Tears

It is a little more than two weeks past six months since my life was no longer mine. On April Fools my mother was struck down by a moment eruption of a tiny vain deep in the brain. 

The call came early. My mother never called me in the morning. But the voice on the other end was not my mother, but my father and my father never called. “Your mother had a stroke,” he said. This was not the script we wrote. The call that had been expected since his heart attack a couple years back would be of his passing, not one of my mother’s failing. He was supposedly the weak one and she the caretaker. And now I was the caretaker of both by some odd reversal of nature. It never should be that the child becomes parent to the parents.

These six months have been ones of suffering for them, who lived so long, perhaps beyond a reasonable age. But the will to keep on keeping on is strong within us, even when our bodies have begun to desert our souls and hope is only that the suffering might end.

The world that surrounds us can be sympathetic, but is inefficient and slow moving. The gears of bureaucracy move slower than the fingers of beckoning death. And while you wait for these instruments of government and care to turn and click on you see all the trappings of their lives dissolve away, until finally and mercifully they too slip off in the night

BRIDE

She comes all winter warmth
Swathed in clinging frost
And diaphanous gloom.
Her smile of frozen teeth
And her eyes of icy ponds
Send shivers through the room.

We think of death as skeletal,
Cowled with cloak of black
Hunched like some old farmer
Over his scythe and sack
To cut and carry us to our doom,
But no, death is not the groom.

Death comes dressed in marriage veil,
In a snow white bridal gown
With a long icicle train.
Our final vows are sealed by one
Who doesn’t steal, but stills our heart
With a lover’s kiss that ends all pain.

On September 23 my mother felt that kiss and her soul went to The Father, shedding the ravaged body and leaving dad alone.

He wanted to be there to the end, holding her hand as he had for those days before, telling her he loved her so she knew as if she didn’t all ready. But fate and failing lungs carried him from her in the end and he could not be there then. I held her hand that afternoon and told her everything on earth was done and in place and she should not worry anymore and said goodnight. And on that good night she died within the quarter hour before the clock struck eleven.

And he came back to the room they shared during the week after he found her gone and he was too frail to attend at her final resting, to see her body off, to gather up like flowers the regrets and love of long time friends and relatives.

This past Monday dad seemed strong as if he would continue on for many more days and months. Then yesterday all that changed into a gurgle in his throat and a weakness in his body. I could hardly believe it was the same man I had sat next to in the day room the other day as I stood with my wife beside his bed today. He seemed to have shrunk, his breath a gasp and rattle, his eyes wandering up as if seeking escape. He tried to talk, but I could not understand what he was trying to say. He was grasping at the cover over him and I did not know what he was reaching for.

Then at one point as I leaned over trying to hear I did hear what may have been his last distinct words. He said, “Thank you,” which were words my father never seemed to find in his vocabulary before. 

And last evening, October 11, 2012 my father died within the quarter hour before 11:00, within the same time as his wife, the love of his life, the woman they told me he was reaching out for yesterday, had passed. She called for him and he went.

It has been just over six months and in all that time I didn’t cry. There was too much to do for tears. It is 3:38 AM on the 12th of October and now the tears have been coming, in bursts and fits and waterfalls all the last few hours. Now the six months of tears have burst through the dam and flood me.

All is gone now. Willy and Milly have passed beyond the scope of this world. Their house is sold, now the possession of another. All their worldly goods are gone as well. There is nothing left of them except the memories and the feelings they left with others. That is enough, is it not? 

This ordeal has drawn me closer to The Lord and it has taught me many things. Three weeks ago I prayed intently about these things and these passings were God’s mercy both to my parents and to me. 

Take from my parents whatever they left within your hearts, but also see the truth of where our treasure must be for as Job said:

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.”

WHERE THE RAINBOWS END

We begin this journey of life

Down a road we do not yet know.

We see the blossoms of the moment,

Costumed in dancing colors

That entice us like the bees,

To their perfumed petal traps

And we lust to gain their beauty,

 To glisten like the rose after a rain.

We watch the sun rise upon the distance city,

Turning the towers of glass to gold,

Shimmering like a river of riches

And our eyes serve us our breakfast of “wants”

Sprinkled with the sweet sugar of excess.

We glutton for the fat of the land.

Our stressed hearts beat faster

As the grasp of our hands

Fills our veins with the empty

Calories of success.

We ignore the storms of warning

That dare darken our skies and the path

To our ever bigger car and grander house.

We fill our rooms with knick-knacks

To gorge our obese egos

And we ignore the dust specks of reality

That swirls about the air to settle

Lightly upon our treasures

As if in echo of some ancient tome.

Not Home Sweet Home,

But ashes to ashes and

Dust to dust.

We do not see the light for the shimmer.

Our eyes are always to the rainbow,

An illusion of sun and water,

A trick of diffusion

And a lure to delusion.

We cannot own the colors,

But can we the Pot of Gold at its end?

But where the rainbow ends

Lies the mire of despair and truth.

