Cheers

It appears I'm past due on my health updates. 

In short, all is well.

Had a visit with the hematologist a few weeks back; all the numbers were still low, but almost exactly the same as last time. Dr. Jay loves that stability. Her practitioner said, "You are the picture of perfect health."

I even got permission to start drinking alcohol again -- though I'm supposed to limit it to one drink per week. Yeah, right.

Dr. Jay somehow came under the impression that I'm a problem drinker, which has never been true. I did tell her at our initial meeting that I went through a period after my second hernia surgery when my pain medication was not working, so I was drinking more than I should in an effort to dull the pain. But I also told her I had subsequently realized that was not a good strategy and had returned to my normal moderate habits.

I know health professionals are trained to take whatever alcohol consumption a patient self-reports and double it. But even that equation wouldn't add up to much in my case. Nevertheless, in her eyes I'm a drunk and always will be. 

I'll just have to accept that and hoist a pint in her honor.

In a related note, I have regained all the weight I lost, and then some. Had to go out and buy bigger pants today. 

Must be all that beer.

On your feet

I don't know why I feel embarrassed to admit this, but I love this song. Maybe because it's country, or because it's pop, or because it's kind of schmaltzy, and of course I'm way too sophisticated for any of that.

But the doggone thing just gets me every time. It causes me to consider the opportunities I have passed up, and it makes me sad for those who make similar poor choices and fearful that children (and others) I care about will do likewise.

At the same time, though, it reminds me to seize joy when it comes around, and it serves as a kind of prayer for those I love. Every parent should give every child the message this song delivers.

I just heard a snippet of it on the radio the other day and had been thinking about it sporadically ever since, and then my "little sister" Terra -- who didn't know about my feelings about the song but obviously knows me -- just happened to e-mail it to me today.

So, enjoy. (Don't worry; I won't tell anyone.)

Out of the closet

This spook is coming in from the cold.

I can finally drop the cloak of anonymity I have worn since starting this blog, because I informed my bosses about it and they have approved it.

My employer (whom I will continue not to name for reasons explained below) has a policy that severely restricts blogging by certain classes of employees, especially my class. It can be done with approval, so I decided to be honest and tell my boss about The Freakin' Deacon.

He checked it out and ran it by some higher-ups, and the OK came down within a couple of hours.

I'm still not going to use my full name or name my employer to avoid being Googled by crackpots. (Present company excepted.) I'm not even going to write about my employer, because (a) they don't want me to, and (b) I don't want to. That's not what this blog is for.

So, feel free to call me by my name in your comments  -- which, of course, means you're leaving comments. Please do that. I want to know you're there.

Love,

Floyd

 

Ten years on, Part 2

No, Tom, I didn't forget. I just missed my deadline, that's all.

I never will forget the day our father died, nor do I want to. Pain that deep merely ratifies love that is deeper. And that's something to be thankful for.

Dad died on August 11, 1998, after fooling us into thinking he would be OK after major surgery earlier that same day. The whole family had commandeered and occupied Sparrow Hospital's surgical waiting lounge all day while Dad had his cancerous kidney removed.

The surgery had been put off when Mom fell ill in July and then died on the 23rd. The doctors gave Dad a couple of weeks to grieve, but that tumor wasn't waiting around.

While Dad was in the so-called recovery room the surgeon told us it had gone well, and that while he was in there he repaired a hernia he'd noticed. He (unnecessarily, I thought) described the lengthy incision he'd made in Dad's abdomen, which produced a picture in my mind that I have never been able to shake.

The doctor said something like, "Later on we'll get him up to his room, get his butt out of bed and have him walk around a little bit." I've always wondered whether he came to regret the cavalier tone he took that day.

After that briefing most of us left the hospital, as it was early evening and we were all hungry. MLW and I met her father for dinner at Cheddar's; I don't remember what I ate but I do remember the big ceiling fans and that I had a beer or two, and I wasn't a drinker at that time.

