Over the past century, parochial has soured as a word. The adjective form of parish, it has come to connote sectarianism, insularity, boundedness: a mind or a community turned inward upon itself, a pejorative finitude. It hasn’t always been this way, though. Patrick Kavanagh (1904-67), the great poet of the Irish mundane, was sure of the parish’s importance. For Kavanagh, the parish was not a perimeter but an aperture: a space through which the world could be seen. ‘Parochialism is universal,’ he wrote. ‘It deals with the fundamentals.’ Kavanagh, like Aristotle, was careful not to smudge the ‘universal’ into the ‘general’. The ‘general’, for Aristotle, was the broad, the vague and the undiscerned. The ‘universal’, by contrast, consisted of fine-tuned principles, induced from an intense concentration on the particular. Kavanagh often returned to this connection between the universal and the parochial and to the idea that we learn by scrutiny of the close-at-hand. ‘All great civilisations are based on parochialism,’ he wrote:

To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime’s experience. In the world of poetic experience it is depth that counts, not width. A gap in a hedge, a smooth rock surfacing a narrow lane, a view of a woody meadow, the stream at the junction of four small fields—these are as much as a man can fully experience.

Macfarlane is applying this to the writing art. That application caught my attention because in reading his description I realized in my essays that very clear seeing is often what I aim to elicit. I had never thought of it in these terms of the parochial.

But this distinction between two kinds of parochial—perimeter (sectarian turning inward) or aperture (means of viewing well)—can be applied in other ways. On the most basic level our own minds are the first sphere of the parochial, which will either function as an aperture for keen seeing or a perimeter which limits. Moving to the next level—home, or family—is another mode of parochial which will either be our aperture for seeing well, or function as some version of perimeter, obscuring rather than enhancing our sight.

The way we teach our children will help shape the parochial aperture or perimeter of their mind. And the way we build our home will also shape the lens through which they see the world. None of us will see very wide, because we are all very small in a very big word. But we can help our children see with depth from their small place.

My first thought about what Mafarlane is saying comes from my role as a writer. But my last thought comes from my role as a father. Both are something to ponder.

Last week the latest baby joined our family, a beautiful girl. What had been perhaps the easiest labor became something more fraught at the journey’s end. Technical words are so clean: Aspiration of meconium. They are words dry and neat and don’t feel sufficient to tell you that when my baby girl came into the world she gave a first abbreviated cry and then sludge oozed from the corner of her mouth. To say that it did not look right would be an understatement.

Meconium aspiration is a condition where a newborn baby breathes in meconium, a dark green, sticky substance that is the first stool which is ideally passed after the baby is out of the womb. Under certain conditions the baby can release their first stool inside the womb where it mixes with the amniotic fluid and then can be inhaled prior to birth. In layman’s terms, it is something like inhaling liquid diarrhea and is about as bad for you as that sounds. Meconium can block the airways, causing inflammation and respiratory distress. It can also damage the lungs and lead to infection.

The doctor saw my concerned expression and said, “It’s okay, the baby is still getting oxygen through the umbilical cord.” Whatever comfort was supposed to be provided by this statement was annulled as the doctor clamped the cord and offered me the opportunity to cut it. The NICU team was already on standby and whisked the baby to the other side of the room to begin their work.

For the woman giving birth there are many difficult aspects of labor and delivery of which I have no part. But for me in my role, one of the hard things in this journey is that I can do nothing to change anything. I can offer encouragement and support and comfort—and these are not small things—but none of those things fix problems. I like to be a fixer and accomplisher, and in this sphere of bringing a child into the world I can do nothing to fix or accomplish. I am stuck in the proverbial cheering gallery for wife and child. It is important to do that well, but there are specific moments where I feel the hard limitations of this role. If the baby should ever become stuck, I cannot get the baby unstuck. If my wife is bleeding I can do nothing to stop the bleeding. If the baby is struggling to breathe, I cannot give breath. There is a freedom in being able to do nothing, but also a hardness. Especially when your baby is struggling to breathe and you want to do something.

It also feels like a blessing and a curse to know more than the average layman. The blessing is the knowing, the curse is in having more things which I understand but can do nothing about. I am not a labor and delivery nurse, but in nursing school I had the basic education in labor and delivery. Beyond that, I also know the general nursing skills of reading oxygen saturation, heart rate, and breathing. I can’t recall everything on the APGAR score for newborns, but I know that it is the evaluation the nurses do immediately upon birth. Which is to say that I had a much better idea of what was going down over in the corner than the NICU nurses knew that I knew. There was some comfort in understanding what they were doing, but it was also nerve wracking knowing what they were struggling to correct and not understanding how successful they felt they were being.

Suction, then give oxygen. Repeat. Evaluate. The three NICU staff (I think two nurses and an NP) were playing it cool and speaking in low voices but I could tell they were not happy. They would voice out stats to each other in a low tone, probably speaking out the APGAR score and vitals. One of the nurses was chewing her lip, which made me more nervous. They hadn’t called a code yet, but were clearly not happy with the situation and didn’t seem certain which way things would go. They kept suctioning and checking—the checking which I guessed was monitoring the O2 saturation. I was caught between trying to evaluate what was about to go down with the baby and deciding if I should say something to my wife. “We might lose the baby” felt too alarmist especially since nobody else had said anything and I was still trying to take my own measure of the situation. But I was starting to think a “Dear, the baby is having trouble” might be warranted even though my wife was still in the midst of being put back together herself. The comment seemed pertinent and pressing, but I didn’t want to be the one to make that pronouncement. I wanted someone else to speak up.

The work on the baby had been going on for several minutes (I am not sure exactly how long—in moments of high stress time can sometimes seem longer than it actually is) and I was trying to get a read of what the NICU nurses were seeing for the O2 level. I finally deciphered it was the 79% number in green on the large display. I couldn’t decide if I was relieved or more worried—the ideal is 95-100% and 79% is far short of that. It is not in the “about to die in the next minute territory,” but given how much time had passed with suctioning and giving air to the the baby the level of 79% oxygen saturation was not as good a result as I would have hoped. They were clearly struggling to get the situation to where they wanted it to be.

I knew I couldn’t fix anything, I was stuck observing. But it was now clear that they were unable to fix the situation at bedside and a NICU visit had suddenly loomed in our future. I met my wife’s gaze, and tried to convey some sense of “Things aren’t great” but was saved from having to try to figure out what to say by the NICU staff saying, “Dad, you can come over,” as if everything was peachy and it was the most natural thing to have me join them and why hadn’t I come over sooner. In that simple statement I realized (with relief) that they felt they had the situation stabilized and where ready to publicly present the matter.

“So she is doing good, but is having a little problem,” one of the nurses said in a cheerful explain-to-the-ignorant-person voice and ran through what had just happened ending with, “She’ll need to spend a little time in the NICU but she’ll be just fine.”

It was a moment of warring feelings. With a breathing mask the baby was now making 92% oxygen saturation which did indicate they had managed to clear the lungs enough that the worst was hopefully over, but the sentence also brought an end to any hopes for the typical quiet family bonding time right after delivery. Instead of snuggling and staring into sweet fresh eyes, we saw our baby whisked away and were left sharing worried and wondering looks, thinking what all this might mean.

There were tears and hard minutes of waiting, but the end of the story was good. By twenty-four hours the little peanut was off all breathing support. Four days out she was allowed to come home. One nurse—whether just attempting to temper out hopes or laying out blunt facts—had told us on day three that it was a miracle she had progressed as quickly as she had and to not have expectations about discharge because babies who had aspirated meconium could easily be in the NICU more than a week.

We are grateful it was only four days. We are grateful for the first breath, and every breath God gives. We gave her a first name that means “Truth” and a middle name meaning “Free Woman,” in the hopes that she might breathe the air we all need and know the truth and be free.

So we are going to drown.

That wasn't what the chap had said. The first mate, or steward, or whoever he was. I forgot his rank when I heard the words coming out of his mouth. What he had said was so much more bland than drown, as bland as one can make such information. Small accident, taking on water. No great concern, taking every precaution. The last of his words were a droning tone to my ears. I see dark water closing over my head, swallowing my breath.

How I hate myself, hate my weakness.

I smile at my wife. At least I think I did. I tried. Am I the picture of a confident adult? "Looks like we're going to have a little adventure. Don't you worry." My tongue feels thick and clumsy.

I think about the weight of water, how it pulls at you. No. We will be fine. Everything will be okay.

Everyone begins to mill around. Dishes clatter. Voices murmur. A few people hurry out. The meal has been ruined. First class meals, always so sumptuous, can't compete with this news. "Let's go for a walk on the deck." I say it briskly. My wife gives me an uncertain look, but I take the hands of our son and daughter firmly and start to walk. I must seem confident.

Maybe this will be the last time I hold their hands. Savor the moment. They feel alive. I feel my love for them, their love for me. This is life.

***

I remember the first time I almost drowned. There was a small stream that ran through the ravine behind my parents house and during the summer of my fifth year we had a family picnic in the clearing by the waterfall. As children we called it a waterfall but it was a drop of about one foot over a rocky prominence to a large swimming hole. It was a hot sunny day and I was cavorting along the edge of that rock when I slipped and plunged into the cold water. My world lurched sideways, going suddenly from bright and hot to dark and cold. In that first second I thought I had died. Then I realized life was just above me and I flailed desperately to save myself, to no effect. I was lost.

As an adult I look back on the memory and recognize that I was under the water for probably less than a minute, but when I thought I was dying that felt like a lifetime. And I was dying. I just didn't die. I floated down through the water staring upward at the glittering, glowing, surface of sunlight, and felt as if I was being sucked into an endless dark hole. This is why dying feels like, I thought, numb with fear and despair. Then my father's arm plunged through the water, breaking the surface in bubbling shards, and pulled me back to life.

I have felt the fear ever since.

I feared, and I also feared the fear. I feared the helplessness, the feeling of utter captivity to a fate beyond my choice. As a child I was too afraid to learn how to swim, but when I reached my teen years I was determined to conquer that fear, to never be helpless again. It was hard to push past the gut clenching fear, but I did learn, though not well. I could swim in a modest pond, or propel myself across a gentle river. But there was always a tenseness in me when I swam, a waiting for disaster. I did the river once, to prove I could, and never again. I did ponds rarely, but enough to tell myself I had beaten the fear.

I wish.

For our honeymoon we went to the seaside. On the second day I was growing more comfortable with the waves. At first I had feared them, but with time I told myself I could master their tug, that I was able and in control. Until the big wave came. The sea is not a pond, or a gentle river. One moment I was standing in the surf, laughing, splashing, life a delight of fragmented prisms of light shining in droplets. Then I was slammed from behind, water filled eyes, nose, mouth, and my hands clawed in sand. I felt myself sucked out, tumbling again like a small child, pulled by a strength far greater than my own, swirling like a discarded twig.

I fought against the startlement as much as the water, and when the wrenching movement stopped I righted myself, head above the water. Here I found myself much farther from shore than I ever imagined I might be. The fear came as I realized with one glance that I was beyond what I could possibly swim. The fear again. My mouth felt dry, tongue stiff, breath coming short. My body felt tight as I lunged toward shore, more flailing than stroke. I would have screamed for help if I could, but my lungs would not open.

Again I felt the knowledge of death, felt five again. Death tasted like bitter salt water, despair like grit in my teeth, and terror cold as the ocean depths. I did not want to die. I had a wife on the shore, unaware of my looming end. I had a life and I wanted to live it, so many plans and hopes and desires. And I could do nothing. I was lost to a great power. I was nothing.

I felt myself begin to sink and in that moment the water rose again, moving forward, and slung me up the beach. I tried to collect myself before my wife came over, to act as if nothing had happened. But she saw me shaken. Saw me weak.

Drowning is the sensation of being abandoned by God. It is horror and helplessness and the absence of all that is love. The desolation of meaning and worth. I did not see it those first two times, but I came to understand.

***

The next time I found myself drowning my feet were on solid ground. My wife was screaming. I think in her screams were the words, "Do something! Do something!" I stood in our bedroom, our firstborn son in my arms, still wet from his entrance into the world. I held him and watched with horror as he gasped, twitching, turning blue, then purple. My heart felt cold and still. I saw but could not see. I knew and could not believe. God hated me.

And our son died.

He died in my arms, and I felt as the movement went to stillness, his chest ceased its striving.

I did not understand. The doctor said the baby had come too early. Something about his lungs. He said the little boy had drowned on air, unable to breathe. I flinched at the word.

I drowned in darkness in the middle of day. I could find no air, and life ran away. God had dropped us. In the days after I finally understood what I had always known, always felt. It was this: Every day I waited for God to cast me to the watery dark. I knew it was coming. I have always known. And the days when I almost drowned I knew most acutely that today might be that day. If not this day—some day soon. God would be done with me and let me go.

***

I stroke my mustache, smooth it once, twice. Adjust my hat, tighten my gloves. Today is the day. I can feel it.

This is how it must be. Women and children first. This is right and good. How much time has it been? How much time did we have together? The hours have felt strange, my thoughts compressed. I have said goodbye to them. Told them we would meet again soon. Was that a lie? It isn't a lie if it is a wishful hope, is it? But I know it won't be. I shall drown today. I feel the hand of God loosening.

There is clarity, I feel it, life in focus. How foolish to agree to the voyage. It was supposed to be a great holiday. It was my proof to myself that the sea did not rule over me. I did not fear chaos. So, here we are. I am undone, and everything is clear now.

The deck rail is cool through my soft leather gloves. Night is here, but between the stars, moon, and ship lights I can discern faint shapes on the water. The first of the lifeboats. Beyond them, small in the distance, are the lights from other ships. Light to come and rescue, to bring life. My wife and children will be there soon. They are my life.

So close, and yet so very far away.

Church felt like that. The sermons droned on, and depending on the day I might feel lost, drowning, numb. Often my eyes drifted to the tall stained glass windows. They were beautiful with the Sunday morning sun shining through. Sunlight fragments through a thousand colors, glittering, glowing. In light there is life. There is beauty. Hope, and maybe love. I developed this odd daydream that God was on the other side of the glass—like the surface of water—and we all were in the sanctuary, drowning. Sometimes I found myself almost waiting for God's great hand to smash through the glass and yank us out. He felt that close, and so far away.

