Author Archives: Janell

Life’s A Dream

25 Tuesday Aug 2009

Posted by in Life at Home, Soul Care

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It helps to hold no expectations about Daddy.  Quite frankly, I wouldn’t know what to expect anyway.  And after our visit is over, I don’t really know how it went or how I feel about it.  Well, that’s not exactly true.  There is always an element of sadness.  But beyond sadness, what else can I say about these visits with Daddy?

Was today a good visit?  Did we find Daddy well?  I don’t know the answers to these questions.  Daddy was there.  We were there.  And more than last week, I think we actually connected a few times.   But the words ‘good’ and ‘well’ don’t quite fit in the same sentence with Daddy these days.   At least, not without some kind of qualifier, like that word… expected.

If soneome other than my husband were to ask after Daddy, I would say something like, “Daddy is doing as well as can be expected or that our visit was as good as could be expected.”  People would understand what this means, even though I don’t.  For what are expectations, anyway.  Yours, mine and even Daddy’s for crying out loud. Expectations are a moving target, expectations are as fuzzy as it gets.  So, if I’m trying to keep it real, to meet Daddy wherever Daddy is, it’s best for me not to lug around expecations.  When my husband asks me how Daddy was, I tell him the truth.  I don’t know.   And it’s so freeing to be able to speak these words of truth.

Today my brother Jon and I walked into Daddy’s dark nursing home room to find Daddy sound sleep. Jon reached down and gently touched Dad on the shoulder.   “Hi Dad.  We’re here.”  Just like I was looking down on a baby sleeping in a crib, I peeped over Jon’s shoulder to smile at Dad as he tried to wake himself up.  His eyes were huge–and though trite to say as big as saucers  — they were at least as big and round as quarters.  For a few seconds, maybe more, Dad wore a scary blank stare.  But once Dad found his bearings, Dad’s eyes softened in recognition.      

Daddy has always been a dreamer.  But these days, I wonder if no one were there to wake Daddy up, if Dad might sleep straight through to find himself at the Pearly Gates.  Even while we three watched one of Dad’s favorite old television reruns — an episode of Bonanza — Dad fought against sleep.  As Daddy yawned and yawned, Jon asked, “Daddy, are you sleepy?”  And Dad shook his head no.  Then I asked, “Daddy, are you have any good dreams these days?”  And again, Dad shook his head no. 

But I sense all of Dad’s life is a dream right now.  During our visits, Daddy holds a calendar in his lap, which has become his anchor to the world of time.  The calendar is the sort that comes free in the mail from local businesses at the end of the year.  Somewhere inside the front cover, it probably bears “Happy Holidays” greeting and some important telephone numbers customers like Dad should have handy.  Dad likes to flip these calendar pages back and forth –and today he flipped between the months of August and September — and though Daddy use to ask me when he could come home, Daddy doesn’t ask anymore, though for a while today, I thought he wanted to.   I fear my answer might be more reality that Daddy could bear.  And perhaps sensing this, Daddy clinged to his dreams rather than allow me to shatter them.   

Before we left, Jon helped Daddy get ready for bed while I got the bed ready for Daddy.  Then as Jon helped Daddy get in bed and tucked the covers in around him, I tuned the television in to Channel 74, which lucky for Dad, was in the midst of showing back-to-back reruns of M*A*S*H.  Putting the television remote near Dad’s hand and clipping his call button to his bed, Jon and I took turns kissing Daddy goodbye, and then whispering sweet nothings close to his ear.  

As I reflect back on our visit, I see that when we walked into Dad’s nursing home world, we walked into a world as far away from dreams as truth is from lie.  Because today my brother and I parented our parent.  And none of that seemed real.  To see Dad’s meeger life as it now is makes me think… This can’t be Daddy’s world.  Daddy deserves better than this.  But it is Daddy’s everyday world.  It’s Daddy’s world and someday it will be mine and someday it will be all of ours.  Maybe not the nursing home part if we’re lucky.  But the dying part, yes, that’s reality.  Dying is as real as it gets.  It would be closer to truth to say that it is life that is a dream, the way we live it by pretending death is not part of the equation.  Life is a dream and then we die. 

And then, what.  My faith steps in to say that then — in that world beyond death –there will be no more need for dreams.  For in that place beyond time and flimsy cheap calendars, it will be there that Daddy will receive the better that he deserves.  But until that day comes, may Daddy’s dreams be sweet. 

Dream away Daddy.  Dream while you still have breath in your body.  Dream of better places and being loved as you’ve never been loved in your life.  Dream of the love you deserve, dream for the love that waits.  Dream until there is no more need for dreams. 

Quite Contrary

22 Saturday Aug 2009

Posted by in In the Garden, Soul Care, The Great Outdoors

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“Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.”    Alfred Austin

My little garden grows not so well right now.  What I found charming just a few days back — a gorgeous English rose playing footsies with a beautiful mound of sage while fighting off the lecherous advances of the robust tomato plant weaving through its canes — was in reality garden disease 101 waiting to crawl off the pages of any gardening textbook. 