After dinner MLW and I went to our hotel to freshen up, stopping off for a free cocktail in the lobby. I was feeling just slightly unsteady when we got back to the room. I noticed the message light blinking on the phone and knew in my gut that it was not good news.

The desk gave me a number to call and ask for Tom. Before I dialed I knew what Tom was going to tell me, but I didn't want to believe it.

I called. Tom asked me if I was sitting down. "Oh no," I said in that "Not again" tone. I was sitting on the arm of a couch.

Tom gave it to me straight: "Dad ... died."

I think I asked him for details and I suppose he told me, but I don't recall any of the rest of that conversation. I hung up the phone and kicked over a coffee table and started stomping around the hotel room, cursing and screaming and kicking and punching things. MLW put her hands on me, which had an instant (though temporary) calming effect. She gathered up her purse and our keys and we made for the hospital at high speed. I think I drove, though I was blind with unfocused rage, screaming and pounding the steering wheel. At least, that's the way I remember it.

We were among the last to make it back to the hospital. Almost everyone was standing out in the corridor instead of in the waiting lounge. I kept demanding that someone tell me what the hell happened because no one seemed able to explain it to my satisfaction. (It apparently was a pulmonary embolism that formed after the surgery.)

Someone, Maureen, I think, asked me if I wanted to go see Dad and led me back to where they had him. I think Pat came along too. I gotta say Dad looked pretty good lying there, all clean, covered with clean white linens neatly folded over at the chest with his arms lying exposed at his sides. He seemed to have a little smirk on his face.

"Dad ... What are you doing?" I asked him, almost expecting a reply. "What are you doing?" I touched his hairy right forearm with my right hand and his glistening pale forehead with my left. His arm -- that arm that I will always see stretched out to the top of the steering wheel of a station wagon -- was warm; his head -- that shiny dome that it seemed to me contained all the knowledge and wisdom in the world -- was cool.

After a minute or two of just laying my hands on him, taking in that sensation one last time and imprinting it, I leaned in close, kissed that cool, slightly clammy forehead and whispered to him the only words that came to mind: "Thank you. ... I'll see you there."

Family circles

Looking back, I realize I failed to follow up on a line of thought in a previous post, and that loop needs to be closed.

I said that despite my pastor's gentle encouragement, I didn't cry when my mom died.

For the record, that situation was rectified on the Sunday after the funeral, when the freakin' dam burst.

That same pastor, Dennis Butts, had come over and sat down next to me. He asked me if I remembered what he had told me earlier, that it was OK to cry. I told him I did remember, but that's just not the way my grief was coming out. He just sat there with me for a couple of minutes, neither one of us saying anything.

"It's OK to cry."

Pastor Butts is a big bear of a man at better than 6 feet tall and better than 200 pounds. He carries a large, quiet, powerful presence, much as my dad did. That presence began to overshadow me that day on the front pew -- enveloping me, drawing me in, surrounding me, subsuming me. I felt like I was inside a small, dark closet, in the deepest shadows behind the long winter coats. I felt safe.

That's when I absolutely lost it, sobbing inconsolably on that front pew for 20 minutes after the service ended.

I could hear people chatting, some stopping to ask MLW what was wrong with me, random people placing a hand on my shoulder or offering a word of comfort, and the tears and snot pouring out. Someone finally had the good sense and compassion to stuff a couple of tissues into my hand.

That day it became clearer to me than ever that I had a new family. It didn't replace my birth family but augmented it. I felt safe enough to cry like a baby in front of these people, and they responded with love, comfort, empathy and compassion.

Less than three weeks later, when my father also died, my tears were warmed up and ready to go, and go they did. My hysterical reaction at the hospital remains one of the more memorable entries in my family's grief scrapbook.

But it's all good. MLW and my sister Sheila stayed with me to comfort me while I was treated (read: sedated) in the emergency room, and no one made fun of me when we eventually made it back to the house, where we sat around the dining room table in stunned disbelief.

