Elizabeth Van Jacob is taking a leave of absence from work effective immediately to live la dolce vita with her dolcetto amore.  September 24

Elizabeth Van Jacob just shared the very last cherry tomato of the season with Scott in the garden that was ours and ours alone.  September 26

Elizabeth Van Jacob is so very pleased that as Scott comes out from under the fog of the chemotherapy drugs, his inner light is shining through brighter than ever.  September 27

Elizabeth Van Jacob was amazed at how cheerful and matter-of-fact the hospice nurse was about driving from Elkhart to South Bend after midnight.  October 1

Elizabeth Van Jacob observes that while Scott’s body declines rapidly, the light within burns determinedly.  October 6

Elizabeth Van Jacob is glad this chilly morning to finally fulfill this inexplicable urge she has had the last couple of days to cover Scott with a cozy blanket.  October 7

Elizabeth Van Jacob sadly watched her husband say goodbye to his dear friend.  October 7

Elizabeth Van Jacob‘s Scott is fading fast. We are all snuggling together on the sleeper sofa in the living room, reminiscing, singing Christmas carols, expressing our love. No phone calls, please. Scott cannot hold the phone or focus his attention for conversation.  October 8

Elizabeth Van Jacob just kissed Scott goodnight.  October 8

Elizabeth Van Jacob notes that in the 8,000+ days she has known Scott, yesterday was the first that he did not have a bite to eat. After a restless night, he is finally sleeping. Unfortunately, every time he starts to fall asleep, he thinks he has to say his final goodbye to us. Scott really enjoyed hearing all the messages and emails everyone sent yesterday. Thanks for being with us through these final days and hours.  October 9

Elizabeth Van Jacob is glad that Scott said goodbye to family and friends and had a delightful spurt of energy and lucidness while hanging out with his girls last night. The Scott we were with yesterday is no longer here today since he is barely conscious. It is difficult for me to fathom that I will never really speak with him again. I am overcome by a profoundly sad and lonely feeling.  October 9

Elizabeth Van Jacob and Neil Young are singing Harvest Moon to Scott via YouTube. Neil is a great back-up singer.  October 9

Elizabeth Van Jacob reports that yesterday a Becky daisy blossomed in her garden; they usually finish blossoming in mid August. When Scott was wooing me, he brought me a big bouquet of Becky daisies.  I still see him dressed in a white t-shirt, his long blonde hair illuminated by the late afternoon sun glowing behind him as he held them out to me. Scott died at 4:41 this morning.  October 10

Elizabeth Van Jacob requests that friends attending tomorrow’s memorial approach her children with upbeat voices and give them quick hugs. They crave normality at this very difficult time.  October 14

Elizabeth Van Jacob is grateful to everyone who also played the youtube video of Neil Young last Friday night and sang Harvest Moon to Scott from Vermont to Indiana to Oregon to Thailand, across town, across the continent, across the ocean, and half way across the globe. Thank you for helping usher Scott so tenderly out of this world. If ever there was a prayer that was one.  October 16

And even the neighborhood food shops aren’t as parochial as they used to be. Sixteen years ago, on my first evening as a resident of Michiana, I went to the nearest grocery store to pick up something for dinner. Someone at home had an unsettled tummy, so I asked the clerk to point out a few of the less spicy foods there in the deli case. “Oh, no, sir,” she said, “we hardly ever put spices in anything we make.” But now that same store has torn out the giant Aisle 1 racks of Technicolor jello salads and installed a fifteen-foot cooler of imported cheeses. Remember Monty Python’s Cheese shop skit, where John Cleese asks for several dozen different cheeses, and one after another the shopkeeper informs him that they are out of stock? Well, we can finally purchase them all right here in Michiana.

You gather from the Monty Python skit that in 1970 an English family might be acquainted with a pretty nice variety of regional and even some foreign cheeses. But in 1970 the average American household might have had only cheddar and Swiss and what we jokingly called at our house back then, “some really good Velveeta.” Calvin Trillin, of course, is a satirist, and his 1980 essay about health food shops spoofed a quirky fringe of folks out there inventing a new food and health tradition. But he was also spoofing himself and a broad swathe of Americans who could get a little jumpy and critical around any unfamiliar bit of culture, even if it tasted good. In spite of intervening wars and Patriot Acts and acts of terror, we’re getting better at that too. No longer does a Chinese restaurant supply the most exotic food a Midwestern child is likely to eat growing up. Our kids have classmates with names I never heard of when I was in school; our stores and restaurants are more varied. It’s not unusual to be a vegetarian or to know a vegan. I still love the slightly bitter tang and crunch at the pale heart of a head of iceberg lettuce, but face it – America is a more interesting and colorful place now. I’d be happy to have a plate of Boiled and salted bright green edamame anytime.

