[from Linda]
Thanks to all who shared in the great celebration of Chris’s life yesterday. The music – sounds of Taizé and the Zenith Bayou Brass Band – brought joy and cheer to all.
Concluded Matthew, rector at Trinity Church: “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. May Chris’s spirit be free in all of us.”
Amen to that!
[Photo: Laura Hamilton]
[from Linda]
Chris’s memorial service will be held this Friday, Nov. 12 at 2:00 pm at Trinity Church (Ravenswood and Laurel) in Menlo Park.
The photo that accompanies this post was taken by friend and photographer Gary Fong when Chris was sorting through some of the black and white photos he’d taken in the 1980s. The goodbye wave makes me smile – hope it does the same for you.
[from Linda]
With the Giants in the lead – and they didn’t dare lose tonight! – Chris died peacefully shortly after 7:30 pm tonight. We’ll have more details about the memorial service and celebration service shortly.
Thank you, thank you, thank you ALL. We are so blessed by each and every one of you.
[Update: See this tribute to Chris on InMenlo.com.]
[This post is written by Linda]
Over the years, Chris and I often talked about the potential negative consequence of being fit. Would years of jogging, hiking and walking keep the ole ticker going long after “the time had come.”
Such seems to be the case with Chris. But he is comfortable, sleeping and in no distress.
I can’t thank you all enough for the comments, calls, notes, emails and every other way you have reached out to us. Not just in the last week but over the last four years.
We are truly blessed to have you all in our lives.
Note: Chris dictated this post to Linda this morning.
These things always get here sooner than we think they will. Planning ahead has not been our strong suit. We’ve gotten equipment in too late – case in point the assistive poles that arrived months after they could have been really useful.
Two nights ago, we started small doses of morphine which we probably should have started earlier (as the hospice nurse suggested) given back pain and other discomforts. I think Linda and I were both in denial that we were here so soon, realizing that starting morphine is one of the final steps in the dying process.
So now we’re here and discovering like most other things, it’s not a silver bullet (although the dose has just been increased). Even on morphine, we’re still miserable.
Heidi was here last Thursday and told Linda that I’d managed to fall off one cliff – that cliff being the dying cliff – and needed to fall off one more. I keep looking for the map to the next cliff. I keep looking for the “let go button” and can’t quite find it.
Linda thinks maybe I have gone off the next cliff, that my condition as deteriorated since Heidi was here. I hope she’s right. I’m so ready to fade to black.
My good friend and retired priest David Perry is arriving today. Among other things, he’ll administer last rites, which I’m hoping is the nudge I need to take the last step in departing this earth. I certainly feel I’m fading out…
On the one hand, we’ve been busy – organizing and signing prints for the archive – some 500 so far – at the same time as the body is crashing in unprecedented fashion.
I can only just walk as I write this and if it weren’t for my new best friend Susie Bautista, a home health care worker, I’d be much less mobile than I am. My left arm has gone from paralyzed to stiff – it gets in the way a lot. Thanks to the enlarged prostate, much of my time is sent traveling to and from the bathroom. Impaired mobility plus enlarged prostate equals some degree of misery, if I do say so myself.
Susie has cheerfully chipped in and helped the poor, beleaguered spouse with some household chores when she isn’t tending to me. Other bright spots include John, Julie and Grace, who continue their weekly cheer-up mission, to good effect
My stamina is steadily declining and I’m napping more, often twice a day. Sitting up is becoming a chore, And did I mention the sore back? Misery, indeed – and all from side effects rather than the tumor itself . The good news is no seizures, just a little intermittent weirdness with muscle spasms.
The power wheelchair gets me around when I’m up. I’m still dependent on Linda and Susie to get me up and do all the little things like move my (decaf) coffee cup from breakfast table to garage or wherever I’m working..
At 9AM this morning, a short parade of organized, and organizing people showed up on our doorstep.
Leading the parade was Jacqui Bocian, a recommended organizational expert followed by Frances Freyberg a Menlo-based photographer who’s become a friend since Linda and I profiled her for InMenlo and handyman, Kevin Bartling.
Naturally, disorganized moi scheduled everyone to arrive at the same time creating chaos on the doorstep. Jacqui and Frances soon headed off to the garage, home of the Gulker Photo Archive, such as it is.
