A Forgotten Prayer

This past Thursday we left our third child at college. This is an activity in which we have become quite proficient over the past five years.

It usually goes something like this: We arise early on a Thursday morning, load up at least two vehicles, and caravan south to Bolivar, Missouri.  When we arrive in Bolivar,  we find a dorm room and make several trips up flights of stairs while carrying food and other college necessities. We meet a Residence Assistant, then hook up a television set or maybe a refrigerator.  And, there is always a bookcase to assemble.  Always a bookcase….

Inevitably there will be at least one trip—maybe two or more—to Wal-Mart.  After the Wal-Mart run(s), we return to campus to listen to a well thought out presentation from the University Administration.  They always tell us that our children, and we, will be okay.

After the presentation we meet back up with our child. We’re given about an hour to take pictures and to say goodbye. It’s an hour that at the same time we wish would never end and would have ended long ago.

As the hour concludes we form a circle, pray, and say goodbye. The kids all go to their assigned groups while all of the parents and siblings and other friends and relatives flank a large sidewalk which leads to an auditorium.  At the appointed time, a bagpipe-serenaded procession begins and we wave to all of the freshman as they walk away to the rest of their lives.

Each time we’ve done this, after our freshman has disappeared into the auditorium, we sort of awkwardly walk back to our car and carry our remaining family north on Missouri Route 13. We typically grab some sort of supper, occupy ourselves with small-talk, and drive on—mostly in silence.

Although there are many similarities, each return trip is a bit different, as there is always one less child coming back with us.  With the last two trips I’ve realized that it is not a new wound that has been opened, but an old wound that has reappeared like some dormant virus. With each successive trip we return home and set about redefining ourselves in a new and different and ever evolving context.

My post-trip routine back home always begins with me climbing atop a mower.  I’ve learned it is atop this perch that any effective grieving or pondering or reflecting is best accomplished. Last Thursday was no different.  I jumped up on the John Deere Z-Track and throttled up to mow the ditch along our road. This activity was not only necessary as a catharsis, but it was also a pragmatic action because except for me, all remaining members of my three man mowing crew now reside in Bolivar, Missouri.  And Labor Day weekend is a long way off.

Alone with a thousand different thoughts and regrets, I blankly stared ahead as the Briggs and Stratton hummed behind me. Instead of seeing the ditch and the grass and the beauty of the day, my mind flashed image after image of ball games and fishing rods and American Girl dolls and BB guns and supper tables interwoven among five vaporous childhoods.

I was eventually brought back to a time when the children were younger and I had told them of my desire for them to love each other and that they always be best friends. I had told them, Lord willing, they would be so long after their mother and I were gone.

I had said this sort of thing maybe 2-3 times during moments I’d fancied as flashes of parental brilliance. It’s not that I didn’t own these thoughts, but I probably had thought such talk sounded more profound than anything. Or I may have even been saying it to manipulate good behavior or simply trying to acquire some peace in the house so I could watch a ball game.

But as I threw up dust and grass from the ditch along Route T, I realized that my forgotten parental wish had indeed come true. Scattered among the business and sadness of the day Thursday were countless demonstrations of sibling bonds that had emerged not because of me, but more likely in spite of me.

This third child—Timothy—first received a Facebook message Thursday from his oldest sister Olivia. Olivia was in Florida and unable to see Timothy traverse the same landscape which she had first conquered five years earlier. She offered her dismay that a little cooing baby could turn into a bellowing giant—her giant—in such a short period of time.  It made me think back to the almost nightly knock Timothy would deliver at Olivia’s bedroom door, followed by, in a little boy’s voice: “Goodnight Olivia, I love you.”

Timothy’s younger sisters—Phoebe and Annika—joined in later via Instagram. They each enumerated the many things they  would miss about him. Phoebe talked about the high school sporting events, the late night talks about books or television shows, and the many runs for fast food—Taco Bell mostly, but Arby’s if Phoebe was lucky….  Her Instagram pierced my heart—a collage of three pictures of the two of them hugging. Two from when they were very little, the other from real time—right before we left campus.

Annika share similar stories about her older brother. He had taken her often to Chipotle rather than his favorite—Taco Bell. Six years her senior, Timothy had truly become Annika’s big brother, not just a brother who was older, over the past few months.

