Stueart's Last Journey

Last2cu presents:
Most of us have a best friend, if we are lucky...Someone who has known you since childhood... I have one, Marcia Hudson...Marcia and I have been through heaven and hell together but the operative word is through... We have made it to the other side...We survived and are happy with ourselves... And most times you have favorite friends, people who don’t know everything but would remain your friend just the same... Stueart Pennington was one of my all time favorite friends...


Stueart owned the most exclusive men’s clothing store in Hot Springs, Arkansas, Oaklawn Sportswear He had the very best from suits to casual wear... a couple of things Stueart hated was Dockers, blue jeans and stupid people. He also had a smaller store in Downtown that I managed for him. I don’t remember never knowing Stueart. He came from an old family here and knew something on almost everyone... If I needed to know who someone was I’d just call Stueart. If you didn’t have anything to do you could sit and talk for hours with him...He used to say that he knew of people who loved Hot Springs as much as he did but didn’t know of anyone except me who loved her more. He was fiercely proud of his only child Erin Pennington Wood. He had a piece of paper on His father’s very old cash register that had his toll free number on it so that Erin could call anytime she wanted...Every time you went to the store he would show it to you.Stueart was married and  divorced and married again, and then he found Frances, his wife who loved him till the end.

He wasn’t the life of the party he WAS the party! Everyone I know loved Stueart... Downtown Hot Springs had been run down ever since the speakeasy casinos had been closed down by Governor Rockefeller in 1968..Until then Hot Springs was abuzz with activity.. Gambling was wide open and the police let it be as long as the people who needed to pay, paid up. They bought and wore the finest clothes. Life was good. Stueart graduated Hot Springs High in 1967, went to college and came home to the family business where he was until the day he died. As I said, Hot Springs had gone downhill since then pretty bad. Then the downtown merchants association revived down town and it was lively and the place to be...Stueart was a big part of that renewal. Hot Springs is nestled in a narrow valley only four lanes wide. You can Google it and see how beautiful it really is. Hot steaming water flows down a mountain at 147 degrees.

Stueart moved his business downtown in the 1990’s. After a few years the mountain collapsed and the buildings had to be evacuated...just before Christmas...Stueart survived... When the oil money dried up Stueart survived. Stueart had damn near survived everything until that fateful day on
September 8, 2005. It seems that this carpetbagger had come to town and was going to work magic downtown. He was going to make downtown 5th Avenue in New York...Yea, right. So he made a deal with the man who owns most of the buildings...he would collect the rent and choose the renters...He was a wheeler and dealer…A shiny man, shark skinned suits etc... He lived in a house with the whole downstairs walls of glass so that you could see all of his poison’ snakes...each snake had its separate cages, you could hear them strike at the glass and rattle, the lights were low and it was creepy. He was creepy. Dennis Magee was his name. He had gained control of everything and he had a score to settle. He demanded more money for the deposits on everyone...He even raised one family’s deposit over one thousand percent. They had a Chinese restaurant and Dennis put them out on the street with no place to go and no warning.

He went to Stueart and demanded that he double his deposit and rent. Stueart was furious...It was the beginning of the fall season that led into Christmas. Stueart had been there for about 10 years and he would be there forever along with a beautiful bath shop, a fabulous antique shop and an upscale gift emporium. People couldn’t help but to stop in for a visit...Life was good, minus the Dennis fiasco… We had all stood behind Dennis when his restaurant burned to the ground...Stueart headed up a drive to raise money for Dennis... Some say his mortgage and insurance papers started rubbing together and caught on fire...Who knows? Dennis went back to Stueart and Stueart tried to talk some sense into Dennis...Just wait till the first of the year and he would pay...No Way! He demanded it right then or he would padlock the door... Stueart decided to move to another location down the street...So he did just that...It was right before Labor Day which is a big tourist’s day... On the evening in September 2005, Stueart was carrying boxes into the store and he fell flat on the floor dead... Stueart had died of a massive coronary right then and there. He died in the store that he loved so much. A man on the street came by and saw him so he called an ambulance...Frances, his wife, arrived at the emergency room, then his daughter. They took Stueart to Intensive Care and put him on a ventalator. There was no hope...The doctor told me that his heart just exploded...the only thing keeping him alive were the machines... I stood at the foot of his bed crying, holding his feet in my hands and said goodbye. He had been there for about five days not changing one single bit. I had talked with Stueart about death many years earlier...just a casual conversation. I knew what he wanted ..Frances tried so very hard to not let him die She made a brave decision.

