Author: marebear (Page 5 of 11)

            If this pandemic has done anything, it has made many of us face our own mortality. I have friends who have lost spouses, cousins, friends. The obituary list in my local Sunday paper seems longer than previous years. E-mails at work come in labeled “Sad News.”

            I learned at a young age that people can die at any time, at any age, and in a variety of ways. I have a large extended family, and we have faced our share of tragedies. I do not see this as a curse. Every family has losses. In some ways, I see these experiences as blessings. I have watched family members lose their children, their spouses, and their siblings, but I have also watched them live meaningful and mostly happy lives afterwards. We learn from each other. When my dad died, I heard my mom tell herself, “Now I have to follow my own advice.” She had helped countless friends and family members deal with losing their loved ones.

            I had two aunts who, with very few words, taught me much about life and death. One aunt had inoperable cancer. She joked with friends about her fate. She was extremely sick, but she never complained. She had a strong faith in Christ, and she lived it to the very end.

            She taught me how to die, and another aunt taught me how to live. She lost both a son and a husband, but her faith and her sense of humor (she could make the funniest faces) allowed her to enjoy the rest of her life. When her second husband contracted Parkinson’s Disease, she was his caregiver.  We were afraid she would die from the stress of taking care of him. When I told her how worried we were, she responded, “What better way to go?”

            This month, I keep thinking about St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians. When writing about whether he would rather live or die, he wrote, “I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account (1:23-24).”

            Have faith (and humor), everyone.

           When I was about 16 or 17, my mom and I went Christmas shopping. It was a special time for me because it was just the two of us. As we went from store to store, we picked out items, and every time she got a bag from a clerk, she handed it to me. Store to store, she kept handing the bags or packages to me and went on her merry way. Soon, bags were bouncing against my legs, and I could hardly see where I was going. It took her a while, but she finally noticed that I wasn’t keeping up with her and that all she was carrying was her purse.  Shocked, she exclaimed, “Mary, why didn’t you say something?”  “I wanted to see how long it would take you to notice,” I replied, and we both laughed.

            Every Christmas season since, one of us says to the other, “Remember the time . . .?” One of us tells that story, and we laugh. This year I am laughing alone since she passed away, but I am still laughing about it. It was and still is our story, our memory. It belongs only to us because no one else was there.

            Stories are meant to be shared, though, and I wonder what stories you all have and are willing to share. I would love to hear them. You can type them in the comment section of the blog, or if you know me personally, you can comment on my Facebook page.

            Merry Christmas or happy whatever holiday you celebrate. I hope you make good memories.

           Some of my best and worst memories of going to church as a child are when my dad would belt out whatever song the choir was singing. If not a good singing voice, he at least had enthusiasm. We would all sing under our breaths, but he sang out like he didn’t care what anyone thought. He was brave that way. Of course, we were all mortified when he sang the wrong verse.

            Over the years, organ music and choirs have given way to guitars and drums. I have gone to several churches in my life, and some of the choirs/bands were truly cringe-worthy, but some of them were good enough to be on the radio. I was once at a retreat where the band was so good, people from other retreats crashed ours. I also had the opportunity to go to a Mass in Burbank, California, and I could tell they were all professional musicians.

            What may surprise you is that I appreciate the cringe-worthy choirs as much as I do the professionals. It takes a lot of faith and courage to get up in front of people to sing, especially when they must know they are not very good. Music adds a whole spiritual dimension to a church service, and without both the good and the bad musicians, something is lacking.

            A couple of weeks ago, our little church was missing its keyboardist/lead singer. The backup singers asked us to bear with them and sing with them as they stepped forward to lead us a cappella. I could not help but think of my dad. I do not have a very good or a very strong singing voice, but I sang out anyway. I made dang sure I was on the correct verse, though.

            I spent my early childhood living in a mid-sized city. There was a grocery store and gas station across our busy street. Behind our house was an alley with a cement plant. Traffic was constant between the cars in the front and the trucks in the back, and there was not much nature around. We had some bushes in front and a small yard of grass around to the back. Mom told me that most of the trees that were there when they bought the house had died from a disease, but a few survived. Our street was not a pretty place. Several houses down, there was a bridge over a creek. The traffic sound was so loud, you could not hear the water move. I used to stand on my side of the bridge (I was not allowed to cross it), and I would drop a leaf down, down into the flowing water—watch it float away and wonder where it would go.

            Our family outgrew that house, and crime creeped into the neighborhood, so my parents moved us to a town about six miles east. At the end of our new street were some woods, and in those woods was a creek. It was beautiful there, and it was peaceful. There were no busy streets nearby, so you could not only hear the water move over the rocks, but also the wind rustle the leaves of the trees. I did not believe it when my mother told me it was the same creek that flowed under the bridge by our first house. I wondered if any of my leaves had made that far. I hoped so.

            Everyone is going through difficult things right now. Life is loud and confusing, and these are definitely turbulent times. I often picture myself dropping those leaves off of that bridge. In some ways, our lives are like my leaves in that creek. We may not know where we are going, but we should remember that this turmoil just may drift us to a place of beauty and peace. I hope so.

