Spencer's Mom

Except a kernel of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

A Father’s Perfect Love

*** Dear friends- in the beautiful but sometimes perplexing spirit of Father’s Day, I am reposting this from 2017.  I pray it will bless and minister to someone!

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.

 

 

**** A beautiful song “How Deep the Father’s Love For Us” sung by Selah. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKDujmtyAVk

 

 

The Advocate

The door swings open, and I follow the young Victim Services Advocate into the parole hearing room. She’s young and pregnant with her first baby, a girl she said, after she realized it was okay to talk about everyday things with me. She had to keep me separate, in a small conference room with windows and a water cooler until the hearing began and there was not much to say although she warned me that I would hear details of my son’s murder.

            David’s family and “supporters” are separated to the right of the wood paneled room, watching me enter. A rail runs down the middle of the seats that face the parole board, and I am ushered to the left, where I sit flanked by the nice advocate. I notice a large man with a square-shaped head, thick ruddy features, like he’s from Southie. He blocks the door, actually fills the door, then I look to the left and see three more guards, wearing sweaters, to look less threatening is my guess, but you can see the bulge around the belt from weapons and walkie talkies.

            I lean back in my seat, to wave at David’s family. I had spoken to his mom for the first time ever, two nights ago. She called, nervous. “I was scared to call you – I felt ashamed.” When you touch murder, no matter which side you stand on, you get dirty. It has been 17 and a half years since we were all changed in some horrific way. I remembered watching David’s mom at his trial, the angry footsteps, the voice shrill and desperate. Then the father, slumped over on a bench outside the courtroom, the loss bearing down. I had my own pain, a demanding, consuming house-guest I could not shake. I had been treading just above the rising current of a dark and violent nightmare for over a year and i was exhausted. My son was dead, the innocent victim of a senseless murder. There was little else I could think about then.

            David and Rodolfo, another teenager charged with Spencer’s murder, pled guilty to Second Degree murder. They had just watched their friend get sent away for life without parole and decided a guilty plea to a lesser charge was safer. They stood shackled, facing me, as I told them I forgave them. It probably didn’t count for much at that moment. Twenty years. That meant their whole life then – two boys from Cape Cod headed to a maximum state prison. Survival might’ve mattered more.  I was numb with grief; my forgiveness was a reflex, an act of obedience I never questioned or pieced apart. I would not have had the strength or mental acuity. I just obeyed the same Jesus who forgave me.

            The door on the opposite side of the room opened and more guards, then David wearing a crisp blue shirt with a tie and khaki pants. He was shackled, hands and feet. He told me he would be shackled and unable to look at me when we talked the week before. His father’s hair was white now, and his mother wasn’t angry anymore, but had the soft worry lines that carve across a mother’s heart. His sister tried to walk over to my side, to hug me, but was instantly blocked by two guards and I had to remember that a parole room is often a place of visceral and sudden rage. But today, God was there. He was Hope to the convict’s family, Salvation to the soul of the young man shackled.  He was there to open the eyes of those who could not see.

            I had five minutes to speak, the only voice of the Victim’s side of the hearing, but I spoke for Spencer’s family, and for Spencer too. I said we forgive, I said let God continue to use the ground where Spencer fell, bringing forth life from death. Redemption – only He can do this. I couldn’t see anyone except for the parole board, but I could feel my words finding a place to settle in each heart. When I stood to go back to my seat, I noticed the big square guard had become very animated. He was nodding his head at me, then he winked. A minute later, he gave a thumbs up. I could see the side of David’s face and it was wet from tears.

             I was ushered back out as the Victim Advocate spoke to more guards on her walkie-talkie and then was led down the stairs. The big guard followed closely and waited as I checked out at the window on the ground floor.

“I’ve worked here for 17 years,” he said, then he paused, searching. “I’ve never heard anything like that.” His eyes looked puffy and wet. He smiled. “You are amazing.”

