Category Archives: Life at Home

Sore Tributes

05 Tuesday Oct 2010

Posted by in Life at Home, Prayer, Soul Care, Writing

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My throat burns — my eyes water with unshed tears.  I’d  feel better if I let myself indulge in a good cry.  Or maybe an old-fashioned temper tantrum that would give any toddler a run for their money.

It began with Sunday afternoon’s phone call.  As usual, my husband answered, and yelled up the stairs:   “Christi’s on the phone.”  As I walked to the nightstand that holds the phone, I knew —  in a way I couldn’t really know  — that this would be no ordinary call — no ordinary how-are-you, let’s-catch-up chat.  I sensed the load of my sister’s bad news and with each step bringing me closer to true knowledge, I wondered:  Uncle Bob?  Or Aunt Jo?  Uncle Bob?  Or Aunt Jo? As my hand touched the receiver, the answer came:  It was Aunt Jo. Taking a deep breath, I cautiously answered my sister’s call, to hear Christi’s barely exhaled words.  In a voice scratchy with emotions spent and unspent, I heard,  “It’s Aunt Jo.”  All I could summon up was one word: “Damn.”

Sometimes I get angry with God about our apparent need to suffer and watch helplessly as loved ones slip through our fingers.  On Sunday evening, in spite of her brain bleed, Aunt Jo was mostly coherent and ever gracious.  She inquired about something she and I had talked about last Tuesday and in spite of a scary day spent in two ER’s, she talked about others who had made life meaningful:   Her Aunt Loudell, for one, who had taught her how to make cream pie filling — her worry about not being able to find that baby gifts she had put back for my daughter Kara — and her love of her daughter-in-law Judy, who meant more than words could express.

It was this latter point about Judy where she paused to ask for help.  In all of our long life shared together, I can’t recall my dear aunt ever asking me for help. But ask she did, by wondering if I would bring my son Kyle to visit her this week, because she really needed help gathering her thoughts to give Judy a written tribute.  “She means so much to me and our family,” she said.  “And I need help putting it all down in words.”

Assuring her that Kyle and I would come whenever she was ready to write, I left the hospital in peace.  I dropped my family a quick note expressing my relief that no surgery had been needed and that bleeding had apparently stopped.  But five hours later, peace shattered into pieces, as I rushed into the night to offer love and support where I could — to discover Aunt Jo now laboring toward death.  Thirteen hours later, it was over — as quick as it had begun — in the blink and fluttering of eyes.

Exhausted as I was, I was too agitated to sleep.   My mind bounced around, as I tried to focus on a television show, when the phone preempted everyday life again.  It was my sister, calling on behalf of Judy and the rest of Aunt’ Jo’s family — they wondered if I would help by writing Aunt Jo’s obituary?

Do I have to confess that I wanted to say no?  That I didn’t want this task, that I didn’t feel like I could.  But I agreed to give it my best.  And before going to bed, I expressed everything out and left it to simmer in the computer over night.   And this morning, after making a few edits — then a few more with the help of Jane, my sole maternal aunt — I released it to Judy.

Life holds many lessons.  Even in horrible situations, good shines through.  Maybe it would be more accurate to say God shines through, and  that love saturates our actions to carry the day.  I now understand so much more how Aunt Jo felt Sunday night when she asked for Kyle’s help, because the magnitude of love cannot be spelled on paper.  It’s too much.  I’m reduced with a wish to write gibberish:  No more Aunt Jo.  No more Porcupine Balls.  Or Snowballs.  Or perfect Pecan Pie.  No more of this staple in my life being on the other end of the phone to answer my latest call for help.

This writing down of tributes is work better left to poets and saints.  It is above and beyond me.  My spirit is sore —  my words weighted with sadness, with no hope to soar.  But this morning I let them go anyway.  May God bless my widow’s mite of words.

 

Riches and Beauty

29 Wednesday Sep 2010

Posted by in In the Garden, Life at Home, The Great Outdoors

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That gnarly old Magnolia outside my bedroom window is looking good — for the first time in years.

And I am amazed this should be so, given the trials the tree has endured.  First there was the long drought of 2006 with triple digit temperatures — then the one-two punch it suffered in 2007 — a crippling ice storm preceded by a sewer line replacement that sliced and diced deep roots on its western boundary.  And as if these indignities weren’t enough, I delivered what I later feared to be its down-for-the-count  knock-out when, in 2008, I severed two sides of feeder roots with my new flagstone path.