After our first son died, I tried to prove to myself that God loved me. It felt like having two more healthy children was the ultimate affirmation, the refutation of that first loss. And if that wasn't enough, on uneasy nights I could recount how I had a loving wife, good health, a fine home. I had followed my father into banking, and I was successful. There were good clothes, wonderful meals, a good life. My quality coat, my hat, my gloves—even our first class passage on this steamer—were all signs of favor. Few people had so many good things.

Sighing a bit shakily, I drew in a long breath of the cool night air.

I wish.

I wish I knew it was favor.

So I had told myself. But the truth? The truth is that deep inside I am still the little boy cavorting on the edge of the water with everything waiting to disappear in the least slip. Only now I know the danger and as I play I wait for the end to come, the fall, and the drowning.

God will abandon you in the end. I could always feel it.

You will die. Helpless you will die, the water rushing in. The fear is rising, clawing up inside my chest. My hands are clenching and I force myself to let go of the deck rail. It is no good trying to stare out in the dark and see my family. They are gone.

There is so much life I wanted to have with them. The bitterness at that thought is almost enough to choke. It is all ripped away and I am cheated and I can't sort out anger from despair. I want to see our children grow, and see their children. I want to grow old with my wife. I want to wake up in the morning, to feel the warmth of her body curved against mine. That is the feeling of life, the sensation of love.

It is the opposite of drowning.

I make my way to the bar. There is a disturbance outside, men shouting, fighting, and it unsettles me, my heart racing again. I don't want to feel the fear of others, their rage of futility and despair. I want to get away from the noise, to go some place calm. I need peace.

The bar is almost empty when I arrive. I can feel the slight list of the ship, and in my mind I see the water rushing in. The dark cold fills room after room, marching its way toward us. The list is not yet enough to cause glasses to slide from tables, but people steady their drinks as if waiting for the moment to arrive. I take the stool next to the only other man at the bar. The bartender sets a drink down in front of me without even asking what I want. I don't want anything. I want to be free. Alive. Not drowning.

"It'll all be right in the end," the bartender says. He has a rim of hair around his head, his bald top glowing under the lights. "We just keep calm. No need to think the worst."

"Right, right," says the man hunched over the counter. I glance sideways at him. He sounds drunk. "Not a thing to worry about." The words slur wetly.

I finger my glass, run a thumb around the rim. I am glad to see my hand is not shaking. "You're not afraid?" I keep the tone conversational.

"I was." The drunk swings his head around to me. "But what's the point?" His hand waves in a broad sweep. "What will that do? So not anymore!" He raises his glass as if to illustrate, then downs a large swallow.

It is odd to think about what is, and what will be. The mind naturally presumes what is will continue without interruption, without violent change. Life will continue on, as it always has. A sinking ship will change that. The floor here is paneled in beautiful polished wood, the walls much the same. It is orderly, ornate. Dry. It feels impossible to imagine water rushing in, shattering, crashing, everything turned to dissolution. Yet as I turn my eyes around the room I can imagine it now. Tables, chairs, and bodies thrown about. The world upended in sudden violence, a tossing about even more violent than when the shore waves took me. There would be stillness at the bottom. Cold darkness. I see our bodies floating, pale white flesh. The fish nibble at us, feeding.

I rise suddenly, almost knock over my drink, mumble something to the men—I'm not sure what—and hurry away. The image of a fish is too real. I rub my cheek still feeling where the sharp teeth had bit. I don't want to think about what will happen to this ship shortly, but neither do I want to pretend that it will stay whole, good, safe. I don't want a lie.

The passageway looks familiar but it takes me a moment to realize I had been heading back to our cabins. An odd place to go. Maybe my subconscious thought I would feel closer to my wife and children if I returned to the rooms we had shared. They were a happy few days. The children were so excited to go on the cruise. They had a good time. I loved seeing my wife smile.

A sound near my shoulder almost makes me startle. It is a man's voice, maybe calling out, coming through the wall. Is someone hurt? I leave our rooms and fumble at the next door. Inside the small cabin a man sits in an upholstered chair at the far side of the room, hunched over. He looks up, startled. His face is ragged, eyes empty.

"Would you—could you sit with me?" His voice is pleading.

"I—of course. For a little while," I add, ashamed, but already thinking of leaving. I have the sudden feeling that it is unwise to remain down here. I should not have come. If there are enough life boats they will take the men. Then I could survive. Maybe there could be an escape coming. Still, it feels wrong to just close the door on him. I hesitate.

There is a second chair, and I take it, perching awkwardly. I ask if he is hurt.

"No, no." He looks down again. A large black coat is wrapped around him. It looks very warm, though not quite as stylish or expensive as my own. "I'm just lonely. I don't want to die alone."

"Your family went on one of the boats?"

He nods. "They are safe."

I dimly remember him now. A small pale wife. He had twins. They were a little younger than my boy. They seemed a happy family. We exchanged pleasantries a few times. I remember our kids enjoyed playing together. The thought brings pain, remembering my children laughing.

There is a sob in his voice, his shoulders trembling. A hand quickly dashes at his eyes, returns to the folds of his coat. "I didn't think I would feel so alone. It is the worst."

I nod, searching for something to say. How do I encourage someone in a place like this?

The man looks up suddenly, meeting my gaze. I almost recoil. His face is damp from the tears, his eyes are empty, lost. "We will not make it off this ship." His words are firm in their finality.

I protest that there are many more lifeboats. Arguing with him feels like arguing with my own thoughts.

"No." His head moves sharply, insistent. "There are not enough. And not enough time. We will die here. I don't want to die alone."

I start to assure him that we can go up to the deck together and see where things are at. There are many people there.

"I won't drown," he says, interrupting me. "I won't! I can't stand it."

"I can't either." The admission feels almost like a relief. "I'm terrified, and I don't know what to do." The truth makes me sick, and yet it feels so right to say it.

"Well, I know what to do." He pulls a pistol from the folds of his coat, sets it firmly beneath his chin, and pulls the trigger.

***

Within the confines of the cabin the sound is deafening, a thunderclap with smoke. I leap up so suddenly the chair topples over and I almost fall into the hall in my lunge to escape. My shoulder takes the door hard and I stagger several more steps down the hall before I catch myself. My heart is hammering, my breath making strange gulps. I blink, trying to clear the sight from my vision. I feel an absurd fear that someone will come rushing and demand to know what has happened and accuse me, blame me. I hurry back to the deck.

There is something particularly cruel about drowning, the helplessness of it. I could be braver in battle, charging into gunfire to take the enemy trench. There is almost a certain ease to that idea. A bullet to the brain, or ripping through my chest, a sudden end. It feels less helpless. Less cosmic. The enemy soldier hated you, perhaps, but not God. Drowning, on the other hand, is when the earth gives way. When the waters swallow you, you know that God has done it. There we are: Helpless, and abandoned.

On deck there are less people milling about. Those that remain seem to collect in bunches, small crowds. The deck is tilted more. I notice some men are climbing atop the rail, jumping. My stomach lurches as I watch, and I catch myself against the base of one of the smokestacks, leaning on one arm. I had been nearly running, and need to catch my breath.

I try to collect myself. The crack of the gunshot shattered me, and I feel undone. Everything so carefully put together inside is gone. Nothing holds together, my mind tumbles through an emptiness, falling. The terror rolls in waves and for a moment I think my knees will buckle.

Please. I can't hold on.

In my mind the ship is already slipping beneath the water, the cold hand crushes me. The end has come.

I feel death. Stillness comes. Emptiness. There is nothing more I can do, and the truth reaches to my bones. I open my eyes again, see the ship, the deck tilted.

Another waves comes, washing inside me. This time it is peace.

There is freedom here. I can't explain it. After the closed space of the cabin with its final shattering judgment I find my thoughts scoured clean. There is that, and then there is this. The calmness feels odd, but good.

"Ok." I'm surprised to here the word on my lips, but it feels right. I lean my head against the bolted metal panel. "Ok...ok."

This is how it will be.

The night falls into place, the stars above settling, and the deck present beneath my feet. It was, it is, and it will be. I feel a swell of thankfulness, love. For my wife, the children. We said goodbye. I touched her cheek. We had this life. I am here. I feel strangely loved, beyond reason.

I straighten. My head is clearer. There is a nervousness still fluttering in my chest, maybe a whisper of fear, but I can look away from it. I see the jumpers again, and watch now with a detached attention. Is that the way to go? For some it is despair much like a bullet, but for others a last striving for victory. Maybe if you swim long enough, rescue will come. Or, for others it is maybe a last declaration of hope. You can't swim, but if you cast yourself upon the waves a miracle might pluck you out. I see the appeal of that.

I'm walking, I'm not sure where, when I nearly collide with a man coming down stairs from the upper decks.

"Pardon!" The word stumbles from my lips even as the gentleman stops just short of impact and touches his cap.

It is the captain. He is stout, bow-legged, with a long nose and long chin and a short gray-white beard. It had been his habit to politely mingle with the first class passengers, but I had only spoken with him briefly on a few occasions. He had struck me as a solid chap. He sets his pipe back between his teeth and gives me a nod.

"You're not—what are—" I catch myself, not sure what I am trying to say.

"The bridge needs no further commands." He drawls, and blows out a cloud of cherry scented smoke. "Every message that can be sent has been. Every action that could be taken, is done. Our course is set for the rest of this journey."

He walks leisurely toward the railing and I follow.

"I do apologize for this state of affairs." He waves his pipe around at the ship. "I would have given anything to change the course of events."

"I understand." I am silent a bit, thinking about what could have been. All the years with my wife and children. Good breakfasts, long evenings, and laughter. The thoughts don't feel as sharp now. All things come to an end. "I don't blame you."

We both stare out at the light of the other steamers. It is hard to tell in the dark, but some of them seem to be circling, not coming closer.

"Why—"

"Why aren't they coming closer?" The captain purses his lips. "The braver ships will, the braver souls. The rest are afraid of the explosion if our boilers blow. So they leave us to our end."

"Blow?" I am a banker, not a sailor.

"When the sea water hits them." He leans on the rail, puffs the pipe. "They are close enough to pick up all those in the lifeboats, no fear about that."

"That's good." I lean against the rail with him. The ship is listing hard now. I wish I could feel as calm as he sounds. But it is better. It is good to talk with him.

There are so many things I don't understand. Not even myself. I don't understand peace. I don't understand love. But I know they are real, just like this sinking ship.

"The question is," the captain mused in his drawling voice, "does it matter if we can swim?"

The ship tilted suddenly.

This is the picture: You sit in your car at the intersection, waiting for the light to turn green. All around, the life of the city swirls. Through the open car window wafts the pungent odor of exhaust—the mixture of gasoline and fire that tells of power and possibility both nauseating and enticing. People bob and weave on the sidewalk as they pass, lives intersecting on the street, each plugged into their own internal rhythm, part of a larger song—the meeting gaze, the averted eyes, the passing smile—all part of something bigger. The car in the next lane has all its windows down, blaring a throbbing beat like some unhinged heart. The driver slaps his hand on the car, carried along by the energy. Life bursts from every moment, breaks out like the sunshine piercing through the clouds, like the birds leaping from tree to tree at the corner.

Then the light turns green and you move on—the car, the air, the sound and sight and smell.

Except, you don’t lose the moment. In that frozen moment your mind is caught by the thought: What holds everything together? What holds all of that moment and its blazing existence—and where it came from and where it is going—together?

Or is there nothing holding it all together? Is it chaos, all of it the crashing together of so many meaningless non-things for no purpose and of no intent? Was all of that moment nothingness? The very experience of the moment asserts to the contrary. Something was (many things!) in that moment and it had meaning. This recognition speaks to a grand coherency, deeper than the surface scraping of flesh and bone, rock and dirt. At that intersection there was a tune, a tapestry, a coherency in all of the living and existence-ness in that place all the more marvelous for the superficial disconnect of each from the other. The mystery is there, and your ontological tongue tastes it. The mystery existence concealing and revealing truth.

What is that truth, the grand design? In that breath you existential eye opened for a moment and you saw yourself—and your every moment—in the midst of a stream of meaning flowing toward some end. But what? The woman on the corner will go home and beat her child who will grow up to abuse their spouse. The man walking by in the jacket sells drugs to kids and leaves a trail of ruin in his wake far bigger than the burger wrapper he just tossed aside. The driver in the car beside you will be dead in a week, driving home drunk from trying to drown out the pain and emptiness of his life. Is the mystery here the horror of the secret depths and dark end of all things? Is this all meaningless—or something else, a thing of great meaning? Woven together as one, were you in the midst of a song ascending to life, or playing out the grim notes to end in cold silence?

There is the prick, there the rub. Sitting at the intersecting road you felt the thrill of life, and then your mind’s eye saw the death of it. In the end, everything burns. Or rots. You looked and saw life going about its business. You looked again and saw death going about its own work. The undoing of all.

The meaning of mortal life finds itself in its end, the life that does not last. In death is the end—of your place, your civilization, your universe. Death supreme is chaos, for chaos is meaninglessness. If death is not mastered its victory is the non-meaning of all meaning—meaninglessness swallowing all. If that is truth then any meaning seen is a lie to crumble beneath the death of all meaning in the empty void of lost existence on whatever plain you chose.

Was it a lie that you felt, when you felt the pulse of meaning there in the shining moment at the intersection? Was the life you felt a false spark soon swallowed in death’s thrall? If not, then death must be mastered for life to be more than a lie. And if life is truth then the very death you see in breaking cars, crumbling sidewalks, and wandering lives are—in their unraveling—a testimony to the weaving of a greater skein. There is something more, something deeper. For if there is meaning that abides in the face of death, that is resurrection—death existing, yet defeated. Life then gives death its boundary, and meaning to the very thing which sought to bring un-meaning to all. At the intersection you sat there in a moment of a world living out its death—a death full of meaning because life would come again with the wondrous mystery of death’s un-meaning having been given meaning. The breaking of all is shown as the greatest fixing. And we wonder at the hand which has wrought it, or deny the meaning of the testimony of the moment at that red light intersection.

It was only a few days before Easter Sunday, and I didn’t even realize it.

2022

What is the first sign of spring? There are different answers to that question. The first bloom of a particular flower, the first robin. Or, if you are that particular kind of person, you give the astronomical date of spring. But I have come to know a different marker of the season turning: The day when the maple sap begins to run. Truly it is one of the very first marks that winter is breaking. It can come as early as February if the weather is right. In this month darkness still sits heavy over the world, but when the sap begins to move you know day is coming. Spring is on the move.

