By Anne Williston
~ words meant for reality ~

“Do you mind waiting out here?” My husband glances towards the room where his friend is hooked up to half a dozen machines, brain dead according to his wife.  She had her daughter call to ask his friends to come and say good-bye.

I wait in the hall of this bright intensive care unit, large oval command center surrounded by rooms with glass doors.  Some closed off with curtains but most exposing the occupant to any passing stranger.  I try not to peer into those spaces, keep my eyes averted from bleak possibilities that I’m not ready to consider.

My birthday is this week – 50, half a century, old to the young and young to the old.  Harold is 67.  He was born only five years before my husband. Sixties contemporaries.  My husband returns.  “Let’s get out of here.”

Apparently none of the family is in the hospital.  Mike says he is ready to go.  Visibly shaken, we quickly head downstairs and out to our car.  As we begin to pull from the parking lot, a white car pulls in.  It’s Pam, Harold’s wife, and his daughter. My husband opens the window and lets them know we will come back.

After parking, we go back into the hospital.  We head upstairs, to Harold’s room.  Pam isn’t there.  We go back to the family waiting room, and there she is, looking tired and pale.  We give her quick hugs.

Mike asks, “How are you doing?”  “Okay, I guess.”  I listen to them exchange surface pleasantries, a mask for the pain of the occasion.  I drift.  Suddenly, Pam’s words catch my attention.

“You didn’t know the real Harold.  After his first heart attack, he wasn’t the same.  He wouldn’t do what the Doctor told him.  They wanted him to rest and recover for surgery to unblock his arteries, but he wouldn’t.  Just the other day he was mowing the lawn. The goddamn machine they made him wear kept going off.  I’d hear it beeping and beeping.  He just kept on mowing. He sure was a stubborn man.”

A pause.  “He beat me, too.  Couple days ago, he was standing at the foot of my bed.  I’d just got back from the doctor – I was sick.  He started screaming at me.  He’d a hit me, like he used to, if my daughter hadn’t stopped him.  That’s the real Harold.”

Mike looked shaken.  He hadn’t expected Pam to express her pain in a matter-of-fact voice, devoid of almost all emotion.  I’d detected a shade of relief, and maybe remorse. What stood out was the phrase, “like he used to.”  She continued to tell us how Harold abused her.  Mike didn’t know what to do or how to respond.

“I thought all men were like that, cause of my father. That was Harold.  That was Harold.”  Pam wiped the tears from her eyes and was silent. 

When we turned the car around, to offer our understanding and support to the grieving wife of my husband’s friend, the shape of that grief was not yet revealed.  Soon after these unsought revelations, we left.  All the wires and tubes were removed a week later. No funeral was planned.  Harold didn’t want one, Pam had explained.  And anyway, there isn’t any money.  So, no celebration of a life would be made.

Mike was unnerved by knowledge he didn’t need and didn’t want about Harold.  His memories of a man who freely offered his help and smiled easily were torn in two by Pam’s revelations. Mike was forced to view a different face of his friend Harold, a face he’d always keep hidden away.  But, was that the “real” Harold? We all have faces we keep hidden away from the world.  Certainly, Pam had suffered in her marriage.  And there is no excuse for physical abuse. 

But, that wasn’t all Harold was - he was a good friend. The words of his wife didn’t change the friendship he’d always freely given to many people, including my husband.  His life cannot be reduced to one simple statement.  He was a complex individual - he was human. The smiles and the anger, the love and the insecurities, and much, much more: that was Harold.

“My God,” my friend exclaimed.  “It was just a valve! If my husband didn’t fix that right away, I’d throw him out!”

“Well,” I responded, “I’ve learned to let that stuff go.  Over 20 years of marriage, and some things just don’t seem as important.

“Bull. Quit rationalizing.  That’s a load of crap.”  She took a sip of her tea, and glared in my direction.  So much hostility over my husband’s lack of knowledge regarding hot water heaters!  He did get it fixed – it just took a summer of cold showers to find a way.

Judy’s succinct reply called to mind the multitude of unfinished projects around my home.  I have a beautiful, newly decorated bedroom.  We’d moved our room from the second floor of our old home to accommodate my husband’s arthritis, so Mike took extra care to understand and bring my desire for a restful place to life. When our roof leaked, the walls were damaged and new wallboard had to be placed, along with a new ceiling.  He rented a machine to blow insulation into the attic space. Of course, it jammed and he had to call for help from the rental place.  My husband painted the walls a soft green, not exactly what I pictured, but after mixing a couple leftover paints, he achieved walls that call to mind an early spring morning.  I splurged on cream-colored accordion shades.  Light, blessed light.  Our old room, while much bigger, was dark, and cluttered with papers and books I’d allowed to accumulate over the seven plus years we’d inhabited the space. Finally, all was done.  The result is a quiet haven filled with my Danish memorabilia – figurines and miniature reproductions of Olaf Host paintings. 

