All posts by Kevin Makice

J and K in the '80s

Give It Away

Grief, Memories, , , , , , ,

When my father-in-law died a couple years ago, I saw my wife struggle with every new holiday. Every special event brought with it a memory shared with her dad. Living with grief may become more manageable as time passes, but it also seems most intense on the one day dedicated to celebrating a life. When there are no longer candles to add to the cake, a birthday can become the lightning rod for accumulated sorrow.

For most of his life, my birthday greetings to Jeff Poehlmann were belated. My memory is reliable, but for whatever reason my brain locked in February 26th as Jeff’s big day. Or the 22nd. Or the 12th. Apparently, every day in February had the potential to be his birthday, and I usually got it wrong. Even back in the years where he hosted a party as a clear indicator, I figured his parents had just arranged it on a different day out of some convenience. It really wasn’t until Facebook offered regular reminders that it finally sunk in:

Today, in fact, is Jeff’s birthday.

Since attending a memorial gathering of friends from his hometown in early December, I have looked for things to distract me from the biggest feelings. At first, it wasn’t possible. I listened to the music he left behind on repeat for days. The necessities of the holiday season, however, coupled with a complicated move across town gave me reasons not to think too much about my grief. It flared up from time to time, but there was always something in front of me that needed attention, allowing me to procrastinate a little longer with the hope it would evaporate as I multitasked.

Today, however, is the day dedicated to celebrating Jeff’s life. Facebook shows me his picture, as if he were still here, and I can no longer set aside my grief and my guilt.

All you have is just a kind word

Last night, I ate dinner at a Buddhist monastery here in Indiana. After food had been served and veggies eaten, a celebration of the Lunar New Year began. Before the visiting Mongolians sang and danced, some locals with guitars made use of the microphones.

One of those songs was credited to Johnny Cash, one of Jeff’s favorite performers. Unearthed from the 5th track of his 55th album, it begins:

Well, I woke up this morning I had something on my face.
It was still there when I brushed my teeth, still there when I shaved.
I showed it to my neighbor, and he broke into a grin.

I gave it away. I gave it away.

Already braced for Facebook’s inevitable reminder, when I heard those words—first written by Tom T. Hall about the time I met Jeff in the 1970’s—my grief re-entered the room.

Much of my online time this weekend was spent digging for past birthday greetings on Facebook and email to remind myself how J and I recognized each other’s special day. The messages were mostly brief and filled with well-wishing of health and happiness. Occasionally, we would express a deeper gratitude for keeping each other in our lives, but they were mostly limited to a sentence or two meant to say simply, “I remember you.”

Jeff also made a point of replying to those messages. He would reflect the well-wishing back to me and turn his day into a shared one that became special for me, too. Looking through emails and Facebook threads, I notice how often this happened elsewhere, on the other special days of the year. Jeff’s way of being in the world was to fill it with kindness.

Smiles don’t cost money. Give it away, give it away.
Maybe all you have is just a kind word you can say.

Give it away, give it away.

The most Jeff song ever.

Love Someone Sometime

Over the years, I watched apprehensively as others around me coped with the death of close family. Though the parade of years has taken grandparents, uncles and a few friends from me, the people I have known the longest in my life—my parents and sister—are still alive, as are the other people who have shared my home. As I suffer my grief over losing a friend, I can only imagine how exponentially more intense it is for Jeff’s family.

Today, as I celebrate his birth, I am compelled to confront his death. It isn’t easy for me.

The thing that helps me the most in such struggles is to reflect on who this man was and list the traits that defined him, both flaws and strengths. I close my eyes and imagine these traits as tangible gifts, ones that can be lifted from his body to take home and use. From my friend now, I take the biggest gift—Love. To love more is the way I choose to honor and remember Jeff.

Although it helps me to think of it that way, Jeff’s love is not really something I took. He gave me this gift a long time ago. He gave it to everyone he met, and to those he never knew. In his best Johnny Cash, he gave it away.

Love someone sometime. Give it away, give it away.

Especially today.

Screenshot of the Spotify playlist

Wish You Were Here

Grief, , , , , ,

Last weekend, I went back to the town Jeff and I shared as kids.

Woodstock is quiet and comfortable, with a picturesque central square ringed by historic buildings. On every block, a house holds some faint memory that at once fills me with glee and melancholy. My hometown invites me to return, but it never seems to allow me to go back.

The occasion of this trip was to celebrate Jeff’s life. Our friends gathered across generations for hugs, laughs and tears. For my part, I had many things I intended to say but struggled to find those words when I finally stepped to the microphone. Later, when the crew moved north to a karaoke bar, I nearly drowned in a flood of memories while crossing the Square. Instead, I walked alone on rainy streets for hours until it became tomorrow.

