"Entry Into Jerusalem," Danila Vasillief 

Thank You

I wanted to take a moment to thank each and every one of you who sent me messages of kindness and support during the shocking and sad events of the last weeks. I cannot tell you how much it meant to me to experience all of you embracing my mother and me during this time; it was truly like being held by the Body of Christ.

In the midst of the anxiety and grief at my house, something beautiful was happening in my kitchen window: my overwintered flowering maple, which had grown into a straggling and unlovely plant during its time inside, suddenly developed flower buds and burst into bloom. Please consider this my virtual bouquet to all of you for your love and caring. I took this photo the morning the flowers opened; when I looked at it today the sunrise in the background seemed to be a beacon leading my life in a new direction. And I can't ask for better traveling companions on this journey. Thanks again.

My abutilon -- newly in bloom 

Getting Ready For the Service

Another emotional Mixmaster of a day. (On one hand as I blog I think, "Oh, good grief, how much of this stuff are you going to subject people to?" On the other hand, I'm hoping that for people who have not yet gone through the death of a parent, my own gut spillage might be a way to let you know, ahead of time, that you're going to have all these experiences and reactions and feelings, and that it's okay; that you will be treading down a road that others among us have already trod.)

I found myself throwing away more things today: A really hideous secondhand coffee table, a relic of my father's enthusiasm for recycled furniture, that's turned into a catchall for catalogs; a mudroom coatrack literally held together with duct tape up at the top; an ugly old kitchen chair next to the coatrack whose only practical function, other than serving as auxiliary coatrack, is to give you a place to sit down to put on or take off boots in the wintertime. I found myself wanting to move things -- move around the living room furniture. I am seriously considering moving into my mother's bedroom, because it's bigger and lighter than mine, and turning my bedroom into some sort of multipurpose office/exercycle space, or throwing away the decrepit 70's era furniture (which I have been planning to do anyway) and adding a daybed or futon or something. I found myself wanting to put more houseplants around the place; my mother (possibly concerned about the indoor horticultural detritus that a friend of mine calls "plant poop") disliked the idea of more than one plant per room, and in fact kept the plants limited to a Norfolk Island pine in the dining room and a philodendron in the living room. I went into the Cheap Crap of Dubious Origin store today for some practical purchase and left with a pretty celery green soap dish and lotion dispenser for the bathroom, which I have decided is going to be green and lavender. I saw myself, some summer weekend, stripping the horribly degraded bathroom sink cabinet and restaining it so it doesn't make me want to throw up whenever I look at it. (All advice on this proposed project cheerfully accepted, because my home-repair skills are more like Red Green's than Martha Stewart's.)

As I'm idly thinking these things, or hauling stuff out to the garage, part of me is saying, "Good for you. You're moving forward. You're taking responsibility. Mom would be proud," while another part is saying, "Your poor mother isn't even in the ground yet, and this is what you're thinking about? Can you even wait until the interment to tear up her house and take over her room?" And part of me is saying, "Why didn't you do all these things while she was alive? Maybe she would have appreciated it." And yet another voice is saying, "Why did you leave me with all this stuff to do? Why, Mom and Dad? Why did you treat this place like a disposable house? Now I'm stuck with it, and it's falling apart, and I don't know how to fix it, and I don't even know if I want to live here anymore." All of these things are simultaneously roiling around in my head.

I had to pick up Mom's funeral flowers today; our local florist doesn't deliver out to our church. (One of the pitfalls of commuter churchgoing.) That was hard; I cried when I came home and set up the tripod.

The funeral director had mentioned something about putting up an easel with a kind of memorial montage of photographs of my mother. I've been pondering this since Monday, and it would be interesting for our church people, who've only ever known Mom as an elderly woman...but the thought of being creative is overwhelming me: For God's sake, now they want me to do a craft project? I might play with this tonight, but I don't think I can do it. Or if I do it'll look like crap.

My pushy aunt called to ask if my cousins should send flowers or money to our church building fund. I told her that either would be fine. "But which one do you think your mother would prefer?" she pressed, with a note of impatience in her voice. I wanted desperately to say, "Dammit, woman, I just told you; flip a fucking coin." (On Monday morning, when I called to break the bad news to her, she proceeded to relate to me, as I was weeping and sniffing into the phone, all her own health problems. Hello! My mother just died!) I realize that in large families relatives like this come in multiples, so I should be glad I just have one to contend with, but...sheesh. And I'm sure that she and her posse will be taking notes on how fucked-up they think the memorial service is, especially since my mother left their congregation and church body to start going to church with me. (I'm keeping a buffer of church friends around me for the duration of this ordeal.)

I dropped off my other aunt's outfit at the nursing home. She'd just come out of the bath; they were lifting her onto her bed. "See?" she said. "I told you she'd bring me my clothes." God, I thought, now I'm not moving fast enough for the nursing home staff? I didn't arrive according to their preferred timetable? Hey, everybody, is there anything else I'm doing wrong? Someone keeping score?

As you can possibly tell, I am just about ready to go full fetal under my desk right now. But I keep telling myself that by this time tomorrow this stuff is going to be all over.

Dog Interlude

I bought my dog a set of steps today.

