Death be not proud

Daddy

July 10, 1930 - October 25, 2006

Today on the way to work I received a phone call from my mother and father's neighbor on the East Coast. She handed off the phone to my mother, who told me that my father had suffered a massive heart attack and was dead. He had gone out for a walk with the dog and on the way back, passed my mother and the neighbor as they were just setting out. Mother noticed that he was walking slowly and asked if he was okay. "Not so good, love" he replied, and went inside. Mother thought he merely had some joint stiffness or had to get to the bathroom. When she walked into the still dark house at 7:05, she heard a strange gasping sound. Daddy was breathing his last, slumped over on the couch. She called 9-1-1 and sat with him. "I watched him turn white" she later sobbed. And now after 56 years, mother is a widow and alone in a farmhouse they shared for 36 years. His glasses still sit perched on the table next to his hearing aids where he put them this morning.

My father was only 76 years old. He was as strong as an ox, eager to please, and adored my mother. He was talented, energetic, and active. Now he is gone. Daddy willed his body to science, so we honored his wishes that way. Before the coroner wrapped daddy's body, he asked mother if she wanted to be alone with him. She said no. She was current with everything that needed to be said to him. Just that morning they hugged and kissed each other, telling each other how much they loved one another. Daddy told mother he loved her before he went out for a walk. "I know, love." She had not been saving something up to say to him and she was as prepared to say goodbye as anyone could be.

I am stunned, to say the least, but I have to say that this is my experience, too. Just last night I called my parents and had a good chat with them. Daddy was very chatty and warm. He was delighted that the sewing machine they sent me had arrived in one piece. We discussed the latest Handyman magazine, as he was delighted that I love doing woodworking and remodeling projects. I don't remember much of our conversation, only that it left me feeling warm and so grateful that I called. I can still hear him telling me, "I love you, Barb, and I'm so proud of your accomplishments." I have no doubts but that he adored me.

Yet there are streams of light coming through the sadness. Opening my email when I returned back home, I noticed a message from my father. It had been sent at 7:01 a.m. His email ended with a comical remark about wondering if he could mail me his woodworking lathe. And he told me he loved me again. He was dead within four minutes of sending that email, so I received his last communication. I am so grateful.

Daddy died at home, with mother at his side, on his sofa where he took his daily naps. He did not linger and he died very quickly, even though it was unexpected. He had just told me "a funny" as he would say, and he probably felt pretty good, emotionally. It was exactly what he would have wanted, except for my mother's broken heart.

Only two weeks ago I told a relative that there is not a place where I feel closer to God than at a funeral. It may sound strange, but it is the absolute truth. It is at a funeral service when one thinks about what happens after death, and how God plays into all the sadness and losses we face on this earth. My faith tradition believes in soul sleep, which is what most of Christendom believed until the last couple centuries or so. What this means is that when people die, they are as though they are asleep. Then comes the resurrection day when Jesus returns to this earth to gather up His people. As He descends on a cloud with millions of angels and the brilliance of His glory, He shouts, "Awake! Awake, those who sleep in the dust!" And all those who love the Lord will be made alive with immortal bodies.
My father will come up out of the grave tall, healthy, vibrant, and with an immortal body. He will find mother, who will again be youthful and beautiful, and together they will ascend to the Holy City in heaven. Until that day, he will remain sleeping in the grave, oblivious to all that occurs here. The next thing he knows will be the sound of Jesus, whose voice he has longed to hear all these years, and whose face he has often said he wants to gaze upon.

There are certainly worse things than death. I knew daddy was very tired and sad. I knew he had done his best and was painfully aware of the times and places where it had not been remotely good enough. But he kept going, trying to serve God in the best way he knew how, with the best of intentions. I'm so glad I forgave him a long time ago. Now daddy rests in peace and I am left with a deep, clean sadness. I am so grateful that although he was not perfect and although I struggled to understand him for many years, I did understand and love him in the end. I have no regrets.

Night-nite, Daddy, until we meet again.

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.
John Donne

Otis' Friends

Found here

Last night I heard a hiss and a rattle, and looked up from the kitchen table to see Otis hanging on the screen door, about three feet off the ground. Shocked, I went over to the door and looked out myself. There sat two stray cats on the mat outside the door. They are both grey and white, both looked hungrily in the door. Actually, I think they're feral cats as I've seen them in the yard on several occasions and I've taken to feeding them every night in a little saucer on the back porch. One of them jumped up on my lap, purring and begging for a scratch under the chin. The other is a bit wary and stood off a distance. But there they were.
I don't know what to do about these cats. One of them appears to be a good candidate for being inside with us. But they're a team, those two. Probably siblings. Should I take them to the humane society in the hope that someone will adopt them? I think Otis will miss out on the entertainment value of having his friends come calling if I do that. And I will miss these little furry visitors. What to do?