            “No!” I shot back, shaking my head. “I’m not. God is amazing!” Then I noticed an older gentleman to my right, who I had not seen, with thick white neatly combed hair and sparkling clear blue eyes that matched his tie. He was nodding and laughing softly, pointing upward. Then the guard saw him too and said,

            “Oh yes! Of course!” 

            I am not amazing at all. I am Mary Magdalene, or the woman sitting in the dirt, surrounded by outraged men with fists clutching stones as Jesus writes in the sand beside me. “He who is without sin…” Who can stand?

            Sometimes people say, “How could you do that? How could you forgive?” Because murderers stand under the same fountain of Grace that I do. The black grime and stain of my sin was not a better or easier sin. It costs Jesus the same price.

            Outside the breeze rattles the tired late summer leaves, David’s family and friends gather in a loose circle, relieved, breathing in hope and the sweet cool morning air. I hug some more people then leave, relieved to be alone. I have an hour before Rodolfo’s hearing and I have to eat.

            I pick a small table at Wendy’s with the most sunlight streaking across the  top and open up my salad and chili, thinking about the parole hearing, how God has again kept me and I’m grateful, so very grateful.

He shall cover you with His feathers, And under His wings you shall take refuge; His truth shall be your shield and buckler. Psalm 91:4
            The tables around me fill with office workers, sales clerks, old men who eat slow and look out the window and a young mother with a stern voice and small children who don’t pay attention. I thought of the pregnant Victim Advocate – how her life would change soon and it would be a good thing to be away from the violence, the outrage, the wounds that never heal.

            Then I thought of the little man with the blue eyes, almost turquoise it seemed and how they danced. He never spoke, I realized; he didn’t have to.

             I wonder if he was an angel…I thought as I finished my lunch and got up to leave, to head back to the Massachusetts Parole Board. It would not surprise me one bit. He was a spark of Joy in the midst of an endless sorrow, pointing to Christ, the true Advocate – the One who sits on both sides of the rail. I am not at all amazing, but my Jesus surely is.

 

Beautiful song by Selah : There Is a Fountain

 

 

 

 

 

Love Lessons From Jail

“First Corinthians 13…”

      I’m opening a small Bible that I brought to give to one of the inmates.

      “Where is that?” Jessica asks.

      “It’s right here.” I push the Bible towards her, keeping my finger on the page.

      Kara glares at her from across the table. It’s her Bible after all. I just gave it to her. Jessica grabs my pen and starts to mark the page.

     “Do you mind if I make a little mark here? Just so I can find it?” Jessica doesn’t even look up.

      Kara leans forward, starts to say something but stops. She looks exhausted, her hair is a matted mess like she’s been sleeping in the woods, but I catch a little fire in her eyes, then she sits back, shaking her head. She’s too tired to care. “No, it’s alright,” she says softly even though Jessica has already underlined the chapter number, a small mark that she won’t ever look for.

      I want to check my watch but I don’t want them to think, no, to know that I am tired too. I stand and walk back over to the whiteboard.

Love is patient…

       The topic is Love tonight at the jail. I picked it – it’s February after all. I realized scrolling through past lessons that I had picked Love last February too, but I can’t remember how it went. Better than this, I bet. It’s an off night. Only three came out, for reasons I can never understand, and sometimes that works for the best. A small group is less intimidating, the girls can open up more and God will help me. But tonight it’s two new girls and Gail, an older woman who I swear lives here. Her sentence stretches out past the horizon, due to frequent trips to the hole. Someone told me she lived on the streets with “her man.” But it’s been a while.

Love is kind…

      I draw two big hearts side by side and write WORLD over one and GOD over the other.

      “Tell me what kind of love the world gives,” and I watch their faces twist up in confusion so I reset it.  “Ok, what kind of love does God give us?”

      “Unconditional,” the girl with the matted hair says flatly.

      “Good!” I write it inside the God heart, then write Conditional in big letters in the other heart. Now they get the game. The God heart fills up with Freedom and Forgiveness and the World heart fills with selfishness and shame. I feel like this is too easy so I throw in some Greek.