I had to get my hair cut -- I look terrible, but my hair I can fix -- and I got it into my head for some reason that I wanted to wear a black skirt for the memorial service, but didn't have a black skirt, and I was running out of some household supplies I needed. So anyway I made an expedition to the nearest fair-to-middlin' sized city, where I could get everything done in the same general area.

There's a large pet supply store in this shopping complex. I went in looking for my dog's fancy-schmancy delicate-digestion dog food but came out with a set of plush-covered steps designed for small or older pets, to help them up onto sofas and beds. My dog is 14, and while he can still get up and down if he's really motivated, I know it hurts him. And since he's going to be home alone more now, I wanted to help him get to his dog bed, which sits on the living room sofa.

So I got home, put the steps together, and showed them to the dog. He didn't care. I stood him on the first step, then manually walked him up the steps. (I should explain that my dog is a Maltese and weighs nine pounds wet.) "Good boy!" Then I walked him back down. "Good boy!" I felt like Annie Sullivan spelling "water" into Helen Keller's hand.

Except my dog doesn't get it. Or doesn't want to get it. Whenever he wanted to get up or down, I made him walk up or down the steps; this didn't go over too well, and in fact he began pointedly avoiding walking anywhere near the steps. At one point I put one of his beloved puppy crackers on the top step and coaxed him to climb up and take it. After thinking about it for maybe five minutes he tentatively set foot onto the first step, then got a paw on the second step as he retrieved his cracker. "Good boy!" I praised him. He turned and gave me a look that suggested, "You must be kidding if you think this means I'm actually going to use this thing." Then he started grumbling: Harrumph. Gwahhh-wah-wah-wah. Harrumph. (I don't think you need to be fluent in canine to pick up the general gist of that sentiment.)

It took my dog a whole year to decide to use his dog bed, so I expect that I have an ongoing project on my hands.

More Light

This evening, for the first time in many days, I made a tentative trip around the blog neighborhood...not too many; just enough to get out of my own head for awhile. And it helped a lot. Many thoughtful, skillful writers out there. (THANK YOU, bloggers.)

I find myself longing to be at a place where I can start writing about something other than my current, overwhelming life drama. I'm not there yet, but I think I will be soon.

Getting On With It

The first indication that the world was not going to stop for my mother's death: I had a plumbing emergency yesterday -- well, it was an emergency to me but not to the plumber, who showed up just before noon today.

It was good to have a reality check. And I've been having a lot of those. Yesterday I was busy with memorial service arrangements and banking -- I haven't gotten Mom's death certificates yet so I can't start the real nitty-gritty of posthumous paperwork on her behalf; then I came home and continued my spring cleaning program. Today while searching through the pantry for something I wound up tossing out pounds of past-dated cans and boxes -- Mom was a Depression child, and loathed throwing food away even if she herself had no real intention of eating it; I used to surreptitiously slip a questionable item or two, when I could, into the trash on pickup day -- and I wound up cleaning and rearranging half the shelves. (If this is loopy behavior under the circumstances, at least it's loopy in a productive way.)

In between these bouts of housekeeping mania there are some pretty low moments. This morning I was looking through my mother's wardrobe for an outfit that an aunt living in a nursing home could wear to the service. I really hadn't touched my mother's things since she died; it was hard to go through her clothes like this, for a task like this, and hard to think that at some point I'm going to be sorting them into boxes for my aunt or for the church yard sale or to throw away. Later a church friend called me -- her husband had died a day before my mom, after a long illness; his funeral was today -- and we had a mutual cry over the phone. And waiting for the plumber yesterday, I found myself almost paralyzed at the window; couldn't move, couldn't think. (My pastor recalls one of his bereaved parishoners responding, when he asked how she was doing, "These days looking out the window is a full-time job.")

There are episodes of anger, not always rational: Anger at the tardy plumber; anger at an elderly relative of mine (if any of you are acquainted with the Britcom Keeping Up Appearances -- think of an older, Midwestern version of Hyacinth Bucket ("It's Boo-KAY!...");that is my relative) who was being a pest yesterday; anger at my mother's primary care physician for not knowing, or not communicating, the seriousness of my mother's illnesses to her (even as I realized that she very well may have). Last night while I was doing dishes I lapsed into Anglo-Saxon expletives as I tried getting peanut butter off a spoon; suddenly I realized I was yelling at peanut butter for being peanut butter.

There have been episodes of complete goofiness. I have lost my keys more in the past week than I can count. And last night, on a trip to McDonald's (partly to use a functional public bathroom and partly to split a bag of French fries with my dog), I ran into someone associated with my agency. "Hi! How are you doing?" he greeted me cheerfully. "Fine," I responded with a wan smile. It was about a minute later, in the car with the dog, that I first of all realized who'd said hello to me, and then realized how strange my answer was going to sound to him when he picked up the paper the next day and read the local obits. D'oh.

And I've even had a flash or two of dark humor. Last night a friend e-mailed me and said she was going to "send me something." I e-mailed back: "Send me a plumber!"

