A Sad Day July 12, 2019

Hello, all. It’s been a tough week. This week I experienced a first in my almost 47 years on this earth. Last Saturday night I was sitting in a lawn chair in my parents’ driveway, watching fireworks, holding my uncle’s hand and talking to him, hugging him goodbye when he and my aunt left, and the next afternoon he was dead.

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I’ve lost people before. Of course I have. But never someone I was just talking to and having fun with the day before. I mean, I knew he wasn’t well. He was on oxygen and was really struggling with his breathing that night, but none of us could have known he was in such danger.

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My family is a very loving one. Even if we don’t see each other for months at a time, (a fact made somewhat more pitiful by the realization that we live in the same county) we still love each other and enjoy seeing each other. I feel very blessed by that. Last Saturday night was an example. It was a throwback to the days when we had big family gatherings at my parents’ house, with aunts, uncles, and cousins from both sides of the family. We’d eat, maybe grill burgers or make a huge pot of spaghetti. Then afterwards we’d have watermelon and homemade ice cream and pop fireworks until late into the evening.

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That’s what we were doing that night. Not everyone was there- but a few family members from both sides made it feel like the old days for the first time in a long time: simple, homemade country joys, shared with at least part of a loving family.

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Then today, the rest of that family were all together for the first time in ages, as we said goodbye to my uncle. His service was in the church we all grew up in, with congregational acapella singing. That was one of the best and yet hardest parts for me. My aunt and uncle sat behind us for years in church, and many of the songs they chose to sing today were my uncle’s favorites and I could hear his singing so clearly in my mind. Afterwards, the police stopped traffic for us when we had to leave the church and get on the highway that runs through town. My uncle’s youngest son rode honor guard on his motorcycle.

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But the part that struck me, one of the things I loved the most, was the way all the traffic on the roads pulled over and stopped until we passed. It’s such a small thing, and I guess maybe it’s not done in all parts of the country, but the comfort I felt from seeing that show of respect can hardly be described. It made me feel proud to have grown up here. I wished that I could have said thank you to all those people who had taken time out of their day, stopped for a moment in their busy schedules, to sit by the roadside as we followed my uncle to his final resting place.

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As lovely and comforting as that was, though, it was nothing…*nothing* compared to the comfort of knowing my uncle was a Christian, and having an utterly firm conviction that he was in paradise at that very moment. I honestly never realized it before, because at the times of other losses, either I was too young to really think about it or appreciate it, or I unfortunately could not be absolutely certain the people I had lost were in a saved condition. Today, I knew. I knew without question that my uncle was literally in a better place. There is nothing that compares to the joy that comes from that certainty.

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Now, I know all of this gets into religion and theology or whatever, and not everyone shares the same beliefs and convictions. I am not even the most churchy person myself at the moment, but today made me want to start living my life better. It reminded me, as funerals always do, I guess, that someday this life will be over, and all I know is that I want to go to heaven. I want to have my poor fragile physical body exchanged for a spiritual heavenly body that will never get sick or broken. I want to spend eternity in the presence of Jesus, singing and worshipping God and walking streets of gold.

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I know this feeling may not last. This inspiration, this determination. It never does. Death happens, losses happen, and they make you think. And then the sadness goes away a little, the thoughts and introspection fade and you get caught up in the busy-ness of life again until the next loss happens. But maybe I can make it stick around and get back to how I was raised, going to church more often and trying to live a better life. I hope I can. I’m going to try, anyway.

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Until next time,

D.

PS. I have another family member, a cousin who was in a terrible motorcycle wreck. He could use some financial help if he is to make a full, long recovery. Here (I hope) is a link to his GoFundMe:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/joshua-findley-medical-fund?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet

Catching Up on the Family Traditions Series- Easter in April July 25, 2014

Hello all!  I would be willing to bet that some of my regular readers are basically wondering when on EARTH I am going to post about something other than THEATRE!  Well… it’s your lucky day.  I realized (last night on the way home from the.. um.. place I like to go a lot that has a stage and curtains…) that I have fallen behind on my Family Traditions series!  The last one I posted was in regards to our family traditions in March, namely my dad’s birthday and how he grills burgers that make us all drool, etc.

