Love sustains the Shacker family

In the summer of 1975 Michael Shacker was touring the West Coast with his electic swing band “Cousin Cricket,” occasionally providing an early puppet show (with musical accompaniment provided by the band) for folks with children. He built his home off the grid in the hills North San Juan, where he was a volunteer fireman and problem solver for pioneers seeking separation from the sixties’ back-lash: the resurgence of the Power Elite. Barbara Dean was passing through on her own odyssey. She’d just visited her first daughter, trying and failing to put her marriage back together. Coming to rest in these stress-free California hills the azure-eyed, smoky blonde-haired beauty found a room-mate, took a breath, and would start again. Asked, “Who do you want to meet?” by girlfriends, her response was to the point — “Michael Shacker.”

“I saw him at a party…heard his fiddle — which I play, myself — but I’d never heard anyone play the fiddle like him. I fell. Hard. And it was then I realized he was the tall stranger I’d dreamt about seven years before. I purposefully met his friends, hung out in his circle. Yeah, I did my homework and laid the tender trap. You could almost say I was already a part of his life the night his hokey band came home off the road. He walked thru the door, I smiled up at him, batted my eyes, and his jaw hit the floor like Bottom the Weaver upon first seeing Titania. A direct hit. The next day I went home to pack up my things. ‘What’s going on? Did you meet someone?’ Once again it was a two word answer — “Michael Shacker.’”

Melissa was a bright, beautiful, Woodstock girl with the not-so-unique problem of having parents so hip they provided little if anything to rebel against. Still an only child needs to push away. Graduating from Onteora a year early, she was 19, three years into an associates’ degree at SUNY Ulster the night her father was airlifted to Albany Medical and everything screamed to a stop. She and her Mom made the drive to the hospital daily, rarely greeted with good news. That’s not the role of medicine anymore. Prepare every one for the very worst. Avoid malpractice suits at all costs. Keep expectations numbingly low…even so her Dad’s heart wouldn’t quit. But his lungs were a different story. One had collapsed during the seven hour operation and before he was put into brain re-hab he was taken to special unit in Schenectady called Sunnyview and put on a machine that retrained him to breath. It was a terrifying procedure. Oxygen was forced into lungs in painfully manufactured gasps. His ribs mechanically forced open and shut. Sunnyview, indeed. But the determination which caused big-time pay days from computer program start-up companies gambling on a Shacker brainchild (money which they’d lived on much of her childhood) seemed a part of her dad’s DNA.

Back in the world, students, teachers, farmers, journalists, critics and every day citizens wanted to hear more from the author of A Spring Without Bees. Now it was the turn of the Shacker women to step out the shadows. In July of 2008 Barbara and Melissa lectured at the Carey Science Institute in Milton. In 2009, her mother deep into researching a means of rescuing Michael, Melissa read, spoke, and answered questions for 150 students at Marist College for two hours. She was 21.

From Sunnyview Michael was shuttled to the North East Center for Special Care, Traumatic Brain Injury and Neurological Recovery Center. Here Barbara began her journey in earnest. For his sake, for the sake of her daughter who adored him, for the sake of this deeply troubled world which now more than ever needed minds like Michael’s operating at full power, and for the sake of her own broken heart…she needed his low, incredibly powerful voice to break the stillness, re-enter the room, reverberate again back into her world, back…into her life.

The universe had turned against him, but unconscious or conscious it was same: Michael fought back. Accompanying that tenacity, in happier times, he exhibited a grandiose streak. He wrote a full length musical on the life and accomplishments of his hero William Blake, paid legit singers to record it at Nevessa studio in ‘95. Around the same time he bought a sixteen acre compound off a quiet mountain road with an 1860’s farmhouse, guest house, studio, pond, meadow, and forest marked with Druid mounds left over from the little-countenanced Viking explorations a thousand years before Columbus. True? Who knows. Grand idea? Without a doubt. Yes, Shacker was larger than life, almost suspiciously cheerful, charismatic, charming, and high-handed in a manner which — for mother and daughter — became slightly alarming. In the not so distant future that alarm would cease to be a private matter.

