A Little More Lindbergh

At the thrift store I found another Lindbergh book, this one called No More Words, by Anne's youngest child, Reeve. Reeve wrote this short book about her mother's final 17 months, living in a tiny house just up the hill from Reeve and her family. At the time, 1999-2000, Anne was 94 and Reeve was 55, my age.

Thank you, Lisa, for the beautiful bookmark. I use it every day.

I was used to Anne's voice, so I had to accustom myself to Reeve's voice. And I thought I knew Anne. I'd read three of her books, two of which were journals. How could I not know her? But seeing a woman through the eyes of her child is a different perspective. Seeing the home, the father, the marriage from Reeve's perspective was illuminating.

Reeve loved her mother devotedly, desperately, and seemed both awed and scared to have the privilege of being the child to care for her at the end of her life. Reeve went through stages of care, of coping with her mother's approaching death, and she frankly evaluates herself as she responds to the shifting timeline of death. I think, as we all watch our parents age, and watch ourselves approach the precipice as well, it's wise to read how others have coped and reacted. After reading Reeve's open confessions of her weakness, ineptitude, and misunderstanding, along with her dedication, delight, and humor, I feel better prepared myself going forward. 

Anne Lindbergh had the best possible care after her strokes a few years before. She had round-the-clock professionals, a whole staff. She stayed in her own little home with family visiting daily. She had professional hair styling and nail treatments each week. She had house calls from doctors and therapists. Still, it was a struggle for Reeve. How do people cope who have almost no resources, who have to enter poorly-run nursing homes, or live with family members who neglect or abuse them? This book helps me think soberly and honestly about these things. It's scary.

Some aspects of Anne's old journals are given new eyes in this book, which Reeve also calls a journal -- "A Journal of my Mother." Most people would consider Charles Lindbergh the more famous of the pair, but the child who speaks for the family, the writer, chose to write of her mother.  Here are a few telling passages:

"She rarely answers, in fact she rarely speaks, and she does not write at all. This astonishes me. Words were central to her life for as long as I have known her, and yet she appears perfectly comfortable without them. She does not miss them. I, on the other hand, am at a loss. I am bewildered, confused, absolutely at sea, in my mother's silence." (14)

This gives a little taste of how Reeve continuously ponders both her mother and herself, contrasting, comparing. Always tender, often puzzled.

Caring for an elderly patient is a very physical activity, especially when she cannot care for herself in even the simplest ways. 

"I like to watch Janet [a caregiver] working with my mother, who is now so completely, so uncharacteristically, willing to be touched .... My mother, who once so resisted physical tenderness that I wondered during childhood if it was an imposition to kiss her good night, now submits to care and coddling as never before. Her previous body-shyness has melted away ...." (80)

This, of course, is an aspect of Anne's personality and life that she never mentioned, but that her children were intensely aware of. Can you imagine being the child of a mother who you weren't sure if you should ask to kiss goodnight? How did that impact the home? Why was she that way? 

Perhaps the most interesting and telling passage:

"My mother's resistance to circumstances beyond her control has always been subtle .... My father used to say, 'Your mother devastates with silence.' ... I can recall what an effective weapon her silence was against his sudden tirades of opinion and mood. I remember well those times when he moved through the house like a strong wind, shattering everybody else's peace and concentration. It wasn't necessarily a matter of his being in bad humor, it was just that he was so much bigger, so much more energetic, and so much more active than anyone else we knew. When he was walking and talking and moving around, our father sucked up all the space in his vicinity like some kind of whirlwind, sometimes benign, sometimes ill-boding. If he was indeed angry over something his children had done or, more likely had neglected to do, the atmosphere was then twice as electric and doubly powerful, the house itself shaking with what my sister used to call "Ambulatory Wrath of God." If we could do it, we children would scatter out ... but our mother would remain silent, resting in her own silence, and sooner or later, our father would laugh ruefully, as if to acknowledge that she'd won .... He recognized that his wife ... was by far the stronger of the two." (154/155)

In her own journals, Anne's description of when Charles would come into the house was quite the opposite; she described him as bringing LIFE back into the house, as if the house and the family and she were all rather dead, or at least comatose, until he blew in, and everything leapt to life again. But clearly the children didn't feel that way, or at least the youngest one didn't.