Something I've noticed, that is very curious to me -- it's odd how some objective part of me is observing me -- is that, spiritually, I have the equivalent of what my social worker friends call a flat affect. It's not that I've lost my faith, by any means; but it's not in the foreground, the way you'd think it would be at a time like this. It's just there, somewhere. Yes, I've read Footprints. No, that doesn't help me very much. (In fact it's one of the smarmy things I outright rejected for Mom's memorial bulletins...I chose the 23rd Psalm, which has both her and my confirmation verse in it.) If looking out the window is a job these days, then praying is another job; these past few days I run through the Daily Office, when I do, like it's a telemarketing script. I don't feel God's abiding presence in a way that I have felt it at other times of my life; I just have to trust that it's there, perhaps most especially embodied in the caring words and actions of my friends. And the objective part of me is telling me that I'm just "processing" all of this my own way, in my own time, and it's okay, and I can feel anything I want to. (Evidently my objective self has a master's in social work.)

Well, now I have to go to the nursing home and see if my clothing selection for my aunt meets with her approval. The nursing home is very helpfully arranging for her transport to the service, and we are going to somehow get her up and down the stairs of our antiquated church building. (Groundbreaking for our new, barrier-free sanctuary addition is this month, and not a moment too soon.) This visit is easily the hardest thing I have to do today.

It's Over

I wanted to let you all know that my mother departed from this life, to dwell in light eternal, a little after 7:00 a.m. this morning.

Many thanks to all of you who have remembered us in your prayers during the past difficult days. I appreciate it very much, and am in awe of the power of the Holy Spirit to bring the Body of Christ together.

My mother hated standard funerals -- hated them -- and made it clear to me many times over the years that she did not intend having one. So we're not; instead we're having a memorial service at my church this Saturday at 11:00 a.m EST. Please be with me in spirit on that day. Thanks again, everyone, for all your kind notes and e-mails.

For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
Who Thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress and their Might;
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well fought fight;
Thou, in the darkness drear, their one true Light.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

For the Apostles’ glorious company,
Who bearing forth the Cross o’er land and sea,
Shook all the mighty world, we sing to Thee:
Alleluia, Alleluia!

For the Evangelists, by whose blest word,
Like fourfold streams, the garden of the Lord,
Is fair and fruitful, be Thy Name adored.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

For Martyrs, who with rapture kindled eye,
Saw the bright crown descending from the sky,
And seeing, grasped it, Thee we glorify.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
All are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

O may Thy soldiers, faithful, true and bold,
Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
And win with them the victor’s crown of gold.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
And hearts are brave, again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

The golden evening brightens in the west;
Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest;
Sweet is the calm of paradise the blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day;
The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of glory passes on His way.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast,
Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
And singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost:
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Down and Out

Today the roller-coaster ride is only going down.

After two fairly good, optimistic days -- Mom spending some quality time sitting up and even walking, with assistance, to the bathroom -- when I got to the hospital today she was either incoherent or, at times, outright hallucinating. She said her back hurt, and resisted all efforts to be put back in her chair (which is where she's supposed to be, to help clear her lungs). She said she wanted to go home, got angry with me when I told her that she couldn't do that, and started to get out of bed; I had to call the nurses and have them settle her back down. Later on she became somewhat more lucid, but she would still check out every few minutes.

The physician's assistant -- a guy who, yesterday, was talking optimistically about Mom going to a care facility this week -- came in and said that her white blood cell count was up to a troubling level. But she doesn't have a fever. Her blood sugar is also alarmingly high; Mom has diabetes, but she's always controlled it before with oral medication, yet now every day I visit her numbers are up past 400.

And what I feel right now is...nothing. I have experienced so many wild swings of the good news/bad news pendulum in the past week and a half -- often multiple ups and downs in a single day -- I can't even think. I can't phone anyone, because I'm just too tired to talk. In fact, for some reason I'm finding face-to-face contact with other people painful. I was fully intending to go to church this morning, but then I wound up running late; and it occurred to me that I just couldn't handle people coming at me, asking the same things, offering platitudes or astoundingly stupid comments, the latter of which has been happening a lot. (I actually had someone at work ask me if I was going to move, if anything happened to Mom, "because it seems that you'd be happier in a more arty community" -- I'm not sure if she's trying to hurry me out of town or just being an insensitive ass.)

My pastor keeps asking, "How can we help you?" I honestly don't know how anyone can help, other than continuing to pray for us. What I'd like the most right now is to be temporarily unconscious, which I realize is not a very good answer.

Walking the Midway: Lutheran Blog Carnival I

Better late than never, eh...welcome to our first blog carnival, speaking to the topic of Lutheran Spirituality.

(I am going to add the disclaimer that, because of my state of distraction in the past days, there is a very good possibility that I have missed some people's submissions. If you sent me material and I haven't included it, could you please e-mail me? and I'll add it. Thanks. And Clint and Sheryl -- still in? I'll add your posts as well, if you e-mail me the links.)

Chris Halverson affirms that Lutheran spirituality is not an oxymoron, thanks to the paradoxes of our theology.

Mata H at Time's Fool , talks about the spiritual struggle involved in forgiving people who aren't at all sorry. (I loved that "fetal or fist position" line, by the way; I resemble that remark!)

Melancthon suggests that we Lutherans would do well to go back for the wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers .

Here are some thoughts by Pastor Erik Karas at Word For the Week :

Lutheran Spirituality…hmmmmm? I suppose when I first hear those two words crammed together, in a painfully unnatural manner for a group of people mostly made of stoic Northern Europeans, I think first of my first parish in rural Wisconsin where the closest thing to Lutheran Spirituality happened on Sunday afternoon. There in the midst of cows and corn Lutheran Spirituality involved beer, brats and the Packers. While a GOOD beer and a brat can be a spiritual experience I expect that probably isn’t where I should stop in my thinking on this subject.
In seminary, Lutheran spirituality was the “new” thing and at the end of my time there we even got a seminary spiritual director. We were introduced to all of the traditional spiritual disciplines like labyrinth walking, Lectio Divina, some Taize worship, journaling and the like. I always felt a little sub-spiritual because none of these methods really did anything for me. Many people found the discipline that worked for them, or at least they said they did, but nothing ever worked for me. Since then I have talked to lots of people about spirituality and what it means to them but spirituality still has not rubbed off on me in any of the methods “officially sanctioned” by the spirituality police. I have even participated in group spiritual direction with other clergy (five Methodists and me) for two years now and while I love the group and cherish the support, I still don’t feel a whole lot more spiritual.
For me, the Lutheran part of Lutheran spirituality happens to me simply because I happen to be Lutheran (thanks mom). The spirituality part seems to happen mostly when I blindly stumble into or over God; typically when I least expect it. The frustrating thing is that it’s hard to make a discipline out of haphazardly stumbling into God. “Spiritual clumsiness” just doesn’t have that mystical ring to it that you really want in your experience with the Holy Other. So, I’m still not sure what to make of my personal Lutheran spirituality. The bottom line is that while I don’t have an officially sanctioned method of Lutheran Spirituality that connects me to God in an overtly mystical way, I do find times when God is present in my life and I am connected to the Holy. Sometimes that has happened when I’m fly fishing with the water washing away the worries of the world and my focus is in the moment and not on anything else. Every once in a while it is at the altar when I am presiding at Holy Communion but usually I can’t help thinking about what’s next in the service. There have been times when I have been in the presence of people who were incredibly spiritual and some of their spirituality seemed to rub off on me in that moment and every once in a while someone’s laugh, cry or look will give me a wonderful glimpse of the Kingdom.
I think Lutheran spirituality can be an officially sanctioned spiritual discipline for some but I don’t think it has to be (just don’t tell the spirituality police I said that!) I think that probably the best way to think about spirituality, whether Lutheran or another brand, is as a time when we become aware that we have just bumped into God. If you can figure out a place or a way where that happens more often than not…fantastic! But if you are more like me, maybe our spirituality is can be boiled down to just being thankful for the times when our spiritual clumsiness causes us to do an unexpected face plant for Jesus and we know for a brief moment that God is present in our lives. And then, if that doesn’t work for you, you can always try a good beer and a brat!

And Beth O'Connor shares the following:

Hi Folks. I’m sure that other carnival bloggers will tell you more about specific spiritual exercises, a topic for which I haven’t done near enough research to have anything to say. Instead, I want to talk about getting over the Lutheran fear of spirituality. Lutherans tend to get it from both barrels on this one. We fear older spiritual exercises because they can seem like “monkery”, and we fear newer exercises (or exercises newly brought in from old traditions) because we think they might turn us into “spiritual, but not religious” people. In either case, we fear that the exercise is done in order to be saved outside of God’s grace. One way to help calm this fear and put ourselves into the proper frame of mind is to start each exercise off with a prayer that focuses on its purpose, like this:
Lord, I thank you for saving me, even though I don’t deserve it and nothing I can do can change that. I thank you for all the wonderful ways you have shown me your presence. (List some, if you like) I thank you for the opportunity to experience your presence as I (name spiritual exercise here e.g. pray the Daily Office). In your name, amen.
Now that we’ve acknowledged that the spiritual exercise won’t save us, we are free to do it with joy. Pray boldly. Live boldly. Sin boldly. Believe boldly.
In Christ,
Beth

I was going to include a post of my own; my theme is still in my head, in embryonic form. If I get it together I'll include it in another carnival post, along with any late entries. Again, thanks for your patience during this difficult time.

Time Out

I had to take a time out.

My mother has definite visitation limits before she needs a time out. The first four days post-surgery it was about 15 minutes. Now I hang out at the hospital for about three hours; we talk and eat lunch together, and I'm there to see the staff doing their thing for her. But at about two hours and 45 minutes I can see Mom's energy flagging, so I know it's getting time to go.
That's how I felt yesterday. I was just so tired -- tired of driving, tired of talking to people, explaining the same things over and over again. I'd told my mother that I wouldn't be visiting but would call her, and that is what I did; but I didn't drive down to the hospital. I went to work for a couple of hours but came home. I fell asleep on the sofa; the dog and I were alternating snores for awhile, I think. And then I watched mindless TV. And I washed wood paneling around the house.
I just had to be doing and thinking other things for awhile.

I was back on duty today, but now I'm just exhausted again, and not looking forward to losing an hour of sleep.

The good news: Today the surgeon's PA came around to visit and talked about discharging Mom to a rehab facility -- one here in town if at all possible -- later in the week.