But today, under a gorgeous blue autumn sky, the Magnolia’s large waxy leaves cup sunshine while its coral seed pods look like Christmas lights shimmering across a full canopy. In a polar-opposite way, my window view reminds me of other trees I saw today, getting spruced up for the holidays.   Uptown on Western Avenue, patient, capable hands of a local landscape crew were busy stringing twinkling lights on a large number of tall trees bordering a large corporate campus.  From tree trunk to limb to branch, the crews worked its way up to the big blue sky, covering each tree in tight ringlets of all shades of light.

Mother had a favorite saying about the life of “the rich,” and if any trees in our neck of the woods are “rich,” it’s these that live on the well-groomed grounds of Chesapeake Energy.  Mom always spoke these words in response to my own observation of how beautiful some rich or famous person was — like Jackie O for instance — that I’d run across in the pages of a glossy magazine.

I’d say my “how pretty” bit.  Then, Mom would look up from her sewing to peek at whoever had garnished my compliment — and without fail —  she’d hmmph her way to a comeback:  “It’s easy to look good when you’re rich.  I’d look good too with her money.”

I never paid these particular words of Mom much mind.  And today was no different — when I sat down to write for the first time in two weeks, Mother’s oft spoken words on the “rich and the beautiful” were the furthest thing from my mind.  But rising out of the big blue yonder, they came home to roost in my Magnolia tree, with a will and life of their own.

As I sat contrasting the natural beauty of my poor Job tree against the gussied up beauty of the well-heeled trees of my rich neighbor, all I could think of was Mother’s same old words.

Overcoming Hurdles

15 Wednesday Sep 2010

Posted by in Life at Home, Soul Care, Writing

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My friend Anne doesn’t ‘do’ computers. But no hurdle is high enough to stand in Anne’s way;  the one she cleared Sunday evening  — of tracking down her long lost friend ‘me’ —  took over three months and help from her husband and oldest daughter.

It had been twenty-four years since Anne and I had talked.  And before that, ten.  Two conversations in the space of thirty-four years is scary witness of the fragility of personal relationships.  Once a close friend,  Ann served as one of my three bridesmaids; she was a staple of high school years, though seeds of friendship were first sown in the sixth grade Camp Fire group which my mother led.   I had forgotten this last connection until Anne reminded me of it Sunday night.  But, of course, the intervening years and physical distance lulled me into forgetting something more important.

While I was forgetting, Anne has been in the business of making connections.   That’s how Anne approaches each day — she wakes up and says out loud to God, “Okay God, what are we going to do together today?” I’m not kidding.  And I don’t think Anne is either.  Because Anne lives her life doing one good deed after another.

Anne littered our two-hour conversation with evidence, though not to make a case.  She talked in the matter-of-fact way of catching me up on the last 34 years of her life.    Until recently, Anne devoted  herself to the care of an elderly woman.   They had no ties to one another, but a tie was built, as the eighty-year old grew to depend upon Anne’s time.

As I write, Ann has a young mother and an infant living with her — Anne offers free care to the infant so that the young mother can work.  And there have been eleven other  people before this, people who needed a helping hand and a place to call home.

A few weeks ago Anne ran into a woman in K-Mart, while picking up some little item.  She noticed a customer with a shopping cart full of  household goods.  The cart proved catalyst for good conversation — one sentence led to another before the woman told Anne she was new in town, that she was buying the household items due to her recent move.   A veteran of twelve moves herself, Anne convinced her fellow K-Mart shopper to empty her cart of those items which Anne had at home — then the woman allowed her daughter go with Anne (the stranger) to Anne’s house, so that the woman’s daughter could bring back Anne’s offering.

Anne makes light of the way she lives.  But after our conversation, I began to wonder:  What would the world come to if we had more Anne’s — if we had more strangers — or even close friends and family — like Anne?  It was news of Daddy’s death which caused Anne to overcome the hurdle Sunday night.  She tracked me down because she had read of Daddy’s death and wanted to let me know how very sorry she was.  When she heard the news about Mother, she let me know how she had loved spending time at my house growing up, how Mom and our house had been her refuge.

All that to say this:  We can never know how our lives will impact another — for good or ill.  Nor do we realize the incredible power we hold to do good for each other.  And even when aware of the simple good we do —  like making others feel welcome in our home as Mother did — even then, we can’t  fully appreciate the good that will someday grow from our own.

Good ripples through life, without boundaries.  Good overcomes hurdles.  Good even sneaks up to catch us unaware — only after we broke our connection Sunday evening did I realize… that I had been Anne’s good deed for the day.