Faith put down the journal and got up to fix a cup of tea. She had brought her small electric teakettle with her. Reading about April's made her crave pie and tea. She didn't have any pie, but tea was always good. As she waited for the kettle to heat, she thought about the wedding plans. The date was only ten weeks away. She was going to have to decide whether she was ready to marry. She couldn't leave Aaron standing at the altar, and she had a lot of plans to change if they canceled the wedding or even delayed the date to give them more time to work things out.
She was once again reminded of lemon deserts by the whistle of the kettle. She had asked April to figure out a way to make a lemon icebox wedding cake. The resultant fluffy, lemon-flavored angel food cake with lemon icebox filling and lemon icing was divine. Syd and Faith had a private tasting the week before her mother's death. The creation was to have its debut at the wedding.
Faith picked up her cell phone and pulled up the 'toy' Aaron had sent. While sipping her tea, she stared at the picture of her wearing a wedding veil and Mama's earrings.
"When I get home I'll only have nine weeks left before the wedding," she said to her likeness. "I will have to decide what to do. I'm leaning toward telling Aaron we need to delay the wedding."
She walked to the window and put her hands on the glass. She shouted at the empty street and silent antique shops below, "I need more time to sort things out."
"Are you a Don Quixote descendent tilting at your own private windmill?" Jasper's voice echoed in her mind.
"This is no windmill," Faith said. "It's a freakin' nuclear plant."
"I'll be better equipped to decide what to do after I talk to Kyra tomorrow," her mind offered the assurance.
#
The summer before our move to New Orleans Seminary was bittersweet. Our goodbyes were the bitter. We made a lot of good friends in a short time. I understand why most jobs only require a two-week notice. Once you look towards a different future, you become inefficient while you're stuck in the job you're leaving behind. Protracted goodbyes are also emotionally draining.
The sweet was the fellowship we found after renewing our commitment to God. Mt. Zion was gracious and loving. God used them to encourage David as he struggled each week to put together a sermon. David and Daniel forged a deeper relationship as theological discussions dominated their time on the golf links. David and I sang the summer away with a gospel quartet, filling in for members who were vacationing.
The plan was to work through the third week of August, saving a nest egg to tide us over until one or both of us found jobs. Two weeks before we were to pack up our lives and head to seminary, we got a phone call from Nicole, David's Mom, summoning us to the bedside of her dying mother. Maw Gilbert had only days to live.
The phone call came at 1 pm. David headed to the U-Haul place while I frantically began to pack. I had the boxes, but almost nothing was in them. I was always prepared on time, but rarely a minute early. Daniel called and offered to help. I suggested that he stay home and watch the kids and send his wife, Cindy, to assist. She was preparing her family for the trip, though. They had three small children. Evidently she wanted Daniel out of her hair. I dispatched Daniel to a friend's house with our German shepherd. We couldn't have a dog and live on campus. The friend had already agreed to take him when the time came; it just came a few weeks early. By 9pm we had everything packed.
We left for Louisiana that night. Daniel and his family were to follow a day later. Their daughter would be home from camp the next afternoon.
We were fortified for the journey with a huge thermos of coffee, this despite the fact that I was a 'tea totaler.' To say that I despised coffee is putting it mildly. Even the smell of coffee was an anathema to me.
The plan was for one of us to sleep while the other drove. David started out at the wheel. I was supposed to snooze, but I was afraid to sleep. His grief was so great and his haste so vast that I feared he would wreck us without me awake to backseat drive. I tried praying. I prayed for peace. I prayed for a surcease of panic. I prayed for God to knit David's frayed nerves back together. I even prayed for invisibility in the event we encountered a highway patrolman. All of those prayers were for naught because I determined to hang on to my worry. The Biblical injunction to 'take your burdens to the Lord,' I had down pat. Unfortunately, I was not too good at following the remainder of the command: 'leave them there.'
That night I drank the only complete cup of coffee in my adult life. I gagged, held my nose, and complained in a nasal twang the whole time, but I choked it down. I don't know if it was the caffeine or the worry that wired me, but something did. Neither of us got a wink of sleep. When we pulled into Baton Rouge at 8am the next morning, we had made the trip in record time.
We weren't certain at which hospital his grandmother was a patient. We stopped at a pay phone and called Nicole's office to ask.
David dialed the number. I sat in the car waiting.
I heard him identify himself and ask, "What hospital is Maw Gilbert at?" A slight pause and then, " Candace Gilbert, Nicole's mother."
