Eastertide Woodpeckers

I woke to the hammer song of the pileated woodpecker this morning. He visits regularly in springtime, choosing to dine at the dead locust tree at the edge of the woods below our bedroom windows. The rat a tat tat melody reminded me of the time a woodpecker used the metal roof of my uncle’s trailer as a drum.
My daddy was the designated care giver in his family. If some one was sick or needed to be bailed out of jail, Daddy came. When his father was old and sick, Daddy took him to Atlanta and stayed with him while he was in the hospital, no small gift of time and money for a working man. When Uncle D.O.’s alcoholism landed him in jail, kicked out by his wife and fired from his job, Daddy went to Jacksonville to pick him up and brought him home. He lived with us all my growing up years. A small, quiet, red haired man, Uncle D.O. was a mystery to me. Grown ups did not speak freely in our family of grown up troubles in front of the children. Eventually I figured out his love of liquor and his mysterious comings and goings became a part of our family routine.
A caring pastor and my father’s stern house rules helped my uncle stay sober for some years. But when we moved to another county and another church, Uncle D.O. fell off the wagon and stayed mostly drunk until he was placed in a nursing home. For awhile, he lived in a small trailer in our back yard, driving to work sober and coming home Friday evenings soused, weaving gently down the road on the shoulder and the pavement. In our backyard, his trailer sat next to the trailer my grandmother lived in so she always kept her eye out for him, worrying about her broken son.
Daddy would get calls from the liquor store telling him D.O. was asleep in the car in front of the store or calls from D.O.’s patient employer telling Daddy where he was. My one memory of my uncle during these years is seeing him sitting on the swing under the pecan tree in the backyard, a slight form hunched over, smoking a cigarette down to a nub. As the years passed, he began to suffer from alcohol induced dementia. One day he came home, packed up and moved to live somewhere else. A woman in the neighboring community had convinced him to turn his Social Security check over to her and she promised to take care of him, manage his money, pay his bills and feed him. At that point, Daddy was worn out and angry so he let D.O. go knowing he had no choice. It was a bad decision but D.O. was a grown man and Daddy was getting out of the Savior business. Being and doing family is a messy business sometimes.
Deaths and resurrections come and go along with crucifixions in life. Some we choose and some come to us. Like Daddy’s care for my uncle, we do the best we can and pray for forgiveness and grace when we can’t save ourselves or the ones we love. The every year-ness of Holy Week and Easter reminds me that we are a part of a journey, a journey that holds the mystery and promise of death and new life. Whether we are an alcoholic struggling to stay sober or an upright (what a peculiarly descriptive adjective) law abiding tax paying church going man... a mother and wife trying to juggle work, home, marriage and parenting or a disabled veteran living with the left over trauma of war... an old woman who remembers how things used to be or a teenager who sees the future rushing towards her... We all will be crucified, die and with grace and connection to the Source of our life, experience resurrection again and again.
This Eastertide, I wait. I wait for signs of new life in the midst of dying. Our friend Vince and Michael’s father are walking through the end of their time here with us. We will celebrate a renewal of vows for Vince and his wife here at our home next week. Vince helped us build this house and it is right that it should be the place for one last party for him. Michael’s dad lives surrounded by loving hearts and hands that tenderly care for him even when he cannot be himself. New life, like the tightly closed iris buds, is unfolding and with the sound of the woodpecker’s song echoing in my heart, I give thanks that God keeps on pecking away at us until we head home... reshaping, remolding, renewing us into resurrected creatures whether we deserve it or not.