Today, Mike put up the towel rack I chose for our latest project, the bathroom, which is almost finished.  Though, I confess, there is still a missing baseboard in my bedroom. I love my new bathroom, and adore the peaceful air of our bedroom. Perhaps the small unfinished tasks should be left as is. Finishing a project seems almost sacrilegious.  To finish is to stake a claim on perfection, a state far from my own, or my husband’s.  Leaving small tasks to complete is a way of acknowledging our own humanity. 

Perhaps I am rationalizing again, as my friend Judy states.  I like to believe what I am actually doing is choosing to put my relationship with my husband before my relationship with my house.  After all, my house returns all favors by breaking down in some other fashion.  My husband faces the inevitable deterioration of our old house with grim determination, convinced his love for me and our family will enable him to conquer all.  Regardless, I savor the two rooms that are (almost) done as testimonies of his faith in our future as he invests his sweat to maintain our home.

        It’s true, what they say, that a daughter brings joy to a mother’s heart.  While absent, she stores up every moment like precious jewels: glittering diamonds, glowing emeralds, and burning rubies.

        When she returns, she pours them out, heaping them up in my lap, polished brilliant by her smile.  Every one of them must be picked up, admired, held to the light so I might see the truth glowing in the heart of each precious moment of time.

        The absurd, the enchanted, the hilarious and the moments of discovery are burnished bright before being added one by one to the necklace of time we spent apart.  Its beauty she places around my neck, a gift of life she has returned home to share.

Hegemonic Refrain

Blind, isolated

groping past our pain

flickering shadows of reality

smudged by material gain

crush the brokenhearted

rather than lift them up again

ignoring needy others

in search of personal fame

fragmented communities

independently refrain

from extending shalom

mass-marketing blame.

Hegemony: the dominion over others, particularly nations over other nations.

Peaceful Melody

Hands out, eyes smile,

invite to begin;

forget life’s uncertainties

find rest within.

Lift the brokenhearted

into trust again,

cherish needy others

without trumpeting sin.

Unified in hope,

united as kin;

speak peace into truth

love resides within.

Phil 2: 5-8 (NIV)

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!

Note: written on the occassion of Peace Lutheran’s 40th Anniversary.

No, not nostalgia.  The end of May I turned 50 – Fifty!  This is an amazing milestone.

Since I’m a teacher, I couldn’t have a real party yet, as school is incredibly busy at the end of May/Early June.  Now that we are on summer break, I’ve got multiple plans to celebrate, not once, but all summer.  That’s right.  Fifty deserves more than a cake and candles! I have got plans to go and do and see.  Lots of life still to experience and write about….more blogs to come!

After re-reading my last post, I realize what seemed so foreign about it.  Humidity!  Written last summer (when we had a real summer), it was actually hot in June. Where has all the summer heat gone?  Does global warming warm the oceans but cool the earth?  Not being of scientific bent, I’m curious.  But, not curious enough to do research, so I guess I’ll just remain mystified.  And cold.  Much, much too cold! I’m sure, if the humidity ever shows up I’ll be complaining, but maybe with less force than in the past. Maybe…;)

          The air breathes a promise of relief from the pressing humidity.  I try to concentrate as my husband enthusiastically shares the schedule he and my younger children have created for the first month of summer break.  My older son, Danny, comes out asking me to spread aloe vera on his sunburnt shoulders.  The thunder continues to rumble.  A few drops splatter, then stop.  My oldest daughter, Katie, comes out, stares into the rain, and disappears indoors again.  Zachary, my youngest, climbs onto my lap.  He hugs me, slides off and vanishes inside, returning with a book to read.  Sliding in beside me, he lays his legs across my lap.

          The rain settles into a gentle beat, wetting the flowers my husband planted yesterday.  The phone rings.  I wonder if it is my oldest, who moved out, leaving the bustle of our home to shift and cover over the hole that remains.  Not him.  Salesman, of course.

          Cars slither by.  I hear the vacuum running indoors.  The people in the cars have lives I’ll never know.  I wonder if they notice the woman and young boy sitting together on a porch, refreshed by the breezy pleasure of soft summer rain.