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(A friend of mine just e-mailed me this. I’ve been in tears as I tried to post this. –D.M.)

Miss Me — But Let Me Go
Author Unknown

When I come to the end of the road
And the sun has set for me
I want no rites in a gloom-filled room.
Why cry for a soul set free?

Miss me a little–but not too long
And not with your head bowed low.
Remember the love that we once shared,
Miss me–but let me go.

For this is a journey that we all must take
And each must go alone.
It’s all a part of the Master’s plan,
A step on the road to home.

When you are lonely and sick of heart
Go to the friends we know
And bury your sorrows in doing good deeds.
Miss Me–But Let me Go!

Visitation for my wife will be Sunday, January 14th, from 4:00 p.m. until 9:00 p.m. at Moore Funeral Home in Petal.

The first of two funerals will be held Monday, January 15th, at 11:30 a.m. at Parkway Heights United Methodist Church in Hattiesburg. The second funeral will be held in her native Delphos, Ohio, on Thursday, January 18th, at a time to be determined.

After the second funeral, she will be buried next to her father, Marvin Houdeshell, at Walnut Grove Cemetery in Delphos.

After Tuesday’s encouraging signs, Wednesday was a totally different story.

Doctors wanted to do another MRI on Cindy. During the MRI, she had another seizure.

The medical professionals at Forrest General Hospital did everything they could to make my Cindy better. Their best efforts couldn’t help.

We’re still unsure of what caused the initial seizure. We’ve decided for the sake of closure to order an autopsy.

My wife is now in a safe place, free of whatever she suffered and is reunited with her father who left this earth a decade and a half ago. Cindy is also reunited with a fantastic leader in Dr. Larry Kennedy, who served as her boss at William Carey University; he lost a brave battle with ALS.

Cindy, I love you — always and forever. It was a joy, honor and privilege to know you for four and a half years — whether as a lunch date, a friend, your boyfriend, your fiancé and ultimately your husband of one and a half years.

I would not trade these last four and a half years for anything.

This is not the way to start a new year. My wonderful wife had a seizure last night. She’s in ICU as I type this.

I was at the hospital for 12 hours. Her folks came in from out of town late last night. I’ll be headed back to the hospital in a couple of hours or so. I’m here just to pick up a few things, including changes of clothes, for Cindy.

Responses are disabled from entry because I wish not to be flooded with responses. Instead, please pray to the deity of your choice.

I got an e-mail from her husband, Dave, earlier. He noted they got results for her scans from earlier this morning – and she’s cancer free and needs no further chemo. As he put it, “no cancer showing is great news for Christmas!!!”

Great news indeed.

Yeah, I know, I blogged about this last summer. It deserves a follow-up.

Turns out we have a name of the producer who booked “Borat Sagdiyev” and, in the process, was “tricked” into thinking he really was a Kazakhstan-born journalist – when he’s really a fictional character on an HBO show and now a related hit movie.

Her name: Dharma Arthur. Not long after the incident, she was reassigned from her morning producer duties to a similar capacity in the station’s 5:00pm newscast. Arthur and WAPT parted company this past spring.

While she reportedly has found work at a station in Florida, I sincerely hope she’s learned a valuable lesson from the whole “Borat” situation.
My fear, though, is she hasn’t learned anything.

She recently wrote to Newsweek, “Because of (“Borat”), my boss lost faith in my abilities and second-guessed everything I did thereafter.” Well, sheesh, if I were her boss, I’d put her under the microscope, too. “I spiraled into depression,” she continued to whine, “and before I could recover, I was released from my contract early. It took me three months to find another job, and now I’m thousands of dollars in debt and struggling to keep my house out of foreclosure.”

Uh, excuse me, Dharma. If you really want to know who’s at fault for all of this, look in the mirror. Now, I’m sorry you’ve gone through so much hardship; nightmares I wish on no one. But if you had done just a little extra bit of research instead of, apparently, basing you booking just on what “Borat’s” people gave you, you would have saved yourself headaches and you would’ve also spared WAPT a black eye.

In another article, Dharma was quoted as saying, “I don’t have cable. I have two mortgages.” Well, I hope you had internet access in your WAPT days. If so, all you had to do was enter the name “Borat Sagdiyev” into any internet search engine and I promise you would’ve discovered “Borat” was a work of fiction.

Then as now, may this be a lesson for all of us in the media.

(First, it continues to be busy ‘round here. Lately, my afternoons have been spent revising the community events section of ThePineBelt.com, a service of the radio stations I work for part time. With that disclosed…)

It’s come to my attention photographers with Playboy magazine are coming to town next week to seek local models as part of their upcoming “girls of Conference USA” pictorial, scheduled to come to a magazine rack behind the cash register of a convenience store near you next May.

I’m not going to get into the morality debate on this one. Instead, let’s get the obvious out of the way.

First, if the products of the photographers’ and models’ labors ended up under the marriage bed, divorce proceedings would follow.

And second, let’s all be thankful Fred Scott Sands is long gone. If he were still here, he’d lobby to do live remotes from the location of the shoot.

It continues to be busy here at Doug’s Place. The Mrs. and I are planning to be out of town to attend our niece’s wedding. I offered Niki and Kyle a countdown clock similar to the one across the top of the Doug Morris dot org homepage – but they declined.

Kudos are in order — to Dave Ware. He won the Hattiesburg Ward 4 special election. Ware succeeds the recently departed Red Bailey on the city council.

Someone asked me the other day, “Where’s Rick?” Funny, I noticed the lack of nonsense in this past campaign my own self.

If you visit this blog with any regularity, you know Rick James was my boss at SL. He later ran for public office, including the last regular election for Ward 4, and basically fell flat on his face. The last time on the campaign trail was one he’d probably want to forget. Ya know, the whole Dave Chappelle/“I’m Rick James b**ch” silliness.

Despite plans for a march to increase voter turnout, on the anniversary of the death of the singer, I think it’s safe to say Rick’s still nursing a few wounds after this latest failure.

So, let’s review. In the near 10 and a half years of RockTrax, Rick had…

\ a failed talk show (full disclosure, on WXHB-FM, under different ownership and format; since owned and operated by my radio bosses as a Gospel station).

\ a brief return to SL (before Clear Chuckle ate ‘em up; actually a wise move on his part to get while the gettin’ was good).

\ a brief run as a realtor (only listing I could find was some rundown house for just barely over 20-grand)

\ two failed runs for political office (District 102 state representative in the legislature and the aforementioned regularly scheduled Ward 4 election).

…think I miss him? Nah.

By now, I trust you’ve heard a suspect has been arrested in the JonBenet Ramsey case – nearly ten years after her death. News of the suspect is hitting too close to home.

The suspect, John Mark Karr, reportedly grew up in Hamilton, Alabama. Reports say Karr was fired from teaching jobs in Hamilton and nearby Winfield – mainly because he had inappropriate conversations with students.

I know this area pretty well. My grandmother lives there.

The word “freaky” comes to mind.

There once was a man named Brown,
who wore the FEMA director’s crown.
One day he just had to chirp,
that Gene Taylor’s a little twerp.
But we know better who’s the true clown.

If Congressman Taylor could give Mike Brown a job performance grade worse that F-, I know Mr. Taylor would.

Mr. Taylor, keep up the heat, the pressure and the great work.