Tag Archives: kahrmann

EMBARASSMENT CAN KILL

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The ER doctor tells me if I leave the emergency room without getting a transfusion I am at risk for a heart attack or stroke at any second. In fact, he says, they would like to admit me to the hospital and give me a transfusion. The red cell count for a man my age, 53, should be from 40 to 49; mine is 21.5. The iron saturation level for one my age should be from 20 to 50; mine is 3. Not good. Not safe. Just to top things off, an EKG reveals my heart has a blocked left bundle branch. I have a strange notion that if this kills me, I will have died from something in nature, a branch! They tell me the heart’s two bundle branches, left and right, are essentially your heart’s pacemaker. When one is blocked, it may be something you just live with and monitor if you are asymptomatic. It may also be a sign of underlying heart disease.

I am terrified. I want to go home and wrap my mind around what I am hearing. I think maybe the EKG was mistaken and someone will run in and say, Sorry there, Mr. Kahrmann, my bad, wrong EKG, you have the heart of a warrior. But this, of course, doesn’t happen. So, despite all the information about my rather precarious medical condition and the suggested admission, I say no, I can’t be admitted to the hospital.

“Why not?” they ask.

“I have two dogs,” I say, realizing the absurdity of my words the second the escape my mouth. But I swear couldn’t stop there release. I am helpless.

They say, “Don’t you have anyone to take care of the dogs?”

I say, “No, I live in the country. But I can come back tomorrow for the transfusion.”

They say, “If you leave, you’ll have to sign out AMA (against medical advice).”

I say, “Okay, I’ll do that.”

Then, a wonderful ER doctor sits down and says, “Mr. Kahrmann, you are in really rough shape. You’re in real danger if you leave here without at least letting us give you some blood.”

The words you are really in rough shape get past the fog of fear that has me nearly frozen inside and reach me.

“Okay,” I say. I extend my hand to his. We shake hands.

I am blessed to have an extraordinary nurse named Charles Jordon. He is direct, incredibly knowledgeable, compassionate, kind and, in a way, best of all, an extraordinary communicator.

Standing facing each other after the ER doctor has left, I say, “You’d think after my life, getting shot in the head and all, there’d be no it can’t happen to me syndrome left in me. I should fucking know better.”

Charles looks at me, smiles gently and says, “You’ve never been through this though.”

I nod. He has, in one sentence, given me a kind of permission to go ahead and be frightened. He says, smiling, “Well, what do you think? You want to launch into panic right away or hold off for five minutes?”

We laugh. I say, “Fuck it, I’ll hold off.”

I stay until nearly 11 p.m. that night and get two units of blood. I even summon up the courage to tell them the reason I’m in such shape is I had bleeding hemorrhoids and was too embarrassed to tell anyone and tried to take care of them myself with over the counter meds and the misguided belief that they have to stop bleeding some day. Like when you run out of blood, I now realize.

In the ER, fresh blood running into me, I remember the last time in 1984 when I was shot and how unearthly it all seemed. I think this makes sense because in a way death is about as unearthly as it gets.

I arrive home late that night. Glad to be alive, joyous at the sight of my two dogs, McKenzie, my lovely and loyal German Shepherd and Milo, my wonderful mutt, though I never call him a mutt to his face. He has too much character and too much class for that. I am home and think of my father long gone and know that were my end to come I would be with him and in that moment all possibilities are acceptable.

The next day I schedule follow-up appointments with doctors and the day after I give a presentation at the 25th Annual Conference of the Brain Injury Association of NY. During the presentation I tell them my ER story.

After all, embarrassment can kill. It almost killed me.

On “Respectful Interface”

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Dr. Linda D. Misek-Falkoff of the “Respectful Interface(s)” Programme of the Communications Coordination Committee For the United Nations has honored me with an invitation to express my take on the term “Respectful Interface(s)”. I will, with an almost childlike delight, give it a go.

