So, time flies when you are having a good time, eh. Not that cooped up, but enough to stop the analysis of the past. It will never change and whatever story I have to tell will remain in my head. I don’t have to wonder if I will survive this, I may. But little difference will come of it. My CLL limits my life expectancy anyway. Much I didn’t do because of my limitations. On to filling the rest of the time with who knows what, except that fame and fortune have escaped me. Keep in mind, it’s a cromulent world.
Category: Aging
Cora Duckman
My Mother died. She had a heart attack as I was being savaged by the Mayor and Governor. NO support from my colleagues, the little family I had and no defense from my superiors. To this day, the story still hasn’t been told.
I wasn’t with her when she died. My father died when I was a kid. I wasn’t with him either.
Lorin Duckman, 72
I turned 72, which was a good thing and a not so good thing. As to the former, I am alive; as to the latter I have CLL, a blood disorder that isn’t lymphoma or leukemia, but what it is requires me to take pills everyday and be fearful of falling or catching a cold.
I have a marriage that thrives, even though I didn’t support us as planned or become the man we both wanted me to be. I cannot shake the past and don’t have much of a productive future planned. My photography comes second to my wife, so for those two things, I don’t want for attention, assignments or affection.
I read, shoot pictures, travel and volunteer. The images I make at the Soup Kitchen of Boynton Beach are printed and handed out. I have been given a wall that needs to be filled. People leave stuff at our door which I deliver and I beg for diapers (4s and 5s), along with donations of money, clothes and household goods.
Nothing can be done to ease my pain or fix the story. No one knows what happened to me, except a select few and I am not important enough to find out the truth. Not saying I was perfect, just not so imperfect to have been the subject of judicial and political torture. Few friends, none close, and few relatives, none close. Not so bad as long as I live.
Not Walden Woods
Not exactly Walden Woods, but I can go there to think. Eliminating urban stimulus encourages creativity. I can also practice my skills photographing myself, since not that many people want to have portraits made. Very buggy and humid today at Loxahatchee. Not too many people, which is understandable and not too many birds, either.
Day In My Life
Blood day at the cancer center. Not fun, but came away with better numbers than last month. I am learning the vocabulary. This is how some cancer survivors talk. I don’t know what most of the numbers/letters mean, but the more I have in the normal range the better.
On the wall, near the bathroom is a magazine rack. Cannot imagine toilet reading at a Cancer Care Center, though I know most of us who take the pills or inject the poison have bowel problems. The magazine offerings range from what to do if you have bladder cancer to “Car and Driver.”
Now, who would leave a magazine about buying a high priced car in a waiting room at a cancer care center? Not a patient. We don’t think long term. A Dr who can afford one? Perhaps an heir in waiting?
Liz Duckman, 72
Family. One month older than I am. Distant family. Cousin. I have no other family.
Leonard Duckman, Died Fathers Day – June 1963
Never came to grips with his sickness or his death. Now I have it, though not the acute kind that killed him. I didn’t know the man in this image and he didn’t know me. I will never know how I lost my childhood or adulthood.
Loxahatchee Look
all alone. with my camera. never that alone. i can always try to see myself. so people tell me to move on. i tell them that it is hard to move on when you are trying to hold on.
Battery Burlington VT
Cora Duckman, Mother’s Day
Always sad to celebrate a Yarzheit and Mother’s Day so close together. But she died not loving me or so my brother said. He is dead, too. No way to ever find out how or why or what happened.