Carnival Update

I'm still going to try and post the first Walking the Midway blog carnival tomorrow evening...but because of my life circumstances it may be more like April Fool's Day. And if I miss someone's submission -- a distinct possibility given my state of distraction -- please e-mail me and I'll fix it.

She's Up

Sort of.

I went to the hospital today with a gingerbread birthday cupake bearing the icing message "HB MOM" (that's all that would fit on it) but no great expectations... but to my surprise I found my mother sitting in a chair by the window. She was awake and alert -- in a pretty glum mood, because she felt lousy, but certainly lucid.

I stayed there for three hours, during which time she had physical therapy -- they had her reaching and doing arm curls, and I was told that they were going to periodically help her stand -- and ate half her lunch (after some energetic coaching on my part -- my boss, who's gone through this experience with a loved one, warned me that the meds they give open heart patients take away their appetites, and they need to be pushed to eat enough food to keep up their strength). This is a huge improvement over yesterday. But by 2:00 p.m. Mom had pretty much had it for the day, and told me to go home. Although she did ask for her glasses and for the magazine I'd bought her down in the gift shop. So I took that as a good sign.

The roller-coaster goes up...the roller-coaster goes down...the roller-coaster goes up...that's how it's going around here.

Celling My Soul

Another life change for me this week -- after holding out for as long as possible, I finally purchased a cell phone...a basic, non-blingy $20 pay-as-you-go cheapie from the local Cheap Crap of Dubious Origin store. Considering that I'm spending over three hours on the road every day, and monopolizing my land line with the computer when I'm home, it seemed like the right thing to do.

But I have no love for the thing. Oh, I was geeky enough to program a Bach partita ringtone, but I'm not particularly curious about any of the features other than the actual ability to call people on it, or to receive calls with it,under duress. To steal a phrase from theologian Marva Dawn, who critiques our technophilic culture quite harshly, I feel fettered by my new cell phone. And I do not want to turn into one of those people who are surgically attached to their phones, engaged in inane "Whassup?" conversations everywhere. (I haven't yet seen or heard anyone using a phone in a public bathroom, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.)

But...it can't be helped. I have a cell phone now. Whoo-hoo for me. At least it's really, really little.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward

This is how the past week has gone for me.

I call the hospital in the morning and ask how my mom is. If the response is negative, when I get there I'll find her doing better than what I was led to expect. If I get a positive report, when I get there I find her slipping backward.

Today I didn't call ahead. I was somewhat relieved to have her in on a regular ward, and figured that as long as the phone didn't ring things were going fine. I get to the hospital this afternoon, and Mom is so sound asleep that I am unable to wake her at all. Her lunch try is lying uneaten. I go downstairs and wait for awhile, then go back up again. She's still snoring. I try talking her and touching her awake; she doesn't wake up.

I find one of the doctors. He tells me that this morning she was fairly animated, and engaged in conversation, and even ate breakfast, but then she fell asleep. He says the staff can't figure this out; he wonders if she had some sort of mild stroke during the operation, but notes that when she's awake she's lucid and has no trouble speaking, and that she's able to move her extremities. It may be the drug cocktail she's on, he suggests, or she may be this exhausted. But if she hasn't snapped out of it by tomorrow they're going to do a CAT scan and find out if something neurological is going on.

Oh, God, I think. Not something else. A succession of worst-case scenarios tumble through my mind.

"If you can stay and help her eat dinner, that would be great," says the doctor.

If you can't wake her up and I can't wake her up, then how the hell am I going to do that? I think. And I can't stay. I mentally kick myself for attempting to put in a few hours at work this morning. (My employer has been more than generous with giving me time off, and I wanted to reciprocate by tying up my deadline loose ends for the week.)

But I smile wanly and say that, no, I won't be able to stay, but I'll be able to be around for awhile tomorrow. That's because tomorrow, March 30th, is my mom's birthday. I'd put in for a vacation day some time ago so she could have a festive outing somewhere. Not a hospital.

Surgery day aside, I've been pretty publicly stoic about this whole thing, but when I got in the car to drive back home, I just lost it. I honestly don't know how I navigated my way home from downtown Saginaw without killing someone, or myself. I don't even remember driving home. But somewhere in the midst of this it occurred to me that, maybe if she were a bit awake tomorrow I could cajole her into eating a piece of her favorite cake, so when I got back to Outer Podunk I stopped in at the supermarket -- me in dark glasses, sniffling -- for gingerbread ingredients. And I bought myself some mint chocolate chip ice cream because, damn it, I wanted some.

I came home and hugged my dog -- my poor dog, who is so befuddled every day by my ever-changing, interminably long schedule away from home, who piddled on the floor but did it on newspaper like a good boy, because on some level he seems to get that he needs to be on good behavior so things don't slide completely off the trolley here -- and I ate ice cream. And now I'm sitting here on the floor with my laptop next to the sofa, with the dog whimpering into my ear, getting ready to make gingerbread cupcakes for a birthday that was supposed to be a good day.

I am just so tired right now.

