Hope (part 2)

Weeks ago I ranted a critique of "hope" in Hope (part 1). My children, to my chagrin, are frequent flyers on hope's wings. Have I failed to teach them to embrace the present rather than pine for what's ahead? Instead of proactive designers of their destiny, are they learning to be victims, limply hoping for change down the pike?

I hope not. (Whoops.)

Maybe I'm the one failing to learn what my children are trying to show me about hope.

I did promise to share some kid stories that help me question my questions about the value of hope. Here is one.

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We came home tonight to a jaybird dying on the porch. It lay there, just under the motion-sensitive light, moving too little for me to notice, but enough to give hope to the one daughter still awake.

Brielle wanted to save it.

“It will be just fine if we take care of it, Daddy. What do blue jays eat?”

“Brielle, blue jays eat other baby birds and the eggs of other birds. They’re not really a very nice kind of bird.” I was tired. A smear campaign against the species sounded easier than offering emergency veterinary services.

Brielle was shocked but quiet. The little birdie clawing the air on the porch looked too harmless to be an infanticidal egg thief.

I saw the harshness of my tack reflected in her eyes, felt its sting, and softened my approach. “Brielle, it’s probably the same one that smacked against our window yesterday. It probably is blind and won’t be able to live very long without its sight.”

“Daddy, why are blue jays not nice to other blue jays?”

“Brielle, you know, God didn’t make animals smart enough to know what is nice. They just know they need to eat and they try to find food even if they have to do not-nice things to get it. So they’re not being ‘not-nice,’ they’re just trying to eat."

She liked this. Not guilty by reason of low IQ. “So the birdie doesn’t know it’s not nice to eat other birds’ eggs. I think the birdie ate other birds' eggs and then it thought it would fly and then it hit our house and got blind and now it won't steal any other birdies' eggs."

This wasn't working.

"Brielle, you know, if this birdie dies, two good things could happen. One thing is that another hungry animal will eat it and be happy it found some food." There was that stinging, shocked look again. I hate causing that look in her eyes, even when I do it by telling the truth. "Or, if another animal doesn't eat it, its body will go into the ground and help other plants and trees grow because they will use the vitamins that were in the birdie's body."

”Daddy, maybe we can give it some water. And an egg. Maybe blue jays are not nice to other blue jays. But they are pretty sweet to us. It looked sweet and nice.”

Great.

She was right. It was a beautiful bird. Helpless. Beyond the need for judgment--guilty, not guilty...nice, not nice. At our mercy.

And truth is, resigned as I was to this creature’s place in the food chain, the inevitability of its downward slide on the circle of life, I didn’t like being out there watching it die. Euthanasia was probably the nicest thing I could have done, but even if I’d had the strength to do this, I lacked a way to do it so Brielle wouldn’t know, or a way to explain it to her if she did.

I grabbed an egg from its cardboard carton in the fridge. I filled a ketchup cap with water. Together, we went out to the still bird, set the egg and water a couple feet away on the porch. We found a stick and gently pushed them right next to the bird, urging our desperate offering toward its beak. It fluttered, and settled down again.

“Maybe the birdie will get some rest, wake up and drink the water and eat. Maybe it will fly away and be OK tomorrow,” I offered, wanting this to be true perhaps as much as Brielle wanted to believe I was telling the truth.

We both dared to hope. And our hope moved us to merciful action.

At 11:30 I heard the bird shriek. I ran across the room to see a hungry raccoon finishing the job that I lacked the courage to do. Masked and nonchalant, the raccoon dragged the jay--along with our egg--under the porch and finished off both.

Even if Brielle finds out what happened to the bird (and you BETTER not tell her), I think she will agree with me on this: I am glad she hoped. Because her hope moved me from tired resignation to actually doing something, however small, for a needy member of creation. And that moved both of us from guilt and complicity with the darkness into a place where we offered a sort of light.

Whatever the outcome, we both felt better having hoped, having tried.