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BEFORE

I knew this, of course.  Last year’s gardening classes taught me that plants need some breathing room to thrive.  But it’s easy to have more plants than space on my small Mesta Park lot.  So forsaking the hard gardening facts of life  for the cottage garden look I adore only proves that — unlike Albert Einstein’s take on God — I do play dice with the world.   

But then God sent the rains.  And while ever so welcomed, the rain left behind damp rose leaves and the humid conditions that ignited my little garden laboratory into an outbreak of Diplocarpon rosae fungus.  And this morning’s routine stroll through the garden with water hose in hand revealed a sprinkling of yellow and black-spotted leaves on my Christopher Marlowe rose.      

Black Spot disease can kill roses without treatment.  And while the best prevention is buying disease resistant varieties, like the hardier antique roses and Knock-Out Roses that play monopoly all over my garden, nothing says ‘cottage garden’ quite like a lovely English Rose.  

Normally, I treat the diseased rose with a fungicide spray;  and Bayer Advanced Control Disease is a favorite of gardeners.  But since this product isn’t labeled for use around vegetables, I’m gambling that I can beat the disease without relying on chemo treatments by creating space and removing evidence of disease.  

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AFTER

First, to tame the shrew of a tomato plant, I removed all the heavy fruited branches growing around the rose bush.   Focusing next on the rose bush, I cut away both diseased canes and leaves.  Then, I cleaned all diseased leaves laying around the plant’s base.  And now Chris can breathe again.  And I’m hoping all that fresh air will restore the rose to health.  But if not, I’ll come back and give the rose a shot of Ortho’s Garden Disease Control, a fungicide labeled for tomatoes.  

So that’s the latest on my garden.  Now for the latest on the gardener.  That old coot — English Poet Laureate, Alfred Austin — is right about my life being as overcrowded as my garden.  Busyness has a way of sneeking upon me, and all my fine progress in quieting my life has been put into reverse over the summer.  The class I began, the curriculum I’m writing, my spiritual direction and master gardening commitments but most of all the bi-weekly visits with Daddy. 

So even before I knew what gifts today would bring, I longed for room to breathe.  And I found it by giving myself permission to not make the usual trip to visit Daddy, then choosing to not spend the gift of time on anything that remotely looked like work.  Quite contrary to my usual crowded Saturday, today was about the grace of space.  And now, both Chris and I are breathing a little easier .

Travel Light

20 Thursday Aug 2009

Posted by in Life at Home, Soul Care

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My husband is the consummate traveler through life.  He rents his books, buys only the clothing he needs, and rarely makes spur-of-the-moment purchases.  He’s no different when it comes to real traveling; he travels light, packing only the bare bone essentials into a carry-on bag if possible.  

Being his complete opposite, I live a more settled existence, surrounded by a lovely home chock-full of stuff, most of which needs to be washed or dusted.  It’s far too easy for me to accumlate stuff and one look into my library reveals my most glaring weakness for books.  And when it comes to closets, I figure I’m not the only gal in this world to have stored three sizes of clothes for almost ten years in the hope I might one day wear that smallest size again.  Moving to Oklahoma became my day of reckoning, as I came to terms with the likely reality that I will never again wear a size six;  and moving to a historic home with very small closets made those size sixes much easier to part with. 

But my nest is feathered light compared to my mother’s.  Mom always was a pack rat, though once she and Dad settled into retirement, Mom became even more earnest about the business of accumulation.  At the time of Mom’s death, she left the equivalent of two double car garages and one house stuffed to the gills.  And with Daddy’s failing health, I fear my sister and I will soon be forced to reckon with our scary inheritance.  

Sitting with my frail father has instructed me on the art of traveling light as Daddy inches closer to death.  These days, Daddy is not interested in the daily happenings of the world, as reported by the local newspapers.  Nor is Daddy imersed in life as depicted by his once favored television shows.  As Daddy skinnys down his life to the bare bones, Daddy has even discarded a few people that once held importance.  I happen to be one of them.  And while it hurts to unintentionally fall between the cracks of Daddy’s short attention span, I understand that in some godawfulway (yes, one word, said real fast), Daddy is not really Daddy anymore.

More often than not, Dad’s spirit travels as light as a feather to only God knows where.  Our visits of late remind me a lot of my final visits to my mother’s ICU bedside.  And though Dad is not in a coma, Dad is still unaccessible.  At best our visits are a  series of one-side conversations punctuated by golden silence.   Yet at times something mysterious will grab Dad’s attention and Daddy will point his finger to a spot somewhere over my shoulder.  I turn around to nothing, but sense that Daddy is seeing something that only Daddy can see.  Perhaps some spirit from the invisible world has come to help Daddy learn what it really means to travel light? 

Too soon.  Daddy will be traveling toward the light.