"It takes hope to survivie your personal holocaust, Kay...and to change your direction." The counselor's words had survived the years and tumbled over and over in my mind.
Hope. By definition it involved something for which I must wait. Like seeing the far distant light of an oncoming train, knowing it will probably arrive at the statoin, only there is not schedule it must meet. An unknown estimated time of arrival on the hope train.
"If you ever intend to flourish again, return to your intimate relationships, think about how you can help others, and cultivate a spirituality that transcends yourself, Kay." I had written these words down at the time and prayed for the energy to actually do the inherent imperatives.
Cultivating and maintaining cherished hope was a daunting task, but it became the catalyst for climbing out of my languishing existence and grasping onto the desire to truly live. Early in the process I borrowed hope from Marlana and Bill. On May 31, 2003, my phone rang around nine in the morning. "Hi, Kay. It's Marlana. Are you up?"
"Yes."
"Well, God showed me something this morning, and He gold me to tell you."
"Okay." Always a little afraid of what He might want me to know.
"God has given you a new name."
"Oh."
There is a brief pause in the conversation because I fall silent and my friend perceives my hesitancy. Why would God rename me? What does that even mean?
"Freedom. That's your new name. Freedom."
Marlana cannot see me, but slowly I nod my head up and down as I try to synthesize what this means to me. Never has there been a more counterintuitive moniker given to a child of God. My life, in it brokenness and confusion, was the antithesis of freedom. "Freedom, huh? What do you think that means?" Cannot conceive of it; can only barely hope for it.
"It means He sees you differently than you see yourself. That's for sure!"
Only a few days earlier, for Mother's Day, Vanessa had given me a journal even though she knew I have a pernicious distrust of the things. My fear is that upon my death all will see the perfect mess I was and quit mourning should my family betray my dying wish that my journals be turned to ashes in a bonfire which would send my raw, unedited words floating ubiquitously into a smoky cloud of eternal anonymity. So, it was with great consternation I took a pen from my desk and rescued the journal from under my bed and entered into dialogue on parchment.
May 31, 2003
Freedom is my new name. I accept the name by faith, Lord Jesus, for I awoke this morning looking at the black hole of emptiness brought about by walking away from what I can only describe as addiction. As I embrace my freedom in You, I need much wisdom,grace and work. Take me forward. I have run a worthy race, for sure, but in the wrong direction. How truly, awe-inspiringly ignorant. I wanted to run somewhere so badly it didn't matter if it was the wrong way as long as running made me feel better. Make this crippled athlete a winner - let me run with one goal in min. Hope.
My desire was that God sovereignly show up. I wanted a revolution to brew in me with its genesis in Him - one that stirred me to change. My daily prayer was: "God, I need You to intervene. No bullshit. No pretense. I am not looking for religion. I need You! Authentically." Waited for the lightning bolt, but it never struck.
Two steps forward, three steps back. A frustrating pattern to waylay hope. At first, it was difficult to even glance at all the work before me - like looking into a magnifying mirror and seeing so many flaws at once that I wanted to hide my reflection, giving up on any real beauty flowing from all the imperfections. I could not have dealt with all my neediness in one fell swoop or I would have despaired. Often, early on, when I had time alone I would just lie on the floor or stay in bed much of the day; but, slowly, my deeper reasons for living crept to the fore and I would rally. Matthew Henry once said that "inordinate affection sets the stage for inordinate affliction." Certainly that was my truth.
On June 13, 2003, I dug my hidden journal from its dark home beneath my bed and wrote: Isaiah 50 is so true. "Those who turn to idols, who trust their own light to guide them will lie down on a bed of pain." This turning to find love and adoratoin in anything or anyone else buy You has certainly been painful. Thank You, God, that Your word is so appropriate to me.
Up the mountain - down the mountain. Never seeming to reach the top. Always seeming to fail again. Ten days later, I had to plead for strength again: Here I am again, Lord. What will You do with me? I have no real ability on my own. I will try to get up the hill one more time, but I am not very successful at it. I need more than a push. Sometimes it seems You are the fantasy and this world the only reality, and I seem to need too desperately what the world offers me. Prove Yourself strong for me!
Steadier feet were taking a bit of ground by the end of August. Scripture was my best friend. On August 22, 2003, Psalm 9:10 woke me up: "My God loves me and goes in front of me." Love, unconditional and free, was of course, what I was yearning for and running from. It had taken months for me to entertain the idea that God could deeply, personally, clearly irrationally, love me. I kept repeating over and over..."God loves me."
By spring of 2004, after Daddy's second arreest, I was radically dealing with my heart, dashing to bits whatever remnants of addiction physically and emotionally still clung to me as I struggled forward. One morning in prayer I was reminded of two gifts I had stashed away. They stood between me and real freedom and hope. I had not forgotten them; I loved them, which is why I could not keep them. I climbed the spiral staircase to my bedroom and pulled the treasures from their hiding place. As I held them as idol residue in my hands, there was a painful aching in my chest and a mild hysteria started to build. I could not do this. This one last thing. Panicked, I paced the floor, feeling like a caged animal clawing hopelessly to free itself. I knew what I had to do and I had to do it right at that moment. It felt like a death march as I descended one step at a time from bedroom to living room and then on to the garage where the trash cans were, all the while looking at the little box I was clutching, now tear-soaked in my hand. I opened the lid to the garbage can, closed my eyes, and threw it away. As the lid thudded shut, I ran back to the living room, sprawled out on the carpet and cried.