Kids

Found here

Yesterday after work I ran over to Macy's to find something new to wear. I'm giving a seminar next weekend and there is nothing in my closet that I want to be seen in. So I browsed about in the women's clothing section, trying to find just the right thing: somewhat colorful, but also bit conservative and classic. There were all kinds of things that were drab, slinky, and that showed a lot of skin (and cleavage), but nothing that grabbed my attention. After walking through every section in the store, I finally settled back on the women's section. They put the larger sizes upstairs with the cooking pots. Go figure.

Just as I was getting ready to leave, I saw a manikin in the most beautiful green jacket and swirly, sheer overlay skirt. Didn't care much for the top, but I simply loved the skirt. It would look perfect with my black blazer, and I had just tried on the perfect black shell downstairs that would set it off. The ensemble pieces were hanging on a rack back against the wall. I needed a 14 in everything, but they only had 16s. What the heck. Maybe they run small. I scooped up the size 16 skirt. But the only jacket was an 18W. I would swim in that size. But you know, store staff usually put the smaller sizes on their manikins (have you ever seen a size 28 manikin?) So I went back over to the manikin and looked at the tag inside the jacket. It was a 16. That might do it. After looking both ways to be sure no one would question me, I lifted the jacket off the manikin and made for the fitting room.

Taking off my tired, old black pants and pink blouse, I put on the swirling skirt, and jacket. I looked like I had been dressed by a committee: nothing fit though everything should have (on paper). The clothes were pathetically huge. The sleeves hung down past my knuckles, and there was enough overlap on the front of the jacket to button it under my armpits. The skirt fit around me well if I puffed out my stomach. But that defeated the purpose of trying to look svelte. I'd probably do better with a size 14. But there hadn't been any out on the rack. Good grief.

Oh! Look at the skirt on the manikin! She stood facing the store entrance, looking out into the parking lot with vacant eyes and bland face. Her white arms jutted out from under the blouse that was half in and half out of the skirt. I had done that trying to get the jacket off her. I looked at the inside label of her skirt. Size 14. I would have that one.

The clerk was about 20 yards away helping another customer with a purchase. A table of sweaters stood between us, partially obscuring the manikin. No one was at the front door, either. Now was my chance. Unbottoning, then unzipping her skirt, I lowered it over her perfect hips and very long legs. I hadn't anticipated the heavy broad round base that she was attached to. The skirt wouldn't go over that unless I picked her up. Nope, I would be spotted. It needed to go up over her head. The clerk had gone the opposite direction to look for a size the customer requested. Up came the skirt, over the manikin's conservative little bosom. But wait--the skirt couldn't go over the arms. The clerk was coming back to the register and glanced my way. I tilted my head to one side as though I was sizing up an outfit. I was. I think the arms will have to go up so the skirt will go over her torso. But the clerk would notice a manikin with both her arms in the air. I started to move one of the arms upward and it came off in my hand. Horrified, I looked both ways and saw that still no one was coming in the front door. Down on the floor went the arm, and up went the skirt, over the manikin's head. Free at last!

A few minutes later I was taking my skirt downstairs to a counter in the jewelry section. "You don't mind if I pay for this here, do you?" I asked a woman so made up she looked like a Salvador Dali painting. "Oh, not at all!" she gushed. "It's fine!"

So I paid for my skirt and fled the premises. As I left, I turned back to see a mangled white manikin with one arm, dressed only in a blouse. An elderly woman coming in the door stopped short, staring at the manikin. "Hooligans!" she hissed aloud. "There's such a criminal element in this mall. I hate coming here."
I shook my head knowingly, "I know what you mean" I said, stepping outside into the sunshine.

A Real Hero

I've recently become acquainted with a woman who is the strongest, most determined woman I think I've ever met. When I listen to her tell her story, I feel like a rather weak-kneed, dilatory sap.
I could never do what she has done: escape from an abusive marriage, face her abuser in court over custody battles regarding their child, then live through the realization that he was abusing that child. This mother did what had to be done to protect her baby, even when that meant going to court 30 times, traveling across state lines, and being wanted for kidnapping her child. She fought a legal system in one of the darkest states in the country that was populated by good ole' boys who protected abusers because the laws did nothing for women or children in their situation. For several years, the courts notwithstanding, she had to watch her child struggle with the father's abuse. He told her once that he would wear her out with court visits and stress. Since this woman has Crohn's, and stress inflames one's bowels, she now has an unpredictable and very unhealthy GI system.

But she ultimately got her child away from her abuser.
Her child is happily married to a good man, and she has children of her own.
Her child is a church-going, good-hearted woman who is trying to recover from years of abuse by her father.
Her child has had a difficult time seeing beyond what happened. Had her mother not given up her money, time, energy, and even health, her child would not have survived childhood. But she thrives today--because her mother threw down her life to save the life of her child.