Anne Lindbergh died early in 2001 after a long and productive life. I felt Reeve's goal in part was to continue to give nobility and worth to that life, even when the words were gone for which Anne was so respected. 

... But What About Death?

Last night we attended our community Thanksgiving service at the local Catholic church. Hundreds of people from Oriental's Episcopalian, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Catholic, unaffiliated, and even Jewish places of worship, gathered there.

The altar arrangement at the community Thanksgiving service

The preacher this year was Baptist; he spoke on being thankful for the hardships of life. His text: Paul's thorn-in-the-flesh, a true, life-long torment. Even Paul, who could miraculously heal others, could not convince God to remove this plaguing affliction. But Paul eventually thanked God for the thing he first wanted removed from his life.  "Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest on me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

The Baptist preacher proceeded to list off some events we might initially loathe but later be thankful for: a traffic ticket, a bad grade in school, a broken engagement. Those are understandable. But does this principle apply for all things in life? Are there some heartaches that we can never become thankful for?

What about death?

Because if our faith in Jesus is only good for traffic tickets and romantic disappointments, it's not good for much.

It depends on what we do when trouble comes. How much does God have to do to you, before you grab hold of Him? Does He have to cut one leg out from under you, or two? Some of us are so stubborn, so independent, so self-sufficient, that when small- (or medium-) sized troubles come, we still don't think to turn to God. God's answer to Paul was that God had made Paul weak, so he would need God's strength. He would lean on God. He would be dependent.

It is an interesting mental exercise to recall all the greatest heartaches of life, and ponder why God brought them about, why He chose them for you, and what possible use they could be for your spiritual growth. What about death? What about the death of a dearly loved one, a child perhaps?

Even the worst of hardships should drive us weeping to the cross, to the One who suffered the most in death. And death can turn our hearts permanently toward heaven, as nothing else can. Can we be thankful for that?

I wrote a post this fall, but did not publish it, about dying, about particularly awful deaths, about why God (if it's someone's time to go) allows brutal, painful deaths. I wrote it after a local woman died in a boating accident, quite horribly. From our perspective, it was gruesome. Her husband was, I'm sure, numb with the pain of it. Why, God? Why not have her die in her sleep? Why are some deaths so appalling?

And I wonder if that kind of death is necessary to draw the person to God, in those final ten minutes of life. Because God is all about drawing us to Him, to heaven, by any means. What if our most wrenching heartaches are necessary because our hearts are hard? And like a lump of clay, like a cold mass of bread dough, our hearts must be worked and kneaded and ripped and contorted and squeezed until they are warm and malleable in God's hands.

I have great hardships in my past for which I am thankful now, but there were no deaths involved. I think this week of you whose lives have been shadowed with repeated deaths. Is Thanksgiving week a hollow time? May God work His strength into your hurting hearts and give you eyes to see His purposes. May He help you learn, like Job, to accept that He gives and He takes away, and His Name is blessed both ways.

What's New

Good days. Little troubles. (Is there such a thing? I guess so.) Here's some happy stuff. Bo-Beau, loving on his daddy.

He was staring intently at Adam, the kind of stare that says, "I'm really into you. Can we play?" As soon as I picked up the camera, he switched his gaze.

But soon they were back into deep daddy/doggie conversation.

A few nautical pics for you. A friendly dock welcome!

Boating brings lots of reflection.

On Saturday I met a friend-of-a-friend, Tom. He's a boatish type. Loved his cool sandals. He buys them at Renaissance Fairs. Did you know there's a whole swath of people out there who spend their lives traveling from one Renaissance Fair to the next, living a medieval life?

My friend Kip was sporting this fun t-shirt.

"You could get hit by the boom and die.
You could fall overboard and die.
You could capsize and die.
Or you could stay home and fall of the couch and die."

I'm well into a knitting project I've been anticipating since the spring -- making Adam a sweater vest. He's the dapper sort who likes sweater vests, bow ties, and old-guy hats. All his sweater vests are much too big now.

It's coming along nicely. I'm on the back panel. I'll keep you posted.
I took some sky shots this afternoon because the clouds were emotionally overwhelming for a tiny human.

