In fact there are few...

"If you love somebody tell them...

better yet, show them!"

- Anonymous

It was a Tuesday afternoon when Mattie B. took her last breath, and one of the gentlest souls I have ever known in my life ended this part of her journey.  It was a painful loss.

For a little more than 30 years I spent the meaningful hours of my life as part of a Bible teaching ministry in the heartland of this country.  It is odd, in some ways, because at the same time I was teaching at university, unaware I would enter the world of chronic back pain – the furthest thing from my mind.  My work in spine, or so it seemed at the time, was not really the focus…on the motorcycle speeding down the highway of life, it was riding side car. 

I thought I had found my life’s work and would end my years teaching the scripture; ministering to others who shared uncertainties like myself.  I had slipped underground, picked up a shovel and begun the dig to find meaning in life.  Mattie was an anchor…a lifeline tossed just at the right moment…a piece of solid ground upon which to stand in the shifting sands of a young life.

Getting there

I had come back from the war, probably a little more troubled than I was willing to admit.  In those days, when troubled, I got busy…you know time and mind occupying activities to stay the tide, plug the dyke, withhold the fear, hide from the madding crowd…treading water in the sea of life trying to make sense of it all…or maybe just a little.

Undergraduate school in West Virginia had unexpectedly come along, followed by some graduate work in Wisconsin – all of it structured and mind occupying.  After finishing both degrees, I was faced with the same dilemma…you know, the meaning part. Don’t think too much, just work. Fortunately, there was another degree to complete before having to face…life.  It was in Missouri where it all began to catch up with me. 

There were a couple of years left in the doctoral program, things were slowing down a little and I could no longer avoid the call.  It had been a good run; but the secret had been revealed…one could not educate themselves into contentment.  Of the gold rings on the carousel of life, the reality did not match the expectation.  More knowledge?  Surely.  Answers?  There were few!  The great metaphor in my life reflected in the voice of the 1960s torch singer Peggy Lee; the refrain from the Leiber and Stoller lyric:

“Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is…”

What's the point?  Is there meaning?

It had a beginning

It was a chilly spring evening in late April or Early May of 1975 when I met Dick at a Pizza shop on a date with a friend.  She had been trying to introduce me to this fellow for some time, suggesting he was a little strange…like me.  She thought maybe we might find some resonance.  We did meet…we did resonate and there was little doubt he was – we were – different…that meeting and subsequent events changed the course of my life forever.

Mattie – words mean so little

Dick introduced me to a Biblical teaching ministry and as part of it I met Mattie B., a woman in her fifties, who touched my life in ways no other had before or since.  I do not have the vocabulary to describe this Mid-Missouri country woman, whose exposure to the world at large was very small; whose education was minimal; whose early life had been lived on a rural farm...BUT whose heart was of galactic proportion. 

Mattie was a peculiar woman.  Her voice gravely…speech plain spoken and direct…her inner ears had been damaged, so she heard through a sound conduction device that rested on the mastoid bone located just behind her left earlobe – looking like her head phone was out of place…behind the ear rather than on it.  She kept the pick up microphone clipped to her bra, so sometimes you had to speak into her chest for her to understand you…to the uninitiated onlooker, particularly new people visiting church – a strange and sometimes disquieting sight.

She was partially blind in one eye and ultimately would have it replaced with an artificial one.  She played the tuba in church and what she lacked in musical training – which was in fact non-existent – she made up for with spiritual enthusiasm.  Sometimes the spirit would inspire her to preach in church, and when she did there was indeed a ‘...mighty rushing wind…’

She was one of the elder mothers of this rural ministry, and as such taught the scripture, counseled younger members, and did what she did best…led by example. She worked in the church office, spending thousands of hours typing the scriptures and checking concordances for accuracy.  She was a pretty good cook, as long as it was solid country food…meat, corn bread, vegetables and potatoes…none of that, you know “…fancy stuff…”

She may not have had the educational, economic or social access dangled in front of us by the pressures of life, but whatever gifts she had been given she exercised to maximal potential.  You knew where she stood, and if she loved you there was nothing…there was ‘no thing’ that could separate you from it, and while I was not the only one…there was little doubt she loved me!

Over the years, this woman cut my hair, taught me, counseled and inspired me when times seemed darkest…a beacon of unwavering faith that appeared at the time, and until her death, bottomless.

None of this, however, tells even part of the story of whom or what this woman was.  Faith? Honor? Justice? Her life defined them.  Love? Compassion? Thoughtfulness? All of that and more. 

Her sense of humor…beyond belief.  Much of the laughter coming from her plainness of speech and use of whatever word worked for her in the moment – exactly correct or not.  Her directness of speech came without the social filters most of us are taught and brought with it, at times an unspeakable joy.

As the years moved forward, this woman had health challenges that would stop even the strongest of character.  The loss of sight in one eye and greatly reduced vision in the other; increasing deafness making it more difficult to hear; diabetes contributing to both and four failed back surgeries.  She was married to a fellow who spent more time away from home than not…and yet, and yet through all of this she gave everything she had to others…always to others…to me.

Her life was the antithesis of the Leiber and Stoller existential lyric.  She understood almost by instinct this life was only a preparation…really not much more.  Her life was not one of angst informed by ‘great thinkers’ working to solve the mysteries of life.  She had faith…she lived in the moment…what more could one ask or do?