Another Mom Update, and Waiting-Room Field Notes

My mother was moved to a regular hospital room today. This is good news, after her spending four days in cardiac intensive care instead of the usual day-and-a-half. She is still very weak, and groggy from pain meds, and can't really keep up a conversation for more than about a quarter-hour; but today she seemed to finally be cognizant of her surroundings and her operation, and kept saying, "A triple bypass? I can't believe this happened to me." I've been telling her that we're very fortunate that we went to the emergency room when we did, not knowing how sick she really was; that this was really the best outcome considering a lot of not-very-good alternatives.

It's funny; in my day job, which involves outreach on behalf of an aging services agency, I spend a lot of time encouraging caregivers of seniors to develop a "care team" of people they can turn to for support. Little did I know, just a week ago today, that I'd be the one needing a care team. Many thanks to all of you who are team members helping on the spiritual front; your prayers are appreciated. And -- maybe this is just me, but I think there's a reason why, no matter how weak and sleepy Mom is, her vital signs are very strong and the physical aspects of her surgery are progressing on schedule.

Needless to say, I've spent a lot of time this past week sitting in a waiting room. To paraphrase Dr. Johnson, this has the effect of concentrating the mind powerfully, although perhaps not on the situation that's brought one to the hospital in the first place; I was telling a friend that I think we loved ones go through a kind of anesthesia during health crises like this that keep us from dwelling on the gravity of our loved one's condition until we're too mentally and emotionally paralyzed to function. So we think and do other things -- things that disinterested people might find odd, in the circumstances. But it gets us from Task A to B to C, which is where our loved ones need us to be.

Anyhow -- some random thoughts while sitting in a waiting room:

When I started feeling too sorry for myself, I'd look around at the other families clustered in various areas. One family was pretty much camped out on a group of sofas they'd moved together; they were there on Thursday morning, and they were there yesterday afternoon. Today they weren't. I thought I overheard a comment about "my father dying," so I suspect it was a gathering of the clan for that sad time, although there wasn't a lot of crying or sadness in the family...perhaps it had been expected. But there was that family. There was the elderly woman there for her husband; I heard her tell a hospital staffer that they had seven children, but all seven lived far away, so it was just her, waiting. There was the family ushered into the consultation room, off to the side of the waiting room; I watched them entering with some trepidation, and watched them leave a few minutes later, all smiles. That was good. This is actually the hospital where my father died, of a burst aneurysm, many years ago -- I remember that moment where the surgeon appeared with a grim look on his face; that's when you really don't want to go into the consultation room with him. But -- sitting in a large metropolitan hospital like this, watching the various dramas enfolding around me -- like the song says, every picture tells a story, don't it.

Here's irony for you: This hospital is considered one of the best in the state for cardiac surgery. It contains a separate cardiac care outpatient clinic. But when you walk into the cafeteria, one whole side of the place is like a shrine to fried food -- rows of onion rings and french fries and battered fish filets and deep-fried everything else. Over on the entree side, there's exactly one "healthy" choice, and more cheesy, fatty, cholesterol-laden stuff; the other healthy options are the salad bar or the premade salads and sandwiches. I found it interesting that the staff seemed to choose the healthy vittles, while the visitors went after the deep-fried cheesy cauliflower, et al. Maybe it's because of what the staff sees all day.

I seem to recall that this hospital once had Lutheran roots; at some point it merged with the city hospital, but it maintains a "faith-based" feel, with crosses in the hallways and a very nice chapel off the end of the waiting room -- a kind of beautifully stark, Danish-modern design, except for an evocative sculpture of Christ cradling a sick person in his arms up above the altar. In the almost-week that I've been hanging out in the waiting room, I have seen exactly one other person, besides myself, enter the chapel. I went inside and said the Noonday Prayer Friday, after the surgeon came down and told me that everything went fine. I was glad it was there.

The Cardiac Care Unit has hospital chaplains bring family members up to the CICU for the first visit. I was wondering about this -- it's not standard for other surgeries -- but it's because of the gravity of the operations, and because the patients look terrible -- it can be a shock for the unprepared. The chaplains sit down with you beforehand and give you a very detailed description of what you can expect to see and hear as you go up to the recovery area. I had one chaplain prep me and another take me to CICU; the one who went with me said, "Sometimes the visitors pass out up there -- usually the men." Fortunately for her and the rest of the staff, I remained upright and conscious.

My pastor -- who, by the way, both by himself and then later with his wife, sat with me for several hours on Friday; they are the best -- passed along a great line: We were talking about Mom's recovery, and I was expressing my anxiety about how we were going to engineer her care at home, and he quoted a friend of his as telling him once, "We all spend an awful lot of time and energy clearing away the wreckage of the future."

