Dave Van Echo is a former colleague of mine back at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and is currently a staff physician there, in the Hematology-Oncology Service. Although there are only around 25 Army Oncologists, it just happens that 3 of us are in Iraq, actually fairly close to each other. Dave is on a different FOB, and he wrote the following in response to my “Day In The Life” segments. I include it here, because it adds some genuine insight into the life of a military doctor in post-surge Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF).

SUBJECT: embrace the sand

DATE: March 21, 2008

Erik,

Welcome to the desert. Tanya told me you are here and mentioned your blog. I looked at it once but it hits too close to home, so I won’t be reading it again.

I’m loacted at FOB XXX, at a level II TMC co-located with a FST. Our sick call is not as busy as yours and Tanya’s so I do get to the d-fac 3 times a day. I think the higher-ups have discovered this so when our unit leaves we might be replaced with a level I + FST. The clinic is in a renovated 1-story building that was probably the hospital on the former Iraqi airbase. We all live in the hospital—at least I rate a private room since I am the highest ranking member of the company.

Our FOB is commanded by an American Army HQ element, but the coalition forces outnumber us 3:1. Georgians (both Republic of and State of), El Salvadorans, Poles, Lithuanians, Kazaks, and Romanians dominate the place. I don’t think even a Marine could stop a 280 lb. Georgian taking food from the d-fac. And their military health standards are somewhat looser than ours so we do occasionally see some real medicine pathology in the clinic.

All the essentials for life are located within a 1 square mile area but there is still enough open space that the occassional rocket doesn’t hit anything important. Coffee shops, barbers, theaters, and pools are still a pipe dream, but our pharmacy has been augmented to include as many different antidepressants as antibiotics to keep the natives pacified.

Try to stay happy and just give in to the sand. It will win.

Then, after an e-mail request by me to publish the above:

Yeah, feel free to post this on your blog. You may use my name. I find other docs’ stories fascinating, too. You never know where a subspecialty career in the Army will take you.

I may only be in country for 5 months, much to my family’s delight. The position was a 15-month assignment started by another doc who managed to convince his command on both sides of the ocean to let him come back early to resume some research. By the time it was approved and I got over here, the unit had only 5 months left in its deployment. I’m the senior physician in the C/26 Brigade Support Battallion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division. In actual fact we are not supporting the 2BCT, 3ID because they are located closer to Baghdad. In the modern Army method of bastardizing units, the C Med Company was sent off into the hinterlands to support the coalition forces and other US units operating in Wasit province. It’s nice to be in a line unit, though — the administrative procedures run much more favorably for us then they do for our MEDCOM-controlled FST neighbors.

My brother is a proud member of the brainwashed Marines so I have a little insight into their behavior. It’s not personal. They have no respect for any medical personnel, or anyone who is not a Marine for that matter, unless you can hump a ruck farther and faster than they. I once heard them refer to a certain Navy Admiral as a boat driver whose only purpose was to deliver Marines to the fight. Let them try to fight without us, I say.

Dave

Dave’s comment about the Marines above was in response to my observation that on Al Asad, many Marines have been here a long time, and thus have gotten pretty complacent. Some are not very respectful of officers, and many are downright disrespectful of my medics, even when outranked. This was a rather great surprise to me, as my experience in the states has been very different. The Marines I’d previously met had impeccable military demeanor—the type of servicemen who just naturally use “sir” for roughly every other word in a sentence spoken to an officer. This is still true of many here on Al Asad, but there are more bad-apple Marines here than I had seen elsewhere.

This brings up a general theme in the military, one which is pretty simple to understand, and widely pervasive, not just among the Marines. It is the general disdain of the fighters (those who regularly go off the base on “missions,” wherein they may very well be risking their lives) for the medical personnel and others who stay on post most or all of the time. There is a derogatory (but hilarious) term for those who rarely/never leave the safety of the Forward Operating Base: they (we, actually, for I am one of them) are known as “Fobbits.” In further proof that the best new words are coined from the bottom up, rather than the other way around, this is a nearly perfect amalgam of the Tolkien creatures (Hobbits, who, you recall, never wanted to leave the Shire and face the big bad world outside), the acronym “FOB,” and the fact that the Fobbits tend to be a bit fatter and softer than the rest of the group (again, like Tolkien’s “little people”).