The phrase, or term, “Respectful Interface”, instantly draws me to the thought that humanity itself ought to be the magnet that attracts and drives all its endeavors. Were this the condition of things, respect would be a given in all our interactions, in all our discourse. Yet, no sooner do I alight on the preceding observation and place the words onto the page when a flaw appears. There is an unintended yet certain arrogance to the composition of my observation. Linking the concept of “Respectful Interface” solely to humanity walks me full-length into the cultural and sociological trap that, unless permanently disabled, will doom us all; it is the notion that all of nature is here to serve us, and we are somehow separate and superior to the whole shebang. Nothing could be further from the truth. My initial observation omits Mother Earth, and, without her, and all that makes her up, we are, in a word, done. While rare is the moment when the behavior mandated by the phrase “Respectful Interface” occurs between people and peoples, rarer still is the moment when it occurs between humanity and nature.

While the dismantling of anything that precludes enacting “Respectful Interfacing” is a must, all will be for naught if there is not a similar dismantling of anything that precludes enacting “Respectful Interfacing” between humanity and nature. Greed and the lust for power are certainly two of the barriers to “Respectful Interfacing”. However, I believe a close look at the very core of those driven by the aforementioned would expose fear as the mightiest culprit, the biggest barrier.

So what is “Respectful Interface”? What does it mean? One definition of the word interface I read says it is a point where two things meet and interact. Another definition says interface is, essentially, interaction.

Before I go on here it dawns on me that I have failed to mention perhaps the most critical place where “Respectful Interface” must apply, and, for the most part, rarely does. In my view it is the most important site where “Respectful Interface” must take place. I am talking about “Respectful Interfacing” with one’s self. If it does not take place there, it is unlikely to flourish and last anywhere; in fact, it won’t.

To my mind, the process of “Respectful Interfacing” requires, and I mean requires, three underpinnings: humility, honesty and strength; real strength, of the courage variety.

The best definition of humility I ever heard came from the mouth of a woman well into her seventies. She said, “Humility is not thinking less of your self, it is thinking less about your self.” Just imagine how different life would be if countries (governments), peoples, people, business, religions and more donned this concept of humility and lived it.

Imagining this possibility leads this essay to the doorsteps of honesty and strength. Of these let me say that I am convinced that neither honesty nor strength can reach the summit of their respective possibilities alone. In truth, one cannot exist without the other.

To honesty:

Legend has it that many years ago an American Indian warrior went to his chief and said, “Chief, I have two wolves fighting inside me, the good wolf and the bad wolf. Which one is going to win?” The chief looked at him and said, “Whichever one you feed the most.” I am convinced that honesty is the number one fuel for the good wolf while dishonesty is the number one fuel for the bad wolf. It seems apparent that honesty breeds and promotes respect, so honesty would have to be present in the process of “Respectful Interfacing”.

Some years back I was in a correspondence with a man, an attorney by trade, wherein I argued against the death penalty and he argued for it. My argument was based, in part, on the fact that there have been and will be instances where an innocent person is executed. He wrote that he understood this, yet felt it was a sacrifice society had to endure in order to combat crime. While I did not and do not agree with him, I was, then and now, impressed with the honesty of his response. I can disagree with, dislike, or abhor another opinion, yet respect the source of the opinion when honesty is afoot. Now, to strength.

Much of the world’s definition of strength rests on an armature of pure myth. Countries, including mine, currently one of the biggest offenders, believe their ability to threaten or inflict violence is a true measure of their strength. Wrong. People are saturated with this strength-myth on all fronts: global, national and individual. The capacity to threaten and inflict violence is a true measure of the ability to destroy, not to preserve. Anyone can destroy, not anyone can preserve. It is the latter, not the former, that requires strength.

Consider the following. In my country and others we are taught, men particularly and women increasingly so, that abstaining from both emotional expression and admissions of wrongdoing, not to mention simple mistakes, is a surefire way of displaying one’s strength. We are taught that walking away from a challenge, walking away from a fight are acts of weakness. Not only are all these messages wrong, they are strikingly easy to dismantle. Watch.

