For Ross

The ghost of our last kiss
Lingers softly on my lips
My heart aches for you
Even though it is only
The start of a new day
Be safe, my love, always
As you wander forth
Into a world undeserving
Of your sweet nature
(Sometimes well disguised)
Of your kind and gentle mind.
I smile as I recall the times
You have smiled or
You have laughed
And that carries me through
Each day like air or life itself
Your return each evening
Is the most welcome event
Of the day
Your greetings
Your complaints
All fall upon an eager ear
Eager to hear your voice
Always.

How Is This Supposed To Go?

Patty called the other day to let me know the leukemia is back. She goes back to the hospital tomorrow for another round of chemo. A study drug they were trying may have been what damaged her lungs, preventing her from going through the full body radiation needed to ablate all of the leukemic cells in order for the bone marrow transplant so now they may do what is called a "mini transplant" instead, which may work but they cannot say for certain. Her voice broke as she spoke of palliative care and dying despite all of the efforts made so far to save her. She's my younger sister and I do not know how to do this thing that is being required of all of us.

What do you say besides "I love you," "I'm so sorry," and "What can I do to help?" How can you hold another adult in your arms and rock her back and forth to try to comfort what will never quiet, never stop hurting, never be welcome? How do I give to her all of the love in my heart; a heart that is so sore right now hope cannot even glimmer there a great deal of the time? How do you cry to a God in His Heaven who has always seemed to have deserted you in every hour of need, in every crisis, in every moment where His divine and healing presence would be so wonderful? Why do other peoples' prayers get affirmative answers while all of mine seem to fall on deaf ears? Why are my sister, my family, myself, so unworthy of the honor of a simple miracle of medicine and divine grace? Why does God refuse to express caring and concern in human perceptable ways; in ways we can feel, touch, and understand? We are constantly reminded by scriptures of our imperfections and weaknesses, so why does the God who has declared us as such demand perfections we will never be capable of delivering? Why are the cries for healing, mercy, and kindness seemingly redirected into oblivion as my sister is forced to go through all of this? I feel so hurt, so grief-stricken, so helpless and so angry! Why does God always say, "No?"

I will see Patty tomorrow and the kids will be there, as will Dad, our stepmother, and our youngest sister. We will try to laugh and talk, try to bolster one another's hopes in the knowledge that some people have recovered when they were even worse off than Patty is right now, but it does not feel as if our emotional balance will be in anyway helped by this knowledge as we traverse a tightrope that skirts far too close to death. The way is craggy and dark; frightening beyond all comfort, painful beyond all hope. Where will we end up after our rollercoaster ride into Hell and back?

If this is the beginning of another end in our family, I hope we are able to fill the time with love and laughter, bright hopes and soft caresses of hands, cheeks, hearts, and comfort. If I end up having to say a "good-bye" I dread, one I will continue to hope will not have to be said anytime too soon, I hope Patty knows that my very heart and soul go with her and that the final kiss I give her upon her forehead will forever seal her mind, heart and spirit within my own heart, and she will live there forever, always my younger sister, always held close and forever loved.

Sisters Once Again

Although it is usual for my sister Patty and I to disagree, her illness has made such breaks in communication and affection all the more difficult to cope with. This made hearing her voice on the other end of the telephone line all the more important the other day. She was finally ready to talk and to listen and we were able to clear up the difficulties that have kept us seperate for these last several weeks in a matter of minutes. For the first time I was also able to tell her how all of the stuff her battles with leukemia have seemed to me. I told her how my being the oldest of the four of us has always made me feel a sort of protectiveness toward her and our other sister and brother, how I have always found myself defending them from babysitters, parents, and once even from the police. I cried as I told her how hard it has been to see her going through all of this, that I do not want to lose her, and how worried I have been about her children, my only niece and nephew. I told her how I would gladly go to the very ends of the earth to try to help her get through this and I told her how very much I love her. Patty listened to me and then told me that she is not doing very well right now, that her lungs have been damaged by the chemo and radiation and that she may not be able to have the full bone marrow transplant procedure because of it. She told me how difficult it is for her to just get a chore done or walk around the house a little without becoming short of breath and that she now has to carry oxygen with her where ever she goes. She told me that they might have to do the transplant in a way that is not as effective because the full body radiation would damage her lungs even more and that the longer they had to wait for her lungs to heal and function better, the more of a foothold the leukemia will have and that that might also prevent her from having the transplant. She said she might die. I never knew until now how happy and how heartbroken you could be at one time. I do not want to have to say good-bye to my younger sister, but nature may leave us no choice except to continue reminding each other how very much we love one another until there is no more time left to say such things. Oh God! Why Patty? Why the only one of us to have children? Why not me - I'm the oldest? How a mother must feel when she has to watch a child suffer and die while standing there helpless must be at least something like being an older sister watching her younger sister do the same. Patty, if I knew I had fifty or sixty years left to live and I could somehow give some of them to you, half would have been yours in a heartbeat. If I could somehow discover in time the way to lay hands on you and heal you, it would already be done. And if heartfelt prayers and tears can wrest anything from the grip of God and Heaven you will get better.