But most of us Fobbits have absolutely no choice in the matter. My predecessor, MAJ Kep Davis, was not ever allowed to leave Al Asad, and so spent his entire 6 months within a certain 1-mile radius. It is likely to be the same for me. I still owe the Army three years, and I’m pretty sure that they want to get those three years out of me. And our clinic, of course, serves an essential role on the post, and we are open 7 days a week, so we clearly need to stick around. And I have found that a brief, sharp reminder that my clinic staff and I will be respected, usually sets an errant servicemember on the right path pretty quickly.

TECHNICAL NOTE: Our internet has been up and down (mostly down) for the past 15 hours or so, and this may continue. If you don’t see a post from me, know that there is probably one queued up, just waiting for a conduit to the site. This happened last night, and thus you are getting this belated post today. Coming soon: some pictures from my trip to an actual desert oasis. (Don’t worry, mom. It’s right here on the FOB.)

Quick one tonight; I’ll regale you with a lengthier yarn on the morrow.

I am sitting in my Contained Housing Unit at the moment, watching West Kentucky have their upset hopes dashed by Drake after leading for the almost the entire game. The service which brings this to me is the Armed Forces Network, or AFN.

I’m a bit afraid that in telling you all of these nice little amenities that we have, I am making life on a combat zone base seem almost cushy. Disneyland under martial law, as it were. Not the case, I assure you. However, the Department of Defense (DoD) has done a few things to make living conditions better than any previous war. In my humble opinion, this is a smart move, one which has served to keep morale generally pretty good, in spite of a long, difficult, laborious war, 5 years and one day old as I write this.

The AFN is one of those amenities, and like most of the DoD’s attempts at entertainment, this one is imperfect, but generally succeeds. AFN comes over satellite (perched on the top of one of our city’s canisters), and offers eight networks, each with a generic name like “AFN Prime,” “AFN News,” etc. The programming is a combination of live stuff (like the basketball game I am watching now) and delayed showings of high-demand shows like “American Idol.” They’ll repeat the big stuff a few times over the weekend.

(And West Kentucky sinks the three at the buzzer for the win!)

On the AFN, there are no regular commercials, i.e., for Michelin tires or GEICO or other products. The commercial commercials are replaced by messages aimed at Army members, teaching me the following important lessons:

1. Don’t go out with a prostitute and then divulge to her top secret information. (Darn; I’ll cross that one off of my to-do list.)
2. Don’t fall asleep while driving. (Good advice.)
3. Don’t eat questionable food from non-authorized sources.
4. Cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products (you know, the kind that the Army sells tax-free at the PX a half-mile away) cause cancer, and should not be used by any soldier, sailor, airman, or marine. Apparently the message here is: buy them from AAFES all you want, but just don’t use them.
5. Do take advantage of the many educational opportunity afforded to Army members and their spouses.

About every other commercial is about sexual harassment, how to report it, how to avoid it, why you should not engage in it. These commercial, presumably to make them “fair and balanced,” always include an example of some heavily-eyelinered female boss making comments to and about a male co-worker. This part of the commercials is extremely contrived, unbelievable, and therefore, rather entertaining. The Army has an ongoing war against sexual harassment, which results in the AFN commercials, plus quarterly “POSH” training (”Prevention Of Sexual Harassment”), and a few other programs with similarly tortured acronyms. I wonder if it helps?

At the top of every hour, there will be a news report given by a very scared-looking enlisted Army Specialist (the look on his face says “I thought I signed up to kill bad guys”) speaking in a thick southern accent. These “news” pieces very carefully avoid mentioning any real news—no Hillary or Obama here, no Baghdad bombings, or New York Governor shenanigans. Instead, they are oft-repeated pieces on service-specific topics, such as how a certain group of sailors has practiced overboard rescues on dummies, and the segment will include interviews with sailors who state confidently how they are now better prepared should a real-life situation like this come up. Fun stuff.

Overall, the AFN is kind of quaint, one of those things which will linger in the background of my memories about this deployment, kind of like the water bottles and the Iraqi Fried Chicken.

We had a bit of drama with the AFN when I first got here. Every night at around 8 PM, the signal would go out. There were some bad dust storms around that time, so I thought maybe that was it, but after a few nights, including some clear ones, it became obvious that something else was afoot. After a lengthy investigation and a near riot, it was discovered that a certain low-ranking enlisted marine living in the cans had the satellite box (the one which served our entire complex) in his room. This equipment took up one of his precious electrical outlets (we only have six per room), and when he wanted to play the X-Box, he’d just unplug us all. The night it nearly came to blows, he unplugged the satellite just as a basketball game was nearing its fruition.