This spring is the first year I have ever tapped maple trees to collect sap and make syrup. In retrospect, it is the sort of thing I wonder why it never occurred to me to do this before. The initial cost was around $30 in supplies for ten spiles and ten lengths of hose and two filters. The barrier to entry was quite low, and I ended up with a very respectable amount of maple syrup. I could have easily done this in my teens and early twenties. But somehow I never took the step until this year.

I am trying to do new things this year. When I took stock of myself last year I decided to step out of the habits of my comfort zone. And it has been uncomfortable, with challenges of maple syrup only the beginning. But the results have been worth it.

In the process of making maple syrup the most intimidating part is boiling the sap to the right temperature. I read all sorts of dire warnings about what would happen if I boiled the syrup to even one degree too high. (It will turn into maple candy!) So I had visions of ruining all my hard work in one moment of errant temperature increase. I have heard stories about it happening.

The second thing I fretted about was gathering sap too late in the season. The literature warned that I must stop collecting sap once the trees begin to bud. (The aste of the sap turns vile!) Fair enough. But instructions were a bit vague about how to determine exactly when that day arrived. The sense I got from what I read is that if I waited until there were big fat buds on the trees that was far too late. And if I collected too late I would ruin that final batch of syrup and waste a lot of effort. Because of my fretting over this point, I may have stopped collecting sap a bit early this year. I have more to learn here.

It would have been delightfully old fashioned if I had the old type metal spiles and metal buckets to collect my sap. The cost of going that route (if such supplies are not banging around in an old shed) is a much more than the $30 I spent on some plastic spiles and plastic tubing. And rather than collecting in metal buckets, I gathered my sap in old milk jugs. My venture is low class, but it worked.

The whole process was fun in the way of turning straw into gold. There is a magic to taking what is practically water from trees and turning it into luxuriously delicious syrup. It is like the trees are giant straws that suck the nectar from deep in the earth. If you could dig cookies up from the ground that would be something equivalent.

What tempered the fun was the reality that the process was time consuming. Very time consuming. Probably the hardest part was trying to line up the sap boiling with the days of the week when I was home. That part would have been a lot easier if I was a farmer working at home all week, but as it was I had a cram period of sap boiling every weekend which started to get really old after several weeks.

One of the first things I will try to improve next year is creating a more efficient boiling process. At this point in time I am pretty much stuck boiling the sap on days when I am home from work. That means staying up really late. But I could stay up less late (or at least late fewer days) if my boiling time was reduced through efficiency. This year my process was starting the boiling on the wood stove in the kitchen in huge canning pots. We had the wood stove running to heat the house so this made the maple syrup add no cost since the wood was already being used. That tickled my frugal nature, and it also made the whole process feel very homey with the pots on the stove. The final boiling down step was then done on the propane stove.

The problem with this little romantic picture was that evaporating the water this way was very inefficient. The wood stove did not keep the pot at the optimal temperature, and the pot was too tall to evaporate off effectively. The ideal way to evaporate is to have a long pan with a lot of surface area, kept at the perfect temperature. I don’t know if I will perfectly accomplish all these things, but it is my goal to improve on what I have this year.

From the ten spiles I made almost three gallons of syurp, though I didn’t boil it down quite as much as would have been ideal. I was very happy with that result. I look forward to doing this next year. Beyond just the deliciousness of the syrup, there is a pleasing rhythm to tapping the trees in this first act of a new year. It is a marker of the seasons moving, the first heralding of spring. It is the nectar of the earth, the promise of new life.

2023

Another year, more learning. Doing maple syrup gives me a hint at what life is like if we live more in step with nature. Western Civilization now lives mostly (if not entirely) ensconced away from what the seasons give and take. Those turnings of life happen outside the window—perhaps we peek out the curtain at the leaves and sunshine—away from our carefully regulated lives. But with maple syrup you need to know the time of the season turning, and in that attention you feel the moving. I feel the moving. It’s like a dance.

Before I did maple syrup, January was just a miserable dark and cold month that felt miles away from spring. Now, January is still just as cold and dark, but I know the glimmer of spring coming. The tree tapping is coming; February might be when I need to get started, so January is the thinking time. Winter is here, but it is time to think about spring. Then February arrives—and in years past it could be the hardest month of the winter, the cold and dark having long overstayed their welcome.

The winter is still heard, but now in those waning winter days when endurance wears thin there is something new—the first hearld of life returning. The taps are put in the trees. There is still snow on the ground, but the trees are starting to stir. The giants are waking and spring is coming, though we cannot see it yet. It is such a hopeful thing. Maple tapping is such a hopeful thing.

Hope in the midst of bleakness. That captures the reality of maple tapping for me. February is dark, and there can be a kind of grimness to collecting buckets of sap in the dark. But there is also a quiet hopefulness to it. In the chill night the moon peaks through the bare branches of the trees, the clouds make their silent march across the sky. It might seem like the world is lost in winter but the two brimming buckets of sap I carry down the path proclaim life, and the first taste of a new year. That is hope in the midst of bleakness.

It is a good way to start the year. It is good to feel the rhythms of the seasons. Would that I could do it more through every season of the year. Yes, and every season of life. That is something I would do well to think about in the places of life that feel busy or empty or hard.

It is fun including the children in the process. When a bacth is finished they are able to taste some fresh maple syrup which is both wonderfully like candy and also a bit like magic. (Hey, I’m old and it still feels a bit like magic to me!)

At the beginning the boys came along for the tapping process. I had them help bring some of the equipment so that my hands were a little more free. They felt like Big Stuff marching up along the side of the property, holding tools and watching as I drilled and put in the spiles. I could tell they felt the importance of being part of something bigger than yourself.

During this process they stumbled across history. Most of the trees I tap are along the edge of the property and many decades ago an old farmer had nailed barb wire fencing to the trees. Relics of a bygone era. The wire is almost entirely rusted away, but in some places it still clings on to the trees, the ridged lines drooping down into the bramble and old leaves.

"What is that?" Tigie-boy asked, pointing. I explained to him what it was, and he seemed amazed. "You mean this used to be pasture?" He sounded almost astonished that the place we now lived and roamed previously attained to the glorious farming category of pasture (because farms are cool). I affirmed that it had been pasture.

"You had pasture when you were growing up here with the uncles?" he pressed. To that I had to demur. We had no cows or even goats up here because by the time we lived here the fence was already too far gone.

"Oh," Tadhg said, and perhaps there was a hint of disappointment as his eyes peered through the trees and saw across time a grander and golden age of farming and pasture. Maybe some day we can again have pasture, my son.

I did improve my maple syrup process this year. Since it is the second year and I have proved to myself that I intend to keep at this endeavor I felt this justified a larger investment of funds. More as a nod to the good old days more than anything else I bought ten stainless steel spiles to replace my plastic spiles. It is true that the plastic spiles will break sooner or later (being plastic) and the metal spiles will last forever(ish), so one could make the argument that eventually the much more expensive metal spiles will pay for themselves. But I suspect that the number of seasons of use required to pass the break-even point would probably be my lifetime. So the spiles upgrade changed nothing about the collection process and was mostly the expression of a certain idealism. Let's just imagine that my children will carry on after me, and it was all worth it as the generations continue to use those enduring stainless steel spiles.

Joking aside, I did some other improvements which greatly helped the sap boiling process. I invested in a three-burner outdoor propane camp stove which puts out far more BTUs (heat) then my kitchen stove. Looking to the future, I made sure it was of the right size and shape to be used with a evaporator pan, but for this year I stuck with my two huge canning pots. Because I was still using the inefficient pots the evaporation process was still longer than it otherwise might have been, but it was a lot faster than it had been last year using primarily the wood stove. Of course this meant it took one canister of propane for each batch of syrup, but I figured the cost was about $20 per gallon for processing the maple syrup. Not quite as frugal as getting the maple syrup for practically free (cost of firewood), but still a lot cheaper than what it would cost to purchase the equivalent amount of maple syrup from the store.

I have another idealism dream of constructing a sap house and a wood fueled evaporation system. Cue visions of my rustic sugar shack. I imagine that rustic building with the smoke and steam rising up in the late winter light, the cheery fire cackling, steam billowing on the crisp air. Hmmm. Add the sound of wood be chopped. I can conjure these awfully good visions. But not today. Not this year. Maybe never. The adult realist in me says, “How much sap would you need to process to justify all that?” But a man can dream.

The second thing which I did was upgrade my maple syrup storage and collection. I bought some food grade five gallon buckets and used the majority for storage during the week so I could stash my sap in a snow bank and not freeze it in my chest freezer. The freezing did preserve my sap from spoilage but also meant I had to melt all the sap again before boiling which add a lot of time to the evaporation phase. The cost of food grade five gallon buckets is a lot more than you might expect so I wasn't able to buy as many as I wanted. But the two large buckets I was able to hang on some of the trees helped my collection, and between them and using some other larger storage containers which could hold more than the gallon milk jugs of last year I was able to increase my collection efficiency. As a result of all these things I was able to collect more and boil down faster.

The result of my improvements is that the sap boiling went more smoothly, and faster. Last year every sap boil went late into the night—infamously, one sap boil went to 4AM if I remember right, and that was brutal. This year I finished every boil before midnight, and two of them I finished by around 9PM. This felt sane. This felt doable. An added bonus is that in the first year I made three gallons of syrup, and this year I made 3 and 1/2 gallons in even better time. Since I had 1/2 gallon left over from last year I decided my greater abundance was enough and called it quits before the season ran out. I think I am starting to figure this thing out.

The season is over now, and I am looking ahead. There is a part of me that thinks it would be cool to keep expanding until I was able to produce enough syrup to have some to sell. Another part of me questions how reasonable that kind of venture would be, and to what real purpose, at this stage in my life. I don't have a huge margin of time to work with, and if I make the operation too big it could become a burden regardless of whether their is profit involved. Going above a certain size operation would require being self-employed to have the kind of free time necessary. I don't foresee that in the future. However, as our own family grows, and our consumption of maple syrup expands, there will be room for some growth in my operation. I would like to set up to an actual evaporator because that would make the entire process much more efficient.

Those things are for the future. For today, I enjoy what I havel learned, and we all enjoy the fruit of my labor, and the trees bounty. I have a new marker of Spring’s coming, and a reminder that in even the darkest seasons there can be a bounty coming.

Postscript: I would like to say every year only brings improvement, but 2024 had the distinction of being the first year I accidentally boiled over a pot and lost a batch of maple syrup. I still made a decent amount, but that year I could always think about how much more there would ahve been, if only I had not lost some. That’s life too—you have to learn to live with your mistakes.

I’m in a reflective mood this morning, thinking about life. Last night was a late night, and that contributes to a vague sense of being out of sorts. I gave a talk in an old barn converted into a coffee house. The coffee house makes quite the impression with its soaring vaulted ceiling, in memory heaped with hay bales. Now an open balcony supported by ancient wooden beams looks down on the ground floor of tables and chairs. I am not sure what impression I made as I shared a broken story about a difficult season. My hope was that I encouraged others. I think I did, at least a few of them.

Afterward as I drove home in the dark, I saw the flaws in my words better than I could make out the road I drove. It wasn’t regret precisely, more a feeling of my limitations. This was the first time for the talk so I tried to be kind to myself. Improvement always takes time.

The coming of April left a hard winter behind. Ensconced away beside a wood stove or under warm blankets, the mind can fail to measure such things—but the animals will tell you, if you listen. They know hardness.

When winter was running out in its last fading days, a redtail hawk began hunting the chickens. This is a chicken nightmare, the reason every one of them has it written into their blood and bones to run for cover at a glimpsed flash in the sky or a passing shadow. Death comes swiftly.

The first chicken was found splayed in the middle of the snowy yard, its head devoured. My initial thought was that it had been a weasel, as they are known to eat chicken heads. But I was puzzled because there were no tracks in the snow. What did we have—a ghost weasel? The next day the answer appeared when the boys saw a hawk buzzing the chicken yard—cutting low, back and forth. There are no tracks when the preadator does not walk.

The hawk would not leave. The bird moved from tree to tree, swooping over the chicken yard. Our rooster stood in the bramble and tried to pretend he was a brave defender, but he looked more like a doleful convict waiting for his inevitable execution. The hens hid.

I went out to make my presence known in the hope that it would drive the hawk away, but he only moved to a slightly more distant lurking point. When I made a count of the hens I realized one was missing. The little Phoenix hen was nowhere to be found. I looked up at the hawk, considering. The preadator was restless, almost agitated, as if it were trying to get to something. I was suspicious the hawk knew something that I didn’t. Running down a list of possibilites in my head, I went back inside to get a flashlight and there in the dark shadows under the chicken coop I found the little bird. Her body was pressed back in the far corner, dead.

It took a little work but I finally eased the body out. A large gashed sliced deep into the back of the neck, a fatal blow. She had fled from the strike in mad terror, scrambling for safety only to die there. Hawks are deadly hunters.

For the next two weeks or so I instructed the boys to keep the chickens locked up. The hawk was hungry, maybe even desperate, and would surely come back. When the weather began to improve with coming spring more sources of food became available and making a hard attempt at a chicken would not be so appealing.

Over a month later a bald eagle killed a rabbit in the back yard near the lower garden. In my childhood eagles were almost a thing of legend. Now I can see them wheeling in the sky, most often in the river valley. Eagles prefer hunting the water so the rabbit kill—and especially a kill so very close to the house—was a sign of the eagle’s hard times.

A hard winter makes for hungry predators.

But the birds were not the only things looking to fill their bellies. I was also battling a rat infestation. Winter brings these creatures in also.

After a long war involving many methods (and no mercy), I was finally down to what I thought was the last and smartest rat. In these kind of drawn-out contests I start to imagine all sorts of nefarious and devilish cunning on the part of the rodent1. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had started laying traps for me. Instead, I was almost assaulted.

One dark morning I opened the basement door and was startled to see the final wanted rat down on the stair landing. Instantly, the rat sprinted up the stairs toward me. There are few things as effective at livening your morning and driving away the cobwebs of sleep as a rat sprinting up the stairs toward you.

The battle was on. The direct assault was alarming, but I was more alarmed by the idea that—rather than fling himself on me to extract vengance for his fallen comrades—the rat might attempt a dash past me through the door to wreak some kind of malicious havoc in the first floor. So rather than launch a counter-assualt I made a start toward slamming the door. The rat was faster and played me for a fool, making a sudden left turn off the stairs and into a basement hidey-hole.

