Wild John watches
As Word becomes Flesh
As Flesh descends to water
As water parts with sky
As sky and Voice combine to cry
You are Beloved!
God's Beloved waits
As angels attend
As beasts breathe
As Satan sulks and stomps his tiny little feet
As time ticks by, forty days, forty nights
As Word made Beloved Flesh prepares to proclaim
God has come near!
Village women wonder
As wet with water and wild, he walks
As son leaves father along the water's way
As fishermen drop their nets to foolishly follow
As dancing he says with glee
Fish for people!
And as the world wakes...all eyes chase Him
He who is all things
Wild, wet, walking, wandering, waiting, wanting, whimsy, wonder
Beloved come to play!
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
all ready...not yet
Last week I got the "all hands on deck" call, also known as the "rally the troops" call. You know, the one that says she's dying today, come hell or high water, and if you want to see her, you'd best get your booty here. So I arrived in Athens late Sunday night (really Monday morning) and made my way out to Hospice House, which is nothing short of a miracle place. And there I saw my grandmother, who is sick and dying, but not today. And not this week. Probably not this month. I mean--who knows for sure, but they're already looking at discharging her from the Hospice back to the Nursing Home (which kinda sucks just because Hospice is soooo much nicer).
Today was hard. She spent hours just screaming. I suspect it is the dementia coupled with pain. I was exhausted watching her--she must have been just plain exhausted. I went back tonight and watched Dancing with the Stars and the Real Housewives of New York City while she snored away. It was kinda nice and quiet.
In the morning I head back to Chicago. I'll get off the plane, get my car and drive to work for our Wednesday Night program and Eucharist. And my life will return to normal. And I feel so strange leaving. I had an agenda when I arrived--it was to say goodbye to my grandmother. And I have done that. But it wasn't like I pictured it would be--not some moment of her recognizing me and then sighing a last deep sigh, giving up the ghost. Instead it was full of screaming and confusion and good colouring. The woman is strong--she would squeeze my hand and she's got a grip on her that is unbelievable. She's not done yet. She's working this on her time schedule and no one knows just exactly what that schedule is.
So the limbo land begins. I've never been very good at the limbo of life. I guess I'll learn.
Today was hard. She spent hours just screaming. I suspect it is the dementia coupled with pain. I was exhausted watching her--she must have been just plain exhausted. I went back tonight and watched Dancing with the Stars and the Real Housewives of New York City while she snored away. It was kinda nice and quiet.
In the morning I head back to Chicago. I'll get off the plane, get my car and drive to work for our Wednesday Night program and Eucharist. And my life will return to normal. And I feel so strange leaving. I had an agenda when I arrived--it was to say goodbye to my grandmother. And I have done that. But it wasn't like I pictured it would be--not some moment of her recognizing me and then sighing a last deep sigh, giving up the ghost. Instead it was full of screaming and confusion and good colouring. The woman is strong--she would squeeze my hand and she's got a grip on her that is unbelievable. She's not done yet. She's working this on her time schedule and no one knows just exactly what that schedule is.
So the limbo land begins. I've never been very good at the limbo of life. I guess I'll learn.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
mrs. mcdonald and the nursery school
my grandmother started a nursery school. i don't know the year. the story i've heard told is that it was started because my grandfather, ever tight with a dollar, told my grandmother "one pair of shoes per child is enough." and my grandmother was going to be damned if her children wore the same shoes to church that they had been wearing on the playground. so she started this business to buy shoes for her children. i don't know if that really was the catalyst, but somehow it cements for me the image of the relationship they had. and while it's not the relationship i'd wish for myself, it does give a pretty good picture of my grandmother--stubborn, committed, passionate and thinking first about her children.
my grandparents divorced when i was really little--maybe 4 or 5. and i never knew of a time when they shared a bedroom. her bedroom had two single beds, with matching light blue comforters, scratchy sheets and one pillow on each bed and the lamp in the middle, between the beds, and it looked like that iconic image most of imagine when we picture ward and june's bedroom.
so my memories of my grandparents, as a little kid, were much less of my grandfather, and more of my grandmother. i think it is safe to say that i was, i am, the apple of her eye. the only grandchild until i was 21, this woman adored and still does adore me. my earliest years were spent at her house, where baby-Sarah would attend Mrs. McDonald's nursery school (my years in high school were ones of reminding people who were a few years older that it was no longer appropriate to call me baby-Sarah). and when i was older, i would take such delight in being the special one at nursery school, who would always have lunch with Mrs. McDonald after nursery school was over.
i was the last "class" of Mrs. McDonald's nursery school. when i was old enough to go to kindergarten, she called it quits and went back to nursing school. the highest scoring nurse at crawford-long memorial when she was in school as a teenager, the nurse in her returned for a brief stint. i remember her practicing giving shots on oranges and it terrified me. but more than anything, i remember her, for the first time in my life, gone. she would leave athens and spend the week in atlanta for her refresher course. having grown up with her taking care of me, her house my second home, her home the common place for dinner at least twice a week--it was a dramatic shift.