When we reach the distance touchdown point

The rainbow fades away

With all we ever gathered

And we are left naked before the eyes of God.

A Wanderer At Journey's End

Death is all around me. It is like a heavy fog that will not lift. It covers me like a blanket at night and a cloak during the day.

Last Friday we buried the body of my mother and yesterday, October 2 on his 94th birthday, my dad entered Hospice Care for his last journey.

And last night at 11:54 PM another journey came to an end. Hobo Joe died.

I do not know what his original name was nor how old he was. He had belonged to someone at sometime. He was neutered and housebroken and for a large cat genteel with people. A Snowshoe Cat we believe, my daughter said he had Siamese in him because of the shape of his head, and he had those large white feet. If so, it was an apt breed for we first saw him in the storms of 2010, those blizzards that hit that year and buried us in feet of snow.

He came wandering into our yard every day a-sudden during that chill time. He would look at you and vocalize, but then hurry off into the brush. Our own cat, Brad, a Houdini of a cat, escaped the house for a while and the two of them were often somewhat distant companions hunched against the winter background. We finally corralled Brad and now this large black cat was alone again.

All that winter and that spring he haunted our yard at times. We put food out for him, but he was caution to any approach. Until one May evening, just when my daughter arrived home from work. It was a pleasant warm late afternoon and my wife, Lois, was working on the bushes before the house when the cat appeared in the drive. Lois sat down upon the stoop and called to him and he looked over. Eventually he ambled close and let her stroke his head and he didn't flee when my daughter pulled in and came up the walk. Laurel, who is a VetTech used to working with cats scruffed him and carried him into our home. We placed him in the bathroom with a cat bed and he settle upon it and slept.

This lost wanderer had a new home and a new name, Hobo Joe.

He quickly adapted to the family. He was the biggest cat and not mean, but assertive. None of the others were about to give this stranger any trouble.

One summer night not long after, my son came home carrying a scruffy, scared, starving kitten he had rescued from the parking lot where he worked. He named the kitten, barely weaned, Kerouac. For what ever reason, Hobo Joe took this kitten under his wing. It was if they were father and son and they forever bonded.

I have been stoic through these harsh few months and days, but I almost lost it this morning when Hobo  managed to walk feebly down our hallway toward the kitchen, as he always did when I got up. He lay down halfway to rest. He suddenly flopped over and I had thought he was gone, but when I touched him, he got back onto his haunches in that positions cats often take. It was then that Kerouac came over and began to groom him.

Somewhat later I placed him on a little carrier bed and took him into the living room to be with me. Kerouac came over and lay down a few feet away as if in vigil for his adopted father. That is when I took the photo at the top of this post, Hobo Joe laying halfway between Kerouac and the light at the end of the tunnel of his life.

I had to go and tend to my own father in the afternoon and expected Hobo would be gone when I returned, but he was still alive. I was with them last night until the end.

Hobo Joe was one of my favorites. He was one of the three that always greeted me when I awoke in the morning, the same three who would be waiting at the door every time Lois and/or I would come home from somewhere, our little welcoming committee of Mark, Kerouac and Hobo Joe. Now it is diminished by one.

I will miss him, he was with us such a short time.  Rest in piece, your hobo days are done.

To My Mom 1920 - 2012

My mother suffered a stroke on April 1, 2012. Before that day she had been independent, albeit sometimes using a cane. She was caretaker to my dad. The stroke was in the Pons area of her brain stem. It took away the use of her left hand and left leg and led to a feeding tube inserted in her side. So she loss her ability to walk and eat, and to do much handling of things. The speech was unaffected.

Her mind was clear and focused until the end. During the last few days when she was actively dying this brought even the experiences Hospice nurses to tears. One told me this was the darkest thing because my mother was aware and responsive to everything going on and most people by that stage were not.

My father sat beside her bed holding her hand those last few days. On Sunday morning he had a build up of fluid in his lungs and they took him to the hospital.

I sat with her Sunday afternoon and held her hand. I told her not to worry about anything. All was taken care of and under control. I told her I loved her and bid her goodnight.

She died at approximately 10:45 Sunday evening September 23, 2012.

Dad holding mom's hand the day before the end.

I want to tell a story and a last lesson my mother taught me about what we should value.

My mother was born in 1920 and her growing up was not in a home her parents owned. There was a prominent family named Thomas, one of the founding families of the Quaker Track in Chester County, Pennsylvania called Whiteland. My mother’s family was tenants on George Thomas III’s estate “Whitford”, in an old white house back of a pond. The “big house” she called it. There was a Blacksmith Shop down the lane from them. That smithy was still working when I was a boy.

She was nine when the Great Depression began and it lasted until she was a grown woman. The family had some hard times. My mother said one of her fondest memories of childhood was every Christmas Mr. Thomas would come to the house and give her a new pair of gloves.