It was not enough. There was the thought that they were still there, alive somehow in the garbage. Given the chance to kill the enemy or be killed, one should always kill the enemy. "No, God," I wailed. "Please, no!" But again, I knew. Every last vestige of hope for the past had to be annihilated in order for me to move into hope for the future. The gifts were not the enemy, but I was aware they tied me to an idol as surely as a hypodermic needle to a heroin addict. All the other choices had been made. This final one was left. And it was brutal.
Back in the garage, I reached deeply into the pit of the trash can and pulled out the items. Hanging on the wall with the other tools was the sledge hammer. Catching my breath to stifle a sob, I reached for it and headed to the sidewalk at the back of the house. Laying the precious glass gifts down on what was now their sacrificial altar, my tears splashing over the concrete, I raised the hammer and beat them, pulverized them into dust, as I sobbed the loss of what I had held on to and reached forward, in hope, to God alone. Terrified, I knew I was stepping into thin air and God must catch me or I would fall into a great, empty abyss.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
2010
Bill.
From His cross, Jesus looked down, blinking back the blood and perspiration that streamed from His forehead and stung His swollen eyes to see only one of His disciples standing there, faithful. Though John did not understand any more fully than the other disciples the events that brought their master to this ignominious, crushing death, the "disciple whom Jesus loved" followed Jesus all the way to His death. Summoned by name, John came close to the blood-soaked wooden cross - close enough to hear the Savior's labored breathing and maybe to be splattered by the sweat of His dying. "Behold, thy Mother." Into trusted, constant, reliable hands, Jesus committed His own mother.
Peter should have been there, too. After all, he had seen Jesus heal the lame, give sight to the blind, raise the dead. On a high mountain near Jerusalem Peter and John had seen Jesus transfigured before them, giving over for an instant His earthly body for His heavenly one. The night before the crucifixion, at the Passover meal, Peter proclaimed passionately that he would follow the Lord anywhere! Fight for Him! Then things got hard. Counterintuitive. Peter strikes Malchus, a soldier, with his knife that evening, and severs the officer's ear - an ear Jesus lifts from the ground and restores to Malchus. Clanging swords, Judas and his kiss, loud shouting - all became confusion as Jesus was led away, and Peter could not understand what was going on. He did not see Jesus again until the next morning when he turned and looked into the eyes of his master in the same instant when Peter cursed and denied for the third time that he knew Christ. The morning rooster's crow penetrated the dewy air, and Peter ran in shame to hide.
I am Peter. Bill is John. Faithful. In his own confusion, still following Christ through our crucible of pain. Still loving me when I was unlovable - even absent. He is not perfect. He made some heart-wrenching mistakes in the process with Mother and Daddy; but, Bill never ran away; he just kept looking at Jesus.
And, Bill walked. Miles. And listened with his hand in mine, to my sorrow, heartache and confessions. We tromped about California searching in our conversations for an elusive clarity that would not come full circle. Why? How to repair it all. Mother. What to do with Daddy. No answers. Talking in the same circles in which we walked. Tirelessly, Bill's heart tried to be open - to offer up solutions, or at least, consolations. Lesser men would have removed their walking shoes and grabbed the remote.
When Mother and I brought Daddy home from jail, Bill did not recoil from the sight and touch of him, but endured the guttural wailings of a man sorely in need of mercy when I could bear to hear it no longer. Bill loved Daddy, too; and his love was ripped and tattered as mine was. But Bill saw Daddy's need; was sorry for his great sin, and held the man.
In my time of wandering in the far country of my rebellion, taking my life into my own pitifully ignorant hands and nearly throwing it and my family away, there were times when I wished Bill would "play the man." Maybe he should have. I do not know what would have happened had he gone "gladiator" in the situation. What I understand now is that Bill was clinging desperately to the side of a sinking ship, praying for mercy from a God who alone had the power to right it. Daily, my husband walked alone with God during his lunch break. Touching me was like grasping a dead, withered stick that looks alive until, with the slightest pressure, it disintegrates into brittle, dusty pieces. Bringing life-sap back to me was beyond my man's ability. Only God knew how.
Before the onslaught of cataracting anguish in 1985, my heart was overtaken by my God and my husband. I was desperately in love with both. Imagining I could feel such cavernous estrangement from them was impossible. I would never change! Like Peter, I would swear to stay the course! Then life sabotaged my journey with a brutal assault, leaving me near death, struggling for breath, bruised and quaking. Blocking my way now was a mountain of pain, doubt, fear and loss. I could not see around it or over it. Moving past it was too great a task; so much to contemplate that my wounded spirit wished to die rather than even attempt the feat. Shame put its icey fingers around my shoulders and bowed my head, whispering that I had created the mountain somehow and would never conquer its height. Stripped of forward motion, I seemed for years to roam zombie-like in circles doing what I had always done before but with a fractured heart and a perplexity of spirit that I could not even articulate. I did not know what God was doing - could not see that He is good. Already winded from the first collapse of faith, I stood near the rubble mountain and beat my breast as I watched my friends struggle against death and lose. So, in my running from the unconquerable ascent before me, I ran also from Bill. How could he possibly understand and fix what I had not even begun to comprehend myself?
"Please bring her back to You, Father," was the heartcry of my husband. Not "bring her back to me," for in returning to the Father, I would surely find again my love for Bill. They were intrinsically bound together. The day I told him I no longer loved him, he sank down into the deepness of the white overstuffed couch in which he was sitting and deflated. "I don't know what to do, Kay. I can only pray." Swallowing hard, he said, "I would go to hell for you -to know you loved God again." Hell. Forever. I heard what he said, but the extravagant and ferocious love behind those words did not permeate my heart until I had very nearly thrown Bill into Hades.