Eros. Phileo. Agape.

      “Agape sounds Indian,” Gail says.

      “No it’s Greek,” I correct her, feeling the foolishness of this conversation. I can see her bumming money at the bus station. Hey do you want to hear some Greek? As soon as I tell them that Eros means sensual or sexual love they completely regress to somewhere around fourth or fifth grade. I sit back down, feeling defeated and a tad disgusted.

Love never demands it’s own way.

      I’m praying under my breath as I try to rustle the last shreds of my lesson together. Gail senses my despondency.

      “I can be mean sometimes,” she says.

      “Well, I know you can be sweet sometimes too Gail. ” I’m touched by her honesty. “And I can be mean too.” My words settle like pretty snowflakes.

      Then Gail says, “I wish a was a bird. A big bird.” I wonder where she’s going but I want to think of David writing a psalm about flying away.

      Jessica starts to laugh at her. “So you can escape?”

      “No, so I can poop on everyone who’s pooped on me.” By now Jessica is sputtering and turning red, and falling into Gail.

Love bears all things…

      “Then you want to be a horse!” as she demonstrates the size of horse manure with her hands. Kara is silent, her face expressionless and it occurs to me she may be withdrawing form something. Or very medicated.

      “Ok guys, back to love.” They stop laughing and look up. I feel like the kind of teacher I couldn’t stand. Dull. A droning voice. Even my notes wonder what I’m doing.

      Jesus made a point of showing us over and over that what we thought we had was beside the point. Five fish. Two mites. Or should we just call down fire and toast them all? I remember one time when my husband and I were pastoring that I confessed to my mother that I felt like telling everyone to go to hell. She thought that was terrific. But it wasn’t – it was a screaming indication that I was spiritually bankrupt. I was sitting at the piano smiling every Sunday, embracing women I considered faithless and teaching their little demons about Jesus in the cold basement. Apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:5) Oh yeah, I forgot. Again.

       An exasperated Jesus asks his disciples, “Are you being willfully stupid?” (Matthew 15:16, MSG) They weren’t getting it. Neither was I, trying to love what i thought was worth it, with a small love that I manufactured for my own benefit. And here I was again; a teacher trying to teach something that I understood but didn’t really know. I forgot AGAIN.

Love hopes all things..

      “Do you want to know why I’m here?” They are silent. “I’m here because I love you.” The words come out soft and I am as surprised as they are. Yes, that’s it.

      “I’m here because Jesus loves me. I don’t deserve it, but He does and He’s put His love in me. That’s why I’m here. Because I love you. And Jesus loves you.”

      Kara looks up from the table, her eyes searching. Jessica and Gail are looking straight at me, and I know I saw just a small flash of hope, like a shooting star.

Love rejoices in the truth.

        As I drove home that night I prayed for Kara and Jessica and Gail. I knew that despite my dumb lesson in Greek, that the Holy Spirit was able to take my notes and breathe upon them – to feed 5,000 with two loves of bread, to feed three women with the feeble prayers of another woman who knows what it’s like to be held captive, without hope, then set really free. And He is still able to teach an old teacher a new lesson in Love – even when I’m willfully stupid. It just takes a spark, a small spark of humility and a flash of hope. That’s all He really needs.

Love never fails.

 

*** All names have been changed, except Jesus.

(All Love scripture from 1 Corinthians 13, NKJV)

 

 

Surrender

Dear friends,

Please forgive my blogging vacation. I am finally writing a book and making reasonable progress, so I have approached a few of my favorite writer friends to be my guests. This one is from my favorite writer/friend and my precious big brother, Bob. He asked if it was “too personal”, but to me, a quest for God is never too personal, although it is what makes us each as different as snowflakes from the next soul. It is, in my opinion, the only thing in life that matters, and if we can’t be sometimes painfully honest in our journey, if we can’t say, “God, where are you?” then we have stopped searching and have settled for recliner religion.

