When All Else Fails, Do the Dishes

We watched the Seahawks game against the Packers. Before it started I said to my son that I hoped it was a good game. At the end of the fourth quarter with the score tied, my son turned to me and asked, “Is this tense enough for you?” Whew. Yeah, it was. Football, I’ve been told, is but one of the games that simulate war. Strategy, land won and lost, physical violence, injuries. I found myself thinking that it’s too bad that football isn’t as violent as we get. How’s that for a vain surmise? Sometimes I am rocked out of my preferred personal contemplative state. Some days I look at what seems to be the infinite capacity of human beings for cruelty and violence, and I wonder how we made it this far without making ourselves extinct. I have written essays in the past when I tried to bring readers to the point of realizing that we are all in this together. I’m not even going to try to go there today. We are divided so many ways, one from each other, I won’t try to sell that “C’mon, people, love one another,”* philosophy. It ain’t that simple. The election of a black president in 2008 seemed to herald a new paradigm of equality at the highest level of political power. Yes, that, and a new wave of outspoken racism, hatred, and incredible lies in this country. Racism had been somewhat covert for a few decades, but it’s been right back out in the open since 2008. Racism is a twisted complexity of unreason that allows people to feel superior by dehumanizing other people. It allows the subjugation, torture, and killing of other human beings because they are seen as less than human. It’s part of our cultural psychosis, racism. The institution of racism goes back to slavery in this country. You cannot buy and sell human beings without telling yourself they aren’t really human beings. There would have not been a United States if there had not been a political compromise to accept slavery in the southern states. This is the great divide that has run through our country since before it was formed. The Civil War was fought to keep the divide from causing a complete breakup of the country, but the Civil War was not the beginning, and it was not the end. We are still divided. We are still, we are ever, at war with each other, and there can be no meeting of minds. I believe deep in my heart that all people are equally loved children of God. Then I am left wondering how God could love racists. This is one of those tough Christian precepts that it’s hard to live up to, that each person, each creature, is loved alike, is of the same worth. Okay, God, they are your children, but why do you need them to be the way they are? So am I falling right in there and seeing racists as less than human? Dammit. I’m thinking too much again. I’m sure there are people out there with a scientific understanding of human behavior who could tell us why some people ardently want and wish and work for peace and equality and justice, while some people as ardently want and wish and work for hatred, separation, prejudice, war, and sorrow. It has to do with power, and money, usually, but it must be some profound difference of temperament and understanding, don’t you think? I don’t get it. Sometimes the evil I see gets me down, especially when it’s people I care about who are spouting lies and espousing hatred. So when I’ve thought myself into one of these holes, I’ll finally get up and go do the dishes. There is not much I can do about racism, war, and lies, but I can do the dishes. Each morning I thank God for my life and my many blessings. I try to be kind, and often fail. I wonder sometimes if there is a reason I am still here, and if there is, how will I live up to it? I need to take a lot of naps, you know, and I’m not brave. Guess I’ll go do the dishes. *A tip o’ the hat to Chet Powers, who wrote “Let’s Get Together”

A Rose, Some Regrets, and the Answer to Everything

The anniversary of Rick’s passing on December 29th was hard, but not as hard as I feared. What was hard was the virus that mowed me down on Christmas Eve. Ough. On the day of the anniversary I looked out in the yard and saw what appeared to be a rose on one of my rose bushes. I walked out to check it out, and sure enough, it was a rather puny and beat up yellow rose. This late bloomer was pure yellow, and yellow roses were Rick’s favorites. That little rose made me feel like Rick is still thinking of me, and he had sent that rose to me.

