[MD] Hal Darts

[John Carl]

Well it's been a quiet week in my hometown, my mom's husband Hal died.
Expectedly.

Everybody who watched it happen, admired his humor and good grace till the
end.  Everybody who watched his process said, "that's the way I'd do it - no
chemotherapy"  Having witnessed my wife's mom's passing, and comparing it to
Hal's, not as if that were enough of a sampling to hold any statistical
significance mind you, but the difference was like night and day.  Lu's mom
really suffered from the chemo and the effects, and lasted about three
months after her diagnosis, most of it absolutely miserable.

Hal had the same cancer (lung) and opted for a natural treatment and died
anyway, but lasted for a year and a half and he never really suffered, just
got shorter and shorter of breath.  His last day, he was pretty out of it.
On sunday, he said he thought he'd be gone on wed. and he was right.  Small
satisfaction, to be proven right in one's prediction about the day you die.

He died at home, surrounded by loved ones and family and peace.  He had two
packages of Depends - adult diapers - and only used one out of those
packages and didn't mess that one up.

Hal never wanted to be a bother.

He succeeded.

He didn't always hit what he aimed at.  In fact, his greatest claim to fame
might just be a phrase that derived from his creative misses.  "Hal darts",
is a term recognized in almost any bar in Grass Valley where there's a dart
board, and has been heard being used in places as far afield as Reno and the
Bay Area and is understood in dart shops in Sacramento and all over.  It
refers to a lucky miss where a player is aiming at the trip 20, and hits the
trip 18 instead.  It's a miss, but its a GOOD miss.    And very rare for
good players who usually just miss a little bit and hit the 1 or the 5 right
next to the 20 instead of landing all the way over in the 18 - and not just
a single 18, but a trip 18 to boot.  To do it so consistently that you get
the miss named after you takes some doing and I have probably more insight
into the mechanics of the miss, than anyone alive.  Which makes it incumbent
upon me to explicate to the world at next Sunday's memorial service.

I'm  the chief Yougoogleyizer (as Derek Zoolander calls it) of the family
due to past performances at my daughter's funeral and my mother-in-law's.  A
rarely needed skill, but vital in the moment it is needed.

Just as funerals are vital to a family's sustenance and continuance.  You'd
think they'd be counter-productive to social adhesion, but its funny how the
opposite is true. Just like Hal Darts, the creative miss from what we aim
for turns out to be better than we'd imagined at the outset.

First of all, the obvious.  With one old person out of the way, there's now
more room for the young.  Which by no means delights the young.  They seem
the most upset when they find out that individuals are not permanent.  But
what happens is, their upset turns to idealization, and the things they
appreciate most about the lost loved ones, becomes part of their behavioral
repertoire.

Second, old arguments and feuds seem to dissipate at a funeral.  We get too
locked into static grievances, which in the face of actual death look stupid
and make it easy to look each other in the face anew and move on in positive
ways.  I've seen it repeated over and over, in my family and other's as
well.  Funerals are great for burying hatchets as well as corpses.

And as for killing all intellectual patterns, well funerals are good for
that as well.  Not only in the deceased, but in the survivors as they cope
with a new reality with one less person to interact - starting most strongly
of course, with the widow left behind.  My mom and Hal married the same year
my wife and I did.  And my brother and his wife, who just divorced this
year.  1988 was a fecund year for marriages.

The theme of my eulogy, will be, of course, "Hal Darts".  Not only is it
obvious, but there's quite a bit to say.  Figuring out how to put it
together is a tricky bit of writing.  You want to convey information in an
eulogy, but more important than anything is the right emotional tone.
Preachers usually suck at it.  They're all about making the conversion,
manipulating the masses who usually wouldn't get caught dead in a church
(ha-ha) by scaring the shit out of them and promising them glory and
reunification.  If you really think about the true processes of grief and
healing, you'll agree with me that this is an insanely evil thing to do, and
one reason preachers are (and should be) widely reviled.