My grand Father's Day

This Father’s Day was kind of sad for the ladies in my life. Our family was missing two fathers. With Rachelle’s dad and grandpa both gone, and my brothers still trying to figure out how babies are made (or something like that) it left just my dad and me to get the royal Daddy treatment.

Neither Rachelle nor Evonne has a habit of tallying losses, but on a day like Father’s Day in a year as grief-ridden as this has been, it’s hard for the fatherless and the widow not to feel the irony.

These losses make me even more aware of how fortunate I am to have my dad. He lost his father when he was still in grade school. Naturally, he imagined he would follow suit.

As kids, we lived only half-resigned to the dread of Dad’s early death. We feared it but we knew it was coming. It was as real and as expected as other unavoidable certainties like swim workouts or going away to college.

But we dreaded this most of all.

And now, against all prophecies of doom, he has survived. By God’s grace, he is cashing social security checks, yelling at the Lakers, chasing the Four Freshmen around the country with Mom as they celebrate their 60^th anniversary (the Four Freshmen, that is), and working 80-hour weeks during tax season. (We still pray he’ll retire. Soon.)

Best of all, he is goofing off with my three little girlies. Listening with rapt attention as Melía tells about her prize snails and roly-polies. Making faces. Tickling his way down Ashlyn’s face saying, “Fore-bender, eye-winker, tom-tinker, nose-smeller, mouth-eater, chin-chopper, gully-gully-gully!” and cackling as raucously as she does. Playing hide-and-go-seek. Teaching Brielle how to cast with her new Barbie fishing pole (and dig that visual). Reading about Jesus calming the storm with real sound effects, the wind and waves rocking all four of them in the La-Z-Boy. (They eat this up as much as I did at their age.)

These are all things of beauty that I never imagined. Measures of soul music after movements of monotone. Breathtaking vistas out of miles of fog. They take me by surprise—as heaven will no doubt do when it comes in fullness—because I never dared to think of any of this. My vision was too short to see myself with children, much less with my dad around to enjoy them. It is unanticipated delight. Serendipity. An ambush of joy.

So thanks for sticking around, Big Dada. Life has often been tiring, and survival can be harder than its alternative. But we’re lucky you’re still with the program—despite your predictions.

“I’m wrong. I’m always wrong,” you have often lamented. You are far from always wrong. But I’m glad you were wrong on this one, Big Dada. Really glad.

We love you.

Trying to stay positive

I’m struggling not to violate the cardinal rule of blogging: “Don’t let it become too negative.” (I’m trying to do the same with my parenting in general; more on that tomorrow....) It’s not like I get a kick out of life’s dark stretches. I don’t. Nor do I derive any sadistic pleasure watching my kids walk through them.

It’s just that so far in 2008, my girls have lost their More Papa, their Papa and their cat. (Please don’t mention the cat to them—they still haven’t spoken of his absence and we haven’t brought it up.) Shuffled into this was a holiday featuring the violent death of God. Watching my kids process the first death of their life at the end of January was touching and even a tearful sort of beautiful. I didn’t like that they had to go through it. At the same time, it was important, deep, inspiring.

But watching them lose their grandpa has been simply bleak.

It’s as if two deaths in as many months has left them feeling like this is routine. They felt the stress and sensed something was wrong; it showed in their hyperactive and hyperfussy behavior all last week as they spent evenings with other loved ones while we were at the hospital. But there was a grim resignation this time, something even more painful to see than the more visible grief that showed up when they lost More Papa.

The twins both took the news of Rachelle’s dad’s death in silence. Brielle didn’t even manage to cry until half a day after she’d heard, when she listened to Mommy sing “Goodbye for Now,” the same song she’d sung at More Papa’s funeral. And then, at last, Brielle fell to pieces. I was relieved.

We barely got to that point though. The evening had all the ingredients of human brokenness. We had designed it as a quiet time for the family to gather in our home and remember Don.