Both my families had their finest hours in the days and weeks that followed. My birth family, without exception, demonstrated kindness and grace to a degree that I had never seen in many of them before, and it helped heal some old wounds in me. My church family, which I already knew to be full of kindness and grace, proved generous and gentle as well, weeping and grieving with us, taking on themselves the loss of two people they had never known.

I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge as well the kindness of my co-workers, who sent stacks of cards and food and sent flowers to the funeral home and covered my extended absence from work without a word of complaint.

It's true that there's a lot of bad stuff and a lot of bad people in this world. But these moments and these memories remind me that God looks after his own:

A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy
dwelling.
God sets the lonely in families, he leads forth the prisoners with
singing;
... You gave abundant showers, O God;
You refreshed your weary inheritance. -- Psalm 68:5-6a;9

I apologize for writing so much about death and grief lately. It's a season the Spirit has sent me into, and I'm walking through it. Which reminds me of something another member of my church family, a man named Brother Herman, said a couple of years ago:

"Psalm 23 says, 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death ...'
Notice that it says 'walk through'; it doesn't say 'set up camp in.'"

Thanks for that, Brother Herman. Thanks to all my brothers and sisters. And thanks, God, for them.

Ten years on

My mother died 10 years ago yesterday. Her given name was Catherine, but everyone -- everyone -- called her Honey.

Maybe that's why I was a sucker for this video:

http://www.emailthis.clickability.com/et/emailThis?clickMap=viewThis&etMailToID=1038394309

I feel like I should add some comment here, but I got nothin'.

Miss you, Mom

My sister told me that since I wrote about my dad on his birthday I'd better write about my mom on hers, or I'd never hear the end of it through eternity.

That's where Mom is right now: eternity. She left the confines of time 10 years ago this month. I remember my brother Tom calling with the news that morning; I think it was a Thursday.

Mom had been in the hospital for more than a week after developing a painful blood clot in her leg. The hospital gave her Heparin, a powerful blood thinner. It worked too well.

We were told the drug caused a rare reaction, breaking up the clot into thousands of tiny clots that bombarded her kidneys and destroyed them. After several days of dialysis, sometimes several times a day, the rest of her body just shut down.

It was probably for the best, given the circumstances, but it was painful for all of us who loved her and were loved by her.

MLW called one of our pastors, with whom we were pretty close. She handed me the phone, and he asked me how I was doing. I told him I was OK. "You know it's OK to cry," he told me. "I know," I said, unemotionally. "It's OK to cry," he repeated. "I know, I know," I told him. "I'm just not feeling that way right now."

We waited a day before heading to Michigan, which I later concluded was a mistake. I should have been there with my dad and the rest of the family as soon as I could get there, but we only got there in time for the viewing and then the funeral.

My best friend from high school, Gonz, showed up at the viewing. I was shocked; I hadn't heard from him in years. But Mom used to drive him and me to school every morning, and at the viewing he and I laughed as we fondly remembered her utter inability to make a right turn without clipping the curb.

She and Dad also attended Gonz's wedding in Muskegon. Although he is emotionally rather clueless, I think he was touched that they made the trip. And they -- especially Mom -- seemed to have a great time.

Mom was a people watcher par excellence, which made wedding receptions and similar gatherings fun for her. While I wouldn't go so far as to say she spied on the neighbors, she did keep an eye on them and delighted in making up stories to explain what she saw in the absence of actual facts.

There's a lot I could tell you about Mom, but this post would go on forever. But I'll just say she's one of the funniest people I have ever known and illustrate the point with this one BBAA (Brief But Amusing Anecdote):

While Mom was in the hospital, MLW and I went to visit her. Mom wasn't always fully conscious or entirely present, but there were some exceptional moments. At one point while we were in the room she said she needed a Kleenex. The box was on her tray across her bed from me, so I reached across her to put it within her reach. As I did so, she noticed that my thumbnail was black.

"You hurt your thumb," she observed in a sleepy voice. I explained that I had smashed my thumb with a hammer.

"Oh," she said softly, "... stupid."