If it is an act of weakness to admit you are wrong, then why is it so hard for you to do? If it is an act of weakness to cry, then why is it so hard for you to do? If it is an act of weakness to admit you are afraid, then why is it so hard for you to do? You get my point. If any of the aforementioned were indeed acts of weakness, they would be easy to do. And they are not. Need more proof? Consider this. Approach a woman in the midst of natural labor and ask her if she happens to be feeling strong at the moment. I would suggest, by the way, that you don’t ask her this within arm’s length because while she is screaming at you that, No idiot, I don’t feel strong! the vice-grip of her hand, or hands, if you are really unlucky, will prove to you beyond a reasonable that she is very strong. Humor aside, I can think of few human events requiring more strength than giving birth to a child.

So what is the lesson here? The lesson is that real strength requires honesty and the ability to endure life on life’s terms, the ability to engage with the world around you with humility, honesty and respect. In short, it is the ability to engage in the courageous and honorable art of “Respectful Interfacing”.

SHEP AND THE PRIEST

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As mentioned in an earlier post, I will be placing memoir excerpts in the blog as the writing of the memoir progresses. Here is an excerpt.

I am living with less than a handful of homeless boys around my age in an abandoned three story brick house on 53 Street in Brooklyn between Third and Fourth avenues. It is very late November when I take up my quarters there. I take a small room upstairs in the front of the house. It has a door that closes and working electricity. The other boys, none of whom I know, take up quarters downstairs. It is our circumstances that have drawn us together. We develop a bond and look out for each other. We are the neighborhood strays. I have just turned 18.

There is no running water in the house but we do find a cold water source in the dark damp unfinished basement. A pipe runs across the low ceiling of the basement and with one working tap. When turned on it releases an aggressive stream of ice cold water. I find a two-coil hotplate and a small dusty black and white TV in a closet. I bring them to my room. To my great joy they both work, kind of. The hot plate works wonderfully and when the two coils glow red they generate enough heat to keep my room nice and toasty. The TV gets only two channels; NBC on Channel 4 and WOR on Channel 9. This is good news because not only do I actually have a TV but Channel 4 has Johnny Carson and Channel 9 has the New York Rangers.

There is an old stained mattress that must have been for a cot that I drag into my room. My girlfriend, Lyn, brings me some blankets. I am sitting in my room nice and warm, instant coffee freshly made, watching the Rangers, smoking a cigarette, safe from the cold. I think it doesn’t get any better than this. There is the sound of movement outside the door. I pick up my knife, hold it pressed against my thigh and open the door. A broken-eared male German Shepherd is sitting there looking up at me. His tail sweeps back and forth across the dusty floor. He has no collar. He gives me a look, then walks past me into my room and curls up on the mattress.

I go downstairs to the other boys. “Hey, any you guys have a dog?”

One of them says, “That’s Shep, man. He’s a stray. Hangs around the neighborhood. Nice dog but he ain’t ours. Everybody knows him though. Smart fucking dog.”

Back in my room Shep is sleeping. I sit down next to him; he shifts his head onto my lap, gives my hand a lick, and falls back into sleep. I am remembering my Dad telling me that when he was a boy he and his brother had a male Shepherd Collie mix they both loved. His name was Shep.

Shep and I join lives and are pretty much inseparable. He stays by my side and at night keeps the rats and mice out of the room. There are a few occasions that first week when a rat or mouse runs across the room and me at night but Shep is all about rapid response and soon the intrusions stop. Shep is protection, warmth, friendship and a damned fine conversationalist, thank you very much. It is not long before he loves Johnny Carson and, like me, is a devoted fan of the New York Rangers. I think he likes Eddie Giacomin as much as I do, although I suspect he favors Rod Gilbert more than he lets on.

I learn that Shep is beyond smart. In fact, he’s brilliant. I say, “Go meet Lyn at the train,” and he takes off and when she comes out the train station a few blocks away, there he is waiting for her at the top step. Sometimes he walks her back when it’s very cold because I don’t have a winter coat. As soon as she is safe in the station he returns. The sound of him bolting up the stairs is the sound of reassurance.

