I GAVE MY SON A SONG FOR CHRISTMAS 2011 ~ UNTIL FOREVER ENDS

Christmas Eve
December 24, Saturday, 2011
Photo credit: Sandra Hammel

Christmas Eve
December 24, Saturday, 2011
Photo credit: Sandra Hammel

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This is a public video, however the purpose of this song is for my son, which is a personal matter. He is 24 years old. Some bonds are deep, some never take at all. The bond that I feel with my son is the deep kind, that of hearts, spirits - between two souls. And he came into my life when he was 8 years old.

I am grateful for this special experience, this special bond.

One day, I hope to do this song with better voice. In the meantime, I upload what I did yesterday and include the live version that I sang for my son as one of his Christmas presents on Christmas Eve 2011, which was shot with the cheapest camera sold. I dream of having a decent camera one day. I just can't afford one.

This song was written December 14, 2011 for my son.

Until Forever Ends

Written by Sandra Hammel

Though we are two hearts, many years apart,

Our bond runs deep, deeper than the blue sea,

Now, you, you sail on,

I stand here and watch you take flight……

Every day, keep your passions alive, breathe free,

I will love you always,

Until forever ends,

I will love you until forever ends.

Key: F Major

6/8 feel

Raw title: Until Forever Ends Live.mov

INDIANA HOME ~ HAMMEL, MICKLEY, MICHELET, METZ, FRANCE

This is a picture I wanted to include in the video, but when I got around to finding it, I was at the end of making the video and couldn't find an appropriate place to slide it in. Dad always "enjoyed" in a humorous way what he was giving Mom for Christmas. When I was there, I always was asked by Dad to wrap the gift. So, I am sure I wrapped this gift. Photo credit: Sandra Hammel

Huntington, Indiana
Dad's man-made lake

Photo credit: Sandra Hammel

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The lake was made out of a field by my dad, where he also located a natural spring. The house was drawn by my mother and built by my dad. It is the third home that I lived in overall before moving out as an adult. The other two houses in the family childhood videos and photos were also built by my dad and the plan of the second childhood home was also drawn up by my mother. The first home was built right after WWII during the Depression.

This video at Youtube is "unlisted". Please, honor me and do not embed this video anywhere.
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I have made this video in three versions. The above video is the second version. The third version is still processing at Youtube. Unlike the first version, there are audio glitches in the youtube uploaded video above.

I love pictures and videos and taking them. One thing is all the "unpleasant" times of a family are not in the pictures and videos for the most part. I made this video for my mother that I haven't talked to since my dad's funeral. But I have been emailing and sending youtube videos to her over the last months. It works well.

Story behind what brought me to making this video

My brother who lives in Hawaii, called my sister in Indiana recently because he felt mother must go to the hospital with an extremely low blood pressure. She has always had a very high blood pressure. The hospital kept her for a few days, ran tests and sent her home finding nothing. Then she went to her doctor and he had a test ordered, which was done June 24, 2011. Then the doctor "quit", as my brother put it. It took my sister pursuing the test results and Wednesday, June 29, my brother called to tell me the results: 75% blockage to one artery to the brain and 50% blockage to another artery to the brain. So the 75% blockage apparently is getting a stint and the 50% is getting medication. She was born in 1925, so it is surely risky that the stint will go well. No one has let me know when the stint is being placed in the artery.

So, I made this video for my mother. It is something I can do for her. Even though, there were some very hard words and actions about my dad the couple of years before he died...in 2007. I can do this. And give her some comfort.

My father's name is Hammel. And very little history has been passed down about my ancestors on his side. It is either Swiss or German, I believe.

My mother's family ~ the Mickley family's name was Michelet in Europe. And before one of the ancestors came across the Atlantic Ocean, they were from the area around Metz, France.

There is a book of the Michelet ~ Mickley history ~ The_Genealogy_of_the_Mickley_Family_of_America. There are some very interesting stories in the book, including the name (last) changes down through history. Some ancestors are listed as being killed by Indians. (See my blog post about the Indians: Neglected story of discrimination) There is a story about the Liberty Bell. Pages, I particularly like are: (Page 95 (Joseph Jacob Mickley ~ Biographical Sketch, 100, 102, 117-118, 150-153. My name is listed in the hard copy that I have. But my sister was born after the time that new children's names were added.

The first link is to this book put online by Cornell University ~
www.archive.org/stream

Other related links ~
archive.org/details

archive.org/search/Minnie Fogel

openlibrary.org/books/The_genealogy_of_the_Mickley_family_of_America

Click on the image to enlarge
It has the Coat of Arms of the Michelet family and the motto of the family.

For Me ~ Raw title of the third version: Indiana The Lake July 14, 2002 #9 Hi 8 D 1 Edit Color of Video, Added Pictures and Video 720x480 (640x480) What A Wonderful World.mov

MY LAST GOOD-BYE TO MY DAD AND MY RED SLED

Today, my plans were turned upside down. Once my Darfur lobby appointment was cancelled for December 17 with U.S. RI Representative Patrick Kennedy, I could stop studying the points to be made to the constituents prior to meeting with Patrick for Monday morning. I already had emailed all the important “asks” to Patrick’s office Friday, so I simply asked the scheduler to forward them to Patrick in Washington, D.C. because some of the things are to be up for a vote Monday. Although it has taken me since February 2007 to land this lobby meeting, I wasn’t upset with the change in plans for now. We will be rescheduled after I go to New Hampshire to volunteer in the Derry, New Hampshire Barack Obama campaign office through January 9.

