Wisdom Out the Window

Back in 1985, I’d recently walked away from fundamentalist religion. I’d been a student at a school run by a Baptist megalomaniac named, Jack Hyles. I’ve written many posts about Hyles across the footprint of my blogging that dates back to 1993. Of course, in 2020, blogging is as anachronism, just as outdated as a rotary dial phone. Doesn’t mean it’s bad—it’s just not the way the ignorant masses roll these days, especially the impressionable kids.

I was just an impressionable kid myself back in the mid-1980s when Ray-Bans were all the rage. But, I had determined to dry the wetness behind my own two ears. I figured broadening my understanding was the way to go. Moving beyond mere Bible verses and jeremiads offered in daily chapel services at Hyles-Anderson College seemed like a step in a new direction.

Mark was two-years-old and Mary was working the breakfast shift at the local Wendy’s. I was working the afternoon shift keeping the prisoners at Westville Correctional Center healthy and medicated (I was a medical assistant employed by the Indiana Department of Corrections).

With my morning free save for childcare, I decided to take my three semesters of credit at the University of Maine and see if I could ramp up my hopes of success in higher ed. Purdue University had a satellite campus about 20 miles away from where we were living and just up the road from the prison where I was working in Westville. Not sure why at the time, but I enrolled in Philosophy 101. It was probably a morning time slot thing.

Thinking college was the way to go (Purdue satellite)

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Back in God’s Country

A week ago today, Mary and I were heading north on I-65, back to places where our young family began our life together. This is about as close as one gets to having what could be called a “time machine” or sorts.

Traveling back in time, via I-65.

A week later, news is still filtering forth from the Hoosier State, fallout from the newly-minted documentary, Barefoot: The Mark Baumer Story. We got to hear a welcome voice yesterday afternoon. It was Julie Sokolow, the filmmaker. She’s remained behind after we flew back and her cohorts headed back to Pittsburgh. The festival actually has continued for another week. We were thrilled to hear that her efforts at telling Mark’s story were rewarded. The film landed the Heartland International Film Festival’s Best Premier Documentary Feature. As Mark’s parents, this elicited more emotion—but this time it was something more joyful and made us less sad. We’re thrilled for Julie and the film’s team that worked so hard in capturing Mark as elegantly as they have.

Barefoot wins award at Heartland Film.

I think Sundays will forever be a day that I remember as one that once centered on God and church, especially back in the days we first pulled up in our rented U-Haul in front of the Bible school I would be attending. Last Sunday, we drove onto the grounds of Hyles-Anderson College, where every day was focused on those two elements, at least in a theoretical and experiential manner for a 22-year-old who’d felt “called to leave everything behind save for his pregnant wife and a few belongings. Continue reading

A Journey That Never Ends

Grief is primarily a solitary slog. If you and your partner end up being thrust into the position of having to share in the journey, then there are times when your parallel paths join and then, depart again.

Briefly, there are times when others come alongside: We both experienced this in the days and weeks following Mark’s death. But then, people go back to wherever they were before the tragedy occurred.

In a nation where our empathy deficit is just one of a host of maladies, this inability of other people to understand at first is maddening, then it becomes the source of anger (or sadness), then eventually you simply stop caring. You are left alone to live in a place you never considered before—but there you are—a ghost among the living.

This weekend, in addition to being pleased with the documentary that was made about Mark, we got to spend time with people who reminded us both of Mark. They were a lot like who he was, believing that our better angels might win out. The filmmaker, Julie Sokolow, is a force to be reckoned with. It would have been enough for Mary and me to have a wonderful film. But, to see Julie in her element, bringing her “A game” to the Heartland International Film Festival, on message in interviews, was a thing to behold. She’s also so easy to be around and we’ve come to consider her a friend in addition to the woman who gets to tell Mark’s story in documentary form. Having spent so much time with Mark and his memories she’s forged a unique connection with his parents.

Barefoot: The Mark Baumer Story (poster by Jim Rugg)

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End or Beginning? (2018 Recap)

Shit!! I made it through another year!! Barely, on fumes, with my low fuel warning light flashing on my figurative dashboard. But, I’m here at the end of another romp through the Gregorian 12-step.

I’m edging closer to pulling up alongside yet another sad anniversary of losing my only son, maybe the best person I’ve ever known or ever will know. I don’t expect to meet anyone like him again and that’s something impossible to ignore.

Riding shotgun on a two-member team that’s managed to make it through the worst of stretches a life can parcel out, I’ve also weathered abandonment, lies, and the usual failings that humans are genetically predisposed to deliver. Fuck it, though! There’s something celebratory in all this darkness and mourning. At least approaching it in the spirit of the age-old wisdom that co-worker Wilma Delay dispensed back in my Westville Correctional Center days: she told me, “Baumer, sometimes you gotta’ laugh to keep from crying.” I sometimes wonder what became of ole’ Wilma. She always made more work for me with her predisposition to never moving off her sit-stool and more-often-than-not assigning herself the task of setting up the evening’s prisoner’s meds, which meant she had to do little else. Her co-workers picked up the slack. But I believe her heart was in the right place.