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Easter was in April this year, which means I have a fabulous opportunity to tell you how dorky our family gets on Easter.  First of all, some backstory.  Oh, come on, you knew it was coming.  So our family has always attended a church that doesn’t really put much extra special focus on Easter as a religious holiday.  The religious world celebrates Easter as a commemoration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is great.  But in the church of Christ, in which I was raised, Easter is really not that much more special than any Sunday, because we (and some other religious groups too, I know) commemorate the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus through the Lord’s Supper, or Communion, each and every Sunday.

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So Easter.  I remember back when I was a kid (waaay back in the olden times!) my mother would always stay up until ALL hours making matching dresses for my sister and me.  (Yes, that’s the correct grammar.)  So not only was she always up late sewing, she would also put together our Easter baskets.  She’d put candy and goodies in the plastic eggs, and if we’d already colored real eggs, she would put those in there for us first thing in the morning before we got up.  And generally, there was some little present in there, something special for us- a little piece of jewelry, a watch, a video, a t-shirt, a toy.  It could be anything.  There was usually also some lip balm or hand lotion from Avon.  (Or maybe I’m thinking of our Christmas stockings, but it sounds like something she would put in Easter baskets as well!)  Once my sister and I told each other what our Valentine’s Day surprise was and Mom didn’t let us have them until Easter!  I still remember, too- mine was a watch and Middle Sis’s was a Giant Hershey’s Kiss. Baby sister wasn’t around yet.

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Every Easter morning we’d get up and find our new dresses and baskets laid out on the couch or dining room table, ready to enjoy.  We’d have breakfast and get ready for church, and after church we’d come home and have a nice lunch.  Seems like we often had ham and cheesy potatoes.  I think you fancy people call them au gratin.  So then she always made a dessert or two, and the star attraction was always the Lamb-ie cake.  Lamb-y.  Something.  It was a cake shaped like a lamb.  She had this old cake pan that was shaped like two lengthwise halves of a lamb.  You filled both halves with batter and when they were cooked you stuck them together and set them upright, and it looked like a little lamb lying down.  She would always tint coconut flakes green with food coloring and put it on the serving plate where it looked like the little lamb lying in the grass.  Sometimes she’d add jelly bean “eggs” in the grass, sometimes chick Peeps.  She frosted the lamb himself with white icing and covered that with coconut as well to give him a fleecy look.  And then she’d give him pretty little blue eyes and a pink nose.  He was so cute!

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Once or twice in later years, the Lamb-y cake had been set out of the way so there would be room on the table for the rest of the lunch, and the dog found him and ate half of him before we could stop her.  That was always an adventure.  Other times we’d get really silly and argue over who got to eat the lamb’s rear end, or his head.  Yeah, we were sick, twisted little puppies.

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Anyway.  Once lunch was finished, it was time to hunt eggs.  Mom would get all the eggs from the baskets, take them outside and hide them for us.  No place was off limits.  My parents have 15 acres, but the Hide Zone was usually restricted to the front and side yards around the house.  They’d be hidden in tail pipes of vehicles, up in trees, everywhere.  Dad would come outside to watch us hunt, and he’d be sitting in his front porch rocking chair, and usually there would be an egg actually hidden ON Dad, somewhere.  One year someone got the bright idea to hide eggs in the back yard, and someone lifted the lid of the grill and hid an egg there.  That grill wasn’t used often, because my dad has more than one, and that egg wasn’t found until barbecue season the next year!!

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Now that there are grandkids in the family, it’s as competitive as ever, but I have to say here, my sisters… are devilishly competitive when it comes to egg hunting.  Seriously.  Zeroing in on the same egg as my beautiful middle sister would like as not result in a full body-check and a lost egg or two, because when she plowed over you and you lost half your eggs?  She’d pick them up! Youngest sister was not usually such a vicious competitor, but for Middle Sis it was all-out WAR, and her daughter is now the same way.  It’s hilarious to watch!