By 8 p.m., we had not yet begun to do this.

I had been waging a man-against-machine battle up to the last minute, trying to get the 161 photos I’d scanned of Don to play on the TV, oblivious to any human beings in the room. Don’s sisters were getting along like sisters, which at this point meant a disagreement sharp enough that one was out on the porch calming herself down before she said something regrettable. Rachelle’s recently widowed grandma had come up the mountain to share in the time, but had run out of steam by then and was begging for rides back home, convinced that she too had lost her husband that very day. In the midst of this was Rachelle’s mom, shell-shocked after the loss of the two most important men in her life, just trying to hold it together.

And in the wailing department were my three daughters, whose enthusiastic screams would have put Bible-era professional mourners to shame. So vociferous were our lovely progeny that we carried the twins off to bed in the middle of dinner. This meant leaving them out of a process I fear they really needed. It was this process that finally wrung the tears from Brielle’s eyes, the moment that her resignation gave way to real feelings.

We all need those moments. Maybe even fussy three-year-olds? Why couldn't they stay sane enough to have theirs?

Melía prayed the night before last, “Thank you for this nice day. Thank you for this wonderful day. Thank you that Jesus die and rose adain. Thank you that Papa die and rose adain. Amown.” It was sweet. It was funeral homily quotation material. But is it OK that either one of those tragic deaths should roll so routinely off the lips of a child? Is this a welcome sign that Melía is trusting in the hope of the resurrection, accurately applying Jesus’ story to that of her grandfather? Or this all too glib for a loss that is much closer to home than the one two thousand years ago? Should I be encouraged or concerned?

I am sad that my daughters have to deal with so much death right now, resentful even that Easter had to fall when it did. More than than, I'm angry that this most recent death came much sooner than necessary. I am indignant that hospital visiting rules and the twins’ own fussiness has made it so they haven’t gotten to say good-bye the way I think they needed to. I am worried that theses losses will lead to I don’t know what in their psycho-spiritual future. I am scared of how we adults may fail them as we handle our own grief.

And despite all that has been breaking in our babies’ hearts of late, I’m trying to keep my eye on what remains whole. I’m making an effort to keep things real yet positive with regard to the family we’ve lost and all of us who are left. After last Tuesday, we got out of town and spent a couple days in Carlsbad at the beach and pool. Yesterday found us at church and a birthday party. Today we all went to a play and dinner with the kids' choir. Good stuff. Hollow-feeling at times, but good.

So yeah, we’re working not to let this all get too negative. But it is work. Sometimes, it is hard work.

Who's her Daddy? - A legacy

As I watch his earthly life slip away, I’ve been thinking about everything Rachelle’s dad has given his daughter. Here are just some of the ways that Don will live on through Rachelle:

Food: This family expresses love through food and over food. Love is their food. Food is their love. The bestselling book, “Eat, Pray, Love” describes the heartbeat of the Long family—they love and they eat, the synergy of which rises up as a sort of prayer, a holy fellowship around these two essentials. Conversation over breakfast inevitably reaches back to recipes of the past and forward at least as far as dinner. Don has been speaking love via gastronomy most of his life, putting more than anyone could imagine into his recipes—growing and grinding ingredients than others would barely think to even purchase. “Taste o’ this,” he’d say, handing over a forkful of his latest creation. Rachelle, too, loves the world through her food, which, like her love, is always more abundant than necessary, more delightful than expected. Tonight when we gather to remember Don’s life together, Rachelle will be making pizza, her dad’s favorite. You can bet it will be better than anyone would guess pizza could be. You can also bet there will be leftovers.

Music: Don exults in good music—jazz, Celine Dion, the Four Tenors, and most recently, the Celtic Woman. He would record his favorites from PBS and play them for anyone who would listen when they came over. “You’ve got to hear this,” he would say, sinking into his recliner. Often he’ll be in tears minutes later, fully at the mercy of the music. He likes to get our girls dancing around the room as they listen, fancying themselves to be the singers. Of course, he loves to hear Rachelle sing. His daughter is music herself, with an essence that puts life to a melody, makes it a thing of beauty. Like her dad, Rachelle finds hope, energy, peace—God—in music.

