Reply to Re: The Passing of CocoMonkey
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Another shtick we had was to try to outdo each other in how poor we used to be. As in:
“ This spaghetti sauce has onions in it”
“Well in my day we would have been glad to have any spaghetti sauce at all.”
“You had sauce? Why we’d have killed for sauce. We had just noodles. And we were glad to have them!”
“Noodles? You had noodles? You must have been rich! We had just the one noodle. Drank the water off of that one noodle for years. And considered ourselves lucky!”
“You had a noodle?? We knew some rich folks in the next county that had themselves a noodle. We only had dirt. We ate dirt every meal and thanked the lord we had that.”
And so on. Until Lyla or Melissa would yell at us and make us stop.
Back to Pride.
I think it is easy to see why I would be proud of my son.
But as my partner Ed Baxa, pointed out at the recent service for our friend John Hamilton, we tend to make our departed loved ones into a saint. And that was certainly the beatification of John.
But Tim was no saint. Along with all the joy and good qualities I’ve described there was the pain and challenges and dashed hopes of dealing with his mental illness.
A few years ago Tim and I were at the Mayo clinic in Jacksonville and Dr. Beth Rush told me something that really changed things for me. She said that some people are just stupid or just lazy or just mean. Some people just make bad choices. But some people have an illness. Their wiring is off. As Tim always described it, they have a broken brain. Dr. Rush said that if we are angry, frustrated, or at a loss we should be angry and frustrated with the illness not with Tim. We wouldn’t be mad at Tim if he had cancer or heart disease. That made sense to me. But with mental illness it is hard to do. Because the personality, the essence of who they are is all mixed up with the illness. But I tried. And I did better for trying to see it.
I’m angry. And anger and I are old friends. I know anger well. I am so mad. But I’m mad at the disease. At the unfairness of it. That this illness took our precious Tim away.
Once at a rough session with me and Tim and Dr. March I tried to let Tim know that I understood. I told him that life is a road. And some people had a smooth well paved road. Others had potholes and bumps. Others had hills to climb. But that Tim had a mountain in his road. That he had to go down that road anyway and we would help him climb that unfair mountain.
Tim paused, and said in that way of his, “Dad, your analogy is flawed. I’m not on that road. I am in a pit off to the side of the road. Stuck in deep mud. If I am lucky I get my head up enough to see that there is a road. But I’m never going to get out of the pit to face that mountain.”
I’m almost done.
Tim and I didn’t talk about death all that much. Except for me to tell him to damn well stay alive. But he did love one particular eulogy. A Monty Python one of course. John Cleese gave a very memorable speech at the early passing of Graham Chapman. I apologize for the shock but I’m going to read an excerpt. For you, Tim. This is for you.
“Graham Chapman, co-author of the ‘Parrot Sketch,’ is no more.
He has ceased to be, bereft of life, he rests in peace, he has kicked the bucket, hopped the twig, bit the dust, snuffed it, breathed his last, and gone to meet the Great Head of Light Entertainment in the sky, and I guess that we’re all thinking how sad it is that a man of such talent, such capability and kindness, of such unusual intelligence should now be so suddenly spirited away at the age of only forty-eight, before he’d achieved many of the things of which he was capable, and before he’d had enough fun.
Well, I feel that I should say, “Nonsense. Good riddance to him, the freeloading dink! I hope he fries. ”
And the reason I feel I should say this is, he would never forgive me if I didn’t, if I threw away this glorious opportunity to shock you all on his behalf. Anything for him but mindless good taste. I could hear him whispering in my ear last night as I was writing this:
‘All right, Cleese, you’re very proud of being the very first person to ever say shit on British television. If this service is really just for starters, I want you to be the first person ever at a British memorial service to say duck!’
You see, the trouble is, I can’t. If he were here with me now I would probably have the courage, because he always emboldened me. But the truth is, I lack his balls, his splendid defiance. And so I’ll have to content myself instead with saying ‘Betty Mardsen…’
That’s it. Goodbye Tim. You will always be in my heart.
Oh. One more thing…
“You had dirt?? You were so lucky! All we had were rocks. Broke out all our teeth. You ever try to gum a rock?”