To you skeptics and pragmatists who are saying, “Oh for gosh sakes, the rose happened to bloom late and it happened to be yellow,” I say: you are no fun. Like billions of people before me, I ponder what happens and where we go after we die. Books have been written detailing the experiences of people who died and came back to life. Rick’s grandmother in Ohio once was dying and would have been happy to go, but she recovered. Afterward she said an angel came and told her, “Florence, it’s not your time, and you have to go back.” Which she did, albeit reluctantly. That is not that unusual a story. John Edward had a television show in which he talked to dead people. At the end of every show he said, love people while you still have them to love. That’s excellent advice. A lot of my grief has been wishing I could change the unchangeable. I wish I’d called in medical caregivers at home months before Rick died instead of thinking I could do everything myself. I wish I’d hugged Rick more, although we hugged a lot. Sometimes I close my eyes and remember the feel of hugging him, the contours and warmth of his body, the feel of his shirt collar against my cheek, the feel of his arms around me and my arms around him. I am grateful for those memories, and that I can conjure them up so vividly. I wish I’d tried harder to get him to stop smoking. I did nag him at first, but decided after a few years that he was never going to quit, and I was only lousing up our relationship by nagging him. “It’s the only vice I have left,” he said, “and I enjoy it.” I’m glad you enjoyed smoking, Rick. Too bad about it KILLING you. Life is moving on now and I’m moving with it. For the first time since I was young, I have choices about where I go and what I do. Unlike when I was young, I now live with the results of the choices I made over time: My adult children, my granddaughter, my house, and the family mythology created in a lifetime of telling and re-telling stories. Like this one, one of my favorite Rick stories: Rick was a straight arrow, drug-free American citizen until he joined the Navy and went to Vietnam. That’s where he learned to smoke marijuana. After he left the Navy he lived for a time in Marin, and there he was introduced to LSD. LSD, this is Rick. Rick, meet LSD. They hit it off. One night he decided to take LSD and then go to sleep to see what happened. What happened was that he woke up in the middle of the night on fire with inspiration. Suddenly he understood everything! Incredible! He had the answer to everything! He was so excited and happy. Quickly he wrote down what he had realized, and lay down to sleep content that the Answer would be waiting for him in the morning. When he awoke, he remembered the lightning strike of enlightenment that had come to him in his sleep, and he ran to the paper where he’d written down the wisdom of the ages. What he found written on the paper was one sentence: “There’s a funny smell in this room.” Yeah, always loved that story. By the time we met in 1972, LSD was not a part of our lives. It was a character in stories we told about our experiences in the 1960s, which already seemed long ago and far away. I don’t know what happens when we die. I can’t say. But between the yellow rose and all the pennies I’ve been finding lately, I feel like Rick is trying to get my attention. Maybe he has something to tell me. I hope it isn’t that there’s a funny smell in the room. That’s the dog, and he doesn’t need to speak from the other side for me to know that. I’ll try to be still and pay attention and see what develops. Stay tuned.

Felines and Hard Times

It has been a hard year for some of us, and some people find December to be a hard time of the year. But suddenly I find myself rebelling against gloom. I want to feel better. Sometimes even the depressed and sad get fed up and want to toss their heavy moods and laugh a little, or do something a little mad that feels good. Which is why I have a new cat. His name is Mellow. I’ve been singing, “They call him Mellow fellow…” all week. He is a debonair tuxedo cat, black with a white vest, white front paws and white socks on his rear legs. He is extremely affectionate. He likes to get in your face and have you massage his ears while he rumbles a low blissed out purr and drools. Oh my goodness, does this cat drool. He doesn’t care how much he drools or where he drools, so I am starting to carry towels around the house. Sometimes I forget the towel, but I can always change my shirt. If this is the only problem I have with the cat, I’m in good shape. When my granddaughter was a baby she joyfully pounded on my iBook keyboard one day and after that iTunes was gone. Mellow hasn’t done anything like that. Yet. My dog, Marley, has other issues with the cat. She wants more than anything to give his butt a good, deep, thorough sniffing. Mellow will tolerate that up to a point, but if Marley gets too carried away with this joyful behavior, Mellow will give her a swat on the snout. I figure he’s training her, and if we’re all going to live together, we all have to train each other to an extent. Marley also has a little trouble with Mellow’s affectionate nature. She’s a little jealous, and squeezes up next to me when Mellow sits in my lap. I don’t mind. I got the cat because I’m lonesome and I’m as much or more of a hog for the animals’ attention as they are for mine. The dog is getting more exercise than before because she often runs around the house looking for the cat. The cat walks through the house with all the haughtiness of a king strolling around his domain. He doesn’t run away from the dog. He stands and glares at her, and offers a hiss and another swat if he feels it is merited. This is the sort of cat that does well in a dog household. As you can see, having the cat has taken my mind off my troubles. He makes me laugh. So, living with a cat and a dog again. I’ve always believed that one of each was about right for me. They don’t leave me so much time to ponder and feel sorry for myself. Sometimes it is good to take a break from thinking about life, and simply live it. Dogs and cats have the gift of pulling you right into living life. Many people had a hard year in 2014. All of us are grief-stricken sometimes in life, and I hope that sharing my grief journey this year has perhaps made you feel a little less alone in your journey. Thanks for reading, anyway. I wish you all light in this dark season. May you feel the love of your family and friends through these days, and all days. May you feel the joy of the return of the light. May we all be thankful for the people we have loved and who have loved us. We didn’t have them long enough, no matter how long they were here, but at least they were here for a while and we can be grateful for them. In closing, a prayer from the Book of Common Prayer: “In the Evening “O Lord, support us all the day long, until the shadows lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in thy mercy, grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last. Amen.” See you next year. Blessings, love, hugs, peace, & grace to all.

