Loss

July 25, 2018

Color-Coded Chaos

Will finished his cigarette and took one last look around his yard, his house then grabbed his cooler and shoved it into the back of his black pickup and rode off. I could see him through my sunroom window where I pray every morning, through the thin layer of cedar and maple that separates our two homes. When you live so close, you either love your neighbor or, if you’re a Christian you “have to” love your neighbor. My husband and I did both, for six years, and in return I think Will liked us and may have even been a little sad saying goodbye.

Now my own life is changing, that much I know. In my excitement, I’ve started way too many things at once and I wake up exhausted. I’m not even working.

“Hi honey! What did you do today?” my husband asks when he comes in from a day of building things, caked in saw dust and sweat.

“Oh, I was working on the non-profit/ book stuff/coaching website,” whatever the case may be. And he nods respectfully even though I could be creating Frankenstein in the basement for all he knows. In a way I wish I was because I’d have something to show for hours of labor each day. But nothing. Just dreams that make more dreams.

Will was the best-ever neighbor. He watched our house when we were gone, rescuing all of my plants on the sun porch last winter when the temperature hit a numbing six degrees. He even watched our house when we were home, sending my husband text alerts about suspicious activity in the street. Once he saw me walking my dog at night past his house.

“You should be careful here at night,” he warned.

“I’m okay,” I assured him. “I have a big dog.”

“I have a big gun if you ever want to borrow it,” he offered with a smile.

Now looking over to his empty house is like looking at a corpse in a casket. He’s not there so it’s just a house, swept clean and echo-ey. Last night my husband and I prayed for good neighbors, maybe ones that we could point to Jesus. We tried with Will, inviting him to church many times.

“The church would burn down,” he responded. Or he would wave his can of Budweiser at us and yell, “I’m too drunk!” But I have hope for Will as he heads to his new home high in the Vermont mountains. God speaks through His creation and I believe our good neighbor will hear.

I’m in a season of transitions and I’ve always had a hard time separating things. Same with when I lose someone close. It’s like the whole weight of everyone I’ve loved and lost bears down on me and I’m crushed. My son Miles and his wife and children just packed up their lives and left their home of seven years in North Carolina, to begin a new life in Malaysia.

“Malaysia? ” people say, with their faces twisted up in shock. “How long are they going to live in Malaysia?” I think only God knows that answer. It’s far, it sounds crazy but that’s how following Jesus often looks. And they are all ecstatic.

They visited us on the Cape before they left. And to complete my joy, my other two grandsons were here at the same time. Balls, trucks, beach buckets and books lined every foot path inside and out. Joyful chaos. Then it was time for goodbye. As they pulled out of the driveway a small hand pressed against the back window, then they were gone. I know now why my mom hated goodbyes.

See I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the desert. Isaiah 43:19

A knife, a grenade and three crayons. I move methodically around the room, eyes to the floor that is strewn with the last remnants of my grandchildren’s busy worlds. The big stuffed teddy bear that Leo dragged around the house and yard with him had to go back in the Celtics can with his other buddies. Pipe cleaners, Popsicle sticks and the glue my granddaughters used for the odd jeweled raft they created that was semi-stuck to the small play table, were sorted back to their shoeboxes. I sighed. These kids utterly wear me out in such a glorious way. The bubbles go up high on a shelf and I turn to scan the room, still and quiet. Curious George, missing an eye, winks at me as I turn and go back to my grown-up world.

I wish my life was as easy to sort as that play room. Career up on a shelf, people close to my heart that I know God wants me to spend time with – maybe they can sit next to Curious George and chat while they wait for me look up from my laptop. The book, speaking invitations stacked neatly in predictable color-coded boxes. Just yesterday I stared at all the messages I had flagged in my mailbox, wondering why they were so disorganized and then it hit me. They were organized by color flag. Only I had picked a random color each time I flagged one.

“Oh purple looks cute! I’ll flag that purple!” Not a clue that there was an opportunity for some order.