Surprisingly -- or maybe not, because there's so much waiting going on in a waiting room that you have to do something with your brain to keep it from imploding -- I read three books in the past week. And I retained so much from all of them -- unlike my usual distracted, multitasking way of reading books. I read Joan Chittister's Wisdom Distilled From the Daily, a very good book about incorporating Benedictine spirituality into one's daily life; I read Marva Dawn's Unfettered Hope, about living joyfully and counterculturally as a follower of Christ in an alien culture; and I read (don't all start laughing at once)Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson. The first two books dovetailed so perfectly together it was almost as if the two authors had collaborated with one another; I really felt God's "Listen up!" in stereo. The last book -- well, I had expected the author to be a scary, anal-retentive Martha Stewart clone, but she wasn't half bad, even though she is a lawyer by trade and includes a scary chapter on homeowner liability that will make you never want to have anyone else set foot on your property ever again. (Especially if you have a neurotic old dog who's been known to clamp his mostly toothless but still pain-inflicting jaws onto the calves of persons he does not happen to like.) And she also included instructions on how to iron sheets, although she noted that she was doing this mostly as a hat tip to the good old days and not because she actually expects her readers to iron sheets. And I learned stuff. Did you know that banana oil removes Wite-Out stains from clothing? Except that I'm not quite sure what banana oil is. Oh, well.

Finally, a sign at a gas station next to the exit I take to get onto the freeway: "WORLD'S SECOND LARGEST SELECTION OF JERKY." (For my international readers, jerky is dried, smoked, extremely chewy meat of various kinds -- beef, turkey, venison, bison -- these days often specially flavored in various ways; Cajun, teriaki and so forth.) Honesty in advertising -- you've got to love it.

It feels good to be back talking to people not wearing scrubs and disposable slippers. Thanks again, everyone.

Mom Update

My mother is having triple bypass surgery tomorrow (Friday) morning at 7:00 EST. Her doctors have given us a positive prognosis for her full recovery, but she was a little shaken today because the surgery is happening so soon.

Thanks to all who've sent encouraging words and prayers. They mean a great deal to us. Thank you for being Christ for us.

ER

I am going to be on hiatus for the next couple of days: My mother is in the hospital with what appears to be a mild heart attack. She'd been having what she thought was muscle pain in her shoulder for the last couple of days, but this morning it got much worse, and she began feeling short of breath, so I took her to the local ER. A few hours later we were 70 miles away at a regional medical center that specializes in cardiac care. So I expect I will be commuting back and forth for at least the next couple of days.

Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

Going Back For Joseph

I remember, not too long ago, deciding that I was going to periodically spotlight some of the church calendar feasts and commemorations listed on my Augsburg Fortress webfeed.

Like many good ideas of mine, this one is languishing due to my lack of attention. But I did want to go back for St. Joseph, whose feast day was yesterday.

Actually, I guess he has two feast days. This week we remember him for his role in raising the young Jesus; in May he is recognized as Joseph the Worker, whose example of good and useful labor underscores how our work is really God's work in the world.

Sadly, Joseph hardly even ranks one feast day in my tradition...he just gets no respect around here. Even though his courage in responding to God's call in a radical way -- trusting God's message to not abandon his pregnant fiancee, which also put him in a socially precarious position and no doubt, as the neighbors started doing the gestational math, caused community tongues to wag about his "righteousness lapse" -- makes his actions an example of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer would call the cost of discipleship.

And Joseph also reminds me of the dads and grandpas and uncles and other caring men I know who are not afraid to hold and hug and comfort little kids, who are not too macho to carry diaper bags and binkies, who willingly spend quality time with kids, who co-parent in ways that their own fathers and grandfathers may have never imagined.

O God, who from the family of your servant David raised up Joseph to be the guardian of your incarnate Son and the spouse of his virgin mother: Give us grace to imitate his uprightness of life and his obedience to your commands; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Postscript: Evidently the link I provided to Bridge Building Images took the viewer...erm...somewhere else, somewhere else not nice...when my life returns to normal this will be funny, but until then, if you're interested in Bridge Building Images, you're on your own; Google it.

Nancy Oliphant, "St Joseph of Nazareth," Bridge Building Images s 

Spring Cleaning

I'm sitting here luxuriating in the scent of a freshly steamed dining room carpet (we won't talk about the color or density of the water I emptied from the carpet steamer)...my laptop is squeaky clean, thanks to a vacuuming and application of electronics cleaner...the ceiling corners are free of those insidious, filmy little cobwebs that tend to escape notice for weeks at a time.

I'm doing spring cleaning at Cold Comfort Cottage.

So I guess the Apocalypse has arrived.

Which is to say: Susie Homemaker I ain't. In addition to sheer obliviousness and a multitude of far more interesting and rewarding distractions, as well as the fact that I have no particular emotional attachment to this place -- my parents built it as their retirement cottage when I was away from home, and to me it's like any number of temporary rentals I've ever lived in; just an ill-constructed, unattractive little box that keeps me warm and out of the elements -- my reticence about getting into the homemaking thing has also been in large part due to a power struggle in my home.

My mother has always prided herself on her housekeeping skills. She's now at an age where she just doesn't have the energy or mobility to keep house the way she wants, but she has also been very equivocal, to say the least, about my helping out. On one hand, when I've tried to pitch in she's been so critical of my efforts that half the time I just give up in frustration; or else she steps in and sighs, "Oh, let me do it." But then she's complained that I don't help out enough.

"Okay," I told her one day. "Make me a list of what you want me to do, and I'll do it. I like lists. They help me."

"I shouldn't have to do that," she retorted. "You should know. This is your house too." (Could have fooled me, I thought sourly.)

Or I'd start doing some household chore on my own, and she'd stop me: "Why are you doing that first? Can't you see that you should be doing ________ first?"