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Another tradition we still have is family pictures on the front porch.  Somewhere over the years, someone got the idea to put their baskets upside down on their heads, so now every year there is at least one grandkid with the Easter basket on the head.  One of my favorite Easter pictures from my childhood years is the one that was taken the year Mom was expecting my baby sister.  For one thing, our dresses were yellow, my favorite color.  But I also love to see my mom in that picture, looking so young and adorable with her baby bump, in her black flower-printed dress. It’s amazing to think that I am ten years older now than she was when that picture was taken!

Slightly altered for comfort of publication.

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So.  That is how weird we get on Easter.  Baskets on heads, violent egg-hunting, fighting over lamb’s butts.  Just another day in my awesome family!  Stay tuned for the (admittedly belated) continuation of the Family Traditions series, when I talk about May:  Mothers’ Day and Youngest Sister’s birthday, and The Boy’s birthday as well.  Oh, and End-of-School celebrations, and Memorial Day family gatherings.  It’ll be action-packed, I promise!

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Until next time,

D.

Searching for Answers to the Divorce and Remarriage Question May 6, 2010

Hello all.  I’m trying to figure out a way to explain about what I said I was confused about, yesterday.  I don’t know if I’ll be able to explain it right.  People who aren’t familiar with the teachings of the Church of Christ won’t understand.  This post will not be funny.  This post will be painfully honest, and this post will contain a confession of what may or may not be sin.  I’m not 100% sure anymore.

I’m confused about why I have to have a man-made piece of paper that says ‘here, you’re divorced’ and supercedes the previous man-made piece of paper that says ‘here, you’re married.’  Does it really make a difference what a piece of paper says when I don’t know if the marriage was ever sanctioned by God to start with?  Does it really matter if I go out to dinner with someone, without having that man-made piece of paper in my pocket, when the other person whose signature is on those papers left and has been gone over a year and the two of us are already physically, spiritually, emotionally, and financially separate and distinct?    What if we wrote our own piece of paper?  What if we went out by a lake or a river and sat down and held hands and prayed to God and told Him our hearts and our situation and that we knew there was no way we could be a married couple in the sense He intended, and we asked Him to recognize that we were divorcing ourselves from each other, but since He joins together, only He can separate, and asked Him to separate us?

I know what I was brought up to believe, but now it seems so weird.  It doesn’t make sense.  Like if I went out to dinner with someone tonight, that would be wrong, but if I went out to dinner in 2 weeks and I had that piece of paper that some judge gave me, that he was only qualified to give me because someone gave him a piece of paper, then that would be ok … where does it all end?  What does it mean? 

Neither of us had sex with anybody else.  That is not the reason we’re divorcing.  In some people’s minds, (the church that I was raised in) that means if we go ahead and divorce for other reasons, neither of us is eligible to remarry, ever, and if we did, we would be committing adultery.  Ok, so right now I can’t really imagine finding someone and developing that strong of feelings for them.  But I’ve always been a person who wants to love and be loved.  I watch romantic movies and ache with jealousy.  (Yes, I know they’re not real, they’re fictional, they’re scripted, whatever- the concept of romance and love does exist in reality!)

So if I go along with the letter and the spirit of what I’ve been taught, then I free myself from one bad situation only to lock myself into another bad situation. (I’m no longer married, but because I didn’t divorce for the reason of adultery, I’m not able to remarry.)   If I go along with a loose interpretation of what I’ve been taught, (I confess and ask forgiveness for the fact that I was going to go on a dinner date with someone a while back, and there’s no piece of paper in a file drawer in the courthouse, and that he had certain things in his life that took the place of intimacy and provided emotional fulfillment in my stead, and that we’ve both kissed someone else) then we’re both guilty and neither of us is free to remarry anyway. 

So how do I know?  How do I know what to do or believe or hope for?  Is it already a lost cause?  Do I just forget about marriage and romance and love and divorce myself from the part of me that longs for it, and live the rest of my life like a nun?  Or do I just do what I need and want to do, which is get a divorce for the reasons I do have, and if I meet someone in the future and want to marry them, I do it, and if that’s a sin then I just go to Hell?

I don’t know.  Do you?

Until next time,

D.