Shocking news, yes, but a good person goes to glory

After nearly 70 years of surprises, the thought of being truly shocked by something wasn't part of my makeup.

Until Thursday.

I signed onto Facebook and saw I had a message from my lifelong friend Mick Curran. We had a dialogue going recently and I figured this was his latest response.

I opened the message.

Cheryl and son Sean

"Cheryl died today."

I don't know if I was ever more shocked by something that probably shouldn't have been that shocking. Mick's wife had been in poor health for many years and had been hospitalized recently, although she had returned home and posted on Facebook that things were looking up.

"Sick for two months now. I am done with this. Unfortunately, it is not done with me. Yes, I am still thankful for so much!"

That was Saturday.

She died five days later.

I didn't realize it at the time, but Mick told me I had known Cheryl longer than any of his other friends. We met in the summer of 1978 when my first wife and I visited Mick in Los Angeles.

Mick and Cheryl pre-1980

We met again in 1981, two years after they married and nearly two years after my first marriage ended. They had come to Virginia to visit Mick's parents, and we went on a double date to see a movie at Bailey's Crossroads. Ironically, the woman I was dating and have remained close to for nearly 30 years later became friends with Cheryl through Facebook.

Cheryl told me she and Lisa had enjoyed some long and wonderful phone conversations. I was happy for both of them.

Aside from a vacation in Los Angeles in May 1986, I didn't have any contact with her until my last stop before moving to California myself in 1990. I worked in Reno from the fall of '88 to the spring of '90, and there were five or six times I made the 1,000-mile round trip for long weekends.

She and Mick had two children by then, and her health was starting to slip by then. They had tried for a long time to have children, and Sean (1983) and Kelsey (1985) were turning out to be two wonderful ones. I don't think there was anything in her life she took more pride in than being a mother, and sometimes it made her react to certain things.

In 1990, there was a TV commercial for a convenience store that talked about the challenges modern mothers face. The joke was that the two "mothers" in the advert were Mr. Moms. She was upset by that because she thought it was making fun of mothers.

When I moved down to Southern California, I stayed with them for a few months while looking for a place of my own. Kelsey was 4 that year and adorable, and I taught her a sequence of "high five, low five. baby five and goofus five (hands backward)" that we would joke about.

Kelsey grew up to be a wonderful, unselfish person who spent the last couple of years taking care of her mother 24/7. Just last Friday, Cheryl voiced her appreciation on Facebook.

Easter 2016

"My Kelsey has taken such good care of me through all this hospital and sicky stuff. So grateful for her."

Of course Sean and Kelsey weren't Cheryl's only joys. She and Mick had a third child -- Shannon -- in 1999, and Shannon brought much pleasure to her mother's life.

Through all her health problems, Cheryl remained wonderfully upbeat on Facebook. She was thankful for what she had, not what she lacked. She wasn't able to go to church, but she thought it was wonderful she could "attend" through streaming video on the Internet.

When you're retired, as I have been for nearly 11 years, it's easy to lose track of people. Mick has been my closest friend for more than 50 years, but the only time I've spent with him the last eight years was when we both attended a dear friend's funeral in Colorado in 2016.

It had been too many years since I last saw Cheryl, and there is so much I don't know about her situation. Close friend or no, Mick keeps his cards very close to his chest these days.

I know Cheryl spent her adult life loving Jesus, loving her husband and her children. I know that for all she went though, it didn't cause her faith to falter.

I know beyond any doubt that when she passed from our world on Thursday and stood before the Lord, she had only one word to say.

"Hallelujah."

American exceptionalism has never been for everyone

American exceptionalism?

You're kidding, right?

For all the talk about Cities on Hills and Last Best Hopes of Mankind, America has always had a significant gap between reality and ideals.

Let's start at the beginning, whether it was Columbus who "discovered" America or the Vikings hundreds of years earlier.

It's impossible to know the exact number, but there's no question there were millions of Native Americans inhabiting the continent the first time white men arrived.

So of course the Europeans called them heathens and set out to convert them to Christianity. Then they started taking their land, pushing them west and eventually killing them off.

Exceptional, huh?

Baby Rose, the Babe and the Brady Bunch

Short takes from a journey through a disorganized mind:

WAIT FOR YOUR LAUGH -- When I was 11, a wonderful television show came on the air. For five seasons, "The Dick Van Dyke Show" was the only show we made an effort to see every week. With the possible exception of the actor who played the kid, everyone else in the cast was marvelous.

I particularly liked Rose Marie as Sally Rogers. I knew nothing about her, especially that she had been in show business since 1926, starting as Baby Rose Marie at the age of 3. And I didn't follow her long enough to know that she continued working until she did a voice job in a Garfield movie in 2013.

