Post For Fall
August 08, 2013

Dear ones, hello, and how I miss you, Jami, Larry has my address. It is:

Marvin Randall Chaplin
E-20848 - Hospice X-110
California Medical Facility
P.O. Box 2000
Vacaville, CA
95696-2000

I pray you find a way to connect with me. I would like to see the photos you have. My life has gone by and left me windblown and dusty by the side of the road. Friends have recently told me to stop apologizing. I'm going to do just that, if the Lord moves the hands of fate in my favor I'm going to work hard helping someone who I know needs a friend. I imagine, "cooking", "cleaning", taking her grocery shopping and to church, even in a wheelchair. Sometimes just being there for a family member can change the quality of life so much. I don't know how long I have to live but I'm going to spend all the time I can being positive in my outlook. I have found the resonance of church friends to be soothing, so I'm going to find a church in our neighborhood to attend on Sundays and make that part of our lives. I have been watching DVDs, reading books and playing my acoustic guitar. Working with this lung cancer and living the best I can, that's about all I can think of, I'm afraid, afraid of saying something wrong now that I may have a chance, of a chance, of going home to Indiana and living there with my sister Roseanna. But there's really nothing more than simple people with a simple hope to live a while longer with my brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces, to work on the family tree, take wheelchair cruises with Rosie, cook good meals for us. I no longer have excuses but I have spent 14 years and I'm costing the state a fortune. I'm not gonna break any laws, I have a strong support system now here and also waiting for me back home and that is what I need. I'm old and breathless, the cancer has taken my voice. It is very difficult to talk and I will never sing like I used to, I'll sing, heck yea I'll sing but I'm in the Tom Waits school of vocalization and I'm way down on the list. But it's still good. I can sing in a high falsetto voice, well, I wouldn't call it singing, I'm sitting in the "dayroom" area of the Hospice here in Vacaville, I could be staring out into space and probably feel I'm being just as productive. So, I may indeed get to be released and disappear in a little room in Columbus, Indiana, the town of my birth, Reader's Digest's Architectural City of the Year in 1978. In the United States that is. It is a nice town, I have lived there a couple of times when I was younger. I never went to school there or anything. I went to school in Cambridge City, about 100 miles north east of Columbus. School? I failed at school. I regret it, to this day I regret my inability to apply myself at school, here's what I think, for some reason in 1st/2nd grade, I really applied myself to reading and writing. Reading was my salvation and escape, I was always super hungry at school and when I went home for lunch there was hardly ever anything to eat. I turned 18 in Tanya, Florida, I was running the streets "prostituting". "Surviving". My mother told me over the phone that she was sorry for me being hungry, "malnourished". I swear that's what she said to me, I remember weighing 68 lbs for 2 or 3 years in elementary school. I told her never mind, I loved, do love my mom unerringly, she was my rock, I'm sitting here writing this stuff that has no meaning any longer. I'll stop. I'm bored, this hospice is overrun by janitorial staff. Care workers, nurses, etc, the patients walk on and off the stage in a daze looking for something to do, or waiting for the next med pass, sometimes it seems there's one place for patients, "bed", the rest of the place is an up and running construction zone. Once one signs the "do not resuscitate", it's a waiting game for the Grim Reaper, or the not so amused chauffeur to East 59th Street?? So, if I were a rich man, on & on & on - what difference would it make? Probably a lot, I wish I could walk out into the South Pacific off the coast of So Cal, between Cardiff by the Sea and Encinitas. That's where my rock was, is, I sat there for time after time after time, I dreamed of her, I cried after her, I never had any money, to this day, to my death, I had no money, I dreamed of her, I could rub her feet w/ lotion and massage her back for hours, listen to her laugh and cry like a baby because I knew it was hopeless. She was grown up, she lived in the real world, I lived in the fantasy world that I created daily, that I still create, I never knew reality. I never had a grip on it. I've paid my own phone bill maybe 3 times. I paid my own rent, maybe 2 or 3 times. I never owned a car or anything, really. It makes no sense to me now at 57 years of age w/ terminal illness, I finally have an understanding of paying rent, of paying bills, but I'm still probably going to be on Social Security, so it's like the taxpayer will be still paying my way. I am holding on. I am still trying to get the "Compassionate Release", I'm praying for the Buddhist Hospice, San Francisco, that may be a wondrous blessing.

I love you, there at your computer, dreaming of your hopes, wanting the very best for yourself and your family. I love you and until my last breath, I will pray for you. My nephews, I miss you, Stephen, Michael, Johnny, Perry, Troy, Roman, Jason, my nieces, Allison, Jami, Tara, Renae, write soon. I am going quietly into that long goodnight.

HAR-HAR-HAR :P

Uncle Randall