When this marine was confronted about the issue, he initially simply refused to answer his door. Eventually, he had to open up, and was ordered to plug the thing back in. He refused the order, and shut his door. A couple of days later, Lance Corporal Snuffy was on his way to a lovely new dwelling in Tent City (where he wouldn’t be bothered with having to prioritize the electrical outlets in his room, for fairly obvious reasons). The night that he moved out was the night that we got the torrential rainstorms. Wonder where his X-Box is now?

Alrighty then, it’s late here on the other side of the planet. See you 4PM-ers later on. Write some stuff on here while I sleep, will ya? And go Huskies!

…is the title of an essay published in the Village Voice this week, by the undisputed greatest living playwright, David Mamet. If you, like me, have alternately enjoyed and been sickened by the Hillary/Obama circus of 2008, you need to read this essay, in which an entrenched, lifelong lefty reveals how he came upon the light-bulb realization that he had converted over to the right side (pun intended), while listening to NPR (the “National Palestinian Radio”). He is not the first.

I have mostly stayed away from politics in this blog, especially where Iraq is concerned, as it is impossible for me to currently have a fair view of that topic. But when an icon of the left explains with clarity, cogency, and depth the silliness that inevitably led him away from the histrionics of modern liberalism (”dark forces arrayed to thwart the delivery of benevolence to fragile masses”), I had to take note. Warning: there is a single bad word in this column (the mother of all bad words, so to speak, but one which, I am obliged to confess, may have passed somewhere around the vicinity of my brain in the exact situation Mamet describes).

By the way: there is a new Iraq entry below.

Noon (still): In the DFAC, we have a pretty wide choice of foods, ranging from the “Main” line, where the entree of the day is served, to a short order line (with hamburgers that taste like they are made of meatloaf), a sandwich line, even a stir-fry line. The servers are Third Country Nationals (TCNs), from varying places including Pakistan, India, Lebanon, and Iraq. They are very humble and very sweet, and will always give an extra helping if asked. One of our SGTs has gotten to know them fairly well despite a significant language barrier. We often see them in our clinic, where they are always very grateful for any assistance we give them.

On Tuesday, on a whim, I tried the IFC, a.k.a. “Iraqi Fried Chicken.” This turned out to be a bad idea, as it seems that IFC is just like KFC, except that it is left in the fryer much, much too long. Sort of extra extra extra crispy. But most of what they serve us is pretty good. We also have a dessert bar, with ice cream and pastries, but I have yet to partake of those—I am not huge on the sweets.

12:30ish: After we finish eating, we each grab our allowed two “to-go” items. For me, this is usually a Diet Coke plus a Gatorade bottle, or else a bag of Saudi Doritos or a Saudi potato chip called “Tiffany.” The slogan, which doesn’t quite translate to English, but is there on the front anyway: “Taste The Natural.” You’ll be happy to learn, as I did from the “Nutrition Facts” on the back page, that one bag of Tiffany “Chilli” chips gives one 2183.0 kilojoules of energy. I can feel those kilojoules in me now, bouncing around like Smilin’ Joe Fission.

The fact that we are allowed only two items to take home with us is a point of contention here on our otherwise happy base. Other DFACs (i.e., on Army-run rather than Navy-run bases) allow essentially an unlimited number of to-go items, though they’d probably flag you if you were being ridiculous about it. Also, we are not allowed to carry out any non-packaged food, which means that the person watching our clinic during the lunch hour goes without any lunch, and has to survive on the 2183.0 kilojoules of energy which a bag of Tiffanys offers. This, again, is different from any of the Kuwaiti posts, and from the Army bases in the states. The reality is that no one can make it to DFAC three times a day (I average about 1.5) and most of us have fridges, so if we could take something home other than chips and soda, we’d avoid having to eat peanut butter and crackers for dinner on those nights that our clinic runs late. But this is a Marine base, and the motto is “The Marines are looking for a few good men, preferably those who enjoy being miserable.” (By the way, to any Navy or Marines personnel who are reading this and shaking their heads, I have one thing to say: “You can’t handle the truth!” Oh, and one more: “Of course I ordered the Code Red [Mountain Dew]!”)