Affection: Don is a hugger, a snuggler, a lover of cuddly animals. He gives backrubs, which must have been the family sport as a child judging by the spontaneous massages that break out at Long family get-togethers. His wife, daughter and granddaughters have always been, “Darlin’” or “Sweets.” Yet his affection is more than a family thing. He has space in his heart for all kinds of people, knowing not a stranger—only friends not yet met. Likewise, Rachelle is the kind of soul who, coming upon a row of five chairs with a single person sitting in a chair on one end, will select the chair next to that person over the other three vacant ones. Space between souls is not a good thing for her. Rachelle’s random back and foot rubbing qualifies her as a true Long, and even the roughest character may qualify as “Sweetie” in her generous language. The world will not sink into loneliness and despair while people like Don and daughter are on the loose, because they will snuggle up, give a hug, work on that knot in the shoulder and let people know that they are not as solitary as they had supposed.

Acknowledgement: Don—whether wearing the hat of pastor, innkeeper, friend, brother or dad—is an encourager. He has a prophetic eye for the best in people and a prophetic voice that puts that vision into words. He speaks to the best part of a soul, with conviction that makes believers of the people he builds up. Best of all, he listens to that best part, relishing opportunities to hear and celebrate people’s stories. Rachelle never needed that rule about saying seven nice things for every criticism; her verbal recipe pours in gallons of sincere compliments for every ounce of censure. She is the best fan I could dream of to bring to speaking engagements, showering heartfelt praise on me after every sermon or presentation I’ve given. Even in times of famine, when my character is a scorched, fruitless wasteland, she finds the one thriving plant in my soul and holds it up as the hallmark of who I am. I think I know where she learned this.

Spiritual Hunger: Don has a voracious appetite for God. He devours reading not only on biblical scholarship and archaeology, but on spirituality as described by yogis, emergent church leaders, scientists and others outside the traditional church in which his faith was forged. He is open to anything that might grow his understanding and experience of the divine. Some ten years ago he ended his employment as a minister, but he never stopped seeing and participating in the work of God. One of the first things that drew me to Rachelle was her genuine interest in things spiritual. Her heart beats to the rhythm of simple, solid faith—the lifeblood of a mind open to ideas that stretch the traditional boxes into which God has been stuffed. She works to create opportunities to learn more about relating with God and to talk about this learning with others. For Rachelle, authentic encounters with God and His people are pretty much the point of being alive.

The irony is this: I find it so easy to love her, while for him I have often found in myself as much criticism as love. How can this be when so much of who she is she learned from him? Dad, forgive me for failing so regularly to connect these dots, to see your goodness spilling over in the woman I love.

Thank you, Dad, for teaching your daughter so much of what matters. I pray for the grace to pass on as much to my little girls. We miss you already. But thank God, the best of you lives on in the people lucky enough to have known your love.

Who's her Daddy?

Deep inside the hospital, in critical condition, lies the man my wife calls “Daddy.” He is not long for this world. Standing at his bedside in the ICU yesterday, I watched Rachelle spoon broth into his shaking lips, wipe his chin, hold his hand, caring for him with all she had in the dwindling hours left.

I stared at father and daughter through my dull disbelief that the end could be so near. How did we get here? Was it not just a season ago that I was bringing a pot of flowers to this man, asking for his daughter’s hand? Could it be more than a few weeks since he, having watched those flowers multiply, had teased me about the omen for our fertility?

How long ago could it have been that he fed, wiped and cared for that same girl who had stolen his heart, and who grew up to steal mine?

