LG

I'm Lisa, George's daughter. I tried posting this on his "I'm Dying" thread, but I've never used this forum before, so I couldn't figure out how. He told me that he felt he had several good friends on this forum, and asked me to post when he passed away. That's a blunt way to say it, I guess, but I'm a little frazzled right now and don't know a better way. I foudn him this afternoon. He seemed to go very peacefully and quickly, which is great consolation. I don't really know what else to say. I'm in a little bit of shock right now I guess, but I just wanted to tell all of you to whom he "talked" (or at least typed at). This is a horribly written post I know, but I wanted to get it out there.

That is not and never was the issue. The issue is that Wierwille published Stiles’ work as his own, claiming authorship of and copyright to Stiles’ work. Your suggestion that Stiles might have agreed to that isn’t being “open to the possibilities,” because Stiles himself continued to claim authorship. Had Stiles agreed to allow Wierwille to claim authorship, he would have declared himself to be a fraud for having previously claimed authorship. Moreover, he would have branded himself to be a continual, non-repentant fraud by continuing to claim authorship. That sort of thing would not only be wrong on about every level one can imagine, it would have been insane.

Hardly. We're not even talking about the same things. You're talking "eye cancer," "liver cancer," and all sorts of other generalities. I'm talking what Wierwille actually had, ocular melanoma, and later (read metastatic - you should know what that means) melanoma of the liver, which is what killed him. It is much more likely that smoking and drinking had nothing at all to do with Wierwille's death than that they contributed to it.

You're not reading the death certificate correctly, WordWolf. For some reason, GS is one of only a couple of places I can get to on the Internet right now, so I can't quote, but it says something like metastatic melanoma of the liver as the cause of death and cites ocular melanoma as the primary (the initial site from which the cancer spread to the liver). Okay, that odd glitch is gone and I can view the death certificate. It cites "Metastatic Melanoma of the Liver" as the cause of death. To the right of that, it indicates that the liver cancer was diagnosed about 1 month prior to death. On the next line, it cites the ocular melanoma, and to the right of that indicates that it was diagnosed about 18 months prior to death.

It's on the death certificate. I suggest that you Google ocular melanoma risk factors. You won't find smoking or drinking listed. You will find fair hair, fair skin, occupational UV light exposure, and having had several eye burns.

You've no grounds for that conclusion. You're applying the wrong risk factors to the wrong cancer.

The edit function is time-limited. I think editing is allowed for an hour after posting.

TWI 4: The Waydale / Grease Spot Years – c. 1990 – present... This start date appears to be a typo. Should be "c. 2000 -."

I'm fine. Please don't update this thread. Send me a PT if you like.

Very nice, polar bear.

As much as these bug me, they don't come close to the following: "Should [would, could] of," instead of the proper, "should have" or "should've" causes me to wince. "Could care less," instead of the proper "couldn't care less" drives me nuts.

HELLMAN'S (or homemade) is the ONLY way to go. Miracle Whip is horrible. Kraft "Mayonnaise" is barely tolerable.

Shhh, ex. Lisa's sleeping. Jonny, the doctors think smoked salmon may have been the cause. ;) Life's good, folks.

I led a fellowship in Irving, which Wayne took over after he graduated from the Corps. I had spoken with Wayne a few times when he was a WOW in Grand Prairie during his interim year, and I liked him. I was supporting a family of four, trying to prepare for a more secure financial future, and thought highly of Wayne, so I was all for him taking over. We continued to meet at my place. That went well, but Gil, the first and only “Corps Nazi” I had anything to do with in TWI, had a definite negative influence (to put it mildly) on the area in general and many individuals.