First Thanksgiving Alone

As my younger son and I were setting off for the family Thanksgiving dinner to which we had been invited, I received a text from a friend wishing me a good day. “I know it’s hard,” she said, and she does know – she lost her spouse about a year before Rick died. To be honest, I have been dreading the arrival of the holidays. I like the Christian spirituality of the coming of the light, and I have no problem with people who are non-Christian. It doesn’t bother me if people wish me happy holidays or anything else. I figure Christianity has enough of a PR problem without me being rude. I have had a problem for most of my adult life with the cultural and commercial demands and expectations of the holiday season. I’ve never felt like I could live up to the demands of a busy and expensive time of the year. I have other reasons for getting uptight around the holidays. You see, in my life some rather awful physical calamities have taken place at Christmas, starting with my father’s first serious heart attack on Christmas Eve, 1974. This was at a time when bypass surgery was beginning to be done, but not yet in our little town. My father was in the hospital for a couple of weeks and then came home, where he picked up the pieces of his retired life. He got a jade heart on a gold chain for my mother’s birthday in February. This was a gift of uncharacteristic tenderness for him. He had his last heart attack in his sleep at four in the morning on the 13th of March, after spending the day before pruning my aunt and uncle’s fruit trees. Move ahead twenty-two years. In 1997 Rick went into the hospital in renal failure on Christmas Eve, after refusing to go to a doctor for weeks. He was stubborn that way. I spent that Christmas wondering if I was going to become the widow Tuel. Kidney failure can take you out more quickly than cancer, I learned. It turned out that Rick had prostate cancer, which had blocked off his kidneys. The docs removed the blockage, and Rick’s kidneys recovered their function, and then a few weeks later the docs removed his prostate, and told him, “You are now cancer free. Have a nice life.” Three years later in 2000 my mother had her first heart attack on the 22nd of December. Some neighbors checked on her the next morning, found her in rough shape, and called 911. Then they found my number and called me, and I got on an airplane and flew down to California. I spent that Christmas going back and forth between my mother’s house and the intensive care unit at Dominican Hospital, where she was in a drug-induced coma. She recovered a bit but not much, and died on the following March 31st at my brother’s house in New Mexico. Some of you are now thinking that December may be hard, but it’s March I should watch out for. I hear you. I’ve thought that myself. Last year when Rick and I were having one of the extremely honest discussions we had in those last months, I recounted all the things that had happened at Christmas and said to him, “Please don’t die at Christmas!” He didn’t. He died on the 29th of December. And now here comes Christmas again. I appreciated my friend texting good wishes to me for Thanksgiving, but it caused me to pause and remember that Rick hated Thanksgiving. He said his mother would always do the full Midwest Thanksgiving dinner, which required days of hard work in preparation. Each day she became a little more crazy and frantic. By the time the turkey was on the table, she was heck to be around. Once Rick had told me that, I tried to simplify and de-stress the meal and day as much as I could, but even so, he tended to hide out all day until the meal was served. He’d come and eat, and then disappear again. So I can honestly say I didn’t miss him that much at Thanksgiving. It is now the season of Advent in the church, a time of contemplation and expectancy. I am waiting – expectantly - for the first anniversary of Rick’s passing. It will be the last of the first times of without Rick. I miss him so much. I think of him every day, and whenever I find a penny, or any coin, I feel like he is saying hello to me. Sometimes he sends a quarter. I figure he knows I am always pinched for money. He was always kind and generous that way, the hard working rascal.