Adam longs to make us "adult pizza," rather than the boring cheese or pepperoni we ask for. So he made this twice recently:

No red sauce -- it's a cream based sauce. Chopped basil (perfectly in season now) and various cheeses give it a delicious, mellow flavor. We're not missing the pepperoni.
(Okay, now I get wordy, and if you prefer a picture-blog, please click away now.)

The change of seasons, heavy in the air, produces in me a pensive spirit, an expectancy of leaden but cathartic thoughts. It's troubling, but it happens each year as my heart anticipates cooler, darker, melancholy days. I find summer wearying. I find winter invigorating. Autumn is winter's harbinger, and my soul longs for the spiritual sleep, the soul's still rest that winter offers.

I'm bemused lately about death. When we see death coming from afar, we brace ourselves, arm for the battle, and engage heartily. We think we look death in the face, but maybe we look only at the dying days, the process of dying. We cross swords using surgery, medicines, treatments, specialists, prayer, and optimism. We feel we've looked death in the eye and given our best fight.

But when death thunders in, unexpected? Recently I've heard of two sudden deaths by drowning. One was a boy, adopted after 17 horrible years in an Eastern European orphanage. At last, he was loved, nurtured, taught, cherished. God answered yes to the impossible for this child. He was brought halfway around the world to a new life. His parents, siblings, and caregivers were well-trained; there was no neglect. But in a matter of seconds, he drowned in a bath tub. Why?

A lovely Christian family, friends of friends, lost their husband and father in a shocking, bizarre drowning at the beach. My heart has ached for the wife who watched her life ebb away, knowing that God had planned this moment, planned it for her. Why? Why take him so suddenly? Why not allow them to say good-bye? It's the horror we all dread -- that death might snatch one away, not giving the usual warning. No battle. No crossed swords. We are fooling ourselves to think that we defeat death when we only extend our lives by a decade or two.

How do we mourn with hope? How can that grieving mother console herself, in spite of the horror of finding her precious gem of a son dead after all he'd been through before, that his death is only a comma in the ongoing story of his continuing life? That she simply watched a passing, a transition? That the moment which feels like a horrific mistake -- (Please! It's a mistake! Can we go back and relive those three minutes? Please!) -- is no mistake? That the moment of his death was set from before the foundation of God's world?

How have we defined death? It is the ultimate surprise. It's over before we are prepared. We don't face it at all. We try to face the process of dying. But death itself is always wrong. I'm ruminating about something I've had little experience in. I've skirted the edges of death several times. I try to remind myself what death is to God. He is never surprised by our deaths. Is it helpful to know, in the midst of chaos, grief, horror, agony, regret, and guilt, that one Person watches death every time and is neither surprised nor bemused? It is an essential part of His plan. How do we soothe the pain of that deliberate wounding?

I don't know. God is a surgeon, sure. He performs many repairs on our souls, and the death of a loved one is a cutting with inadequate anesthesia. But in His intricate system the pain itself is important for us somehow. We're horrified to watch death snatch someone. The boy, the husband ... is it a horror to them? I don't think so. For us who observe the flash of a soul's disappearance, the shattering loss and loneliness, our inner screams are evidence that we have insufficiently considered the transition from this brief world to the next. It's excruciating -- we know how long the years will feel -- like an eternity, we say. We struggle to consider this present trouble in balance with true eternal glory and being-together-forever. I'm not certain eternal life feels very real to those who mourn. I wonder if I will grasp it. Some have glowing faces that evidence they've seen a holy event. Some have the broken eyes of only grief. God help us all.

Death in the Mist

A small family cemetery lies on a raised jut of land very near out house. It's a quiet, lonely spot in a stand of pines.

I stopped there this morning on my walk.

I find it strange that graves could be dug so close to the creek, but the land does rise here.

Our county is filled with water -- rivers, creeks, serpentine patches of mud -- so people bury their dead on any piece of higher ground, no matter how small. The county is dotted with tiny graveyards of five or ten stones.

This one's rather old.

"Midgett" is a local name. Now it's spelled "Midyette"; I don't know why. Apparently the pronunciation has always been "Midget," with the emphasis on the first syllable.

Not much difference in their years, but the surname spelling is clearly going through some flux. Either that or the stone-cutter made a big no-no.

Mr. Shipp, an appropriate name around here.