So here it is. Thanks Bob, and your little sister will continue to pray, will love to pray, for you to know God’s perfect will, and of course, to meet Jesus face to face.

 

Church eclipsed by Empire State Building (Photo by Bob)

Church eclipsed by Empire State Building
(Photo by Bob)

 

Surrender

When both of your parents die – if you have been lucky enough to have relatively sane and loving ones – you lose more than those dear souls who have seen you from cradle to who you are now. You lose the only sources of unconditional love you have on this planet.

 Your mother and father, though they may judge, will never stop loving you no matter what mistakes you make, no matter what you’ve done, what level of depravity you’ve sunk to, who you’ve hurt, how much damage you’ve done to yourself and others.

My mother is still living though she ceased to know who I am some years ago. When she was cognitive there were doubts about her sanity and even about the extent of her unconditional love for her children. Her famous line – that she had trotted out many times for at least my sister and myself – was:

“I don’t even like you.”

Those words, though, were belied by her tears and worry when we were in trouble. I felt, underneath it all, unconditional love. I felt it from my father too though his fear often caused him to cover it with anger.

My father died in 1980 of esophageal cancer. My mother suffered several strokes in the last ten years, which has left her as a little child with no understanding of her own children or their lives. Good thing I haven’t needed unconditional love in the past ten years, except…I do right now.

I also needed it thirty years ago – though I didn’t know it at the time. I was sick and depleted from drinking a bottle of Jack Daniels a day. Every day I could somehow get by, working as a pantry cook and drinking myself into unconsciousness at night, but I was sleeping on the floor of my brother’s abandoned apartment and I was thirty-three years old. That is the point that my mother came to visit and told me she could not bear to lose me and that I must either get myself to AA or she would commit me to a hospital.

Love. The bonds of love are all we have. I believe I was put here with the sole purpose of creating and maintaining those bonds. Strange, but at the time my mother expressed her unconditional love and the good people of Alcoholics Anonymous expressed their kindness and support, I became open to another source of boundless affection and caring. It was at once like a distant memory and an old friend.

I have heard many times from friends, from TV, from articles on the web that the only people who believe in God are those that are raised – ‘brainwashed’ – in a religion or those who have suffered such a crisis that they believe God is the only solution – a ‘crutch’ for the lame.

The crutch theory makes perfect sense to me. Only those that need God, see God. My atheist friends mean the term to point at a sort of hallucination of necessity but it fits me well. I only seek God – see God – when I am desperate.

I am desperate now. It has been awhile since I talked to God. My voice is hesitant and unsure, “Excuse me…Are you there?” and my prayers are pathetic “God, I need you to love me”.

I am almost 64 years old. I wear jeans to work, my co-workers are young and hip and my office is in the heart of ‘Silicon Alley’. I can almost forget that I’m well…old. The church pews of the cathedrals on Fifth Avenue are spotted with the dim forms of the elderly, the ones long missing their earthly sources of unconditional love. Who is there to love them now? And this is what I think, who is there to love me now?

My dear sister says God will love me, has always loved me. She has offered me up in a prayer but though deeply moved I imagine the answer is something like “You, beloved Robin are doing my will…your brother, well…”

I can almost see the path I was meant to take over these last five years; it is barely visible trail plotted with bright points: do not put drugs into your body, turn your attention to those you love, learn to be a worker among workers, keep your life an open book so that those bound to you may read it. There it is, steady and straight beside the one I took, the path of secrets, fear, and arrogance.

The prayer I make in the full confidence of desperation – they call it the ‘gift of desperation’ in AA – the one I ask right now on the train to Katonah is simply: “What?” The answer is: “You are beloved; you are on my path.”