The next day down at the store Frances was in the back...friends were everywhere putting the store together...The way Stueart would have wanted it to be. I went to Frances and we started talking... She asked my opinion of how I thought Stueart really was...It was very grim. Stueart wasn’t there in that body...Sometimes people just have to hear it from the right person. In this case it was me. She decided to ask for one more CT scan to see if there was and glimmer of hope...sadly, there was not. They made the heart wrenching decision to let Stueart go...He had been gone the whole time...they just could not believe it….No one could. He was only fifty six...too young.

They had a beautiful memorial service at the First United Methodist Church which held 500. The sanctuary was packed, standing room only and they were flowing out the doors. Grammy Award winning song writer Randy Goodrum played music and he spoke. He told a story of being in church for a youth meeting when he and Stueart snuck upstairs to play Great Balls of Fire on the pipe organ...full blast...That is the kind of friend Stueart was, Fun...

Stueart LOVED Lake Hamilton... People used to ask him “How can you stand living on the lake in the winter...It is so dreary and depressing” Stueart said “ looking at the lake in winter is like looking at a black and white photo You just have learn to appreciate it"...And he did. In April the next year Frances decided to have another memorial to send Stueart off. I knew what they had in mind beautiful sunset, beautiful music, a few drinks with friends... Stueart would drift off into the sunset...It was April and I knew what the weather and currents would do and it wasn’t pretty. I could imagine Frances sitting there at the the end of the day and there goes Stueart drifting by… or getting stuck in someone’s dock... The day of the service I ordered a tropical urn wreath and had it delivered... I was ill and could not attend…. It was way overcast and the winds were blowing from the west into the bay not away from it. They took a boat out into the middle of the small bay and poured Stueart’s ashes onto the wreath and let it go to drift into the sunset...Frances sent me photos and it was a beautiful ceremony. Life went on...

In late May we put the boat in the lake and I decided to go visit my friend, Marcia. She lives about six miles up the lake from me then you turn west off of the main channel and go a few miles. I was talking on the phone with my friend in Florida, Pattie King...Just chatting my way up the lake when I decided to go up the main channel to the 70 West Bridge where Stueart lived. No reason just had the urge to go up there. And what to my wandering eyes did appear...? Stueart, sitting there hung up at the 70 west bridge! About one hundred feet away from where  he was set adrift. It was about three miles out of my way. When I got to the bay I looked around and there was Stueart and his wreath stuck against the bridge embankment...I was floored... I told Pattie King that I had found Stueart...Six weeks after he was set adrift...It was exactly as if he had called and said that his car had broken down or he had had too much to drink, come and get me. I pulled the boat up to the bridge and waded out to pick up the wreath, ashes and all. I told Pattie King what I had found and she was speechless. I hung up. Stueart had been washed up on that spot six weeks earlier and what are the chances that I had found him? He was only about one hundred yards from his house and his house sits directly on the shoreline. I put Stueart on the back seat of the boat and headed off to Marcia’s again...As I was pulling up to Marcia’s dock she looked at the back seat and said “Noo! I can’t believe it where did you find Stueart”? I told her the whole story and she just could not believe it either... But, yes, it was the wreath and Stuart’s ashes... What are the chances that I would find him?

I visited with Marcia for a while and then I told her to fix me a scotch to go... As I was pulling away from the dock the sun was setting over the lake and it was a spectacular sunset. I am not sure that anyone loves Lake Hamilton as much as we do... it was a slow cruise...As I turned into my bay the sun crept lower. When I got home I asked my husband to drive me to the cemetery downtown where the Pennington Estate is located, he did. The sun was going down pretty quickly now and I knew I had to hurry. I gently laid  Stueart and the wreath on his mother’s grave and said a prayer and said goodbye to my friend for the last time. During the next few weeks people said that they would spot him going down the lake. Then someone said that they saw him at the dam...I just smiled...His cousin was at a yard sale at Marcia’s and said that she saw him at the cemetery.. Marcia called me and we had a quiet laugh...We knew that Stueart would just love this story...Espaciall since it was about him!