Thanksgiving, 2011. Left to right, Drew, Allysan, JD, and Rick

Water Walking into the Darkness

Well, my SAD friends, it is that time of the year, when the sun goes down early and comes up late, and there are fewer minutes of daylight every day. For people who have SAD, it is the least favorite time of the year. SAD is the acronym for Seasonal Affective Disorder. People who have SAD tend to become sad when the long nights and short days move in. It stinks. Of course I am still processing personal grief along with the seasonal changes. Last winter when I entered a hermit-like state and didn’t leave the house much for four and a half months, I asked myself, is this grief, or is it plain old depression? I decided it was probably a little of each, and I also decided that it didn’t matter. The important thing at that point was to sit home by myself in an emotional fog and not have to go out to face the world. Yeah. Looking back now I think that was mostly grief. For years I noticed that October was a time when depression would overtake me. My life could be fine, with nothing to gripe about, but the darkness would descend and I’d be motionless and sad, lacking the will to do much anything. Many people here in the northern latitudes experience this autumn downturn. We trade remedies: vitamin D3 and light boxes are mentioned often. I keep meaning to get a light box, but in its absence, I find that exercise helps. Following my recent angiogram, I felt motivated for the first time in my life to exercise, and signed up for water walking at the Vashon Athletic Club. I go three days a week. The class attendees are an eclectic collection of islanders, some whom I’ve known for years and others whom I’m meeting for the first time. The classes are real workouts, but we also find time to chat, and that is pleasant. Everyone is friendly. It is overall a positive experience. I am grateful to have this opportunity, especially because for the last few years I thought I had too many cranky arthritic joints to be able to do any exercise. In the water I can move. The things that have helped me with depression and grief have been writing, singing, and now water walking. It’s good to have few things to do that I know will help, especially this year. The problem with depression, or grief, is that even if you know what would help, you usually do not feel up to doing it. That’s the bear trap of depression, holding you motionless and in pain. I told myself the other day that I need to make myself sing even if I don’t feel like it, because in a few minutes I’d feel better. That thought started a song lyric unreeling in my mind. If there’s anything more cheering than singing, writing, or exercise, it’s getting a check in the mail. Oh. Yes, that cheers me up, too, but I meant to say it’s writing a song. If you are creative in any way, you know what I mean. The feeling you get when you’re in the zone of doing your art or craft, creating something that did not exist before, is the best feeling in the world. However good or bad a song turns out to be – and I’ve written plenty that didn’t make the cut of public performance – at the time of creating that song, I’m in love with it. So I wrote this lyric, and now I’m working on getting the tune together. Where shall I sing it? I don’t know yet. In my office, for the moment. Here’s a verse, so you get the drift: “Today I’m feeling very low Sing anyway The winter sun has lost its glow Sing anyway There is no reason more or less For sadness or for happiness I lift my guitar, my guitar lifts me And I sing Anyway” The title of the song is (surprise!), “Sing Anyway.” That’s what I mean to do. Between singing and water walking, I’ll get through another dark season. Although I have considered going to visit friends in Australia until next March or so. Failing that, it’s the guitar and the swimming pool.

Living Out God’s Plan

How do you reconcile a belief that God has a plan with the apparent random cruelty of life in this world? An old question, and you need to think it over and find your own answer. Lately I have been trying to be more conscious of, and grateful for, the gifts and graces that have come to me. From that perspective, I am blessed. I have loving friends and family, and I recently learned that I have a heart that is healthier than I thought, so I can expect a few more years before shuffling off this mortal coil. Of course that expectation is tempered with the awareness that you never know, but I remember the wisdom of Nikos Kazantzakis, as spoken by his character Zorba the Greek. I can’t remember the exact words, but the meaning was, “Live each day as if you are going to live forever, or you are going to die tomorrow.” Either way you choose to look at it, you can find yourself living with an expansiveness, awareness, and generosity that can get lost in the everyday lives we live. So, a little bit more life stretches before me, a little more time to bring my gifts to the world. Thinking about that had me asking questions about God’s plan. Am I spared to live a while longer because God has some purpose for me, or am I simply going to spend the time I have left doing, as nearly as I can discern, God’s will? How you answer that sort of question depends on how you perceive God – is God an intelligent being, a God created in our image, who thinks and acts for reasons that are dictated by an overall scheme? Or is God an intelligence that animates us and leaves us to work out our own destinies? Or, as in some belief systems, are we here to work out some ongoing karma, making up for the mistakes of past lives, learning new lessons for the next life? Long ago I had to get used to the shocking idea that God is not an old guy in the sky with a beard. Mind you, if I die and am confronted by an old guy in the sky with a beard, will my face be red. That old guy image is how we tend to envision God in our Christian –based culture. I realized I had to get over that idea, but then, what does God look like? I don’t know. I tend to believe that when we look at each other, we are looking at God. When we marvel at the beauty of creation, we are looking at God. When an orca leaps in Dalco Passage – yup, God. But then, what about the other things? Anyone who has been paying attention to what is going on in the world can grasp the difficulty of seeing God in beheadings, random shootings in public places, car wrecks, and of course, Ebola. When I see those things, I try to perceive God not as the perpetrator of atrocities, disasters, and horrible diseases (AIDS, anyone?), but as the source of grace to those who suffer. Are all victims aware of God’s grace? I am certain they are not. A lot of people claim they don’t believe in God because of all the pain and truly horrible things he allows to happen. This is tricky, blaming the God you don’t believe in for the world’s troubles, but still a popular stance. Allow me to introduce the concept of Satan, who is no more a red guy with horns, a pointy tail, and a van dyke beard than God is the old guy in the sky. These words, these characters, God and Satan, are shorthand symbols for the good and the evil they represent. There is evil in the world. We see it and hear of it every day, in wars and racism, hunger and disease (trying to remember the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, another shorthand symbol). If you take these symbolic beings literally, and expect them to think and feel and act like you, which is, again, creating God (and Satan) in your own image, you can go wrong. You can make heartless mistakes like telling people with cancer that it is their own fault because they didn’t pray enough, for example. You might think you know exactly what and who God is, and what he (usually) is doing, and what the heavenly consequences of earthly behavior are. You might think like that. With all due respect, that is not what I believe. I believe that God is with us when we do chemotherapy, when our heads are being cut off, when our wasted bodies are too weak to move. I believe that God speaks to us through friends who give us rides and bring us meals when we’re too sick and tired to cook. I believe that God works through the workers who try to make the dying more comfortable. I believe that God’s plan, whatever it is, is too big, too far reaching, for me to see. Either that or there’s no plan. And I don’t know the answer to that, so I have to have faith. My faith is in what is true, what is kind, what is real. My faith is in the living God, who lives in us. I believe that when God gives us gifts, we are obliged to bring our gifts to the world, if we can, so I write, and I sing, and I listen to people, and I pray. That is how I reconcile myself with the cruelty of this world, that is how I try to live out God’s plan, whatever it is. That’s my answer. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to tune my guitar and sing a little. Blessings, love, grace and peace, be with you all.