Almost right away, my Blackberry started getting phone calls from overseas, or so I figured since the caller’s number was several digits longer than good old U.S. numbers. Presumably this was a friend or family member of the last person who was assigned my new number. I ignored the calls, but they kept coming, so one day I finally picked up and said hello. The person on the other end spoke a completely mysterious language. I said, “You have the wrong number,” and pretty soon he hung up. But he’d call again every couple of days and we’d go through it all once more.  I had the impression that the fellow didn’t understand any English at all, and the words he spoke didn’t sound like any of the European or East Asian languages we Americans study in school or hear in the movies. The calls continued, but there was no communication going on. None.

Eventually I realized that I could look up the caller’s country code. His first digits were 233; in a moment Google told me that the calls were coming from Ghana. I checked out a map of Africa. There was Ghana, south of the Sahara on the continent’s big curving west coast, facing the Atlantic Ocean and looking south. And still the calls came, and when I said, “Do you speak English?” there would be more of that unfamiliar tongue. I looked it up – more than a dozen languages are commonly spoken in Ghana, with names I’d never heard before and didn’t know how to pronounce, like Asante, Ewe, Fante, and Dagarte.

So somebody in Ghana was missing somebody here in area code 574. Maybe some son or daughter had come to study at one of our area colleges? During the Christmas season, more calls – there had been no holiday trip back home to Africa. Somebody was lost here or didn’t want to be found.

I read a little about Ghana. Drug traffic, but too poor an economy for the international drug cartels to launder as much money as they might like. Average education, ninth grade. Lifespan 59 years for men and 60 for women. Home of Lake Volta, the largest man-made body of water in the world. Risk of malaria, rabies, typhoid, and some other diseases I’d never heard of before. I saw pictures of villages and countryside, I heard collections of beautiful rhythm-driven music.

An image of the country started to form in my mind, and I realized that the next time a call came from overseas on my cramped little phone, I could say, “Hello, Ghana.” But what good would that do? Someone was lost here, and half the world away a friend, a father, perhaps a husband, was calling and calling and never getting through.

My creative assistant, Larry, has offered the helpful suggestion that, like any major competition, we need to train for the season. Note now, you need to prepare. You can’t just go into this cold turkey. Beginning in late October or early November, we should begin to overeat just a bit each day in order to stretch our stomachs, so that they can accommodate the coming onslaught. He has named this regimen “The Stomach Pack.” Not such a bad plan, since there almost certainly will be quite a feast coming soon to a table near you. As Oscar Wilde said in The Importance of Being Earnest, “I hate people who are not serious about their meals.” This is crucial business.

The marathon begins with the fourth Thursday of November. Face it, Thanksgiving is huge! Even those who don’t eat much of anything except sandwiches as a regular habit—and in some circles, that includes breakfast—are faced with fowl, meat, vegetables, assorted bread products and other grain-based starches, plus potatoes, relishes and desserts: most served separately, not stacked, and all at one meal. It’s quite a stretch. Even through the tryptophan-induced haze, those who haven’t trained risk facing severe pain.

From there we move, admittedly now a bit more slowly, into the Christmas party season. Starting early in December, we gather at festive tables that are laden with tempting hors d’oeuvres and desserts, sometimes even with full dinners. Then, there are the incidental feedings: gifts of candies, cookies, cakes and breads and tastings of things that we ourselves are preparing. It’s a season that would try the eating stamina of a Hobbit. The December heats culminate with the main event: Christmas dinner. This often is only a slight variation on the Thanksgiving competition. There are many of the same dishes as were served at Thanksgiving, but with a bonus round.  More desserts appear:  now it’s not just pies, but also cakes, cookies, custards and plum and figgy puddings topped with the not-to-missed hard sauce.  Not just the imagination is stretched under the weight of this groaning board. Another example of why it would have been good to train starting months ago.

