If you don’t tell your story someone else will write it for you.
What can I say?
I lived my life.
I was born to Lloyd and AnnaJean Ballinger on January 12, 1952. I worried my mother sick as a child. I was not expected to live. Yet here I am, was?
I was 1 of 6 siblings to Lloyd, Kathleen, Nancy, Bryan, and Russell.
I married the love of my life, Betty, my wife, my soulmate, my nurse, my everything on September 29, 1973.
We raised 3 darling daughters Jessica, Heather, and Courtney. “Oh, my darling, oh my darlings, oh my darling Clementine…” because everything leads to a song.
I was grandpa to Amber, Timothy, Clay, Anna, and Coal. Papa to Mollie.
I lived life with purpose, see above.
What have I done all my life? What haven’t I done? I answer questions with questions.
I was a carpenter with the local 63. You’ve seen my work if you’ve seen Clinton Power Plant, Mitsubishi Motors, Diamond Star at the time, various culverts and houses.
After years as a carpenter, I left the trade to begin a new trade. As a sick child I was limited to activities. With no sports, I turned to music. I’ve played them all. I’m a piano player. I sang in the Donald Armstrong Choral Ensemble. I love all music. Allison Krauss and John Prine both of whom I’ve met are my favorites. My love of music led me to learn the dying trade of a piano technology. I was sent to New York to train at the Steinway Factory in New York. I worked for Horine’s Pianos Plus, where I made long lasting relationships with customers. I tuned for churches, both university’s, and Ewing castles.
My wife and I spent 5 days canoeing the Boundary Waters in Quetico Provencial Park. I was currently working on building my own canoe at the time. We camped, visited the Florida Keys as a family, toured rivers, white water rafted, been to Colorado, South Dakota, San Diego, Missouri. We’ve chased tents flying away, canoes tipped, and seen the Cumberland Falls. These are a few great words to look up; stultiloquence, sycophant, arcane. I was a man of many words. Have you ever talked backwards?
My health began to deteriorate. After years of battling health issues with no answers, I researched a facility to help me. We went to Denver, Colorado where National Jewish Medical Center found I had Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency. Alpha-1 is an inherited genetic disease that affects the lungs and the liver. For more information: https://www.alpha1.org/.
As a result of this deficiency, I struggled with lung and liver diseases, my liver wasn’t producing the protein to protect my lungs. As a non smoker I developed COPD. We tried protein replacement therapy called Prolastin. With little success. As an unusual complication I developed primary hepatocellular carcinoma.
The treatment would be a new liver. One option would be a living donor. Family members were not an option, some of them shared the genetic mutation. Several family were not matches. It would now be out of my hands. We waited. I was put on the UNOS transplant list.
I don’t wait well. In the time we waited, we continued to live a great life. In case it was going to end. I spent time in my shop building my canoe to pass the time. I spent time with family. Gardening, home remodeling projects, making wine and making music..I continued to work as a piano technician.
I baked, I read, I solved math problems. I taught my girls to be great stewards of the land, to canoe, hike, sleep in tents, to build character. I watched grandchildren grow. What more can you do, but live?
How do you put into words the chance for a second lease on life? Why me? Why now? It takes a selfless dynamic individual to just decide to give life while also living their own. It’s difficult to write. Difficult to believe. But it happened to me.
We met Nikki, a coworker of my oldest “Juicy-Jessica”, Nikki, who’s name hasn’t been changed for this story, it’s Nikki. With her permission, Nikki is part of my story. My second lease on life. She gave me 60% of her liver. June 1, 2005, at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, in Chicago. I we would undergo my liver transplant. The doctors would remove mine and be shocked I was even still alive. It shouldn’t have been able to sustain life. My will to live outweighed my bodies desire to retire. If you saw my purpose of life above you would have lived to.
My life was made not just longer, but also a richer and fuller life, so my story is much longer. Because of Nikki. Donate Life.
I became an active swimmer, I participated in the transplant games in Kentucky, my wife and I took a dream trip on the Camden Harbor to sail away, sail away, sail away. 5 days on the schooner Lewis R. French, first launched in 1871. I was there for my girls. I was able to continue my work as a piano tuner. I was there to see my son-in-law, Geoff receive his own gift of life, his new lungs. I was learning to play violin, I was learning Spanish, I spent my mornings at the Coffeehouse with my coffee house friends, I was restoring violins, I was a cantor in the church choir, I read books about physics, for fun. I was watching my youngest grandchild Mollie, I worked in my shop. I baked. I lived and I lived longer. I was infinitely curious.
Here we are today, amidst a global pandemic crisis. I went in sick, with pneumonia, we would test for this virus, who’s name shall remain nameless to my story, we would wait. My wife, Betty couldn’t be with me as she always was, I am a difficult patient. I was getting worse. I was negative for this virus. Then I was better. I was able to connect through the very technology that I often dis-like with my family. I was getting better. I was tested again. I was still negative. They couldn’t look past what they believed it to be. With it being on everyone’s mind it is easy to see why. I was scared. If I would have gotten this virus it would have defeated me, maybe even my family. Like I tell my girls, “If it’s too easy, it’s likely wrong.”
I’ve never done anything simple in my life. I made my exit my own way during a global pandemic. It didn’t get me. I was able to be given my last rights and be with my wife and girls in the end, while my music played close to me. Betty held my hand. The girls chatted around me as if it were just any day. I had my pencil.
If you are reading this, I am gone, my story is being told through my family, by me. As I would have wanted. I lived my life for them and it is their story to tell now. How can you sum up a person who is unsummable? How can you tell your story if you don’t know it’s over? Or is it? What do you think?
Where am I going? My last ride to Chicago will be to the Anatomical Gift Association where I will be studied. Given to science. To be used to figure things out. To educate our future medical professionals.
To quote John Prine:
“Please don’t bury me
Down in that cold cold ground
No, I’d rather have ‘em cut me up
And pass me me all around…”
What can you do?
No need to send flowers, to slow the spread of this virus, send thoughts and prayers.
The cat Samson also eats floral arrangements.
Are you an organ donor? Give the gift of life. Don’t just want to do it, register to do it.
Pay it forward, buy someone coffee at the Coffeehouse when this pandemic eases, my coffee guys will be there without me.
Be kind.
Spend every moment as if it is the last. Live with purpose.
Memorials may be made to my family to follow through with my wish to be transported to Chicago.
At a later date, when we can all meet, when we can all be together, let’s be together and we will listen to my choir sing, we will listen to words spoke by Father Greg in a mass at St. Mary’s Church.
Peace be with you. And also with you.
Me, my sisters and my mother wrote this through tears, laughter, anger, distractions, a bottle of wine and our broken hearts. He would have been furious with the grammar and lack of editing. But in our defense we were grieving and he didn’t write it. Just gave us the tools, words and life to put it together for him. It’s his story unedited.
In the end we write our stories. By living them. His story could have been summed up as I lived until I died. Everything in between was what we called life. The sum of life is insurmountable. An edited version would have been inaccurate simply because of it was that. Edited. Every time we went back we didn’t look for errors we were looking for more life to put in between the beginning and the end. Their were no errors to us.
It’s not going to get easier, nothing ever does. It becomes a different more complicated sometimes interesting kind of hard. You adjust. You don’t get to go back and edit. You get to move forward and add more life.
Aspenleaf 