Dad

At the Masonic Lodge in Middleville, Michigan, there is a "Charles E. Collins, Sr." dining room named in honor of my father, a life-long Mason and a tireless supporter of his Lodge.  He spent many, many nights of his life attending meetings and fund-raising for his favorite organization.

The last handful of years, his lodge fund-raising took the form of selling poker chips at Texas Hold 'em charity tournaments.  This is a Michigan thing and I don't know the ins and outs of it, but I do know that Dad worked until the wee hours of the morning, lately seven days on, seven days off.

When a stroke claimed the lion's share of his vision, he convinced his wife to go with him.  One of the proudest days of his recent years was when his grandson Max became a Mason.  Max, too, would occasionally accompany Dad to work the game room.

This week Dad and his wife Carol had planned a trip to South Carolina to visit my baby brother and me. But "Man makes plans, God changes them" and this time, God called my father home.  After his normal night-shift at the poker room, Dad got to bed about 3:30 am.  During the night, he suffered another stroke and on Labor Day, he slipped peacefully into the next world. 

Dad was a man of action and I am grateful that on the last Saturday night of his life, he was joking around with the guys at the Masonic Texas Hold 'em game.  It was just where he wanted to be.

Way to go Dad, you went out with your boots on. 

I Love You.

Charles Elmer Collins, Sr.
1929 - 2012

It's Relative

Some days start out innocently enough only to blossom into disaster before your very eyes. Yesterday was kind of like that.

Often I stay up too late and I had played one too many video games the night before, making that knock at the door at 8 a.m. seem evil. Guys had come to bury the cable at our new house but when they arrived, they found our lift station oozing sewage and that changed their plans. And mine. Before yesterday, I had no idea what a lift station was or why it was that I wanted one.

Just about the time I was figuring this out, the plumber (my new best friend) was figuring out how to get rid of it. "Sh** don't flow uphill" is the saying and, unless we want to spend a lot of money quite often, the saying is accurate in our case. To achieve the coveted downhill flow will involve excavation and roughly two years' worth of college tuition, but flushing toilets is rapidly climbing my personal "top ten" list of fun things to do. Like so many things that we take for granted, when we can't do it anymore, we realize just how much we enjoy doing it. Right about now, I'd pay pretty much anything for that privilege.

As soon as I broke the news to Dad that we wouldn't be able to flush our toilets for the next three days, he started packing up. He's decisive like that, able to make snap decisions and act upon them. I envy that trait. In ten minutes flat, my dad and his wife were in the car driving with ease up our remarkably steep driveway. 

I ought to give my little brother a heads-up call, but why spoil the surprise?