Oh.

So I wasn’t being assaulted, but rather witnessing a mad dash for safety.

Winter brings on these rat invasions of the country house. Like a besieging army, they try to find every way into the warmth and stashes of food. I am still sore over how they pillaged my previous year’s dried corn harvest. Once I was convinced the last giant rodent was dead, I sealed off the holes that had been made in the foundation. I hope it will hold.

Today my mind wanders, making leaps. Winters can be hard, and those who must survive feel the sharp pains of hunger. With the talk I had given fresh in my mind, I connected the winter’s recent passing with that past hard season in my own life. It is true, there are other kinds of seasons in life besides those brought by the change in weather.

Our personal lives have seasons, and some of them can be hard like the hardness of a cold and hungry winter. Those seasons grind us down and seem to threaten us with the whisper of death, as no doubt the hawk and the eagle also heard, and the chickens, too.

In my own smallness and frailty I wish hard seasons didn’t exist. Isn’t that a human thing? But we can’t control the seasons—only rise up to live through the hard ones, look for the coming of spring.

Today, the rain slackens. The storm is passing. I have another talk to give. Maybe the second time I will do a little better.

He set his copy of my book on the table, and spoke with a quiet simplicity. “Thank you for making it not scary,” he said, and looked at me as if he meant every last bit of those words with all of his heart.

                                                                       ◊ ◊ ◊

The path to many places is long and winding, and such it was to reach the Big Flats Community Center this crisp Saturday morning in late April. Not physically winding–it is nearly a straight shot up the highway, a little over an hour drive. But the metaphorical path to bringing this occasion into being was long.

This morning of April 21st started last year when a friend of mine who sells gutters for a living made a sale to a lady who–he learned in the course of conversation–was in the business of helping elderly people adapt their homes for aging in place. Sue was her name, and besides her consulting work she also held speaking events on this topic. Noting how her work and speaking overlapped with mine, my friend mentioned to her (and later to me) that the two of us ought to discuss possibly working together.

It was an odd connection, but I decided it wouldn’t hurt to follow up, so I emailed Sue. After a few exchanges it was agreed that attending one of her events was a good way for me to figure out if I thought we could work together–and she would view the video of one of my events, and read my book. So it was I ended up traveling to Chemung County and listening to one of her presentations. In the process I met agency facilitators for the Chemung County Office for the Aging, introduced myself, and let them know what I was doing. Afterward, I followed up by email.

Sue and I agreed that there was opportunity to work together, but neither of us had anything planned at that time and we left it that if either of us had something that seemed to fit, we would let the other know. So far that has been the end of it. But months later one of the ladies from the Chemung Office for the Aging who I had met at Sue’s event contacted me by email and said they were interested in having me speak for them. They said sometime in November, but later it was pushed into the new year.

I thought maybe it wouldn’t happen at all. Things come up, then disappear. But in the new year they did get back to me, and we had a date set for April. This all came to fruition a year after I first came to the Chemung Office for the Aging. A winding path indeed, from gutter sale to community center speaking event.

                                                                 ◊ ◊ ◊

The Chemung Office for the Aging used grant money to purchase a copy of my book for every attendee of the event. The old man slid his copy across the table toward me.

I nodded in response to his thanks for my presentation. “I try,” I said. “I hope people can see it that way. I don’t think it has to be terrifying,” I said, then add, “who should I sign book this for?”

“You can sign it for Ed. That’s me,” he said.

“Who are you caring for?” I asked. Sometimes this helps me know what other words to add if I know a bit of their story.

“Actually, it’s me.” He looks at me. “I’m the one. I’m in the early stages, but it’s coming.”

My world hiccups, the conversation jumping to an entirely different frame of reference. Often caregivers thank me for helping them see the disease better–more clearly, more in context, more hope filled. But rarely does someone with the disease come to an event, and even less often will one of them speak with me. I had presumed another caregiver stood thanking me, and now the raw confession told me I had spent the last hour and a half telling this man what his future held.

And he had said thank you.

“I’m not scared anymore,” he said again. “Thank you for the things you said. I don’t think it has to be bad.”

“No,” I agreed. “After what I went through with my grandpa, I think it is less scary than it was before for me. I feel–for myself–there are a lot worse ways to die.” The conversation felt at odd angles. We were talking about this man’s impending losses and eventual death, and he was being grateful to me. My emotions stirred, my heart wishing I could give him something–something more than what now felt like the pitiful amount I’ve given.

I hand him back my book.

He picks it up. “I want to read this. I want to learn, to understand what is coming. This book will be good.”

“It’s good you want to learn. It’s great!” My words feel feeble. I’m thinking simultaneously about how it is going to slip out of his mind and yet maybe some bit–somewhere–will stay. I hope. I’m wondering if he will even be able to finish my book. And I marvel at his attitude.

“We’re all given a life,” he says. “Something. Our own burden.”

I notice now how there is a hesitation in his speech, a small halting that a listener might not notice if they weren’t attentive, but I catch it.

“I just think this is mine,” he looks away. “And I’m going to live it. And it will be okay.”

I nod, and try to find words, fumbling things to say.

“Anyhow, thank you,” he finishes. We wish each other well, and he moves away and I must sign the book for the next person. I feel like I’ve been swept along prematurely, and I want to follow after the old man and–and–do something. Say something. Help him, be there for him in the years that are coming. But that’s not the way it works. He must walk on, and so must I. But I do hope I’ve given him something for his road, something he will be able to carry with him.

                                                                 ◊ ◊ ◊

A few more people down the line I have two elderly ladies standing in front of me. I think they might be sisters. They both clutch a copy of my book, standing side by side with a hint of tension in their shoulders, a weariness in their faces. The first hands me her book and says with the quickness of someone trying to force emotions back, “Make it out to Barb and Ed. That’s me and my husband. He has the disease. We’re going through this with him.”

I smile to myself as I sign her book. “I met your husband a few minutes ago,” I say. “I signed his book. We talked about his disease.”

“Oh! What did he say?”

The sisters look a mixture of surprised and curious.

“He said he isn’t afraid anymore. That it’s okay.”

“He said that?” Tears come to Barb’s eyes, a hand to her mouth. “Oh, you don’t know what that means to me. I can’t believe–He never talks about it–and we don’t know what he thinks. To hear that he said that–that alone makes today worth it. Thank you so much.”

We talk a little more, and I try to find encouraging words, but giving them her husband’s words is all they wanted. All they needed.

Afterward, the community center empties and I am alone with my wife and our baby boy. My wife tells me how everyone made a fuss about the baby, but one man in particular. This old man came up to her three our four times while she was holding our baby. She thought the man might have had Alzheimer’s, because each time he stopped he said the same exact thing–as if he didn’t realize he had come a previous time. He is a beautiful boy. Cherish the moments, he said. These are precious days, and they are gone so quickly.

It was Ed.

                                                                  ◊ ◊ ◊

Life is a winding road, and none of us knows what lies ahead. I don’t know if I will ever have another speaking event. Maybe that bright April morning will be the last time I speak to an audience, the last time I stand up and open my heart and my mouth about hardness and brokenness and love and worth and what life means. I don’t know. But what I do know is that I am glad to have heard those words: “Thank you for making it not scary.”

It is what I have wanted to give.

2021

We all have our weak spots. One of mine is getting up in the middle of the night. However much patience I have under the best of circumstances (and I do not have the patience I should even then) I have much less patience in the middle of the night. I regularly do not rise to the occasion with grace when a child bellows in the middle of the night, “Daaadddy!”

For this I am sorry. A two-year-old can’t help that he needs to go to the bathroom at 2AM. It isn’t his fault that his siblings woke me up twice in the night already and more is probably coming. It isn’t his problem that I have to get up at 4:30AM because tomorrow is a work day and I don’t know how I am going to make it through the week because I am so tired. He is two, he can’t make it down to the bathroom by himself, and it is a great unkindness to him for me to be grumpy.

And yet I am. Often.

In the light of the morning I regularly see myself for what I am, and yet like a pig returning to the mud I am grumpy again when the middle of the night comes. I am not always outwardly grumpy. Sometimes I do make the bathroom trip without being verbally short with the little boy. But inwardly there are still the thoughts and feelings of, “I wish I didn’t have to get up. If only I could sleep through the night without interruption. I am so tired…” and so the litany of complaints goes within my mind until I get the child back into bed and collapse there myself.

The better moments are when I see beyond what I am (a grump) to the reality of what is. There are times where—in the flash of a moment—I see myself from the outside and I see things differently. One night not so long ago I was heading back upstairs from a little boy bathroom trip. Little hand in mine, we started up the stairs together. It was like so many times before where I was wishing I was still asleep in bed, and yet for that flash of a moment I saw it all differently.

I had a little boy who depends on me to take him to the bathroom in the middle of the night. The greatness of that reality caught me. No, I have two little boys who depend on me to take them to the bathroom. And soon enough a little girl will join those nightly treks. But soon enough they will all be grown and not need those nightly journeys. Soon enough they will fly away. But for now they are here, they are given to me, and they need me. And in light of that great truth, with this little hand in mine, is all I can think about really how I wish I was still asleep and didn’t need to do this?

In that moment in the night I was struck by my profound ungratefulness. It is a good thing to have a little boy to take to the bathroom. A beautiful thing. Is it always easy? No. Am I terribly sleep deprived? Often. But it is a great gift to have little children to take to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and it is a thankless heart to forget the goodness because of the momentary hardness. I felt that reality in a way I too rarely do.

I went back to bed feeling my own smallness, and momentarily seeing the great goodness in my life. I wish I could say it stuck.

Ungratefulness is a hard attitude to escape, but I am grateful for those moments when I am given a better glimpse of the life I have and the goodness hiding in plain sight. May I see it more and more. And may I be changed by it.

2024

It is hard to process the loss of others in a way that makes right sense of my own life.

A few years ago a man whose blog I follow lost his young adult son. I don’t know this man in person, he is a stranger to me, nearly half way around the world. His son was in the prime of his life, about twenty, and died quite suddenly from an undiagnosed heart issue. One day he was healthy, happy, full of life and preparing to marry his sweetheart. The next day he was dead. His father went from having a son dear to him, close to him, a son whom he could look forward to having a wonderful and rich future with—to having only memories left. Memories and hurt.

I respect how this man walked through that devastation publicly. He wrote of it, but with discretion. He was honest about the hardness and hurt, but also wrote frankly about where he found hope. His blog did not become consumed with that loss, but on anniversaries or other occasions he will return and remember what happened. But it feels like I can’t read anything on his blog without thinking about what happened, and imaging his life and his loss and dwelling on it as if it was me and my boy. It gnaws at me, thinking about what it would be like to see one of my sons live twenty years and then lose him so suddenly. What would I do, what would life be like?

I feel bad that I keep thinking about this man’s loss when I read his writing. Who wants to be reduced to the tragedy of your life? And yet I find myself unable to forget his past and read his writing for what it is in the present. How am I to do that?

More recently a nurse at work was telling a story from a few years ago, during the height of COVID. In her previous job she was an ER nurse of many years and the story was about a family who lost their two-year-old son. They had been doing a family Bible study when at some point they realized the littlest was missing from the room. They searched around the house and didn’t find the boy, and then went outside looking. There they found the child, face down in the pond.

The nurse was part of the ER team who tried to revive the boy. She said they tried a long time and finally the father—standing there and watching the team trying to save his son—came unglued and the nurse had to take him outside. After trying to calm and comfort him she went in again to join the team in their efforts to save the boy, but to no avail. After more minutes of futility the nurse went back outside to try to comfort the father as she gave him the news that his little boy could not be saved.

For my fellow nurse the point of the story was how much she hated the gear they had to wear during COVID which made a barrier against being close and giving comfort to people. Listening to the story, I was wrecked thinking about the dead little boy and his broken father. It was in one sense like every other child drowning story of the thousand you will read and hear about in a lifetime, but it was particularly vivid for me—being a nurse hearing it from another nurse, imaging myself there. It made my gut feel hollow, imagining myself the father, imagining the despair and loss and self-loathing I would feel in what would seem like such a preventable accident, a small oversight that ended a life. My boy’s life.

“Thank God I don’t have a pond,” is a little thought that slips through, but in that very moment I know it is a lie. The road passes maybe fifty feet in front of the house. We impress upon the kids that nobody should go into the road, or even close to the road. And they learn, and they are good. But it takes just one moment of forgetfulness, one second of inattention when a child runs after a wayward ball—and I can see in my mind too well the image of an F-150 striking my child at forty-five miles per hour. The ball bounces harmlessly the rest of the way across the road. The little body is flung aside in a blur, broken and bloody.

I wish I could push the image out of my mind, wish it had never come, unbidden. But the reality I must face is that I can never comfort myself with the idea that at least I don’t have the danger in my life that the other family did. There is danger on every side, for all of us. Death can come sudden, in an instant, from anywhere, from where we least expect it. A heart defect, a drowning, blunt impact, and more.

It is hard to be thankful when little kids get me up in the middle of the night, and I wish it came more easily for me. But it can sometimes be a harder thing to know how to rightly live out thankfulness when feeling the fragility of all that we have. Thankfulness isn’t hanging on to it all with a throttling desperate grasp, though sometimes it can be tempting to think so. Thankfulness is holding things lightly, gratefully, in spite of all the losses that will come, somehow even embracing those yet-to-come losses with a gladness in the goodness of the moment of now and the goodness yet to come.

But I’m not sure I know how to do that.

The recent cold weather has me thinking. For those of us who live in these parts of the world the cold can be an unconsidered part of life—just one of those uncomfortable seasonal rhythms. But if someone living in a warmer climate visits, the experience of cold can be staggering. Cold enough, and the reality becomes hard to comprehend unless you’ve lived it. Jack London explores this idea in his short story To Build A Fire.1 The protagonist does not adequately grasp the reality of 75F below zero, with dire results. London captures the extreme of the idea, but the same truth has less extreme applications. A person native to Florida has no experiential knowledge of -20F until they have lived and breathed and walked in that temperature. As London observes, there is something very different between theoretical knowledge and experiential knowledge.

The greatest experiential knowledge I can claim is -30F, a temperature we hit at least once the first year we moved into the Halfway Valley when I was a boy. That was a cold winter, but a far cry from the -75F in London’s Yukon story. The coldest temperature of which I have deeply personal experience is -22F, and I say deeply personal because I took a bike ride in that cold.