Last2cu: Writers Block

Ever since I had my stroke I have major writers block and stage fright. Has anyone else experienced anything like this before and what do you do about it?

Last2cu: Meux Cemetery Cemetery Will No Longer Keep Her Secrets

Paunch Rowe died late last month, he was 86 years old and he was the only other person who knw the name of the man who calously threw all of the tombstones in the newly formed Lake Hamilton so he could sell the most prime lake property on Lake Hamilton. Pauncho and I are the only people who knows the name of the man who did it and i feel that the time is now to come clean and tell the truth..Over 200 people are buried in this toney subdivision on the banks of Lake Hamilton.

Last2cu: My Life In The Day Of A Stroke

On the evening of April 9 2010 I had a stroke.I am only 51 years old! I knew exactly when it happened..I had gotten a sudden excruciating headache and I could not talk. I took an asprin that they said saved my life..an asprin! I have absolutely no family history of stroke.. in 2006 I had a virus hit my heart and thought that I had finally recovered from that..I had lost 55 pounds and life was good. Of all the ways to die, I thought that I would be shot out of the saddle.


I was scared.. .really scared. Dr. Tuttle came in and said right off the bat that I had had a stroke. My smile was lopsided; I was weak on my right side and I was having a hard time answering questions. They immediately took me for a CT scan that confirmed it, they admitted me, took me straight to a room and there I was. They didn’t hook up IV’s or anything. Just watched me. Everything smelled of musk, my least favorite thing. My smeller was working over time. My friend, Marcia Hudson was the first one there. I cried when I saw her. She told me that everything would be ok..If Marcia tells you something it is true. No one on the face of the earth did I want to see than her. Her friend, Theresa, drove her up to the hospital and then Theresa checked on me for the next two days..She is a respiratory therapist at St Joe. All I could say was a few words that didn’t make sense. So people politely said uh huh. Jeff and Amber came on Sunday and they stayed all afternoon. We had a great visit and I will be forever grateful because that is just what I needed. I needed to talk to someone for a while just to practice and with someone who knew me and had the patience to listen to me. It was very hard.

It is funny but, I understood everything that was being said to me. I just couldn’t communicate.. Mitch was very worried but, he held up like a champ. Having a stroke was very interesting, to say the least…I have never been at a loss of words, my daughter says that I talk to everyone and I do!.. So , to not be able to talk or write was devastating. But, I knew it would change, and it did, for a while. Then blood pressure medication became a bad thing.. I woke up one morning itching my head off from head to toe. So we changed that. Then came the antidepressant. It didn’t work and had some very bad complications so I was out on a different one and it was brutal. I cried all of the time and felt like the world was ending..I do not fear death. Since I write about cemeteries I had always wondered what it really would be like to die..not in a morbid way just curious.. all I could do was cry and I knew it was the antidepressants and I could work through it. Depression is a major issue with a stroke.. I had backslid to the point that I could not talk to anyone at all. Mitch had some friends come up from Dallas and that was very trying..I felt that I couldn’t keep up with the conversation. I felt like I was fading away….I felt stupid.