Despite the sweetness from his sisters, perhaps the ultimate in sibling love was demonstrated by Timothy’s older brother Davis, who has already tapped him to play for his SBU intramural football team. Davis, as a senior and the one who knows everyone at SBU, Thursday was busily introducing Timothy to anyone he knew that had not yet met him. These boys will have an entire year together on campus. Now as men, I know it will be more special than any year they shared together in our home as boys.

So God comforted me atop that Z-Track Thursday.  He gave me this glimpse of His grace through my children’s love for each other. He blessed me with the fulfillment and realization of a forgotten desire. A desire expressed, perhaps even half-heartedly, during the doldrums of child rearing.  A hope expressed during a time when we often wondered if anything we did or said would ever matter.

Grace is like that. It appears and emerges and arrives when we least expect it.  In God’s storehouses it lays waiting, emerging in His perfect timing.

It rained down on me last Thursday, atop a green zero turn lawnmower, at the precise moment in time that I needed it most.

Father's Day

It is sometimes difficult to know how to approach Father’s Day.  Do I approach it from the perspective of a father, or do I approach it from the perspective of a son?

From the time we are old enough to know what’s going on, we most certainly approach Mother’s Day and Father’s Day from the perspective of a child. After all, we’re not yet parents, and our entire being revolves around our relationships with our parents.

This changes once we have children of our own. Then we become the focus of the day, so much so that our parents are the ones giving us the gifts. No child can really give a gift on those first few Father’s Days, unless you count soiled diapers and regurgitated baby formula. But that’s okay. Even these gifts are much appreciated and go with the wonderful new territory of parenthood.

As our parents age it seems we once again think of ourselves a little less as parents and come back to the role of the child. At least I realized this week that this seems to be true for me.

This realization came when I brought my dad down to my house Friday afternoon so that he could watch me plant a “garden.” I use the term garden loosely.  I had randomly during 2-3 shopping trips picked up a couple of tomato plants and several pepper plants. These had been sitting around in their pots and needed to be planted lest they die. As bad as this practice has been, I hadn’t even made it this far during the last eight or nine years.  So I asked my dad if he wanted to come down and help me plant my tomatoes and peppers, to which he semi-enthusiastically replied “yes.” And so my garden was born. 

My father recently gave up his apartment at the Foxwood Springs retirement center and for now, is residing in the skilled nursing center in the same complex.  This was a difficult step for a man who had been a very independent and healthy individual for most of his almost 95 years.

For as long as I can remember, until this year, my father had planted some sort of a garden. During my youth his plantings were sometimes monumental agricultural efforts, especially given the suburban context in which we lived. He would plant tomatoes (state fair quality), peppers, onions, lettuce, radishes, cucumbers, and even strawberries. Some years he’d plant okra.   I never really understood why.

If I pause for a while, I can still see him out with his hoe weeding his garden. He would come home from work, and change into some bright red shorts while leaving on his undershirt (now we’d call it a “wifebeater”). He’d slip on a sort of hybrid loafer/tennis shoes which were always accented by his trademark knee-high dress stockings. He only had one style of socks—both equally placed into service for gardening or as his Sunday best. I never understood why he wouldn’t wear white, knee-high tube socks. My kids shake their heads at me today for what I’m sure are much more grievous fashion faux pas.

Few things characterized my father  as did his garden. It was one of the few constants in his life, and even as his living conditions became less independent he still managed to set out at least a pair of tomato plants each year. So it was sad for me to see him without a garden this year, and I invited him down so that we could both give each other a bit of a gift.

I checked him out of Foxwood Springs and we traveled the thirty or so minutes to my house. The trip had its challenges, but I eventually managed to situate him in his wheelchair near where he had recommended I plant the garden. His desired location was not necessarily mine, but on this day, this was his property to do with whatever he wished.

He talked to me about the necessity of pairing the plants of cross-pollination purposes. He discussed with me the proper separation between the tomatoes and peppers.  He kept telling me to  plant a pepper in a particular corner of the plot. I really did not want to plant one there, but I finally relented, reminding myself that this was his day and that he was blessing me by allowing me to sit as his feet.

I was struck by the reality of how sometimes a father’s instructions are met with, at best, indifference, and at worst, disgust. I thought about how many times I had been uninterested in the things that he was interested in, and regretted that I did not take more time to learn from him while I was young.

The shocking realization for me Friday is that not only did I not bristle at my father’s subtle and sweet  commands to “do this,” or “don’t do that,” I actually craved them. It seems as the time draws near where he will no longer be able to offer advice or instruction, I long for the thousand opportunities, squandered so many years ago, to learn from him.