I suppose that statement could use a little explanation.

For almost twenty years of my life I took three bike rides every week. This was my favorite form of exercise. Also being a creature of habit, I was unwavering in this routine—which meant I went all year, no matter the weather, no matter the temperature. The rainstorms where I could barely see were difficult, but the snowstorms were much more dangerous (and difficult—if you think traction with a car is bad in snow try it with a mountain bike). But the most painful were the brutally cold mornings.

In the pit of winter I left on my bike ride before dawn arrived; it wasn’t until I had returned home that the sun crested the hill. I did my fair share of subzero Fahrenheit bike rides, but the coldest was -22F. This winter riding would have been more bearable if I had worn specialized clothes appropriate to the season, but in my stubbornness and poverty I just wore double sweat pants, double socks, and my winter coat along with a headband to cover my ears and gloves that were winter but not rated for the arctic cold.

And it was brutally cold.

When the ambient temperature drops into the double digits below zero the tears can freeze when they squeeze out of the corner of your eye. Eyelashes stick together. Nostril hairs harden into a plug. The beard becomes a crust of ice. There is nothing comfortable about it.

The cold air slammed against my body as I peddled ferociously to stay warm. The air was painful in a way best described as perhaps some inverse of being crushed—not literally the experience of being tossed out into the vacuum of space but a dissolution of sorts. A violent theft of heat. That kind of painful.

There was always a trajectory to the ride. Starting out it was a desperate battle to stay warm as my body wailed that it was going to freeze. About a quarter of the way into the ride I would start beating my hands against the handle bars trying to get sensation back into my numbed fingers. Halfway through the ride I would be at my warmest and for a few brief moments every part of my body was thawed and there was something almost magical in being out there. The world utterly frozen has a certain stillness to it. The air, stripped of moisture by the cold, is clear like it is clear no other time. The sun crests over a world suspended in white and nature is laid out beautiful and terrible.

In this severe coldness I felt the slightest change in temperature, the least hint of stirring air. I grimaced whenever I biked through a wooded area because in those secluded places I felt a chill worse than every other chill. Before this experience I would not have believed that a person could feel cold air settling into a pocket in the terrain so distinctly. I always wanted to get out as soon as possible, wanted to be in one of the places where the sun would first touch.

I knew I was riding close to the edge. How many more degrees cold I could survive without causing myself serious issues I didn’t know, exactly, but it wasn’t a lot more. There was only so much I could survive in sweatpants and a coat.

On the way back my body started to lose the battle with the cold. As I closed in on the half hour mark I again felt the chill encroaching on every part of my body. The frigid air was winning against my feeble heat production. The momentary warmth was failing. I couldn’t hold out much longer. Then I was home. I swung stiffly off the bike and stumbled inside, stripping off my winter garments and doing cool down stretching that was also warming up. When I undressed for the shower the front of my thighs were pink and tingly from the cold.

That is the closest I’ve come to the Yukon cold, and it is cold enough for me. There was something invigorating about the experience, once survived. The body is very aware of being alive, being warm. It starts the day off in a very sharp way.

You can say I was a fool for riding in that weather, and I won’t argue the point. But the stubbornness displayed is echoed in some fashion, to some degree, by everyone who lives in these more northern climes. We don’t all go on bike rides in the middle of the winter in subzero temperatures, but coldness brings out a hardiness in those who face it. It either tempers perseverance and determination, or you get out.

I can’t say if forcing myself to stick to the routine of bike rides even through subzero temperature grew determination in me, or simply was an occasion to reveal the truth that I am a very stubborn person. It was, at least, an occasion that reinforced to me the truth that perseverance can carry you through a lot. I like to think those rides did some kind of good. Maybe I am just fooling myself.

There is a meanness to the brutal cold not felt in milder chills. When the outside is hovering somewhere in the 20F above zero your friends from Florida might be complaining about the cold but there is something almost cheerful and cozy about a home with a wood fire on those days. When the outside air drops below zero, the mood changes. Grab metal with a bare hands and the sensation feels like burning. Hostility invades the world, and I can feel the battle. Yes, inside the house it is warm, but it feels like some frozen demon is trying to claw through the windows. The windows and doors radiate cold when I walk past. Frigid air oozes through tiny cracks in the walls. The temperature around my feet is noticeably colder than around my head. The cold outside wants to win—it is trying to win—and crush the house into a frozen death. And in that cold I remember how savage the wild really is. The weather can be merciless. I understand why people freeze to death.

To go outside on such a night feels a bit like stepping into a hostile void. The snow crunches loud beneath boots, a sharpness distinctly different from the softer sounds of snow in warmer weather. For a moment a cloud of warmer air hangs around me—then it is gone, and the chill presses in. Chores are done in a hurry and if I’m not quick enough I’m chilled to the bone.

Back inside, the battle for comfort is constant. The cold claws at the windows, batters the walls, seeps through the floor. And I stoke the fire until it roars. I do find a metaphor for life in this contest, a thing worth pondering. If the cold and dark of these winter nights speak for the coldest and darkest times of life, then as much as a warm fire is needed on these nights that fact tells the truth of how the warmth of friendship, companionship, and good company is vital to making it through those cold and dark seasons of the soul. Without warmth and light, you die. As easily as we acknowledge that physical truth, we don’t always heed it in the inner realm. In London’s grim story, the protagonist died because he did not respect the cold. I think that is equally true for the inner cold and dark that assails us.

On winter nights it can feel like the cold will never end. It can feel like that inside us, too. But then, eventually, the weather breaks. The temperature softens. You’ve survived. So it goes through winter, through life, until finally all the battles are over. Whether you are stuck inside your house with the snow blowing outside, or trapped within the cage of your mind feeling the cold—persevere. The season will turn.

By Tuesday night the change in weather arrived. The morning snow gave way to rain, which spattered against my windshield in the dark drive home. The wind gusted and buffeted. Any time outside was brief, with shoulders hunched against the unfriendly atmosphere.

After I locked up the chicken coop for the night I walked back across the sodden yard, boots squishing in slushy snow as I listened to the wind moan and rush through the tall pines along the border of the property. In the night the sound was both mournful and wild, speaking of things coming, things changing. The call was uncomfortable, and at the same time thrilling, in its restlessness.

In contrast to the wildness of the night, inside it was warm, bright, and dry. There is a special pleasure in stocking a wood stove in such times. The coals raked, the fresh wood shoved in, and the revived flames speak of a bulwark against uncertainty. There is assurance and comfort.

Supper was home made pizza, something which my wife has grown in her perfections of making over the years of our marriage. I don’t know if it was the weather, the food, or something else, but I was feeling particularly thankful as we all gathered around the dinner table.

The pizza with fresh onion from our garden caught my attention, and taste buds. The wet autumn had made plenty of onions start to rot in the field before harvest and I had been afraid that nearly our entire harvest would spoil. But I sorted the onions as best I could and the remainder have been holding up decently well. The pizza sauce was home made, with garlic from our garden, then the mozzarella and a bit of scattered pepperoni, topped with the thinly sliced onion. The onion provided the kick of taste, the best I can describe it as fresh and sharp, elevating the flavor of the entire combination of the pizza.

I could easily have eaten far too much. I probably did eat a little too much.

We were eating and talking and my mind was wandering over various ideas (as it is wont to do). At some point in the evening I pondered local grown food versus imported and argued both sides to myself. On the one hand, there is goodness in what is grown local, even down to what is pulled from the earth of your own back yard. But also there is a goodness in buying from others. There is a spirit of generosity in that exchange, the hospitality and open-heartedness of offering what is ours to others. To understand that truth you only need to consider times in history of great warfare. There is no sharing of food then. The world shrinks into a cage of animosity and violence so that each hoards what is his own. The doors are shut. If you recognize this, then you can see how food enjoyed from far and wide has a certain implicit kindness so easily overlooked.

My thoughts drift to the work day. There was an episode of “story time” in the morning, when the nurses sat around at the start of shift and reminisced. Somehow the topic of preferred places to work came up and my boss opined that he preferred working the Trauma floor because there was less paperwork and things were simpler. I will say this is a matter of perspective, but since his first career had been twenty years as a police officer it is understandable that he was not as bothered by the harder aspects of working Trauma.

As I chewed my pizza I mulled over three of his harrowing stories. In the background the children munched and crunched. The first story was about the man who came in with a hammer claw embedded in his skull, the result of a fight. The man was conscious and talking so when the physician walked in the room the doctor said, “Well, clearly it isn’t in his brain,” and promptly began wiggling the hammer back and forth until it came lose.

The second story was about a lady who had her hand caught in an industrial accident with a mold press. “I’ve never seen anyone in so much pain,” my boss said. “When she was conscious her entire body shook from the pain. The hand was completely flattened.” There was nothing that could be done to save it, and the hand had to be amputated.

The third story was about a car accident where a man was brought into the hospital with a steering column embedded in his abdomen. The firefighters had cut the steering column out of the car and brought the man in with the car part sticking out of him. “That was before the days of airbags,” my boss mused.

All three people survived their trauma.

Pondering such stories provokes a strange sensation of dis-junction, as if the world has bifurcated into two realities. Here I am in my dining room with the family gathered around, enjoying fresh garlic and onion with cheese and thick tomato sauce over a crispy crust. The children talk about their day in between bites of food, a warm relaxed chatter. It is a picture of domestic tranquility and yet simultaneously within my head (and outside beyond the rain and darkness) there exist a world of pain and anger and brokenness. It is all tangled together, without easy explaining, and it feels impossible to reconcile the existence of both—as if one must be nothing more than a dream in the face of the reality of the other. Perhaps there is the fear that domestic peace is but the dream, one day to be woken from as it is devoured by the wild black beast of reality. I don’t know what to do with that. Be thankful for what I have, I suppose. That is a start.

Today there is good pizza and a happy family. Here there is the goodness of gathering around the table, eating together in life and togetherness. These things are so much absent from this age and culture. Aloneness is like darkness. Both consume you.

And so after reading two more chapters from The Wingfeather Saga, the children are packed off to bed. They still have the Christmas lights strung around the room, the multicolored ambiance the accompaniment to which they can drift off to sleep. Later I come in and shut off the lights.

Outside the rain drips through the night and the wind sighs a song about sorrow unspeakable.

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Auld Lang Syne

As I sit down to write at the kitchen table I look out the window and see the boys adventuring in the snow. They love exploring the wide world of our country property, playing in whatever way their imagination takes them. Tigie-boy stops now and lays down in the snow to make a snow angel.

So often Tigie-boy takes Mr. Pip on long meandering walks around the property, exploring or re-visiting familiar haunts. Tigie-boy is two and Mr. Pip is one, but Tigie-boy is much more able to do the walking. Still, Mr. Pip tromps along after him with all the determination a one-year-old can muster. It is hard with the snow and Mr. Pip often slips and falls. Right now they are two little shapes in snow gear off in the distance at the edge of the field, where the old garden used to be. It is a drizzly, windy, morning and strangely warm for the second day of a new year.

Now the boys have decided they want to come inside. I help them strip out of their winter clothes in the kitchen by the wood stove. As Tigie-boy pulls off his snow pants he glances up, savoring that fresh warmth of coming inside from a blustery day and says, “I love our nice warm house.” He has many of the faults common to a two-year-old, but he is an example to me of how it is good to live in the moment with gratefulness and awareness of the present.

The dawn of January is the time when plans are made for the coming year, where hope and expectation give rise to words and resolution. We welcomed our third child into the world on December 22nd, a snuggly little girl, so our household enters the new year with three children under the age of three. In this place of life a sober resolution would be, “Survive the year ahead.” The reality of caring for three little ones does not leave room for grand ambitions, much less little plans or even keeping the house clean.

There is something to be said for entering the year without expectation, opening hands to receive whatever may come and learning to see and live the life that has been given in this present moment. To live well with little ones is a great accomplishment and worthy goal. But there is also something to be said for the days of small things, the little time carved out for the steady perseverance of intention toward something more than another day survived. Beyond living well with my family in thought and deed, my hope for the new year is writing. No goal of books completed, or anything so grand. Such things are dreams, beyond the scope of life in this present season. Just the intention to write a little each week is a reach enough. In the course of writing this I rescued Mr. Pip out of the snow, helped set up a toy road system on the kitchen floor, mediated fights, changed a diaper, and watched boys fly their own imagined paper airplanes around the kitchen.

If I manage a bit of writing each week this year, I will have done well.

More memories. It is March 2020. Unseasonably warm air, and a need to get ice cream, blew me into the gas station. I was standing tiredly at the checkout while the cashier rang up my purchase. “Where do I stick this–oh, here,” I said a bit foolish, staring at the card reader right in front of me. I inserted my credit card. “Long day,” I said by way of excuse.

“Yeah,” said the younger cashier to my left. “I’m leaving work early today.”

“Well I work in health care,” I said. “With all of the corona-virus it’s been more than the usual.”

The two cashiers made sounds of fake alarm and stepped back, one covering her face with her shirt.

“I remember that,” said the older lady, a rangy woman in her fifties or perhaps early sixties. “That’s why I got out of the nursing home. I worked there and I was sick all the time. I was forty years old then, and I was sick three months, throwing up all the time.”

I gave a vague expression, half thinking of explaining that it was administrative headaches associated with the corona-virus, not issues of getting sick, which had made my day weary. But the lady continued without any input from me.

“I went to the doctor and told him I had the flu. He tested me and said, ‘Lady, you don’t have the flu.’ I told him, ‘Yes, I do. I’ve been sick a long time.’ He said to me, ‘You don’t have the flu, you’re pregnant.’ I said to him, ‘Doctor, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m forty years old. I’m not pregnant.’ ‘Don’t argue with me,’ he said. ‘I’m telling you that you’re pregnant.’ I went home and I was so mad. I was furious.”

I looked at her, a little uncertain, and picked up my purchase. “So…were you pregnant?”

“Yeah. I was so furious.”

People sometimes share the strangest things.

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To take the thought further, a picture is not good at conveying the detail of complex ideas. A good picture of a person may hint at the complexities of the subject, but it cannot speak clearly about past sorrows, joys, or accomplishments. I could convey more detail about the life of a person I know in a thousand words than in a single picture. But a picture would give you a clearer understanding of their appearance than I could convey in a thousand words.