But maybe, just maybe, I am exactly the way God intended me to be – the same girl that danced on the desktops to break up the monotony of a 2nd grade classroom. Jesus is probably shaking his head at my mess and thinking it would be a good thing if I could sort it all out a little more, and He would help me, no doubt.

“God is not a God of chaos,” I’ve heard over the pulpit more than once. And it’s true. But I think He’d rather have us doing something, than just being like Will’s house. Empty and echo-ey.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

Renewed day by day. I like that, no, I need that. Yes, there is much to do. Maybe Jesus can help me color-code my dreams. Or we can build a jeweled raft and try not to glue it to the table.

“Hi honey! What did you do today?” my husband will ask.

And for once, I’ll have something to show him.

January 14, 2018

The Last Escape

New mom

My eyes snapped open as I heard the soft creak of the stairs, the gentle whoosh of the front door, then a few minutes later, an engine turn over. As it idled for a minute, my husband rolled over next to me.

“Why does she do that?” he asked in a half-asleep voice.

I smiled as I heard my mother back carefully out of the driveway. “She hates good-byes.” I waited until I could hear the Toyota pushing off into the still dark night no more, then turned over and went back to sleep. That was around 2006.

On December 17th 2017, she skipped out on her last goodbye, with a swift downward spiral that hailed a trip to a local ER. When the phone rang just before midnight at my brother’s house, he assumed it was an update. But she was gone, like a night bird, swooping high into the midnight sky.; escaped from the ancient tent that kept her bound. And no goodbye.

My mother was never easy, but once you accepted who she was, it made your life, well not easy, but better. Quirky, defiant, stubborn and often withdrawn, but yet so fierce in her love for her children, she was a study in opposites. She was soft as a southern teacake – surrounded by barbed wire. We tried, all of us, over our adult years to bend and shape her into a more ordinary mom – enticing her into classes or retreats, even bus tours. And how about book clubs, or the senior center? But she ignored us, usually withdrawing further into her New York Times crossword puzzle or a solitary bench in a musty library, a pile of books beside her.

We were different. She was brilliant, wary of the world before her and unsettled until she could piece it all apart and diagnose it. She hated laziness and stupidity, especially together, and was blunt and condescending in her opinions. I was more like my dad – simple minded, naive enough to step boldly into quicksand, then fast enough to scuttle out. I was a peacemaker; she wielded a sword. I let go, she held fast to any grudges she could gather.

As she aged, her world grew smaller, but the possibilities for catastrophe loomed large. Anxiety grew as her mind slipped away, replaced by copious Post-It notes dotting her walls and cabinets. Then a major artery in the left frontal lobe went. The next year, one on the right blew, and we had a brand new mom before us. The intellect, and the fear attached to it, was completely erased. The New Mom laughed a lot, painted her nails with White Out, ate napkins and would tickle you if you stood close enough.

“How are you doing?” I asked my brother Bob last week.

“I’m not sure who I miss the most,” he said. “The Old Mom or the New Mom.”

The New Mom lasted a lot longer than we thought she would. We assumed one more stroke would take her quickly but instead she declined slowly in a sweet little nursing home overlooking the Hudson River. You would find her in a wheel chair, sometimes wiping the fingers of her baby doll and kissing them one by one. In 2011, as I came around the corner and met her eyes, I said goodbye to the last remnant of the mom who loved me. She no longer knew who I was.

At the funeral, I was transfixed by an old black and white photo of a young woman, her mahogany hair long and messy, clothes hanging loose on her thin frame with the knee highs pulled up on her skinny white legs. My grandfather put this frail young girl on a train back when deep South meant a whole different country and sent her towards her dreams; graduate school, Columbia University, New York City. I think he knew that the little redhead who survived encephalitis at age five was much tougher than she looked. Her smile is wide but slightly pensive. She is looking at her future husband holding the camera, with guarded hope. This is the mom I never knew. By the time we could talk face-to-face, that hope had morphed to a droll cynicism and her courage had hardened to defiance. Like me, she had buried a son, and reached out to grasp the hand of a God she took years to come to terms with, surrendering in fragments and pieces. Ironically, the child that gave her the most trouble, (that would be ME) showed her the way to grace, to a Jesus who was bigger than a book or a class in theology, a Jesus who would love her tenaciously yet tenderly in her loneliness and fear. After I lost Spencer in 2002, she became an outright evangelist. “Let me tell you about my grandson who loved Jesus,” she would begin.