I am trying to figure a way to get off the street. I call John Jay College where my Dad used to teach. A man that knew him comes to the phone. I tell him I’m living on the street and does he know anyone that can help me. He gives me the name of a priest he knows. I call the priest and go to see him the next day in the city. The priest is a man of medium build with snow white hair, blue eyes; it takes me only seconds to realize he is a genuinely kind man. He tells me he knows a good man from Long Island that, like me, had been through difficult times and has become a very successful general contractor. He says he is quite sure that when he tells the Good Man from Long Island about me he will help me. The priest takes me to lunch. The restaurant is warm and there is comfort in the shelter of a booth. We order coffee. I am afraid to ask for more so I slowly sip my coffee. “Thank you, father,” I say.

“You need to eat, my son,” he says.

I say a hard thing to say, “I don’t have any money, father.”

“That’s okay, son. You order anything you want. Anything particular you like?”

I can’t look up because he will see my wet eyes. I say, “Grilled cheese.”

“Do you now. Well, we are alike there, my son, I can tell you. I love grilled cheese, but I always need more than one sandwich, how about you?”

“One’s okay, father.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t live with myself knowing I ordered two and you had one. That would be the height of unfairness, put things out of balance it would. I’ll order us both two and we’ll go from there. And some fries, I think we can use a plate of fries.”

I have to whisper my thank you because I know if my vocal cords move too much what self-control I have left will vanish and I will burst into tears here in this restaurant with a nice priest whose kindness overwhelms me. I am not surprised when the priest tells me this is one of the very rare times his eyes are bigger than his stomach. He asks me if I would be good enough to consider handling a third grilled cheese sandwich. I can.

GOODBYE SUNDAY: A MOTHER’S SUICIDE

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AUTHOR’S NOTE: AS I WORK ON MY MEMOIR I WILL, FROM TIME TO TIME, PUT SOME IF IT, IN-PROGRESS, ON THE BLOG. THANK YOU FOR TAKING THE TIME TO READ IT.

My mother called me shortly after 9 a.m. that Sunday morning to tell me she would end her life within the week. She was 68.

My mother said she suffered from arthritis and a mysterious condition, never fully identified, that gave her leg pain. She said no one in the medical, homeopathic and psychotherapy communities had been able to help with either condition.

The result of her pain (or the cause, I’ll never know) was a well-developed addiction to painkillers.

That Sunday morning she told me she could bear the pain no longer and the time for her death was at hand.

“I’m looking forward to the next scenery,” she said.

“Can I come see you?” I asked. My hands were trembling.

“No, Peter, that would be too much for me.”

“When?”

“I don’t know, but soon. Within a week.”

“Mom, I need to get myself together, can I call you back today, please?”

“Yes,” she said. “But not for too long, I want to make it brief. I can’t deal with other people’s emotions now.”

Over the last three years of her life my mother had developed an ever-increasing reliance on the possibility of suicide. Something she could control. And in my view, her fear of losing control played a major role in her decision to leave this world.

She seemed unable to understand – or simply could not believe – that all emotions, including anger and sadness, were a normal part of the human experience. Months before her death, this disabled understanding of the human experience made a wrenching appearance when she told me she did not believe anyone loved her.

One year before her death, when her damaged self-image led her to cliff’s edge, I intervened by reaching out to her psychotherapist, Fred Drobin, and her minister, Laurie Ferguson, a remarkable and loving woman. While our intervention was successful, it was met with displays of rage and puffed-up indignation. For weeks she would rocket the phone back into its cradle the moment she heard my voice on the line. When she finally did talk to me again, she accused me of betraying her by bringing about the intervention.

When I called her back that Sunday, I asked if she was going to tell Fred Drobin about her decision at their Monday session. I felt if she intended on telling a mental health professional, a trained mind, committed to her well-being, would come onto the scene. She said yes, she would tell him.

I asked her what her happiest memory was. “When the two of us went on tour with Joffrey in Tacoma and Seattle,” she said, without hesitating.

I began to weep. Inside I knew she was going. And then, thinking of the others in the family who had died, I said, “Mom, would you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“If you see Daddy, you know, if people are discernible, and you see him and Mommom and Poppop and Grandma and Grandpa, would you please tell them that I love them and I’m really trying to do the best I can?”

