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Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Life Without Bill Maki.

This week brings an end to my fifty-eight and a half years with Viljo William (Bill) Maki. On May 23, 2013, we laid him to rest. I don’t believe there is such a thing as closure, but my life will have to change. Gone are the days when Bill would help me with my quilts using his eye for detail and creativity. Nor will I be the harshest critic of his cartoons.

My mother taught me how to sew and I took sewing classes in high school. I sewed most of Al’s clothes until he came home from his first semester at university and told me,”No more home-made tee shirts.”

For years I have been collecting fabric. I have to admit I love fabric. I could spend my whole day rearranging them all. But the truth is, if I live another 100 years I couldn’t use up all the fabric I've collected. I sorted through some and gave them to a friend. I swore I wouldn’t buy any more fabric, at least for now.

Having said that, I went to Fabricland’s sale and - guess what? - I found many new fabrics I liked. I bought black, grey and yellow floral fabric, plus some polka dot fabric for contrast. I’ve pieced the top, just have to add the last border.

I made some kits out of fabric in my stash, but I haven't made a dent in the pile that remains. 

I'm still finding it hard to get back to quilting.

Right now, I’m in Utah, but I won’t be going to any quilt shops. When I get home I have to get Bill’s drawings packed then send them of to his sons. They loved him so much. I miss him dearly.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Bill Maki my Father, by Allan Maki. Columnist for the Globe and Mail.


My dad once told me, life is strange. We earn more money but seem to have less of it. We have more university degrees but less common sense. More people telling us what to do but fewer people willing to listen.
But for my mom, my brother Chris and I, there was always one man who made sense, whose actions spoke beyond the oddities of life. That was Bill Maki, the guy who pretty much always did the right thing. He taught, he didn’t preach. He was quick to laugh and he loved a good pun. His favourite was, “Did you know that two-thirds of a pun is P U?” I’d say yes dad and roll my eyes in mock disdain.
Bill Maki was a wonderful man to learn from.  He’d tell action-packed bed time stories and do incredible pieces of art work. It all traced back to his childhood.
Dad grew up an only child for 10 years until his kid sister Laila came along. He loved her unconditionally, from beginning to end. For entertainment, dad listened to the old time radio classics and was a gifted artist whose grade school work with pal Eric Green was once featured in the News Chronicle. Dad’s school books were filled with cartoons and doodlings, a tradition Chris and I and our kids have merrily maintained. A quick aside: my grandson’s teacher recently showed me a note book he had drawn in, as if there was something wrong with that. So I look at it and said, ‘Hey, he drew Spiderman. That’s really good.”

Dad was a cook in a bush camp for a time, went to Business College then signed on with Lakehead Freightways. In those days, we lived on Machar Ave. in an apartment kept warm by foul-smelling oil. I remember the place because I was there until the age of six, going to St. Joseph’s Catholic School, where I was taught by a nun, Sister Mary Discipline. A wooden ruler was her weapon of choice.

Looking for a better place for his family, dad borrowed $4,000 from his father and bought a palatial spread at 619 Andrew St. It was everything we wanted and I had my own room. Even better, I got to go to a public school, which meant no more knuckle whacks from Sister Mary.

Anyway, dad later became clerk at Jordan Wines and while he wasn’t fond of the loutish clientele, he was always at work on time and unfailingly professional. I remember his advice when I was too young to really appreciate it. “I don’t care what you do for a living,” he said. “Just be sure you enjoy what you’re doing because you’re going to be doing it a long time.”

When Jordan Wines shut down, dad started working in the City of Thunder Bay’s printing department with his good friend and best man Don Oram. If only dad had gotten there sooner. The work was relentless but he enjoyed it and was afforded many chances to draw or design crests and logos. He also kept up his cartooning for The Hockey News publication.

Dad got an early buy-out from the City and happily retired in 1994. There was a special luncheon and gifts. Finally, after all his hard work, he was given the chance to slow down. We were all thrilled for him.

My dad taught me a lot of things - how to throw and catch a ball, how to shoot a puck, how to dry the dinner dishes – now that one I could have lived without. But he topped all of that with what he showed us during the last week and a half of his life.
For 10 days in November, Bill Maki was dignified and gracious and gentle. He couldn’t speak because of the stroke he’d suffered, but he communicated with his eyes and through his smile. He waved to the nurses who took care of him, as if to say thank you, and he squeezed our hands to let us know he loved us all, of that there was no doubt.
We live in a time where life is strange, where we get too angry, appreciate too little and laugh even less. But for those of us who knew Bill Maki, and those of us who took special note of his character, the best thing about our lives was him being in them.
He made the greatest sense.
Love you dad. Until we meet again.



 
I'm posting this becase it means so much to me. 