She lived to be 94 and died just last year. Thankfully, she participated in a documentary film about her life -- "Wait for Your Laugh" -- that is one of the very best documentaries I have ever seen.

Everyone talks about Mickey Rooney having a career in which he had movie roles in 10 different decades. Rose Marie did 10 decades too, but most her early work was in vaudeville and nightclubs.

After "Dick Van Dyke," she did 14 years sitting above Paul Lynde, and then later she toured as part of 4girls4 with Rosemary Clooney, Helen O'Connell and Margaret Whiting.

So long ago, but things were really happening

It's very strange, but I really wish it could be 1961 again.

Or at least 1962.

I was 11 years old in 1961, and I went to school -- sixth grade the first half of the year -- across the street about half a block up from our house. It was the last year I ever was able to come home for lunch. I had sisters who were 9 and 4, a brother who was 2 and a baby sister who would be born in October.

We were overflowing our home in Huber Heights, Ohio, a three-bedroom ranch house in the oldest part of the largest all-brick housing development in America. It's the part of what's now a city that people refer to scornfully as "Huber-tucky," and you have to understand the Ohio/Kentucky thing to get the joke.

So many stops along the road of a lifetime

In the last year or so, I have found myself thinking about the fact that in less than three years, as long as I am still living in Georgia, I will have liven in four different states for at least 10 years each.

It's sort of uncommon. Most people I know have liven in one or two, and a few have made it to three -- one each for childhood, adulthood and retirement.

But not many people have four.

Home in 1962, Huber Heights, Ohio

I found myself thinking it was kind of cool, that I had not just visited places but had stayed in three and soon four of them for at least 10 years. By contrast, in the middle of my life, the period in which I was establishing my career, I lived in seven different states in a little more than eight years.

My friend Mickey is almost the opposite, although not really by design. He has lived in the Los Angeles area for nearly 42 years, all in a handful of apartments within 20 miles or so of each other.

It isn't as if he has never been anywhere, although the next time he travels outside North America will be the first time. Some people never go anywhere, and others go everywhere. My wonderful grandson Lexington Kastner had circumnavigated the globe by air before he was a year old.

Minnesota trip had more ups than downs

Albanie Yvonne at 3 1/2

The second half of June was pretty eventful this year, although not without some difficulties.

We had been planning for some months to go to Minnesota to attend the wedding/blending ceremony of our daughter Pauline and her new husband, Johnathan Roy.

Each of them brought three children to the new family, a sort of "Brady Bunch" for the 21st century. So our number of grandchildren doubled from three to six just like that.

Things began badly when he missed our flight to Minneapolis, although we were able to get onto another flight less than an hour and a half later. It only cost us an additional $700 or so.

I'm not going to list the other difficulties. I'll just say it was wonderful finally to meet Malachi, Simon and Coen, our three new grandsons, and it is always wonderful to spend time with Madison, Lexington and little Albanie.

Western Minnesota was a revelation too. I think there were 50 lakes within 10 miles of us, some little more than ponds but some that were maybe two steps below Great Lake status. Johnathan's parents live on the shore of Lake Amelia, near Glenwood. It's not huge at 910 acres, but it's 69 feet deep at its deepest point, and the view is really beautiful.

Updating the list of albums that mean a lot to me

This is something I have been thinking about for quite some time. What follows is a list I made for Facebook nine years ago in response to a question asking what 15 albums had the biggest effect on my life growing up.

I fiddled with it a little and decided that an update was in order. Actually just an addition. I'm leaving the original list alone, but expanding the overall list to 24 with the conditions that the additional nine all have to be either from the last nine years or from artists I didn't know before then. The only way artists from before can be included is if they were in a group and now are performing on their own.

So 1-15 are the same, 16-24 are new.

Enjoy:

1. "The Pretender," Jackson Browne -- Before the abuse allegations, before he became obsessed with politics, there was this great 1977 album. Lots of terrific songs -- Linda Paloma, Daddy's Song, Sleep's Dark and Silent Gate -- but it's the title song that still speaks to me 32 years later. "I'm gonna be a happy idiot, and struggle for the legal tender ..."

2. "Buffalo Springfield," Buffalo Springfield -- This 1967 album was the earliest incarnation of guys who would later go on to be some of the biggest stars in rock 'n' roll, foremost Stephen Stills and Neil Young. Others from the group would go on to form Poco, and Jim Messina, who wasn't on this album, would be half of Loggins & Messina. Everybody remembers "For What It's Worth," but other haunting songs like "Mr. Soul" spoke to the angst of the late '60s. The group only did three albums, but their work still sounds fresh.