all of the selves we Have ever been
I was his emergency contact. I just didn’t know it. I learned of my assignment one sweltering summer morning when the local dialysis center called to say that Julius had not shown for his treatment that day. Julius had missed an appointment earlier in the week as well. Still holding the phone, my mind went into overdrive. It was not like Julius to skip dialysis even once in a week much less twice. Painful as it was, dialysis was his life and his lifeline. This was not good news. I grabbed my purse and headed to the car. During the short drive to his home, I tried to prepare myself for what I might find. The back door was unlocked. I called his name as I opened the door. No response. An offensive odor and a swarm of flies greeted me instead. The house was burning hot, like a glowing kettle that had simmered for days over an open fire. I stepped carefully over the plastic shopping bags dropped in a trail around the door, the contents scattered here and there. I walked past the bathroom where I could see the toilet was backed up and the flies were buzzing. I called his name again, “Julius?” No response. As I proceeded toward the living room, I could see Julius in profile. He was seated on the couch. The television was on. Julius did not react to my approach. As I stepped around the couch and came face-to-face with my friend, I could see that Julius had died, probably several days earlier. Though I had anticipated what I might find, the preparation did not prevent my heart from breaking. I called 9-1-1. The dispatcher told me, “Get out of the house.” I sat on the front porch steps with my head in my lap and waited. The police arrived, and we entered the house together. With Julius’s medical history and no signs of other trouble, the police called the coroner, and then we waited for the funeral home staff to arrive. This was not a typical call for the young men from the funeral home. They came dressed respectfully in dark suits, crisp white shirts, and ties. Once they entered the burning hot house, sweat poured from their faces and necks. The condition of the body was unusual for them, and they were concerned about moving Julius’s fragile corpse. They asked me to leave the room and turn down the heat, if it was on. I waited on the back porch and said a prayer. As Julius passed, I lay my hand on the black body bag—farewell from an emergency contact and friend. The situation was both surreal and painfully real. There was much to be done, and while I was honored to be the emergency contact, I was not next of kin. I had no legal authority to make decisions. Julius had a nineteen year old son in flight school somewhere down south. I would need to reach Christopher and tell him that his father was dead, the most difficult of assignments. I loved Christopher. Had Julius anticipated this moment when he chose me for his emergency contact? The situation was overwhelming given the shock, heat and work to be done, but I wanted to clean up the house to honor Julius and for the sake of his young son who would soon arrive filled with grief. Thankfully, a friend came to the rescue. He unclogged the toilet and helped me to roll up the carpet that had been underneath the place where Julius died. I contacted a restoration company and got a machine to eliminate the terrible odors that filled the house. Then I rolled up my sleeves and got to work trying to put the house in order, scrubbing away my sorrow. The smells from the home, the smell of death filled my nose and saturated my clothing. I could not get away from it, but the scent kept Julius on my mind and close to my heart. As I worked, I reminisced. There was a final gift from Julius. We were with him on his last good day. We just didn’t know it. Had we known it would be the last good day, the knowledge might have destroyed the exquisite beauty of our final time together. It began as a simple day, ordinary on the surface, and yet it was filled with an extraordinary sense of peace and contentment. My children and I packed up some lunches, picked up Julius, and took him to a medical appointment in Cleveland, about an hour from our homes. Julius needed to meet with his transplant team, and he was becoming too easily fatigued to make the trip alone. Surrounded by this sweet man, and my sweet children, we talked and laughed. The children and I waited in the assigned area for Julius to finish with his medical appointments and tests and then we went to our van where we broke out a picnic lunch. Julius insisted we stop at a local country shop that sold delicious ice cream. His treat. Julius sat in a rocking chair on the covered porch while the children played on the edge of the pond and fed the ducks. Like hummingbirds, we poked among the blossoms, drinking the nectar of that beautiful day. Julius asked for a second ice cream cone, and we lingered there, happy and content. I had known Julius for a long time. His life had never been easy, and yet he was always kind, considerate, concerned, and cheerful. His own problems were never at the forefront. He always wanted to know about me and the children. This year, as we enter the season of harvest and thanksgiving hounded by a relentless virus, I am reminded of my friend Julius and all those who live with the specter of death. Julius made his peace with that terrible roommate. He did not let that specter rob him of joy. Julius did not let that threatening presence steal his spirit while he was still busy living. After Julius died, as I was helping to write his obituary, I was reminded of the words of G. K. Chesterton: “Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances we know to be desperate.” That was so Julius. None of us know what the day will bring or when it will be the last good day. While we live in a time of chronic threat, I want to be more like Julius—to make peace with that ugly, microscopic roommate and hold onto my spirit. Julius had a beautiful voice, and he loved to sing. There was always a song in his heart. Though he did not write the lyrics, I am sure he would agree with these words from the divinely inspired hymnbook: “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad.”