It had only been 10 days for me, 10 days of hearing the screamer from the room down the hall, the one who would spice his “No, no, no” rants with a thunderclap, ‘F---!’ Ten days of seeing Dialysis Dwayne, a frail, old man with two bruised legs who had to be lifted out of his bed by some sort of medical crane so he could get treatment.
I got to know the screamer and Dwayne in my 10 days in the hospital where my dad lay dying. My mom had it worse. She was there right from the beginning, from the many times dad had to be taken to the Thunder Bay Hospital over the past five years to the last time in late October when his luck ran out and the bleeding in his brain was simply too much.
We all knew dad was living on borrowed time. He was 81 with a history of diabetes, high cholesterol and a high blood/sugar count. It was a nasty trifecta and, despite the years of concerted efforts, the right meds and change in his diet, the strokes would come and he’d find himself in the hospital, sometimes in intensive care, sometimes in the stroke ward, until he’d recover enough to go home where my mom would begin her care-taking all over again.
I got the last 10 days in the hospital with dad. Mom got the full ride.
What can you say about a hospital that you can’t say about a prison? Maybe the food is better in a hospital, I’m not sure. In both places, people are putting in time, trying to get by and get out as quickly as they can. As dad lay in his single room, at first awake but unable to say much, then later in a coma, his family held his hand and talked to him. We’d been told the last thing to go is a patient’s hearing. Dad could understand what was going on so we spoke of happier times.
My brother Chris, 13 years younger than me which led to largely separate childhoods, was at the hospital with his wife Nicole and three sons. They were there the day before I arrived and had listened when the doctors and nurses assembled in dad’s room and gave their assessment of his condition. Unable to be there, I had listened in on a conference call. The phone had been placed close to dad and I could hear his breathing, steady yet laboured. It was an ominous soundtrack to the doctors’ messages: soon, he would be gone.
The next day, the lot of us - mom, me, Chris and his family - sat in dad’s room and talked and laughed, listened and cried. Chris spoke for both of us when told dad how he’d been such a wonderful role model. Dad grew up on Machar Ave. in what was then called Port Arthur, an only child until his kid sister Laila came along. Dad slept in an upstairs bedroom in a two-storey house and would listen to the old radio classics - Suspense and Lamont Cranston as The Shadow. He said it used to scare the bejesus out of him. But he always listened.
Dad was a gifted artist whose grade-school work with lifelong friend Eric Green was once featured in the News Chronicle newspaper. Dad’s school books were filled with doodlings and caricatures, a tradition Chris and I and our kids and grandkids have merrily maintained.
Dad was a cook in a bush camp for a time and later went to Business College before working with Lakehead Freightways as a book keeper. In those days, we lived on Machar Ave. in an apartment kept warm by foul-smelling oil. I remember the place because I was there until the age of six, playing with a bunch of rat pack kids and going to St. Joseph’s Catholic School, where I was taught by a nun in Grade 1. I think her name was Sister Mary Discipline. A wooden ruler was her weapon of choice.
Looking for a better place for his family, dad borrowed $4,000 from his father and bought a $10,000 spread at 619 Andrew St. It was everything we wanted and I had my own room. Even better, I got to go to a public school (there were no catholic schools in the area), which meant no more Sister Mary and her ruler wackings from hell.
Anyway, dad later became clerk at Jordan Wines and while he wasn’t always fond of the loutish clientele - the store was located on Cumberland St. or what we called Bumberland, for obvious reasons - he was always at work on time and unfailingly professional. I remember his advice to me when I was too young to really appreciate it. “I don’t care what you do for a living,” he said. “Just be sure you enjoy what you’re doing because you’re going to be doing it a long time.”
I remember, too, how much dad wanted me to go to university, get an education, a better job. He wasn’t counting on me leaving for Toronto to study journalism, but he never complained nor tarnished my dreams. As Chris said while holding his hand in that hospital room across the hall from Dialysis Dwayne, Bill Maki taught us how to act like a father.
Ironically, dad could have moved us all to Toronto a year or so before I left for Ryerson’s journalism program. Jordan Wines was shutting down its Bumberland location - much to chagrin of many a drunk - and had offered dad a job as a vendor at a store in Southern Ontario. The bigwigs took dad to an NHL game at Maple Leaf Gardens. He thought it over. One of his reasons for staying was him not wanting me to have to relocate before heading into my last year of high school. So we stayed; and I took off a year later.
Left without a job, dad landed on his feet with another old friend, Don Oram, in the City of Thunder Bay’s printing department. If only dad had gotten there sooner. The work was relentless but he enjoyed it, enjoyed his co-workers and was afforded many chances to doodle and design crests and logos. He also kept up his cartoon work for The Hockey News publication.
Dad got an early buy-out from the City and happily retired. There was a special luncheon and gifts. Finally, after all his hard work, he was given the chance to relax and slow down. We were all thrilled for him.
It wasn’t until later that his health issues began to make life difficult. He had kept records of his blood/sugar count, and the numbers were always higher than they should be. He was on the phone talking to Chris one day when he suffered his first stroke. Chris noticed dad was sounding funny; mom took him to the hospital for the first of those many trips.
Doctors dubbed it a TIA, transient ischemic attack, a mini-stroke. In time, dad recovered and could talk and move around. He had several TIAs and was becoming more and more limited physically, which made it tougher for mom to take him to his favourite spot, the McDonald’s at the inter-city Wal-Mart, where he was always greeted warmly.
It was in late October that mom woke up one morning still reeling from a haunting nightmare. In her dream, she saw dad sprawled out in the bathroom, his head near the toilet, unresponsive to her voice. Only a dream, she figured. Hours later, dad collapsed outside their apartment bathroom, his head towards the toilet. Mom called 911. Doctors gave dad a CT scan and determined the best way to proceed was to give him a tissue plasminogren activator, TPA, to break up the blood clots forming in his brain. TPA comes with a 94 per cent success rate. Dad fell into the other six per cent. The TPA led to more hemorrhaging until more than 50 per cent of his brain was damaged.
The worst part was being told dad could no longer swallow. The portion of his brain in charge of that function had been damaged. Dad’s wishes had always been clear: no force feeding, no heroic efforts to keep him alive if he could no longer move or talk again. On Nov. 8, the day I arrived at the hospital, all the tubes were taken out. Dad’s end time was coming.
The next 10 days were filled with lasting memories, some funny, some good. There was the screamer in the room across the hall, whose profane outbursts never failed to get a laugh. There were the many nurses who came in to administer medication and clean dad and were always so gentle, as if they too had known him before all of this. Friends and other family members came and it was understood: they were saying their goodbyes.
On Nov. 17, a Saturday, dad’s breathing took a subtle change. He had been in a coma for three days and other than an occasional muscle twitch had not responded to our touch and voices. At 4:48 p.m., the nurse taking his pulse turned to mom and I and said softly, “I’m sorry for your loss.” Just like that, he was gone.
It hasn’t been easy, but for mom it’s been the hardest. They say God only gives you what you can handle. If so then Chris and I have a mom who is one stubbornly strong woman. She hurts but she survives because that’s how it’s meant to be and how dad would have wanted it.
Before mom and I walked out of the hospital for the last time that November day, several nurses gave her a hug and passed along their condolences. As many times as they’ve done that before with other families, I like to think the nurses meant it a little more for a wife who had spent every night in the hospital sleeping on a couch next to her stricken husband.
Rest well, dad. You did your best and it was plenty good for all of us.


