A Love So Sweetened

 

A year ago tomorrow, my love was sweetened through the cost of bitter tears and tears of relief and sadness, and some of love and thankfulness.

I had the onus of sitting with my dad through his last hours, how many it does not matter. My mother joined me for the last couple of hours or so, my brother-in-law spent time with me and my sister as well. I say ‘onus’ and indeed, the task was heavy. But onus is not quite the right word, too negative. It was not a pleasure, to be sure, but it was a place and time of honor, of the deepest intimacy that I could experience with my dad, the moment in time when he reached a final peace after what seemed an age of suffering.

We sat together with him holding his hand and as he breathed his last three breaths and it was eye-opening. He breathed free and easy for the first time in years and he went with a look of astonished wonderment on his face knowing that he would be breathing easy forever after.

All this is fine but what did it do for me right after or what does it do for me now? It allowed me to let go and love more sweetly. Love for my dad, for my mom, and for anybody I am brave enough love – my kids, their kids, and a wide range of family and friends and acquaintances. If I let myself do it.

I wish I’d known this as a young man when I lost friends far too early, family so near, and as an older man feeling the same as the losses grew. It is hard to forget them. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve not been so encumbered by losing friends and family as others, many others, maybe even most others.

Over the years I have told others that they have big hearts. Hearts big enough to hold the memories of a lost loved one and to continue loving others and even ‘another’. It is no disrespect the departed to love more fiercely, more sweetly once they have gone, it is an accolade to memories of them. As my friends David, Stephen, Graham, and Neil like to say, ‘love the one you’re with.’

My cousin is showing me this right now as they sit with her husband along with his mother, her mother, their kids, and grandkids, as many as can be there. They are in a place to love more. More sweetly. And they are doing so and inspiring me and warming me up. Thank you, cousin.

Hug your loves more tightly, speak to them more tenderly, laugh with them more often, be sweeter to them always.

And yes, I believe my love for Jesus has been so sweetened.

In His grip,

jerry

To My Daughters, et al.

 

To my daughters, et al.,

“Et al.” is an interesting term to use in a salutation but perfect for my point. Et al. is short for the Latin term ‘el alia’ which means ‘and others’.

It is such a broad term that it can encompass anything anyone wants to add in for reasons both proper and true and reasons so obscure only the adder knows why, adder as a noun and not to be confused with a snake. The punctuation for the term is a bit esoteric and I did the best I can.

I have been blessed with two daughters of my own, a daughter-in-law, and a bunch of bonus-daughters via their association with my kids or having come through the various youth programs I’ve served. Some of my bonus-daughters have daughters of their own who have children and that is a reflection on me being in the youth work game for a long time and achieving the title of old man. I embrace it.

You young women are raising children who are loving, open, and inclusive. As mothers, you are completely vested in your kids and present in their lives. You take them on adventures to the park, walks around the block, vacations, and stay-at-home exploits and flights of fancy. You guys hug your kids through every childhood misadventure and scraped knee, laugh with them in play, and dance, and understand jokes only your child knows the punchline to.

The investment of unyielding and unconditional love from mothers, and in particular the ones I am holding in my heart as I write this, will pay off in healthy, loving, and brave young adults and responsible people over the next generation. I am in awe of you and in truth, more than a bit proud. You warm my heart on chilly days and refresh me like the breeze coming in off the lake on a hot summer day.

These things did not come about by accident. Your mom invested in you as their mothers invested in them. They put the right ingredients in the bowl just so and if you were a fortunate lass, your grandmothers added dashes of wisdom and caring and stirred the pot just enough that all the ingredients were thoroughly mixed. They didn’t stop with the mixing and taste testing, they put you in the oven and let you bake into the women you have become. I salute them and wish I could hug each of them right now and thank them for the work they did and the miracles they performed.

Thank you ladies for being amazing. Happy Mother’s Day.

Now, if you have read this far and you are asking yourself if I meant you then yes, I meant you. If you don’t have kids yet or might never have kids then I submit to you that you likely still qualify as a bonus-mom or a fantastic aunt and are adding critical ingredients to the next generation. Keep stirring them in and watch that they aren’t left in the oven too long and burn. And, as any good cook will do, taste test often.

Again, happy Mother’s Day.

I love you all,

Dad or Jer Bear as the case may be.

Confessions of a Wayward Writer

 

What do you do when you believe God has called you to a vocation and you engage in all manner of ‘good’ things instead of that which you are called to? 'Good', as in necessary everyday activities like three sets of tax returns, including your recently deceased parents’ final return, and any number of things – wash dishes, cook, do yard work, work on estate processes, spend time with family… What do we do when we know we should be spending time and energy on activities we are beckoned to do by that quiet voice we have come to trust as God’s?

Confess with a sincere heart, move on, and get down to it. And so I confess:

I am a writer. I believe God has called me to it and He did so after I searched for the creativity that exists in each of us. We who are created in the image of God have a spark of The Creator in us. I searched for mine after giving up on the notion that I was creative on the basketball court. While that may have been so, if the divine creativity for me was that of an athlete I would be writing this as a former NBA player, or at least that is how I see it.

I did a lot of business writing for the phone factory and was well thought of for my efforts. White papers, business cases, reports, and all sorts of communications that paved the way for me to have a nice little career.

