At first, I'm thinking of a couple: 1. My father's struggle to identify himself in the middle of a confusion of one-sided media images of homosexuality, one-sided religious images of the "proper" family, destructive religious teachings about human sexuality itself, and a religious belief that humanity itself is doomed and sinful. 2. My mother's struggle to define herself in a religious tradition that subordinates women, denigrates sexuality, within a failing marriage (wherein God has bound her soul to her husband's forever, and family is the best thing a woman can do in life). 3. A quadriplegic Vietnam veteran with continuing nightmares, the single survivor of a helicopter crash, and whose son died at some point in the past, and who has made a life helping others with disabilities get access to education and life-skills - lying on his back for 6 months waiting for stabilization and recuperation for surgery related to pressure ulcers that he got from working too much.
And there are others... In all of these cases, it's survival and taking back one's self-definition in the face of physical, mental, and emotional pain, coupled with social/religious definitions that demean that person and make judgments against their basic humanity.
A few days ago I came up with the following thing, and have been since deciding whether or not it's what I want to offer. It is. It comes from my hero, my maternal grandfather. In the last month of his life, in fact four weeks prior to his own death, we lost his wife, my grandmother, unexpectedly. He was so ill from liver failure and weak from the process of dying that he couldn't make it to the funeral. Before the wake, his daughter and granddaughters (he was surrounded by women) brought him to see his wife in the flesh. one last time. I will never forget what he did. We wheeled him in his wheelchair up to her open casket. He reached up to her precious hands, one crossed over the other, and said, "I'll see you soon." Not, "I miss you," and not even, "I love you." None of that was necessary, it was obvious. He was weeks away from death and he knew it, and he said in front of all of us, "I'll see you soon."
My maternal grandparents were always more emotive than my father's side of the family. Still, they were affected by midwestern reserve that restricted outward portrayals of emotion to Sunday morning at the Baptist church. That's where you cried and told the truth. With all of his naval and great depression-bred dignity, he held his wife's cold hand and promised to see her again.
The night before he died I was barely able to squeak out, through tears, and when my mother had left his room, that he was my hero. "Everyone's got a hero, and you're mine," I told him. Having had the opportunity to tell him that helped me through grieving his loss. However, it was hard to get the words out. I wish for the kind of soul stamina that he had for myself as I get older. My grandparents could've weathered anything, and in the process, they likely would have created community and comforted anyone else around them.
I too am having difficulty coming up with a courageous act that I have personally witnessed. I am a witness, however, to a courageous life--that of my father. The quiet graciousness with which he accepted and adapted to the losses that later life presented him was truly a wonder to behold. He lost his wife (my mother) of nearly 60 years in 1997. He took amazingly good care of himself after she died. He slowly lost his eyesight to macular degeneration. That led to loss of independence, namely, loss of driver's license, and then his car, loss of house when he realized he could no longer care for himself and moved in with my brother. As his condition progressed, he could finally no longer read--a daily habit he'd had ever since I knew him. He was blessed with a lucid mind until his last day on earth and loved using it to brighten other people's lives. At age 97, he could no longer get around very well but walked, with increasing dependency on a walker, until he just didn't have the energy anymore. He and I spent what was to be the last week of his life together--just the two of us for most of it. He got discouraged at times but never gave up until he gave out.
I'm wondering if this isn't a truer courage than one dramatic act which proves in some cases to be an exception to a generally uneventful, if not dismal, life. Even the life of Christ may be deemed courageous more by His steady progression to a death on the cross which he did not wish for Himself but felt duty-bound to continue, rather than a series of speeches and miracles performed at times in the face of opposition. "Heroic" is more than "heroics."
4 comments:
Wow, I've been thinking about this for 24 hours and still, I got nothin'. That's kind of amazing.
At first, I'm thinking of a couple:
1. My father's struggle to identify himself in the middle of a confusion of one-sided media images of homosexuality, one-sided religious images of the "proper" family, destructive religious teachings about human sexuality itself, and a religious belief that humanity itself is doomed and sinful.
2. My mother's struggle to define herself in a religious tradition that subordinates women, denigrates sexuality, within a failing marriage (wherein God has bound her soul to her husband's forever, and family is the best thing a woman can do in life).
3. A quadriplegic Vietnam veteran with continuing nightmares, the single survivor of a helicopter crash, and whose son died at some point in the past, and who has made a life helping others with disabilities get access to education and life-skills - lying on his back for 6 months waiting for stabilization and recuperation for surgery related to pressure ulcers that he got from working too much.
And there are others...
In all of these cases, it's survival and taking back one's self-definition in the face of physical, mental, and emotional pain, coupled with social/religious definitions that demean that person and make judgments against their basic humanity.
A few days ago I came up with the following thing, and have been since deciding whether or not it's what I want to offer. It is. It comes from my hero, my maternal grandfather. In the last month of his life, in fact four weeks prior to his own death, we lost his wife, my grandmother, unexpectedly. He was so ill from liver failure and weak from the process of dying that he couldn't make it to the funeral. Before the wake, his daughter and granddaughters (he was surrounded by women) brought him to see his wife in the flesh. one last time. I will never forget what he did. We wheeled him in his wheelchair up to her open casket. He reached up to her precious hands, one crossed over the other, and said, "I'll see you soon." Not, "I miss you," and not even, "I love you." None of that was necessary, it was obvious. He was weeks away from death and he knew it, and he said in front of all of us, "I'll see you soon."
My maternal grandparents were always more emotive than my father's side of the family. Still, they were affected by midwestern reserve that restricted outward portrayals of emotion to Sunday morning at the Baptist church. That's where you cried and told the truth. With all of his naval and great depression-bred dignity, he held his wife's cold hand and promised to see her again.
The night before he died I was barely able to squeak out, through tears, and when my mother had left his room, that he was my hero. "Everyone's got a hero, and you're mine," I told him. Having had the opportunity to tell him that helped me through grieving his loss. However, it was hard to get the words out. I wish for the kind of soul stamina that he had for myself as I get older. My grandparents could've weathered anything, and in the process, they likely would have created community and comforted anyone else around them.
I too am having difficulty coming up with a courageous act that I have personally witnessed. I am a witness, however, to a courageous life--that of my father. The quiet graciousness with which he accepted and adapted to the losses that later life presented him was truly a wonder to behold. He lost his wife (my mother) of nearly 60 years in 1997. He took amazingly good care of himself after she died. He slowly lost his eyesight to macular degeneration. That led to loss of independence, namely, loss of driver's license, and then his car, loss of house when he realized he could no longer care for himself and moved in with my brother. As his condition progressed, he could finally no longer read--a daily habit he'd had ever since I knew him. He was blessed with a lucid mind until his last day on earth and loved using it to brighten other people's lives. At age 97, he could no longer get around very well but walked, with increasing dependency on a walker, until he just didn't have the energy anymore. He and I spent what was to be the last week of his life together--just the two of us for most of it. He got discouraged at times but never gave up until he gave out.
I'm wondering if this isn't a truer courage than one dramatic act which proves in some cases to be an exception to a generally uneventful, if not dismal, life. Even the life of Christ may be deemed courageous more by His steady progression to a death on the cross which he did not wish for Himself but felt duty-bound to continue, rather than a series of speeches and miracles performed at times in the face of opposition. "Heroic" is more than "heroics."
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