New Years Baby Came Riding a Dead Horse

Quite frankly I'd rather be riding one of these horses on the beach.

New Year's Day started with death. I got up and saw the news coverage of the terrorist attack in New Orleans, where I still have plenty of friends and family living. I kept reading through the coverage obsessively, trying to make sense of the pathway up Canal St to a tight turn onto Bourbon St. It's too tight of a turn for the driver to get much speed going, and just like that my mind has been down a conspiracy rabbit hole. Jim had to drag me away to a New Year's Day party at the house of a friend. I did not enjoy myself because my mind kept working it's way back down to New Orleans worrying while the sorriest excuse for a pile of strange foolishly preening self-focused Gringos kept yammering on about inanities around me.

 Life has been a pile of more strange involving deaths since the first of the year. Jim's aunt Ramona died, his last living relative from his parents generation. Tomorrow I take him to the airport to make a 72 hour turn around flight to attend the funeral. Why this aunt and why now? He seems to be particularly upset about her death and keeps mentioning that she's the last of the Greatest Generation. I think it's the last vestige of his grief over his parents passings years ago.

President Jimmy Carter died as well, Jim's favorite president and it was another death that just shook him up. I wasn't so affected as he was by the death, I was more perturbed by the ridiculous paparazzi photos taken with a long lens that showed a wizened wheelchair bound man back in July. It was a mercy he finally passed. But for Jim he always looked up to Mr. Jimmy. I cannot tell you how many times we had to take a side quest into Plains, Georgia to sit in his Bible study class on our way down to Louisiana from our home in Virginia. Jim took the death hard.

It wasn't until a few days later that death came and shook me up. Ramona and Mr. Jimmy were expected. Wayne Osmond was not! He's the same age as my own dear husband and his sudden death from a stroke was unexpected. Many years before when I'd been a twelve year old struggling with a burgeoning sexuality I'd fallen completely in lust with the cleanest boys in the land - the Osmonds. Donny being my favorite with Wayne being a close second. I still have wonderful memories of my days in teenybopper-hood, of driving my daddy insane to take me and six of my closest girlfriends to an Osmond concert in City Park Stadium in New Orleans along with a monthly ritual scouring of the local news stands for the latest issues of 16 Magazine and Tiger Beat. The walls of my room were papered with images of the Osmonds. Life was so simple back then. Somewhere in my photos I have one very grainy photo of myself in my Osmond-bedecked room.

On Thursday morning we were awoken early by a disturbing phone call from our friend Therese. She was crying and babbling, not making much sense asking Jim to stop by right away. Therese is a neighbor of ours, just down the road a bit. Next door to the silly church secretary and her r-u-n-n-o-f-t husband. Jim headed down while I had my first cup of coffee out on our pool deck. As I sat there I saw something I've never seen before, a large cat traveling across our little acre on the tree tops. Guanacaste is home to a few different kinds of pumas and cougars. A strange rare occurrence!

Jim came home a few moments later to tell me that Therese had called because her husband AJ had passed. When Jim got there the police and the ambulance were leaving after filling out the paperwork needed when you die here in Costa Rica. AJ was laid out on the living room sofa awaiting what happens next. Jim came home slightly freaked out over having seen a dead body. 

AJ was the dude who peed on my sofa shortly after we moved in. He was so soused he sat there with pee dripping down. The only time I've ever had to say to someone "Excuse me, but you are peeing on my sofa! Can you please not do that?" AJ lived in the pyramid house I was speaking of just the other day. We haven't seen AJ in quite some time.

Jim went to class and I ended up going back over to AJ's, cigarette fumes or no, and helped with the washing and laying out. Six am he was eating his Wheaties, keeled over dead from a heart attack before he hit the floor. Noon he was being lowered, all clean, pressed and dressed, into a simple  tropical wood coffin. Yesterday was the funeral. It was simple, held outdoors at the local cemetery by the local Mormon church. All this time I had no idea that his wife was Mormon. I guess that explains why they started rebuffing Jim's invitations to join him at the littlest revival church in the jungle! Gawd, I cringe every single time Jim's ridiculous pastor friend refers to his church that way.

It was simple and simply moving. A sad end to another life. Jim was disturbed that none of the expat community, not his silly church secretary, no one but us and a pile of Ticos showed up for the funeral. I wasn't surprised. Much of the expat community will not turn out for things like funerals unless it directly involves someone or something they adore. Sad. 

My phone finally died. Yesterday I got a brand new Iphone. I'm pretty happy about that!

The dryer that's been limping along with various things wrong with it finally died. No matter because it's dry season and I seldom use it then. But when I went to pull out my pile of drying racks they are all twisted and broken. Could not find a replacement anywhere in the Tamarindo area. Tomorrow I go to Liberia to drop Jim at the airport and buy two new ones at Price Smart. 

I'm sick of death, so I've been experiencing life by gardening hard this last week. I'm going to be picking up a few new plants tomorrow as well and some lawn furniture. Bring on life please! I hope Jim's flight is not canceled or delayed by the coming snow in the States and the fact that the Liberia airport has had to play the 'we're open, we're closed' limbo over continuing potholes on the lone runway. So thankful not to be traveling to Cincinnati with Jim!