Cherries Garcia

Published in slightly edited form August 27, 2014 in the Foothills Sun-Gazette


     This past Saturday we communally celebrated the life and mourned the loss of our friend Jim Chlebda in Springville, where he lived and worked during his days editing Southland Magazine and publishing South Valley Arts. His Springville “peeps” (as he called his friends) set up the memorial at River Ridge Ranch, a wonderful environmentally-run cattle ranch with full conservation easements lightly developed for open air events.  A cool morning breeze skittered cottonwood leaves around our feet and rustled them in the air.  The smells of dry grass and fall coming centered us in the moment.
    
     Patti Torrey, Springville’s remarkable, warm-hearted singer, emceed and sang; Kathy Everett and a host of friends spread tables of food and drink.  Jim’s favorite Grateful Dead recordings accompanied our conversations while we ate.  His beautiful sister Karen and brother Rob came up from Down South, as did his best friends Adam and CindyLou with their two incredible children.  The only thing that could have made the day better would have been to have him there.
    
     I had my first encounter with Karen and Rob, as well as many other members of Jim’s family, at his funeral the Monday before, held at Mission San Fernando del Rey.  The clear love and dedication of this family to each other and the world helped me understand where Jim came from, that it’s possible to live on earth as it is in heaven (or at least worth trying.)  The mass in that ancient church, given by a Franciscan priest, ended with the singing of the hymn “Make Me a Channel of Your Peace” from the prayer of St. Francis.  The burial of his ashes in the cemetery there, in the same grave as his father, whose birthday he shared, and his sister who died at 20 of cystic fibrosis and who would have turned 50 that day - all of it brought the Divine Presence into the very air we breathed.
    
     The air had a different quality there at River’s Ridge: more natural, less personal, freer and to me, at least, more frighteningly real. By celebrating what we had when he lived among us here, I think we sensed our loss more acutely, the days past truly gone. As the mid-day temps rose, we began to pack up and disperse early.  A few of us re-grouped where Karen and Kathy were staying to say goodbye.
    
     That’s where we got to hear the Cherries Garcia story.  Karen’s husband Bob had told part of it to me at the cemetery, so I asked Karen to repeat it for the others.  On Jim’s last night, Bob had to pick up his son Dan at the airport. Before he left, he asked Jim if he’d like something, and Cherries Garcia ice cream was the answer.  So Bob and Dan scoured late-night stores until they found some.  When Jim heard their voices in the hospital hallway, he came awake.  They put on some Grateful Dead and danced while Jim woofed down his ice cream.  Late, they finally turned out the lights.
    
     Sometime in the early morning hours, Jim took off his oxygen mask, his lifeline.  Karen said they protested, but then she saw that the mask was not going back on.  A couple of hours later, he was gone.
    
     I have written that he was heroic in the way he lived.  Now I’m adding that he was just as heroic in the way he died.  He had lots of help and support for both, which is an important part of the story.  But I have been surprised to find that heroism has brought me to tears over and over.  Though it’s been a month since his death, I’m surprised to find that I’m still crying.
    
     The Quaker poet Ellen Sophia Bosanquet, wrote this beautiful poem about the work of grief: 

 “Since you have vanished from my eyes,

Since I have lost your blessed touch,
I own continual surprise
To find, in spite of loss, how much
Of all I cherished still remains:
Your thoughts that set my mind on fire,
And ever flowing in my veins
The urge to do what you require.          
Is it that death has more to give
Than love-companioned life can show?
And only as we learn to grieve we learn to know?”

     With 20/20 hindsight, what I’ve learned firsthand from Jim’s life, and now second-hand from the story of his death, is that he was a conscious channel of the Spirit.  He knew the Light within and made use of it.  What I’m learning from my grief, however, is that I want to grow in that direction.

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer who lives just one watershed west of Jim’s.  You can send her your channeling stories c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.  The Bosanquet poem is quoted in Catherine Whitmire’s Plain Living: A Quaker Path to Simplicity, Sorin Books, 2001. Visit www.river-ridge.net to view their offerings and see a video of Patti Torrey singing “He Don’t Like Love Songs,” which she wrote for her husband Jared, another one of Jim’s closest friends.

Fire & Rain

Published Aug. 9, 2014 in my Fresno Bee column "Letters from Lewis Creek"

Mr. James Chlebda, Heaven

July 29, 2014

Dear Jim,

        There’s a pink tinge to this morning’s sunrise in the remnant of yesterday’s clouds hanging onto your mountains.  Maybe some of that’s smoke – I haven’t checked the news for fires, preoccupied with getting these things into words.

        It’s been a week since you took your last breath.  The news triggered James Taylor’s "Fire and Rain" in my head, that devastating first line “Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone.”  It was only hours in my case - your sister Karen texted Betty Blanks, who found the message on her phone during a break from court in Kings County.  She was crying when she called me.  I didn’t cry until we hung up.  Even though we knew it was coming, your death hit hard.  I’ll love her forever for getting up to Stanford to see you the weekend before.  Her reports from that trip have consoled me over and over.