Suddenly she was in tears. Jolted by her sobs, yet relieved to have a job to do, I hugged her while scanning the room for Kleenex. Finally, I unwound a yard of single-ply toilet paper from the restroom marked “For Patients Only,” folding it four times before it was anything like a passable snot rag. Rachelle filled it in two seconds. I returned to the toilet for more.

As I rolled out TP—the sole offering I could give my broken-hearted soul mate—my mind fluttered. We had seen it coming. We had hoped he would take better care of himself. He knew better. We hadn’t talked about it with him all that often, knowing it would likely as not make him more stubborn in challenging fate. But he knew. In fact, it could have been ending more slowly and painfully than this. It was actually merciful. And suddenly, through my righteous rationalism, a rogue thought bored its way in: A little girl is losing her Daddy.

In the room, she was pressing her forehead into his. “I love you, Daddy,” she said.

“I love you,” his trembling mouth managed to say.

I noticed that this day would come for me. My dreams, ambitions, hoping, working and tail-chasing would someday get me the same place they get all men—on my back, dying. I could only hope that whatever my flaws—and my sons-in-law will have as easy a time seeing mine as I see his—I might raise my little girls to have half the love and goodness that this daughter of his has. I could only pray that despite all the reasons not to love me, on the day they tell me goodbye, they will choose to love me anyway.

Because Dad, whatever you have to show after your years of toil, as many or as few trophies for your work in the world, however fleeting or misunderstood your life may have seemed to you, it is enough if you have this one thing: your little girl there with her hair on your neck, declaring her love to you.

God, give him grace to feel the love that he has added to the world. May he sense through this somnolent fog just how much Rachelle loves him. May be know through her something of how much You love him.

Of funerals and bedtime

Papa’s funeral was yesterday.

It has been tiring and beautiful. And in the process of saying good-bye, my kids and I have been teaching each other some new definitions. For example, I’m teaching them:

• Death: (n) sleep
• Casket: (n) bed

My favorites they have taught me are:

• Funeral: (n) party
• Tribute in song with pantomime by great-granddaughters to honor deceased: (n) dance contest

The girls had spent the long weekend “helping” Daddy put together a bulletin and slide show for their great grandfather, and were downright excited about “Papa’s party.” (We called it a “celebration” of Papa’s life—why not a party?) They bathed without complaint, put on their church clothes, descended the mountain crammed in the back of the Accord without even scratching each others’ eyes out. In fact, despite skipping a nap, they shared a Chicken McNuggets 10-pack among the three of them, Brielle in the middle handing out nuggets as each twin managed her own container of dip on either side. (Unheard of.)

The service was what it needed to be—a loving review of a life well lived. And the kids offered grace notes throughout it. Technical difficulties stopped the sound from playing during the slide show. This left us in a silence I can only call deathly, a silence from which Melía rescued us with her narration, audible throughout the room: “Dat is my Papa. Dat is my Nana. Dat is my MOMMY!” Ashlyn ran outside, broke a vase and reminded us how grateful we are for friends to scoop her up and prevent her from plowing straight into traffic. Tears and farewells and poetry and hymn and eulogy honored the 90-year-old patriarch in a dignified fashion. Rachelle managed to get through her song, Goodbye for Now, only choking up on the last two lines, which in its own way was as beautiful as the rest of her singing.

All this was preamble to what would easily have been Papa’s favorite part: the “dance contest,” featuring contestants Brielle, Melía and Ashlyn. Following their aunt’s lead, the girls did motions to You Raise Me Up. In their cherubim-white dresses, they carved laugh-wrinkle canals to drain our tears. Each child lost interest in the performance at various times during the song, pausing to check under fingernails, pick nose, eye loved ones or otherwise drift off to left field. Yet each refrain of “You raise me up…” brought them back, lifting hands from floor to sky, high as their tiny arms could reach.

Hours later, as the restaurant hosting the wake was rolling up the fire hoses used to clean up after our kids, I tucked the girls into bed. Melía, ever the night owl, brought up the song again. “We raise Papa up, Daddy.”