Mama was an amazing cook, seamstress and a natural beauty too but she never taught me a dang thing except how to make the best southern biscuits in Dixie. You better handle that dough like it’s a newborn. Maybe if I’d stuck around past age 15 I would’ve picked up some things, but I doubt it. I did share her overall disinterest in all things material and domestic. I think we were both hippies before they were invented.

“Nothing in my house matches,” I told my granddaughter Brooklynn recently, as she nodded in agreement. “It’s wonderful! You don’t have to worry if something breaks!” We laughed together, and then I added almost secretively, “Some people have matching everything!”

She gave me a sweet smile and said, “Ama, I think MOST people have matching everything.” And we laughed at the craziness of that, and of her grandmother too.

They say daughters invariably become their mothers. That thought would’ve made me cringe 40 years ago, but now I like it, most the time. And when I don’t ( my siblings and I have coined a new adjective for it: being “martha-ish”) I just ask Jesus to pull away the barbed wire and give me His love instead.

After I got the call that my mother died, I lay down on the couch in the quiet house and cried. I will miss her; the old mom, the new mom and that gutsy redhead alone on a train. But as I stared out at the moonlit night, I suddenly saw her running, and laughing. It was a mom I never knew! She was free and she had some people to see. And I waited until I could hear her laughter no more, until the night turned silent again. No more goodbyes, sweet mommy. Then I climbed back into bed and fell asleep.

Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped. Psalm 124:7

June 9, 2017

A Father’s Perfect Love

My dad —circa 1962

Pawwwwwt Chestah!!

I can still hear the conductor holler over the clack and rattle of the train and the steady kachuk kachuk kachuk of the wheels on the rails. Port Chester, Rye, Harrison. Back then, in the 60’s, it wasn’t an odd thing for a little girl to ride the train alone. The conductors that strode like drunk men up and down the swaying cars knew my dad, knew that he worked in New York City like most men from Riverside, Connecticut and that he would be there, at Grand Central Station, watching for the wave of the conductor as he would signal me to go.

“There he is!” they would call out, as I ran from the train to my father.

New Rochelle! These places didn’t look much different to me until we reached Harlem.

“One hundred and twenty fifth Street!” I learned that was the final call before the last stop. The station was filled with people that were strange to me, dark-skinned with ragged clothes. But it was more than the way they looked, or didn’t look. They moved slower, like they had no where to get to, like trains and time didn’t matter much, not like my town, where men in crisp suits and new briefcases often ran to catch the train..

The seats were soft blue velvet and smelled like my dad, cigarettes and shaving cream. I liked to pull up the window so I could feel the air rush in and hear the tracks beat out their rhythm…kachuk, kachuk, faster and faster as we pulled away from each station. I could smell the air change as we pressed forward, farther and farther from the salt air of Long Island Sound and the heavy perfume of tall maple and elm trees, into the colorless exhaust of Harlem. It was different in so many ways.

My father took me to Radio City Music Hall several times — Nutcracker Suite, the Rockettes — all the things he knew a girl would love. I remember gawking at the bare legs flying up in the air in unison, because these women must be the “chorus girls” my mother made reference to when I behaved in a coarse way, like belching or chewing gum. But what I loved the best was going to his office, high above Manhattan, being “Bob’s little girl” and the pride he showed as he smiled down at me while people filtered through. I knew that I, his big desk and the view over New York City, made him feel special, like he did something right, and I loved sharing that moment.

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

I never thought of this Father too much growing up, the one in church. For one, heaven seemed very far away, so this Father must be too. My sister thought they were saying, Harold be thy name instead of Hallowed which made more sense because we had an Uncle Harold. Who ever heard of someone named Hallowed? Anyway, I had a father, right here and he was the daddy of the big desk and the Rockettes and whisky breath, the bedtime stories that would take you to castles with swords and knights and knaves, the scratchy kiss good-night from the thick stubble on his nighttime face. I can still see him waiting for me, outside the train, smiling like a big kid waiting for a friend to come out to play.

