Thirty Days of Thankfulness

I missed the blogosphere bandwagon yesterday, not realizing the current posting 'fad' focuses on expressing what I'm thankful for in a daily dissertation. So please pretend that today is actually yesterday, the first of November in the year 2011.

I am thankful for my family.

Terry, Derek and Rachelle (Dec. 2010)

• Thankful for My Husband, Terry. More than twenty five years of love and friendship, through thick and thin. He never ceases to amaze me with his brilliant musicality and compositional talent. His recent interest in the culinary arts means I come home to a new delectable food adventure nearly every evening. He overcomes his disabling chronic illness each day, never succumbing to depression or giving up the fight. He tilts windmills with home remodeling contractors and global corporations peddling home appliances. He is passionate and compassionate and I love him dearly.
• Thankful for My Children, Derek and Rachelle.
• Derek, and his wife Royna, just returned home after a four day visit with us during the last weekend of October. Number One Son came into the world busting the Apgar scale, despite an arduous labor ending in an emergency C-section. Even though he didn't learn to walk until fourteen months, he never slowed down all the years we corralled him. He excelled at nearly all sports, having an uncanny sense of balance and an intuitive understanding of body mechanics, such that he competed nationally as a judoka in her early to mid teen years. His true artistic gift surfaced late in high school, blossoming under a mentor at community college. His talent for art and love of video games led him to the Guildhall at SMU and landed him an excellent placement even before graduation late last year.
• Rachelle, oh how I miss you. I haven't seen you face-to-face since last January. The wonders of the Internet at least allow me to listen to your concerts live, but it's just not the same as being there. At least I'll get my daughter fix in three weeks when Terry and I drive to North Texas for our third annual Moss Migration for Thanksgiving. Rachelle's gift for vocal performance surfaced almost before she learned to talk. I caught her singing as a baby and toddler almost more than she did talking. Years and years of choir drudgery and exceptional vocal mentors honed her magnificent mezzo soprano. As she approaches the last semester of her undergraduate degree in musicology at UNT, she is gearing up for a round of auditions (and the attendant travel) to various graduate schools around the country.
• Thankful for My Extended Family.
• My Father, who is always willing and able to help with demolishing a dying pine or trimming back a few limbs on my oak trees or any electrical wiring project that crops up. He readily supports my bread baking habit, where he reaps the rewards in loaves of fresh home-made and home-baked loaves. He also tags along on some of my astronomical adventures courtesy of the local Astronomical Society. I have a general class amateur radio license thanks to him. My troubleshooting talent can be directly traced back to me tagging along with him while growing up, as he fixed all many of items for family and friends.
• My Mother, who inspired me to read at a very early age (three or four) and instilled a love of all kinds of literature.
• My Uncle, Ron, and his wife Treva, are an inspiration and an example of a blessed marriage. Ron and I feed each other's addiction for the next great book to read to the chagrin of our spouse (I'm sure). Ron's watercolors keep winning awards at various galleries across the Midwest and East Coast. Someday soon I hope he returns to writing that next great short story, novella or novel that I know is lurking just below the surface.
• My Aunts, Melody and Jan. Melody, my mother's sister, lives close by, within an hour's drive in Topeka. Jan, my father's sister, lives farther away in Ohio, between her brothers (one in Kansas and one in Virginia). Both of these women hold special places in my heart and fond memories from my early childhood.
• My Cousins, starting with the paternal side of the tree, Wendell, Eric, David and Katy. Since I was the oldest cousin (from the oldest offspring), I got to see each and every one of you grow-up, from infants to adults with families of your own. Katy, the youngest, tied the knot just this past June (on or very near both my daughter's birthday and what would have been my grandmother's eighty-ninth birthday). Wendell and his wife Kristen recently became the proud parents of twin boys, William and Logan. On the maternal side of the tree, I have many cousins, some of which I've reconnected with on Facebook and others who remain in obscurity. Since my mother was somewhere in the middle of six children, I am not the oldest of the cousins on this side of the family tree. Oldest to youngest (by family group): Roberta, Peter, Rebecca; Tracy, Kelly and Phillip; Brandi and Summer; and, Charles and Anne. I know I'm missing some in the above list, mostly because there are cousins out there who are younger than my kids and I've only met them or heard of them once or twice.

Even though 2011 marked the first year of my life without a living grandparent, I am grateful for the time I had with both my grandmothers. Doris, my father's mother, passed away last year, and Juanita, my mother's mother, passed away in June of 2005.

Juanita and me (at my high school graduation)

Quotes on Families:

Families are like fudge - mostly sweet with a few nuts.

~~~ Author Unknown

When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them.

~~~ George Bernard Shaw

One of life's greatest mysteries is how the boy who wasn't good enough to marry your daughter can be the father of the smartest grandchild in the world.

~~~ Jewish Proverb

Family life is full of major and minor crises -- the ups and downs of health, success and failure in career, marriage, and divorce -- and all kinds of characters. It is tied to places and events and histories. With all of these felt details, life etches itself into memory and personality. It's difficult to imagine anything more nourishing to the soul.