The result of this silly “to-go” rule is that people end up stuffing food into the many pockets of their Army Combat Uniform, like starving hamsters. During the walk back to the buses, on careful glance one can notice a few who are walking in a sort of wobbly, duck-like manner, presumably because of the load they are lugging around in their side pockets. Occasionally, a marine standing at the exit will see a particularly egregious offender, and their pockets will be searched, their apples, chocolate milk boxes, chips, drinks, and even the occasional main course enclosed in a ziploc, all will be confiscated. The medics tell me about one doctor from prior days who seemed to be a constant target of these searches, upon whom contraband was regularly discovered. Kind of embarrassing, but hey, we’re talking about bags of nacho cheese Doritos (or generic equivalent)! To gain a lot, you’ve gotta be willing to risk a lot. Ask a Bear-Stearns guy; he’ll explain it to you.

12:45 PM: On this day, we make it to the bus without any further issues, then off to laundry. On Iraqi bases there are no laundromats, only laundry services. The idea is that you bring in your dirties, all wrapped in a mesh or cloth bag, fill out a slip, and they throw the entire bag into a massive, olympic-sized washer. 72 hours later, you get the whole bag back, but with the clothing folded for you. Surprisingly, this approach actually works, and the clothes get pretty clean. As you can imagine, this one-color-fits-all method results in the whites becoming very off- after a while, but to me, it beats the heck out of doing it myself. There is something very satisfying about replacing a dusty ACU coat with a fresh one.

1PM: Back to the clinic, where we see the afternoon patients. Back pain, shoulder pain, upper respiratory symptoms, a couple of fakers looking for paperwork that will get them out of unpleasant duties (”profiles”), more back pain, strep throat, a weird-looking skin thing which is probably a spider bite, burst tympanic membrane in a TCN, and yet more back pain. Oh, and a couple of STDs also, one male, one female. (We give out a lot of condoms here, to men and women.)

4PM: The medics start mopping the clinic. Unfortunately, they usually don’t sweep first, and we have no vacuum, so mopping just serves to push the dust around. I usually sneeze a lot during this hour, and sometimes put on my very sharp-looking wrap-around goggles. Somewhere between 4-5 someone makes a run to the post office, and on this particular day, I am the big winner, with two large packages from Lorri (woo-hoo!). More on those in a later entry. There are usually a couple of general care packages from nice people in America, and the medics fight over the Snickers bars and beef jerky. This time of year, Peeps are big.

5PM: I finish signing my notes, and head home. Sometimes I walk, sometimes the medics are headed also, and I ride with them. After getting home, I sync my ipod with the podcasts that have been downloading all day long (Bill Simmons, ESPN Fantasy Baseball, Jim Lehrer, a few others) and then I grab the ‘pod and head to the gym. 30-60 minutes on the elliptical, then some upper body stuff (gotta start somewhere!) and I walk back home. The air is cool, and it is dark outside, so I have to wear my Al Asad-mandated reflective belt, and I am not allowed to listen to my ipod while in the PT uniform, so I have to jerk it out of my ear every time someone walks by me. The air is cool, and actually pretty sweet, with the faint taste of dust and diesel being the only thing dragging down my endorphin high (but not much). I stop by the clinic to call home, but this time, Lorri is not there.

7:30PM: It takes me about 5 minutes to walk back to Can City (I pass Tent City on the way, poor suckers!), and then I walk into my vinyl cave, grab a towel, and right back out, to the showers. There are about 5 Marines in there at any given time, and this night is no exception. The non-potable water washes the dust off of my body, and in a few minutes I am back in my canister.

8PM: This is sacred Jon Stewart time (the Armed Forces Network plays the show from the night before; tonight on “You’re Not Helping”: Geraldine Ferraro and The Reverend Jeremiah Wright).

8:30: I call home on Skype and talk with Lorri a bit, with the call dropping every 5 minutes or so. Regardless, it is good and right talking with her, as you have already heard.

Somewhere around 9-10, I dust off and clean up my canister, get laundry ready for drop-off, clothes ready for the next day, carefully arrange my myriad nightly eye-drops, read scriptures, surf the net a bit (very slowly), maybe write a blog post if I haven’t already. Then I head out to the bathroom for one last time, and finally off to bed.

Life ain’t so bad.