By Allan Maki, December 9, 2012

Friday, April 12, 2013



Snowy April.

I’ve been slack in posting the last five months, got caught up trying to understand, where do I go from here. The boys are coming home May 21st to attend a Celebration of Bill Maki's life, May 23, 2013, then I’m going back with Chris and his family to Utah. Great time of the year, it won’t be so hot. Al will go home to Calgary, I will visit him later this summer. This should be an interesting trip, I will be flying out of Chicago for the first time. The lady from United Airlines told me if I get lost in O’Hare Airport just scream, “help me I’m lost”, someone will come running. 
Slowly I’m trying to quilt again, but it’s easier to do small items than the quilts. I made some mug rugs for a friend whose husband passed away. I’m waiting for Fabricland’s next sale so I can buy more, Printed Treasures. I’m going to make more mug rugs using Bill’s cartoons. 

Soon I will post what I have quilted the last few months. 


Monday, February 11, 2013

For  Sunday,  Februay 17, 2013.


"The expression was about aging and how you reach a point in time when life stops giving you things and starts taking them away."


A wonderful quote from my son Allan.

It's been three months since the passing of my dear husband Bill Maki and I still miss him so much. I'm attending one-on-one grief counselling with the Rev. Hugh Walker, a very kind and gentle man. I realize I'm not the first person to feel so sad after losing someone close, and I myself have been guilty of saying, "Sorry for your loss," and never fully understanding the pain. In the last few years I have lost my mom, my mother-in-law and my nephew Tom, But somehow this feels so different.

November 12, 2012 - My sister was in the hospital and had a hip replacement just five days before Bill's death. Complications set in and I ended up helping her. After three trips to the hospital, the doctors eventually found out Monica had a heart attack and did an coronary angioplasty. God works in mysterious ways. Maybe He's allowing me look after my sister so I will have something to take my mind off Bill.

I'm blessed with some of the best quilters in the whole world. They are always there for me. It is difficutl for me to quilt because Bill was such a big help, but I am trying. Last week-end I finished piecing two quilt tops. Hopefully things will get better soon.

Life, it seems, is still giving me things.