In my memory, he stands tall and straight like the Georgia pines around his house. Wearing overalls with a can of Prince Albert tobacco and a packet of paper in his pocket, he sits on his heels to roll his cigarette, surveying the world around him. Yesterday, stooped, slight of frame and trembling, he stood by the casket of his wife of seventy four years to say his last good by to the woman he has loved since he was seventeen. As she descended into the pits of the hell of Alzheimer’s, he stood by her side and with the help of children, kept her home with him until the end. His was the last face she knew even when she couldn’t remember his name. Their marriage was not a happily ever after. Times were hard and Calhoun men are notoriously difficult to live with. But the love remained, refined by conflict and struggle, until the pure flame that sprung into being when he was sneaking kisses at school became a selfless devotion to her well being.
I sat with him for a few minutes talking about his new reality. He told me about coming home, a home without her presence, sleeping in his bed, waking up in the night to go sit in his chair and weeping for an hour. He has suffered an amputation of the spirit and it hurts like hell. Telling him I had no idea how he must be feeling (he informed me I got that right), I told him I hoped he would continue to cry, to grieve, to mourn the loss of his beloved Burma Lou. He spoke of his fear of being suffocated by tender loving care, of not being allowed to stand on his own as much as he could. And he spoke of feeling he had nothing to live for now. I reminded him he was a Calhoun man, tough as a corn cob, who never flinched from hard work. This will be the hardest work he has ever done. And I also told him I had asked Jesse to whop him up side the head when he talked about nothing to live for. I reminded him there were others of us who still need him, the last of the Calhoun brothers living, to be our stack pole, our connection to our parents and their family.
Love does not come cheap. Sometimes it comes with grace and ease but always it is given life by struggle and suffering. New mothers and fathers survey their little babies with a love the depth of which never fails to surprise. But, they live out that love through the years paying the price for that love in loss of sleep, feeding, clothing, teaching, weeping, frustration and pride. We find our mates, the persons who delight us and take delight in us. We marry. We live together. Our points of pleasure and attraction often become blisters raised on our soul as we struggle with the fit of our relationship. Our parents who brought us into this world and shaped it for us, are flawed even as we are. The love we felt for them as a child often turns to a benign mild contempt as we grow away from them into our adulthood. Most of us leave that form of loving behind as we mature and learn to see our parents as individuals, people like us who have their own gifts and struggles.
Love and loving is never a one size fits all process. Each relationship is unique unto itself and yet the same. “And now I beg you, lady, not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. And this is love, that we follow his commandment, as you have heard from the beginning, that you follow love.” This passage from the Second Letter of John, a short loving note written to the “elect lady and her children”, calls us to follow love.
Lent is in the final analysis a love story. God so loved the world that he sent someone to love us here on earth. The power of that unadulterated pure loving has transformed lives through the centuries that have followed. My calling during Lent is to learn how to love more completely God, myself and others... to live that love, to speak love in truth, to become a purer, brighter flame of loving until one day my love returns to its Creator, refined and strong. Dear One in Three, give me strength to endure the furnace and laughter for living as I stumble along loving as best I can all those who share my life. Help me not take myself too seriously and remind me that we all deserve a heaping helping of love without strings attached. Let me be a loving respite for those who need a place to lay their weary heads and be my refuge in times of trouble, Lord. I love you best, Lord. Let my life show it, please.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Lent... Sad brains
Mom, how can I stop crying when my brain is still sad? Mason Thomas Maguire
I went to my daughter Megan’s house this week to help with her boys while her husband was out of town for a convention. Megan had a class in at her work and her days began at six thirty teaching, often lasting through the evening meal. So Nana rode in on a white horse(or a white donkey?) to the rescue arriving to loud shouts of praise and acclamation from three of our grandsons. My days began early with snuggles and laughter followed by the multi-tasking required to feed, clothe and transport small children to and from school. Matthew takes a bus to his neighborhood school but Mason’s special class is in a school in town so he must be driven in.