            My husband and I have been re-watching “The Wonder Years.” The show was a weekly date for us starting in 1988, but the story began in 1968. It takes the main character and his friends from 7^th grade through high school, and if you ever want to know what is was like to grow up during those years, watch this show. It brings back a lot of memories for me.

            Like now, the late 1960’s and early 1970’s were turbulent times, and the show lets you know it in both bold and subtle ways. The parents have the news turned on in a lot of scenes, and you hear about how many soldiers were killed in Vietnam each day. It is much like the COVID reports now. In some scenes, you can hear the news in the background covering The Soviet Union and the nuclear arms race. I grew up hearing about “the button,” and I was always scared that someone would accidentally push it and start a nuclear war. The show covers some of the race relation problems during that time. Unfortunately, war and race riots have not gone away in current times, but a lot of people have changed their attitudes for the better. Today’s news just doesn’t talk about those people, and today’s media is not as unbiased as the media used to be. I miss Walter Cronkite.

            Still, growing up in those turbulent times was not all bad, and looking back, people younger than me cannot imagine what it was like. Often there was only one phone in the house, and it was attached to a wall. There was no privacy. The family in the show had to wait to buy a colored TV because when they first came out, they were too expensive. I remember being jealous of other families because they got one way before we did. The dad in the show worked hard and often came home grumpy. My dad was nowhere near grumpy, but he worked two jobs so that my mom could stay home with us kids. The mom in the show didn’t get a job until later episodes. My mother also worked in her later years of raising children. The hippy teenage daughter in the show wore clothes just like ones I longed to wear, but I was not quite old enough. They sat down to family dinner every night after the kids played outside till dark. I was lucky enough to be able to do that, and my mom was a good cook. The dad grumbled about the price of a Christmas tree, and my dad was known for buying us the “Charlie Browniest” of trees.

            If anything, watching this show reminds me of all that my generation has faced and, for the most part, survived. It gives me hope that younger generations will come out of today’s problems stronger and wiser. No matter how bad things get, there is still good in this world. We need to remember that. We need to cherish it. We need to promote it. That is how humanity survives.

            When my kids were in elementary school, I was on the PTSA as the liaison between the parents and the school district. I was not, and have never been very political, but I enjoyed meeting the school board members and the occasional state senator or representative.

            We had a new kindergarten mother come to the PTSA meeting one night, and when I introduced myself and explained my role in the organization, her response was, “Pffff. Politics!” as if we were all stupid for even thinking about such things. No one said anything for a few seconds. For me, it was one of those moments when my mind went completely blank, and I could not think of a single rebuttal.

           Of course, I could not sleep that night because I thought of several things I SHOULD have said. Primary in my mind was, “You may think politics are stupid until your son is in a kindergarten class with 25 other kids, and the teacher is so overwhelmed that she cannot give enough attention to each child.” As time went on, I wished I could have had more conversations with that new kindergarten mom. I pictured her complaining, and me responding, “What? You don’t like the school calendar?” “So, you don’t want to supply five boxes of tissues and wipes? You expect the school to pay for them?” “You don’t think the board should have hired that teacher?” “Yes, people who have never taught can be in charge.” “Hahaha. You really think teachers have the summer off? Let me explain some things.” I could go on, but you get the idea. She only came to a couple of meetings, so I never had the chance to say any of these things.

            There was a time when I thought the same way she did. It wasn’t until I became the parent of school-aged-children that I understood that the people we elect make decisions that can directly impact our lives. I am still not political, but I take time to do a little research before voting. I occasionally contact elected officials to voice my opinion. I still think of that “Pffff. Politics!” woman and wonder if she ever figured it out.

My family recently went hiking around a lake in the Pacific Northwest. The trail went through a forest, and we could see Mt. Hood in the distance. It was gorgeous, but my problem with hiking as opposed to walking on a leveled path or sidewalk is that I miss a lot of the scenery. I spend my whole hike watching my feet so I don’t trip. There are tree roots and rocks in the way, and even though I’m careful, I still hit a toe on some and almost fall down. I stop once in a while just to look up to see what I am missing. (Okay, so I also sometimes have to catch my breath, but we won’t mention that.)

I am dazzled by the sky and the treetops. There is something beautiful about sunlight filtering through branches with the blue in between. I remind myself that there would be no treetops without the roots. There would be no path without rocks broken down to sand.

I try to appreciate the necessity of the things that trip me up. As in life, each hiking step I take is a choice, and some choices have better consequences than others. So, I watch where I go but also stop to take in my surroundings. Roots to sky, stone to sand, steps to life.

When my husband and I got married, the only furniture or household items either of us had was a kitchen table and chairs that he had bought before meeting me. We bought everything else except what was given to us for the wedding shower and wedding. After our honeymoon, we came home to discover that there were still a lot of things we did not have—scissors, for instance.

Thirty-some years later, we have raised two children to adulthood and moved several times. Every time we moved, we got rid of things only to find at the new place there were different things we needed. We might need a shower caddy in one house, but not another.

