It's hard to say goodbye

Moving on from this point is going to be pretty tough and will take some time.  This morning I got word that my dear friend, and my wife’s best friend, Jeanne Davis, succumbed to the cancer that had plagued her for the past six years.  All along we had hoped and prayed, and prayed and hoped some more that somehow she would shake loose from this devastating disease.  All along we wanted our friend back for another night out, or another hot tub soiree at her brother Bill’s pool and our own private version of Margaritaville.

It hurts to know that those exquisite moments of pleasure, those times when we were able to just sit together and enjoy just being friends and feeling how it can be when you don’t even have to talk won't be the same. Just spending time with all of us around was good enough for any party, and now that’s dashed somewhat. It won’t be the same without her there.

Jeanne was a pixie of a woman, who would fool you in a second if you just tried to pass her off as some dumb blonde.  She had an inner drive to succeed that no one could ever get a fix on.  It’s what made her a great realtor, an even greater mother and wife, and the best of BFFs for my wife, Jackie.

We have known Jeanne nearly as long as we have lived in Colonial Heights, which is about 23 years.  We met her when my wife was opening up the Sea Dream Leather store in the then new Southpark Mall.  At first, she was a cute, perky, fun loving blonde who always had a smile on her face and a giggle in her throat.  She took the Sea Dream job in retail sales and worked with Jackie for several years.  Over that time, their love and respect for each other blossomed and grew.

Jeanne was the kind of friend that you didn’t always need to be around to be sure she was your friend.  I don’t think my wife went more than a day without talking to Jeanne or texting or facebooking or in some way ensuring that she was there, and that’s what probably hurts as much as anything.

In my heart of hearts, I have been expecting this day to come, dreading it like we dread anything that has a ring of finality to it.  I have prayed as much for her husband Jimmy, and her sons Jed and Joel, knowing what they were going through and what lay ahead and wishing somehow that we could cushion them when this day arrived.  And that time of need is right in front of us now, and somehow we know there is no cushioning.

And that group of friends that we developed even closer over the past five years, as much because of Jeanne as anything, that we now have to lean against and to support one another when the pain is sharpest and our hearts need quelling. We’ll be fine, as long as those friends are around; it’s the quiet moments alone—the solitude—that frightens me.

We were fortunate to spend last Thanksgiving with the Moore family.  It was a huge dinner, a large number of family and friends, and of course Jeanne at her best in the middle of things, always with that eye for making a social event an EVENT.  It was one of her gifts.  Knowing how things should be, how things should look, and how to make things look their best.  It’s probably what made her the great realtor she was.  She always knew what her clients needed to do to make their houses look just so.  And she always knew what to look for when she was showing off a home to a prospective buyer.

It won’t be the same seeing her JDSELS tag running up and down Conduit Avenue and the Boulevard.  We won’t be able to hustle up alongside her car and beep our horn to get her attention and wave.  And she won’t be there to wave back, or roll down the window with some snippet or other of girl talk for Jackie.

At the Thanksgiving dinner she confided to me that she was getting tired of the fight. She had been battling for an eternity it seemed, and just the constant battering of her body was taking its toll on her, she said.  Some time ago, she told me about talking to some other cancer patients who were getting ready for their first bout of chemo.  At the time, she said, she was going through her 100^th chemo treatment.  That was at least a year ago, so who knows how many she had racked up since.  But still, she was blowing the minds of her doctors, who couldn’t understand how she just continued to plow ahead seemingly oblivious and loving life. The cancer and its treatment may have had its effects on her body, but it wasn’t about to touch her spirit and soul.

We all have a lot to learn from Jeanne.  Her grace, her strength, her burning desire to live and spend time with those she loved is a lesson for everyone. Even if you didn’t know her, just hearing her story is uplifting, heartwarming, and poignantly sad and yet happy.  She showed us all how to live; and ultimately she showed us all how to die.

And so I’m writing this because that’s what writers do. That’s how we purge our emotions, how we release our feelings, our joy, and our pain.  It doesn’t always show in our faces or our eyes or our spoken words.  Our tears fall on the pages in the words and sentences we construct.  These simple words are the best I can do in saying good bye.  They are my heart split open on the page; read slowly about the pain, but remember mostly the joy of just having known Jeanne.

Not Big Muddy, Big Dummy

Now, I don’t claim to write like Samuel Clemens, but we do have a few similarities.  Sam wrote about the Mississippi River, which he called Big Muddy; while I write about the Appomattox River, and call myself Big Dummy.  See how close those terms are?  Just a mild transposition of a few letters, and there you go, the 21^st Century Mark Twain clogging up the river.

It’s interesting to note how much time Clemens put into learning the river, and the ways in which the current would change, and the channel would sweep from one side to the other.  He explained how sand bars would appear then mysteriously disappear, seemingly overnight.  And how he would listen for the person calling off the water depth, they would yell, 'mark twain' and follow that with the number of fathoms of water the ship was floating in.

