Code Blue

It’s a borrowed title from another story but its weight fits the mood. These are the prosthetic hooks that taught me how to use my hands. Fortunately too we had Mom who taught us the best a Mother can teach. But Dad was our Dad. Best mentor an eight year old boy could have. Tea Garden Builder. John Deere tractor driver. Lit his occasional cigarette those years from the red-hot exhaust stack on Farr’s tractor when he was plowing for Farr on early mornings in Orland. Dad was a great piece of great work.
©Peter Bray 9/6/2018. All rights reserved

Code Blue Twice

Feb. 21, 2012, at age 44, in her 24th year with Crohn’s Disease, her third suspected fistula was probably more toxic than her system could withstand. I stayed with her Tuesday night at her home in Concord and insisted that I call paramedics. She said, “No, her toilet was closer to her bed at home than it would be at the hospital, and I could bring her cold juices throughout the night.”
In the early morning she agreed, I should call 911. They arrived and I followed them to the hospital as fast as I could drive. In the ER they announced “Code Blue” the first time. Not knowing what that meant I inquired how she was doing, it was just minutes after we had arrived. They said she’d been taken to the ICU and I knew what that meant. I ran there. Upon entry they were sounding the second “Code Blue” and the team was administering the paddles.         She never regained consciousness. For two more days her vital signs rose and fell with the changing of multiple IV sacks of life-sustaining fluids. On Friday morning 2/24/2012 the small bird that had pecked on her hospital window for two days finally connected with Cathy and bless their hearts, they both left together. I wept and my grief slowly turned to hardened activism.
©Peter Bray 9/9/2018. All rights reserved

The Saddest Poem I Ever Wrote

The saddest poem I ever wrote was about losing my daughter. I had to borrow a word from her title in reference to my Dad’s World War II injuries as they were equally hellacious to write about like losing my daughter. I was an empty vessel, a bone-dry camel in the parched desert, a burro, dry as salted jerky and in need of water when I finally had the courage to relive the last four days of losing my daughter. She and the small sparrow that knocked for two days on her hospital window, they left on a Friday in February, 2012 and flew high and above the hills of Martinez.
©Peter Bray 9/11/2018. All rights reserved

Sucking on a Malt on Columbus Parkway

I filled the lady’s radiator from the green hose at the side of the house next to the Tuxedo cat’s white ceramic water dish with the clean but hardened green algae. Then called my scheduled customer to postpone my normal Handyman day. All seems OK so I test drive it all the way to Curtola Parkway and nothing exploded or misbehaved. I was hungry early for lunch so I took a break, paid and sorted bills all afternoon on the waterfront, the dashboard pile down to a manageable few, the paid ones collected into the paper brief I marked “R” for Receipts so no burglar looking though the passenger window would think I carry all my vast loot there, looking very legal. Dinner time came early, I know my way to Habit Burger in Vallejo, and my Lady agrees for a “Veggie Burger with no bun” and “Not a Lettuce Wrap but extra of their Honey Mustard spread.” Now the best and most notable part of my day comes (the rest will be too soon forgotten) when I’m “Homeward Bound” and remembered forever just like Paul Simon but while “Sucking on a Malt on Columbus Parkway, sucking on a Malt on Columbus Parkway.” ©Peter Bray 9/11/2018. All rights reserved

Peter Bray lives, works, and writes in Benicia and has written this column since Christmas of 2008.

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