Well enough to be transferred closer to home [for a fuller description of Michael’s medical odyssey see Barbara’s blog: strokefamily.org] Michael landed at the Head Trauma Center in Lake Katrine in August of 2008. This is where — several years later — I first visited him; where that piece of skull was taken of a freezer, thawed out, and rejoined to his cranium. Where hair grew anew. And his temper flared. On the other side of the door I could hear his powerful monosyllabic voice angrily objecting to food (he and/or Barbara on his behalf refused to accept any red meat or white sugar through his entire eight year institutional ordeal), but as I poked my head into the room and he set eyes first on me, then my guitar, and then my companion, the light of joy in his helmet-framed face became a human generated lightning bolt no less powerful than any created by Nikola Tesla. My girlfriend, a speech pathologist, had already prepared me: music, stored on the right side of the brain, had been spared the devastation of speech stored on the left. Michael, in no uncertain terms, quickly made it clear he wanted me to get out my guitar. But no, I wasn’t ready for what followed. Strumming a strident Am followed by G, F, G and back to the Am, I sang — instantly joined by a strong, clear, joy-filled baritone: “There must some way outta’ here/ Said the joker to the thief/ There’s too much confusion/ I can’t get no relief.” The guitar was trembling in my hands, as — trying to hold back unruly tears — I completed the counter-culture anthem, unable to ward off the time delayed bombs of sentimental clap-trap I’d heard growing up in Woodstock, all about the healing magic of music…

I didn’t know it yet but it the Shacker’s finances were in free-fall. Barbara’s kits for stroke victim speech recovery, her editing, work as a librarian, and as a free-lance writer, all while laboring towards Michael’s slow progress forward, could not possibly cover the bills. She had succumbed to the great American addiction of credit card debt. Her beautiful property was suffering from neglect as was her beautiful smile. It was that too-rare moment when a local realtor can actually do something to help. I stepped in and put the property up for sale, doubling as mover, landscaper, handyman and fundraiser, knowing Michael would howl when he heard and howl he did. Eight months later, in a disintegrating market still without a real offer, the price lowered accordingly, we finally garnered a respectable “verbal” offer; one which would allow Barbara to walk away with enough money to rent for a year and — carefully — stay alive. The very day that call came in the banks had finally had enough — would suffer non-payment no longer — and the property suffered that fatal sea change, went from “short sale” to “foreclosure,” and I — as listing agent — was legally obligated to notify the buyers of this transformation. The moment such words are spoken over a telephone it’s like releasing a few gallons of fresh blood into the ocean just off Barbados…Obviously, the universe was not yet finished punishing the likes of Michael Shacker & family. Thanks to the brilliant ministrations of attorneys Miller and Graff and the hard work of all agents involved, the Shackers escaped with a few dollars and their credit with the great god of American commerce intact.

Today Michael [who has made astounding progress working with Dr. Stephen Larsen of the Stone Mountain Center in New Paltz ] with the assistance of daytime aids, has his own residence “back in Woodstock” in the apartment building where Ulysses S. Grant once spent the night; his daughter Melissa is working an administrative job at Sunflower Health Foods and finishing college, while Barbara renting in Bearsville — at this very moment — struggles to fulfill her deadline (as I attempt to do likewise). An all-but-finished Shacker manuscript on Global Re-Generation has (with information extrapolated from Michael’s “Global Curriculum)   been completed by her in the last three months and is presently slated for an Inner Visions publication in the fall of 2012; working title: The Global Flip.

I met yesterday with the entire Shacker family to take the photograph above. Michael’s comedic side was in full force — correcting me with slow, hard-earned phrases, and clowning for the camera. Fully ambulatory, he was shining with love for Barbara, glowing with pride in Melissa, resorting to the computer for articles and You-Tube clips for fuller answers to my questions. A few hours earlier I’d spoken with Barbara over the phone, saying I wanted to be protective of their privacy, but that I did want to broach the subject of their marriage. “Well, you want to go back to the way it was, and that’s very painful, because…it’s different. It just is. Different. There was a time I thought I had to move on but…I couldn’t. The truth is…I can’t live without him. And so…all this…is actually an amazing opportunity to find out what real love really is.”

Before I packed up my camera and guitar I asked Michael the following: “Through all that you endured over the last decade — all the pain and struggle, humiliation and frustration — did you ever once think that you’d rather be done with it and just…throw in the towel?”

Huge black spectacle-framed eyes fastened onto mine and his face shook slightly with the effort of conveying the seriousness of his response.

“Never.”

He glanced once at his family and then back at me, repeating the word before amending it. “Never give in.” ++