Her dad pulled weeds for a dollar a day. The average America salary was $26 a week, he was making five or six. Her mother became a maid for the wealthier in West Chester and at some point teenage mom labored in the dark of a Mushroom plant, while dreaming of being a motion picture star.

She even entered a talent search for an unknown to play Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With the Wind”, but she didn’t win. Somebody named Vivian Leigh got the part. The movie premiered in 1938 and in that year a friend asked mom to go on a moonlight cruise with her, her boyfriend and a friend of his. That’s where she met her Rhett Butler back 74 years ago. He was this tall, wavy haired fellow known as Wild Bill.

He must have thought this little 5 foot one, 98-pound redhead was something, because he’d walk the 15 miles from Modena to Whitford to see her, sometimes sleeping on her porch before walking home again.

Just before they married in 1940 he lost his job and after the wedding they were so poor she went to her home to live and he to his. And so they lived separated the first month of their marriage and except for World War II that was the last time Milly and Willie weren’t together until she left him last Sunday night.

On Monday, when a nice lady from the Hospice went with my daughter and I to the hospital and told dad mom was gone, he quoted Scripture to us. There was once a day when no one would have believed that Wild Bill would ever quote Scripture. It was right after he said, “She was the love of my life and I will miss her.” It was part of a verse from Hebrews. He said, “Well, it says don't it, it’s appointed to every man to die? And now she’s better.”

My daughter, Laurel, and I brought her things home from Pembrooke (the nursing home) that same day, five cartons. Five Cartons was all that was left of what she gathered in her 92 years, mostly clothes, which we donated to Goodwill. All her worldly goods are gone. And it made me think of Matthew 6: 19-20, and made vivid the truth of that Scripture. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth… store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”

But she did have some valuable treasures here as well. She had a group of friends, who loved enough to care for her and dad these last years and see them thought when they couldn’t always do for themselves. Thank you and bless you all for loving my mother.

And she had a man who even after 72 years of marriage insisted on sitting by her side all her final days holding her hand.

I spent a few minutes alone with mom on the Wednesday afternoon after she passed. It was a sneak preview just for her son of the girl who once dreamed of being a movie star before her final last staring role on Friday. I told her not to worry; dad would be by her side soon.

And they can enjoy their Heavenly treasures together.

R.I.P. Mom.

Second Greatest Event

MERRY CHRISTMAS

I suggest you scroll down and turn off my music player before watching the video.

A Little Folding of the Hands...

There is hanging on the walls of our home office paintings of cats. The ones clearest in the photo are of Big Cats, not lions in this case, but a tiger and a leopard. We've had these canvases for years; for decades. They are reasonably large, I suppose, three foot by two foot. They are not particularly heavy for they aren't framed. Well, I guess that isn't quite true, there is a frame of light wood over which the canvas has been stretched and fastened. See, we often look at something and admire it and forget what it may hide underneath. We forget there is a not-so-lovely wooden frame behind the image.

There is also, hidden, rather thin nails that hold these pictures on the wall. I can't see the nails, but I know they are there because I am the one who hammered them into the wallboard sometime ago. They are there, but I ignore their presence, not certain whether they have become bent with age or if the hole they occupy has wore.  I have put out of mind that these pictures stand only as long as the pins that hold them remain straight and true.

The title of this post is taken from verse 33 of Proverbs 24.

Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep:

Yes, I know in context this line refers to laziness. But there are many reasons for a little folding of the hands.

To pray is one, for many of us were taught to fold our hands while speaking with God. It's a sign of honor.  Some even fold their hands to show respect and honor to others. There are a great number of people in Central Pennsylvania who could use some folding of hands in prayer at this time.

This is because of another purpose for a little folding of the hands, a representation of doing nothing when something should be done. There is probably a lot of folding of hands, or more precisely, a wringing of hands now by some or many who folded their hands and went to sleep over some recent years.

What happened at Penn State should be illuminating to us all. It should give us all pause.

Here we have a great institution sullied by one pin in its wall. A sin, any sin by any one, may have grave consequences for all. Eve took a bite of fruit and she shared it with her spouse and they tried to cover it up and look to where it led? A man became an icon and a VIP and he started a worthwhile charity (if perhaps not for so worthwhile motives) and he befriended people upon pedestals. But this man was a bent nail and when someone noticed the bend all the others folded their hands.

Now a legendary coach is dismissed and disgraced. A large university is rocked and socked and heads have rolled. The worthwhile charity is wavering, perhaps to fall as well, because of the bent nail at its foundation.

Do not think sin, big or small, of commission or omission does not have consequences in this world.

Proverbs 24 has other things to say. Verses 10 to 12:

If you falter in a time of trouble, 
how small is your strength! Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter.  If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,” 
does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? 
Does not he who guards your life know it? 
Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done?

Some men of stature saw a troubling thing and they did not take steps to rescue those being led away, those whose childhood and innocence was being slaughtered for the pleasures of a predator, much a wolf in sheep's clothing. Do you think they now see they are receiving their due according to what they have done?