People never realize how much stuff they have until they move it. Each move makes them decide which items have enough value and meaning to keep. As we grow older, some of us downsize and have to sort even more carefully. And, when there is a brush fire a mile from your house and you find yourself in an evacuation zone, you really have to think.

This happened to my husband and me this week. First, of course, we knew to preserve important information, so we packed computers and paper files. After that, we had to decide what was worth packing. I did not think about monetary value. I thought about what we personally valued.

My husband loves to bowl, so that is what he chose first. “I’ve got my bowling balls. I’m good,” he said. I pulled out bins of old pictures and negatives. For those of you who are young, a negative comes from film that has been used to print pictures. I don’t know if there are still places that can turn a negative into a printed picture, but I packed them anyway. We continued to go through each room and finally packed some clothes and toiletries. When we had it all in the cars ready to leave, I looked around at what was left. There were a million little things that could have gone up in smoke, but I had to ask myself if they really mattered.

In the end, it is all just stuff, and someday when we die, each thing will either be a burden or a blessing for our children. That was another question I had to ask myself as I looked around—what would bless my children, and what would be something they needed to get rid of?

We were very lucky that the wind blew away from our house instead of towards it. We did not actually evacuate, although we remained in the “zone” for hours. After this experience, I look at our possessions in a new way. How much of it do we really need? Which items have sentimental value? What can be replaced, and what cannot? What would we replace if we lost it? I keep thinking of the phrase, “You can’t take it with you,” and boy that is true. Look around your homes. What would you take, and what would you leave? I will tell you this. You will learn a lot about yourself by deciding.

I started my life living on a busy street that was residential on one side and commercial on the other. The gas station across the street was often robbed, and the high school was not a safe place to be. I lived in a mid-sized city in the Midwest, and like most cities in the 1960’s and 70’s, there was racial tension and civil unrest about the Vietnam War. My dad watched the news, so I saw both peaceful marches and police using clubs and tear gas to control crowds. I saw crowds breaking into stores and looting. I don’t remember seeing it, but JFK, his brother Robert, and Martin Luther King were all assassinated during my early childhood. The war ended, some laws changed, and my parents moved us to a small town before my brother and I reached high-school age. I appreciated my parents for moving us out of there, and after a while, it seemed as if those problems didn’t exist anymore. It took a while for me to realize that just because we moved away from the violence and injustice, it didn’t mean that the violence and injustice had stopped.

Fifty years later, I am saddened and outraged that people’s mentality has not changed. People of color are still being looked upon as less than the rest of humanity. I don’t think all police officers are prejudiced, and I don’t think all people of color are criminals. I had hoped that by now, everyone would think that way. Has our society learned nothing?

 I have worked with children from a lot of places who look different from one another, but I am most afraid FOR (not of) those who have dark skin. I helped in a pre-school class for a short time, and the teacher talked to the class about being good citizens. She asked them what happens if we break the law, expecting them to say that we would get in trouble. A four-year-old African American boy said, “You get shot.” None of the other children had that as their first thought, but he did.

I worked with two extremely tall, extremely dark-skinned middle-school boys who had moved to the U.S. from overseas and were trying to learn the English language. They transferred to other schools, but I still pray for them. I am scared that there will come a time and place where they are misunderstood and accused of something they did not and would not do. They came to the United States for a better life, and I hope that their lives are better here than the lives they would have lived in their country of origin. I wonder what they think when they see the news. Does it scare them?

I mourn with the mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers of anyone who dies from anything, but when someone is killed needlessly by police or by criminals, it especially saddens and angers me. Violence breeds violence. We need peace to prevail. Everyone’s life is a gift from God to the World. We are all humans born to love one another. Racism needs to stop.

            My dad used to read the newspaper every day. He would often read an article, and in dismay or disgust, set it down and say, “Everyone is talking about rights. No one talks about responsibilities.” Yesterday, I was on a Zoom meeting with two of my third grade English Language students. Their social studies assignment is to choose five of the first ten amendments of the US Constitution (also known as the Bill of Rights), write them down, and then come up with responsibilities that go along with the rights. It took some explaining  of the meanings of the words “quarters, press, seizure, jeopardy, incrimination, bear arms, etc.” to children who do not have English as their first language, but I think they understood the rights part of it by the time we were finished.

            It is harder to teach people about responsibilities. It starts with parenting. It continues in school and interpersonal relationships. What responsibilities do we have to our friends and family? What responsibilities do we have to strangers? These are difficult times for everyone, and each of us has to figure out how to balance the rights and responsibilities we have. Like most people, I have more questions than answers. All I know to do is practice my first amendment rights by praying for anyone who reads this, whether I know you or not.

            Heavenly Father, I bring before You the people who are reading this, regardless of their beliefs. I ask that you keep them safe from the virus that has taken hold in our world. I ask that you give them the opportunities and the help that they need to have a safe place to live and enough food to eat. I ask that you help them get along with the people with whom they live, and I ask that those who live alone don’t feel alone. Please give our doctors and scientists the knowledge they need to cure and prevent this disease. Also, in this time of trouble, I ask you to help everyone turn to You for strength instead of turning against You in blame. In Jesus name,

Amen