The visits changed. One day my mother called me outside, to the porch where she shook a glass filled with ice and bourbon.

“Your father lost his job,” she said. I was 12, I couldn’t grasp the full meaning of what that meant, nor did she try to explain. But I knew that things had changed, just like when my brother died four years before. The wind was turning around again. I looked at my feet and turned away.

The next time I met my dad at Grand Central station, he took me to a bar. Everyone there knew him, just like when he took me to his office.

He ordered a drink, and took out his cigarettes, shaking the pack and offering me one.

“I know you smoke. You steal my cigarettes all the time, so I’m giving you one now.”

I took it and put it between my lips.

“Always wait for a man to give you a light,” he instructed me, as he pulled his lighter out of his jacket and flipped it open with a swift shake. He reached across the table and waited for me to draw smoke, then lit his own. I don’t remember if we ate.

There was no Radio City Music Hall that night. We got on a subway beneath Grand Central Station, sitting in the front, near the conductor, so we could see the tracks ahead, the stations appearing bleak and dirty as we stopped along the way, the doors sliding open to swallow the rancid air. Finally the subway reached the end, then jerked backwards, sending us back again. We stayed in our seats, watching the tracks disappear into the dark, not saying much.

Even after I met Jesus, at age 31, years after the subway ride and watching the daddy I loved slide into a deep pit of failure and despair, I still didn’t trust this new Father. I was grateful though. I knew He had rescued me from the same snare that caught my dad, I knew He had had somehow fixed what was broken. The mess that teachers and cops and therapists had just scratched their heads at, God reached down into my heart and in a flash – it was like new. But love? I doubted it.

My father died at age 56, when I was pregnant with my second son. He had been sober for seven years and in an awkward dance of reconciliation, we tried to build a bridge over years of my pain and his shame. I wrote letters because it was safer, describing the raw beauty of the lower Cape, and he lived within the fierce gales and the unrestrained sea. He liked that the gulls kept flying, even though they couldn’t get ahead. Cancer took him away from me for good in 1981.

Forgive your father, my new Father spoke to me. I argued a bit — we had made amends. He’s dead anyway.

Forgive your father, He insisted. So I did. And a strange thing happened. I could love again. My old dad, and my new Dad too.

This Father’s day, love your father if you can. And if you can’t, I suggest you meet the new One. And forgive.

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6 NIV

No one. That seems a little exclusive, I know, but you are all invited.

It’s funny — when I remember my dad, I remember the dad who loved me, the dad who sat through the Nutcracker Suite, smiling, who showed me off to his friends. He was a good dad. But I am even more grateful to my real Father, the one who gave me life, who poured His love out into my heart – a heart that quit love, quit hope, like those people a little girl on a train looked out at in Harlem 50 years ago. I couldn’t name it Despair then, but I would come to know it well.

Thank you, Father, for your love that is pure and boundless and never fails. And for Jesus, who made a way for me to find you. Your name is not Harold, it is Love. Perfect love.

November 29, 2016

Turkeys That Fly and Other Miracles

Turkeys don’t fly. Or so we thought. My husband and I were taking a walk to town when we passed a young man on a bike.

“I might be crazy but I think I just saw some turkeys taking off from a roof over there!” He was breathless, and looked back over his shoulder at us as he kept riding. We smiled, thinking , yes, he could be crazy, but then right in front of us we saw a huge bird swoop down and up over the street, high up into a tall oak. There it perched on what seemed to be a very small branch for such a large bird, its long neck and broad tail silhouetted against the dark blushing sky.

“Wow!” we both said together. Wild turkeys are not strangers here, and their numbers have been growing. Mostly you see them on the ground, clucking and waddling, not moving with great intention. Occasionally they will flutter upwards to perch on a shed or pile of wood. But I’ve never seen one fly.