Like a man with an incurable disease who puts on a happy face for friends and family, Bill rarely revealed his deep concern for our marriage. Walking in faith is quite courageous. There is no falling down and playing dead on the battlefield of trust. One afternoon Marlana came over to pray with and encourage me. My plea was for an authentic relationship with Christ-wanted to know Him as He knows me. Otherwise, it was just a religious exercise that could not change me, much less save me from the mess I had made. I was sincerely not trying to be difficult; I wanted God to reveal Himself to me in my situation. If I were to get over the mountain, it was not going to be on my own power. But, difficult, I was! That day particularly. Before leaving, Marlana found Bill, who had just come home from work, up in our bedroom near the bathroom sink. I followed her at a distance and walked in just as Bill took a sobbing breath and put his head heavily down onto Marlana's shoulder for support. He did not cry - he merely collapsed for a moment. Took refuge in a trusted friend. I tiptoed away, understanding his grief, but unable to assuage it all alone.
From the hotel room where Marlana prayed the night away with me, I went directly to Bill's office. He had no idea where I had gone the day before - where I had spent the night. Hope was shining a very tiny ray of expectation in my fresh-washed soul, exposing a longlost love buried deeply in the detritus of shame and loss. The beginnings of warmth - a remembrance of the joy of touching and being touched by my God and my man. Just a thought, really, that it might be possible to get to the other side and run free again. My fingers worked the numbers on my cell phone, calling Bill out into the parking lot, with hope. Nothing more.
Reticently, Bill walked toward me, wondering at my disheveled appearance and swollen eyes. I took his large familiar hands in mine. "I hope we can start over. I know I have a long way to go."
Tears sparkled in my man's eyes and he grabbed me, kissed me and held me tightly. "I have prayed so hard for this moment." Into my ear he said, "Yes. Yes, we can start over."
With all my heart I wish I could say from that day forward we took up where we had left off in 1985. But, I had so much work to do. For months I read the Bible, profoundly wise books by great Christian authors, and lay on my floor face to the carpet sobbing sin, doubt and fear into its threads. It would seem I made progress up the mountain and then I would slide all the way down again. Hope coaxed me back up onto my feet and I would will myself to try once more. It was during this time I found Micah 7:8-9 in my Bible. "Enemy, do not laugh at me. I have fallen, but I will get up again. I sit in the shadow of trouble now, but the Lord will be a light for me. I sinned against the Lord, so He was angry with me, but He will defend my case in court. He will bring about what is right for me. Then He will bring me out into the light, and I will see Him set things right." This became my life verse. Over and over, hour after hour, I would quote it...begin to believe it.
Bill did not hover over me expecting me to change immediately. There were no daily quizzes about my feelings for him or God. I was only capable of crawling toward the mountain and touching the edges of its base. No running jumps to scale it full on. Surprising emotions would grip me at the most inappropriate times...dinner with the family, a play, during my daily workout...and I would be immobilized. Had Bill expected warmth and wholeness from me immediately, I would have been too overwhelmed, I think, to live.
During those months of prostrating myself, God did make Himself real to me, giving me guidance from the Bible that was nothing short of stunning. Especially these verses from Zechariah 4. "This is the Word of the Lord...'You will not succeed by your own strength or power, but by my Spirit,' says the Lord All-Powerful.
Who are you, big mountain? ...you will become flat, and Zerubbabel will bring out the topmost stone, shouting, 'It's beautiful! It's beautiful!'" Then the Lord spoke His word again: " The people should not think that small beginnings are unimportant." This after I had expressed to God that I thought I would never get up the mountain looming before me. It was taking too long and my efforts often counterproductive. After reading these verses I felt a deep assurance that I would, like Zerubbabel, either see the mountain flattened or persevere to its top and find that "It is beautiful!"
Bill had a yearly trip to Las Vegas with his company and I usually drove to meet him there. Hearing from God again seemed virtually a new thing, though entombed and slowly resurrecting were the prayers I used to pray and Bible verses I had memorized dancing around the edges of their grave. Whispers of rebirth that excited me for no small reason. God must still love me. Bill did. No small miracles. All I could talk about was what was going on within me - imperfectly manifesting, but churning and deliberating even in my sleep.At the Mon Ami Gabi restaurant in the Paris hotel on the Strip, Bill listened to me for endless hours as I tried to synthesize my spiritual journey. Never once did he say, "I already knew that" or "This can't be new to you, Kay. You used to teach all of this." No. He listened while I gushed clean water for dirty. Somehow he loved me enough to hear me without judgment.
Bill was my protector in the battle for my life. That is what William means, protector. In war, real men stand, uncowering, and trust their leader, faithfully following orders. They are the kind of men to which other warriors entrust their mothers. I know God loves me. But I will ever be convinced God saved our home because He loves my husband.
Bill.
From His cross, Jesus looked down, blinking back the blood and perspiration that streamed from His forehead and stung His swollen eyes to see only one of His disciples standing there, faithful. Though John did not understand any more fully than the other disciples the events that brought their master to this ignominious, crushing death, the "disciple whom Jesus loved" followed Jesus all the way to His death. Summoned by name, John came close to the blood-soaked wooden cross - close enough to hear the Savior's labored breathing and maybe to be splattered by the sweat of His dying. "Behold, thy Mother." Into trusted, constant, reliable hands, Jesus committed His own mother.