After our afternoon of gardening I drove my father back to Foxwood Springs where he wheeled himself into the dining room for supper. I bid him farewell, and I drove back home to clean up the mess I had made that afternoon as he looked on.

It was disjointed afternoon in many ways, and one that produced a good bit of regret. But it was also a blessing, a realization that it was not too late to learn from my father.

One of the greatest gifts from our Heavenly Father is that of our earthly fathers. He gives a picture, although veiled, dim, and incomplete, of Himself. He shows us a shadow of His incomprehensible love and grace through giving us our earthly fathers.

And, perhaps best of all, He promises that what earthly fathers and sons could not do perfectly, He does perfectly as He redeems us and refines us, putting to death every regret, every wasted moment, and every squandered opportunity here on earth.

May the regret and waste and squander of this life dim as we behold Him face-to-face.

Three Men and Their Shared Stories

Melvin Finley Pacific Theater WWII

The three men convene each day at the skilled nursing dining room at Foxwood Springs Care Center. Each arrives at their table with varying degrees of assistance. Chester plods along with the aid of a walker. He is the most “ambulatory,” as they say. Roy slowly wheels himself down from his room at the end of the hall. He takes baby steps as he inches the wheels forward with his hands. Melvin, my father, usually waits to travel with assistance from one of the aids if my brother or I am not there. It appears he could manage the same sort of effort as Roy, if only he realized it.

The three men arrive at each meal like clockwork. Sometimes a fourth—Bob—joins them. Their routines may vary depending on the schedule from the therapy department at Foxwood Springs. Sometimes one will inexplicably not show—usually because they are a beneficiary of a trip to the independent living dining room to eat with a friend as they did when their health was better.

The table-side conversation is almost exclusively about food.  “What are they having tonight?” “Something called sir-fry.” “I don’t like fish.” “NO Shrimp!” “I only like beef.” “That needs some salt.” “What is b-i-s-q-u-e?” “I can too have that! No one’s said anything to me about my blood sugar!” “I don't know--they say it’s something called a water chestnut.”

Sometimes if I’m visiting my father at mealtime, I pull up a chair and join these gentlemen as they dine. I am never disappointed.

These men share more than meals together. They converge each day as joint heirs of sorts. Their stories, while unique and different in many, even most ways, share chapters and seasons that are rarely experienced by others of their gender.

Because the faculties of each man are diminished at least modestly, they fail to notice or adequately appreciate their shared stories. Or, possibly, their shared stories are too painful to dwell upon.

Each of the three men served our Country in World War II. Roy and my father both served in the Pacific. From what I can piece together, it appears they may have been in close proximity geographically during some of the fiercest battles in that Theatre. When I asked Chester where he was during the War, he thought for a while then exhaled “Germany.”

Each of these men obviously survived the War and returned home safely. Each raised families—Chester had four children; Roy and my father two. Each apparently lived enjoyable lives in post-War America.

That these men would share the story of war is not unique, not for a male born between 1915-25 in the United States. It is not even unique that they would live to come home. Although our casualties were significant, they did not outstrip the numbers of our survivors.

The uniqueness of their stories begins just ten or so years ago when their paths converged.  One-by-one their lives were brought back together inside an area of Foxwood Springs known simply as the Atrium. The Atrium is Foxwood Spring’s “memory care” unit.  It’s where patients reside that have Alzheimer’s disease or are experiencing other forms of dementia. It’s not, upon first entry, a pretty place. It can actually be quite a scary one, where the faculties and filters of the patients fade into oblivion and where they have been rendered a shell of their former selves.

But the Atrium, for all its frightfulness, is also a place where memories come back alive. It’s a place, as memories vanish, from last to first, that many are found changing their baby’s diapers or issuing orders to a battalion of soldiers. It’s in the Atrium that we rediscover the beauties long since dormant in the people  that Tom Brokaw dubbed “The Greatest Generation.”

And it was in the Atrium that these three men were brought together, not as patients, but as bright, sharp men in their late eighties and early nineties caring for the loves of their lives. Each of these men was forced, undoubtedly after much anguish and futile attempts at being sole caregivers, to entrust their brides to the care of Foxwood Springs and the Atrium staff.

This is an unusual story for a man, let alone for three men to share. Most men do not outlive their wives. Nursing homes possess a female-to-male ratio of up to 8:1. The men of our story here are conspicuous because they are male and they were/are still alive. Unfortunately each man buried his wife after they died at Foxwood Springs. After doing so they pressed on alone.