Battered buses jammed up to the roof
Dust and diesel the prevailing themes
Farmer sleeping on the truck in front
Feet trailing over like he’s trolling for dreams
Smiling girl directing traffic flow
.45 strapped over cotton print dress
Marimba-brown and graceful limbs
Give me a moment of loneliness

Dust and diesel
Rise like incense from the road
Smoke of offering
For the revolution morning

Bruce Cockburn, “Dust and Diesel,” 1982, written in Nicaragua

It is too early yet to know what my daily routine will eventually entail (i.e., I am still figuring out whether I will exercise in the morning or at night), but I have had a few people tell me that they would like to know about my typical day. So, for the curious, here is how my day went yesterday, start-to-finish. For the not-so-curious (or not-that-curious), well, at least there are some pictures.

7 AM: I wake up to the little $3.95 battery-powered Elgin alarm clock on my dresser. Actually, I was awake a bit earlier than this, but remained in my little warm cocoon until the alarm made me get out of bed. Bathroom, shave, dress, eat a PopTart (brown sugar cinnamon, of course—Is there any other kind?), and out of my canister, into the very bright Iraqi sun. I walk to work, and arrive by 8 AM, where my medics are gathered around their table, getting clinic ready for the day.

People do a lot of walking on combat-zone bases, as cars here are rented and very expensive, around $1000-plus per month, though you can’t beat the on-base gas prices (free!). There are three bus routes which run all day long, and are free, so if you don’t want to walk, you can wait at one of the many bus stops, and catch the bus to wherever you are going. So far, I’ve taken the bus one time. After it stopped, as I waited to get on, I watched a truly unbelievable quantity of very young marines in their PT gear (green on green) come off of the bus in front of me. It was like one of those surreal Monty Python scenes, where far more people come out of a small area than could actually fit in there. And when I got on the bus, the smell and humidity made it very evident that a bunch of sweaty kids had been crammed into the thing. That was my last bus ride for a while. But I digress…

8AM: Clinic starts, and the medics start seeing the patients. It takes a medic a minimum of 15-20 minutes to have the patient ready to “present” to the staff, so I’m really not on the clock until around 8:30. I use this time to make myself some Gatorade from the distilled water bottles they give us and powder packets that can be picked up at the mess halls. I also may sneak in a Diet Coke, though I am trying to cut those down and eventually out. We’ll see how that goes. I also get my notes from last night completed, if I had any left over. Finally, I’ll get a wipey of some kind, or a cloth, and clean the overnight accumulation of gritty dust off of everything: my chair, my desk, my keyboard, my Panasonic Toughbook’s touchpad, etc. This battle against dust, about which I have spoken before, is a constant one. I am not winning it.

8:30 – around 11:30 or noon: The medics see the patients, and then they come and “present” them to me, which means that they give me a brief summary of why the patient came into the clinic, what the past medical history is (usually not much for the group of patients we see), the physical exam findings, and then a brief assessment and plan. This should take about 3-5 minutes, but may be longer depending upon the diagnosis. I use this time to teach my little grasshoppers a thing or three about medicine, and they sometimes they throw a few tidbits back in my direction. We see the patient together, and I do whatever exam maneuvers are necessary to confirm the diagnosis, and the three of us (medic, patient, and doctor) talk in plain, understandable terms about what we think the diagnosis may be, and how we plan to treat it. The medics write the notes on the dreaded AHLTA system (though it is streamlined a bit out here, and hence not as painful), and I co-sign them. We get through about 3-4 patients an hour this way (with my colleague, Nurse Practitioner LTC Bullock-Price, doing roughly the same thing), and we go until noonish, when we…

NOON: …head to lunch. The vehicle which gets us there is a very dusty (of course) Mitsubishi bus, runs on diesel, which I have noted is the Official Smell of Al Asad.

We have a choice of two DFACs (mess halls), the smaller “rat” DFAC, or the big “Warrior Hall.” Both have their charms, but we all prefer the bigger one: easier to find a place to eat, a bit more selection. On Al Asad (and most other combat zone bases), if you are a uniformed military member, you cannot go anywhere (except the gym) without your weapon. For most soldiers, the weapon (don’t ever call it a “gun”; that is a baaaaad word in the military) is the good old M16 rifle, a military staple since 1964. I have an M9 semi-automatic pistol, and I am grateful for it, because it is not nearly as much of a pain to lug around. Before a soldier is issued either weapon, he has to learn how to completely dissassemble and clean it. I always enjoyed learning this, and occasionally will take mine apart, clean it out, oil it, and put it back together, partly to make sure it is in working order, and partly just for the fun of it. They taught us how to do all of this stuff at CRC, like so:

[picture removed upon request]

A quirk of Al Asad is that, before a soldier can enter any public building (including our clinic), he/she must “clear” the weapon: point it in a barrel and open the chamber to ensure that no ammunition snuck in there. After the fiftieth time, this seems rather redundant (especially for someone who rarely fires a weapon), but it’s probably saved a few lives along the way.