To prepare for this night, Jeff made a playlist. In the din of conversation, however, his music became background noise whose message was overlooked. I wanted to listen to the playlist on the long ride back to Indiana, but I couldn’t find it on Spotify. When Jeff’s brother sent me the link that night, I couldn’t stop listening.

Music is a conversation

I don’t know if the order was important, but the first song in Jeff’s Funeral Mix is the Pink Floyd classic, “Wish You Were Here.” That recording begins with someone tuning channels on an old radio, the sound initially only flowing into my right ear. Once the familiar riff begins, the song switches to stereo and doesn’t let go. It was as if Jeff was teasing me, making me think my headphones are broken only to let me off the hook before the joke went too far.

From the start, I could hear Jeff speaking through every song.

Back in August, just two months before he died, Jeff wrote about the importance of curating playlists. For the times when his family, friends, and support group were not available, music was his companion:

Half the therapy is in constructing the lists themselves, some of which I have not even had time to really listen to. But I know the tunes and I know why they are included in each list, and just knowing that, having that familiarity, sometimes feels enough.

I had this in my mind as I listened to the music Jeff had assembled. The selections are eclectic, mixing rock with country, rap, jazz and novelty songs. Jeff chose every one of them for reasons that are not always obvious, reasons that I may never understand. Together, the songs become a long conversation, like the kind that unfold on distant car rides or during midnight phone calls.

Even without the luxury of a fresh take on his world, Jeff left us a full half-day of thoughts and feelings packed into his playlist. In one click, I can shuffle his songs into a new order and let him talk to me about something new.

Sometimes, Jeff tells me it is time for him to go. Later, he comforts me. There are Monty Python skits and children’s lullabies for humor and whimsy. He speaks directly to his family in both overt and subtle ways. Sometimes, he shares what he is feeling about leaving us, or about playing with the bad cards he was dealt. For songs with no clear message, I am left to speculate what Jeff might have told me about his music if I had listened sooner.

We have time for love

Not being a Spotify guy, I have recreated the playlist in Apple Music for my own convenience. Not everything translated across platforms, though, so a handful of songs are missing or differ from the exact version Jeff chose. I also added two songs of special importance to me, when I think of my friend.

The first is Louis Armstrong’s contribution to the James Bond canon, “We Have All the Time in the World.” It harkens back to one of our first projects, a short film at a camp at Indiana State University in 1985. This song was the joke, moving slowly and sweetly as young Jeff frantically scrambled on screen to avoid being late for class. As with most of my projects, I didn’t quite finish, but the memory of our collaboration endures.

The second is a song from a musical I have never seen. I heard it by chance on the drive south out of Woodstock, on one of my wife’s playlists that we chose when I couldn’t find Jeff on Spotify. Ben Platt’s “For Forever” is sung by a lonely kid who imagines a close friendship with a classmate he didn’t really know. I cried as I listened, both for the strong bond the lyrics describe and for the underlying guilt echoing in the context of the plot, making me question the many times I should have been a better friend.

With my two additions, I listen to Jeff’s playlist over and over because I need our conversations to continue, even if they are imagined. I need Jeff to tell me that it was time for him to go, but it will be OK. I want him to share his pain and then crack a joke or find a way to laugh at his circumstance in the next song. I want him to express love for his family and for me, and I want him to do so for forever.

213 songs can be rearranged in many ways. With this gift, Jeff has invited me to an infinite number of conversations with him, each consuming up to a half day. That’s more than enough love to last a lifetime.

Bar Chart of first month of contributions to Aubrey's Fund

Support Jeff on #GivingTuesday

Fundraising, , , , ,

It has been a month since the sad news of Jeff’s passing. His death ended four years of writing about his experience with lung cancer, but the courage, strength and hope arising from his words persevere. We can continue to be inspired by his optimism and give back to help support his most important project.

A primary concern for Jeff throughout his journey was how to secure future education for his daughter, Aubrey, if he wasn’t around to help. On October 25th, his family took a step to address this by starting a crowdfunding campaign for Aubrey. In the four weeks since, 129 people have contributed over $22,000 toward a goal that would give Jeff’s daughter the financial support to choose her college in 2023.

The target goal was set high enough to meet the projected costs of a four-year undergraduate education. While $150,000 is a daunting amount, that goal does not need to be reached today. We’ll get there by raising $30,000 each year before the first tuition bill comes due. That’s also $2,500 per month, a little more than the average rent in Los Angeles.

