Limitations, loss--and future gain

No one likes to be called a quitter. Nasty word, quitter. I’ve never seen myself as a quitter, although I do have some dark memories of times I just gave up. But mostly I pushed through the darkness and found a way.

That’s changing as I age, and I don’t like it. I would rather expand that be pulled back by limitations. But it seems that knowing and accepting our limitations is the new name of this game called growing older.

For some time now my body has been telling me to slow down. Chronic dizziness and fatigue have made some of the leadership roles I’ve loved seem more like burdens than joys. Recently I gave up leadership in a Sunday class I love; serving in the capacity of class coordinator was life-giving and I felt as though I were making a contribution. But when something that once was light starts becoming heavy, you know it’s time to let go and let other people step in. So I did. But not without a tinge of grief.

And now I’m in the process of finding someone else to edit the community journal I began some nine years ago. It’s become a way for people in this retirement community to tell their stories and I’ve loved being part of the group that puts this together once a quarter. But, again, my spirit tells me it’s time to let go.

Our plot in the community garden, my guitar and ambitions of becoming a classical guitarist (foolish, considering I have no music gene in my DNA)—these are other things I’m giving up. It’s time.

All of this makes me wonder if I’m losing my voice, along with my active roles. Will I now just melt into the background, become dimmer and dimmer until nobody even remembers my name?

Now that’s pathetic. It’s me at my worse, and I don’t always grovel at that level. Actually, I get hints that letting all this float up off my shoulders might in some way free my spirit to focus on the things that matter most. I hope that’s true.

I had a strange dream the other night. I still remember it, so that tells me to pay attention. In the dream Hal died (the worse part of the dream) and the rest of the dream focused on how I expressed my grief. In short, I went mute. I stopped talking. I lost language. With family members or in groups of people, I made myself melt into the background. In time, people seemed to accept it.

One night, still in my dream, I was with a small group of close friends and people were sharing their prayer requests. I sat and listened, mute as usual. But then as we went into a time of prayer, my tongue was loosed. I began praying for my friends, out loud, with wisdom and discernment. With compassion. It surprised everyone, myself included.

Then I woke up.

As I’ve been processing the dream, I’ve decided it was not prophetic. I’ve not been given a warning that Hal will soon die, although I know we’ll both die someday. And it’s not telling me that when all else fails, pray. No. I think it’s about facing loss and letting myself grieve the losses, even if that means a time of silence to sit with the absences. But there is something good on the other side, something I can do well and that will give meaning in this time of life.

I believe that. In fact, I do want to learn how to pray better and how to settle into more fruitful times of worship and intercession. I want to learn how to do silence and contemplation better (meaning more than five minutes at a stretch). I’m making time for this.

I now have more time for writing; I’ve still got poems to write, stories to tell, memories to mine. And I’m fulfilling my hope of refreshing my ability to read the New Testament in Greek. I’ve lost a lot since my seminary days, but it’s coming back little by little. And it’s lots of fun.

And then there’s people time, of course. More time for long conversations, for reading books and talking about them with other book-lovers, for just being with the people I love.

As often happens when I write this blog, I’m processing my situation and coming to a place of hope. Journeying from negative to positive. From grief to joy. I haven’t arrived yet, at least not consistently, but I feel better about it all. I hope you also find yourself encouraged.

Always a mom

 Life seems to be a series of stages, one after another, characterized by changing relationships. One pattern, the one I’m most familiar with, starts out with a single baby in intimate dependence on its mother, a gradual growth out of dependency, followed by blessed independence (!), and then marriage (an interdependence at best), motherhood (reversed dependence), up through the empty nest and a new freedom as persons in our own right. Then we end up again dependent on others for the slow journey to the end of life.

Only that’s a little too neat and orderly. My own life seems more mixed and messy, without a clear transition from one stage to the next.

Take motherhood, for example. Now that my kids are grown and with grown children of their own (and soon to be grandparents, amazingly enough), my raising/nurturing/disciplining tasks should be long over. And, indeed, they are, thank God. But it doesn’t always feel that way. While no one calls me “Mommy” any more (again, thank God), I still sometimes feel a keen sense of responsibility and a need to protect. I still have a compulsion to stand between my daughter or son and any real or imagined monster that would threaten them. I want to exchange my safety for their peril. My health for their illness.

I sometimes still wake up in the night with a nightmare of some threat to their well-being. I find it harder to pray with faith when one of them faces danger than I do to pray with faith for peace in Ukraine. And that’s ridiculous!

Today, in mid-January, the houses, trees and hills outside my window are covered in white. The first snow of the season always amazes me with its beauty. But beauty isn’t the first word people use to describe the snow this year. It’s slippery and dangerous outside. And more so in the mountains where my daughter and her family live.

On Saturday it wasn’t snow; it was freezing rain that fell all day and stuck to the trees surrounding their house on the McKenzie River Road. Electricity went off in the morning and a downed tree blocked their long driveway up the hill. That night as the temperature dipped and the winds blew, Kristin, her husband Jon, and their son Peter huddled all night in the living room, listening to the sound of tree branches cracking and falling.

By morning, branches had broken through the ceilings in a bathroom, the hall, and their dining room. The front porch and back deck were damaged and the yard a tangle of fallen trees and branches. The largest tree on their property, a giant Douglas fir, had completely toppled.