It is also said, “Pictures don’t lie.” But this is not true. Anyone who understands photography knows you can present false information in a picture, whether by the physical altering of the photo (very easy with today’s technology) or by simply altering the lighting, posing, or setting of a photo. Even the most simple photograph is not just conveying what is–it is conveying a certain perspective.

Words don’t replace pictures, and pictures don’t replace words. They simply tell different stories.

Why am I saying all of this? Because when I look at pictures of Grandpa from during the time I cared for him, I am always struck by these realities. I think “There is so much that photo isn’t saying. There is so much that photo isn’t showing.” But also I sometimes see a photo and think, “That photo is showing something I couldn’t convey in words.”

The memories, words, and photos I have of the time I cared for Grandpa balance each other out. They each tell a slightly different story. In my memories, and often in my writing, what comes more readily are the bad times. But then I see some photos–photos of things I lived through–and it gives me a different perspective.

I would divide the following selection into two categories. The first are sad pictures, which present an approximate chronicling of Grandpa’s decline:

In the early days he spent a lot of time sitting at the kitchen table.

Later, when he was no longer able to walk well (or at all) he would often crawl around the house until he was so exhausted he lay down and slept wherever he happened to be.

He never wanted to be alone. This photo is from two months before Grandpa died.

This last photo was taken only a few days before Grandpa died. He was no longer eating or drinking, only sleeping.

It is hard to describe my reaction to those photos. They are sad, and at the same time when I look at them I feel like they don’t do justice to what happened. The living, and feeling, can’t be distilled down to what the pictures show.

But then I see the happy pictures, which remind me of things I need to not forget.

Grandpa liked hats. He was always more than willing to wear hats. Here he is wearing my younger brother’s hat.

This picture says a lot to me.

The pictures that say the most to me are the following. They were taken on July 4th, 2009, two months before Grandpa died. It is when I am looking at these pictures above all others that my thoughts turn to what I said at the beginning of this post. The last months of Grandpa’s life were extremely difficult for me. Grandpa was slowly slipping out of my grasp, eating less and less and as a caregiver is was very hard for me to care for someone slipping away. The most immediate memories that come to me from the last months of Grandpa is one unending blur of trying to coax him, and help him, to eat.

It was emotional and psychological misery, and it is very easy for that to become the only window through which I see the last months. But these pictures show a different side. The vision is so different it is almost hard to believe when I look through the pictures. A stranger looking at those pictures wouldn’t think Grandpa was nearly incapable of speaking, or eating. They wouldn’t guess how after the party was over it was a battle with apathy and exhaustion to get Grandpa to eat a few mouthfuls. And for that reason the pictures can feel like a lie. But it isn’t that they lie–it is that they only capture a small part of the picture. A very small part, but a very important part. There were many sad times, and many hard times, but there were happy times too. Even though Grandpa was in the last weeks of his life, and just about everything had fallen apart for him, when his children and grandchildren were around he could still be happy.

Perhaps even very happy.

And in that the pictures remind me of something it is easy for me to forget, and which is good to remember.

Grandpa with a granddaughter.

Grandpa with a son.

Grandpa with another son.

Grandpa on the couch.

Grandpa interacting with his granddaughters.

Grandpa sharing a laugh.

Today, December 31st, would have been Grandpa’s 82nd birthday.

[Note: This ended the blog As We Lived Before.]

Note: This material originally appeared in a blog I wrote while caring for my grandfather as he journeyed through dementia. It ran 2006-2009 and ended at the time of his death. This blog was the incipient material for a book, “The Sea is Wide: A Memoir of Caregiving.” If you have appreciated this writing, please consider purchasing the book and sharing it with others.

Gene’s health had been failing for some time, and there was at least one point in the last year where it appeared that he was about to die before Grandpa. For Grandpa’s sake I was glad Gene held on because it meant Grandpa didn’t have the sadness of Gene’s death in his life.

On the subject of Grandpa . . . it is strange what unexpected things will appear to remind you of the past.

Earlier last week Grandma was digging through her old collection of Christmas cards, thinking that since she had collected so many unused cards over the years she ought to use them. Then, there in the midst of her cards, she found a small plain white envelope addressed in the familiar tight handwriting of Grandpa, to my uncle Kevin.

The card was old, at least more than 16 years old. It had never been sent. There wasn’t even a stamp. Inside the envelope was a small simple card. On the front was the pastoral painting of a red barn in winter. Inside Grandpa had written:

Dear Kevin -

Cards never seem to have the precise words to express what a person really thinks or feels on a Holiday season such as Christmas Time. So, [below were the printed words of the card:]

Wishing you a beautiful world
Through all the seasons of the year
Happy Holidays

[then he concluded in his own writing:]

With much love and unbounded hope for the future

Mom and Pop

I was astounded to see the card. Not because I didn’t know Grandpa felt such sentiments toward his children–for I know he did–but that he actually ever wrote such a thing in a Christmas card. Grandpa didn’t share those feelings–he kept them hidden away in his heart where it only came out in little glimpses if you were paying attention. And perhaps that was why I saw the card today . . . perhaps in the end he was embarrassed by what he had expressed and put the card away so nobody saw it, until today. Which is too bad, because I know Kevin would have understood, and appreciated, the quiet sentiment behind those words.

And he still will, because Grandma is going to give him that card this Christmas. It’s a little weird getting a card from a dead man, but still fitting. Our past deeds speak about us, even from beyond the grave.

Note: This material originally appeared in a blog I wrote while caring for my grandfather as he journeyed through dementia. It ran 2006-2009 and ended at the time of his death. This blog was the incipient material for a book, “The Sea is Wide: A Memoir of Caregiving.” If you have appreciated this writing, please consider purchasing the book and sharing it with others.

So long as we have earthly possessions this cannot be entirely avoided, but there are steps that can be taken to make the trouble after the time of death less difficult. I am sure I am not the first to tell you this, but I will repeat it: Make a will. Have mercy on your survivors, please, and make a will. If you are caring for someone else, check to see if they have a will in place. If not, see if one can be made. I am sure there are many other legal related things that can be done, which a consultation with a lawyer or other expert (or a lot of research on your own part) could make you aware of, and save other people a lot of work down the road. Some things to consider are: Whose name is on any property owned? Whose name is on stocks and bonds? Who are the beneficiaries of any insurance policies?

Grandpa had very little that was in his name alone, and he had a simple and straight-forward will in place, so dealing with the legal and financial issues after his death has been (so far) a relatively straight-forward process. The emphasis is on relatively. We still had to go through probate, and the forms for the process (like all bureaucratic forms) were not clear and easily intelligible. As something of a collective family effort we managed to get the forms filed without the involvement of a lawyer (but with some very nice help from the staff and clerk at the probate court). On the death of a loved one, most people are not up to untangling the intricacies of this process and simply hand the entire matter over to a lawyer. Having been through the process, I can sympathize.

Beyond making sure all the proper legal documents are in place before your death, or the death of a loved one in your care, it is also a very good idea to familiarize yourself with all the steps that will need to be taken in the event of the death. Who will need to be notified? What will need to be done? The list can be distressingly long, and it is easy to forget things when the upsetting event of death actually comes. Social Security, Pension, Insurance Policies . . . who else? What kind of paperwork will you need to file with these various organizations? Where is the birth certificate? Death certificate? Marriage license? Insurance policies? Financial records? If it is your death you are preparing for, make up a list of who will need to be contacted and where the needed paperwork is located and make sure the person taking care of your estate knows where that list is located. If you are preparing for the death of someone in your care, make sure you know who needs to be contacted, and where the information is located. Nobody wants to be left tearing apart the house looking for who-knows-what and who-knows-where after someone has died.

When Grandpa died one of my uncles determined all of the organizations that needed to be contacted, and did so promptly. Grandma had all the paperwork filed away, but we had to do more than enough sorting, trying to find exactly what we needed, determining what policy was the correct one, and what phone number we were supposed to call, and so on. It could have been a lot worse, but it also could have been better.

It can seem morbid to deal with this sort of thing in advance, but it isn’t. It is wise. We will all die, and we don’t know the day, so the wise will prepare in advance. Yes, it is unpleasant but those who must deal with it later will thank you. It is one good thing you can leave behind. So remember, put your house in order.

Note: This material originally appeared in a blog I wrote while caring for my grandfather as he journeyed through dementia. It ran 2006-2009 and ended at the time of his death. This blog was the incipient material for a book, “The Sea is Wide: A Memoir of Caregiving.” If you have appreciated this writing, please consider purchasing the book and sharing it with others.

Grandpa is gone, and it is natural to think about what we have lost in his passing. But there is something I would like to share today, something that I think gives a needed perspective. In this time when many are feeling burdened with grief, it is good to remember what burden Grandpa felt. Grandpa was very aware of his Alzheimer’s, and that sickness was a great burden to him. He did not speak much about it, but today I will share with you some of his earliest words on the matter. It is something for you to think about, and remember.

When I first came to take care of Grandpa I wasn’t sure how much he understood why I was there, or how much he understood about his problem. Then one day shortly after I came, we went on a walk. It was sunny, and warm, a beautiful fall day. Grandpa decided he would take a walk up toward Doug’s. I guess Grandpa was feeling fairly well because we made it to the top of the hill where Grippen Road meets Glenwood before Grandpa decided to turn around.

When we turned around Grandpa seemed to collect himself and then said (without any lead-up), “I do hope and pray that this curse would be taken away.”

I said nothing at first. On other days when Grandpa had complained about his general state I commiserated about the fallen state of man and how our only hope was new bodies. At first I wasn’t certain if he was taking up that general eschatological thought in his out-of-the-blue comment. But I thought not, both because I guessed his recent blow-up at Grandma was on his mind (“Well, Pa,” she had said afterward, “You’re not very clear.” “I’m sorry I’m not clear,” he had said,) but also I felt that the way he had gathered himself before making the statement indicated he wasn’t making an off-hand comment about the condition of the world in general but something much more personal.

He said nothing more after a few steps, so I said, “It’s hard, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s very hard. I think . . .” But then he stopped. Finally, he said, “I don’t know what I think.”

He spoke no more on that subject and a little later when he spoke again it was on a different subject.

The short exchange might not seem to mean much if you were not there to hear the way in which he said it, but I’ve recounted it because it meant a lot to me. I think all of us who have interacted with Grandpa could see quite clearly that he was painfully aware that he couldn’t communicate clearly, and that he made a “fool” out of himself by doing stupid things. But to be aware that you can’t speak clearly at this particular moment, or that you do stupid things, is not the same thing as expressing a larger awareness—both the larger issue of causation, (that is, “I am doing these things because I am succumbing to Alzheimer’s”,) and his spiritual relationship to his problem.

Now we can say, “I hope and pray” in a very flippant manner, but that was not the way in which Grandpa spoke. He spoke quietly, but in an earnest way that told of what was deep within him. I felt it was a rare moment where he opened up to express his recognition of his affliction and his innermost earnest desire and petition regarding his state.

I wasn’t sure he would ever speak so openly about his condition again, but about a week later we had another exchange.

On this occasion Grandpa had gone to bed for the night, but I needed to finish up on some stuff I was doing, so I didn’t go to bed at the same time. I went to check in on him a little later and he was sitting up in bed. I took care of his minor problem and was starting to put him back to bed when he paused and said, “Do you believe that?”

“What,” I said.

“What he said,” Grandpa said, gesturing toward the CD player. “Do you believe it applies to this age?”

I had left the Bible on CD playing for him (he liked to listen to it when he went to bed) and the section being read was from the gospel of Mark where Jesus speaks about faith saying, “If a man has faith he can say to the mountain ‘throw yourself into the sea’ and it will be done.”

“Yes,” I said. “I believe it.”

“Well some people say there are two ages,” he said.

“It says elsewhere in scripture, Grandpa, that all scripture was written for our instruction. So I believe it, yes.”

“But some people say, ‘Well, then, why are you sick?’” Grandpa said.

I answered, “And Jesus disciples asked him ‘why was the man was born blind–because of his sin or his parents sin?’ And Jesus told them ‘Neither, but that the glory of God might be revealed in his life.’ And we can say the same for your situation, Grandpa.”

He gave a little chuckle and said something to the effect, “I don’t understand why.”

And I said, “I know. The situation of Job is a good example. He suffered a very lot and God didn’t give him an explanation. God wouldn’t explain himself to Job—Job had to accept it because God was God. We have to believe by faith that He is a loving and compassionate God.”

“Yeah. It certainly gives you something to ponder,” Grandpa said.

Then, in alluding back to the issue of faith he said, “I sure would like to be healed from this . . . or whatever comes down the pike.”

I said, “He will, Grandpa. He will heal you . . . if not by making this body well, then by taking you out of this body.”

He gave a little chuckle and said something about hitting him over the head with a board. (Earlier when he had expressed distress about waking up so much in the night I suggested he hit himself over the head with a board to go back to sleep. I suspect he was furthering the joke on this occasion by suggesting patricide by the same method.)

I am telling you these stories to give you some idea—as much as any of us can—of what Grandpa’s thoughts were. The sickness was a burden to him, in particular the Christian (or spiritual) aspects. Not only did he wish that his sickness would be taken away, but the implications of his sickness evidently weighed on his mind. If he was not healed in answer to his prayers did that mean he didn’t have enough faith? Or was this all happening to him because of some past wickedness in his life? This last thought was something he expressed more than once.

Today we face the weight of grief, knowing that we will not see Grandpa again in this earthly life. But in facing that grief, we should remember the burden that Grandpa faced. It was his earnest desire and prayer that he would be healed, and his sickness taken away. That was his heart’s cry. And God is faithful, and He has answered that prayer. Grandpa now knows what he longed for, and the burden he carried has been lifted away. His burden is gone. Though we may be sad that he has left, I saw what burden he carried these last three years, and I know what he desired.

For his sake today, I am glad.

Note: This material originally appeared in a blog I wrote while caring for my grandfather as he journeyed through dementia. It ran 2006-2009 and ended at the time of his death. This blog was the incipient material for a book, “The Sea is Wide: A Memoir of Caregiving.” If you have appreciated this writing, please consider purchasing the book and sharing it with others.

I meant to write a post like this some time ago, long before Grandpa’s death arrived, but it is still appropriate today.

Alzheimer’s can be a sad, and even grim, sickness. Day after day is the steady grind, and day after day is the steady decline. There is plenty of opportunity for tears, and even despair. How does a person survive?

