A Season For Dying
The deaths are piling up like used tires. First Cyndi's dad, than the grandfather Grant had been living with for years in Sacramento, keeping an eye on G-Paw as we called him. My friend Sailor is dying as I type this and sending good thoughts to him and Catherine. But today's post is about Jay Hays.
I met Jay in the 1990s at Oh My God Hot Springs in Southern California. East of the San Diego mountains and west of the Salton Sea. Oh My God was a free place to camp, soak, or just be. My first trip out there was for a regional rainbow gathering in the early 90s. Jay is a Vietnam Veteran who used to travel around in a school bus with a couple of Rhodesian Ridgebacks and play drums. He is a drummer's drummer. Jay started college in the early 1960s but then went off to Vietnam and came back broken like so many men I have known. He tried to use alcohol to fix himself for a whole lot of years.
A few years after I met him, when I was seeing one of his best friends, he called me from the VA hospital in San Diego where he had checked himself into the drug and alcohol rehab program. That point really marked the beginning of our friendship. From there he went to the old Veterans Village on PCH and stuck with sobriety.
Over the next 7 or 8 years, he went back to college - community college. Then on to San Diego State University where he majored in Counseling with an emphasis on drug and alcohol addiction. He did a combination BA and MA program despite a few health related setbacks that slowed down his progress. The years of hard living etched in his body.
It was February or March of his last semester of school that his body collapsed and he ended up back at the VA. The doctors wanted to do operations and try to fix him, but Jay wanted to graduate. He wanted his MA in Counseling before he died and so once he was stabilized, he went back and finished up that last semester.
He invited his friends to graduation and being the oldest student in his graduating program, somehow wrangled a lot of tickets. When I showed up I ran into people I vaguely recognized from those days at Oh My God Hot Springs. Once they introduced themselves, I laughed and said, "I didn't recognized you with your clothes on." That was our running joke and was repeated time and again as more old friends show up.
It took Jay forty years to graduate, but he did it and I'm so proud of him. All my attempts at going to grad school are inspired by Jay. I too started going to community college a long time ago (1976 or 1977). I went to college on and off until the year 2000 when I received my BA from UCSD but that doesn't compare to Jay's track record. He was the one who made me realize that it's never too late.
His mission for the last few years of his life was to help as many people as he could.
After Jay graduate a few years ago, he was hired by an Indian Tribe in Rainbow Arizona to run a drug and alcohol rehab clinic. I haven't seen Jay since he moved, but we've talked on the phone, email and written each other. About a year ago, his health problems returned with a vengeance. His liver began shutting down. He was able to get on the list for a liver transplant and died on the operating table on January 28 of this year. Jay knew his days were numbered for years.
Jay we're going to miss you. A mutual friend was with him at the end and Jay was worried that his comrades in this battle against using alcohol to fix brokenness were going to backslide and he didn't want that. So if you're out there, please call a friend, go to a meeting, or plant a tree. It's what Jay would have wanted.
I met Jay in the 1990s at Oh My God Hot Springs in Southern California. East of the San Diego mountains and west of the Salton Sea. Oh My God was a free place to camp, soak, or just be. My first trip out there was for a regional rainbow gathering in the early 90s. Jay is a Vietnam Veteran who used to travel around in a school bus with a couple of Rhodesian Ridgebacks and play drums. He is a drummer's drummer. Jay started college in the early 1960s but then went off to Vietnam and came back broken like so many men I have known. He tried to use alcohol to fix himself for a whole lot of years.
A few years after I met him, when I was seeing one of his best friends, he called me from the VA hospital in San Diego where he had checked himself into the drug and alcohol rehab program. That point really marked the beginning of our friendship. From there he went to the old Veterans Village on PCH and stuck with sobriety.
Over the next 7 or 8 years, he went back to college - community college. Then on to San Diego State University where he majored in Counseling with an emphasis on drug and alcohol addiction. He did a combination BA and MA program despite a few health related setbacks that slowed down his progress. The years of hard living etched in his body.
It was February or March of his last semester of school that his body collapsed and he ended up back at the VA. The doctors wanted to do operations and try to fix him, but Jay wanted to graduate. He wanted his MA in Counseling before he died and so once he was stabilized, he went back and finished up that last semester.
He invited his friends to graduation and being the oldest student in his graduating program, somehow wrangled a lot of tickets. When I showed up I ran into people I vaguely recognized from those days at Oh My God Hot Springs. Once they introduced themselves, I laughed and said, "I didn't recognized you with your clothes on." That was our running joke and was repeated time and again as more old friends show up.
It took Jay forty years to graduate, but he did it and I'm so proud of him. All my attempts at going to grad school are inspired by Jay. I too started going to community college a long time ago (1976 or 1977). I went to college on and off until the year 2000 when I received my BA from UCSD but that doesn't compare to Jay's track record. He was the one who made me realize that it's never too late.
His mission for the last few years of his life was to help as many people as he could.
After Jay graduate a few years ago, he was hired by an Indian Tribe in Rainbow Arizona to run a drug and alcohol rehab clinic. I haven't seen Jay since he moved, but we've talked on the phone, email and written each other. About a year ago, his health problems returned with a vengeance. His liver began shutting down. He was able to get on the list for a liver transplant and died on the operating table on January 28 of this year. Jay knew his days were numbered for years.
Jay we're going to miss you. A mutual friend was with him at the end and Jay was worried that his comrades in this battle against using alcohol to fix brokenness were going to backslide and he didn't want that. So if you're out there, please call a friend, go to a meeting, or plant a tree. It's what Jay would have wanted.
posted by Karin Zirk at
8:47 AM
4 Comments:
I'm so sorry. Love you.
damn. that made me cry and I didn't even know him. THESE are some of the stories you need to tell.
love Jenn
I am so sad to hear of Jay's death. I went to grad school with him in the MSW program. Also, I went to Thailand with him the first year of the summer internship there. What a cool one he was! He will be missed.
Thank you for this special post, Karin. Melanie De Jong
What a wonderful soul and great friend Jay was. Went through the MSW program at SDSU with him. We shared the same internship at the VA in Chula Vista. He always made me laugh. Enjoyed his sense of humor and will remember it always. We kept in touch over the years by phone and e-mail. He will be missed by all who knew him.
Beth
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