Jacqui and Frances made remarkably short work of sorting hundreds of prints into stacks of like subject, the better for me to choose the ones I thought worthy of my signature. Meanwhile I took Kevin around pointing out the manifold household entropic decline that has taken place since my own entropic decline began.Today was also day 1 of home health care workers… These guys should have us whipped into shape in no time…
The day has come: we’re now in a power wheelchair. It arrived yesterday and we’ve been trying to get the hang of driving it with its joystick control.
So far, I’ve hit every wall in the house at least twice, and I crashed into a 16×20-inch picture frame, shattering the glass. I realized, belatedly that I was driving as if seated in a car, and leaving too much room on the right for the non-existent passenger side. Doing a little better this AM.
Lying on the floor yesterday, I realized that increasingly I am trapped in body hardware that is steadily breaking down. The CPU and software are still good, but that’s about it. I can walk a little, but it’s more difficult than even last week’s efforts. To be honest, this not fun.
Friend Dennis Nicholson came over for our Friday morning coffee confab, complete with fresh scones from Peet’s. Dennis is just back from hiking Zion Narrows with two friends. Looks like it was a great trip, wet feet notwithstanding. Dennis says the Canyon is only 12 feet wide in places and the water ranges from a few inches to waist deep. Once upon a time, I’d have jumped at the opportunity to make this trip.
Dennis also filled me in on Nathan Myhrvold’s latest project, a 6-volume “Modernist” cookbook that explains at some length the science behind each recipe. Starting to have some inkling of what Stephen Hawking‘s life must be like…
Earlier this year, I was still walking, unaided, sometimes unaccompanied and could usually go 1.5 miles and sometimes further (the year before it had been 4 miles solo). When I began falling a lot, I started using a walking stick, which helped me walk the 2 mile daily sojourn from Ameugny to Taizé and back this past spring.
Alas, this past summer saw us falling again, fortunately, mostly in the house, even with the stick, a sturdy device meant for hikers. Angel Heidi then appeared with the hemi walker, which has gotten me around, including to photo assignments for InMenlo these past two months or so.
But, as the inevitable decline continues, we’ve become pretty wobbly even with the hemi walker. Monday morning we fell while making our way the few steps from bed to bathroom. I managed to hit a doorframe and a heavy stool before arriving at the floor, but otherwise survived in one piece.
Unfortunately, Linda was out jogging (and I foolishly disregarded my promise to stay in bed until her return) so I was temporarily on my own. I quickly realized that there was no way I was going to get up on my own (a feat I’d managed in the past by crawling to some large upright object, and using my strong right arm and leg to haul myself up). For one thing, I can’t crawl anymore, so weak has the left side become, and while I did crab my way to the side of our very sturdy bed. I couldn’t get the body into a useful geometry from which to launch the strong “Heidi Muscles.” after 20 or 30 minutes of struggling, I got onto my back, pulled the bed cover down over my unadorned corpus, and tried to snooze. The hard floor actually felt good under my perennially sore back.
Linda returned and immediately started the drill that has worked to peel me off the floor in the past. she got me up on my right knee, a prerequisite to extending the left leg and using it to hold the body while I moved the right under my torso, preparatory to lifting while grasping the sturdy bedpost.The left leg, it turns out, is no longer stable enough for the chore. It can push down with useful force, but I’m no longer capable of holding it upright and steady.The leg kept collapsing to the side.
Time for Plan B said Linda, and she hurried over to fetch neighbor Dr. Kurt Hafer, who just happens to have been trained as an ER physician. Kurt had me off the floor in about a minute using some magical lifting technique (he put his arms around my chest from behind and lifted straight up).
So it’s time for the next phase – a power wheelchair in my case (one-armed people have a problem with a conventional wheelchair, unfortunately). An occupational therapist is coming for a consult this morning, a Medicare requirement….
A number of readers have have been encouraging me to “write something,” if only to reassure them that I’m still here. Short answer is yup, we’re still answering the phone, as it were, at least when we can get to it, mobility being what it is.
As mentioned we’re still good from the neck up, thought the left side continues its slide. I’m in a wheelchair more often, now, if only because it makes Linda feel better, and still very grateful for the hemi-walker that Heidi found for me. Either way, the wheelchair ramp is a very welcome help.
The biggest difficulty I face now is the approximately 5-inch tall curb that surrounds my shower. A 3-year old can step over it effortlessly, but my increasingly paralyzed left leg can do so only with great difficulty – a situation which isn’t getting better. Linda has to help me get out of the shower all of the time now… we’re waiting for an assistive grab pole that may be a help. Just making our way…
Chris Gulker - www.gulker.com 