I am on a quest that may seem foolish to some. It involves reading books about things I have always cast a suspicious eye on before, trying to find a way to get water from Lourdes so we can toast your health together even if it ends up being only symbolic of sisterly love, trying to find hope where medicine has failed to give any, and trying to make love into such a solid and tangible thing you cannot help but be healed.

I am your older sister. I may not be able to do more than that, but I certainly cannot do any less.

So Much Going On

There has been so much going on the past two days, more so in the world at large than in our backyard, but still so much to choose from when sitting down to write. A police officer in Kentucky was brutally murdered in his car by a suspect he had been kind to, Ruth Bell Graham passed away yesterday, the little red squirrel seems to be missing from our home, and yet another Muslim family has murdered a daughter for being merely human and wanting what every young girl wants and dreams of having - true love.

How can any religion have gone so wrong that it, seemingly, encourages the savage murder of one's children over matters of embarrassment? I realize these people would argue it is of much more import than that, that it is a "command from God," that honor and embarrassment are not equal - anything to justify the action at least in their own hearts and minds. I also notice it is never sons who are killed for these reasons, highlighting once again the disregard for women so obvious and prevalent in most, if not all, discussions of Islam. It troubles me because the tales I have heard of Mohammed and the women in his life do not sound as if this was his attitude toward women at all and the quotes I have heard from the Quran are not specific and subject to interpretation, although there are a lot of the verses and stories I have not heard or read. It also troubles me that this particular religious group seems to be having a much more difficult time evolving to meet the practical needs of any religion in today's world. It is as if many of these people are still stuck in a much more primitive and brutal time past when such things were the "only" options for parents when trying to control their children. Perhaps it is more a question of parents not knowing when to let go, to let their children finally take responsibility for their own actions and souls - either way it illustrates a base and brutal attitude toward women, a prejudice toward women, and a total lack of love and understanding for their daughters that is profoundly shocking and savage. The shame of murdering your own child for merely being human should far outweigh any thoughts or ideas of that daughter having shamed the family because she wanted love instead of some brutal arrangement in which she has had no choice. The shame is on the parents for their willing adherence to such a backward, ignorant, and vicious system, not upon the daughters who are so miserably dispatched by the brutes Islam permits the men in families to become in dealing with such trivial situations. Shame upon shame is theirs, not their daughters.

It troubles and amuses me at the same time to note that Ruth Bell Graham would have been slaughtered like these girls long before she could have even begun to become such a marvel of womanhood had she been Muslim by birth. She was too independent for any Muslim family to have coped with in any other way, yet she was true to her God and the calling she believed she had received from Him. It is too bad that the controversy over the place of their burial had to mar the final years of both she and her husband. It is too bad the pretensions and greed for publicity and fame has gone to the head of their eldest son, and it is too bad that, in this world, even such a well-known and spiritually aristocratic older couple have been obviously preyed upon by that same son in his quest for an immortality his parents never sought for themselves. Another type of shame but, perhaps, one that is excusable enough in both Islam and Christianity because it is a son instead of a daughter doing all of these things. Again - Shame!

One of the things Ruth Graham was noted for was her kindness, a kindness consistent with her Christian beliefs and one emulated - whether consciously or on his own - by the police chief of a small Kentucky town whose life was cut short by one of the people he had tried to show kindness to while pursuing his tasks as the town's only police officer. A light has gone out forever in America with this man's murder; a light that shines too infrequently in our rapidly moving, deteriorating world. I hope the rest of the criminal element in that town gangs up to let the drunken assailant know what a disservice he did not only the police chief, but himself and every other person the chief tried to help with kindness and consideration in the execution of his job. The ones who benefitted most from this man's quiet example and courage, though, are the least likely to truly appreciate what has been lost - his prisoners. Another conundrum of the times, perhaps, or just another reason such people are all the more important in a world spiralling toward its own implosion - a world that will eventually die "not with a bang, but with a whimper."

Last upon my list is the little red squirrel missing from our drain spouts, which it used as a highway around our roof. I have not heard it running around upon our roof for several days, it has not peeked in at me while I am in the bathroom or through the sunroof windows as I sit and type. Its bright eyes and lovely red fur with pluming tail are gone and I can only assume the fisher cat I thought I spotted several weeks ago may have been instrumental in its disappearence. I will miss watching the little squirrel as it raided our bird feeders or maintained its sovereignty of our back deck. Its chatter and skittering will no longer be a part of the many sounds of outdoors I have so enjoyed listening to while sitting quietly indoors on the warmer days of Spring. I will no longer be able to observe the interactions of this little being with the community of blue jays and cardinals, mourning doves and grackles, chickadees and juncos and an occaisional field mouse or chipmunk here and there, that has been the group our backyard has supported and encouraged this year. The cardinals will still sound their perimeter call and raise their young, the other birds, especially the jays, will visit and chat and spy upon me as I spy upon them, but there is no longer the bright eyed little squirrel to make it all even more interesting.