I hadn’t started my search for the creative spark at the time but when a student ministries director asked me to do the writing for the church’s monthly newsletter, I took to it and enjoyed the outlet. I wrote about our youth activities and what was coming up and did some pieces about the depth of our mission trips and camps. What I really loved doing was zeroing in on a particular person and writing a story about him or her and what I found special about them. I could and did write from the heart on those occasions and they were the ones that touched people. My mom and mother-in-law were my biggest supporters in this and they carried it over once I heard the call to write creatively.

I am not a good writer and I feel this way for several reasons. I do not do it consistently enough to say I have a writer’s life but I wish that I could claim that I have such a life. My work needs a lot of editing and I need to learn the craft more completely. I write some good pieces here and there but nothing that has been published outside of my own blogs or social media outlets. Some of that has to do with me lacking the confidence to believe the piece is worthy of printing and some of it has to do with me lacking a tough inner shell to withstand the common practice of writers to collect rejection letters.

I completed a novel a couple years ago but it has been left idol. It is the book I believed I was urged to write by the Author of our Faith and yet I cannot bring myself to rewrite it as it desperately needs. The book needs to be cut it in half if there is any hope in having a publisher even look at it. The story is mortally out of date due to my delays and I need to refigure the timeline and at least bring it up to the point where it touches on the pandemic.

All of this falls short of a legitimate excuse for falling short of having a writer’s life, one meant to touch the hearts of at least one person with each piece I publish. For all of this, I am sorry and will rekindle my efforts.

I am a writer. My best of friends Mike and Jim say so. Mike even puts ‘Writer’ as my occupation when he uses me as a reference when he is job seeking. Mike is a professional editor so it must be true that I am a writer. Jim is my coach and he tells me how touched he is when he reads my work. He was key in showing me the error in a short story I have now submitted several times to start my collection of rejections, so it must be true that I am a writer.

Ani is a published writer, has a master’s in fine arts (MFA) Degree, and is an entrepreneur. She took a short story I wrote almost on a whim for the family and put it in a picture book for us. My mom had me autograph her copy, so it must be true. I guess this means I need to retract my earlier statement that I have not be published outside of my own media resources.

What led to me writing this confession was Phil talking to the men on our Zoomeeting the other morning and telling the group what a good writer I am and how he appreciates the works that I put up. Having spent that morning in the presence of the Holy Spirit, I was uplifted, touched, and convicted all at the same time. Phil is a published writer himself, so it must be true.

Thus, I must confess that I fall short of God’s call to me.

I looked on the back of a piece of intarsia my late father did for me and he said, “Together in His grip, love Dad”. And so I’ll sign off on this confession as I frequently sign off on my Calvary's Thread posts.

In His grip,

jerry

Waves of Grief

 

Personal observations on the process and state of grief upon the loss of a parent or spouse, or maybe worse yet, a child:

Grief is like standing on the beach just in the surf-line where most of the waves lap up and tickle our toes and encompass your foot. As the wave recedes we can feel the sand erode from under our feet and sense that if we stood there long enough, the beach would altogether cover us up.

Now and again a wave comes in as an ankle slapper and we get surprised but not too worried at the sensations. Then an outsider comes and we are standing up to our thighs in the ocean and we feel like we’ll be pulled out to sea. And so we sob quietly but manage to recover on our own though the emptiness leaves us hungering for another day with our loved one.

Then there is the rogue wave. The ones we hear about that come unexpected and wash people out to sea because they weren’t being vigilant while going about their day on the beach or sitting on the jetty letting their minds wonder. The wave takes us out, off the beach and into a surf so roiled as we feel we may drown. We need help, a lifeguard to show up in his rescue dory or maybe in a Baywatch boat. We need them to pull us in and take us to safety.

Let the toe ticklers do their work. Let the ankle slappers have their way. Be wary of the outsiders and stand firm. Let the lifeguards to their job and bring us in when the rogue wave crashes over us and tosses us about. If you don’t see them, call out and someone will come for you.

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Author’s Notes:

During the past six months my family has endured the loss of both my parents, first my dad early in September 2020 and then my mom ten weeks later in November. Neither was the result of covid-19 and the path we followed starting this last July was shocking and unexpected, almost violent. No, certainly violent to our souls.

While traveling the path of grief I have on occasion written a piece about each of my parent and put up various Facebook posts on the sensations of grief and loss. I took the first motorcycle ride with friends since this all began for me and we ended up at Duke’s Malibu for lunch out in their patio dining area. The above piece came to me while enjoying discussions ranging from home sales riding and what the future has in store for us as we learn to contend with the pandemic. We did not speak about my loss and grief but the waves coming up on the rocks below us and the vast Pacific Ocean stretching out in front of us spoke clearly to me.

Putting up the above observations as a Facebook post generated good discussion points and a great deal of sympathetic replies. One such reply came from my friend Lisa Brickner, a practicing psychologist. She suggested that with so many people in isolation and experiencing the ravages of loneliness that I should submit the writing to newspapers, something I’ve never done. Once I put this post up on Calvary’s Thread I will heed the advice of the professional and submit it somehow to our various local papers and perhaps to the Grants Pass Daily Courier where I will shortly be sending the obituary for my parents.

As a Christian, I have the additional benefit of The Great Lifeguard, Jesus Christ, and his followers.

I am no professional, simply a man in grief feeling his way along the surf line.