Peter should have been there, too. After all, he had seen Jesus heal the lame, give sight to the blind, raise the dead. On a high mountain near Jerusalem Peter and John had seen Jesus transfigured before them, giving over for an instant His earthly body for His heavenly one. The night before the crucifixion, at the Passover meal, Peter proclaimed passionately that he would follow the Lord anywhere! Fight for Him! Then things got hard. Counterintuitive. Peter strikes Malchus, a soldier, with his knife that evening, and severs the officer's ear - an ear Jesus lifts from the ground and restores to Malchus. Clanging swords, Judas and his kiss, loud shouting - all became confusion as Jesus was led away, and Peter could not understand what was going on. He did not see Jesus again until the next morning when he turned and looked into the eyes of his master in the same instant when Peter cursed and denied for the third time that he knew Christ. The morning rooster's crow penetrated the dewy air, and Peter ran in shame to hide.
I am Peter. Bill is John. Faithful. In his own confusion, still following Christ through our crucible of pain. Still loving me when I was unlovable - even absent. He is not perfect. He made some heart-wrenching mistakes in the process with Mother and Daddy; but, Bill never ran away; he just kept looking at Jesus.
And, Bill walked. Miles. And listened with his hand in mine, to my sorrow, heartache and confessions. We tromped about California searching in our conversations for an elusive clarity that would not come full circle. Why? How to repair it all. Mother. What to do with Daddy. No answers. Talking in the same circles in which we walked. Tirelessly, Bill's heart tried to be open - to offer up solutions, or at least, consolations. Lesser men would have removed their walking shoes and grabbed the remote.
When Mother and I brought Daddy home from jail, Bill did not recoil from the sight and touch of him, but endured the guttural wailings of a man sorely in need of mercy when I could bear to hear it no longer. Bill loved Daddy, too; and his love was ripped and tattered as mine was. But Bill saw Daddy's need; was sorry for his great sin, and held the man.
In my time of wandering in the far country of my rebellion, taking my life into my own pitifully ignorant hands and nearly throwing it and my family away, there were times when I wished Bill would "play the man." Maybe he should have. I do not know what would have happened had he gone "gladiator" in the situation. What I understand now is that Bill was clinging desperately to the side of a sinking ship, praying for mercy from a God who alone had the power to right it. Daily, my husband walked alone with God during his lunch break. Touching me was like grasping a dead, withered stick that looks alive until, with the slightest pressure, it disintegrates into brittle, dusty pieces. Bringing life-sap back to me was beyond my man's ability. Only God knew how.
Before the onslaught of cataracting anguish in 1985, my heart was overtaken by my God and my husband. I was desperately in love with both. Imagining I could feel such cavernous estrangement from them was impossible. I would never change! Like Peter, I would swear to stay the course! Then life sabotaged my journey with a brutal assault, leaving me near death, struggling for breath, bruised and quaking. Blocking my way now was a mountain of pain, doubt, fear and loss. I could not see around it or over it. Moving past it was too great a task; so much to contemplate that my wounded spirit wished to die rather than even attempt the feat. Shame put its icey fingers around my shoulders and bowed my head, whispering that I had created the mountain somehow and would never conquer its height. Stripped of forward motion, I seemed for years to roam zombie-like in circles doing what I had always done before but with a fractured heart and a perplexity of spirit that I could not even articulate. I did not know what God was doing - could not see that He is good. Already winded from the first collapse of faith, I stood near the rubble mountain and beat my breast as I watched my friends struggle against death and lose. So, in my running from the unconquerable ascent before me, I ran also from Bill. How could he possibly understand and fix what I had not even begun to comprehend myself?
"Please bring her back to You, Father," was the heartcry of my husband. Not "bring her back to me," for in returning to the Father, I would surely find again my love for Bill. They were intrinsically bound together. The day I told him I no longer loved him, he sank down into the deepness of the white overstuffed couch in which he was sitting and deflated. "I don't know what to do, Kay. I can only pray." Swallowing hard, he said, "I would go to hell for you -to know you loved God again." Hell. Forever. I heard what he said, but the extravagant and ferocious love behind those words did not permeate my heart until I had very nearly thrown Bill into Hades.
Like a man with an incurable disease who puts on a happy face for friends and family, Bill rarely revealed his deep concern for our marriage. Walking in faith is quite courageous. There is no falling down and playing dead on the battlefield of trust. One afternoon Marlana came over to pray with and encourage me. My plea was for an authentic relationship with Christ-wanted to know Him as He knows me. Otherwise, it was just a religious exercise that could not change me, much less save me from the mess I had made. I was sincerely not trying to be difficult; I wanted God to reveal Himself to me in my situation. If I were to get over the mountain, it was not going to be on my own power. But, difficult, I was! That day particularly. Before leaving, Marlana found Bill, who had just come home from work, up in our bedroom near the bathroom sink. I followed her at a distance and walked in just as Bill took a sobbing breath and put his head heavily down onto Marlana's shoulder for support. He did not cry - he merely collapsed for a moment. Took refuge in a trusted friend. I tiptoed away, understanding his grief, but unable to assuage it all alone.
From the hotel room where Marlana prayed the night away with me, I went directly to Bill's office. He had no idea where I had gone the day before - where I had spent the night. Hope was shining a very tiny ray of expectation in my fresh-washed soul, exposing a longlost love buried deeply in the detritus of shame and loss. The beginnings of warmth - a remembrance of the joy of touching and being touched by my God and my man. Just a thought, really, that it might be possible to get to the other side and run free again. My fingers worked the numbers on my cell phone, calling Bill out into the parking lot, with hope. Nothing more.
Reticently, Bill walked toward me, wondering at my disheveled appearance and swollen eyes. I took his large familiar hands in mine. "I hope we can start over. I know I have a long way to go."