“Yes, Melía, Jesus will raise Papa up, sweetheart. You did such a good job helping people remember that today.”

“We raise Papa up, Daddy.”

“Melía, when Jesus raises Papa up, he will be so happy to see you. He will dance with you and play with you and run with you and tickle you.”

“Yeah! YEAH! Yay! YAY!” Melía was bouncing on the bed now, energized, as always, by her parents’ snowballing exhaustion.

“That’ll be fun, huh, Melía?”

“Yeah, dat will be fun. Dat will be FUN!”

“I hope Jesus does that soon, Melía. I can’t wait.”

“Yeah, I townt wait. I townt wait.”

“Night-night, Melia.”

“Night-night, Daddy.”

Night-night Papa. We can’t wait…

Weak of prayer, day 4: Supplication

A = Adoration (digging who Father God is)
C = Confession (noticing He and I are dissimilar)
T = Thanksgiving (celebrating His gifts despite this)
S = Supplication (asking for more)

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My wife's grandfather died in his sleep yesterday morning at the age of 90.

After several hours of beating around the bush and feigning normalcy, I broke it to my daughters, there in the open doorway of the minivan, all three still strapped in. "Daddy has something very sad to tell you." I eyed the three blond heads, hating that they had to hear what I was about to say. "More Papa has been very sick and ouchy. His body was so broken that this morning, he died."

The 3-year-old twins absorbed the news in silence, unsure what to make of it. Brielle--whose increasingly pointed questions had finally convinced me it was time to talk--puckered her lips, her eyes flooding with tears, and began to wail. "He is sleeping now," I went on, "and the next thing he sees will be Jesus waking him up. And then we'll be able to see him and play with him. And he'll be able to dance with you and throw you in the air." Brielle giggled through her tears at the thought of this. "And play hide-and-seek with you and do all kinds of fun things that he couldn't do before because his body was too broken."

Brielle cried for two or three minutes. I passed her Kleenex and stretched over the middle seat of the minivan trying to snuggle my face up against hers and stroke her hair. The twins processed it all without comment. As a brief thunderstorm wets the ground and disperses, Brielle's tears came and went. She was on to the next topic, and it was time to go into Souplantation to lunch with Papa's surviving wife, daughters and granddaughter.

I would apologize that yesterday's events so dominate this day of supplication--of obeying Jesus' command, "Ask and you will receive...." But prayer never happens in a vacuum; real prayers flow from souls scraping their boils as they sit upon the dung heap, from the fatherless and the widows. So be it.

Day 4: Supplication

• Comfort my wife and kids and all in the family who mourn the loss of this great fallen father.
• Lord, please give peace, or at least the hope of peace, to all children who have lost their fathers.
• Give me a sense of urgency in my time with my own father and with my kids.
• Remind me that everything I do leaves a legacy; nothing is only for now.
• Help us be both wise and courageous in the conversations we have with the kids about this, the first real death they've experienced in their short lives.
• Give us grace to be the difference in the world that Papa was in his 9 decades.
• Help the girls to relate rightly to death, not fearing what is on the other side, but seizing every second of what we have while we live.
• Use this time of mourning and remembering to bring the family together. Deliver them from the temptation to let their grief be a wedge; let it be a bridge instead.
• Give me a long life, Lord--at least long enough to give these girls a fair start, to frontload them with the love a soul needs to thrive in the true love wasteland that is our world.
• Teach us to be content.
• Remind us that health is a fragile gift, and that following your guidance on healthful living--like following all the rest of your Law--is less a duty than the tearing open of that gift. Help us to take delight in caring for the temple.
• Protect my wife from harm; home could not be home without her.
• Hold Nana close to you in these excruciating days. Help her to find your grace to be sufficient for her, your strength made perfect in her weakness.
  
• Give me a hunger and thirst for You. Keep on melting the ice on my heart for you (and thanks for mixed metaphors).