"What difference does it make? At least I'm starting somewhere."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

This past weekend we had a Saturday-morning breakfast-table Intense Conversation on this subject again -- for some reason Saturday morning seems to be when mother-daughter frustration reaches its weekly peak, which is sad, because it spoils the pleasure of pancakes -- and I finally told Mom, "Do you know what it's like to be treated like an idiot? Because that's what I feel like when I try to help you, and all you do is criticize me. Nothing I ever do is right. How do you think that feels? What's my motivation to help you?"

Now, if this were an Afterschool Special, we'd cry and hug and make up; instead Mom got pouty and quiet. But this time, when I got out the vacuum cleaner and proceeded to vacuum behind the sofa, which had been the original plan that day, she did not protest or "supervise." Encouraged, and losing my cringe, I then vacuumed the rest of the floor...and the upholstery...and the curtains...and the walls. I vacuumed the whole house that day.

And, miracle of miracles, my mother said, "You did a really good job."

Followed by: "You make me feel very inadequate."

Have I mentioned that I take medicine for hypertension?

Comic interlude: How many Jewish mothers does it take to change a lightbulb? None. "It's all right. You go and have your fun. I'll just sit here alone in the dark."

But anyway, this attitude readjustment has been a great relief to me. And it's readjusted my attitude.

As I've mentioned, I like lists, I think for the same reason that I like liturgical worship and fixed prayer and my workplace day planner; they're all ways of wresting order from chaos. So I've been looking for books that give me some structure for doing housework; some workable timetables. As opposed to my usual crisis-management housecleaning plan: "The carpet is crunching. Maybe I'd better do something."

I've got one book here from the library, the Country Living Home Almanac, which is great because it has a schedule for outdoor maintenance tasks as well as indoor ones. And then I selected an encyclopedic tome by Cheryl Mendelson entitled Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House. Mendelson is a former J.D. attorney and university professor turned domestic scientist. She's into it; imagine a cross between Mrs. Beeton and Martha Stewart, with OCD, on speed, and you have some inkling of this individual's intensity when it comes to questions like how long to keep an open bottle of chutney in the fridge and how to fold boxers. In other words, she's pretty scary, and that's even before you get to her chapter on homeowner law. But she has provided me with -- caloo, callay -- a comprehensive yet surprisingly flexible schedule for doing everything around the house. Yes! Thank you! You can go back to the boxers now.

At the beginning of Lent I pondered the wisdom of trying to make more room in my life for God not only by creating more mental space but more physical space as well. But then I got all Kantian and started second-guessing my intentions: Oh, come on...that's like fasting to lose weight. But -- you know what? When part of your brain, one of those programs running in the background in your head, is always stressing about the not-quite-rightness of your home, or worrying about your making an adequate contribution to its upkeep so that people who have to live with you don't have to stress about it, it's a distraction; it's something that affects your relationship with God and with the people around you.

I'm still not enamored of Cold Comfort Cottage. But at least it's getting to be a cleaner cottage. And I suspect that my mother and I will both enjoy our pancakes much more this coming Saturday morning.

Blogging the Rule

I've just begun reading Joan Chittister's book Wisdom Distilled From the Daily: Living the Rule of St. Benedict Today; it "hits the spot," so to speak, where I'm at in my faith life right now.

Chittister notes that Benedictine spirituality is grounded in openness of heart and, in her words, "a willingness to be surprised by God" -- an openness that makes space for regular prayer and reading/hearing of Scripture; for learning; for hospitality.

This is great stuff. But what does it have to do with bloggery?

I've struggled for a long time with how to adequately honor the circles of Christian bloggers in which I travel. This is partly a function of hospitality -- I know I certainly enjoy it when others visit my weblog, and assume that the rest of us feel the same happiness and satisfaction when we connect with other human beings on an intellectual and/or emotional way -- and partly a function of wanting to learn from others; to explore and exchange experiences and insights; to seek to discern together the "whats" and "hows" and "whys" of living in Christian community.

My bloggy circles of friends include people I affectionately refer to as The Instigators, who got me started on this enterprise a little over a year ago, and other bloggers I met via The Instigators' blogrolls; there's the community of Lutheran bloggers; there's the RevGalBlogPals and the Reconciling bloggers. I've never had a real system for visiting others' blogs; if one graphically portrayed my usual blog-hopping, even among my good friends' blogs, it would be reminiscent of the experiments I heard about as a kid, when scientists fed spiders caffeine and then watched them spin frenetic, anarchic freeform webs. The problem with this as-the-mood-strikes method is that it tends to lose people; people with engaging, funny, thoughtful, profound, inspiring posts. To add to that oversight -- sometimes I get busy; busy with myself; that curvatus in se thing. And that is not only disrespectful to others, but it also puts me at risk for becoming too enamored of my own Deep Thoughts,unmediated by the comments and counsel of others -- to, as Chittister puts it, elevate my arrogance to the level of inspiration.

So I'm making an effort to "get out more" in the blogosphere, and make the rounds more consistently, even if it means I don't post here as frequently. Because I think we're all doing something really important here; I think we're "being the Church" in a new and profound way that brings together people of faith who would otherwise never have an opportunity to meet. That's worth quality time and attention, I think.