And maybe that’s where I ultimately went wrong?  Fathoms are a measurement equal to six feet, so two fathoms is 12 feet.  Whereas, two feet is 24 inches, and one foot is a mere 12 inches, and three inches is a stuck boat.

Knowing where you are in the shoals that make up the confluence of the Appomattox River and its main tributary, Swift Creek, can make all the difference. Oh, and another good thing to keep in mind is that thing called a tide chart.

Misquoting that famous line from the Humphrey Bogart movie, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, all I can say is “Tide Chart?  We don’t need no stinking Tide chart!”

Yeah, right!

I think, as readers, you’re starting to get the drift (pun intended) of where this column is headed.  For what it’s worth, we probably would have been OK, except that there are no road signs in the middle of the river, and the river is very unforgiving when you miss a turn.

Truth is, we had to go out when the tide was relatively low, because we wanted to go fishing.  My brother had come in for the day from North Carolina, and we had all these great plans on stalking rock fish. I already knew they were in the river, having seen pictorial proof of the piscatorial demons. In other words, my friend’s sons had already caught a couple.

But, tides wait for no man; and, seemingly, no man can control time off.  You play when the games afoot, which we believed it was that sunny, but cool and windy Sunday morning. We did not go in the river where I would typically go in the Appomattox due to vehicular obstructions at the private ramp.

Instead, we opted for White Bank.  We had two chances there to out-think Mother nature (see, use common sense), first there was only one truck and boat trailer parked in the lot, and second there was a kayaker who told us that the water up stream was getting a bit shallow.  He also said we should be alright heading down stream.

So, we knew the tide was going out, but we didn’t realize what the ramifications of “tide going out” meant in Swift Creek.  We forged ahead with our plans since this is the only time we had to go in the water anyway.

Off we went, with one hand on the tiller and one eye on the depth finder.  For a long time, it showed a generous four feet, would that it were four fathoms.  As we got closer to the confluence with the Appomattox River, however, it started to fluctuate a bit, sometimes ranging as low as two feet and we had an occasional bump and flurry of muddy wake, warning us of impending doom which we dutifully ignored.

We drove on oblivious, our silvery Moby Dick calling us farther and farther away from the boat ramp, safety, and comfort.  We made it to the spot that should have been our saving grace, where Swift Creek actually crosses the Appomattox River.  To be honest, it looks like a huge roundabout, and there’s a bit of a tuft of tree branch sitting up in the middle like a traffic light.  At this point, had we only made a left turn everything would have been fine and we would have been in the Appomattox River channel and good to go for the rest of the day.

But the river channel looked more like a small bay, and the water in front of us was wide and open and very inviting.  We plowed onward, feeling our way along the edge of Cat Island, while the keel was bumping and grinding over submerged sand bars and suddenly, the depth gauge was reading in decimal points.

We eventually had to pull the motor up, and a little bit later, even the trolling motor was grounding out.  Then the breeze sort of pushed us into a huge sand bar that appeared in the middle of the river where no sand had appeared before.

Feeling we might be in trouble, I made a phone call to a friend with a boat who said he would be happy to help out, but had to wait a couple hours for the tide to come in.  Knowing that we were safe, although hung up, we opted to see if any said fish were lurking about.  But even fish won’t swim in three-inches of water.

Federal Budget Smackdown!

Ladies and gents, aliens and domestics, democrat, republican and tea party members, one and all welcome to the Federal Budget Smackdown!  Tonight’s matches feature Rasslin’ greats from our very own US Capitol building in Washington, AC/DC.  Here’s the rundown on our program for this evening:

Serving the masses since ’91, “The Cincinnati Slasher,” John Boehner.  Slash, as we call him around the district mats, has hacked, carved, sliced and diced his way from Ohio political obscurity to become Speaker of the House.  His ascension to those balmy heights has come from the backlash of cut-and-carve budgetary conservatives known as the Tea Party.  And this ain’t your tea and crumpets type tea party, neither.  No Mad Hatter here; it’s hard core ‘rasslin complete with hidden brass knuckles, chains, lumber, and brickbats.

His opponent, hailing from the great state of Delaware, is none other than Joe “Robinegg” Biden.  Biden comes in weighing two trillion pounds, which at the current rate of exchange amounts to three trillion dollars.  Due to his enormous waste line, Biden was fitted for a special pair of ‘rasslin breeches that resemble a sumo wrestler’s mawashi.  Biden has been known to keep dangerous last minute excuses tucked into the folds of his shorts. Despite occasional verbal peccadilloes, Robinegg has in general been sequestered in his current position deeper than a bloated tick on a mangy old mutt.

Headlining the tag team feature is none other than Eric “Ivan the Great” Cantor.  Cantor, is considered one of the young guns because he was born in the same year that John Kennedy met his fate.  Despite that, there doesn’t seem to be any other connection between Cantor and the Kennedy’s, with the exception of Eric’s penchant for listening to the 80’s hardcore punk rock group, The Dead Kennedy’s.  Ivan the Great does his part to ensure that his partner, The Cincinnati Slasher, completes his appointed rounds.