Tears sparkled in my man's eyes and he grabbed me, kissed me and held me tightly. "I have prayed so hard for this moment." Into my ear he said, "Yes. Yes, we can start over."
With all my heart I wish I could say from that day forward we took up where we had left off in 1985. But, I had so much work to do. For months I read the Bible, profoundly wise books by great Christian authors, and lay on my floor face to the carpet sobbing sin, doubt and fear into its threads. It would seem I made progress up the mountain and then I would slide all the way down again. Hope coaxed me back up onto my feet and I would will myself to try once more. It was during this time I found Micah 7:8-9 in my Bible. "Enemy, do not laugh at me. I have fallen, but I will get up again. I sit in the shadow of trouble now, but the Lord will be a light for me. I sinned against the Lord, so He was angry with me, but He will defend my case in court. He will bring about what is right for me. Then He will bring me out into the light, and I will see Him set things right." This became my life verse. Over and over, hour after hour, I would quote it...begin to believe it.
Bill did not hover over me expecting me to change immediately. There were no daily quizzes about my feelings for him or God. I was only capable of crawling toward the mountain and touching the edges of its base. No running jumps to scale it full on. Surprising emotions would grip me at the most inappropriate times...dinner with the family, a play, during my daily workout...and I would be immobilized. Had Bill expected warmth and wholeness from me immediately, I would have been too overwhelmed, I think, to live.
During those months of prostrating myself, God did make Himself real to me, giving me guidance from the Bible that was nothing short of stunning. Especially these verses from Zechariah 4. "This is the Word of the Lord...'You will not succeed by your own strength or power, but by my Spirit,' says the Lord All-Powerful.
Who are you, big mountain? ...you will become flat, and Zerubbabel will bring out the topmost stone, shouting, 'It's beautiful! It's beautiful!'" Then the Lord spoke His word again: " The people should not think that small beginnings are unimportant." This after I had expressed to God that I thought I would never get up the mountain looming before me. It was taking too long and my efforts often counterproductive. After reading these verses I felt a deep assurance that I would, like Zerubbabel, either see the mountain flattened or persevere to its top and find that "It is beautiful!"
Bill had a yearly trip to Las Vegas with his company and I usually drove to meet him there. Hearing from God again seemed virtually a new thing, though entombed and slowly resurrecting were the prayers I used to pray and Bible verses I had memorized dancing around the edges of their grave. Whispers of rebirth that excited me for no small reason. God must still love me. Bill did. No small miracles. All I could talk about was what was going on within me - imperfectly manifesting, but churning and deliberating even in my sleep.At the Mon Ami Gabi restaurant in the Paris hotel on the Strip, Bill listened to me for endless hours as I tried to synthesize my spiritual journey. Never once did he say, "I already knew that" or "This can't be new to you, Kay. You used to teach all of this." No. He listened while I gushed clean water for dirty. Somehow he loved me enough to hear me without judgment.
Bill was my protector in the battle for my life. That is what William means, protector. In war, real men stand, uncowering, and trust their leader, faithfully following orders. They are the kind of men to which other warriors entrust their mothers. I know God loves me. But I will ever be convinced God saved our home because He loves my husband.
Bill.
Monday, April 5, 2010
2007
The smell of Daddy clung to his clothes hanging in his closet as my sister and I went through them, sorting things out on this Sunday after his death. There was really not much there. A few shirts and three or four pairs of slacks. A couple pairs of shoes. Underwear and socks in the drawers of a little dresser standing lonely in the corner of his closet. Daddy's straw gardening hat was on a shelf above the clothes rack as was a heavy fur-lined hat with ear flaps that he had purchased in Germany to protect his bald head against the harsh winters there. All but the gardening hat we bundled into bags for the Goodwill truck; my sister wanted it as a reminder of the Daddy who mowed our lawn on hot summer days. The two of us then made a list of the things I needed to accomplish in the next few days when I would be there by myself. She had to leave that afternoon to be back for work on Monday. As the executrix of Daddy's estate, my sister had a daunting task before her; so, I wanted to do all I could before boarding the plane back to California.
The list we compiled included getting in touch with Goodwill, returning Daddy's oxygen machine, going through his paperwork and sorting it, and gifting his motorized wheelchair to the church, which was his wish. I added to the tasks a complete cleaning of his bedroom because I knew my sisters would be coming back and forth to Arlington, and they would need to stay there. The mattress cover had not been changed and the sheets were soiled. So, as soon as I kissed my sister good-bye, I set about scouring Daddy's living area. Three men rented rooms from my father; two, John and Leon, were college students from the Ivory Coast who had lived there since May. The other, Pete, was an older single man who had lived with Daddy for quite some time. All of them loved my father and were heavy-hearted over his death. Because they were home on Sunday afternoon, I elicited their help in turning the big heavy king-sized mattress and moving things around in the room to make if more livable. Then I washed everything except the drapes. My sister and I had already replaced the handicapped toilet seat with a conventional one, so I scrubbed down the bathroom and made it sparkle. With a soft cloth from Daddy's laundry room closet, I used orange oil to polish the furniture, I vacuumed his room and the den; then, I remade the bed with fresh mattress pad and clean, warm sheets.
When I sat down on the bed that evening and looked around at the order that had been restored, I thought of the day Mother and I had first heard of Daddy's arrest. Not knowing what to do, we had set her perfectly ordered home "in order." I breathed deeply, inhaling the aroma of fresh linens and flower-scented disinfectant wafting in from the bathroom and realized that I had done the same thing on this day. I needed to set straight what could be visibly ordered before I tackled the job of arranging Daddy's belongings. My understanding, from his journals, of the scope of his problems was very fresh - less than twenty-four hours old. The physicality of cleaning helped to clear my thoughts.