We work so hard to keep the physical memories of our dead ones erect, noble, as if they'd just died. But truly, the dead are like their stones -- their memories wear away and they long to lean into earth.

An interesting shape for a gravestone:

The sun shines on the stones' faces. Someday Jesus will come back through the sky, bright like that sun, and these dead will thrust aside the dirt and climb from their plots, turn their backs on those death dates and walk into a new life.

It seems odd, but right out on that same creek the fog settled thick above the water as I stood among the graves. School was delayed two hours locally due to fog.

The fog didn't reach the cemetery, but someday I'll get a few photos of those graves wrapped in mist. That'll be something to see.

Why Some People Die

This verse has been preying on my brain the past few days.

"The righteous man perishes, and no one takes it to heart;
And the devout men are taken away, while no one understands.
For the righteous man is taken away from evil.
He enters into peace;
They rest in their beds (or perhaps, graves)
Each one who walked in his upright way."
Isaiah 57: 1, 2

At the risk of offending some of my more conservative Christian friends, I'd like to handle the text a bit, and rewrite it my own words:

"A truly good man dies, and everybody is mystified by it.
And people who've served God all their lives die, and we moan, 'Why did they have to die?' because don't understand what's going on.
They died because God was taking them out of this evil, broken world.
The good man is finally at peace.
The godly men are resting safely after devoting themselves to God for a lifetime."

How many times, when someone dies, do we react as if a tragedy has occurred? "But they died!!" we exclaim, as if (of course) dying were the most horrific thing that could happen to anyone. That's a worldly perspective. It's not God's perspective, who orchestrates our deaths and determines our lives afterward. The Christian is delivered from a world full of: danger, evil, meanness, unkindness, uncertainty, fear. He is taken to a place of absolute safety where his needs are fully met and there's nothing to fear ... ever.

And we call that a tragedy. What's wrong with us?

A dear elderly friend said lately, "There's a lot of living going on, both here and in heaven." Her husband died unexpectedly two weeks ago. What a wonderful, clear understanding she has! When I mentioned these verses in Isaiah to her, her eyes lit up, and she knew exactly which verses I meant -- she'd been studying them too.

Her husband has been delivered from all manner of evil, and a weary life. He stepped directly from one life into the other life. He now has everything we all long for.

It's difficult to fight against the mentality of the culture that teaches us to fear death, avoid death, deny death, and treat it as the ultimate human tragedy. Christians should reject this thinking. Neither is death a friend. Death is simply a conquered enemy, lying slain on the field of humanity's battle now, these 2000 years. When a Christian passes from this living into the next living, one of the things he steps over is the limp, dry corpse of death, on that battlefield conquered by Jesus.

"Now We See Through a Glass, Darkly, But Then ... Face to Face"

I hardly know where to begin. I wrote briefly about a friend, a young mother, who died suddenly, unexpectedly. That was last December. Then in July I was surprised to find that a fellow blogger, a woman with whom I'd had brief correspondence, had also died -- suddenly, unexpectedly.

Then in August, another friend died. S-- was a good friend and neighbor of mine during our husbands' days in seminary. S-- was funny, chatty, honest, and generous. She was beautiful, with clear light skin and dark (almost black) thick hair, a contagious smile and bright eyes. We lived across from each other. During our time as neighbors she had two babies and I had my first baby, a boy. We were poor together, cooked and grilled out together, talked about ministry and seminary and marriage and being women and a multitude of topics that women thrown together in a tight community will chat of, on long days watching toddlers play while waiting for husbands to come home. She laughed good-naturedly at my extreme frugality, how I would save used tin foil for later use. I thought she was fun and lively. She was a few years younger than I. That was over twenty years ago. S-- developed cancer in recent months, and after treatment she passed from this life, leaving three children. She and her husband had divorced a few years ago. S-- was heart-broken and tried to avoid the break-up of her marriage. It crushed her. I was crushed for her.