He let out a wail and dropped the telephone receiver. It hung dangling from the pay phone while he doubled over in agony, a sound like a mortally wounded animal coming from his mouth. I jumped from the car. I tried to put my arms around my husband, but he turned away.
"Hello! Hello? Are you there?" I heard coming from the hanging phone.
I grabbed the offending instrument and rudely demanded, "What did you say to him?"
"I just asked if he meant which funeral home," the voice responded calmly.
"Don't you know who you were talking to? You just told her grandson, who has been up all night driving from South Carolina, that his grandmother is dead."
"I am so sorry, Ma'am," came the apology. "I'm just a temp filling in for the day. I didn't know."
"That's okay," I said. "I'm sorry too. I know it was an accident. It's been a long night. Forgive me. What funeral home was it again?"
While David sat in the car and rocked back and forth moaning, I called the funeral home. The family wasn't there. They had gone home. I drove us to David's house. The anguished, primordial sounds had been replaced by tormented sobs. David had been raised across the street from his grandparents. Maw, as he dubbed her while still a tot, spoiled him rotten. If the food at home were not to his liking, Maw would fix him an alternative. When he was punished, she offered a shoulder to cry on. Maw's ample lap provided a safe haven. No matter what he did, Maw believed in him and prayed for him. She and Paw Gilbert had been the first ones David called after surrendering to the ministry. He'd been looking forward to spending a few days telling them about his spiritual journey. He knew how pleased she was that he'd gotten things straight with God. Now she was gone, and he didn't get to say goodbye.
Maw Lander – the Maw and Paw tradition David started with his grandparents had passed to his parents – needed David to be strong. She was struggling with a sick husband. Paw Lander had been unable to work for several years – the diagnosis was an uncertain mental condition. Daniel was on the road somewhere. His sister, a single Mom, had her hands full juggling her preschool daughter and a full-time job.
After being drugged into much needed sleep with one of his father's pills, David was better able to be the man Nicole needed him to be. During his slumber, a dream tempered his grief. To this day, he believes Maw visited him. When he told me of his vision, it was so vivid that I felt like I'd been there.
He stood in the midst of a beautiful meadow carpeted with Black-eyed Susans. The sun shone brilliantly. A cool breeze ruffled his hair. In the distance he could hear the gurgle of a stream. Across the meadow, a huge boulder cast a shadow. A woman emerged from the shade. She wore a long skirt. Her dark hair curled around her shoulders. The slight smile on her face was hauntingly familiar. She seemed to float across the meadow, her feet barely touching the ground. As she neared, she called out, "Hello, Shot, what are you doing here?"
With the affectionate nickname, recognition dawned. The woman was his grandmother, the youthful version he had known only through yellowing photographs.
"Maw, is that really you?"
Her laugher rippled. "Of course it's me, Shot. Who were you expecting? The queen?"
"But Maw..."
"Maw, what big eyes you have," she said with a smile. "Maw, what wrinkle free skin you have. Why, Maw, what a chipper step you have. And Maw, what bonnie black curls you have."
Dropping her voice as though to share a secret, she said, "The better to sing and dance and rejoice with, my dear."
"Where are we Maw?"
"We're at Heaven's Gate, Shot. See that boulder."
She gestured behind her and then turned and shaded her eyes with her hand.
"Look closely. In the shadows beyond you'll glimpse Him. He's beckoning me. He took my hand and was leading me into the shining city. The brilliance is so blinding, I'm not sure what it really looks like. I felt such a peace, Shot. I was going home."
She turned back to face David, dropping her hand to his arm. She caressed the length of his arm as she talked until she was holding his hand.
" When I heard your sobs, I turned back in distress. He said, 'He'll be okay.' 'Are you sure? He's just a babe, you know, a spiritual babe,' I reminded him. 'He has to find his own way. He can't always lean on your strength and rely on your faith.' 'He won't. He just needs to say goodbye.' Jesus let go of my hand. 'Do what you must,' he said."
She smiled at David and squeezed his hand.
"He's waiting to take me home, Shot. You'll join us some day, when it's time. Until then, remember we love you, He and I. We won't ever stop."
She stood on tiptoe and softly kissed his cheek. He stood transfixed as she retreated toward the boulder. Before entering the shadow, she turned and blew him a kiss. He saw the strong masculine hand that reached from the shadows to take her extended appendage. He could vaguely make out a muscular form in a long flowing robe silhouetted in the gloom.