We just returned from New York, from a beautiful Thanksgiving with my family —siblings, spouses and kids who are not kids anymore joined with my sons, their wives and my five grandchildren. Even my daughter-in-law’s family came and joined in with singing and playing all kinds of instruments. Making music together must be a form of love. The night ended with my granddaughters taking the stage and singing Amazing Grace as we sang and played along.

I keep looking at a picture of us taken on a bridge the next day, 11 of us. Just 15 years ago we were five, then four a month after Christmas, when Spence died. I remember looking into a camera that summer, my arms around both boys, unable to smile. Whether we liked it or not our new name was Homicide Survivor, and all of the implications and statistics of our survival came with it. The empty space screams at you at first, then settles in like a dense fog. You see what’s closest but everything ahead and behind is obscured. And the two boys I held onto that day were not guaranteed – I was too aware of that much. Now four has turned into 11.

Eleven! Who would guess that even through the ashes and ruin of a family brought down to their knees through grief that something so wondrous could grow? And grow and grow. In one picture taken on Thanksgiving day, I am holding two babies, one for each arm. Leo Murray Farnsworth arrived in July and Quincy Spencer MacLeod joined us in October. They can eat turkey next year!

A dear friend who lost her son two years ago this month told me she was relieved to find others had left small treasures at her son’s grave.

“I am afraid people will forget him,” she lamented. Well I know the feeling. I found a picture I had of her son testifying at the Spencer Macleod Three Point Shoot Out the summer before he died and sent it to her.

“I miss Larry,” I told her. People think saying this kind of thing heightens the pain of loss but it actually helps. She will never stop missing him. It’s good to not be alone, especially when the pain is so dense you can’t see very far.

No sooner had the first turkey settled in the top of the tall oak, when two more ascended over the street, up, up , up into the sky. Turkeys are not known for their grace, but the huge wings pumping against the pewter sky and lighting on the top of a bare tree were magnificent. It’s a tad ironic that we just celebrated a day when millions of their genetically altered and fatter kin were slaughtered.

We walked down to Main St. and it felt good after a four hour drive home. The air was cold and wet and the downtown was deserted except for a few stragglers like us. The Christmas decorations were up but so restrained I wasn’t sure if they were decorations at all. I miss the full bore garish displays of Pawtucket – Santa, baby Jesus, angels and elves all competing for tiny lawns and dirty windows. And lots of lights, colored lights blinking and shouting Merry Christmas. I think Jesus would love it too. There’s a lot to celebrate.

The Cape air felt good to breathe in and out as we walked – the salt from the Sound mixed with the smell of decaying leaves scattered around my feet. I thought of my two sons’ cars traveling south still, their wives who love them so well and the children that adore their daddies. I say a quick prayer for the babies to sleep, for their cars to be filled with peace and joy. It’s a long way to North Carolina. And I thank God for the miracle of His grace, His abundant life.

Those who sow in tears will reap in joy. Psalm 126:5 NKJV

People may forget, but He does not.

On the way home, we strained our eyes to search for the dark outline of a turkey 50 feet up in a tree. We could spot two for certain. The wind was picking up and we wondered how they could sleep on the thin branches waving in the dark. But then again, who would guess that turkeys really can fly? Who could guess?

“What’s this about flying I hear?”
“Pure nonsense, dear. Ignorant humans!”

July 20, 2016

Old Nurses Never Die; They Just Have Surgery

Left on the whiteboard by an elderly patient I cared for.

Robin. I had penned the letters over silk tape and stuck it to a locker 7 years ago. I caught the corner and pulled it off, closed the empty locker door and headed out, taking one last look at the small break room.

The room is tucked away, off a hallway used by everyone from Risk Management to Interpreters to Float Pool, but is seldom used at all. There’s no TV in it; just a small table and 3 chairs. But it’s a room I’ve used every work-morning to pray in, as I watch the steady flow of workers crossing the parking lot and the sun edging up over the bog. I slow myself down, making sure Jesus leads before I jump into the unknown world of the sick or injured. The room also provided a small respite at many lunch breaks, allowing me to reflect in silence, away from the din of alarms, phones, call bells and anxious families.