Last Wednesday, I was in Jeff’s office crying my eyes out, again.. I could not write and the key board looked like a jumbled mess, I couldn’t keep up with a conversation, I felt stupid for the first time in my life, I was just a mess. Jeff said that it was the Wellbutrin. He had tried to reactivate the part of the brain that was damaged and it didn’t work. I felt hopeless. Depression is a brutal thing in case some of you are lucky enough to never have had to live with it. It sucks you in and you buy it. Still, I could understand everything. I just felt stupid and had no chance of it ever getting better. I felt that had lost everything and that nothing I could say would be of any interest to anyone. So, I went home and quit taking my Wellbutrin. I was scared at having to wait for the new antidepressant to work and I didn’t know how I could wait didn’t know how I could make it, it felt so permanent. When you are in the hospital the staff never tell you anything about a stroke..NOTHING! So you have to have your wits about you to ask the perfect questions and they still don’t tell you anything..The Doctor didn’t do much better. I finally got strong enough to walk the halls and I noticed everyone in the rooms.. I felt like it was a scientific experiment. There was one lady who motioned for me to come in and turn her lights off..I couldn’t talk and neither could she.. But, there is a silent language between stroke patients.. She could not move, so I turned them off and stood there holding her hand. Our eyes met and she tried to talk to me.. Funny, but I understood everything she was saying. She had been hit hard by the stroke..Her right side was paralyzed, mine wasn’t. She asked me to pray with her and I did. I left and walked down the hall and saw an elderly man who was completely paralyzed and wasn’t going to make it through the night not a flower or person in sight the next morning he wasn’t there. I realized that I was one of the few to have another day. They call this one a warning stroke and I hate that. And the statistics say that if you have a TMI (transient ischemic attack) you are at a 60% risk for getting another..But, it doesn’t tell you what to do to keep from having it. I called the American Heart Association and the National Stroke Association and they said that I would feel much better if I sent them money. I am sure that it would. lol So, no one tells you what to do. You are left to try to figure it out yourself so here I go. I take an aspirin every day and you should too. It is the single most important thing anyone can do for themselves. And I take my blood pressure medicine everyday! I delegate stressful things to others.

I have begun talking on the phone more even though friends stop calling whenever something bad happens. I don’t know why since it is when you need them the most. I think it is because they believe that you may be resting and they don’t want to bother you and some just simply don’t know what to say, then you have some that just simply are not friends in the first place. A stroke weeds them out in a hurry! Mitch isn’t much of a talker so practicing is a bit hard.

And if this wasn’t enough we were in the smack middle of a move to a new house! Mitch handled everything; all I could do was just sit and point. I felt really bad for not being able to anything but realized that I had always had to do everything myself..When I was forty I moved all by myself to Orlando, Florida with no map and no job to start my life over. From a rown of 35,000 to a city ov over two million people. Lived through four category 3 and above hurricanes in six weeks. I have lived through horrific floods in my home town. An epic ice storm, with no power for over two weeks. The death of my aunt, my uncle and my mother six months apart.. Raised a daughter all by myself after her father died in an auto accident, when she was in the second week of first grade. I was a pioneering HIV/AIDS Advocate, when AIDS was not a popular disease, starting with my first patient in 1983. That was two years before they had a test for AIDS. It was still called Gay Related Immune Deficiency. I have worked on a Hollywood movie set nad been kissed by Antonio Bandaras. I have been to two Presidential Inaugurals, been a guest at the White House. I have ridden a camel up to the great Pyramids of Giza…Floated on the Nile and stood on the hill where the Sheppard’s saw the star..The Star, professing the birth of Christ. I have been to the tomb of Jesus and stood at the place of his birth.  And I have a daughter and have been blessed with three beautiful grandchildren. So if I am in that sixty percent don’t feel sorry for me..I have had an amazing life, and I know it. And if I am lucky enough to be in that fourty percent then God has granted me a repreive, great friends and an even greater life!

On The Evening of April 9, 2010 I Had A Stroke

In a few days I will post another story. I had kinda lost many of my stories. It takes some time for me to write but, will soon! Thank you for all of your support.

Louise The Unfortunate

                                                          

Many years ago I had had surgery so I was watching hours of cable TV...It was actually soon after cable TV came out in our area when I came upon a home and gardens story about antique roses...I remember the lady, Teri Tillman, saying that most antique roses are found in cemeteries. The reason? Because when people plant roses in cemeteries they never go back and dig them up! She was from Natchez, Mississippi, which is one of my favorite Deep South Towns...It is located on the Mississippi river between Vicksburg, Mississippi and New Orleans, Louisiana..The Civil war was hard on Natchez and even harder on the people...As with any great civil war city, Natchez has a great cemetery. The City Cemetery of Natchez, Mississippi. And it is covered with roses...


