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Lullaby
lay your head down
rest your tired eyes
drift off to sleep
let peace be on you
let me sing over you
let this sound be your home
clothed in love, wrapped in light
its time to say goodnight
its time to say goodnight
This comes from Aaron’s album Cure. It has been a blessing to me during this time. Goodnight all.
It looks like my father will be passing away soon. He has been sleeping all day. I go through times when I am at peace with what is happening and times when I am overwhelmed. My dad loves God and is going to be pain free for the first time in almost two decades–he has been in pain through pegged pants, hammer pants, stone washed pants, baggy pants, acid-washed pants, pre-ripped pants, and the return of pencil-legged pants. In retrospect, maybe it was all of these pants that really caused all the pain.
Above all I have hope; hope that my dad will be with his God, hope that my family will be blessed by my father for time to come, and hope that I will be a better father because of what I have learned from my dad.
Please pray that my family can find the hope in my dad’s passing and feel the blessing of who he is.
Walker Texas Ranger has just come on while I stay up with my dad as he sleeps. “The Juggernaut” features some of the best bad acting America has to offer. There is a tough guy breaking a beer bottleover someone’s head;a woman standing with a look of awe, no of fear, no of who farted on her face; and of course Chuck Norris manhandling a man.
It only gets better; Walker is now emceeing the “Kick Drugs out of America” karate tournament. Why didn’t anyone think of a program that tells kids to not do drugs? I think I may start a “Kick Drugs out of America” club when I return to Lynnwood. How many of you would join? Would your membership depend on me wearing cowboy boots, giving creepy speeches in a locker room, and sporting a semi-mullet? Let me know.
Hmm, they must not be from New York, they look like they are in shape. Steal my nuts you will not! Link
Before starting this entry, I read a story in The Washington Post about brain research. The headline proclaimed “If It Feels Good to Be Good, It Might Be Only Natural.” At first I was intrigued; it seems that researchers have found some evidence that altruism is hardwired into the brain. How exciting! People might actually enjoy being selfless. Do not fret, Shankar Vedantam (the author of the article) saves humanity from having any hope. Although he opens with the philosophical and spiritual implications of altruism being hardwired into the brain, he quickly detours into the minefield of moral questions: killing babies and euthanasia. Sweet, humans are awesome.
But fear not, hope is only a few clicks away. A couple of months ago I found myself in the parking lot of Target listening to NPR. This American Life had been on the radio, one of my favorite shows; the episode was called “Kid Logic.” As I drove home, about 0.8 miles–don’t judge me, I went somewhere else first, a story came on about a child trying to cope with his father dying of a terminal disease. His father, a strong healthy man who ran marathons and ate organic food, had a rare disease where he loses his brain function. As Julie Hill–the mother of the child–explained it, he was aging backwards.
Soon after his father was diagnosed, the child began to scrunch up his face and declare, “eww!” whenever he saw a baby–I am glad he did not read the previously mentioned article. Mrs. Hill could not figure it out until she heard Elton John singing “The Circle of Life.” In The Lion King, dying is explained to Simba as a circle: someone dies so someone can be born. This little boy saw these babies as a threat to his father, not little people who cry when they don’t get their way, poop their pants, and melt the hearts of any person with just a smile. No matter how flawed this logic is, it is beautiful; human interaction cannot be reduced to logic, no matter how complex. Dare I say, this “faulty” logic is really this child acting on the hardwired propensity for altruism.
I will not spoil anymore of the story; go, listen to it. After the story ended, I sat in my car weeping. It was uncontrolable; all I wanted to do was to hold my wife. I stumbled inside, kicked off my shoes, found my wife–who was napping in bed, and fell into her arms weeping. In hind site, this was probably not the best way to greet a sleeping mommy, but she was gracious and loving.
She continues to be gracious and loving. I have not seen my wife in over two weeks. I have been with my father who has decided to stop chemo after fighting Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma for 17 years. He has told me stories about his father in Tokyo Harbor shooting mines with a 50-caliber gun, stayed up late just to talk to me, taken his last motorcycle ride, and talked about computers with me. God has blessed this time with my dad, but now he is on the downward slope. Peggy–my step-mom–and I just walked my dad around the house for various reasons: he wanted to go upstairs; file his taxes in West Virginia; and, after having his glasses placed on his bedside table by his sister, fill out a missing glasses report. It makes my heart hurt; it took all my strength to keep laughing and not burst out into tears. As he was maneuvering into to bed, I said “Good night.” He looked back with a smile, winked, and said goodnight. Sleep well dad.