Backing up Robinegg himself is relative newcomer to Smackdown, Charles Ellis (Son of Chuckie) Schumer.  Schumer hails from the Empire state, where he knocked off Al “The Axeman” D’Amato, and was also a member of the CBA franchise Albany Poltroons.  Schumer, a large and growing New York favorite on the mat, brings his own kind of street cunning to the field.  When worse comes to worst, you can count on Son of Chuckie to hold the banner of integrity tightly across the eyes of Biden’s opponents while biting off their ears in classic NY fighting fashion, ala Mike Tyson.

Not to be forgotten, we have the Budgetary Smackdown ladies:  Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin.  Look out when this catfight hits the mats.  Clinton holds the Smackdown international record for dirty tricks; while Palin is the only female mat woman known to have killed a moose with her bare hands. Step right up ladies and gents, get your tickets here.  Just tap in to CNN or Fox News for this pay per view extravaganza and be prepared for a night of fists, fury, and furtive glances.  Not since Rear Admiral George Cockburn burned the White House has there been any such fiery action in Washington.

And for tonight only we have a special referee.  Hailing from Hawaii, or thereabouts, we have a man whose name is only preceded by his ears, we bring back for your viewing pleasure, the one, the only, Barrack Hussein Obama.  Obama – living proof that the Acorn doesn’t fall far from the nut.

So, let’s get readdddddddddddy to rummmmmmmmble!

Now 60 Minutes is after me!

One of the problems with writing columns, or running a blog, or anything you do like that is you are never really sure whether you actually reach an audience or a readership or anything else for that matter. So instead, you end up writing to air, or in the case of newspapers to fill a certain number of column inches.  By that I mean, it’s like a one-sided argument, you know the ones most married men have with their wives.

Even at home when I go off on some tangent or other, at least I have a wife who can try to bring me back to reality.  Outside of that, there isn’t much—the dogs always seem to like almost anything I say, as long as a biscuit is involved. This sort of brings up a whole other idea about how to assess readership and how to see what people are thinking about the stuff I am pushing through the keyboard.  Still, a man’s gotta do what a man’s getting paid for, so here we go, right?

All of that came to a screeching halt this week when I got this message on the cell phone.  Most of the time messages on my cell phone consist of things like, “Hey Dad, how’s it going?  Can you put some money in my account? I need gas.” Or better still, “can you pick up the dry cleaning on your way home?”

But this time, the message was different. It was more in line with the kinds of messages I used to leave people when I was actually reporting news for another local newspaper that will go nameless to protect the innocent and those not so innocent.

The message was simple: “Hello, I hope this is the right, David Breidenbach.  My name is Dan Rutenik and I work for 60 Minutes.”

Already I was in shock. Finally, I knew my column was hitting home.  Somehow, my wit had reached the heights and even those at the top of the heap were trying to reach me, the people at 60 Minutes. I just knew that the likes Mike Bradley and crew had come across my column for something witty I’d written or something that I wasn’t even aware of.

That’s when it hit me, this was 60 minutes calling.  They may not be calling me about my writing. No indeed, they may be calling me about something deep and dark from my past, like failing to pick up behind my dogs when I take them out for a walk, or leaving my child at the day care center too long. I just knew I was in hot water for something.

So, with a bit of trepidation, I called Dan back at his 212 area code phone number.  At first, I just got his answering machine.  Phew, I thought, didn’t have to talk to him yet.

But the problem with answering machines and phones in this day and age is that they keep a running log of missed phone calls. Dan was on the line with me in a matter of minutes.

“Is this David Breidenbach?” he asked.

Sure, it’s me, I said. What can I do for you.

“Well, I was hoping I got the right David Breidenbach.  I work for 60 minutes and we’re working on a story about his company in Alexandria,” Dan said.

We talked for a few more minutes, as I explained that where I live in Colonial Heights is a two-hour drive from Alexandria on a good day with no traffic.  He explained he was trying to find this guy so he could get some information about his company.  At that point, I opted to cut short our conversation, because I didn’t want him to get any other ideas about me.

But before I hung up, I asked him if perhaps he had seen my column?  He started to stammer a bit like he wanted to hang up but didn’t know how to without being rude.

It’s online, I blurted, spouting the URL for the Hopewell News.

The voice on the other end of the phone link started to stutter a bit at that.

You really ought to take a look at it, I know it would brighten your day, I said.  I know how it is living in New York.

He said, “Uh uh…”

Hey, I even have it posted in a blog on BlogSpot, I said.

“I think I have another call,” Dan said, and I sensed him moving the handset toward the cradle.

Wait, I said, it’s called Butterside “click” Up, as he hung up his extension.

I guess I’ll have to wait to see if I make