There is much that goes into coping with Alzheimer’s, but a sense of humor doesn’t hurt. One of the great things about my experience with Grandpa was the synergy between our humor. I think many people are not fully aware of Grandpa’s sense of humor because for most of his life his powerful sense of decorum often kept his humor in check. His humor was usually not the type for mature or refined company, so as an adult it was often restrained, only occasionally bursting out.

There is a good deal of overlap between Grandpa’s humor and mine, though I think I have much less of a sense of propriety or decorum. This overlap meant that as Grandpa’s Alzheimer’s grew worse, (and his sense of humor became increasingly uninhibited,) and where mature conversation was lost, we gained the ability to tease, joke, and laugh. Grandpa never, never, lost his sense of humor.

Conveying our banter, games, and jokes, is difficult. Partly because a huge amount of nuance, texture, intonation, and inside references went into the verbal teasing and this makes it difficult to relay the full humor of an exchange in a way that accurately conveys why it was funny. And partly it is difficult to convey because as a comedian I am extemporaneous, making it up as I go along, and forgetting it just about as quickly. So, if you weren’t there, you missed it, and I forgot.

At the time I didn’t really think about why I indulged in the humor. It was just something that spontaneously welled up inside me that I let bubble out. But in reflection I see the humor did several important things. First, it was a way for me to communicate with Grandpa, to express my love and affection in a way he could understand, all the way up to the end. Second, it was a way for me to take Grandpa’s mind off his troubles and misery. Introduced at the right moment, a bit of humor could effectively defuse one of Grandpa’s worried or agitated moods. Finally, the humor was simply an expression of me finding humor in life, an act which provided a bit of antidote to the hard times, and sad times.

When I came to care for Grandpa he was already significantly impaired in his speech ability, so any verbal humor was always largely a one-sided act. It was also almost exclusively absurdist humor. The key was to keep the lines short enough, and absurd enough, that Grandpa could easily grasp that it was an absurd joke. A bonus was if I could bait him into giving one word responses. Below are a couple of examples of exchanges we would have, perhaps none of them exactly verbatim for an actual conversation, but in substance accurate.

Example 1

Me: Are you poor? (Grandpa has always thought of himself as very poor, so it is an easy answer)

Grandpa: Yes.

Me: I think we should rob a bank.

Grandpa: What?

Me: Don’t you think it would be fun to rob a bank?

Grandpa: No. (He hasn’t caught on to the joke. Otherwise he would say, “Sure, lot’s of fun.”)

Me: But it’s lots of fun. You get to shoot guns and drive cars really fast, and have the police chase you with sirens. And if you’re really lucky, you get thrown in jail.

(But this time I’ve piled on enough bad and not fun things, that Grandpa gets the joke. So I add the last twist:)

Me: But don’t worry, when they catch us, and we go on trial, I’ll testify against you and get off scott free while you go to jail for twenty years.

The last line is Grandpa’s favorite, not only because it adds a little twist to the story, but also because it reflects a view he has on life: The guilty are always getting out of their due punishment by blaming someone else.

Example 2

(I sit down next to Grandpa and give him a hug)

Me: Boy, you are so strong and handsome. How did you get so strong?

Grandpa: Don’t speak such nonsense.

Me: You’re so strong, I wish I was as strong as you. I bet all the girls like you.

Grandpa: You think so, huh?

Me: Yep. I think we need to get you a girlfriend.

Grandpa: (Silence)

Me: So what we’ll do is, we’ll take you to the beach in California and have you walk up and down the beach in a tiny bathing suit and flex your big muscles for all the girls. Doesn’t that sound like a good idea?

Grandpa: Don’t be stupid.

I did a lot of variations on the “Your Handsome” joke. Grandpa was never a big man (perhaps topping out at 140 lbs in his prime), never was a man for the girls, and certainly never wanted to prance around in any type of bathing suit. It was probably not possible to come up with a more absurdly stupid joke, and Grandpa rarely found it funny. But I enjoyed it immensely because it was a great way to tease Grandpa because he found such jokes about his person slightly embarrassing, highly stupid, and vaguely inappropriate.

I could go on and on. I had various other stock basic jokes which I would take off in infinite variations. There was the “When you were a little boy . . .” jokes usually centering around some supposed wickedness he had done as a child, or somehow involving how his mother had treated him (kisses, hugs, spankings, etc). When I came in the house and he asked who it was, I would tell him I was his conscience come back to haunt him for all the bad things he had done. Then there were the motorcycle jokes, the car jokes, and the traveling jokes, all things which Grandpa hated and all things I would suggest he engage in, in some elaborate and over-blown fashion.

Some of my verbal jokes didn’t necessarily involve Grandpa directly but were my own little personal riff on life which he may or may not have got (depending) but he certainly gathered my general mood. I took to loudly singing him “Georgie Porgie Puddin’ Pie” when I took him out to lunch or supper (don’t ask me why—it just seemed the thing to do) and as Grandpa took to calling me Gene (the name of his brother) I took to calling him Georgie. Part of the joke was the implicit messing with his mind and/or messing with reality—he would shout “Gene!” and I would shout “George!”—and part of it was just a subtle acknowledgment of the ludicrousness of our entire situation—calling people by names that weren’t theirs, shouting endlessly for people who weren’t present.

As time went on, I became increasingly convinced that, in some sense, Grandpa was on to that deeper subtext of the joke. The most clear example came about the middle of this summer, one evening when Grandma was quizzing Grandpa about the names of people in his family. One of the first things Grandpa lost to Alzheimer’s was the ability to recall faces and names together. So when Grandma asked Grandpa for the name of his mother he glowered at her (not wanting to admit he couldn’t remember) and then told her very distinctly, and defiantly, “Georgie.” His (rather brilliant, given the circumstance) verbal riposte left Grandma nearly hysterical with laughter. He couldn’t remember his mother’s name, but he could remember that Georgie was the “wrong” name that everybody kept using for the somebody and so he deliberately used it to make his own point.

On another occasion (perhaps a year or so ago) there was some company visiting. Grandpa was sitting and listening to the people converse, and I imagine he got to thinking it was the most inane blather he had ever heard, because in the middle of the conversation he burst out, “Pick your nose, pick your nose, pick your nose.” He was probably thinking that the conversation was about as interesting as watching someone pick their nose (and the thought just happened to come out of his mouth) but it certainly left an awkward silence. I was not present for that particular conversation, but it was relayed to me with a mixture of horror and amusement. I found it greatly amusing, and ever afterward I would burst out to Grandpa at odd intervals, “Pick your nose, pick your nose, pick your nose! Don’t forget to pick your nose!” (or some other variation on the fine benefits of nose picking). In the months afterward I doubt Grandpa remember his initial statement which had sparked my reoccurring admonition, but my admonition could often get a chuckle out of him.

I could never be entirely certain how well Grandpa was following the humor. One day, sometime during this summer, Grandpa was hollering at the top of his lungs, for nothing in particular. I was sitting next to him, trying to keep him company while I flipped through a magazine. He would shout “Hey!” with ever increasing volume, staring across the room as if something over there should answer. I would say, “Yep,” or “I’m right here,” or “I hear you,” in response. Either my responses simply weren’t registering in his mind, or he was truly trying to get the attention of the (non-existent) person on the other side of the room, because his volume kept increasing. Finally, after a bellowed “HEEEYYYY!” I drolled out, “A little louder, Grandpa. The Chinese can’t quite hear you yet.”

There was silence. Then Grandpa said, “Was that a snide comment?”

I had to laugh then.

The best times were when Grandpa got my jokes, and then tried to take them one step further. It didn’t matter if his Alzheimer’s stopped him—the effort was all that counted. On another occasion, some time ago, he was calling out randomly. He shouted, “Gene!” so I shouted “George!” So he shouted, “George!” so I shouted “Where are you?” so he shouted “Where are you?” so I decided to have a little more fun and shouted “Give me all your money!” Grandpa started to repeat me—but then caught himself—in that instant the Alzheimer’s parting for just a moment so that he realized what we were doing. “You want it all, huh?” he said, mischievously. “Well, hold out your hand, palm up, and I’ll put a little—” but then the Alzheimer’s struck again, and his words left him. I couldn’t decide if he had been attempting to say he would put something naughty in my hand or that “all his money” was a pittance, but I laughed for his attempt to best me, and Grandpa laughed too.

Perhaps we had the most fun with our physical humor. I had a running gag where when Grandpa called (for me, somebody, anybody, to do something, anything, not sure what) I would come to him and offer him a pinch, a poke, or a bite. Sometimes, I would even tell them they were on a special sale. Firstly, this would distract him from whatever imagined problem he had, and secondly, it almost always got a good reaction from him. And there was a good chance that if I give him pinches that it would devolve into a “pinching fight” where we would both try to pinch the other while chuckling with mock malevolence.

I constantly “harassed” Grandpa physically, playfully, partly because with him constantly calling me over it got boring to come and simply ask him what he wanted (especially when he couldn’t come up with any answer) so it became more fun to come over and harass him whenever he called. And it served the purpose Grandpa really wanted, which was for somebody to come and pay attention to him, and remind him that he was loved. Of course, not to be entirely outdone, Grandpa wasn’t aloof to sneaking his hand out, thumb sticking up threateningly from the cushion beside him when I began to sit down. He never quite dared let me sit on his thumb, but it was his way of saying, “I gotcha back.”

As Grandpa’s Alzheimer’s grew increasingly worse he became increasingly less aware of his surroundings and in this condition I found the great opportunity to “get” Grandpa. For someone else, I’m sure the game would have been cruel. It consisted in me coming upon Grandpa when he was completely absorbed in his task (often picking lint from the carpet) and leaping on him, snarling and biting like some ferocious lion descending on its prey. Without fail, he would jump out of his skin with a shout. I would then fall down beside him, laughing and crowing, “I got you! I got you! I got you!” And Grandpa would laugh, and say, “Yeah, you sure did. You sure got me that time!” And sometimes he would vow that one day he would get me back.

One of my most favorite times was when I snuck up on Grandpa, commando style, slithering around the couch so I could pop up and take a bite out of his knee. He jumped—oh, he really jumped! Afterward, in the midst of his laughter, he said, “Did you see me? Did you see how I jumped? It’s a good thing I didn’t have my mini-club then or I would have splattered you all over the place.”

Yes, indeed, Grandpa knew how to appreciate the fine art of getting someone.

My most favorite time, was the time he got me back. It was a bad evening for him. He spent I don’t know how long down on his hands and knees, shouting incomprehensibly. Finally exhaustion overcame him and when I came out to check on him he was sprawled on the carpet like a dead man. He looked so sad, weary, and worn out as I bent down to check on his sleeping form—and at that moment Grandpa went “Bwhahahahaha!” and came up, grabbing for me. Oh, yes, I jumped. It was completely unexpected.

“I got you! I got you!” Grandpa said, chuckling gleefully. And I was so proud of him.

I treasure all of those times. They are memories that can still make me laugh, even now, two short weeks after Grandpa is dead. I treasure them, because even in the midst of Alzheimer’s—even in spite of it—those times were times when we had fun together in our own personal, crazy, zany, way. It was the way we spoke the language of love.

This last story I will tell is not exactly a joke, but it seems a fitting conclusion. Every night when I put Grandpa to bed I would tuck him in and give him a goodnight kiss. But I got bored with that. So when I tucked him in I started giving him “hundreds” of kisses all over his cheek. I was teasing him, a little, but then one night after I did it he looked up seriously and said, “Just one kiss, now. Any more than that, and it’s a little queer.”

If you say so, Grandpa. Just one kiss.

Note: This material originally appeared in a blog I wrote while caring for my grandfather as he journeyed through dementia. It ran 2006-2009 and ended at the time of his death. This blog was the incipient material for a book, “The Sea is Wide: A Memoir of Caregiving.” If you have appreciated this writing, please consider purchasing the book and sharing it with others.

We all grieve in different ways. Some people grieve loudly, others in silence. Some people take a long time to grieve, other people finish grieving in a short time. Grandma told me she was grieving long before Grandpa actually died, and I think that is true for me also. But that doesn’t mean I finished every last bit of grieving before he died.

If grieving entails the acknowledgment of loss, sometimes absence speaks louder than words. For three years Grandpa was my life. My every waking and sleeping moment practically centered around him. What he needed, what he wanted, what his problems were, and what the solutions might be, were constantly on my mind. And if my life centered around Grandpa, the center of his life was the couch.

The couch was home base. The couch was the place where Grandpa always returned. It was the center of his domain. In the household, Grandpa was the constant fixture on the couch.

Grandpa liked the couch. It was a good couch, with good comfortable cushions. It was the place he was most comfortable. From there he could peer out the window, watch TV (back in the day when it meant something to him), and in general keep tabs on what was going on in the house as much as possible. On the couch Grandpa was there for you, always waiting. Sitting on the couch, sleeping on the couch—Grandpa and the couch were meant to be together.

So, it is no surprise that I find the emptiness of the couch the most acute reminder of Grandpa’s absence. Its silence, and emptiness, is the loudest statement of the finality of his departure. The impulse of expecting him to be there was especially strong in the first days after his death. Before, for a man failing from Alzheimer’s he could be remarkably sensitive to what was going on in the house. If a door opened or slammed, he wanted to know who it was. If someone was making noise in the kitchen, he wanted to know what was going on. If someone passed by in the corner of his vision, or went down the stairs behind him, he wanted to know what they were doing. Grandpa wanted to be informed, and he didn’t want to be forgotten. Often during certain times of the day he would shout and call for somebody (sometimes nobody in particular was named, sometimes the name would change with each shout) and often all he really wanted was somebody to come sit with him on the couch. And so, often I would come and sit with him for a short while on the couch before I went back to whatever I was doing.

It’s strange how habits become ingrained in your mind. In the first days after Grandpa’s death I so much expected him on the couch that when I entered the living room it was almost as if I saw him from the corner of my eye—my mind so much anticipating his presence—that it was only when I turned to look that my mind registered he wasn’t there. When I came in from the outside, or shut a door, words would come to the tip of my lips, ready to answer Grandpa’s shout from the couch. I would move about the house, and find in the back of my mind I was thinking about how what I was doing would reach Grandpa on the couch.