Ladies and gents, I apologize, but I’m gonna have to cut it short here. We had a couple of unexpected surprises in clinic today (nothing bad, just time-consuming) and after a run and a shower, it is already late and I really need to hit the sack. Will continue this tomorrow…

I have a new post for you which I will upload tomorrow (probably will be ready by the time you get up). It goes over my typical day, with the obligatory semi-snarky commentary. I was gonna up that one today, but a single event changed my mind, to wit:

After work, I went to eat with a couple of my medics, then we dropped off laundry and went to the gym. We walked back to the canisters, and said goodbye for the night, and after I showered, I went into my lonely, strange little square plastic cave, and closed the vinyl door behind me.

There are these sudden, sometimes unexpected moments out here in which I suddenly recall where I am, and, more pertinently, where am I not. I am not in Evans, GA, with my family. I don’t want you to think that I constantly wallow in this fact, or spend inordinate amounts of time feeling sorry for myself, because I honestly do not. But it would be impossible not to feel the pangs of separation at certain times. For me, I can’t always predict these moments, but they usually come when other distractions have subsided (i.e., when I have hunkered down for the night).

For three of the last four days, just as I was starting to feel a wee bit lonely, I was immediately called by Lorri. It was almost as if she sensed it (and maybe she did; in each case, she was feeling similar pangs of loneliness). One of these was on Saturday morning, but it was way too early to call back home (we are seven hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time here). As I cleaned out my quarters that AM, I kept glancing at the clock on my computer, trying to determine the earliest possible time that I could reasonably call home. I was in the midst of trying hard to mentally justify a 1 PM call (6 AM back home), when suddenly my computer started making that beautiful Skype tone which signals an incoming call, and it was Lorri on the line.

Same thing happened tonight. I will get more into Skype later, but suffice it to say that it is a free video and/or audio calling service, which enables people all across the world to communicate with one another. It is not perfect, especially with my sloooooow internet, but it is pretty good most of the time. When I clicked to accept the call, and the pixelated, laggy, choppy video came up and I saw Lorri there on the screen, one half of our bedroom in the background, my heart was home again, and hearing Lorri’s sweet voice reminded me of the solid truth that our families (as opposed to bricks, mortar, and drywall) are our real homes in this world. I also understood exactly why Joseph Smith said about his wife Emma that “I would go to hell for such a woman.”

We didn’t talk about much today: the kids, the dog, the guy power-washing our house, the ubiquitous Barbara Wall (our much-loved neighbor who walks seemingly 8 hours a day, almost always passing our house while Lorri and I are Skyping), the mail, the bills, more kids, more dog, Barbara Wall coming around again. But it is not what we talk about that matters. Just the act of being “together” for a moment, of continuing to share our lives in spite of the separation, this is strengthening and uplifting to me. Sometimes Lorri sees me on the webcam and suddenly stops talking and asks me why I am laughing at her, but I am not laughing. I am just smiling “wide as a ringin’ bell,” and wondering how in the heck I got so very very lucky.

Lorri, my sweet, sweet wife, thank you for calling me tonight. Thank you for taking care of Maddy, Drew, and Maya in my current absence and before. Thank you for loving me all of these many years (18 now, long enough for both of us to forget our recent, separated anniversary until the following day, and neither of us got upset about it). Thanks for wearing that funny little French-looking hat today—it was/is so very Lorri and no one else, and Lorri—with two “r”s, a french hat, an ever-diminishing Canadian accent, an indisputable sense of style and grace, and the same sweet, sweet vulnerability I fell in love with so many years ago—it is that Lorri who I needed tonight.

I, too, would go to hell for such a woman. In fact I’m already there. Ah, well, at least it’s a dry hell.

Goodnight, Lorri-Sue Rupard. I love you.

–Erik