I intended to write a semi-serious entry about the importance of silence and looked to google/images for a little inspiration…besides creepy pictures from a cannibal movie, dreamy landscapes, and other odds and ends I found this, Chuck! Now all I can think about is Chuck making silence cry, Chuck roundhouse kicking silence, and Chuck stealing silence’s wife. Maybe I should make a t-shirt that says: I tried to blog about silence and all I got was this lousy Chuck Norris poster. Oh well, good night world.
Virginia–at least around the Richmond area–does not have mountains. I would argue that I change more elevation walking from my apartment to the mall then driving 70 miles from my dad’s house to my sister’s apartment. While Virginia does not have mountains, it does have the tops of trees; God must think people in Virginia will confuse the tops of trees for mountains–I will refrain from making region-biased statements.
On a side note, somebody should send a memo to the Virginia PR department: mountains are for lovers. Here is just one fire lookout you can rent: Evergreen Fire Lookout. Check out the view:
Sara, I think we have found the place for “numero dos nino” creation–do not worry, it’s code nobody will get it. Also, who reads the words in quotation marks anyway? Our secret–albeit a distant one–is safe for now.
While I am on the East Coast, I have been trying to keep Pacific Time. What better way to be reminded of the West than to reflect on a writer with a special fondness for my side of the country.
Before I launch into my exegesis–shallow as it may be–on Cannery Row, let me tell you how Steinbeck drifted into my thoughts. My dad has had cancer for 17 years; if you ever met him, you would never know. His routine would consist of getting up early, going for a walk/run, taking care of the three “S’s*”, drinking an insane amount of coffee, making an unplanned pitstop because of the aforementioned coffee, working all day, coming home, changing clothes, working in the yard, coming in when dark, working in the house or garage, and going to bed. Now there would be some variation to this schedule–except the coffee and pitstop–but my dad always managed to put more work in a 24 hour day than anybody that I have met. Never would you here my dad complain, more than likely you would find him trying to encourage somebody.
Along the way he had an impact** on hundreds of peoples’ lives and now those people are pouring into his home as he prepares for his last days on Earth. Had I the foresight or equipment, I would have stood at the door with a clicker to get a formal count, but by my rudimentary math skills I would say well over one hundred people have visited him or called him to say how important he is to them.
Seeing all of these people come to visit my father made me see something in him that I had not recognized before. In the beginning of Cannery Row, Steinbeck describes Cannery Row in Monterey. After carrying on about the geography he starts talking about the people of Cannery Row. That is where these lines come from:
Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, ‘Whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches’, by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, ‘Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men’, and he would have meant the same thing.
My dad has spent his entire life trying to look through that peephole; this does not mean he has always been successful, but his effort is the reward and it is not a Sisyphean effort.
I think one of the best illustrations of this effort comes from the Parable of the Prodigal Son***. The Parable of the Prodigal Son is the story of a father who looks at his son who, as the man once said, was a son of a bitch; but his father did not see him that way. The son demanded his inheritance before his dad died, went and partied, lost all his money, lived as a pauper, and then returned home. The father looked through the other peephole and saw a saint returning worthy of a feast and not the son of a bitch everybody else saw.
In this way, my dad has lived his life; a life where he has poured out blessings onto other people just as his Savior has poured out blessings in his life. If God could extend his grace even to my Dad, despite his shortcomings, how could my dad not extend his grace to all the people he met?
I love you Dad; you are a man of God that no one will forget. Also, please let me know if your coffee and pitstop routine continues…God does have a sense of humor;)
* I know that an apostrophe gives possession and not plurality, but I was advised to make the concept of more than one letter S clearer.
**Notice the correct usage of impact as a noun and not a verb.
***I am not the prodigal son, if you are wondering.
Ah, yes, marketing taglines. Before I criticize, in the interest of full disclosure, Seattle’s tagline is Metronatutral. Thank God that Spokane has some visionaries–or at least people with common sense–in their public relations department; Spokane’s tagline is Near Nature, Near Perfect. Alas, while Spokane’s tagline makes me want to go back, Virginia’s tagline does not make me want to do anything…except to not walk alone at night.
Postscript For those who do not know, I have been in Virginia visiting my father for the last two weeks. Also, for you literary types, did I split an infinitive in that last sentence? Let me know.
Why is it that there is no shortage of men who can tell you everything about the swords, guns, knives, undergarments, and alcohol that a pirate would use or consume? The History Channel–the name is a stretch for a lot of its programing–is running a show as I type about pirates, arrrgh! Back on topic–these men tend to be overweight and tuck their pants into their socks polo shirts into their pants, albeit with what I call the under-tuck–this is when the shirt must change directions before reaching the beltline. Do you think that modern pirates scour the web looking for the history of their profession? If my aptitude test spit out pirate as a profession and I saw these “experts” talking about my profession, I might be forced to hire a life coach or at least rattle my saber at my counselor.