I remain flummoxed by the speed that grief allows a grieving person to spiral downward. One minute, you are coping with the shitty stick you’ve been handed and the next, you are contemplating a painless way to end it all. I’m not messing with you. It’s that fucked-up at times. I don’t anticipate it will ever get too much better than that in all honesty.

But again, here we are—another new year goading us into resolutions and pronouncements, sent out into the great unknown. What’s one to do, save for going along, with some remote hope of getting along.

Wrapping up 2018, here are the things and people that helped bring the year to a tolerable close:

  • Books and writers
  • Music
  • A new understanding of family
  • A few true/blue friends
  • Better physical health and the return of some measure of fitness
  • A sense that despite all of the brokenness and tears, Mark’s parents are doing the best we can be doing in terms of honoring his memory.

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Walking Away

Walking away from fundamentalist Christianity was a pivotal event in my life. It probably is one the most significant (and difficult) decisions I’ve ever made since. The year was 1985. After three semesters at a school that from the outside seemed like it was “blessed by God,” once I was on the inside (as a student) however, nothing was as I expected.

One of the things I know about organized religion is that reality regularly falls far short of the ideal. Then there were the practical matters that caused immediate red flags when we rolled up to Hyles-Anderson College in our overloaded U-Haul, during the oppressively hot Midwestern August, in 1983. First, there was the expectation that the school provided some support for students when they arrived. I’d been told that there was assistance at Hyles-Anderson in finding a job.

Our pastor back home had given us a point of contact. Clayton Busby had pastored a small church in Maine, but felt “called” to Hyles-Anderson. We stayed with the Busbys for a few days, and then moved into a condo project near the school, where many other students were living.

Two days after arriving, I met the man, Brother Phil Sallie, who was in charge of workforce assistance. My 21-year-old radar told me he was a fraud. Of course at the time, I thought this was “the devil” trying to trip me up. It was evident months later (and perfectly clear from where I sit, today) that this man was a sadist who derived pleasure from wielding control over people’s lives.

Twisted scripture, Northwest Indiana-style.

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Could You Be The One?

Back when life was simpler and a lot less sad, I went out to see bands because I thought music might save my life. Music as a life saver? Please do tell.

Lot’s been written about Mark by me and others. In death, there is a tendency to enlarge one’s life, or attribute qualities to people in the dead person’s life that may or may not have been present. In Mark’s case, he was the real deal. I did my best as a dad and things turned out pretty well until last January.

In 1986, I was simply a father and husband with a three-year-old son. We were living on a dead-end street in Chesterton, Indiana.

Mark had a tricycle and was making a few friends in the neighborhood. I worked at a prison and Mary had just started working breakfast at Wendy’s prior to me heading off to the med room at Westville Correctional Facility.

Mark and dad playing in the snow [1986]

Things were looking up for our little family, trying to scrape together enough money to return to Maine. I also had aspirations of being something more than an hourly wage slave. It would take me another 15 years to recognize that the writing muse was calling. Unable to recognize its beckoning however, caused considerable frustration and angst in my mid-20s. Continue reading

We Showed Up

There’s a huge advantage to living nearly halfway across the country from the rest of your clan when you are 21 and you are a brand new dad. This formative experience fosters deep bonds between you and the other two members of your unit.

Being so young and suddenly thrust into the role of parents forced the two of us to become really clear about our lives and our love for one another. Yes, I suppose we could have gone in the opposite direction, but what we lacked in money and resourceswe more than made up for in devotion to one another and our newborn baby boy, Mark.

When I look at photos of the two of us from the early 1980s, I’m struck by a couple of things. First, I’m amazed at how young we both looked. This was the stage in life when many people our age were getting started on a career, and contemplating what grad school to apply at. For the two of us, it was cobbling together enough cash to pay our rent, keep one of our two clunkers running and on the road, and later, how best to sync our dual work schedules so that Mark could have a parent home, spending time with him and nurturing his spirit.

On the steps of our duplex in Chesterton, IN (circa 1986)

After I fell out with the God people in Hammond and Crown Point, Indiana, I landed a job working in a prison. While Westville Correctional Center sure as hell wasn’t glamorous, it offered decent wages and even more important for our young family at the time—access to health insurance and our first HMO. Continue reading

Turning 31

Mark is 31-years-old today. It’s sounds clichéd to say it, but it feels like only “yesterday” that I was driving Mary to the hospital like countless other nervous fathers-to-be before. We were living in Indiana at the time, 1,500 miles from family and familiar surroundings. To a then 21-year-old dad-in-waiting, this was terrifying. It was also one of my high-water life experiences

Young Jim and Mark

Mark at 18 months (I think).

I enjoyed being his dad. I still do. Continue reading