Every morning we walk in with the other children and parents at Ward Elementary, many colors, ethnic backgrounds, typically and atypically developing, all converging in a swarm on the school doors. I smile at the African American mother who walks her son in on crutches. Maximiliano, Mason’s friend, and “my girl Donna” are already in the classroom at the computers and look up smiling as we enter. The principal speaks to Mead and calls him by name, teasing him a little as we leave.
Then it is on to Mead’s school where I join in the parade of parents and grandparents bringing their little ones to the pre-school at Lewisville Methodist Church. I watch the Pap Paw in overalls, driving a pick up truck and wearing his cell phone blue tooth in his ear, walk his granddaughter into the building. I smile at the mothers and fathers and grandparents who have the privilege of being a part of the daily routine for these children. So much joyful energy concentrated in this one place lifts my spirits.
In the evening of the first day, we go to eat at the boys favorite restaurant, The Statue of Liberty. Its real name is the Liberty Restaurant but the statue of Lady Liberty in the front translated by the literal minds of children has resulted in a name change. She stands washed in gold paint over a sea foam green background, holding her torch aloft, a sign of fine dining for the boys. It is a down home place with leatherette covered booth seats, home made potato salad, salmon patty specials and waitresses who have worked there for years. Like the bar in “Cheers”, everybody knows your name.
We order and sit with the boys, talking about their day. Megan and I catch up on the schedule for the next day. Matthew asks how long I will be staying and I tell him I will be leaving Wednesday. A few minutes later we look at Mason and see his lower lip trembling, eyes brimming and running over with tears that streak down his dusty little cheeks. One of the ways Mason’s autism is manifested is in a slower processing of information. He had just realized I would be leaving and was already grieving my departure. “Mom, could you hold me?”, Mason asked as his tears continued to flow. Megan held him and tried to comfort him with the prospects of coming to the farm next week for Easter with Nana and Pop. Looking up at her with tear streaked cheeks, he asked, “How can I stop crying when my brain is still sad?”
And there it is... the question for Holy Week reflection in preparation for the Resurrection Easter. Sad brains for Lent leave us with tear streaked souls, trembling chins and the dawning realization that our lives too will come to an end. Even as Jesus died and descended into hell, so do we during Lent die to ourselves and descend into the pit of despair and loss. We will never measure up, do enough, be completely true to our professions of faith, or obtain a certificate of perfection. Facing our shortcomings, our sins of omission and commission, is a depressing business and we weep not only for ourselves but for the world and its grimly familiar cycle of wars and rumors of wars, hunger and starvation, earthquakes and tsunamis, haves and have nots. Depressing... How can we stop crying when our brains are still sad?
An article in the New York Times Magazine, Depression’s Upside, written by Jonah Leher, quotes Andy Thompson, a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia, and Paul Andrews, an evolutionary psychologist, who have proposed a new meaning for some of our sad brains. They view some depression as a necessary part of our development that carries with it the possibility of benefits... the silver lining in every cloud school of thought. Andrews and Thompson say “Wisdom isn’t cheap, and we pay for it with pain.”
Our souls need the wisdom that comes with the pain of Lent, the recognition of our limits and the awareness of our endings. Like Mason facing the departure of his Nana, our knowledge of suffering and death can lead us to grateful appreciation for life and all its gifts, a celebration of life’s triumph over death in the resurrection of Jesus, a model for living all the little lents that come our way during the days of this next year.
So I will learn from Mason... find someone to hold me, weep without shame, feel the sadness and loss, anticipate the bridge between grief and joy, and walk into the light of a life lived wisely without whining, grateful for all that has been and all that is yet to come. Hosanna, indeed! Anybody up for a donkey ride?