I did not know how exhausted I was until I became still; and, I was hungry. John and Pete joined me for dinner at a restaurant nearby, and we had the waitress pack up a meal for Leon ,who had been studying. They wanted to talk about my father. John, a Christian, called my father "Daddy" and loved him. His wheelchair, said John, was always parked, with him in it, beside the front door at least thirty minutes before his ride to church came to pick him up, so eager was my father to be there. Daddy's "ride" was his court-appointed chaperone, though my father's tenants did not know this. Daddy loved to sing and John played the guitar, so they would sometimes have small worship services together in the evening. It was John who had found my father short of breath and needing an ambulance before he went to the hospital for the last time. Because my father spoke French and had been in North Africa in the war, the two young men from the Ivory Coast had a special love for their landlord, as French is their native language. I did not tell them about Daddy then. They saw someone engaging and godly. Thought I was so lucky to have such a father. I did have one, once.
Back at Daddy's, the four of us sang songs with Leon and John playing guitars, then I was regaled with stories of the Ivory Coast and shown pictures of John's home and family until late into the night. Leon presented me with gifts - a shirt for my husband, a Cora, which is a stringed-instrument used in the Ivory Coast, and little travel bags with slippers for me and my husband. We had become a little family that day, clinging to each other for the warmth of home that each of us, for whatever reason, was missing.
I was sitting in the middle of the den floor on Monday afternoon. Scattered around me were photographs that I had found in a box in Daddy's bedroom. Beside me were two or three albums of pictures from beneath the coffee table. That morning I had gone through Daddy's desk and organized his paperwork into piles that made sense and then labeled them for my sister. What was extraneous, I had thrown out. The Goodwill truck had been scheduled and the bags for them stacked on the front porch. The church would send someone early Tuesday for the wheelchair, and a young man had already been by to collect the oxygen machine. He was shocked that my father had died - thought Daddy was such a nice old man.
I had moved the sorting process from the bedroom to the den and looking through the pictures was my next endeavor. Not really knowing where to begin, I picked up an unfamiliar album from the stack beside me. Here was a little boy, chubby, wearing a yellow shirt and a big smile. Sitting atop Daddy's lap. Cozy. Safe. Next was a child, dark hair curling angelic around his face. Maybe he was eight or nine. Then a boy dressed in a Superman t-shirt and shorts, sitting snuggled into the pit of my father's arm. No treachery. Who were these children? Of course, I knew none of them. The pictures were not sexual in nature, but appeared to display the love and warmth of this older man for children. Probably taken by a mother or father who had no idea who this grandfatherly gentleman was. It seemed strange to me that his probation officer had never seen these pictures. The freshness of my father's words describing his deepest secrets compounded with the images before me made my stomach churn with that all too familiar queasiness before I had time to leaf through the many pages of the album. I got up and went to the kitchen where I found a large black trash bag. Into it I poured the children and the old man, treachery emblazoned with a smile, to burn in a cremation of fire or to rot with the other garbage outside the city in some dump. No more photographs added to the album of this secret life. That, at least, was now over.
Reticently, I began to lift picture after picture from the stacks around me on the cool linoleum of the den floor. Family. My family chronicled for years in photos. I was struck by the memories of a safer father. I held in my hands for a few minutes an eight-by-ten of my father reading to my daughters. Two little blond-haired girls, ages three and five, were listening as their grandfather read them yet another story book. Vanessa, the younger, leaned over the edge of the big green velvet recliner in which her granddaddy sat and laid her head almost against his chest in order to see the illustrations in the book more clearly. Heather, the older, sat, comfortable, upon her grandfather's knee, her index finger to her rosy mouth and her body lying against his as she lost herself in the story of the little white rabbit. An ache in me for the loss of that father.
There were pictures of Christmases and baby dedications; grandchildren playing in the back yard and relatives now dead; wedding photos mixed in with picnics, trips to Europe, and birthday parties. It was a thoroughly eclectic journey through the past, and it made me yearn in a way that by then seemed intrinsic. Into this array of photographs walked John, just home from class. Fascinated by the faces there on the floor smiling up at him, John asked if he could sit and help me sort them out. I welcomed the company, knowing that the task could become maudlin in a moment's time. I had learned John's family the night before - met them vicariously through the many images and stories he had told. It was time for John to meet our family in the same way. Because of the several visits my sisters had made during the summer to see Daddy, John knew them. He had fun guessing which childhood photo was which of us daughters. He and I made a stack of pictures for each sister and one for me, and I entertained him with stories of our lives as we put the snapshots, one by one, on the appropriate piles. Much of life recorded by the camera was really sweet, untainted in the moment by the darker knowledge of what was. Life, as captured in these memories, is not a straight line. It has many twists and turns, surprises and griefs, joys and setbacks. The photographs so loosely strewn across the den floor revealed, as we picked them up randomly to enjoy them, even in the most conflicted life there are times of purest experience. My father was a homosexual pedophile, but that was not all he was. Other better times defined another better man.
Later that afternoon I went through the glassware in the big hutch with its stained glass doors that Daddy and Mother had brought back from Germany. I packed up the set of blue dishes that Daddy had saved for me - the ones we had eaten from on my birthday in 1985 when Mother announced her impending death. They had arrayed the dining table on many different special occasions, and the dishes were the only thing from the house I really wanted. Handling so much history was emotionally challenging that day. I felt caught in a confusing time warp and did not know what to do with the heaviness of heart that had settled on me by dinnertime. No one was in the house with me, so I picked up my purse and got into my rental car without specific destination - just needed a breather.