eventually her nursing career ended and she sold the house and became a sorority house mother. and that was a whole new adventure. suddenly, i shared her with a house full of college girls who all dressed in plaid and ribbons. but it never mattered. i was still first in her eyes. and teacher or nurse or housemother, the core of how i saw her was the same: the woman with the bedroom with the two single beds, covered in blue, lamp in the middle; the woman who cared for me when i was sick and my parents were at work; the one whose face lit up when i walked in, even when i was a mess. the thing about my grandmother was that in her home, whether a house, or a condo, or a sorority, there was always room for me. i always had a key, i always knew the combination. and when my world began changing, when the keys and the doors of my own home became less and less available, there was, somewhere in my world, always a place where i was wanted. and she was it.
my grandmother, having lived with alzheimer's for years now, is back to living in the room with the single bed. this one is draped in white hospital sheets, white hospital blankets, the familiar nursing home hospital bed. but she still knows me. i am, after all these years, still the apple of her eye.
yesterday the doctors decided that the mass on her lung that has, for so long, been assumed to be pneumonia, was, is cancer. how one treats (or doesn't treat) cancer in an almost-90-year-old-woman-with-dementia is still up in the air. the one thing that is clear is that it, most likely, won't be long now.
she's my last grandparent left. i never knew my father's parents and my relationship with my grandfather was so very different, always from a far. so this is new ground for me. in some ways, she has been gone for such a long time and yet, with dementia, with age, comes a whole new person--lacking in memory, yet rich in adoration for the world as it is now, in this moment, which is all she has, and really all any of us has. and so begins the navigation of the new land, the different space, the road which has yet to be revealed. i'm not sure i'm ready to walk it just yet.
my grandparents divorced when i was really little--maybe 4 or 5. and i never knew of a time when they shared a bedroom. her bedroom had two single beds, with matching light blue comforters, scratchy sheets and one pillow on each bed and the lamp in the middle, between the beds, and it looked like that iconic image most of imagine when we picture ward and june's bedroom.
so my memories of my grandparents, as a little kid, were much less of my grandfather, and more of my grandmother. i think it is safe to say that i was, i am, the apple of her eye. the only grandchild until i was 21, this woman adored and still does adore me. my earliest years were spent at her house, where baby-Sarah would attend Mrs. McDonald's nursery school (my years in high school were ones of reminding people who were a few years older that it was no longer appropriate to call me baby-Sarah). and when i was older, i would take such delight in being the special one at nursery school, who would always have lunch with Mrs. McDonald after nursery school was over.
i was the last "class" of Mrs. McDonald's nursery school. when i was old enough to go to kindergarten, she called it quits and went back to nursing school. the highest scoring nurse at crawford-long memorial when she was in school as a teenager, the nurse in her returned for a brief stint. i remember her practicing giving shots on oranges and it terrified me. but more than anything, i remember her, for the first time in my life, gone. she would leave athens and spend the week in atlanta for her refresher course. having grown up with her taking care of me, her house my second home, her home the common place for dinner at least twice a week--it was a dramatic shift.
eventually her nursing career ended and she sold the house and became a sorority house mother. and that was a whole new adventure. suddenly, i shared her with a house full of college girls who all dressed in plaid and ribbons. but it never mattered. i was still first in her eyes. and teacher or nurse or housemother, the core of how i saw her was the same: the woman with the bedroom with the two single beds, covered in blue, lamp in the middle; the woman who cared for me when i was sick and my parents were at work; the one whose face lit up when i walked in, even when i was a mess. the thing about my grandmother was that in her home, whether a house, or a condo, or a sorority, there was always room for me. i always had a key, i always knew the combination. and when my world began changing, when the keys and the doors of my own home became less and less available, there was, somewhere in my world, always a place where i was wanted. and she was it.
my grandmother, having lived with alzheimer's for years now, is back to living in the room with the single bed. this one is draped in white hospital sheets, white hospital blankets, the familiar nursing home hospital bed. but she still knows me. i am, after all these years, still the apple of her eye.
yesterday the doctors decided that the mass on her lung that has, for so long, been assumed to be pneumonia, was, is cancer. how one treats (or doesn't treat) cancer in an almost-90-year-old-woman-with-dementia is still up in the air. the one thing that is clear is that it, most likely, won't be long now.
she's my last grandparent left. i never knew my father's parents and my relationship with my grandfather was so very different, always from a far. so this is new ground for me. in some ways, she has been gone for such a long time and yet, with dementia, with age, comes a whole new person--lacking in memory, yet rich in adoration for the world as it is now, in this moment, which is all she has, and really all any of us has. and so begins the navigation of the new land, the different space, the road which has yet to be revealed. i'm not sure i'm ready to walk it just yet.
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