Getting Loose

Being Used

Since I am retired, once a month or so, I volunteer to put in some time toward helping the staff out with pastoral care needs. While Marvin UMC is a big church (3000+ members), we are tilted toward the upper end of the age spectrum. Hence there are far more pastoral care needs to attend to than the clergy on the staff can possibly get done.

Each time when I set out to do this, there are usually 30 names or so to choose from. I try to see who has had some minimal pastoral care work in the last 30 days, and then I set out to write three people, call three people, and visit three people. I never really know who I am going to pick in these categories ahead of time.

One of the people I called had cancer. They were trying a stem cell replacement in their bone marrow. It's really dicey. I shared that I also was undergoing cancer treatment. They immediately opened up about how hard it was on them. Having to be in Dallas for 7 more weeks as they had to be within half an hour of the hospital if things suddenly went bad. It was like being in prison in some ways. They apologized for getting into so much detail about their condition with me, and said they knew I didn’t call to listen to their troubles, and what did I really want? I said I wanted nothing from them. I knew they were on our prayer list and just wanted to touch base with them. They were surprised. When I call people, I rarely know if anything is wrong or not. All I really know is that they haven’t been in church for a while.

Another person that I actually went to see, opened up about their fear that their child was an alcoholic. “Is pushing them down, really the best option?” That’s a tough one, because ordinarily the answer is, more often than not, a “yes” to that one. I said that this parent had to learn to become exceedingly well self-defined—to love their child, yes, but to not enable their child. I didn’t know where the conversation was going to go. I had never met this person in my life, yet I told them that in my last church that I pastored, we had an exceptional program in place to help women with their addictive issues.

When I volunteer every so many weeks, I never know what people I am going to meet or talk to, and it always surprises me that I might be the very person they need to hear an encouraging word from. In fact, I realize in those moments I am but a tool that God uses to reach out to others. That’s a very humbling position to be in.

Choices

I’m fairly sensitive.  I distinctly remember the first day we were out on the Broadway and New Broadway, wending our way through the teeming people; I could feel the heavy vibrations of some of the people passing us in the street.  The look of anxiousness on their faces, the costs of associated goods and services, the choices having to be made between eating lunch or buying a necessity for the child.  It wasn’t what I thought it was going to be initially.  I’ve not been able to get that heaviness out of my system.

Tea for Two

Since knowing Roger, my British exchange clergyman, our tea consumption has increased, first starting in Houston, and now here in London.  I’ve not seen this many cups before in the dishwasher for just two people . . .

Clothes Line

I’ll bet not a whole lot of kids have seen this invention in use anymore. 

This is only a few of the clothes, 
 
but honestly, until the Mrs. started putting the clothes out to dry, I had forgotten seeing my mother do the very same kind of thing over 50 years ago.  My mate swears she is determined to have one in our yard.

Yesssss

One thing that is very different over here in this section of town is the number of couples that I see are holding hands and pushing baby carriages.  It seems to be way outside the norm of what I have ever seen in the USA.  It is refreshing to me.  I rather enjoy the sight of it all.  It’s like a big YES to life.

Residential Homes

We call them nursing homes, but over here, the governmental municipalities take far more of a proactive role in caring for the indigent in their old age.

 

Like the States, the workers are way underpaid for what they are asked to do and to put up with.

 

There is a jewel of a couple who take it upon themselves once a month to provide a keyboard and try to lead in some old beloved hymns that touch a few of these people’s memory banks.

 

I told them a story about creation from Genesis chapter 2.  There is humour in it, but you would never know it to read it the way it is printed on the page.  I told it in a fashion much truer to the intent of the Hebrew redactor.  And much to my surprise there was laughter at the appropriate parts of the story.  Until that moment, I did not have a clue as to how much or how well I was communicating.  I had to walk around telling the story, getting in their faces, making eye contact.  A few fell asleep.  And that’s OK.  Some are suffering with Alzheimer’s.  They may never fully understand what I said, but let me tell you what they will take away from the experience.

 

It was a welcome change in their routine.  Someone invited them to be present at a gathering.  They heard some music that was vaguely familiar.  Someone was talking to them, not as barking an order, but rather with verve and energy.  And they received a touch and a hope and prayer for their own individual peace.

 

Later that day, they will feel better.  They may never be able to tell you why, but their day will have gone better. 

 

And you know what?  That’s just good enough.  God was there.  He saw it all.  And his heart was touched.

 

That’s not just good enough, it was good enough for me.

Family

I have always been interested in family. I grew up starved for family connection. It took me at least 900 miles as a kid to go from Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania to where there were close relations and cousins. One of my big disappointments when our family moved to Texas when I was 9, was discovering that we would still be 900 miles away from them, when I was hoping beyond hope that somehow we would be closer.