I finally remembered the name of the lady who told the story about antique roses, Teri Tillman ...but, I think it was the story that she told about an anonymous grave that stuck with me the most…One grave marker sits alone in the Jewish part of this cemetery and the rose lady told us how she had grafted her favorite rose and planted it by Louise’s grave.. It is the story of Louise that tugs at my heart...Seems that Louise was a mail order bride who arrived in Natchez sometime in the mid 1800’s... no one knows for sure...Louise came from somewhere back east and when she arrived at the docks all blushed with anticipation for her new husband to be and new life, she waited and waited..No one came to claim her...She waited the next day which turned into night then a week which then turned into months..What had happened? Had her betrothed really been at the docks all along and decided that she was not what he had ordered? Had he been killed and no one knew that he was bringing a bride from back east. Heart sick and ashamed, Louise could not go home and could not let her family know that the man of her dreams had left her at the docks to be thrown to the streets to take care of herself as best as she could…

                                                        

Louise worked for many years in what  the locals call "Under the Hill"...She did the best that she could..a broken woman with broken dreams... Louise took ill and died without anyone knowing a thing about her…..It is said that a wealthy Jewish businessman took pity on her and gave her a space with the rest of his family...The only thing that remains is a white marble gravestone which simply says Louise The Unfortunate..Whomever she was and whatever she did ,she touched at least one heart..

When I picked up my daughter from her school in Vicksburg, Mississippi, after a five and a half hour drive myself, we drove the one and a half hours down to Natchez just to visit Louise’s grave... I stopped at a florist and bought a small nosegay for Louise…The clerk asked if I had family buried there and I told her “no, I am just going to see Louise” to my surprise the clerk got nasty...she said “I can’t believe that with all of the beauty that is Natchez, Mississippi you come all of this way to see that whore” She was a prostitute, you know?” Of course I knew...It even made the story more dear to my heart and enticing...Allison and I took the flowers and I tried to remember what I had seen in the background scene that would help me indentify her spot…no luck, so I walked across the street to a magnificent Bed and Breakfast overlooking the Mississippi River, to my suprise, again I was met with disdain. I walked back past a car from Texas...the elderly couple had driven 15 hours from their home to Mississippi...They asked if I could help them find a grave and I told them that I, too was looking for a grave but, would help if I could..They were looking for Louise The Unfortunate! They had seen the same show that I seen and something about Louise was calling them, too...

What was it about a woman who we never knew, who died over 150 years before we were ever born? A woman who no one wanted, a woman abandoned in a strange town and even stranger world? A woman who was deemed unfortunate at the time of her death turned  out to be a very fortunate woman after all…A woman with a story, buried in one of the most beautiful places on earth overlooking the Might Mississippi River…eternaly watching the sunset of legend every day ..Who would have ever thought that Louise The Unfortunate would become a legend….? If we are really lucky in life we will have strangers touched so much by our lives that they drive hours and hours from their homes to lay flowers at our grave..One Hundred and fifty years later.


http://www.bbg.org/gar2/topics/plants/handbooks/roses/3b.html

In Lieu Of Flowers

                                                              

                                                              

When I die, I want FLOWERS! Not just an urn wreath...not just a family spray, I want an obscene amount of flowers...If someone wants to send money to a charity of choice in my name that is ok. I would hope that I had made a positive impact on enough lives that I had lots of friends who would send flowers. If they just pick flowers from their yard or from a field; I would love that just as much...Once, I had two AIDS patients who lived together and died within days of each other...Tim and Jim...They were as we say in the south, Dandies...Always into something and just plain ole trouble…But, you just had to love them..I buried them in a cookie jar thqt was donated by a local potter, in my family cemetery with a do it yourself funeral because I could not get a single preacher who would do a funeral for an AIDS patient... And in one of the most touching moments I have ever seen, a grandmother and her young grandson walked into the cemetery, with a coffee can covered in aluminum foil and filled with flowers of the field..I could imagine both of them carefully and thoughtfully taking the only vessel that they had and covering it with foil...they then walked about a mile by themselves and handpicked flowers...a coffee can full of wildflowers. Every flower picked to show Tim and Jim how much they were loved and would be missed...They said that they sang gospel hymns while picking the flowers...Can you see it in your mind? I can and I hope that you can, too.