It is a goal that is ultimately met through ongoing contributions, such as 100 friends giving $25 monthly, or 500 giving just $5. Given the size of J’s circle and the time to reach this goal, success is possible.

In the initial month of the campaign, most donations were between $100 and $200. The other half of the contributions falls equally between smaller amounts less than $100 and larger donations greater than $200. If you have the resource and the inclination to contribute, imagine taking Jeff out for coffee or dinner and how many times you would want to do that over the course of a year. Consider donating that amount to support Jeff’s passion project for this year.

On this #GivingTuesday, please consider donating to Aubrey’s Education Fund to help reach this first-year goal of $30,000. Together, I know we can make his final project a success.

Young Jeff in the dim light of the WHS dressing room

Losing Bits

Grief, , , , , , , ,

Earlier this month, my computer broke. It was a long time coming, an inevitable journey for a laptop Apple now calls “obsolete.” Having already suffered everything from missing screws to intermittent lines showing the age of the screen,  the slowness eventually made it impossible to complete a backup. My data at risk, I brought the computer in for care.

A week and a few hundred dollars later, a new solid state hard drive lived in my laptop with most of the age dusted off. However, the replaced drive wouldn’t release all of its data and cost me some applications and my bearings. Some of the bits have not yet returned. Some never will.

I’ve experienced other catastrophic computer failures in my life. Despite devoted backup practices, a screenplay was once eaten by the clicking of a SyQuest drive, and a similar thing happened with Iomega a few years later. In both cases, large chunks of my life disappeared, including my first decade of email activity. While I don’t need to every day, more than once I have wanted to look for something old, something that did not survive the waves of technology.

Much of my anxiety about this particular digital crisis stems from the death of my friend, Jeff. The last complete backup I was able to get came in July. I was therefore confident I would avoid starting completely from scratch but assured that no new writing or other correspondence since would be recovered from that backup. Many of our thoughts and interactions are on social media, but some files I wouldn’t be able to recreate.

Death never disrupted my home. Meaning, I have never had the experience of walking past a silent room knowing someone I love used to occupy that space. TV and movies tell me this is a thing the bereaved have to face: what to do with the silent room.

One of the things I have done over the past few weeks is to look at old yearbooks, the social media of my youth. I paged through surviving yearbooks from Freshman, Sophomore and Senior years—what happened to my Junior year, I don’t know—looking at pictures of Jeff and for the words he left for me. This, and a handful of artifacts preserved in some Tupperware box, are the tangible proof of our connection. As long as I keep them close and don’t write on them further, they remain as they were and always will be.

In the decades that followed high school—constituting the bulk of our relationship—the artifacts are mostly digital. While J was always a good letter writer, we embraced email to embrace each other. From politics to entertainment, these remote exchanges left a sizable digital footprint. I don’t have many pictures of us together as adults, but I had the emails. Like the yearbooks, to preserve them I only had to keep them safe.

As I type, I still hope to read them again. Most of my email was sent through a POP account, which ultimately means that the only copy likely in existence is what was on my laptop. Through much effort, I believe I have my email files back on my laptop, but they remain invisible to me when I open the application to view them. Leaving them in that state for the moment, I draw comfort in the uncertainty. I don’t know if they are forever lost, which is better than knowing for sure.

These bits comprise the digital life I have created with Jeff. Every time I open my laptop, I walk past this virtual room, knowing there is an open invitation to walk inside and sit. I can venture in and see him exactly as he was. I can keep my memories fresh. Maybe that is what I fear most about losing these messages: Without them, my memories will fade and Jeff will disappear.

There was a moment in this process of restoration when I launched my computer and saw nothing familiar. My Chrome browser lost all of its open tabs. Many applications reset to scratch. Once I found where that information lived—and realized the techs had not restored a hidden directory—I was able to get those things back.

I launched Chrome to check my work. In my Facebook window, a chat with Jeff reappeared, right where I left it. It contained the last interaction I had with him. I told him I loved him, he told me he loved me, and we ended with a joke. In this new moment, I am relieved to see his room still exists. I read it as a new message saying everything will be all right.

Today, that’s enough. I’m walking away knowing he’s in there, somewhere.

Carter Mondale pin

Voting With Jeff

Grief, , , ,

Today is Election Day, so declared in 1845. It was a practical decision that accounted for a number of factors our young nation was facing.

We recognized the realities of our agrarian nature by scheduling a vote after harvest season, but not so far into winter as to make northern roads impassable from snow. We saw the effects of technology improving our communications, compounding the advantages of some states voting later than others, and so we made everyone in the U.S. vote on the same day. We chose Tuesday so as not to interfere with either Sabbath or Market Day, two institutions of our society. We tossed in the specificity of waiting until after the first Monday of November to keep the vote of electors a consistent 29 days apart.