I entered the world of healthcare 30 years ago by answering an ad in the paper for a Personal Care Attendant, or PCA. If you had asked anyone who knew me then, I would be on your Least-likely-to-become-a-nurse list or just least-likely-to-care. I had little patience for sissies with sniffles, and my sons will tell you I had Zero Tolerance for whining.

“Go to you room if you need to whine,” I would tell them, and they quickly learned that whining to yourself is absurd.

So I answered the ad. The wife of a 40-year-old quadriplegic needed help. Jimmy had broken his neck drunk on a motorcycle and now depended on someone else to feed, wash, dress and move him. It was the first time I had to push past the awkwardness of a helpless human body, so vulnerable and frail, and learn to care for the soul within it as well. This was a huge learning curve and there were days where Jimmy and I both wanted to quit.

It was no coincidence that Jimmy’s wife, and reluctantly Jimmy, were born again Christians and I was not. This man, with just enough strength to push out the air to argue, caught me in the middle of his beef with a God that would lay him up in bed for the next 20 years, at the mercy of clueless people like me. Oddly, it positioned me in a place of wanting to know a few things too, and before I left Jimmy’s for nursing school, I too had surrendered to this beautiful and terrifying Father who could woo us with cords of boundless love and mercy yet love us enough to let us go, even if it meant crashing into a telephone pole drunk.

As I walk down the deserted hallway from the break room, the rooms behind the closed doors come alive in my memory. I first worked on this floor as a “student nurse” in the late 80’s, then hired as an RN when I graduated. I remember caring for a 90-year-old woman here, my young face startled by her pale gossamer skin and network of tiny blue veins threading up her arms. She was amused by my innocence.

Then in this room, my first young guy, a diabetic, handsome and flirtatious, and how I flushed when I had to give him an IM injection in his left buttock. And room 27, where I saw my first dead man, sitting up in bed like he was watching TV, but he was gone, just a body that I would help wrap and pull the zipper over his face. I have never grown used to that. And I remember an older nurse, like me now, telling me “No matter what, take a break. Get off the floor!” And I’ve held to that advice, 26 years later.

But I’ve always loved nursing, to be face to face with sickness, and the despair and fear it can bring. To be there, to join in, has been as natural for me as breathing and I recognize it as a particular gift from God, made more perfect after I lost my son 14 years ago. “Deep calls to deep,” the Bible says. When you have gone through some things, others will trust you with their pain.

I have an old nurses body now; the shoulder has been injected, the hip scoped, the back MRI’d and I think the knees are next on the chopping block. So I’ve taken a step back from the bedside into the IV team when I return from surgery. I will still see many patients, but I will not be washing them, hauling them out of bed or whispering in their ear when they are trying to die. But I know my God, and I know He never takes back His gifts, He just changes the scenery from time to time.

I’m glad nursing has never defined me, and I always feel a little sorry for nurses who do try to get their sense of purpose from a career that doesn’t often give back in the ways we want – few kudos from the upper echelon, often yelled at by a patient long before you get a thanks (You want me to get up?!?!) and spending a lot of time in places with “output” that I won’t describe here, although if you see a group of nurses together laughing until they cry, it’s likely over the things we can’t tell anyone. “Fine,” is what I tell my husband at dinner when he asks how my day went. As all the faces and images flash before me, I know Fine is safe and enough.

Neither do I define myself by being a wife, mom and a grandma, roles I cherish way beyond nursing. I would drive them all crazy if I did. As it is, I have a husband who still adores me, two beautiful daughter-in-laws who apparently love me, but more importantly love Jesus, my sons and grandchildren. I simply can’t ask for more.

Delight your self in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4 ESV

Many of us just use Jesus as an add-on, like a rabbit’s foot charm.

If I do this, then I get that.

It’s in our Promise Book, conveniently alphabetized for a quick look; Children, Health, Wealth with a coordinating scripture we can chant over our own selfish wants. But delighting ourselves in Him means our lives are hid in Christ and He in us. It is a posture of submission that grants abiding and oneness, so that our desires will always align with His will. Obedience becomes a joy, not a hard task. And what I think I really need may be the precise thing He will remove or never give. Can we trust this Jesus, this God-man who says we must hand over all, including our plans and our identity?