So the big decision to be made after going to the Doctor’s this morning and getting a prescription costing $109 ~ a bottle, 1 inch high and ½” in diameter of ear drops ~ I decided NOT to buy a Christmas tree. I spent hours this afternoon decking the house out though. I cut lots of branches from my juniper trees in the back yard, put them in a bucket of water. Cut holly branches complete with the red berries. Got out all the Christmas stuff.

While in the attic, I saw the little red sled from my Indiana childhood, that my dad had repainted red with my name across the middle wood slat and transported to Rhode Island years ago when mom and dad traveled a lot by a 32 foot motor home. Great! I thought. Dad can be here in my decoration scene. My dad died May 10th ~ the same date that his mother died years ago. But dad died this year. I only cried recently about dad being gone from my mortal life. But mostly because he didn’t get to die living in his home, but in a tiny room in an institution.

My dad had a favorite song, that I don’t think anyone knew of ~ until I told them. It was “Go, Tell It On the Mountain”. We sang it together in that tiny room even when I had been told he couldn’t remember things, that he wouldn’t recognize me, he had no capacity to smile ~ only I found all of that to be untrue. He smiled with me, he remembered and talked with me and we shared some of the most intimate and memorable times while his memory was less, but still there.

The saddest part was that my mother kept me from being with my dad at the end. She denied me and my dad time and experiences together those last years. And when he was near death, she never called and told me. So here I was in Rhode Island doing my Darfur activist stuff. On May 9th I was organizing the thousands of divestment petitions to be delivered to Fidelity Investment Company’s main headquarters’ office in Smithfield, RI with students from Providence College and Brown University.

May 10th, my brother had arranged to have me talk to my dad in Warren, Indiana on the phone following his phone call to dad. And I called at 10:00 a.m. with a written out message to dad to tell him that I was coming to Indiana to see him next week, but that if he couldn’t wait until then, to know it is okay to go and that I love him. On the phone, I sang him one of his other favorite songs “The Old Rugged Cross” that I had sung to him on my recent visit to Indiana. At that time, while I was singing it, dad closed his eyes and I thought to myself that maybe he was passing away at that time, but no, he slowly opened his eyes later in the song and looked straight ahead. He was just taking it in.

This time I had the nurse who was holding the phone to his ear so he could hear me talk to him ~ also hold his hand while I talked to him. He was unable to talk anymore. But he understood everything that I was saying. I said again, I love you, dad. I asked him to squeeze Nurse Marcia’s hand to say that he loved me. After I said my last good-bye, Marcia came on the phone and told me that she thought he was gone. She was amazed at the peace that came over his body and face. She saw him take his last breath. Marcia said that he was too weak to squeeze her hand, but dad at the time I asked him to squeeze Marcia’s hand, winked his left eye. My dad told me he loved me with a wink of his eye. His mind was there for us both.

At his funeral I told the story of my last phone call with my dad. My dad’s sister told me that mom never looked at me once as I talked and sang “The Old Rugged Cross”.

Marcia, said he had waited for me. I adore my dad. And I am sad that my mother didn’t tell me he was this near death so that I could have gone home to be with him in person. But my mother hadn’t told me she moved dad into this institution either. Dad so badly did not want to go to this institution. He hated it there. He wanted to go to his final annual Hammel Family Reunion August 5, 2006. I wanted to grant him this wish. But my mother forbid it. So my mother got her way. And my dad is now gone from this mortal life.
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youtube
Uploaded by a 16 year old of Sweden called Hafor at Youtube.

At his funeral May 14, 2007, we all sang “Go, Tell It on the Mountain". I love this youtube of it. Dad liked music. But he was a sportsman. Right out of high school, he went to play for the Green Bay Packers with Curly Lambeau. Football was dad's favorite sport to play, although he was a track star also. Dad told me he loved playing football in the rain the best. None of this was in my dad’s obituary. He was an excellent basketball coach in two Indiana high schools, also. Bobby Knight would scout the boys on my dad’s teams for recruitment because of the fundamentals and X’s and O’s coaching that my dad did.

My mother left for the airport to go to Hawaii with my niece, on the afternoon of May 14th. The trip had been planned for a long time.

Recently, I have begun to write about my life, my feelings, my memories by sifting through my prolific writing over a lifetime and it is stunning to have all these feelings for a dad that belted me, but in the end, showed me how very special I was to him. In his heart, he was a teddy bear. The afternoon, following my dad's funeral, I went to visit his only surviving elder brother on a farm. Jerald told me that dad had received more whippings than the other four children in their family put together. Jerald died in his sleep 5 days later.

My dad's mom, dad, siblings and him. He's the one holding the ball.

Here you have my Christmas “tree” that cost me nothing but time. AND there is the red sled of my childhood, painted by my dad by the tree as a part of the Christmas 2007 at my house. Thank you.

Mark O’Keith Hammel
Born August 3, 1924
Died May 10, 2007
CoachHammelDies
familytree
Merry Christmas Dad!

Sandra Hammel
Born April 2, 1949
Not dead yet
My dad's nickname for me was Whistle Bait. I know it may sound disgusting, but he meant it in the nicest way, I am sure.