*************************

You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. Jeremiah 29:13 ESV 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good Courage

 

Buried treasure

Buried treasure

“Treasure” the neatly penned label read. I scanned the pile of boxes stacked against my desk. Something made me label this one box, besides the occasional urge to organize my life. When I sit at my desk, I can reach all the things I love; pictures of husband, kids, grandkids, changing with the calendar – and faces of those that are gone now, framed memories. My dad smiles, tan and shirtless from a beach, my brother Timmy and I arm in arm in front of a green canvas tent at a campground, and Spence to my right, his little Cambodian sister Jade smiling from atop is shoulders, his face focused, not smiling but not sad, the gaze deep and searching. A corkboard above is covered in sheathes of photos, scriptures I must never forget, a note scrawled by my granddaughter, “Hello I hope you are not feling lonely – hope you r filt wif joy”, and some of Spencer’s prayers he wrote to God alone.

I smiled and pulled the Treasure box out from under the pile. Whatever it was, was important, I mused. As I lifted the lid, I saw letters and cards, and as I thumbed through each one, I remembered those who dared to love me, reaching deep into my pain 14 years ago this month. I had culled the best of the best and named them appropriately; Treasure.

The cast of players was peculiar. There were letters from my sons, including Spencer, from my husband, encouraging me to live again, from the assistant DA, and a copy of a letter from Samuel Rutherford, a brazen Scottish preacher from the 1600’s who reached into my heart with his council to a young mother who had lost her daughter. Lining the bottom were Kina’s letters to my mother, written 50 years ago after my brother Timmy’s death. There was also a letter from Elisabeth Elliot, who went home this past year. She very promptly returned my correspondence twice when I wrote her after Spence died. I told her she was my spiritual mom and she thanked me for that. Then a letter from another spiritual mom, Marian, a woman who touched my life when I was in my 20’s and left a lasting imprint.

Marian was married to  my grandfather’s first cousin and neighbor, J.G.. My grandfather left home for good as a young man and became a doctor. J.G. was also educated,  but decided he loved raising cattle, children and pecan trees along the airy marshland of Edisto Island. Marian was a teacher from the mountains, inquisitive, a traveler and the hardest worker I ever met. She loved J.G. with an amused sideways glance, and they were both the first real Christians I ever met.

They took me into their lives and loved me, a free-range poet from New York City who landed on their porch in a jet stream of cocaine and Jack Daniels. There, side by side with this couple in the ebb and flow of farm life and the raw wild of this coastal island, I learned that God was among us, in the field, in the storm, in the broken down trucks. Marian showed me patience with humor, grace with humility. She held up a mirror and showed me Christ’s reflection before I could even put a word to it.

I pulled the yellow folded papers from the box, the familiar scrawl, hands that must’ve been 80 and arthritic; hands that worked and loved the energy of life and dirt and things that could grow. She had loved Spencer too. “A note from Marian Murray “ was at the top of the stationary with a birdhouse on it.

Courage is the basic virtue on which all others depend for vitality and life.

As I reread the words, I retraced the surprise I felt nearly 14 years ago. Amid a flood of flowery Hallmark sympathy notes, the word Courage had leapt out at me, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. Courage? But it was Marian so I had held the message tighter.

Of what use is wisdom if one hasn’t the courage to act wisely?

Of what value is love is one hasn’t the courage to love?

Of what value is truth if one hasn’t the courage to speak it?

Of what consequence is faith if one hasn’t the courage to embrace it?

 There was no signature, no wrap up, no “praying for you” or “May the Lord etc. etc.”.

Then on a page stapled to this were three scriptures.

We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed or broken. We are perplexed, but we do not give up and quit. 2nd Corinthians 4:8

 Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. Joshua 1:9

 There was that word again – be courageous. I was intrigued. Then lastly,

I waited patiently for God to help me; and He listened and heard my cry, He lifted me out of the pit of despair. Psalm 40:1-2

 Rereading this unusual sympathy note now, I realized how deeply these words had directed my path. She was taking me by the shoulders, and in an amazing act of love and rescue, shaking me and pointing upward. She was correcting my posture.