My friend has been hospitalized for her Crohn's too many times to count. She has had inflamatory episodes, gone on TPN (intravenous feedings), been unable to eat, had uncontrollable diarrhea and cramping, and thought she was going to die, over and over. But she never gave in. He couldn't kill her spirit.

This is only one of the several things that this woman has overcome in her life. She came from a difficult home situation. Yet she is not bitter and she worked hard to give her family a better life. She has a generous spirit, a happy-go-lucky personality, and is a very creative person.

She has worked for people who abused her and nearly ruined her, financially, socially, and spiritually. They are highly esteemed and have prestige and loads of money. No one would believe the hideous behavior of these people. And yet even though they threatened and tried, they couldn't kill her or take away her faith.

Why am I writing about this--about a woman only two readers would even know? Because she feels that she is a failure as a mother; that she is weak, small, and insufficient. She has been too busy doing the next thing that needs doing to be able to get the distance she needs to be objective about all that she has endured. But heroes are not made of stronger stuff than she is.

There is no greater love, and therefore, no greater person, than she who holds back nothing, but gives to ensure the life of her child.

Worse than I thought possible

At 4:30 this morning I realized that there are worse things than dead mice in the attic. We slept with the window open, it being quite warm in the house last night. In the midst of tossing and turning, hoping no one was climbing in the window, a third ingredient introduced itself to our unfortunate situation. We were visited by skunks. Oh Lordy...

Rats!

The other morning I woke up with Otis dancing across the bed. Opening one eye, I could see him running back and forth over our legs while looking up at the ceiling. Then I heard something being dragged across the ceiling in the attic. Gross! We must have mice or a rat up there, I thought. How disgusting. And I fell back asleep with Otis' little frolic continuing unabated.

This happened every morning around 5:00 for several days. No scampering sounds, just this heavy dragging sort of sound--a miniature ball and chain, in my fantasy. I heard some frantic leaping about over the kitchen ceiling one morning while I was cooking breakfast. Otis heard it, too, and started pacing the floor, looking up at the ceiling as though something was about to drop.

Last night, we heard two odd scraping sounds in the wall of the living room. Sam froze as his eyes rolled toward the sound. Yuck. We really must have a colony up there. It's pretty horrible to contemplate, but it surely is consistent with the quality of this house! Rats! I told Sam that we probably should put some traps up in the attic. But neither of us was too keen on going up there with flashlight to lay the traps down, much less bring them down with wriggling, terrified, chattering rats caught in the glue traps like hideous statues. To drown them in a bucket is even worse to contemplate. So we didn't do anything about them.

This afternoon when we walked into the house, an unearthly smell met us. It was like Sam's dirty socks, even ten times worse. It was in our bedroom, I thought. So I wrenched off all the sheets and the comforter and did a huge laundry. How could we have been sleeping in such a bed with such a stench? We must be more piggy than I thought. Sam came in the room and began sniffing about. He stopped short by the closet. "It's a dead rat in the attic, I think," he said gravely. Sure enough, I think it is, too. I pray that it is a mouse--the smell will be gone in a couple days.

My aunt called tonight and told me to put cups of vinegar around the room. "It will smell strong for a couple days, but it will absorb the odor." I'm prepared to hose it into the attic. But I don't want to go up there. Oh no...
Does anyone know how to get that smell out of the house?

Avalanche!

Have you ever started out to do a good thing and find it all snowball into a huge mess? There are times in all of our lives when this happens. We see something that needs to be taken care of and upon further investigation we find that many things are amiss. Or a worker or student comes by just to let you know that so and so is doing something like filching office money or selling office supplies on the side. Three of these kinds of things happened to me this week and I'm still reeling.

As a new administrator I've been dancing around several ideas related to the hullabaloo that follows the discovery of these unfortunate events. It seems that there are a few predictable ways people respond to finding out that something is grossly amiss. Here are a couple scenarios:

"I'm going straight to the principal and tell!" This is not an uncommon response. People who do this usually have a hard time maintaining their anxiety. In other words, it's so anxiety producing to have something wrong or out of line that they rush to the higher ups and report what they have found. They don't want to be implicated in anything bad, so are quick to point out what others are doing wrong. I'm not sure that they want a pat on the head necessarily, but they do want things to be correct and smooth.

"Then Mary said to Tom..." Some people were born watching other people live and have no intention to do it themselves now. These individuals find another person to talk the problem over with fully and completely. Every angle is examined and discussed. After one or both get insight and incidentally, gain strength from each other's knowledge and validation of their ideas, they keep a buzz going about the latest development. And they do nothing about it themselves except to complain or point out the issue to anyone who will listen.