Today is that day. While some of the magic has dulled from widespread adoption of early voting, I am still an open-presents-on-Christmas kind of guy. I like the pageantry, taking the day off to bask in democracy and share the experience with friends.

One of those friends, however, is now gone.

The earliest conversations Jeff and I had about politics came during our time at Northwood Elementary School. At some point, our teachers taught us about the election process by having us pick sides, hold up signs, and pretend we were at a national convention. Despite living in a Republican county, I started on Team Carter and never looked back. I’m certain Jeff wasn’t on my side of the fence initially, but as the years progressed we found common ground in the same pasture.

Politics drove much of our conversation over the years. We wrote—poorly—articles with political themes for the LeProCon, our high school periodical. We exchanged letters in college, occasionally commenting on the different politics of the Midwest and California. Long before social media, we emailed our debates. At some point, frustrated with the crop of politicians and policies, we created ThirdParty.org to be a forum for alternative politics. Four decades into our relationship, our politics was still central to our interactions.

On this particular Tuesday, I find myself missing Jeff more than any point since I got the sad news of his death. This is the kind of day we lived for, with high stakes following a long period of activism.

I want to talk to him about walking for Liz Watson, my local candidate for Congress, and why it took this long to knock on doors and donate meaningfully to a campaign. I want to tell him when our Indiana polls close and inquire about his own ballot choices. I want to stay up late into the night (for me) to watch the results come in, looking for virtual high fives or hugs, depending on the results. I want to conspire once again on impractical projects to change the world.

Today, I find myself angry at the arbitrary choice to vote on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November. I don’t know if Jeff was able to vote this year. California’s early voting started on October 8th, and it is conceivable he might have stopped his last Uber at a polling center somewhere, just in case, or filled out an absentee ballot as a precaution. Probably not, though. When it came to voting, he was an open-presents-on-Christmas kind of guy, and an eternal optimist. I find myself cursing agrarian society and the Sabbath and Market Day and all of the things that conspired to keep Jeff from enjoying today.

I found an old Carter/Mondale button in my son’s car. It reminded me of those early political conversations with Jeff, so I pinned it to my chest. I carried Jeff with me to the polls, and he helped me fill out my ballot.

Today, should you be on the fence about voting, please let Jeff take you to the polls.

 

 

hands on wall to make 50

Beginning

Grief, , , , ,

“How do I begin?”

This is the question that paralyzes me most when facing the death of someone I know and love. As I start to consider possible answers, my mind and my heart talk over each other with a swirl of suggestions that avoids consensus. I get stuck between a desire to connect with others and the guilt over not doing enough while my friend was alive, between fixing the unfixable and making a bedsheet fort where I will live the rest of my days. I want to do everything and absolutely nothing. How do I begin?

Just Bad for You is an archive of my friend Jeff Poehlmann’s experience living through a serious health challenge that ultimately cost him his life and us his voice. It is a space he made to help himself and others understand the particulars of lung cancer and how to live beyond the prognosis. From the testimonials on Facebook and LungCancer.net, where he spent the past year as a contributing writer, Jeff’s reach proved considerable. While he may not be here to continue publishing, Jeff did leave works-in-progress and a community of friends who can curate and contribute to the continuing story of what makes life meaningful.

In the wake of his death, I find it both comforting and intimidating to read and hear his words. Through his podcast, Jeff accompanies me on walking commutes to work, though usually only at the end of the day for fear I may be rendered useless. I see a dozen or so drafts in his queue, each started at different stages of his health journey, but I cannot yet bring myself to touch them.

With a brain and heart muddled in grief, I don’t have a clear idea how this blog will evolve. Perhaps it will be a place to process his life and our loss, or expand as a resource for the state of care for this and other diseases. Regardless, I do know that I want it to continue.

For four years, Jeff wrote about what he knew, what he learned, and most poignantly what he was experiencing. I do not have lung cancer. What I am experiencing now is loss and the challenge of regaining forward momentum in a world without Jeff. For a little while at least, that’s what this blog may focus on. We’ll draw from the strength he showed, even when not physically at his best, and the time he made to love the world.

I do not expect to be alone in this. Others who knew him or were impacted by his story may contribute as well, by sharing memories of Jeff that continue to resonate in his absence or by making meaning from the struggles they endure. For the moment, this space is for us.

Caring for Jeff’s community, however, requires starting with something. Right now, this is where I am and what I can do. Tomorrow, I will know I have already begun.