Death and loss are already such an integral part of merely existing that it makes no sense to murder one another at all. Nature will eventually render all of us to the base elements from which we are formed; why make such an effort to assist what we all spend our rather short lifetimes trying to resist, each hoping to live happily to as old an age as possible?

May your day be blessed with life, kindness, and forgiveness.

Izzlebug

To Mom, Who Would Have Been 75 This Thursday

The acrid, arid, bitter ache
Is gone, although
Some days are still and sad
Calling you to chat
Seems possible
Until memory reminds,
Tugs at the scars
Tattooed upon my heart.

Life goes on despite
The searing flame of loss,
Now merely simmering.
The frustrated grief
Still demanding the question, “Why?”
Does not demand so petulantly
Any more.

Ivy covers barren brick facades,
Tendril by tendril growing back,
Like hearts after the death
Of a mother; genesis of life.

Going ever on
Softly disguised by kind and verdant
Leaves; lush vines.
Cold and hard
Somewhere underneath
But resting, at last.

Knowing pain is past
While memories fade gently
Shading thoughts of tenderness
Caressing memories of you.

You held me close when
I was small; taught me to walk
And stay safe in your heart.
It is my turn now and
You are safe
Within this heart,
Never more out of place.

Dear Mom,

Although I still wish you could be here with all of us right now, it may have been a blessing for you, strangely, that you are not. You did not have to see the World Trade Towers go down after terrorists rammed into them in planes filled with innocent passengers, nor have you had to follow the news of war or the machinations of a president of dubious integrity largely due to his own superficial religious pretentions and an inexcusable stupidity where matters of war are concerned. However, he has been very good for business and Eisenhower would be proud of the way he and two of his modern day predecessors have been keeping the military-industrial complex well greased and running to the stock holders content. You have been missed, but considering what you have missed, I cannot honestly say you would have been better served, knowing the state of your health those final months, surviving to see all of this other stuff.

One very painful thing that is happening right now is Patty's battle with leukemia. You would have thought immediately of the little girl who lived in your mother's old house, before our family ever moved in, who died of leukemia, and you would have worried, again, that it might be contagious, despite the ensuing years of good health and well-lived lives. We all miss you, although Dad's "new" wife has really been such a help and support to all of us, but especially for Patty. I know Patty misses you and wishes you could have seen Katie play the violin or one of Brad's art projects. They are both something quite special.

I still think of picking up the phone to call, although the stab of pain no longer stabs, merely tugging gently where it used to hurt so much. I still see your face in my thoughts and wish we could talk again, even if we got crabby with each other and disagreed on what was being done for this person or that one and why. I missed you last year at my graduation, and will think of you again next Spring when I have finished my Master's Degree. I hope you would have been as proud of me as you always were of Patty and Sue, although my achievements are arriving belatedly in life.

We never had any children. If we had, I wanted to name a little girl after you and Ross's mom or a son after both dads. But, it never happened, so we dote upon our pussycats which, I suspect, was all you ever saw me doing anyway. I remember most of our good moments, a few of our bad ones, and some of the times we laughed together until we cried. I remember how you liked some of my poems and asked me to sing your favorite Christmas carol for you that last year. I have all of the words somewhere and want to learn it by heart, but have not yet gotten to it. Perhaps it is that I have been so busy with school or, perhaps, it is because I still cry whenever I try to sing it and have to stop in the middle to blow my nose, which would have made you laugh at me. I did not mind your laughing at me sometimes, Mom, I just wish I could have figured out how to manage that particular thing on purpose. Others have laughed in the same way, reminding me of you, and I still am not too sure just what it is I have done or said to cause it, but there it is.

We are all hanging in there, getting on with our lives and hoping for good things in all of our futures, but mostly remembering how much we miss you as we try to stay positive for Patty's sake, as well as the kids', while she endures all of the pain and indignities of being, hopefully, cured of leukemia. She will not let anyone hold her hand, I think she decided that was your place and you are not able to be here for her. That makes me sadder than anything else, Mom, that Patty cannot have you there when her head hurts badly or she is so sick from the chemo and radiation. We are also afraid we may have to say our goodbyes to her far too soon, something you could have helped us with, although we do not speak of it most of the time.

I cannot imagine having had a better mother or a different one. You are so much a part of me that I cannot let you go, not really, but I am able to say goodbye right now because I know where to find you no matter when I call.

I love you, Mom.

Love,
Liz