I don’t yet know Chester’s entire story. I assume it is similar to Roy’s and Dad’s. After their wives died they enjoyed some years of independent and vibrant living before experiencing their own declining health. Each now themselves have to be cared for in one way or another at Foxwood.

On Memorial Day we honor our dead and we honor our veterans. Today I’d like to honor these veterans while they’re still living. They’ve seen a lot. They’ve endured a lot. They did some things that most men don’t have to do. They've done other things that most men would be unequipped to do.

Please remember that within Foxwood Springs or any other senior care center or nursing home in the country, there resides not just aging bodies and minds, but stories. Therein reside our stories. Stories that help us to understand from where we come, and stories that in many ways solidify the hope in where we are going.

In the halls and beds of these places, look past the decay to the dignity of life. Honor the life well lived. Praise the perseverance. Treasure the moments that remain.

Whisper to them the simple words, “well done.”

Paradox, Romans 8, and Horseradish Slaw

Today was one of my best days, after a week that may have been one of the worst. There were many highlights. The morning started with a good cup of coffee. At lunch I enjoyed some of the best barbeque in Western Missouri. It was accented by a cup of savory horseradish slaw.  A little later I got to ride on a mower for a while, taking in some  belated scents of Spring. The day ended with a bit of a walk and a bit of a jog while my daughter rode along side me on her bike. It was epic stuff.

As the day draws to a close, the word that sticks with me though is paradox. We're all a bit paradoxical. I perhaps more than most. I love the State of Missouri and consider myself a Missourian through-and-through. But I went to graduate school at Kansas, taught there for a while, and somehow raised a bunch of rabid Jayhawk basketball fans. The two make odd cultural bedfellows, but somehow that combination has worked, although I would hardly say it defines me.

So after my morning cup of Joe, I loaded up my family--at least those still at home--and headed south to Osceola, Mo. We traveled much of the same route that William Lane's Jayhawkers traveled some 150 years ago when the sacked the rebel stronghold of Osceola. That September, 1861 evening of plunder and destruction and execution still rubs raw on some folks in these parts. It's strange to have roots in both places.

But our travels today were much nobler and less political. We visited the First Baptist Church of Osceola where our son Davis had been asked to preach as part of a preaching symposium sponsored by his church--Freshwater--in Bolivar, Mo.

It was a proud day for Sandee and me, and in the midst of Davis's outstanding sermon I was struck with another paradox of sorts. The son that I had taught was now teaching me. It was a powerful realization, that God had worked with what we had done, or more accurately worked in spite of it, and had grown Davis up into a man that could, and would, rightly divide the Word of Truth. Sandee and I had taught him to read, to tie his shoes, to ride a bike, to swing a golf club, and even some things of God, but here he was giving us new insight into the Apostle Paul's Letter to the Romans. It was a day that parents can only dream of when they're changing diapers and cleaning highchairs and administering timeouts or groundings and all the other things that in their midst seem like they will never matter.

But in a day of paradoxes, Davis confronted us with the ultimate paradox. He showed us anew that for us to be exalted, Another had to be humbled. He showed us that the road to Glory is paved with suffering. He showed us that perfect justice has its companion in grace. And he showed us that in breaking the chains of the law, Christ set us free to the law of the Spirit of life.

Paradox, Romans 8, and horseradish slaw. It was a great day. Perhaps the best.

Aunt Fredia

The Finley Children, Circa 1948.
L-R Melvin, Leta (Buck),
Fredia (Buck) & Gerald

She was a product of the Greatest Generation. And she was one of my final links to a world where things simply seemed to make more sense. Her lineage boasted Londoners and Kentuckians, both of whom eventually migrated to the lush, rolling terrain of the Osage River Valley in Western Missouri. She was my father's younger sister, and together they, with another older brother and another even younger sister, trickled into the world as Finleys during a nine year span that bridged World War I to the Roaring Twenties.

She and her three siblings came of age during the Great Depression, where the devastating economic consequences were real and realized, and not buoyed by artificial credit or fiat currency. Her father made a living in any way that would allow him to put food on the table. He sold bulk oils for Standard, started a trucking company, and owned a filling station--fixing flat tires that were casualties of the graveled Jefferson Highway. Later, when the Jefferson Highway was paved and became U.S. 71, her father let her sister and her roller skate out on the fresh hard-surfaced pavement, the only such surface to be found in the entire community.