Corrie Ten Boom said “There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.” This was a truth I discovered after Spence died, and that pit seemed bottomless. As a nurse, I have had to stake my career on it; that in the despondent alcoholic, the cancer ridden mother and the cries of a parent who lost a child, whether that child is 6 or 60, I can share that place of overwhelming darkness because Jesus has gone before us.

My nursing career is not done yet, just transitioning once again. And my hope and prayer is this:

God, use whatever I have in every new place, in each new day. Give me manna for today that I may share it, giving glory back to you. Your crazy daughter — Robin

June 13, 2016

Don’t Be Cliche`

Dear friends,

Not only am I proud to be Spencer’s mom, but Miles and Jake’s mom too. I have been bugging my son Miles for a blog for four years. Finally, he sent a copy of a baccalaureate graduation speech he gave for his high school students. The last third of this speech is his beautiful testimony. Enjoy and please pass along to your graduate friends!

Baccalaureate Speech by Miles MacLeod

It is truly an honor to be here. I am humbled by this opportunity. Heritage graduates, don’t be afraid of failure. Be true to thyself. This is the first day of the rest of your life. Follow your heart/ (backslash) passion/ (backslash) dreams. Be the change you wish to see. This is not the end; this is the beginning. Never stop learning. The future is what you want it to be. Everything happens for a reason. Take chances. Pay it forward. Congratulations. Good luck and God bless.

In some ways, all of us are slaves to custom. It is certainly not reason that tells you to wear matching polyester robes and funny square hats whenever you successfully finish a pre-determined period of education. And so it does not surprise me that this week of celebration, known as graduation week, has similarly become beholden to custom’s literary cousin, the cliché. In an ironic twist, a week that is meant to celebrate the hard work of our young scholars is often framed by phrases that many English teachers consider lazy. Sure, they sound cool and make for good hashtags, but unwrap most clichés and underneath these nuggets of cultural wisdom is a nebulous blob of bland impracticality. I, for one, think that our Heritage graduates deserve better. So without delay, let’s take off our funny square hats, put on our thinking caps, and see where this speech takes us

So, where do we start? How about with three words to live by? Ready for it? Never… stop… breathing. Sounds a bit obvious right? Well, so is our first overused graduation cliché: Never stop learning. Sure, it sounds like good advice, especially in this setting, but here’s the thing. Your body is stuffed with 100 billion neurons and an equal amount of sensory receptors that make it their unending job to process information and, without fail, learn from it. In fact, our bodies are made to learn in much the same way that we are made to breathe or sneeze or blink. Without my encouragement, there is no doubt that 100% of you will continue to process information at an amazing rate. So how about some advice that is not so certain and far less cliché. Try this one: “Never stop… teaching.”

From Martin Luther King to Ms. Singh; from Coach K to Coach Kennedy; from Dr. Seuss to Dr. Savage –the men and women who have dedicated their life to teaching is a long and impressive list. For those that accept this challenge, it is a difficult and often thankless path. But it is so necessary. Teaching is what progresses not only our society but our humanity. Conflicts around the world will not end without people to teach forgiveness and reconciliation. Poverty will never end unless literacy and compassion are taught to the poor and rich respectively. Teaching is the reason that cars go faster, buildings get higher, and phones get bigger… and then smaller… and then bigger again. In short, if we want to continue to progress, we need more teachers.

Now for our graduates, teaching does not have to be a profession. But it needs to be a choice. My hope tonight, is that as you increase in experience and knowledge, you would, more often than not, make the decision, whenever it arises, to teach. On the one hand, you could say and do nothing. This will always be the easiest option. On the other hand, you could instruct, inspire, or, best of all, lead through example. This will take effort, creativity, and, at times, courage. It is the hardest option. I hope, for the sake of others, you choose it.