“Of course I will, Peter.”

“I’ve tried to be a good son to you these last years, Mom.”

“And you have been, Peter.”

“Mom, do you have any advise for me in life?”

And she paused, thinking, and said, “Yes. Be kind.”

“Okay.”

She then told me she had a Wednesday afternoon appointment with her minister, Laurie Ferguson. To me, this meant she was going to tell Laurie of her decision. She was making her goodbye rounds. I believed this gave me until Wednesday to decide whether or not intervention was the best choice. The Sunday afternoon conversation, our last, ended this way:

“I love you, Mom.”

“Thank you, Peter.”

“Good-bye, Mom.”

“Good-bye, Peter.”

I hung up and fell to the floor, sobbed, and tried and failed to remember the last time she told me she loved me.

That evening I placed a call to her psychotherapist, Fred Drobin, and left a message asking him to call me. He returned my call Monday afternoon and told me my mother had again threatened suicide.

I asked if he thought we should let her go. He said he didn’t know and suggested I call him at home that evening. I did. We spoke for 10 minutes or so before he ended the conversation.

“My dinner’s getting cold,” he explained.

On Tuesday I placed a called to Ray Liberati, a detective in the Orangetown Police Department. The Orangetown PD covered the area where my mother lived and I had known Ray since I was a boy. Ray Liberati was a good cop and a good man. I left a message for him. He knew my mother and had helped her out on more than one occasion.

The following day, Wednesday, August 12, Ray Liberati called me. It was sometime after 2 p.m. and I was so relieved to hear his voice.

“It’s good to hear from you,” I said. “My mother is talking about ending her life again and it feels like everyone is standing around waiting for it to happen.”

There was a brief pause.

“Peter, it did,” he said. “I was just at the house. I heard the call over the radio and went right over. You didn’t know?”

“It did what?”

“She’s gone, Peter. She died. Her minister found her, that’s the way she had it set up. Peter, I’m so sorry.”

The Wednesday appointment my mother said would be used to tell her minister of her decision had, in fact, been her the way she wanted her death discovered.

I arrived at my mother’s home less than an hour after her body had been removed. The police were gone. Laurie and some family members were there. Faces were pale, sweaty. The air did not move. At one point I wanted to throw everyone out and fling myself onto the bed where her life had ended and allow the little boy inside me to dream of holding my mother one last time.

My mother designed her suicide with great thought and care. She was found in bed with the suicide manual “Final Exit” tucked under one arm. She wore a nightgown and her Timex watch. She had surrounded herself with pictures of family and friends. I suppose she wanted to gaze at us while the drugs slowly sucked the life from her eyes.

Above her bed hung a large collage of Ballet pictures. Ballet was the greatest love of her life. Her definition of heaven, to dance throughout eternity with Fred Astaire, was a well-known piece of family lore. When I was a boy one of the only times she would let me stay up past my bed was to watch Fred Astaire’s movies over and over again. We both loved the dance and we both lived Fred Astaire moves. When I was in my early teens, I danced a lead role for the Joffrey Ballet Company.

Dance was the one arena in which the two of us could connect safely with each other when I was a child. It was there that she could allow herself to experience me and not be threatened by my intensity. And it was there, in the world of dance, that I was able to safely experience her, without have to her usual onslaught of Peter you’re-too-intense messages and because of this are mentally ill messages. Throughout my childhood I learned to believe that the words intense or melodramatic described horrible emotional deformities that were to be, if not avoided, hidden. The intense drama of her thoroughly choreographed death scene seems tragically ironic to me now.

Weeks later I would be the one to remove the last box of belongings from her home. Before I left that day, I went into the bedroom and sat on the floor and wrote in my journal – and wept.
There was, as I wrote, the bizarre belief in a mother’s omnipotence that perhaps rests in all sons, perceiving her, mother, as the strongest of them all, somehow believing that if she could choose to leave the world, then maybe, just maybe, she could choose to come back.