~~~ Thomas Moore

In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.

~~~ Alex Haley

Lagging a Bit After a Year

As I mentioned earlier today on my other more active blog hosted by WordPress, I created two blogs a year ago out of my now defunct MySpace blog.  I post my book reviews, generated from GoodReads to both this blog and the other one.  And I occasionally cover a sermon series I might follow from sporadic attendance at a couple of local churches.

So, I can't explain why I only posted seventy-eight times here (including this post) over the last twelve months, while more than tripling that number, to 225, over at WordPress.  At first blush, I have to confess the interface and options are more appealing there, but in Blogger's defense, I can post HTML widgets that include Java scripting. 

I promise to make more of an effort to post here, perhaps at a least once a week.  Perhaps I'll even venture a poem or two, something I've not attempted in over thirty years.

To Scream or Keep Silent, That Is the Dying Question

Scream by Edvard Munch

September went into a tailspin about a week ago. I can't remember the last time I actually received personal good news from family or friends. Death or dying and depression crowd around me, jostling for position and attention, blotting out my surroundings: beautiful sunrises and sunsets, crystal clear night skies bursting with twinkling stars, perfect weather any southern California native would drool over.

I woke up this morning after having tossed and turned and lost the skirmish with my sheet and pillows. Apollo couldn't wait to jump up and greet me with a wagging tail and unconditional canine adoration. Roxy slept on, sprawled on the floor, oblivious to anything but her dreams of breakfast. I rubbed the crusty, dried sleep from my eyes, slipped on my reading glasses and woke up my Nook to see what had happened in the wider world while I pretended to sleep.

I soon read the sad, tragic news of the death of Sara Douglass (aka Sara Warneke). I discovered this astounding Aussie female fantasy writer a half dozen years ago and loved everything she wrote, especially Threshold, the first novel I found written by her. As I perused the various postings on Twitter and Facebook about her passing, I found her blog post from March 2010 she entitled "The Silence of the Dying." I took a few minutes to read the entire post, after which I couldn't help but shiver, especially after the seemingly prophetic nature of the most recent Doctor Who episode "Closing Time" wherein the Doctor seems to fall apart (emotionally) as he approaches the day of his death (flashback to the start of this season and the "Impossible Astronaut"). He even utters some dialog containing the words 'silence' and 'dying.'

After reading Sara's thoughts on how modern society sticks it's head in the sand with respect to death (and the dying), I pondered my own situation. Part of my September tailspin centers on a sharp worsening in my health. Par for the medical course, I'm running the gauntlet of various tests, procedures and eventually a biopsy (scheduled for mid-October), all of which amounts to endless waiting for results and the accompanying anxiety. Just as Sara describes in her blog post, I prefer to keep silent, as I don't want to appear 'weak' by complaining. Of course, at this stage of the 'game' I'm not in much pain or discomfort (not compared to what Sara or other cancer victims endure). And I must put up a good front for my husband, one of the chronically ill routinely maligned or ignored by modern day society. He needs me to be 'strong' and I will remain so as cheerfully as I can.

Normally, I look forward to the beginning of October and the advent of autumn with peace and joy in my heart. Of course, the fact that my birthday occurs the day after the first of October wouldn't have anything to do with that would it? But this year, no birthday cake with sputtering scores of candles will great me. Instead, my husband and I will travel south, to his home town, to console and support his life-long friend and his wife in the sudden and unexpected loss of her mother, so soon after his mother's death. Oh, and their dog died last week in the midst of all this family tragedy.

I am full of unanswered questions and troublesome, uncomfortable thoughts today, ones that I wish I had the courage to shout out on a street corner to the self-absorbed oblivious passersby. Rather than deprive a homeless person of their accustomed spot, I will jump up on my bloggity soap box instead.

From a Christian worldview, I can understand some of the silence surrounding death and dying. Jesus conquered the grave, therefore, it follows, that we can sweep this whole messy business of dying under the proverbial rug. (Yes, I'm being sarcastic). Yet, even Jesus wept (and raised Lazarus from the grave). Jesus also suffered, but not silently, and died, nearly alone, on a cross we nailed him to, at a crossroads dung heap outside Jerusalem. Two thousand years later, we've sanitized and compartmentalized dying, hiding it from ourselves so we can ignore the writing on our own walls.

I ask that you stop for a moment and spend time, yes, that very precious commodity you can never, ever get back, with a friend or family member who is dying. Don't send flowers, or stuffed animals or Hallmark cards. Give them comfort. Don't expect them to put you at ease about their situation. Embrace the truth. For you know, it's not 'if' we're going to die, it's when. We're all dying. And I, for one, will not go silently into the night.