        When I emailed John Dofflemyer, he wrote back and called you “a force in many people’s lives.”  That cowboy poet and fellow publisher who knows his ropes also said now you can operate with a freer hand.  I’ve been gratified to find that’s true.  I don’t know what you’ve been doing with the others, but your presence here with me has been a blessing.

        When I emailed Jeremy Hogan, he began sending YouTube clips of the Grateful Dead and Creedence, John Lennon’s "Mind Games."  I didn’t know 'til later that when he got my email, he left his office, went out to his car and cried for 45 minutes.  Then he began an outpouring of words about how you saved his life, how you were the pivot point between being lost and becoming a photojournalist.  I hope you’re enjoying the force of his flood of love and gratitude.

        Other people have said now you’re with Wilma.  I don’t know about that, but give her a hug for me if you see her.  I think you’re back at Back 40, communing with your brother floras and sister faunas, the granite and gneiss, unconstrained by property lines and deeds, not worried about the drought.  That’s where I feel your heart beating, anyway. 

        Sunday morning I found a crow’s feather on the ground on my way out to the car.  I stuck it in my hair and took you to church with me, where I read the Scriptures aloud, five parables from Matthew about the Kingdom of Heaven – what it is, what it’ll be like.  I still don’t know about all that, but I know better now than I’ve ever known before that when you walked this planet, the kingdom of heaven was near.  You brought it with you, sowed seeds of kindness and appreciation, love and respect everywhere you went.  Some of those seeds are on their way to being trees, nest sites for all those birds you love. The pearls of great price you found on every nature walk, in every poet’s corner, every encounter with the unconformed and wandering souls who became your friends – those pearls are shining now, right here on earth.

        It was hard, imagining what you were facing up there at Stanford: the antibiotics no longer keeping the pseudomonas at bay, the prospect of surgery to swap out those lungs you did your damndest to protect these past fifty-seven years, the need to take on a whole new and unknown medical regime to fool your body into keeping the replacement breathing apparatus someone else didn’t need anymore.  It was hard, but I imagined you daily.  When the Bee carried that great story about the young Clovis woman climbing Half Dome with her new lungs, we sent it right off, hoping the vision of being back in your mountains would help you cross that high desert of fear.  But that afternoon the doctors took you off the lung transplant list.

        I still don’t know all the reasons – do you?  Betty said… Kay said… Karen said… but I don’t know.  Last time we got to talk, you said “I guess now I have to go through this other window.”  I got to wail “We’re all grieving that you have to do that,” probably the most real thing I’ve said in a long time.  And you said, with your characteristic love, “And I’ve been grieving that I haven’t been able to talk with you when you’ve called, Trudy-bud.”  You took my breath away.  You get the last word on this.

        So, yes.  My heart’s still singing “Oh, I’ve seen fire, and I’ve seen rain.  I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end.  I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend.  But I always thought that I’d see you again.”  Despite my initial fear of that dead loss, that, in my life, you would go blank, here you are.  Thanks for sticking around all these years, and these last few days especially. Thanks for leading the way now.

Love,

Trudy

 

Editor’s Note:  Jim Chlebda was editor of Southland Magazine, then publisher when it became South Valley Arts serving Fresno, Tulare, Kings and Kern Counties between 1990 and 2000.  He published Valley poets with his Back 40 Publishing, most notably the Okie poet Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel and Modesto poet Lillian Vallee (see www.back40publishing.com.)  He was a grateful recipient of excellent health care at Valley Children’s Hospital until he moved to Sonoma County and shifted medical service to Stanford.  He will be missed by many.

Big Jim

Published August 6, 2014 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette


     My friend Jim Chlebda took his last breath a couple of weeks ago.  Once he was taken off the list for a double lung transplant at Stanford, there was little time.  He got his papers in order, gathered up his family and friends for one last good day, and three days later he was gone.

     At least from this form of existence.  After  I heard the news of his passing, I was surprised how my days filled with the sight of him and the sound of his voice, how his normal way of saying goodbye – “hey, now,” became a greeting.  How his motivations and purposes suddenly seemed completely coherent, an integrity that was not only admirable but something to follow in my own life.  So I might say that Jim’s transformation from living to eternal is having a transformative effect in me.

     The Okie poet Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel, who Jim loved and supported with his publishing efforts as well as bringing bursts of new life into that old woman’s days, called him “Little Jim.”  He was no taller than I am and weighed significantly less, all muscle and bone with a beautiful skin covering topped by curly hair the ladies had trouble keeping their hands off of.  But there was nothing little about him.  It always rankled me that she could so casually mark him with what most men would receive as a slight.  I mean, even the Pygmy Bushmen of Africa greet each other with a sentence that goes something like “Hey, now, you’re so tall I saw you coming from a long way!”  But Jim just laughed it off.