Another common graduation cliché reads like this: The future is what you want it to be. The reality, I am somewhat sad to say, is that the future is not what you want it to be. When I graduated from high school, I wanted lots of money, huge muscles, and a beautiful wife. I got one of them. I will let you try to guess which one. But believe me when I say, it was not from a lack of wanting that I nearly struck out. I mean think about it. If dictating the future was that simple, we could simply blame all the world’s current problems – world hunger, global conflicts, the Kardashians — on our previous graduates.

So if the future is not yours to mold and shape, then what are you to make of it? Make lemonade, says another common cliché. I say that’s a lot of sugar for a lifetime of disappointments. Instead, save your teeth, and remember this instead: The present can be what you want it to be.

You see, the original cliché got it wrong. You can’t control the future any more than you can wish away bad weather. But when rain clouds appear, and be certain they will, you can make sure your boots and umbrella are close by. Or, even better, kick off your boots and jump in some puddles. Whatever you do just remember, the only thing you might be able to control about the future, is your reaction to it. Throughout my life, I have observed that the happiest people are the ones who have learned this truth. My hope tonight is that most of you will too.

Now, I wish I could tell you that the bad advice will stop with graduation, but it won’t. Inevitably things will go wrong in life and when they do, you might hear something like this: everything happens for a reason. Or perhaps this: when God closes a door, he opens a window. Or my personal favorite: the Lord doesn’t give you more than you can handle.

As sweet and reassuring as these may be, like all clichés, they are dangerously simple. They represent, not reality, but a mixture of misplaced idealism and simplified half-truths. Problems arise when we come to believe that every bad thing will be accompanied with an opportunity and an explanation; we are, to a very large extent, setting ourselves up for disappointment and resentment.

I remember when I graduated high school, I was like a cliché myself. My life was simple, and it was fun. My entire belief system could be summarized into neat, little phrases, and on occasion, I would get them made into a tattoo for the world to see. A year into college, however, my world was rocked when my older brother was murdered in a senseless act of violence. For the first time, I realized how shallow my faith really was and how little my collection of cool sayings actually helped. There was no new window for me to climb through; there was no rainbow on the horizon; and as much as I pleaded with God to reason with me, I was met with only silence.

In the years that followed, it felt like I was slowly drowning in an ocean of anger and grief, and the only things being thrown to me were life preservers that didn’t float – a recycled cliché here, an out-of-context Bible verse there, and a promise of thoughts and prayers to come. I was growing tired of treading water. I craved a resting place, somewhere where the waters of doubt would not sweep me away.

Finally, too tired to do anything else, I decided to float. I spread my arms wide, trusted in something other than my own ability, and then…I did nothing.

When God saw that I was floating, he met me at those troubling waters. He did not offer me an explanation or point me towards a window he had just opened. Instead, He promised me heavy burdens with little explanation along the way, and the only thing he pointed out to me was my own weakness. And as bad as this may seem, it was strangely encouraging to discover that my pain and my shortcomings were all part of the plan. But they weren’t the only part. Also included in this plan was a heavenly father who could empathize with my grief and a personal savior who knew what it was like to walk alone in times of darkness.

Needless to say, I was eager to deal my handful of recycled clichés for 31,102 verses of Biblical truth. And when I finally made the trade, I learned something else: I learned that the old cliché – the Lord doesn’t give you more than you can handle – had gotten something terribly wrong. You see, my brother’s murder was more than I could bear. Luckily, however, the Lord doesn’t give you more than He can handle. And this realization has made all the difference.

In conclusion, the sooner you come to realize that life cannot be summarized by a bunch of over-simplified phrases of positive affirmation, the sooner you will get better at it.

Now, I know what you are probably thinking. Mr. Macleod, that advice is good and all, but it’s too long and impossible to remember. We need something catchy, something cool. Something we can remember forever and always. Fine, if I could boil down my entire speech into three simple words, words for you to live by and be inspired by, it would be these…

Don’t….be….cliché.

And if you are sitting there thinking that this is a rather lazy, over-simplified summary of the speech that doesn’t really help you in any way as you navigate the murky waters of adulthood,… well, you’re on the right path.

Heritage High School, Class of 2016, you can put your funny hats back on.

Thank you.

The girls sharing the spotlight with daddy at his Teacher of the Year acceptance speech.
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