In a journal I kept after my son died, I wrote this over a year later, starting with Kina’s words to my mother:

“Courage is more than just grim determination – hanging on.” Real courage is stepping out into His “fullness of joy” when all of your sensibilities tell you to stop and hover at the edge of darkness, in the shadows of sorrow. I could live there always and I’m quite sure it is a place I will visit often. I don’t miss Spence any less or feel less sad that he’s not here. But my eternal life seems to start where I want it to. I can wait until I die, or I can meet God here on this side, and ask for the fullness of His joy – His joy strengthening me. I still stand at the edge and weigh this out.   October 18, 2003

 Marian came to visit me in June 2002, 5 months after Spence died. Her knees were bad but she would only let me help her down the stairs. She had never been to Cape Cod; maybe even Massachusetts. We drove along the Old Kings Highway, comfortable with silence, distracted by the rambling roses and lilacs. I was still stunned and exhausted with the daily work of grief. She was in her eighties, her presence there was all that had to be said. I drove her to Logan airport at sunrise. I don’t remember if we ever said “I love you” but watching her disappear into the airport, small and frail, I knew she had to love me a lot. Less than a year later she died peacefully, pneumonia finally overtaking the “lousy lungs” she endured since childhood.

“ I don’t know if I’m more of a grandmother, or mother or just friend to you,” she remarked once while we picked tomatoes in the full Carolina sun, sweat dripping off my face onto my dusty hands.

“Maybe all of them,” I suggested, and we laughed, an easy laugh that Marian taught me. A laugh that is not afraid.

I gently laid the note on top of the rest of the letters and cards and shut the lid.

January is a month of shadows, of hovering at the edge of sorrow in my life. Orion appears in the sky, sword drawn, signaling a time of year that is tough for me; an anniversary, a birthday. But I know God wants more than just a posture of grim determination. He wants to see me reach up past Orion, and touch His throne. He wants to hear me sing.

I could add to Marian’s message:

And of what use is life without the courage to really live it?

Be of good courage – for the Lord, your God is with you, bringing treasure.

You will show me the path of life. In your presence is fullness of joy. Psalm 16:11

The Next Step

Saying goodbye

Saying goodbye

Sunday morning. I swung the back door open, the door Rosie always used, but this time she circled the car three times, stopping at the door for a few seconds then looking up at me, and walking away. I knew what it meant. But the last time she circled she took a small jump into the car, dragging her back legs. As I picked her up, she flopped over onto her back, and looked at me, like Now what?

I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her up off the floor, enough for her to get enough leverage to climb up on the seat. Seventy pounds – my back was straining. I was talking to her the whole time, forgetting that she can no longer hear.

At the pond, where we have walked for the last six years, I open her door, and she looks down at the suddenly steep drop from the car seat to the ground, then she looks at me, apologetically. “Oh Rosie!” I touch her head, running my hand behind her ears, caressing her soft black fur. “Okay, it’s alright.” And I shut the door, returning to my seat, realizing we would not walk together again. She flopped against the back door, leaning her head out of the window and as we drove off I cried.

Wednesday morning. It was a long night. We could hear Rosie groaning, a strange new noise, unable to move. My husband got up and lifted her, helping her adjust, in the middle of the night, and I listened to her labored breathing, my heart aching. In the morning, she will not lift her head or thump her tail on the floor. She looks up at me sideways, panting, and looks away. I get ready for work, trying to entice her with food. Nothing.

At work I am distracted, which is not good in an ICU, so I ask to go home. I call the vet. Yes, they have one appointment at five, then nothing until next Monday. I circle the house, the yard, sobbing, stopping to talk to Rosie, who lies outside now. I lift her to her feet and she staggers, looking tired but attentive. She always knew when I cried. Her tail moves back and forth. There, there now, I am here, no need to cry.

My husband is painting the house, and trying to gently reason with me as I stand there, sobbing and shaking. She’s in pain, she won’t get better, just worse. He hugs me, and then picks up the brush. I call the vet.

