RIP Thomas B Toohey - Online Shrine to my Contact Lenses

Our family was in shock at the sudden death of Tom Toohey, my daughter/law Nicole's father. She told me her family uses Burns Funeral Home in Bensalem.

A highly decorated narcotics cop in Philadelphia, she now has his awards along with his ashes. 

Her dad was a soldier. She showed me his dog tags. I held the cold lifeless metal in my hands as my grandson Max ate noodle soup off his tray. I tasted it - delicious! 

Nicole was working on some papers as she's in grad school online.

Here's my son Dan, who was folding laundry when I drove over.

He also fixed my laptop, which I'm typing on now.

He turned 38 on October 9 and I finally was able to give him his gift, which he liked.


 
Dan walked me out to my car. 

"You're a mellow guy," I said, as we kissed goodbye.

*

Then I drove to Mom's where I gave her and Ellen, some sweet potatoes which we harvested yesterday.

 They grow deep in the ground in clusters.

Scott said we have great soil, full of worms. He used manure mixed with topsoil.

The first time I had sweet potato pie was when I worked for my late father at Majestic Specialties, Inc, in NYC.

The Coffee Lady, an unfriendly black woman, sold me a piece.

Nibbling on it before I went back to work, I looked back at her and said, "This is delicious!"

I'd made a new friend.

*

Scott and I finally made our scarecrow. He used some old jeans, telling me that now that they're 'outsourced' to China, they're a bunch of crap.

The shirt is from his birth-state Nebraska, the Cornhusker State.

*

SHRINE TO MY CONTACT LENSES

I've worn contacts since I was 17.

Dr Philip Kasdan in Cleveland was my doctor.

As a teenager and even when I went off to Goddard College, I would constantly lose them.

I don't need contacts any more, since I had two two cataract operations in July and August.

For old times' sake, I tried on one of my contacts just now. My eye did not reject this foreign object. I wear the gas-permeable lenses. Or, I should say, "wore."

They're tinted pale blue so you can find em - sometimes - when they drop. Scott is a master at finding them.

On the top left of the photo, you'll see the most important instrument a hard-contact-wearer needs. It's like gold.

Occasionally the lens dislodges itself into the side or back or top of the eye. You lubricate the eye and using The PLUNGER one can slide it back into the center of the eye.

Sadly, I'm gonna get rid of all these lens accoutrements.

Well, I'll leave em on my purple ottoman empire a while and when I get sick of em, will dispose of em.

ELEGY FOR MY CONTACT LENS

Worn from 1962 until 2014... 51 years

Life’s a blur
blue catseye glasses
fixed that
then as a teenager, on
to newly invented contacts
whose intimate loving
embrace with the iris
made the world anew

These little slabs of
plastic, see-through
like the white slip of
Maggie the Cat
bore me up to the
golden hills of Vermont
where Wendy and I
sunbathed in the nude
until the farmer in overalls
asked us to leave his cow pasture
those damn Goddard brats

And so it went. Every night
the ritual: soak the lenses
in a warm bath of water
insert in the morning
-two thousand three hundred
seventeen times –
until little puffs back of the eye
put a halt to the
sacred process.

I lay on a gurney
in the hands of Dr Clark
as he slid “lens inserts”
in the back of my eyes
“Focus on the colors”
he said as the royal blue
exhibited itself like a
million dollar
Mondrian print
and I flashed back to
Cleveland when I
played hockey in a
gym suit that color
Ground sticks! Ground sticks!
Go!

What shall I do now with
the paraphernalia of my
lens-wearing days?
With the white plastic eye case
with two deep holes
the soaking lotion, wetting
and cleansing solution
all the once-unfamiliar names
becoming over time best buddies
best friends

Shall I dig a hole in the
back yard and bury them
the way I did my turtles
back in Ohio?

Or, with a plunk, shall I
deposit them in the
Recyclables, then hide
my eyes, when the
trash men come ‘round
next Thursday?