us that water was running all over the floor. I ran after him and he pointed to the hot water heater. He had opened up the valve for the drain but when water started pouring out he ran to us rather than closing it. I sit here writing this with a smile. My son, Tom, was the adventurous type when he was a little boy. It just reminds me so much of myself.

Copyright   Larry W. Fish   2017

HOW TO MEASURE GREATNESS

I'm 68 years old and I have seen a lot in my life. I have seen literally thousands of good things and thousands of bad things in that long lifetime. I heard a very rich man say on TV not so awful long ago that you have to be wealthy to be great. That has been getting under my skin for the last several months and I have to say that man is dead wrong. You do not have to be wealthy to be great. Greatness is measured by what someone does, how they threat other people, what they have accomplished in their life.

I am not a highly educated man and I do not pretend that I am. I graduated high school as an average student. I could have done better, I just didn't apply myself as much as I should have. Two years after I graduated I enlisted in the United States Air Force. I served my country and I did it proudly. To those people that think you have to be wealthy to be great I say, I served my country for four years and I am great.

I got married at the young age of 22. Now my wife and I who I met in the Philippines have been married for 46 years. That is a great accomplishment. I love my wife as much today as the day I first met her in the Airmen's Club on Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. We have a son who served for 20 years as a U.S. Marine. We are so proud of him. We have a daughter that went to college and studied art. She is an artist/graphic designer. We are so proud of her. What she can do in her line of work makes us so proud. She designed the cover for three novels I have written. Our son and our daughter are great.

I spent 30 years working in manufacturing. I started as an engraver and worked my way to be a machinist. It was at times stressful but often rewarding. I worked on hoists for shrimp boats, engraved small gold drums that in the 1960s went into the guidance systems of missiles, I worked on valves for sewer and water lines, I worked on panels for computers, parts for aircraft, parts for the space shuttle. Sure they were minor parts but all important parts to accomplish a mission. My greatest achievement when working in manufacturing was a tiny but necessary part for a company. For 30 years the engineers at this company tried unsuccessfully to rivet a contact into a part only about an inch long. That part went into security and fire detection systems for large buildings. I worked on that part on and off in my free time. It took my a long time but finally I developed a process to rivet that part in that thin piece of beryllium copper. After, I was a technical adviser to  a company that built an automatic machine to rivet that part. The machine allowed us to make 1,000 parts an hour. It made $750,000 dollars a year for the company. I received the MVP award for that accomplishment. I got a watch and a dinner along with other people that did similar successes. That was my greatest accomplishment in manufacturing and yes I am great.

As I neared retirement, I got an overwhelming desire to write. I started by writing short stories. Some of those were published in Our USA Magazine. It gave me the encouragement to keep writing. I wondered if I could write a novel. The more I thought about it I came to the conclusion that each chapter in a book is a short story. That first novel was published in 2011, one year after I retired. The title was, Golden Haze, the story of a four legged angel and demons. Everyone that has read that novel have told me how much they enjoyed it. To that rich man who says, you have to be wealthy to be great, I say you are wrong again. When that novel brought joy to my readers, that is greatness.

I have written three other fiction novels. All have received good reviews on amazon and I feel proud when someone tells me they couldn't put the book down, they had to keep reading to see what was going to happen next. If someone can give that feeling to someone else, that is greatness. I will continue to write, because I enjoy it.

My point to this article is that you don't have to be wealthy to be great. I consider myself great for what I have accomplished in my lifetime. No, I am not rich, I am great. I am a patriotic American that served my country. Worked hard all my life and decided to not sit back and do nothing when I retired. To the millions of hard working Americans out there that go to work everyday to provide for themselves and their families, YOU ARE GREAT. Remember if it wasn't for you, that rich man could not brag about how wealthy he is. I am proud of how I have lived my life, by hard work, respect for others, and being a decent man. GOD BLESS AMERICA!!


Copyright  Larry W. Fish   2017