Plastering their facile bandaid theologies over a family's real and
devastating wounds, and pretending to be kind in doing so.  What a farce.

I'm determined this time, to get the last word.  In the past, I have come
upon some very effective and moving themes in my eulogy, only to have the
mood completely undone by a sappy and stupid sermonologist intent on scoring
his points.  I figure, let the man have his say, its his church after all,
but if I can get the last word, perhaps I can prevent the preservation of
platitudinous libels, on and on into the future forevermore.


Songs help.  A friend and I came up with a song for my daughter's funeral,
and it made such a difference to me.  I don't know why, but it did.
Accurately portraying my grief in words and music, was SO very cathartic.  I
don't perform the songs, I just write them.  I gotta good one for Hal so I'm
optimistic that this will be a real good eulogy.

Man, what a weird thing to say - "optimistic about a eulogy".  But its true,
so I havta.

Most of his life, Hal was agnostic.  Which I think is a good thing to be.
Open-minded seems to produce the clearest thinking.  We'd talk philosophy
while practicing darts in his garage, which was hugely cluttered with
paintings and pictures, mostly of naked ladies.  Hal was a title officer by
day and a painter by hobby, who did buttons for the lion's club, painting
the windows at the office for christmas and other such civic minded
contributions that he was always getting sucked into because Hal couldn't
say no.  He hated all that community shit, but he just couldn't say no.
What he liked to do was stay home by himself, listen to a ball game and
paint naked ladies.

And shoot darts on tuesday nights.  He was always working on his
techniques.  He read books and books and focused intently on his shot
mechanics and was very frustrated with me because I didn't pay attention to
any of that, just took my stance and let it flow without too much thinking.
This aggravated him a lot (but then, a lot of things aggravated Hal) and
he'd shake his head at me.  Nicknamed me "mr natural" because I just took my
shot without worrying about outcome.  I imagined myself as a sorta zen
darter, but honestly I've always had pretty good hand/eye coordination and
in construction you're always having to throw stuff up to a guy on the roof
or something like that and one reason I could be natural, was that I had a
lot more practice than a guy who worked in an office all day and mostly
flipped pages for a living.

Not that title officer is a boring occupation.  Especially in Nevada County
with a rich history of mining laws as the basis for most of its real estate
- you get some fascinatingly convoluted conveyances over the years, and
there's a bit of field work involved.

But Hal with his worrying and his rules and his focus on technique, was one
of the most socially-bound people I ever met.  He and I were so different,
it was sorta like Phaedrus and DeWeese in ZAMM, we came from such different
worlds that we fascinated one another.  I studied him and came to the
conclusion that Hal's misses were sort of second-guessing himself midshot,
overthinking as it often happens, and his life was similar.  He didn't
really like people that much, but ended up with many friends who adored
him.  He didn't really have much appreciation for my mom's large and
invasive family  - Hal was a lone adoptee of a spinster schoolteacher mom -
but he ended up as the most beloved center of all her siblings and
spin-offs.  He didn't like religion, but he converted and was baptised
before he got cancer, and having all that under his belt felt about as good
about his chances in any afterlife as anybody.

I really emphasize family and community, but nobody can stand me and I don't
do anything for civic causes ever.  And I certainly can't be guilt-trip
manipulated.  I've been a Christian most of my life, but if caring for the
sheep of the good shepard is any criteria, I'm for sure going to hell.

About the only good thing I can offer is the occasional eulogy, and bit of
poetry here and there, mostly for my own satisfaction.


So here's the song I wrote for him.  So far.  It's a simple rondelle that
goes C - am - F- G.
`


Young hearts
Fade to old smarts
everybody gets their day, in the sun

Where we aim
Is not the same
As where we end, when we're done.

Hal darts
the strange arts
of getting what we want, when we fail

missing wide
something inside
we discover at the end of the trail

It's all the same
a fool's game
when it comes to love, we don't wanna part

While we cry
We try
to remember leaving's just a brand new start