I loved being around my cousins and grandparents and aunts and uncles. In ways I could never explain, I knew they were part of me, and I was part of them, and they could never cut me off. I would never be shunned.

So many of my friends had relatives near by and they were almost complacent about them. "Him? Oh yeah, he’s my cousin. Whatever."

I could not grasp that thinking. I could not make sense of it.

A while back a very distant cousin to me, Carl Budd (4½ cousin?—ha ha), got into contact with my youngest son. And Leigh told me about this guy. He came from a part of my family that none of us knew anything about. When, over the months I began putting 2 and 2 together and slowly updated him with what little I knew about my side of the family, he then sent a family tree that showed me scores and scores and scores of relatives I had previously known absolutely nothing about. I was stunned. It was, and still is, very difficult for me to take the enormity of it all in. I am having a hard time comprehending what I am seeing.

One of the tools, though, that has helped me immeasurably is FaceBook. I am astonished, how, with a little detective work I have been able to figure out who some of these people are, and to date, I have connected with 5 of my distant relatives. I get to see their faces, and learn about their children. It is like a whole new world is opening up right before my eyes. I am still in a state of amazement.

The Ravages of Time

When I was little, I can remember on more than one occasion saying to my mother, "When you get old, I’ll take care of you."

She said, "Oh, I would love it if you did."

* * *

Sometimes it is not easy to willingly go gentle into that good night. Your physical apparatus begins to fail you not by changes in kind, but by changes in degree. A degree here, a couple of degrees there, and before long, you find yourself confused and wandering in a fog surrounded by familiar objects, but lacking a sure way of contextualizing all of them to make sense like they used to make sense.

She still has her ready laugh. She is sharp on the uptake. But there is a wobble in the short term memory. Asking things she had just asked about perhaps 10 minutes ago. Allowing others to do her thinking for her, instead of straining and working the old noodle to figure it out for herself.

"Well, maybe I’ll be where June is before too long."

"Why do you say that?"

"Well, what use am I? I can’t do what I used to do. I can’t move around like I used to to make cookies. I’m just not much help in the kitchen." And this is from a woman whose identity was bound up in doing and baking and cooking for others.

And I don’t have a comeback.

I’m not going to give false reassurance, and I listen and sift, and think "Why does she think that?" But then I further think, "If I were in her shoes . . . would I be thinking much differently?" I mean I could come in as the cheerleader and verbigerate at trying to restore one’s confidence, but would I want that done to me?

It’s got to be exasperating. She had so much life and vigor at one point. A workhorse who had unlimited energy, seemingly. Ready to get up and go.

I remember one time my mother-in-law commenting that she did not have half the energy that my mother did. She sat in awe of it.

Mom kept talking about if she only had access to a stove and pots and pans, but then they can’t allow that. Why, what if one of the residents were to leave a burner on. It is too dangerous.

Safety decisions are a killer. How can you take the right pills, if you don’t know what day it is? She can look back and recognize that she is in somewhat of a fog, and it perplexes her. How did it get to be this way?

So she sat a lot and watched and interacted where she could, but the hearing is not all what it used to be either.

We had her for six days, and I was glad to have her here, even though I still work a more than full-time job. I can remember that at my age my dad was retired, even my cousin was retired, but it will not be that way for me. I still have a few years to go before I can consider that option.

She and I think a lot on the same wavelength. Same sense of humor in so many ways. We can get so tickled with each other. I love pulling her leg. She always bites. That’s a lot of the fun, and I always play dumb.

I took her to Austin last Monday to meet my brother who carried her on out to San Angelo. We ate at Zoot there in Austin and had a pretty decent meal.

After lunch she climbed into his mini-van and sat while my brother and I transferred the luggage to the van. I went to the front seat and opened the door to kiss her good bye. And she gave me a look. A look that said, "I’m sorry I’m not what I used to be. I’m sorry I’m not as much help. I can never repay the time and the money and the kindness you have given me. I love you. You are my first born. I treasure you in ways you will never fully understand."

It is only now that I am unpacking what that look said. It is sad. It’s not what I want. It is not what she wants. But it is what it is.

Plus ca change, plus ce la meme chose.

Maybe I was one of the fortunate ones. My childhood to me seemed very idyllic.

Very early on, I loved to go on vacation. Going on vacation to me meant that we would get to see my grandparents—Grandma & Grandpa Cambre, and Grandma Anderson. They lived in the same little town of 5,000 in SW Iowa. It really is not until this moment that I am grasping how fortunate I was for that happenstance. For so many families, the members are flung far and wide. But the core of my family lay in SW Iowa. And when you push on that core, all four of my grandparents came from Illinois. How amazing is that? I knew relatives there as well. My Grandpa Cambre’s brother lived out his life in Illinois. My Grandma Cambre was an only child. My Grandfather Anderson’s siblings remained in Illinois, and my Grandmother Anderson’s two brothers remained in Illinois, while her sister eventually moved with her own family to Denver.