Dog business and Depth Perception

Took the dog for a run at a park on the island. She loves being off-leash, and if there are no other dogs present, I let her go to frisk and frolic, and do what we euphemistically call her “business.” Being the responsible, good, guilt-laden citizen that I am, I always take a plastic bag and go pick up her business, tie a knot in the bag and throw it in a trash can. Almost always. Sometimes the dog is in such a wiggling hurry that she runs out ahead of me, and from a distance of forty or fifty feet away I see her going into the characteristic hunch of the business dog. I groan, because now I’m going to have to look in the grass for the business. I look for a place marker close to her to guide me. Today it was a bright orange autumn leaf sticking up above the grass. I figured the dog was about six feet north-northwest of the leaf. I got my bag and set off for the spot. Which brings me to a True High School Story. At my school all sophomores were required to take a course called Life Science. This class covered health and driver’s ed. Health was a quick once over of body parts. Driver’s ed was the book-learning part of learning to drive. My class was taught by Mr. Haney, who was a coach and teacher. He was not a warm and cuddly guy and his main claim to fame was being able to walk across the gym floor on his hands. One day we walked into class and Mr. Haney had set up two unfamiliar objects. The first was a box with a pedal that measured your reaction time. It flashed a light and then recorded how long it took you to stomp on the pedal. My reaction time was the worst in the class. The other object was a narrow table about eight feet long and eighteen inches wide with two plastic cars sitting on top. The cars were both attached to a single loop of string that ran through two holes in one of the narrow ends of the table. The idea was to stand at the other narrow end and pull on the loop of string. When you did that, one car moved forward and the other moved backward. We were supposed to line the two cars up next to each other. This measured our depth perception. Everyone had a go at it, and most of the kids got the cars pretty close together. Then it was my turn. I tugged the string back and forth until I thought the cars were next to each other. Mr. Haney looked at the cars, and then looked at me. “You’re done?” “Yes.” “You think the cars are next to each other?” I was getting a bad feeling, but I said, “Yes.” Mr. Haney shook his head, and said, “Litchfield, I want you to do me a favor. Whenever you are going to drive a car on the public roads, call me first so I can stay home.” Huge laugh. I walked around the table and saw that the cars were about three feet apart. So, lousy reaction time and lousy depth perception. It’s my inability to discern distance and where one object is in relation to another that pertains to today’s story. Today I walked out toward the orange leaf and got to the exact spot I had decided was six feet north-northwest of the leaf, and … there was nothing there. I stared intently at the ground, starting with what I thought was ground zero and moving in widening circles. After a few minutes of this intense inspection, the process yielded exactly bupkiss. I usually give the search a few minutes, and find nothing. It’s frustrating. I’m telling you all this as a public service. If you decide to take a walk and you see me out in the grass carrying a plastic bag, walking in circles and staring at the ground, you might want to stay clear of where I am that day. As for driving, I’ve been doing that for fifty years now. I try to drive carefully, and most of the time I don’t hit anything. Most of the time. You might want to stay clear of me on the road, too, come to think of it. Just saying.