While I was living and working in Florida, at one of the Crown Jewel of cemeteries for SCI, Woodlawn Memorial Park, I saw thousands of sprays of flowers...WOW, do they ever know how to knock out fabulous flowers! Everyone ALWAYS asks me why I like working at cemeteries? One of the best things I can say is that I love flowers and get to receive huge bouquets of them several times a day. I get to see them and smell their beautiful scents all day long...I get to see how much people are touched by the sentiment that words cannot express... I have never seen anyone weeping with pride over a piece of paper with a number on it...In Lieu of Flowers is great...I am all for donating to charity...I was Excretive Director of a 501(c)3.. I know how much donations mean, I really do but, I have never seen the thank you phone calls or the thank you notes that I have seen by a single bouquet of flowers…store bought or handpicked!

                                                            

I always send flowers, not that I am that special, I just love to make people happy. I want people that I love to know how much I love them and how very much I will miss them. I have the best florist in the world, Marie’s Flowers on Albert Pike in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas. All I have to do is call them up and tell them what it is for and they magically read the mind of the one I am sending flowers to and when we see the spray it is magically the sentiment that I was hoping it would be. We once had a friend who was a Cheyenne Medicine Man, Al Tallbird and his beautiful wife, Beverly... She called us to her deathbed and asked us to take care of her husband after she was gone and she wished for flowers at her funeral…She wanted everyone to know that she was loved...My sentiment exactly..I called Marie’s and told them who she was and what she was like...We picked up the spray to take to Oklahoma...IT WAS STUNNING!! Autumn flowers with pussywillow and pheasant feathers...whenever I find my box of photos I will post a picture of it….

My childhood friend, Frank Rapley’s father, David Rapley was one of the first Marines to set foot on forgiven soil in WWII…He came home from saving the world to raise a family and lead our community..He loved flowers and always sent flowers to the deceased...I found this out when I called to order flowers for Mr. Rapley... Joanne, at Marie’s Flowers, answered the phone and said that the family was just in and said that he hated In Lieu of Flowers. Joanne and I talked a long time about why people feel the need to say please send money instead of flowers and I told her that I had sat with hundreds of families while planning a service and felt that for whatever reason, people feel guilty about having people making a fuss over them. They have all of these excuses like “the flowers die” ...”it is a waste of money”...I always ask how they would feel if someone sent them flowers on their birthday? They would be thrilled!! I asked them if they had ever been to a wedding where there were not any flowers and they look at me like I am crazy. (I am but, that isn’t the point) Would you expect a bride to not have a bouquet? Don’t you want to catch it?? Of course!!! I tell them that a wedding only lasts an hour and then the marriage might only last a few years...yes, I am a little jaded…Then there is a second marriage...Would there be flowers..Absolutely!! So, why in the world would you not have as many flowers at a funeral as you would a wedding? Think about it, it is the last party and celebration that your loved one will ever attend…I feel that it should be a blow out and a true send off...

When I go to a funeral or memorial Service, I think about, Are the flowers beautiful and have the feel of the soul of the deceased? How about the scripture, will it bless the departed? Is the music foot tapping and does it make you want to sing along in joy and sorrow...can you pour your heart out, too? And I love a good eulogy...I want it to be thought provoking and mindful of the sence of the person that it is intended to honor and I want to cry and then laugh..I want to know that everyone involved had the opportunity to mourn and then honor the wishes of the loved one...and I feel that part of the mourning procces is that we , I, have the opportunity to express my feelings with flowers! If any of you don’t want a beautiful spray of flowers just let me know and I will count out the pennies and write a cold number on a small piece of paper and send it to an unknown address and let a clerk open it and put it in a pile...or I can send flowers? We always take flowers ot the cemetery after the death when we visit..Why? Why do we feel the need to keep flowers on the grave and not at the funeral?

                                                   

I have given much thought to my funeral and how I can get a lot of flowers and mourners…I am going to have a raffle...for every $10.00 a person spends on Flowers They will get a raffle ticket...we will draw for something every 15 minutes..After a song of my choice...then at the very end...At the cemetery after I am inurned, there will be a drawing for a one week’s vacation anywhere in the world, I have a book to choose the resort from...I think it will work! What do you think?