But when we went to SW Iowa, we stayed with the Cambre’s. I loved my Grandfather Cambre. He was a mysterious man to me, a witty man, a man with a smile.

I can remember my sister and I touching his bald head and asking him if that hurt.

Well, no, it did not. He said it was like touching the skin of our own arm.  We could not understand that.

In a vague way, I knew that my Grandfather was my Dad’s father, but I had a hard time putting that together.

Grandpa died when I was 10 years old. We were actually at his house when he died in the hospital, but no one told me. I knew that when I came down the stairs for breakfast, everyone seemed a little sullen at the table, but it wasn’t until I went to Grandma Anderson’s house later on that morning that I discovered why. My sister and I got into some kind of a verbal fight, and my grandmother said we shouldn’t fight on such a day like this.

I asked, "What do you mean? What is so different about today?"

She said, "This is the day that your Grandfather has died."

I said, "WHAT? Grandpa is DEAD? Why didn’t anyone tell me?" I was shocked, stunned, blown away. I could not believe it. I did not know he was that ill.

47 years later my Dad died. And now I am Grandpa Cambre.

It is hard for me to grasp this.  I am to my grandsons what Grandpa was to me.

But wait . . . Grandpa was old. And he walked with a cane. He had had infantile poliomyelitis. But now I am to the family what he was 50 years ago.

I grew up in a world that seemed impervious to change. What an illusion. I now grasp that in so many ways, change is the name of the game.

O Tannenbaum

The lights on a Christmas tree have a mesmerizing effect on me.

From the earliest times I can remember on 405 Darlington Road in Beaver Falls, I have loved the wonder of Christmas signified in a tree. The twinkle of the lights, trying to figure out which one was going to go off and come back on on those old bigger bulbs, the smell of the evergreen. I can sort of see why the mysterious feline creatures love to congregate around the base of a tree and look at the lights and swat at the balls.

I was so very glad when I discovered when the 12 days of Christmas were. They were not the 12 days leading up to Christmas, but rather the 12 days were between Dec. 25 and January 6 (the Epiphany, of which I knew nothing for years until I got to seminary). That meant that the tree could stay up longer. I was so thankful for that, because somehow the tree charmed me and made me forget the daily grind of existence. It beckoned me to another world, and I willingly went.

For the last two years we have been sans kids. At first I thought last year was going to be horrible. What? Christmas and there’s no kids around? What kind of a Christmas is that? I dreaded it. I was sad. I tried to put on a stiff upper lip. I envied those families that still had children at home, or children who would come in to visit. But . . . it didn’t turn out to be so bad. One of the church families had invited us over to have Christmas dinner with them. They have a large family with differences between them as profound as night and day. I understood that. I understood the noise and mirth and inside jokes. It was like my family. Christmas wasn’t so bad after all. My wife and I had a really good, relaxing time that day. I found out I could survive.

But this year was going to be the same. I didn’t like that. At the last minute I practically tried to bribe two of our kids to spend some time with us, maybe even a couple of days? But no such luck. Because we are in the mode to move to a new house, we just had not bothered much with even thinking about a tree this year. My wife assured me that that was going to be OK without all the fuss and hassle. But I think that somewhere in the five days before Christmas I went out to Home Depot and bought a baby Virginia Pine. I set it on our kitchenette table. My wife loved it. She strung up lights and balls and she put on a big star on top, and I loved looking at it at night with all the other lights off. There is was again. Some of the mystery of Christmas.

I could never understand those Radical Protestants who immediately took down all their Christmas decoration on the 26^th. But then, they had capitulated to the culture which says that Christmas starts immediately after Thanksgiving. And for four weeks of seeing Christmas saturation in stores and parties and being regaled out with singing they are sick of it, and almost like a purgative, can’t wait to put it all away.

Well, we didn’t get our tree until around the 20^th or so, so that meant I could enjoy it long after everyone else had forgotten and moved on to New Year’s resolutions.

I loved our little tree. We burned the lights on it until January 6^th. On that night I said this is the end. We won’t light it up again. I was sad in a way for that. In its glow and warmth I could see the wonder of what I used to be as a little child when life seemed much more mysterious and simple. I was thankful for its unearthly glow and simple charm. And because it is live, we will plant it at our new house. And I will watch it grow and remember that once upon a time it adorned my kitchenette table, and there really were lots of presents around it and surprises, and lots of happiness shared.