I made my way toward the freeway near my father's house and discovered a seafood restaurant near a movie theater complex. Since fried oysters and beer can almost always cheer me up, I pulled into the shopping center and parked the car, mouth already watering. There is no comfort food like that which is fried in lard! While waiting for the fried oysters, I munched on raw ones and drank my cold Coors Light as if it were some sweet nectar from the gods. Lots of deep breaths. A few tears escaping curiously. My body relaxing from the day. I was not quite ready to go back to the house when I finished eating, so I walked to the theater and bought a ticket for 3:10 to Yuma. Transported into the old west with a highly defined story of good and evil, I forgot, for a couple of hours, my own life and how smeared the lines of righteousness and sinfulness can become.
I awoke early the next morning, Tuesday, to the aromas of chicken and tomato sauce wafting in from the kitchen where John was preparing one of his native dishes for me to try before I left for the airport and my return to California. He had told me the night before that he would do this, but he is young and it was early; so, I thought he might sleep through. I got up, took a shower, dressed and followed my nose to the kitchen. Proudly, John showed me how to eat his favorite meal; I did as he did and picked up some chicken and the rice paste with my fingers and popped the tasty concoction into my mouth. It was delicious, tomato-y, greasy fun! The chicken burst with flavor and the experience was laden with love. My little Christian brother from North Africa had blessed me, and I thanked the Lord that He had provided this friendship at such an unsettling time.
Somewhere thousands of feet in the air between Dallas, Texas, and Santa Ana, California, as I flew home that day, I thought to be thankful that my father had always embraced other cultures and our lives had often been enriched by that. He had loved travel, unique foods, learning languages and harboring foreign missionaries in our homes. I had him to thank that I had eaten chocolate-covered ants and tasted brains and eggs and calf's tongue; that I had traveled Europe and taken road trips to Paris and Vienna with him and Mother; that I have a heart for the orphans of Cambodia even now; that the world does not seem too big a place.
The list we compiled included getting in touch with Goodwill, returning Daddy's oxygen machine, going through his paperwork and sorting it, and gifting his motorized wheelchair to the church, which was his wish. I added to the tasks a complete cleaning of his bedroom because I knew my sisters would be coming back and forth to Arlington, and they would need to stay there. The mattress cover had not been changed and the sheets were soiled. So, as soon as I kissed my sister good-bye, I set about scouring Daddy's living area. Three men rented rooms from my father; two, John and Leon, were college students from the Ivory Coast who had lived there since May. The other, Pete, was an older single man who had lived with Daddy for quite some time. All of them loved my father and were heavy-hearted over his death. Because they were home on Sunday afternoon, I elicited their help in turning the big heavy king-sized mattress and moving things around in the room to make if more livable. Then I washed everything except the drapes. My sister and I had already replaced the handicapped toilet seat with a conventional one, so I scrubbed down the bathroom and made it sparkle. With a soft cloth from Daddy's laundry room closet, I used orange oil to polish the furniture, I vacuumed his room and the den; then, I remade the bed with fresh mattress pad and clean, warm sheets.
When I sat down on the bed that evening and looked around at the order that had been restored, I thought of the day Mother and I had first heard of Daddy's arrest. Not knowing what to do, we had set her perfectly ordered home "in order." I breathed deeply, inhaling the aroma of fresh linens and flower-scented disinfectant wafting in from the bathroom and realized that I had done the same thing on this day. I needed to set straight what could be visibly ordered before I tackled the job of arranging Daddy's belongings. My understanding, from his journals, of the scope of his problems was very fresh - less than twenty-four hours old. The physicality of cleaning helped to clear my thoughts.
I did not know how exhausted I was until I became still; and, I was hungry. John and Pete joined me for dinner at a restaurant nearby, and we had the waitress pack up a meal for Leon ,who had been studying. They wanted to talk about my father. John, a Christian, called my father "Daddy" and loved him. His wheelchair, said John, was always parked, with him in it, beside the front door at least thirty minutes before his ride to church came to pick him up, so eager was my father to be there. Daddy's "ride" was his court-appointed chaperone, though my father's tenants did not know this. Daddy loved to sing and John played the guitar, so they would sometimes have small worship services together in the evening. It was John who had found my father short of breath and needing an ambulance before he went to the hospital for the last time. Because my father spoke French and had been in North Africa in the war, the two young men from the Ivory Coast had a special love for their landlord, as French is their native language. I did not tell them about Daddy then. They saw someone engaging and godly. Thought I was so lucky to have such a father. I did have one, once.
Back at Daddy's, the four of us sang songs with Leon and John playing guitars, then I was regaled with stories of the Ivory Coast and shown pictures of John's home and family until late into the night. Leon presented me with gifts - a shirt for my husband, a Cora, which is a stringed-instrument used in the Ivory Coast, and little travel bags with slippers for me and my husband. We had become a little family that day, clinging to each other for the warmth of home that each of us, for whatever reason, was missing.
I was sitting in the middle of the den floor on Monday afternoon. Scattered around me were photographs that I had found in a box in Daddy's bedroom. Beside me were two or three albums of pictures from beneath the coffee table. That morning I had gone through Daddy's desk and organized his paperwork into piles that made sense and then labeled them for my sister. What was extraneous, I had thrown out. The Goodwill truck had been scheduled and the bags for them stacked on the front porch. The church would send someone early Tuesday for the wheelchair, and a young man had already been by to collect the oxygen machine. He was shocked that my father had died - thought Daddy was such a nice old man.