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I knew an older gentleman who spent the last months of his life adrift on a sea of tears. An early life of tragedy became an undertow pulling him out into deep water. Was it depression? Perhaps, but such a diagnosis seemed inadequate. It felt disrespectful to dismiss this kind and remarkable man with a simplistic explanation and a couple of pills. Something was emerging from deep within his soul. Something he could no longer hold back. His biological clock knew time was running out. A more accurate description of the man’s status might have been an acute state of poignancy, a condition common among the old, but one that is kept a hidden, dark secret. It is an inconvenient truth to acknowledge because treatment requires time, patience, and a willingness to share the pain. We grow more eyes as we get older. Those eyes have seen many things. They become more insightful with each passing year. Looking back reveals new truths. Poignancy reflects the extraordinary capacity we gain with age, a blossoming spiritual dimension that readies us for life on the other side. It is further evidence that we are made in the image of God. It is as if we hear the words, “Let there be light.” A big-picture view of our lives is illuminated. We can look back on our childhoods and remember ourselves through our child’s eyes. But more piercingly, we also see our innocent child-selves from the point of view of a loving parent, a grandparent, or one of the many other adult roles we have occupied. And so, we experience deep new feelings for that child we once were. We have greater compassion for a youth who may have been abandoned, lost, foolish, reckless, or misunderstood. We see and understand things about ourselves and our lives that we could not have known back then...And it moves us deeply. I think of men and women I’ve met who grieved for their child-selves orphaned by the Great Depression, or the teen-selves who enlisted at the age of fifteen unprepared for the horrors of war, or the Holocaust survivor-selves who faced the reality of stepping left and living while a mother and sister stepped right and perished. There is also the reckoning of the other more common twists and turns of life. It is now vivid that day when one drink became one too many. It is clear the morning when the missed assignments added up to failure, when the bills not paid became overdue. And there are the questions and hurts—why didn’t someone help me with my homework? Why didn’t anyone understand that my difficult behavior was grief over the death of parent? Why didn’t someone try to stop me? Why didn’t someone love me? Why didn’t I Iisten? Why? Why? Why? And the eyes of our eyes become like members of a grand jury with many backgrounds and points of view. The many eyes examine the evidence trying to reach a unanimous conclusion. But there are dissenters, eyes that see things differently. Every dissent means a new and painful re-trial. We argue with ourselves. The future is so short now. Not much left to see. But the past…the past is so long, so full, so much evidence to review as our own lives go on trial. We question the accomplices and the witnesses, the bystanders who did nothing. Sometimes there is growing compassion for the accused. Sometimes deepening disdain. It is dress rehearsal for the cross-examination we anticipate when we arrive at the gates of Heaven. Poignancy is part unresolved tragedy and part new-found tenderness for the child and young adult we once were. Poignancy sometimes contains regret that we weren’t wiser while there was still time to change. And poignancy is facing a helplessness we once endured in circumstances we could not influence. It is realizing we did what had to be done when there was no time for examination, no other options. Poignant memories can include gratitude for the things that could have gone wrong but didn’t, for the hands that did reach out, for the voices that did speak, encourage, redirect, for the eyes that acknowledged our lives, our suffering, and our accomplishments. Poignancy is also part nostalgia for the sweetness of life. Sometimes a memory is so sweet that it hurts. Poignancy is part sadness for the passing of life. So many good years. So many happy memories. A lot to lose. Our loved ones will go forward into a future we will not share… Poignancy is not a word that lends itself to acronyms and the shorthand of text messaging. It is not a word to be spoken in haste or understood in casual conversation. It does not reveal itself along with heart rate and blood pressure during a fifteen minute office visit. Poignancy is not a word for the young. Its meaning evolves with time. It requires experience informed by living long, suffering, and enduring. It is a courageous word. Sometimes people pass through Hell on their way to Heaven. Maybe that is how God knows the weary from the wicked, and the self-examined from the self-absorbed. I hope there is a special entrance for all of the humble, good people who drift to heaven on a sea of tears. My father’s pack was