The movements of the mind in the wake of a mother’s suicide are movements to be allowed, not judged.

Recently I was going through her old record collection. There were the many albums of classical music we listened to as a family.

And then I saw it. An album cover I’d never seen before. It was a collection of songs sung by Fred Astaire. And there, at the bottom, in a handwritten script with a movement as exquisite as his dancing, it read, “For Virginia Kahrmann, Fred Astaire.”

I am sure she is a wonderful partner.

KAHRMANN MEMOIR – CHAPTERS 1 & 2

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Chapter 1

I DON’T UNDERSTAND

I am dying on the ground bleeding to death and I don’t understand. I wasn’t bothering anybody. I was just going to work, minding my own business. I wasn’t doing anything wrong and now I’m on the ground dying.

I’m 30 years old and just a little while ago I’m walking down Bergen Street to pick up my cab from the fleet garage. I have a block and a half to go. I hear the sound of keys behind me. A hand grabs my shoulder and a kid with wild floating eyes is pointing a gun at my head and he says, “Don’t fucking move.”

I say, “I won’t,” and I look away because I don’t want him thinking I’ll remember his face.

The gun’s against my head and somebody’s behind me now going through my pockets and getting the sixty-three dollars I have to lease the cab today. I’m waiting for wild floating eyes to hit me on the head with the gun because I know he will so they can get a running head start. But he doesn’t hit me at all. He shoots me.

I’m on the ground and feel nothing neck down. Nothing. I can’t see. The top of my head feels like it’s been blown off there is so much pressure. I open my eyes and I can’t see and can’t feel and I know I’m going to die.

There’s Jennifer’s face listening to someone tell her Daddy’s dead and maybe if I can get up and die trying to get to the hospital she’ll know I didn’t give up. She’ll know I tried the best I could. I can leave her a courage note that way – if I can only get up.

A dark damp blanket tightens around me and I think of Daddy and how he died when I was fifteen so if he can go from here to there, from life to death, maybe it’s okay then. Maybe it’s not so bad dying. Now I feel less scared. Now I can see smoky light and dark images and shapes and they make little sense to me. Jesus fucking Christ I’m dying and I’m seeing a black and white movie and I don’t understand.

The smoke clears for me and I see I’m on the sidewalk on my right side. I see a tree near me.

I’m standing and I don’t remember getting up, I’m just glad I’m standing. I lift my hand to my head and blood hits my hand before it gets there. I untie my blue hooded sweatshirt around my waist and press it against my head to stop the bleeding.

Chapter 2

“OOF!”

I am six years old watching my father at his desk reading and marking college papers. He teaches English in Columbia and John Jay College for Criminal Justice. I am sitting at the foot of his twin bed because it faces his desk. He and my mother have separate rooms. They say it’s because my father snores which is true and my mother is a light sleeper which is also true.

I love watching my father work. He wears half-glasses and a draftsman’s light is clamped to his desk. Smoke from his cigarette curls like a white snake up to the light and rolls along the length of the flourescent bulb before rising up and disappearing into thin air. Behind him is a wall of books. I feel a surge of love for him, do an end run around the desk and throw my arms around him. He says, pretending I’ve knocked the wind out of him. We laugh and hold each other and then I go back to my seat on the bed and return to watching him. He returns to his papers. I run and hug him a lot like this and he always hugs me back.

I am two, three, four and I already know my parents are God. Everybody knows their parents are God. I’m on to this right from the start. My mother isn’t even looking when she catches me doing something I’m not supposed to.

She says, “I have eyes in the back of my head, young man. I do. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up too.”

I know those eyes are in the back of her head somewhere because she says she never lies so I know they’re ther. I can’t find them no matter how hard I search her graying hair, but they’re there alright.

My parents are in charge of everything, of course, because they are God. On Sunday’s we go to the Naurashaun Presbyterian Church. I don’t understand this because my parents are God and they live with me. The Reverend Bill Daniel talks about God like he is invisible or something but I’m not fooled for a minute because I have God sitting on either side of me. Why don’t they just say so? Why don’t they just admit it?