Just a week later, we come to New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. There’s that long party while waiting for the midnight hour. What to do to pass the time? I know! Let’s belly up to the buffet! Surviving that, we move to the eating requirements of January 1st. My mother always said that you had to eat some cabbage for good luck. A quick look at the internet to see other food traditions for the day yielded: grapes, greens, fish, pork, legumes, and cakes—quite a lot of necessities there to avoid the bogeyman of bad luck. The one bit of good news for New Year’s is that there is an amusing list of foods not to consume. Best to avoid: lobster, for instance, because they move backwards and could lead to setbacks. Chicken also is discouraged because the bird scratches backwards, which could cause regret or dwelling on the past. Another theory warns against eating any winged fowl because good luck could fly away.  Finally, a bit of restraint is encouraged.

Those of us with January birthdays or anniversaries face yet another lap in the marathon. Unless exceedingly well-trained, best to avoid venues that offer excellent service. Recently, at the LaSalle Grill, I glanced at the menu and noted the absence of the asparagus side dish. Hearing my lament, José checked and came back to let me know that there was one order of it in the kitchen and that it could be mine. To refuse his thoughtful offer would have been churlish.

Heading toward the last lap, Valentine’s Day, I am grateful for the bounty, but embrace the thought of pushing back from the training table and greeting the arrival of abstemious Lent. Bon appetite! For Michiana Chronicles this is . . . 

I was working at a center for mentally handicapped adults. My dad kept us on his Plutonium Blue Cross plan, but Ethan was upside down (he’s still upside down) and that cost money. Dad was a physician whose successful practice had begun to suffer from his long residence in the vale of booze. (Why do I keep bringing that up in these essays?) Dutiful son and loving wife were coming home to Atlanta for Christmas, fingers crossed for some Christmas money, both to get us back and to ease the next few months. First grandchild and all . . . I loaded up the car. It wouldn’t start; the battery was dead.

Ever push-started a mini-bus in ten inches of snow with a non-mechanically-inclined pregnant wife behind the wheel? I did that morning, and I’m little. The gasoline fired heater—the one luxury on those old shoeboxes—was cooking merrily away, so we were warm. The snow was getting heavier as we rattled down US 31 south.

Three hours later we were nearing Indianapolis, the heater stopped working; we had to rely on the engine flap heater until I could find a sheltered place to work on it. Next, at a stoplight I stalled the car in the snow and it wouldn’t start; the battery was not charging. I could push start it and it would go, but what about when it got dark. Would the headlights work that Christmas Eve?

I ran in for some coffee at a McDonalds, and asked the lady if there was a VW dealership in Indianapolis. She pointed me only a few blocks down, by the bypass construction. We chugged over and turned in; the service bay was open—our first piece of luck.

Out comes this short, round, greasy, cross-looking mechanic; working, on Christmas Eve. I explained our predicament; he glanced at her, in the full throes of dazed, dreamy pregnancy, and growled, “Pull it on in.” Dead battery; he and I had to push it on in. She and I moved to the waiting room. I sat and thought, how am I going to pay for this? It was Friday, they would deposit the check that evening and on Monday it would bounce and there was nothing I could do. Fifteen bucks in the bank; me in Atlanta. Overdraft protection was years away.

Up behind the parts desk steps a real live hippie. Now-a-days, today it’s hard to tell one alienation from another, but back then long guy hair was credentialing. Full throated Vietnam; President Nixon; flag decals on hard hats; you do the math. But there he was, and, for the Jameses, to think is to act, so I introduced myself—he also was a draft resister—and acquainted him with our plight. He said, “I’ll see what’s happening,” and eased back to the service bay.

He returned in short time. “He has the generator out, the gas heater’s out, parts all over the floor.” Oh boy, real money soon to be required.

A half an hour later the bus appeared on the tarmac outside, chugging away. I could see a new little exhaust pipe from the gas heater putting out visible waves. Someone called my name on the P.A. system. The mechanic slid the clipboard over the counter; the parts list included a new generator, an igniter and an exhaust pipe for the heater. Scrawled beneath the totals column was “Merry Christmas. No charge.”

My parents gave us a silver coffee service for Christmas that year. I borrowed some money from my sister to get us home. Two years later I brought the charge slip to that VW dealership and showed it to the owner when he asked why I had come all the way down there to buy a new van. A year after that my bride—ever the dreamer—left with our child to cohabit with two Notre Dame grad students. It didn’t matter that I also was incurably romantic.