I went to my daughter Megan’s house this week to help with her boys while her husband was out of town for a convention. Megan had a class in at her work and her days began at six thirty teaching, often lasting through the evening meal. So Nana rode in on a white horse(or a white donkey?) to the rescue arriving to loud shouts of praise and acclamation from three of our grandsons. My days began early with snuggles and laughter followed by the multi-tasking required to feed, clothe and transport small children to and from school. Matthew takes a bus to his neighborhood school but Mason’s special class is in a school in town so he must be driven in.
Every morning we walk in with the other children and parents at Ward Elementary, many colors, ethnic backgrounds, typically and atypically developing, all converging in a swarm on the school doors. I smile at the African American mother who walks her son in on crutches. Maximiliano, Mason’s friend, and “my girl Donna” are already in the classroom at the computers and look up smiling as we enter. The principal speaks to Mead and calls him by name, teasing him a little as we leave.
Then it is on to Mead’s school where I join in the parade of parents and grandparents bringing their little ones to the pre-school at Lewisville Methodist Church. I watch the Pap Paw in overalls, driving a pick up truck and wearing his cell phone blue tooth in his ear, walk his granddaughter into the building. I smile at the mothers and fathers and grandparents who have the privilege of being a part of the daily routine for these children. So much joyful energy concentrated in this one place lifts my spirits.
In the evening of the first day, we go to eat at the boys favorite restaurant, The Statue of Liberty. Its real name is the Liberty Restaurant but the statue of Lady Liberty in the front translated by the literal minds of children has resulted in a name change. She stands washed in gold paint over a sea foam green background, holding her torch aloft, a sign of fine dining for the boys. It is a down home place with leatherette covered booth seats, home made potato salad, salmon patty specials and waitresses who have worked there for years. Like the bar in “Cheers”, everybody knows your name.
We order and sit with the boys, talking about their day. Megan and I catch up on the schedule for the next day. Matthew asks how long I will be staying and I tell him I will be leaving Wednesday. A few minutes later we look at Mason and see his lower lip trembling, eyes brimming and running over with tears that streak down his dusty little cheeks. One of the ways Mason’s autism is manifested is in a slower processing of information. He had just realized I would be leaving and was already grieving my departure. “Mom, could you hold me?”, Mason asked as his tears continued to flow. Megan held him and tried to comfort him with the prospects of coming to the farm next week for Easter with Nana and Pop. Looking up at her with tear streaked cheeks, he asked, “How can I stop crying when my brain is still sad?”
And there it is... the question for Holy Week reflection in preparation for the Resurrection Easter. Sad brains for Lent leave us with tear streaked souls, trembling chins and the dawning realization that our lives too will come to an end. Even as Jesus died and descended into hell, so do we during Lent die to ourselves and descend into the pit of despair and loss. We will never measure up, do enough, be completely true to our professions of faith, or obtain a certificate of perfection. Facing our shortcomings, our sins of omission and commission, is a depressing business and we weep not only for ourselves but for the world and its grimly familiar cycle of wars and rumors of wars, hunger and starvation, earthquakes and tsunamis, haves and have nots. Depressing... How can we stop crying when our brains are still sad?
An article in the New York Times Magazine, Depression’s Upside, written by Jonah Leher, quotes Andy Thompson, a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia, and Paul Andrews, an evolutionary psychologist, who have proposed a new meaning for some of our sad brains. They view some depression as a necessary part of our development that carries with it the possibility of benefits... the silver lining in every cloud school of thought. Andrews and Thompson say “Wisdom isn’t cheap, and we pay for it with pain.”
Our souls need the wisdom that comes with the pain of Lent, the recognition of our limits and the awareness of our endings. Like Mason facing the departure of his Nana, our knowledge of suffering and death can lead us to grateful appreciation for life and all its gifts, a celebration of life’s triumph over death in the resurrection of Jesus, a model for living all the little lents that come our way during the days of this next year.
So I will learn from Mason... find someone to hold me, weep without shame, feel the sadness and loss, anticipate the bridge between grief and joy, and walk into the light of a life lived wisely without whining, grateful for all that has been and all that is yet to come. Hosanna, indeed! Anybody up for a donkey ride?
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