     As he did most people’s foibles.  What was really big about him is that he did not let others’ faults impinge on his character.  He accepted people for who they were, but (for the most part) he did not let that subtract – or add – to who he was.  It has been easy for me to think that living his entire 57 years with a terminal disease – cystic fibrosis, which took his sister at 21 - was what shaped him into the purposeful, life-embracing, life-giving human I knew him to be.  But as his breathing days came to an end I saw there was more.

     Jim lived with the spirit of Christ, the heart of God, in him.  He wore no external sign of that affiliation, spoke few words of devotion out loud (at least with me).  His ceremonies celebrated the beauty and wonder of the world, particularly the natural world; his publishing efforts supported artists of all kinds.  The gifts he shared were natural shards from the land, like hawk feathers and sprigs of native plants, his photographs of those wonders, or music and books, the works of artists.  His publications were art, from the covers and insides of Southland Magazine and South Valley Arts, to the chapbooks of poets up and down the valley.  On one of Wilma’s little books of prose, Cooking with Eli, he even used spiral binding, like a church cookbook of recipes.  You know, you might want to lay it flat to read while whipping up a batch of pancakes.

     John Dofflemyer, the cowboy poet and fellow publisher who lives along Dry Creek, wrote that Jim was “a force in many people’s lives.”  He was, but not forcibly: it was the force of love.  John also added that “now he can operate with a freer hand.”  I loved that recognition of another realm from this other man of the land, this rancher who copes with the mysteries of life and death on a daily basis.

     But what I finally saw about Jim’s life after his death was that he walked softly and carried no stick at all.  To me, that’s an enormous life accomplishment.

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer who lives in the Lewis Creek watershed, just west of Jim’s beloved home Back 40 in North Fork Tule River country.  Visit www.back40publishing.com to view Jim’s publishing accomplishments; visit www.drycrikjournal.com to see John & Robbin Dofflemyers'.

 

Death and Life Revisited

Published in slightly edited form July 16, 2014 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette

Monday, July 14, 2014.  I asked my customers at the market last night what I should write about.  One said “the heat.”  Another said “the city council.  Or the heat.”  When I woke up this morning to ominous cloud cover, it certainly looked like the heat was winning.  But what’s on my heart is death, and life.

     This past week had more than enough death in it for me, and more than enough life as well.  Two of the animals I’ve tended for years came to their ends, assisted by our beautiful vet Jamie Wilson and the women who work with her.  “Sisters of Mercy” ran through my head all week as I dug their graves and set aside their feeding bowls.

     Another cat I’ve loved since 1998, when she came as a one-eyed kitten, rescued from the park by some teenage girls, seems to have gone off her food.  She doesn’t do well in the heat, so I’ve been watching her closely and holding her more often, lining up my cat-saving supplies: oral electrolyte, tuna in water, canned Friskies, petromalt.  Thank God it seems to be working.

     On the life side, I found homes for two pups who’d been running loose in the neighborhood.  I’d corralled them on the front porch, re-establishing the fence that had not kept in the three little dogs who eventually were taken by the Central Valley Rescue Railroad.  When their owners didn’t come claim the pups, I changed my sign from “FOUND” to “FREE,” and two lovely families each took one home.  Now their lives as the family dog can begin.

     And all of that, it seems clear to me, was preparation for the news that came Saturday morning about my friend Jim Chlebda.  Some of you may remember him from the years he lived in Springville and published South Valley Arts Magazine.  Some of you may remember him as the publisher of Wilma McDaniel’s books of poetry and prose, and certainly her biggest promoter as well as stand-in son.  If you ever met him, you wouldn’t forget him:  he’s the most remarkable person I’ve ever known.

     Jim has been up at Stanford the last few weeks, waiting for the double lung transplant that could save his life.  He was born some 58 years ago with cystic fibrosis, and his lungs have finally succumbed to the bacteria that kills people with this disease.  The normal life expectancy for people with CF is still around 20; he’s tripled his life by taking care of himself and living with more abandon than most people risk.  His lifelong awareness of his own probable death let him live each day fully.  He helped people come into print who otherwise would have stayed wistfully on the margins, including me.  He encouraged people to risk living who didn’t have a life-threatening disease in their genes, including me.

     Friday Jim was taken off the list for a new pair of lungs.  We’re still investigating the reasons and hoping for a reprieve.  Today they will be meeting to set up palliative care and hospice arrangements.  My heart is still throbbing, dull, with the meaning of all this, trying to adapt to a new reality: that Jim will be living inside of me now, and not outside anymore.  That Jim will be present whenever two or more of his friends are gathered, but not physically in the room, able to surprise and delight us with his wildly life-affirming perspective and humor.

     Trying to adapt, finally, to this simple fact:  this is life.


(Note:  At 7:57 this morning, just as I was posting this piece, Jim Chlebda went through "this other window," as he called it the last time we spoke, and crossed into the eternal.  Thanks be to God for keeping him here as long as he was, and for taking him quickly in the end.)

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Trudy Wischemann is a writer, thanks to Jim Chlebda, who lives in Lindsay.  You can send her your stories about Jim c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a comment below.