(Billie and Mac at their wedding, shortly after the end of WWII. Photo Mac Showers).
I appear to have made it to Friday. I think I did. I got up early because I went down early, once dinner was done and the dishes cleaned up. I was going “to read” in bed and that did not seem practical once the old gray head hit the pillow. I was out before nine, I think.
I did not mind the early surrender to the arms of Morpheus since the pop-up meeting in Tysons this morning advertised a buffet breakfast at eight, meeting starting at nine.
I am good for one trip to Tysons per day, and was resigned to showing up late for the breakfast, sit through the meeting and escape back to Arlington some time before lunch to start digging out.
That of course would shoot the rest of the day, and I had hoped to knock out the tribute issue of the semi-annual Quarterly (I know, I know, why a two-a-year for a four-a-year schedule) after the working day is done.
It has been hard. I have a large picture of Mac’s wife Billie on the computer. She is a hypnotic beauty, and when I look down from the words on the screen, there she is, nearly big as life.
(The photo of the lovely Billie that is haunting me this week. Photo Mac Showers).
I never met Billie, but I am sure I would have liked her. She passed a decade, around the time Mac and I struck up our mutual admiration society, and she had been suffering from the ravages of dementia for twenty years before that. She had been institutionalized at the Lutheran Home in the early 1990s, which is when Mac really launched his third career as a volunteer to help people dealing with the two things that he had: Alzheimers and Cancer.
Anyway, she isn’t accusing me of anything with those lovely sloe eyes, but she is reminding me I have to get on with it and get the issue done.
Plowing through the morning stuff I saw a couple notes from the Left Coast from the Macaroon Lady. She is a bit of a mystic. I have friends who are into the Shaman movement, channeling dreams and portents, and given the year this has been, have been refining my ideas about the Great Interface between being here and not being here.
The peculiar circumstance of my parent’s coincident departure earlier this year is a case in point, as is Mac’s own decision to leave: it was a conscious decision to take the long dark train out of town. The Macaroon Lady is on a mission, and it is to discover a trove of messages and logs from the Big War that would change our interpretation of it completely, at least in her view.
I am familiar with causes- one of Mac’s last one’s was to secure the award of the Distinguished Service Medal to Joe Rochefort, the code-breaker whose medal after the Battle of Midway was denied by a cabal of ambitious careerists back in Washington, who stole the credit for his brilliant analysis of Japanese intentions. Acting on Joe’s recommendations, Fleet Admiral Nimitz threw everything he had at the Japs.
“Fortuna audaces iuvat,” goes the old Roman quote. Fortune favors the bold.
Another cause was the one that fixated the late Admiral Rex. He was determined to make a significant memorial to the only Intelligence professional to be captured and executed by the Viet Cong, CDR “Jack” Graf. Rex accomplished his mission before he left.
The Macaroon Lady’s quest is to discover the missing files that would prove that some of the ‘heroes” of World War II were in fact scoundrels, bounders and cheats. She is very determined, and I think she may crack the case, even at this distance in space and time., and I wish her well.
Anyway, that is how she came to know Mac, the last man around who actually knew what happened. He was happy to answer her questions. She wrote me overnight and said that Mac was appearing to her in dreams.
Here is how she put it:
“In the dream, Mac and I were laughing away so much that tears were coming out of our eyes, and as I realized that I was retuning to the land -of -the- living, Mac looked at me and said, “Tell Vic…????”… which I still can’t remember a day later, but it was interesting info about this WWII stuff, as I went “Really?!” to Mac, and then woke up to the California dark. I am concentrating on Mac to send me another dream…it helps if there is a photo of him in the room, as he will zero in through that energy (why Native American medicine people like the legendary Crazy Horse of the Lakota Sioux never wanted his photo taken, as it captures energy)…Mac knew that I sometimes get interesting info in my dreams, that he was able verify..so hopefully there will be a series to the episodic dream later this week…
So, between the photo of Mac’s wife Billie and his possible attempts to communicate from the other side, this is all quite surreal.
If I get the Quarterly done, put away that picture of Billie, and get on with the business of business, things will be fine.
Putting some other files together in the interest of accomplishing that, I found this image. It was taken on a fine early Spring day. I was driving Mac in the Bluesmobile to the funeral of an officer who was a casualty of the war in Iraq. Driving past Section 66 at Arlington National Cemetery, he pointed to where Billie is buried, and where he would lie someday.
“She is keeping the place warm for me,” he said, laughing.
(Mac looks down the row in Section 66 at Arlington National Cemetery. We will all be there again in a couple months. Photo Socotra.)
Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com