Gradually the vision faded. David lay in a darkened room, alone. The disquiet of his grief was replaced by tranquility. Death was not something to be feared. He still mourned the loss of his Maw's physical presence, but her spirit gave him strength. She lived on in his heart and in God's Heaven. The words of the hymn taken straight from scripture rang in his mind, "Where, O death, is thy victory? Where, O grave, thy sting?"
When David emerged from his nap and told me the story, his face shone – that's the only way I can describe it. He had a sort of glow about him. The anguish lines around his eyes were gone, and the terrible sadness that had clouded his eyes was now replaced with joy. He still mourned Maw's loss, but he was at peace.
This was our first encounter with profound grief. For David it was much more traumatic than for me, since my history with Maw was short. The shock of such a personal loss would not come to me until years later. I learned from David that one can mourn and rejoice simultaneously, but more importantly, I learned that the strength to persevere comes only from above.
#
Experiences MakeUs Who We Are
BY SYDNEY LANDER
My father suffered from dementia. Over a ten-year period he gradually lost his mental faculties until he had neither a long-term nor a short-term memory. It was not until this began to happen to Daddy that I realized the importance personal history plays in identity. Without a past, how do you establish the parameters of personality?
Our experiences make us who we are. Daddy's forays into the seedy barroom district searching for a drunken father at the tender age of eight helped make him a compassionate man, who had infinite patience when he served as a pastor to inebriated Native Americans with a penchant to abuse alcohol.
Perhaps that compassion would have been missing had he not been taken to Sunday school by a neighbor. He experienced a life-changing encounter with Jesus when he was nine and brought that knowledge home and shared it with his addicted father. Daddy's family was changed when Papa surrendered his alcoholism to Jesus and lived the rest of his life sober.
Those experiences led Daddy into the ministry, and he spent most of his adult life attempting to help others and introduce them to the person who made such a difference to his family.
Although Daddy served in World War II and was stationed in the Philippines, the only war stories he told us were ones where the soldiers helped missionaries, fed their rations to hungry kids, and did their best to improve the conditions of the people around them.
I'm sure he could've shared combat stories, but he chose to remember instead the good the soldiers did while stationed halfway around the world. I'm not certain what part the war played in making Daddy the peaceful, nonviolent individual I knew, but I am convinced that his laid-back nature grew somehow from his past.
Daddy was the only member of his family to go to university and, later on, to Seminary. His education did not make him an intellectual snob. One way he used his education was to make up crazy puns to enhance his sense of humor. He did believe in education, though. Perhaps that's why I pursued a higher education.
As Daddy lost his memories, he began to lose his personality. He no longer had the vocabulary needed for his brand of humor. He began to make fewer puns and so laughed less.
He began to lose his ability to recognize people. First he lost knowledge of who acquaintances were, then friends, and finally family. He didn't understand any longer the meaning of relatives, daughter, son, or even wife. As he forgot who we were, he lost his ability to relate to us or carry on meaningful conversations with us.
Only Mama meant anything to him. After he forgot what a wife was and even who Mama was, he knew she was what made his life bearable.
He told her one day, "I do not know your name. But I know you belong to me, and I belong to you."
He forgot he had been a minister. He forgot where he served in the war. He forgot the struggles of his childhood. At first he was still the compassionate, caring man I knew and loved, but gradually he began to lose his sunny nature. He became easily agitated and then began to have brief violent spells. He would threaten my mother, a person he had always loved more than life itself.
Eventually, Mama had to put my Daddy in an institution that cares for people with dementia. Only days after being admitted to the home, he became angry and attacked another resident.
After talking with my Mom about the incident, I sat before my computer crying and wondering, "Where is the man we loved and called Daddy? Is he trapped in the damaged mind or has his essence escaped to a more peaceful place?"
As I mourned the father I'd known, I wrote the following poem, which I dedicate to the families of dementia patients everywhere.
Where's Daddy?
Who is this imposter who inhabits my father?
Gentle hands that cradled a child
Are now barbarous, cruel and wild.
Who is this cad in the shell of my Dad?
Eyes once filled with love and compassion
Dissect the world with malevolent passion.
What thief has stolen the mind of my parent?
The minstrel who regaled with tales of yore
Can't recall the day of the week anymore.
What magician has vanquished my Daddy?
He wanders the halls, this husk of a man
Chasing illusions across an empty time span.
Oh, God, where have you hidden my father?
I hope his essence fled to your arms
And his soul follows without coming to harm.