already heavy that day that he enlisted in the United States Army. He just didn’t know it yet. At 16, filled with youthful energy and resolve, dad thought he had found a solution to life’s problems. His father died when dad was 14. The death was sudden and unexpected—a bad case of pneumonia before the advent of antibiotics. It did not take long for the pneumonia to overtake my grandfather. In a couple of days, he went from being a healthy, active dad of two boys to only a memory. The older of the two boys and now responsible for the care of his disabled mother and little brother, dad made a pact with his brother Bob. As soon as he could, dad would enlist in the military and provide financially for their needs. Bob would remain at home and care for their mother. Already in that invisible pack the day dad enlisted: being born at the start of the Great Depression to two physically disabled parents; living on the edge of poverty throughout his youth; a great war that terrified the world and made the future uncertain; the death of a father and no time to mourn; worry and care for a younger sibling and a grieving mother. Added to that pack through years of military service first in the Army and then the Air Force: adjustment to military life, a pack or two of cigarettes each day; a hasty and short marriage that ended in annulment; deployments; marriage and four children; moving every couple of years; job stress; deaths of family members. It seemed the pack was bottomless. After 17 years of active duty, my father separated from the military. Later, my parents divorced, and my father moved away. More weight for the pack. Further down the road, he developed pancreatic cancer. Dad faced it like a soldier-airman, and through a miracle that awed his doctors, dad lived five more years. The illness and treatment took a toll, but dad had some quality of life. Disappointed that he no longer had the stamina to work, dad became a hospice volunteer. My talented and artistic sister-in-law made dad some calling cards that said, “Believe in Miracles.” Dad was a hit in his hospice circle. When our father’s cancer returned, his attempts at treatment were halfhearted. My brother, HB, became desperate to keep our father alive. HB had a menu of health drinks that he concocted daily for Dad. During a visit to his home, I noticed that Dad left the health potions untouched on the end table while he stared blankly at the TV. One day, alone with my father, I pointed out the warm health drink that now looked thick, flat and disgusting. “Dad, you don’t want to do this, do you?” My father began to cry. He had nothing left, he said. The first round of cancer had been so difficult that it took everything he had to survive. “We must tell the others,” I said. True to his roots as a soldier and an airman, my father expressed a feeling of shame about giving up. He did not want any of us to be disappointed in him. He did not want to let us down. I assured him that we all understood. We had all been with dad through that first horrifying round of surgeries, complications, and treatments. We had all survived dad’s blackout and car crash that sent us searching for him in the night when his blood sugar tanked as he tried to adjust to his post-surgical insulin-dependence. As the disease progressed, I often spoke to my father by phone—he from his home in California, me from my home in Ohio. I always knew it was dad calling because I heard gut-wrenching sobs coming from the other end of the line when I answered the phone. I waited patiently until my father reached the point where he had exhausted himself and could cry no more. I then offered what comfort I could. One day the phone rang. Again, there was sobbing on the other end of the line. When the sobbing ceased, and it was quiet, I spoke, “Dad, I know that you are sick and sad and scared, but somehow I know there is something more that you are not saying.” More tears. “For fifty hears something has been bugging me. Until now, I never knew what it was.” The thing that had been bugging my father for most of his life was the death of his own father. Years of unexpressed grief were now overtaking my dad. “Because of it, I was not the man I could have been. I was not the father I wanted to be. I did not have the life I dreamed of.” Dad’s last piece of fatherly advice: “Don’t let sorrow ruin your life.” In that moment on the phone, Dad’s invisible pack burst open. There was no holding it back. The pack had grown so enormous and so heavy that the real man had been hidden from view. It had gotten in the way of fully living his life. My father was like Sisyphus rolling a giant boulder up the mountain. Every day was consumed by the effort of shouldering his invisible pack. And now he had insight but no time left for a do-over. Mercifully, there was enough time for frank conversations and forgiveness. Dad grew up in a time when people did not talk openly about their sorrows. Adults did not even believe that children were affected by events like the death of a parent. My father reached manhood amongst the brave but silent World War II veterans who provided an example of how to be a soldier and a man. We all come into this world with an invisible pack. Some of us are fortunate to reach adulthood with little weight added. Others, like my dad, carry overwhelming burdens before they reach high school. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “Sorrow makes us all children again…” For my father, the overwhelming sorrow of childhood robbed him of a successful adulthood. Though handsome in his uniform, It was all dress-up and make believe. Dad’s pack was heavy. It weighed on all of us. We just didn’t know it. The commercial airlines have it right. Keep your baggage light or it may cost you more than you want to pay. War is hell. And so can be the long aftermath. Several years ago I was asked to comfort a dying World War II veteran. I sat at the bedside as the veteran told me of his youth that was marked by the Great Depression and then the war. All the young men in this veteran’s small town enlisted. It was the right thing to do. The veteran was deployed to the South Pacific to fight the Japanese. He and his comrades were warned not to engage the enemy in hand-to-hand combat given the enemy’s exceptional skill. “Shoot, and shoot to kill,” was the order. While the young solder lay sprawled in the dense jungle foliage, the enemy came at him like waves on the ocean shore. "There were so many. They just kept coming. Wave after wave." The young soldier was terrified. And he shot. And he shot. And he killed. And he killed. And he survived the war. Returning home, he and the others gathered nightly in the local saloon dousing their flaming memories with alcohol. After a time, this returning soldier realized the road to the bar was neither a path from the past nor one to the future. He began keeping company with a local preacher. The Great Depression and the war had taken a toll on his family. While he desperately wanted to go to college, the family needed his income, and so he worked. A wise mentor told him that the education he sought could be obtained for free at the local library, and so he took refuge in books and ideas. Through church, the library, and hard work, the veteran built a good, successful life and a happy family. He could speak of those things with joy and with satisfaction, but now, as his life was drawing to a close, he wept, not for the impending loss of his own life, but for all of the lives he had taken when he was a terrified teenage boy in the jungles of the South Pacific. The question he had kept at bay for so many years now taunted him—“How will I answer to God for what I have done?” As he lay on his bed with tears running down his neck, I could see that he was every bit as terrified as the teenager he had been when facing an ocean of enemy soldiers. Trite accolades about doing his duty and being a war hero would be not only inadequate, but for him, an outright lie. Sharing a common faith tradition with this man, I searched my mind for all I could remember about God and the afterlife. My thoughts lacked the certainty that this veteran urgently needed. “We cannot know,” I began hesitantly, “but, perhaps, this is a time for faith and not fear,” I said. “The same God that was with you in the jungle is with you now. The same God who directed your steps from the bar to the library is with you now. The same God who heard your pleas in the jungle hears you now, and I believe He feels your sorrow and accepts your apology—both the one spoken and the one that was your lived life. I have faith that He forgives that terrified teenage boy in the jungle.” I reflected on what other survivors of World War II had told me, other veterans, Holocaust survivors, civilians. “Don’t talk about it and get on with your life”—that was believed to be the best medicine at the time. And so they did not speak, and they tried to move on. Perhaps the old folks had a point in saying, “Get on with your life.” Maybe we all answer to God long before we reach the pearly gates by the way we have lived our lives. I have a sign on the wall across from my bed now. It says, “Arise, and do not be afraid.” It is from Matthew 17:7. I assume that the “Live and get on with it,” is implied. I have learned from these veterans and from my own life that when we suffer, the only way through is to arise and live. Live in moments. Live in inches. Do the best we can, but keep at it, and if there is someone willing to walk with you and hold your hand, grab on. A beautiful, very wise, young Air Force chaplain once asked a crowd of mourners, “Is it the answers we seek, or the Answerer?” I felt relieved and comforted by his words. It was no longer on me to have all of the answers. It is the human condition to wonder and to ponder, to ask “Why?” and to worry. We do not have all of the answers. Trying to eat the fruit of that knowledge got Adam and Eve in a whole lot of trouble. We must live and find something to believe in so that we can arise, and not be afraid. |
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April 2024
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