I had moved the sorting process from the bedroom to the den and looking through the pictures was my next endeavor. Not really knowing where to begin, I picked up an unfamiliar album from the stack beside me. Here was a little boy, chubby, wearing a yellow shirt and a big smile. Sitting atop Daddy's lap. Cozy. Safe. Next was a child, dark hair curling angelic around his face. Maybe he was eight or nine. Then a boy dressed in a Superman t-shirt and shorts, sitting snuggled into the pit of my father's arm. No treachery. Who were these children? Of course, I knew none of them. The pictures were not sexual in nature, but appeared to display the love and warmth of this older man for children. Probably taken by a mother or father who had no idea who this grandfatherly gentleman was. It seemed strange to me that his probation officer had never seen these pictures. The freshness of my father's words describing his deepest secrets compounded with the images before me made my stomach churn with that all too familiar queasiness before I had time to leaf through the many pages of the album. I got up and went to the kitchen where I found a large black trash bag. Into it I poured the children and the old man, treachery emblazoned with a smile, to burn in a cremation of fire or to rot with the other garbage outside the city in some dump. No more photographs added to the album of this secret life. That, at least, was now over.
Reticently, I began to lift picture after picture from the stacks around me on the cool linoleum of the den floor. Family. My family chronicled for years in photos. I was struck by the memories of a safer father. I held in my hands for a few minutes an eight-by-ten of my father reading to my daughters. Two little blond-haired girls, ages three and five, were listening as their grandfather read them yet another story book. Vanessa, the younger, leaned over the edge of the big green velvet recliner in which her granddaddy sat and laid her head almost against his chest in order to see the illustrations in the book more clearly. Heather, the older, sat, comfortable, upon her grandfather's knee, her index finger to her rosy mouth and her body lying against his as she lost herself in the story of the little white rabbit. An ache in me for the loss of that father.
There were pictures of Christmases and baby dedications; grandchildren playing in the back yard and relatives now dead; wedding photos mixed in with picnics, trips to Europe, and birthday parties. It was a thoroughly eclectic journey through the past, and it made me yearn in a way that by then seemed intrinsic. Into this array of photographs walked John, just home from class. Fascinated by the faces there on the floor smiling up at him, John asked if he could sit and help me sort them out. I welcomed the company, knowing that the task could become maudlin in a moment's time. I had learned John's family the night before - met them vicariously through the many images and stories he had told. It was time for John to meet our family in the same way. Because of the several visits my sisters had made during the summer to see Daddy, John knew them. He had fun guessing which childhood photo was which of us daughters. He and I made a stack of pictures for each sister and one for me, and I entertained him with stories of our lives as we put the snapshots, one by one, on the appropriate piles. Much of life recorded by the camera was really sweet, untainted in the moment by the darker knowledge of what was. Life, as captured in these memories, is not a straight line. It has many twists and turns, surprises and griefs, joys and setbacks. The photographs so loosely strewn across the den floor revealed, as we picked them up randomly to enjoy them, even in the most conflicted life there are times of purest experience. My father was a homosexual pedophile, but that was not all he was. Other better times defined another better man.
Later that afternoon I went through the glassware in the big hutch with its stained glass doors that Daddy and Mother had brought back from Germany. I packed up the set of blue dishes that Daddy had saved for me - the ones we had eaten from on my birthday in 1985 when Mother announced her impending death. They had arrayed the dining table on many different special occasions, and the dishes were the only thing from the house I really wanted. Handling so much history was emotionally challenging that day. I felt caught in a confusing time warp and did not know what to do with the heaviness of heart that had settled on me by dinnertime. No one was in the house with me, so I picked up my purse and got into my rental car without specific destination - just needed a breather.
I made my way toward the freeway near my father's house and discovered a seafood restaurant near a movie theater complex. Since fried oysters and beer can almost always cheer me up, I pulled into the shopping center and parked the car, mouth already watering. There is no comfort food like that which is fried in lard! While waiting for the fried oysters, I munched on raw ones and drank my cold Coors Light as if it were some sweet nectar from the gods. Lots of deep breaths. A few tears escaping curiously. My body relaxing from the day. I was not quite ready to go back to the house when I finished eating, so I walked to the theater and bought a ticket for 3:10 to Yuma. Transported into the old west with a highly defined story of good and evil, I forgot, for a couple of hours, my own life and how smeared the lines of righteousness and sinfulness can become.
I awoke early the next morning, Tuesday, to the aromas of chicken and tomato sauce wafting in from the kitchen where John was preparing one of his native dishes for me to try before I left for the airport and my return to California. He had told me the night before that he would do this, but he is young and it was early; so, I thought he might sleep through. I got up, took a shower, dressed and followed my nose to the kitchen. Proudly, John showed me how to eat his favorite meal; I did as he did and picked up some chicken and the rice paste with my fingers and popped the tasty concoction into my mouth. It was delicious, tomato-y, greasy fun! The chicken burst with flavor and the experience was laden with love. My little Christian brother from North Africa had blessed me, and I thanked the Lord that He had provided this friendship at such an unsettling time.
Somewhere thousands of feet in the air between Dallas, Texas, and Santa Ana, California, as I flew home that day, I thought to be thankful that my father had always embraced other cultures and our lives had often been enriched by that. He had loved travel, unique foods, learning languages and harboring foreign missionaries in our homes. I had him to thank that I had eaten chocolate-covered ants and tasted brains and eggs and calf's tongue; that I had traveled Europe and taken road trips to Paris and Vienna with him and Mother; that I have a heart for the orphans of Cambodia even now; that the world does not seem too big a place.
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