They were blocked in most of Sunday by the downed tree. Some friends met them at the bottom of their driveway and took them home for showers and a hot meal. Jon and Kristin elected to go back to their house to spend last night, partly for the sake of their animals (two large dogs, three cats, and a tortoise), and partly to take care of their house and keep the water system working. Hal and I were awake, off and on, all night praying and worrying (which did a lot of good, I’m sure).

This morning they informed us they had made it through the night with no adventures. Even the cats came out of hiding and slept on top of Kristin. Today it’s still a world of ice outside and extremely cold, although sunny. Electricity is still off. The danger has not passed. Quite a few trees around the property could still fall, and tomorrow the forecast predicts more freezing rain.

The tree company just informed them that the cost of removing the trees that have already fallen on their roof and property comes to $13,000. They were planning on staying another night but Kristin just texted, “We are really needing to consider getting out of here as we were told by the tree company that it may get worse. It’s just so complicated with the animals. Jon may be realizing the trailer, boat, water system, and house just may not be worth keeping.”

Even if nothing else happens to the house, it will take several months at least to repair the damage. They’ll have to work out the details with their insurance company and find a place to rent in the meantime.

So why am I going into all this detail? It’s because it feels like it’s happening to me. If it’s happening to one of my kids, it’s happening to me. I don’t know if every “old” mother feels like this, but I suspect many of you do. I don’t even know if I should feel like this. Maybe it’s a sign that I haven’t matured enough to pass on to the next life stage. But I need to recognize that this is where I am so that I can face it.

Once a mother, always a mother, I guess. At least in the sense of deep empathy and a sharing in bearing the emotional burden. Maybe that’s not so bad.

Meanwhile, tomorrow is another day, with its own dangers, blessings, and answers to prayer.

(I’ll let you know how this story plays out in a future installation.)

The cold of spring--on the death of a friend

 A dear friend died last week. Her death didn’t shock anyone; we’d been watching and waiting for several months. Hospice joined the team a few weeks ago and we knew our time with her was precious.

Harriet was 104 years old when she died. For most of the last seven years since we became friends, she was mobile (if a bit slow), alert, curious, and possessing a great gift of friendship. I benefitted from that gift.

We first met seven years ago in the retirement community’s health center. We were both there to get our flu shots. We introduced ourselves and began talking. Shots finished, the nurse suggested I accompany Harriet back to her room as she was visually impaired. I was certainly willing to slowly guide this dear blind lady, but I soon discovered how mistaken my perspective was. Without a cane or walker, and with vision that was blurry at best, this lady knew how to maneuver the halls and elevators of this building. She had all the routes memorized. And she did it briskly. So, instead of “helping” Harriet I walked alongside and enjoyed extending our conversation.

When we got to her door, she invited me to come back another time so we could continue getting to know each other. I took her up on it and thus began a rich and delightful friendship. We decided we were “kindred spirits” (shades of Anne of Green Gables). It was true.

Mostly we talked. We shared life-stories. I loved hearing about her growing-up years as a missionary kid in the Philippines, her adjustment challenges moving back to the US, and her adventures in marriage, child-rearing, and as a kindergarten teacher.

Harriet was a good listener as well as a good story teller. She wanted to know all about my life and my family, of course. We both loved sharing about our kids, grandkids, and, in her case, great grandkids. We learned a lot of names!

We read books together—or, rather, I read aloud and she listened and responded. Our favorites were Spring Wind by Gladis DePree, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, and Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Alice, the last book we read, was so clever and  funny that many times I had to lay the book in my lap so we could laugh out loud together.

The grief I’m feeling now isn’t the same as the grief experienced at the death of a beloved spouse or child, or the untimely death of a loving parent. Several of my friends are walking this grief path where the life changes and emotional hurdles are profound. This is a grief that takes time to live through.

But grief at the death of a friend is real, and I’m letting myself live into the sense of loss, knowing that my friend is home safe, with perfect vision, reunited with family and friends of years past. I still miss her here where I live.

A poem that helps me understand and walk this sadness is one C. S. Lewis wrote at the death of his dear friend, Charles Williams:  

Your death blows a strange bugle call, friend, and all is hard
To see plainly or record truly. The new light imposes change,
Re-adjusts all a life-landscape as it thrusts down its probe from the sky,
To create shadows, to reveal waters, to erect hills and deepen glens.
The slant alters. I can’t see the old contours. It’s a larger world
Then I once through it. I wince, caught in the bleak air that blows on the ridge.
Is it the first sting of the great winter, the world waning? Or the cold of spring?

A hard question and worth talking a whole night on. But with whom?
Of whom can I now ask guidance? With what friend concerning your death
Is it worth while to exchange thoughts unless—oh unless it were you?

I’ll finish with a short liturgical poem from the book of liturgies by Douglas McKelvey, Every Moment Holy, Vol. 2, Death, Grief, and Hope:

I would rest my sorrows in you, O Christ.
In time let the long bearing of them
make me more empathetic and available
to those around me, who in their lives
will also greatly suffer and greatly grieve
the loss of those they love.

I will acknowledge my sadness and be open to the good work God is doing in me as a result of my friendship with this marvelous person.