"Well, what do you know?" This person wants to sit back and watch to get a good grasp of the situation while they think of various ways to address the problem. These individuals only do this if there is no immediate, significant threat to life or limb. It is an art to switch into ethnomethodologist mode--the researcher-observer who wants to fully understand why people do what they do, how they do it, how it affects other people, what the losses are, and what the individual(s) gain from the behavior. Then they act on what they have observed, pulling in another appropriate entity or entities to deal with the issue.

"Howdy, Pilgrim!" This John Wayne impersonator sees something or someone who operates contrary to how they should and wades into the situation to right it themselves. Very little forethought goes into this kind of response. "I'm going to blow this wide open and then we'll see if they can get away with that!" Unfortunately, this approach rarely takes into account all that can go wrong from an indelicate rush upon the wrongdoers. And, in true John Wayne style, declare mennacingly, "Like *$#!@!, you'll do that again!"

As I've watched the turmoil that has resulted from problems I discovered this week, I have been amused by my own response. All three of the issues have been going on since I started this job, and they have driven me almost to distraction. When I started asking questions about one of the situations, it blew up and I was able to see what was being protected and hidden. Two other situations were ones about which I began documenting the second week in this job. Pulling in our Human Resource officers, the revelations that followed nearly ripped my workplace apart. All I knew was that these three issues were intolerable. I had no idea an avalanche would follow.

So tonight I'm trying to climb my way out and see the sunlight again. Life is not for the fainthearted.

Week from Hell

This last month has been horrible. I am behind in everything, exhausted, overwhelmed, and need a break. So I took one for weeks. I think I'm back now. There should be more consistency in what you see here.
Thanks for bearing with me and for coming back.

Wierd labels

For those of you who have ever had a colonoscopy, the name, GoLytely arouses fear and horror as little else can do. GoLytely is a medicated beverage that doesn't make you go lightly at all. To the contrary, it makes a person lose all but their immortal soul in a few hours. As I listened to thundering feet down the hall for most of last night, I wondered who the creative soul was who thought up this euphemistic label.

The advertising world has had a heyday with an unsuspecting public--one that they assume is as daft as to not realize they've been had. They charge virtual miracles resulting from unknown products; veritable entry into the world of ageless, consciousness-raising, advanced members of the race. Consider these bylines straight from product labels in my house:

Apply all over for volumes of attitude (I can assure you that volumes of attitude I did get--especially from bemused passersby whose glances told me that my hair had definitely made a statement that day.)

Restores natural suppleness and bounce. (I should bathe in this!)

Amazing radiance without gritty sensation. (Why would lipstick ever be gritty?)

For hair that's irresistably alluring to the eye and beautiful to the touch. (This concoction gave me one of the worst bad hair days I've ever had)

Makeup for lost time with our Micro Lift System. (This sounds like gym equipment, but it is on my makeup bottle).

Pearlized microparticles brighten the eyes and diffuse light... (wow!)

...whipped mousse formula... (this sounds like pudding--I should like to eat some)

And it goes on and on. Snake oil can be marketed colorfully to keep us coming back for more, always longing for something we don't have. It's all in the languaging of things.

Perhaps this is one reason why Jesus said, "But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil" (Matthew 5:37) and James reiterated this, "...let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation." (James 5:12).

What did the kids see?

A story of abuse is never over until we see what happened to the children and grandchildren of the abuser. The Bible doesn't tell us much about these individuals, except for the incident in which Jacob's sons killed the entire male population in a city for violating their sister. Apparently they had zero tolerance for abusive behavior and rather than dealing with the guilty parties, they took it out on the entire city.

But before we leave the story of Laban, there are questions that need to be noted--unanswered questions:
What did the children see?
What did they think about their grandfather chasing them as if they were criminals?
Did they see their mothers and father cower?
Did they feel the stress in the family because of the working conditions of their father?
Did they see how dishonest their grandfather was?
Did they hear explanations for Laban's behavior from his daughters?
Did they learn to associate power with abuse and deceit?
Did it seem a normal thing to them to have intrigue in hierarchical relationships?

Those who live in abusive relationships forget that what they allow to continue, what becomes a daily pattern, becomes internalized by the children who watch. Far too often, the children look for romantic partners who will keep this pattern alive--the call of the familiar is equaled only by the anxiety of being in a relationship with unfamiliar rules and behavior. So this continues on and on. Be careful what you do and what you allow in your home. It sets the template for your children's marriage and personal fulfillment in the future.

As for the story of Laban the abuser, I have read this story over time and again, despised him, and moved on. It was only recently that I read more slowly and realized that his behavior was so typical of abusers. I hope this has been a useful discussion for the readers. It has for me.