How nice to hear from you, Gail! I do remember, but not with such detail. You must have an excellent memory, kept journals, or both. “I don't know where you are now.” A little town called Commerce, 65 mi. NE of Dallas. “I remember your daughter, Lisa, and Dee and her son, Chris.” I hadn’t mentioned Chris, but only for the sake of brevity. I loved him as my own and, as far as either of us was concerned, I was his father for ten years. I’d have happily continued in that relationship, and raised him along with Lisa, but of course, I couldn’t. That broke my heart. For several years, my only knowledge of Chris came through Lisa. Lisa and I spent a few hours with him about twelve years ago, when he and his mom came to Texas to see Lisa, but other than that, we had almost no contact. We had a very nice, long phone conversation recently, though, and will likely do so again. He’s had some difficult times, but seems to be doing okay, and I’m glad about that. “You and Dee were wonderful, loving, perfect parents. You were patient and very strict. And as a result, your children were the best behaved children I have seen to this day. That includes my three kids, and they all were very well behavied as well. We had ministry meetings that lasted for hours and hours and your children never, never misbehaved. When we prayed, they prayed. When we talked they sat and either listened quietly or played quietly by themselves.” We were far from perfect, but we did our best. Because of stories I’ve read here about harsh, abusive discipline of children, I want to clarify some things for others. We were strict about their behavior, in that we required good manners and didn’t let them run wild or disrupt things, but we didn’t make them sit like robots, either. We always provided for their quiet entertainment. As you noted, we allowed them to play (or read) during meetings. Also, if one of them just couldn’t handle it, Dee or I would take them outside. When we were at meetings but the meetings weren’t actually “in session,” we allowed them more freedom, and even more in other settings. “I did not know what happened to you. No one in our Irving group knew either. Last I knew you and Dee sold all your belongings and packed up for Ohio, but that you did not go to the WOW field. We all lost track of your family after that. I don't know if you ever came back to Irving.” I’m not sure if your time-line is off a little here, or if I’m just misunderstanding the time correlation between this and what you write below, much of which preceded this. We didn’t go to Ohio. We moved to Garland. I don’t want to get into details, but we needed to do what we did. Some time later, I got a job in Austin and we moved to the Hill Country. We had some very good years, but some problems arose that led to divorce. After that, I moved to Commerce, because it was a good place for me to raise Lisa. “So, my dear friend George, it is with great joy to me that I've found you and been able to chat with you, (although one-sided), bearing all the news I can think of without going over the limit of post words.” It’s been a joy for me, too. Thank you. Love, George

Evan, I'll be receiving hospice care. I'll ask my daughter about a death announcement. I want to take a little time before I elaborate on perceptive change. I honestly haven't given it much thought, except to notice it. Doojable, I didn’t need or even want anything in particular when I started this topic, except to let folks know what’s going on, rather than just disappearing one day. Beyond that, anything’s fine by me. I may not have much more to say on this thread, unless someone prompts me with a question or comment. If anyone does, that’s great. On the other hand, if this thread drops off the front page, I’m fine with that, too. All: I don’t spend my days dwelling on death, especially not emotional, psychological, or spiritual aspects of it. I am spending lots of time trying to close out my affairs. I don’t mind discussing death here at GS, but I come here because I enjoy reading and posting about all the other topics of interest, along with all the other wonderful people here. Now that I’ve broken this news, I’d like to try to resume, as much as possible, my more normal style of participation. I’m not saying I want to cut off this topic. I just don’t want to dwell too much on it.

Thanks again, everyone. A few people have sent me PMs with phone numbers, in case I want to talk. I appreciate their hearts, but I have people to talk with and be with, whenever I want. I really am okay, as much as someone in my physical condition can be.

Thank you all. I wasn’t looking for tribute, or even support, but I appreciate your kind words, thoughts, and prayers more than I know how to express. Regarding questions about what I might want to discuss, I don’t know yet—possibly not much. I wasn’t sure at first that I wanted to say anything at all. I decided to for a few reasons. 1) I didn’t want to just disappear without saying anything. 2) A few times recently, I’ve started to post about something completely unrelated to illness or death, but noticed that my perspective and tone were noticeably different than in the past, enough so that some explanation might be in order. Rather than sidetrack things with an explanation, I just didn’t post. I figured that if I came out and said what was going on, I could avoid sidetracking other threads, should I choose to post on them. If I do, I hope that others will interact with me as they normally would. 3) I’ve noticed that people I’ve talked to in person about my illness or death are usually very uncomfortable. I often find myself trying to make them feel more comfortable, so that we can act more normally together. With impending death in the air, that’s not completely possible, but I prefer it. I began thinking that an online discussion might help some folks be more comfortable in such situations in real life. 4) Some people I’ve talked to have questions that they may or may not feel free to ask. It may seem odd, but what made me finally decide to post about my death was someone asking me “Are you afraid?” I’m not. I have some concerns about some of the things I’ll face leading to death, but at least for now, I’m not afraid of death itself.