Her father was a hard worker and a bit of an entrepreneur, but more than anything he just persevered. He and his family not only weathered the Great Depression from without, but also foes like tuberculosis from within. He and his resolute wife produced a powerful progeny, full of diligence, industry, loyalty, and grace.

My aunts, my uncle, and my father could barely find a place to hang their high school diplomas before being thrust into the vortex of the global strife brought on by World War II. Dad was shipped overseas-to Okinawa, to Leyte, to the Philippines. My uncle to San Diego, to protect us stateside.

By the start of the War both my aunts had married. The Finley sisters would marry a couple of brothers by the name of Buck. Thereafter, both would enjoy a sister-in-law who was also a sister. While the Finley and Buck men were placed in harm's way, the women stayed behind to engage in perhaps the tougher battle: to wait. To hold down the fort. To plant victory gardens or work in aircraft plants. To put their lives on hold while the world was on hold, and all-the-while wondering whether the loves of their lives would ever return.

God saw fit to bring the men back home, and they, like millions like them, all fairly promptly got to the business of baby booming. They basked in the new found hope and certainty that had alluded them in their youth.

By the time I came along, some 15 or so years later, they had established their lives and were enjoying a modest yet abundantly joyful Americana. My uncle by then had moved to California, but both my aunts had settled with the Buck men less than ten miles from our home. If I roll a highlight reel of childhood memories, my aunts a uncles are found throughout. Homemade ice cream...trout fishing trips...playing Pit by a campfire...blueberry pancakes...potato salad...fireworks extravaganzas...Nebraska-Oklahoma Thanksgiving Day football...popcorn balls...Easter Egg hunts...a hot cup of coffee from a styrofoam cup.

But as I grew older they grew old. My father's brother died in 1990. Uncle Lloyd Buck died in 1992; Uncle Willard Buck just 15 months later. But then there was a long period, maybe 15 years, where they--my father and my mother and my two aunts--grew even older together.

But in this fallen world death cannot be held long at bay. Aunt Leta, my father's youngest sister, died in late 2007. My mother followed her some eight months later.

Before my mother died she left us a little bit at a time as Alzheimer's disease compromised her faculties. She lived four years while dying a little bit each day. The long goodbye as some call it.

The effects of my mother's illness on my father were tremendous. But God had put someone on the earth with him some 85 years previous that He knew would help him when he faced one of his darkest times. That same little sister that he had maybe walked to first grade or looked after at the school dance would now look after him a bit.

My aunt Fredia took note that my father probably wasn't eating as well as he had been used to. She also noticed that there might have been a wrinkle or two in his clothes. So, she started making little Parkay cups of chili for placement in my father's deep freeze. She started taking in his shirts for ironing. And she would make the best lemon meringue pies known to man along with other baked goods to indulge my father's sweet tooth.

To Aunt Fredia I'm sure this was no big deal. And maybe any of us would've done that. But I don't think so. The love she had for my father and the bond they shared was forged in the unsettling times of the Great Depression and of the Great War. They had experienced a great deal together, and they would see each other through to the end.

My cousins buried my Aunt Fredia today. At 92 years her body finally succumbed to complications from a stroke suffered six weeks ago. A day or two after Aunt Fredia had been taken to the hospital, I stopped by my dad's apartment to check on him. I peeked in his refrigerator and saw two lemon meringue pies. I asked him where he had gotten those to which he replied, "Fredia stopped by the other day and dropped them off for me." It was undoubtedly one of the final acts of kindness and care she was able to perform.

They say that when both your parents finally pass away you are orphaned. I haven't asked my father about this, but I wonder if that feeling is experienced more acutely once your last sibling dies. Whether that's true or not for him, he is now the final link to an era that begin almost a century ago. He must finish his journey somewhat alone, with us, who know or understand little from whence he came.

I would be committing a great crime here to suggest, as I did in my second sentence, that things no longer make sense in this world but they did in 1920. In reality, the made little sense then either. Things might have been simpler but order and equilibrium and "sense" cannot be found in this earthly realm during any era.

Sense is not made from a baby boom, or from an Interstate system, or from an economic recovery, or even from crushing an evil empire. Sense is made only in eternity, before the Savior's face, where He makes all things new.

I take great comfort knowing my Aunt Fredia, tonight, is experiencing true Sense, for the first time, face-to-face.