But the couch is empty now, and nobody asks who is coming in the house, or what I am doing. The constant calling and questioning voice is gone, and the empty couch is a symbol of the hole in my life. It is a symbol for that which reaches much further in my life, because the couch is not the only place I notice his absence. For three years my life and Grandpa’s life became so intertwined it was as if we had become conjoined. He always wanted me, and I was always thinking about him. When grocery shopping, I would always have an eye out for anything I thought Grandpa might like to eat—especially some dessert. Now I go shopping and there is that brief flash of regretful remembrance when I stop at the baked goods isle and think, “Grandpa would like that,” to then in that instant know that I won’t be buying any more things for him.

Then there are the memories of the funny things, the irritating things, and the hard things. There are the memories of how he would almost always wake up early in the morning to get out of bed, of how he would be determined to leave the bedroom (usually to just end up sitting on the couch) even if he couldn’t figure out how to open the door, had to push a chair in front of him to walk, or had to crawl. There are all the memories of the morning coffee, and the daily routine, the little ways in which we both knew how things were supposed to go, and other people didn’t, and didn’t know why I could do it so much better. There are the hard memories of the many bathroom disasters, and the bad nights, the irritating times when Grandpa would not stop calling no matter what. Then there are the good memories, the memories of how he liked my hugs, of how we would horse around, and how he would put up with my teasing.

Time is a double-edged sword. As the passage of time dullness the freshness of loss and hurt, so also time takes the freshness of what we had. Already the expectation of Grandpa on the couch is fading, already what was is slipping into the past. I knew long before Grandpa died that he would be leaving soon, and I knew when I gave him my squeezing hug that soon I wouldn’t be able any more. So I hugged him, but not too tightly, because I knew that all things in this world must come to and end. Now it has, and I try to not hold too tightly to the past, in some futile attempt to deny the reality of life. But I do see the empty couch, know what it means, and I grieve very quietly.

Note: This material originally appeared in a blog I wrote while caring for my grandfather as he journeyed through dementia. It ran 2006-2009 and ended at the time of his death. This blog was the incipient material for a book, “The Sea is Wide: A Memoir of Caregiving.” If you have appreciated this writing, please consider purchasing the book and sharing it with others.

***

Life can change suddenly. Sometimes, it does. On September 24th mine did.

My grandfather has Alzheimer’s. Grandpa P was only officially diagnosed within the past year, but certainly has been suffering with the early effects of the disease for much longer. Within the past year or so the disease has finally advanced to the point that it had a noticeable effect on his daily life, and then it reached the official diagnosis.

Once Grandpa’s condition became clear we were forced to consider what plans we should make for the future. Grandpa was becoming increasingly unable to take care of himself, and Grandma wouldn’t be able to take care of him indefinitely. They would eventually–sooner or later–need help. We talked about what we would do at that time and came to the agreement that when Grandma and Grandpa needed more help I was the one best suited to move in with them and provide the additional help they needed.

But we didn’t know how soon Grandma would need help. In a month? Two months? Six months? Or a year?

And that is where the suddenly comes into this story.

I think Grandma wanted to be able to take care of Grandpa until she was physically incapable–that is, until someone was needed to physically help Grandpa around and perform other labors that she physically couldn’t do. But sometimes we can’t do everything we would like, and by the middle of September Grandma realized she was mentally exhausted and couldn’t take care of Grandpa alone anymore.

Arlan has been living with Grandma and Grandpa P ever since he went to college. He has provided them with general assistance, but while in college–and now that he is out of college and employed–he couldn’t (and can’t) provide the full time assistance that Grandma needed. So on Sunday September 24th he came home with the message, “Grandma needs you now.”

So I packed my clothes and computer (the things I use on a daily basis) and left with Arlan that night.

Such is the beginning of the next great adventure.

It has been several weeks now and I am beginning to settle in. It will be several months, I think, before I am truly settled in, but at least by this point I have learned the basic necessities of daily life so that every moment is no longer a “new experience” where I must figure out how to deal with it. I now know how to use the electric can opener (trickier than I expected) and the dishwasher (I still think cleaning dishes by hand gets the dishes cleaner, and I would argue it is faster).

In this change my situation has been turned on its head. Before I lived with all my brothers and sisters in a large rural family. Now I’m living with two grandparents, one brother, and a cousin on the edge of a city. Before dinner required ten pounds of potatoes. Now dinner requires maybe two pounds of potatoes. Before the nearest small town store was ten minutes away, the nearest chain grocery store was twenty minutes away, and downtown thirty or so minutes away. Now the nearest chain grocery store might be three minutes away, and downtown ten minutes, or less.

Life has also changed in many more subtle ways, but the most mundane are often the ones that strike most forcefully. In the beginning I always thought the amount of food I was preparing for supper wasn’t enough. There was too little meat. There was too little potatoes. Then, much to my surprise, such a small amount was actually more than plenty. But of course. I eat one piece of chicken. Everyone else in this house eats only one piece of chicken. That means we only need five, not fifteen. I needed to keep doing the math to reassure myself that the meals were not about to come up woefully short.

There is the struggle of adjusting my thinking to the new environment, but there is also the struggle of adjusting the environment to me. Neither of these adjustments has been made completely yet. In matters of adjusting my environment, both me and the people around me must give a little. Growing up in a large family, I was accustomed to structure. Grandma and Grandpa, by contrast, were used to a much less structured environment. So I have added, and intend to add even more, structure to life at Grandma and Grandpa’s while at the same time I have accepted that there won’t be as much structure as I am accustomed to back home.

In my own personal life I am still seeking my own new balance. I am a person who normally lives on a schedule. Certain things happened certain days, and certain things at certain times in each day. This type of structure in my life keeps me focused so that I don’t feel as if I am floundering around, lost, and with no idea of where I am going or what I am trying to accomplish each day. It also kept me accountable to myself because if I had a schedule I knew when I was supposed to be doing what, and if I wasn’t doing it. I lost my old daily schedule when my life changed and I’m still trying to get my new schedule together. I have a general schedule thrown together, but it takes time to figure out exactly how much time should be spent on each task required during the day, and when it is most efficient to do each job. I’m not there yet. While I wish I were, I realize that by any reasonable measure I am doing well enough.

But what, one might ask, do I think of all this change?

I consider it a great honor to be able to help people when they are in need, and particularly in great need. So I am glad to have this opportunity to help my grandparents. But mixed with this is something else, another feeling that springs from the knowledge of why my help is needed. One could say the mortal pall hangs over all of this life, but it stands with particularly visibility in my present situation. Alzheimer’s at the end is a fatal disease and though it won’t kill Grandpa today or tomorrow there is a very real way in which I feel called to a very long death watch. It’s not something thought about in every moment of every day, but it is a reality that informs everything. It’s not something that we really talk about, but we all know–even Grandpa–that I have come because he is growing increasingly unable to take care of himself. I have come to help him, yes, but then another voice echoes in the silence that I have come to watch him slowly die, his dignity and his mind stripped from him by inches, day by day. Grandpa knows it. I know it. We all know it. It is like that monster that lives in the house with us, which nobody wants to talk about, but sometimes we do, a little.

Note: This material originally appeared in a blog I wrote while caring for my grandfather as he journeyed through dementia. It ran 2006-2009 and ended at the time of his death. This blog was the incipient material for a book, “The Sea is Wide: A Memoir of Caregiving.” If you have appreciated this writing, please consider purchasing the book and sharing it with others.

Thank you all for your kind comments.

The family took it as well as could be hoped. We all had time to prepare ourselves, which I think helped in some respects. Pat, in a comment on the previous post, asked how my Grandmother is doing, and I can say for the present she is doing good. At present her worst problem is fretting over the financial events unleashed by the death. She hasn’t slept well for most nights, and basically can’t think at all. I have taken the lead in guiding her through both the paperwork, and the more mundane activities of preparing for visitors. Since she knows she can entrust everything to me it makes life bearable for her.

And how am I feeling? I’m not sure. A bit sad, a bit numb, a bit tired, a bit relieved, and very much like a great burden has been removed. I will write more later, but I just wanted to drop in briefly to say thanks and let everyone know that it was over.

Below, I’ve attached a slightly abbreviated version of obituary that ran in the newspaper:

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On September 11th, 2009 Ivan D. Purdy Sr., lifetime resident of Vestal, departed to his eternal rest. Born Dec. 31st 1927, he lived a full life, a quiet and humble man. He is survived by his wife of 60 years, Janice Purdy, and their children. Ivan was a World War II veteran, and retiree from IBM. He has left us as a faithful husband, loving father of six children, twenty-five grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren. Today our comfort is that he is loved, and he loved. The family would like to thank his grandson, Rundy, for his faithful and loving care for Ivan in his last years. Funeral services will be private.

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Note: This material originally appeared in a blog I wrote while caring for my grandfather as he journeyed through dementia. It ran 2006-2009 and ended at the time of his death. This blog was the incipient material for a book, “The Sea is Wide: A Memoir of Caregiving.” If you have appreciated this writing, please consider purchasing the book and sharing it with others.

There were a lot of things I wanted to write before this, but life never goes in the neat little order we desire. I wanted to write about how Grandpa and I would laugh together, the foolish games we would play, and how I would tease him. I wanted to write about the laughter and lightness we made in the midst of the darkness. I wanted to write about the long goodbye. I wanted to write more about the struggle of feeding him, and caring for him, when it was growing increasingly impossible to do either. But that long goodbye has slipped by, and if I have failed to write about the things I have done, at least I have done them. I can write about them another time.

Today I will write about saying goodbye. Yes, Grandpa has only a few more days left. If I said he was dying that would be true, but not very precise. He has been dying for a long time. More precisely, he is nearly dead. It may be a few hours, or at most a few days. His mind has given up, and all that remains is for his body to catch up.

This may seem sudden, but it wasn’t, not really. One thing I have not written about much is Grandpa’s increasing failure to eat. I always meant to write more about it “sometime” but I never made time for that sometime because it was the most painful thing to write about. The struggle to get Grandpa to eat enough has been going on for more than a year, and it is a struggle I have been slowly losing. I knew this would happen from the very day I started caring for Grandpa, but the knowing didn’t make it feel any less like torture as he slipped–inch by inch–down that path. While it often felt like he couldn’t possibly eat worse than he had the day before, his eating began to grow precipitously worse over the course of the summer. If at the beginning of the summer I had to patiently work with Grandpa to get him to eat three meals a day, by the end of the summer he was only eating one meal–and that only if I fed it to him myself. The course of events was pretty obvious. I concluded that he would not last through the winter.

Grandpa was becoming too tired to live. I could feed him breakfast, but beyond that point his mind was too exhausted to eat. He didn’t want to eat, he didn’t want to be fed. He just wanted to close his eyes and rest. The fight to throw off the web of confusion was becoming too much, and Grandpa was ready to give up.

Then he did. At the end of August I caught a mild cold, and I passed it on to Grandpa. Grandpa became a little sick, and the cold made him more tired. His body recovered from the cold, but his mind decided it had finished the fight. He slept, and didn’t want to wake up. He woke up for increasingly brief periods of time, increasingly unwilling to eat or drink, and slipped into a semi-comatose state. Perhaps his last most coherent words were, “I don’t want it! I don’t want it! I don’t want it!” when I tried to feed him some chocolate pudding. What did he want to do? He wanted to sleep, to rest quietly, and to not be troubled with the troubles of life anymore.

I knew it would come to this, but that knowledge doesn’t make it easy. One of the special cruelties of this is that Grandpa has such a healthy body that if his mind had not been afflicted with Alzheimer’s he might have lived to be a very old man. So, even though his mind has shut down so that he does not interact with the world, and does not remember how to eat or drink, his body still continues on. The last time he really ate or drank anything of substance was on Friday the 4th of September, and we are now to Wednesday the 9th. Over the course of the succeeding days I have managed to coax a few dribbles of liquid down his throat–first with a spoon, then an eye-dropper–but still his body keeps going. He breathes regularly, quietly, his eyes closed, his body slowly consuming itself in a determined effort to keep going. One could call it a coma, but sometimes, for a brief moment, he opens his eyes a bit, and if you are lucky he will drag them into focus to look in that instant at the world, before letting his eyes drift back shut. He is still conscious of sounds, he recognizes voices, and he even smiled when someone laughed in his hearing. But the world is too much for him now, so he mostly just lays there, waiting for it to end.

The most painful thing for me is that he can still feel pain and discomfort. If we have him propped up carefully with pillows supporting various parts of his body he appears to be mostly comfortable. But whenever we have to move him to change his diaper his frail body–and especially his lifelong problem with back pain–flares up and he spasms and whimpers in pain whenever he is changed. I feel like we are putting him on the torture rack whenever we must do that. And then I wonder if he is thirsty. He doesn’t look uncomfortable when he is just laying there, breathing, but I can’t help thinking about how it might feel to be laying there, no longer able to communicate, slowly starving and thirsting to death. What if his throat was parched and he wanted a drink and was laying there, silent, wishing someone would give him a drink? So I give him some water with the eyedropper and he chokes because he can only swallow by reflex now and when he chokes he feels like he is drowning and the expression on his face makes me sorry I gave him something to drink.

Oh, cruel, cruel world.

What does all of this have to do with saying goodbye? It is when you have the few days when someone is clearly dying, but not yet dead, that you have time to ponder what it means to say goodbye, and how exactly do you do it. You sit there and you stare at the sleeping face, and you wonder what you could do, what you should do. Somehow, however true “I love you” and “Goodbye” might be, they somehow don’t feel like enough. How can you distill a life down to a few words?

But as I sat there, I realized that you don’t. You don’t do anything different. What you say is only as good as what you do. All your life you are saying “Hello” and “Goodbye” in what you do. The substance of your deeds toward each person is what defines whether you have given them a good “Hello” and “Goodbye.” If your deeds toward others are deeds that say “I love you” then no better “Hello” or “Goodbye” can be said. Do you want a life of no regrets, a “Goodbye” that says what you want to say? Then make sure what you do toward others says “I love you” and then whether today it is for “hello” or “goodbye” it will be the best you could give.

I have said goodbye to Grandpa. I said those words, because it seemed like to not say them was some attempt to deny the reality. But mostly I realized that my best goodbye would be to do what I had been doing for the last three years–saying “I love you” all day, every day, by what I did for him. There could be no better, or fully said, goodbye.

So goodbye Grandpa. I love you. But you already knew that.

Note: This material originally appeared in a blog I wrote while caring for my grandfather as he journeyed through dementia. It ran 2006-2009 and ended at the time of his death. This blog was the incipient material for a book, “The Sea is Wide: A Memoir of Caregiving.” If you have appreciated this writing, please consider purchasing the book and sharing it with others.