
{"id":2863,"date":"2008-06-26T06:33:16","date_gmt":"2008-06-26T14:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=2863"},"modified":"2010-07-14T11:37:53","modified_gmt":"2010-07-14T19:37:53","slug":"my-friend-chuck-tillotson-died-yesterday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2008\/06\/26\/my-friend-chuck-tillotson-died-yesterday\/","title":{"rendered":"My friend Chuck Tillotson died yesterday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/resizedchuckobit.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/resizedchuckobit-e1279136260452.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"resizedchuckobit\" width=\"300\" height=\"450\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-2864\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<em>By <strong>Gary Phillips<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I dreamed of him as a bird last night,<br \/>\nmigrating in the dark toward some vast coastal outline.<br \/>\nOther fliers joined as we flew.<br \/>\nUp ahead somewhere I could hear raucous welcome cries<br \/>\nand what sounded like a thousand gossiping voices.<br \/>\nChuck made for it.<br \/>\nHe shook me off somewhere<br \/>\nover the noisy shore with a tender but definitive dip,<br \/>\nand I woke up in my own body.<br \/>\nThere were gold finches at the feeder, explosions of yellow energy so intense that it took me a raft of seconds to recognize them as being part of the real world.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Chuck Tillotson was a carpenter, a guitar player, a legendary party boy. He laughed a lot, admired his friends and stayed true to them, gave himself freely to strangers. He was a father to beautiful boys. Chuck played a slow style of poker that drove some people crazy. He was a handsome man with a gentle mien and a long unruly white mustache. He had a voice like hot honey: low, whiskey-filtered, languorous and warm.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nChuck had a great love in his life, his wife Veronica. They had struggles, as all great loves do, but many people envied the laughter they carried together and their love gravity, the way they leaned toward each other over and again as if they shared a rich warm secret.<\/p>\n<p>Chuck was alive and living his life and then he was in trouble and then he was slipping away from us, one foot on the Long Road and no more than a slim thread connecting him to the dirt and sweat and precious air of this world.<\/p>\n<p>The doctor called us in for a conference, into a lounge so full of people some had to share chairs or sit on the floor. He brought in his whole nursing crew for support. The doctor was gentle and his eyes misted, which comforted us, but his message was unequivocal. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I could do an intervention here,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re trained to do as doctors. I could maybe give Chuck two or three more weeks, stem the infection with surgery and powerful drugs, but it would all come to the same thing, and I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think Chuck would want us to do that.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He blinked. <\/p>\n<p>In a room just a few yards away Chuck lay, sedated and pierced with tubes. He looked so vulnerable it broke our hearts.<\/p>\n<p>Veronica took her courage in hand and made the decision: Chuck would be taken off life support and his family would gather and make him as comfortable as possible. She talked with his sons and their strong fine mother, called family members, made arrangements with the nursing staff, had a final consult with the doctor.<\/p>\n<p>I stood in for the family during the extubation, while the doctor and staff freed Chuck from his coil of tubes and separated him from the respirator. This procedure took over an hour. Nurses and doctors were tender and respectful, talking with Chuck as if he were conscious and making every effort not to cause him pain. They treated him always as a human being, as the treasure of a person we all knew. <\/p>\n<p>At calm times during the procedure I worked with Chuck, and the staff gave me room. I blessed him with water and sang songs and prayers of release from many traditions, like this from The Pagan Book of Living and Dying:<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Beloved Chuck, you are<br \/>\ndying<br \/>\nBut you are not alone.<br \/>\nWe are here with you,<br \/>\nThe beloved dead await you.<br \/>\nYou go from love<br \/>\ninto love.<br \/>\nCarry with you<br \/>\nonly love.<br \/>\nMay our love carry you<br \/>\nAnd open the way.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Lauren the floor chaplain walked up to his bed and said: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Chuck, you are a lucky man. You must be a lucky man to inspire such love, such careful attention, so many friends.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>After Chuck was made clean and comfortable his boys and Veronica came in and hugged him and whispered to him and held him in their arms until he died. We all cried a bucket of tears but it was a great loving send-off, with 20-30 more waiting in the hall who came in after to have their time with Chuck and with the family. <\/p>\n<p>That same evening, a whole boatload of Chuck\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s friends met at a community building on the Chatham\/Alamance line, and a riotous emotional wake broke out, with music, dancing and another raft of tears, floating us toward that Other Shore so close we could almost see it, but not ours, not yet.<\/p>\n<p>My sweet daddy died this year as well and almost as unexpected, and I saw a conservative Baptist community I had fled taking care of its own, with food and witness and stories and a thousand acts of kindness to our family. Both these deaths, Chuck\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and my father\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, were hard and shattering to me but they each had a sense of rightness somehow, not that they happened but that both deaths were surrounded by dignity and love and community support for the survivors. <\/p>\n<p>Now my father speaks through my bones in the morning dew and sometimes Chuck Tillotson will slip into my dreams. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad for both, and all that went before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Gary Phillips I dreamed of him as a bird last night, migrating in the dark toward some vast coastal outline. Other fliers joined as we flew. Up ahead somewhere I could hear raucous welcome cries and what sounded like a thousand gossiping voices. Chuck made for it. He shook me off somewhere over the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":2864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-obituaries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2863"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11436,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2863\/revisions\/11436"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}