I went by “long gone” for years, and have been going by “LG,” but I want to introduce myself by my real name now. I’m George Ferguson. I’m 52 years old. I’m a native Texan and have lived in Texas all my life, except during a little over two years of my TWI involvement. I don’t want to go into much medical detail but I had cancer in my right mandible (jawbone). Early this year, I had surgery to remove the bone and some surrounding soft tissue and reconstruct what was removed using bone and tissue from my leg. I later underwent radiation treatment, once I’d recovered enough from the surgery. I made it through that and seemed to be recovering nicely. I still faced plenty of difficulties, including the burden of knowing that I might have a recurrence of cancer, but had reason to be at least cautiously optimistic that I would resume a normal and hopefully long life. Unfortunately, that’s not to be. Other tumors have turned up and they are incurable and essentially untreatable. There’s a chance that further treatment might buy me a little extra time but it would make me so sick that I’d lose out on the quality of the time I have left. After discussions with my doctors and my 23-year-old daughter, I decided to forgo further treatment, except for palliative care. That was about a month ago and, at the time, the doctors said they thought I had maybe six months to live. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be fully capable of caring for myself and conducting my own affairs, but I’m only counting on another couple of months. Of course, I’ll be glad for anything longer than that, and hope that I’ll remain capable until near the very end. This has raised many emotional and other issues that I’m dealing with. It’s not pleasant, but I’m doing okay. So is my daughter, Lisa, whom I raised as a single father since she was seven. Her mother, Dee, had all sorts of problems for many years, but has improved greatly over time and she and Lisa have built a good, though mostly long-distance, relationship. In recent years, Dee and I had managed to again become friendly with each other, but not really friends. She came to Texas to visit and to pitch in with Lisa to help me after my surgery. She stayed at my house for three weeks and during that time, we became friends again. I wouldn’t trade the years of life I’d been expecting for that, but it’s nice to have her friendship again, and comforting to know that she is strong enough to be a support` for Lisa when I am gone and that there are no remaining ugly issues between her and me that might in any way interfere with that. I also have a brother who can be a big support, and some sisters who probably can’t. I have plenty of regrets but I can also draw much satisfaction from the life I’ve led. Perhaps the most satisfying thing is that I know that I will leave behind a daughter who is a more whole and stable person than I was at her age, who will be able to get along well without me, and who seems to be developing into a better person in almost every way than I am. I’m naturally occupied with making preparations for my death, but I still enjoy many of the same things I have, including reading and occasionally posting here. I’m usually fairly reserved and hesitant to talk about myself, both in real life and on the Internet, but I’m thinking of opening up a bit and posting more, possibly on a variety of topics, while I still can. It occurs to me that some folks here at GS might wish to discuss various topics associated with death, whether our own or others. I took me a while to decide to post this and I don’t yet know what I might like to post or how far I’d like to delve into this, but I’d be interested in reading what others have to say and willing to respond straightforwardly to any comments or questions, including personal ones. (They won’t offend me and if something does come up that I don’t want to get into, I’ll politely say so.) I’m not a theist, so I probably won’t be interested in delving too deeply into Biblical or religious discussions, but I don’t consider them completely off limits for myself and I wouldn’t dream of suggesting any topical limits for others. I would, however, appreciate it if anyone who might be so inclined would avoid trying to convince me to accept their religious beliefs. I don’t pray but I understand that some will want to pray for me and I appreciate the heart behind that. Also, I won’t be looking for pity or comfort, but for good conversation that hopefully can get past some of the discomfort that seems to hinder such discussions. I don’t know where this will lead, or how long I’ll be able to post. Except for some severe headaches that I can control with pain medication, I feel pretty good right now and hopefully will for some time to come. I may not post for a few days here and there, but if I go for more than a week or two without posting, I’ll probably not be back.

If I say something that offends, but didn't say it to offend and think it was worth saying, I usually follow up with something like, "I didn't mean to offend," without saying that I'm sorry. I seldom but occasionally have said something like, "I am sorry if I offended you, but that wasn't my intent." Either way, my emphasis is that I was trying to communicate and not to offend. I usually then try to express essentially the same thoughts differently, not because I think what I said was wrong, but rather, to hopefully more effectively communicate with that particular person.

Folks, that is NOT "a" defintion of insanity, much less "the" definition. It was a quip, with a context.

Actually, the first group was not known as "The First Corps," so they weren't stripped of that title.

Don't know where you got the 2.4%, Sushi, but the $16.5 billion is less than 2% of discretionary spending and less than 1% of total spending. Still a significant amount and, although I think it's mostly money well spent, arguments to the contrary are not without merit.

Tom, I missed your first reply to me. Sorry. I'll address it now. I never suggested that many of those benefits couldn't have been come by without a space program. Many could, but many also could not. Of those that could, though, there are no solid grounds to argue that most, let alone "ALL" of them, would. We can only speculate about that. The fact remains, though, that they did come about through the space program. I don't really care to get into a pro-con space program argument. It's just not worth the effort to me right now. I was just addressing the question of benefits of the space program to the average person and the inherent suggestion that there were few.

No need for sarcasm, Sushi. I didn't insult you. As I said, many people are ignorant of the benefits of the space program. That says nothing more about them than that they lack knowledge of that one subject.