I rode in the back seat with my hand on Rosie, who leaned out of the window, enjoying the fall air. It feels so wrong to kill what you have loved so much. CB lifted her out of the car to her feet, but she stumbled and fell going up the one step into the vet’s. I lifted her, now sobbing, “Oh Rosie, I’m so sorry. Oh Rosie!”

The Demerol worked quickly and she fell into my lap. Her breathing was easy and she slowly closed her eyes as I stroked her head and ears, and I realized this was the best time she has had in months. The vet sat on the floor too, and as we talked, Rosie slipped away. She was warm and soft in my lap but she was gone. I gently lowered her head to the floor and we went home.

So that you know, I am not Doctor Doolittle. When my sons’ gerbils began procreating, I took them and threw them off the back porch into the woods, two by two, with a final blessing of “Watch out for owls!” I have owned dogs that I wanted to kill. Rosie was different. (Read Rosie the Rescue Dog.)

Job, in the midst of epic loss proclaimed,

“The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

This is a posture I’ve tried to attain ever since I lost my son. I want to recognize first of all that everything that is mine is first God’s, and is a gift to me, as temporary as my own life, which he also holds in his hands. I want to love but also hold loosely. It’s a balance I strive for, knowing that I can trust my Father with this unpredictable ebb and flow of life.

And I knew when He took my son home, He would provide whatever it was I needed to survive. I couldn’t have even guessed at what that would be. But He knew, and one thing was a puppy named Rosie and nearly 14 years of faithfulness.

When we got home, I cleaned, which for me, is a crazy grief response. I bagged Rosie’s food and treats and C.B brought them to our neighbor, Will, whose two dogs are like his frat buddies. We were leaving in the morning for Maine so I packed, and cleaned some more, vacuuming up swirls of black fur and discovering two tennis balls under the car seats.

So much of life is just doing the next thing, taking the next step. We get caught and snared when we freeze. I know that sometimes the next step feels like a triathlon and every cell in your body is screaming, “Just lie down and quit!” Yet in the going is exactly where God meets us. Because the next step has another name for it: Faith.

I’ll be honest. Many of my steps in those haunting days of bottomless sorrow were more like running steps, escaping steps. I knew if I stopped it was over, that despair would swallow me whole, like the monsters I would run from in the dark as a child. So I kept running and Rosie would be beside me. As we aged together, the run turned to a walk, then a stroll and finally she had to say No, I can’t do it anymore. The Lord gives and then He takes away.

As I said when my cat died in May, I don’t do well with loss. You would think I would have a handy Rolodex, with coping skills in alphabetical order: Anger, Denial, all the way to Yada -Yada. But I don’t, it’s a big scrap pile and when I face another loss I seem to re-grieve the whole mess; my brother, my dad, my son, then the usual stuff like kids that grow up and no longer need you to help them with their Next Step. It’s tiring. I wake up to the stillness of another day and say, “Jesus help me.” And He does.

There are a couple of feral cats that have been showing up more frequently in my back yard. They must’ve mistakenly thought that Rosie, who was deaf and half-blind and liked cats anyway, would hurt them. I hid a bag of cat food behind the birdseed and I’ve been filling a little plastic bowl near the shed.

The other day C.B. said, “Have you been feeding those cats?” and I hid behind my magazine I was reading. I haven’t told him that in my spare time I look at pictures of puppies. It soothes, like cello music.

I want to get another dog someday, but first I’m trying to be grateful for Rosie, to seal every good gift from above with nothing but praise. I haven’t quite mastered this yet. I’m moody, prone to tears and sometimes cussing under my breath. But before we left for Maine, I drove down to the pond in the early morning, when Rosie and I would’ve walked, and I grabbed the two tennis balls and walked just a little ways, then rolled them both down the familiar dirt path, for the next dog who is maybe helping their Person walk off some kind of loss too. Then I looked at the mist rising off of the black pond, to the woods on the other side that I walked for six years, and the clouds dipped in orange lighting the eastern sky and not for the last time said, “Thank you Jesus” and turned towards the car, taking the next step.