While at the farmers market this morning I got a call from Adam telling me of yet another death. A friend from the Midwest, T--, died last night -- suddenly, unexpectedly. Again, T-- and his wife (and their children) and Adam and I and our 4 kids, worked in ministry together at a Christian boarding school. Such work is grueling, taxing, exhausting, filled with challenge and conflict, and in the end binds together those who struggle together under the common yoke. T-- was a big man, many inches over six feet. He had a rolling laugh. He was a serious theologian. When I fell and broke my foot, he and Adam carried me to the car. I recall drives with his wife to town to grocery shop in their van. They lasted at the school longer than we did, but eventually left as well. T-- struggled in recent years with chronic unemployment, in spite of diligent attempts to find work in this awful job market. And then, as the last crushing blow, his wife left him inexplicably -- at least it seemed inexplicable to me. I was deeply saddened to watch his struggle, his heart-break, his confusion at her actions and the radical, sudden change in her, his late attempts to win her back. Never have I seen a man mourn the loss of a wife so. Through it all, he praised God and remained strong in his faith in God's goodness. Finally ... finally! ... T-- was accepted to work with a mission agency. I know he hated the idea of going overseas away from his children, whom he dearly loved, but he pursued the path. Then, another blow:  he developed a seeming grocery list of health complaints. He was in and out of the hospital with abdominal troubles. This past week, ill again, he was shockingly diagnosed with leukemia. And then, in the hospital for that disorder, he suffered severe brain bleeding and died last night.

Perhaps some of you will think it gauche, rude, or improper of me to mention the severe testing that both S-- and T-- suffered when their spouses abandoned them. That's a strong term, "abandon." I could have said "divorce," or simply, "the loss"  or "the failure of their marriages." Except I don't think they felt that way. From corresponding with them I know that they grieved and mourned and struggled with their spouses' rejections and departures. And now that this bizarre scenario has happened twice, I find myself wondering what many must wonder: how would things have been different, if S-- and T-- had had the spouses they adored and longed for by their sides during the last trial? What is in God's mind as He orchestrates these events, these deaths, so close on the heels of these, the greatest griefs S-- and T-- had experienced? Which death is more horrible -- the death of a love, or the death of a body? If I could ask S-- and T--, I think I know what they would say.

Because I know exactly where S-- and T-- believed they would find themselves, in the moment of death. Now they both await us all in heaven. Whatever imperfections they possessed that their spouses found so unacceptable that they had to leave, those imperfections have vanished. Both the departing spouses profess still to be Christians, so now we have the waiting game. Well, we've always had the waiting game, but now that two participants have crossed the finish line, so to speak, it makes me wonder this: what will it be like for us all to meet in heaven, knowing how we have crushed and hurt one another? Our sins are covered by Christ's blood, I know that. But here's the thing -- while we're still on Earth, we tend to make mighty excuses and claim our sins really aren't sins. We hurt those who love us, and we sugar-coat the sin against them. We say, "Here, take this bitter pill. I've sugar-coated it in excuses, so even if it feels like I'm stabbing you in the chest and you're in intense pain, it's not really a sin on my part." In heaven, after we've all crossed the finish line, lies like that will be shown for what they are.

I'm not privy to other people's marriage secrets. I'm only privy to my own. I know marriage is chock full of disappointments, and spouses change over time, and tastes and preferences change, and life takes sharp u-turns and sometimes just drops you off the cliff. I know all this. I know people fall out of love. That's when marriage vows, which are taken before God, become most sacred. They're not necessary when you're head-over-heels. They're necessary when you're not. "Till death do us part" means something. It means you stick with your partner through the nastiness so that neither you nor your partner have to face death alone. S-- and T-- needed the persons they loved most beside them -- not just by the hospital bed, but beside them in life. It wounded me to see them both face hospitals and doctors and surgeries alone. It shouldn't be thus.

This post is not some diatribe against the spouses. It's really a struggling in my soul on this issue of Christians and their deaths and what they signify. I'm not grieved that S-- and T-- went to be with Jesus and left their failing bodies. We all die. We grieve the losses, but they're so very temporary. As we age, we realize this clearly. And perhaps that's the terrifying thing, that in a few short years we'll all face each other again, and the fragile, geographical barriers we've set up to separate ourselves from mean ex-employers or petty ex-friends or unsatisfying ex-spouses will be unavailable to us in heaven. We will face, for eternity, the very ones we've wounded and broken faith with. I guess these thoughts are simply a warning to us all to not be so in love with this life and Earth that we do damage to those we'll spend eternity with. How futile it is to walk away from those to whom we've made vows, when an even deeper vow -- the blood of Jesus -- eternally binds us to them!