Thomas K. Maurer
“ This spaghetti sauce has onions in it”
“Well in my day we would have been glad to have any spaghetti sauce at all.”
“You had sauce? Why we’d have killed for sauce. We had just noodles. And we were glad to have them!”
“Noodles? You had noodles? You must have been rich! We had just the one noodle. Drank the water off of that one noodle for years. And considered ourselves lucky!”
“You had a noodle?? We knew some rich folks in the next county that had themselves a noodle. We only had dirt. We ate dirt every meal and thanked the lord we had that.”
And so on. Until Lyla or Melissa would yell at us and make us stop.
Back to Pride.
I think it is easy to see why I would be proud of my son.
But as my partner Ed Baxa, pointed out at the recent service for our friend John Hamilton, we tend to make our departed loved ones into a saint. And that was certainly the beatification of John.
But Tim was no saint. Along with all the joy and good qualities I’ve described there was the pain and challenges and dashed hopes of dealing with his mental illness.
A few years ago Tim and I were at the Mayo clinic in Jacksonville and Dr. Beth Rush told me something that really changed things for me. She said that some people are just stupid or just lazy or just mean. Some people just make bad choices. But some people have an illness. Their wiring is off. As Tim always described it, they have a broken brain. Dr. Rush said that if we are angry, frustrated, or at a loss we should be angry and frustrated with the illness not with Tim. We wouldn’t be mad at Tim if he had cancer or heart disease. That made sense to me. But with mental illness it is hard to do. Because the personality, the essence of who they are is all mixed up with the illness. But I tried. And I did better for trying to see it.
I’m angry. And anger and I are old friends. I know anger well. I am so mad. But I’m mad at the disease. At the unfairness of it. That this illness took our precious Tim away.
Once at a rough session with me and Tim and Dr. March I tried to let Tim know that I understood. I told him that life is a road. And some people had a smooth well paved road. Others had potholes and bumps. Others had hills to climb. But that Tim had a mountain in his road. That he had to go down that road anyway and we would help him climb that unfair mountain.
Tim paused, and said in that way of his, “Dad, your analogy is flawed. I’m not on that road. I am in a pit off to the side of the road. Stuck in deep mud. If I am lucky I get my head up enough to see that there is a road. But I’m never going to get out of the pit to face that mountain.”
I’m almost done.
Tim and I didn’t talk about death all that much. Except for me to tell him to damn well stay alive. But he did love one particular eulogy. A Monty Python one of course. John Cleese gave a very memorable speech at the early passing of Graham Chapman. I apologize for the shock but I’m going to read an excerpt. For you, Tim. This is for you.
“Graham Chapman, co-author of the ‘Parrot Sketch,’ is no more.
He has ceased to be, bereft of life, he rests in peace, he has kicked the bucket, hopped the twig, bit the dust, snuffed it, breathed his last, and gone to meet the Great Head of Light Entertainment in the sky, and I guess that we’re all thinking how sad it is that a man of such talent, such capability and kindness, of such unusual intelligence should now be so suddenly spirited away at the age of only forty-eight, before he’d achieved many of the things of which he was capable, and before he’d had enough fun.
Well, I feel that I should say, “Nonsense. Good riddance to him, the freeloading dink! I hope he fries. ”
And the reason I feel I should say this is, he would never forgive me if I didn’t, if I threw away this glorious opportunity to shock you all on his behalf. Anything for him but mindless good taste. I could hear him whispering in my ear last night as I was writing this:
‘All right, Cleese, you’re very proud of being the very first person to ever say shit on British television. If this service is really just for starters, I want you to be the first person ever at a British memorial service to say duck!’
You see, the trouble is, I can’t. If he were here with me now I would probably have the courage, because he always emboldened me. But the truth is, I lack his balls, his splendid defiance. And so I’ll have to content myself instead with saying ‘Betty Mardsen…’
That’s it. Goodbye Tim. You will always be in my heart.
Oh. One more thing…
“You had dirt?? You were so lucky! All we had were rocks. Broke out all our teeth. You ever try to gum a rock?”
Thomas K. Maurer