Fogged In

This morning we're wrapped in clouds atop Panther Ridge. I'm wearing sleeves and have draped a flannel sheet across my legs as I sit gazing out my upstairs window. I see the rooftop. I see the near trees. Then only fog stretches across the miles to the Blue Ridge. Fog doesn't make me feel lonely or sad; it enfolds, comforts, and makes me feel secure in a mountain nest.

The view from the upstairs bedroom window at the end of the hall

 It's chilly. I made a breakfast of toast, eggs, and stewed apples. Mother has rid herself of toasters and now we toast on a skillet. I returned to the kitchen for more hot tea and found myself hovering over the stove, warming my hands. In July! Mother says the summer has been this way:  warm (80º) in the afternoons, but always that mountain coolness in the evenings and mornings. One always needs a robe for breakfast and often needs a sweater for supper. I'd nearly given up hot breakfast tea for the summer, but here I'm drinking it again.

Typing this blog post with a cup of tea

I'm feeling better and the head cold is abating. Yesterday I stayed in bed almost all day, and the achy feverishness broke in late afternoon. I'm still congested and a bit tired. Today our neighbor Hunter will come up to choose some soap and have tea. Then we'll head up to the parkway, in spite of the fog. I like the foggy view just as much as the majestic miles-away view of Blue Ridge peaks.

This week a young man died, a friend of my nephew, my niece, and of several college aged kids I know. By all accounts he was the finest of young Christian men. I did not know him. He was serving in Europe as a short-term missionary and went to Switzerland briefly, near Interlaken, I think. There he went on a hike and did not return. He fell. Interlaken and its lovely environs are where I spent five delightful months working at a chalet after college.  I walked some of those trails but was no hiker.

Many hearts are grieving this inexplicable loss. That this young man is with Jesus and enjoyably discovering his happy eternity, neither I nor his friend and family have any doubt. But isn't it strange and troubling how we die? Why do we die in such varied and unexpected ways? A young athlete in the prime of his days decides to hike on a summer day, and he falls and dies. I know God prescribes our lives, every moment of them, and has ordained our deaths. We live not one moment more nor less than He wills, and His plans are neither arbitrary nor cruel. This is a great comfort.

But consider this: every human being comes onto the planet the same way. Egg + sperm = human. You may tweak the method a bit, but in the end we all enter life through that single door. Yet we exit through a million doors. God could have instituted a single way to die, as in, "Everyone will die of heart attack." And we'd be used to that, and expect it. Instead, we live every second of our lives not knowing which second will be our last. Or which second will be our loved one's last. Or worse, how it will occur! It's unsettling and frightening. In this seeming chaos of death-by-a-million-methods, I believe some of our antipathy toward death lies.

To be blunt, I wish I knew why, when God said this young man's last day had arrived, that He also decided he would die by falling on a Swiss mountain. Could God have let him die in some other manner not quite so disturbing? Why this way? Why must some deaths take grueling years to accomplish, and others a fraction of a second? Is this simply God's way of showing us that the Fall, and its handmaiden Death, reaches its tentacles into our existence in a million ways, with a million different deaths?

This young man is already living his Hope. He would have been there in 50 years, regardless, which may sound flippant -- I apologize if this hurts or offends anyone. As I age and get closer to the time of usual dying,  my own life seems so short and almost futile to me. What have I done of much worth? I have loved a little, conquered a little, birthed four children -- but what will they do? I do feel that our lives are a mere gasp for air before surfacing, a troubled dream before awaking. Is it perhaps better to awaken earlier and move on to eternity?

We grieve. I've not had much close grieving in my life. I hope I will not grieve as someone who has no Hope, no eternity for myself or for someone else. May I grieve for my own loss, that I must remain in my troubled dreaming without the loved one who made the dream more bearable. But to begrudge someone his awaking? No. May we all embrace the truth that the Christian does not die. He escapes death. in the moment we leave this earth, we run past Death, only in its shadow, and snatch victory from its teeth.

The sun is on the roof now. A faint line of closer hills emerges from the fog. By lunch, the Blue Ridge will be clear as a bell.