The debt

How does one repay unconditional love from another human being?  How does one balance the books in relationships where there are no expectations, no desire for recompense, no pressure, not a whisper of a quid pro quo?  How does one express the influence another has had on their life that truly comes with no strings attached?  The answer, of course is, one cannot…there are no balancing of the books…there is only trying to live to the example. 

In life, if one were brutally honest, there are few who bring these things to the table.  In my life, Mattie was, without question or doubt, one of those.

In the end, before that Tuesday afternoon during a routine echocardiogram when Mattie gasped with surprise and took her last breath, I had moved to Michigan and we had lost the intimate contact we had had for so many years.  This spirit that had invested so much in me slipped quietly home, as the scripture says, “…to a place she had never been before…”

The payment

It is said everyone we have ever known is a part of us, and more so those who have invested deeply in us.  I am certain there are Mattie Bs in all of our lives, people who are worth remembering and telling others about…people who by their nature and character, not their education or access, inherently live by the maxim ‘…it is better to give than receive…’

Take a moment for one or two of them…

- ted

The continuity of dots...

“A good many family trees are shady…”

- Gonazles, R.E.

Poems and Paragraphs

It wasn’t the first time.  In fact, over the years, it was not a frequent experience, but surely not uncommon.

The first time was one of those unexpected, unguarded moments.  You know the kind…you are just taking a little time to spend with family…someone you love.

The first time was at the movies…

A little background

To say she was a precocious child would be an understatement.  My sister Nancy had come to Missouri and brought the little creature along with her.  Actually, Mariah had little choice, because she was still ‘…in the oven…’ when she arrived – sight unseen – a mystery yet to be revealed.  It wasn’t long, however, before she presented herself to the planet, slipped into consciousness, began her journey and became a part of our family.  We don’t have children, so this little one found herself, unwittingly filling the bill. 

That girl seemed to have a pot of glue in her brain where it seemed almost everything she saw or heard stuck!  A little under the age of three, she gave me a card.  I don’t remember what was on it, but I put it on the side of my filing cabinet where only I could see it.  A year or so later she asked me about that card and wondered if she might have it back.  Before the age of 10, she heard the musical Les Miserables and memorized all of the songs.  “I mean,” she would later say, “who could NOT know the words to that music!”…as if…as if everyone who heard them must know them.  Yes, she was surely different. 

The first time

It was November 1991; the movie had just been released – Beauty and the Beast.  Mariah, was seven at the time and wanted to see the film.  So we made a date to spend the evening with Belle…she was so pretty – Gaston…what an oaf! – Mrs. Potts…just bubbly – Lumier…a character, if there ever was one – and all the others from that wonderful film. 

We laughed and from time to time, occasionally whispered about some of the characters – but mostly we just allowed ourselves to be captured by the ‘evening’s ride’ for which we had purchased two one-way tickets. 

There were a couple scary places when we looked down…you know just to be safe, and of course we weren’t really sure whether Belle and the Beast were going to fall in love…but then the magic happened.  Belle asked the beast if he would like to dance.  He said he couldn’t, but Mrs. Potts – ever the matchmaker – said, “Dance with her…” and in the most lyrical voice that sounded amazingly like Angela Lansbury, Mrs. Potts began to sing these marvelous Howard Ashman lyrics:

“Tale as old as time 

true as it can be

Barely even friends 

then somebody bends

unexpectedly

Just a little change 

small to say the least

Both a little scared –

neither one prepared

Beauty and the Beast”

And then real magic happened.  As we sat in that darkened theater, I felt a little hand slip into mine.  There was another dance beginning and I found myself overwhelmed.  I glanced her way and saw tears streaming down her face – Belle and the Beast had indeed fallen in love…we were sharing the moment and she was touched.  I found difficult to see her in the dark…I found it difficult seeing her in the dark because tears were streaming down my face too.  Here we were at the ages of 7 and 44 overcome by the music, the characters, the storyline and most importantly this moment with each other.

Over the years I was amazed watching this little girl turn into a young woman, and then slip away from the home.  While I had the idea, never could I have expressed as thoughtfully as George MacDonald in The Baronet’s Song,  “…she was…a girl in whom childhood and womanhood had begun to interchange hues.  Happy they in whom neither had a final Victory!”  And so it is with Mariah in her 28^th year, neither childhood nor womanhood has taken complete victory. 

This time won’t be the last

And so today we found ourselves weeping together once again.  It wasn’t the theater or a film that tugged on the strings of our collective hearts – although there have been many films and theater experiences since “…the first time...”   It was a telephone call as we found ourselves separated by half a continent.  That’s the thing about the heart though isn’t it – time…distance, what do they really mean?

We found ourselves weeping together once again, this time about her mother.  It’s one thing for a sibling to realize there will be no golden years with a family member, no sitting on the porch telling stories, laughing at those embarrassing moments…remembering when…for her there is no longer a ‘…remember when…’

It is another thing for a daughter raised to serve others…a daughter instilled with an iron will…a daughter for whom justice really means something…a daughter in medical school learning that the sequence of disease followed by healing is not the way things often are…a daughter who feels the loss with a sense of current and impending impotence…a daughter who sees the withering away of her very best friend…for you see, there is nothing that can be done, nothing that can be said, nothing…..

We had been busy

So she was studying and I was writing, we had each been at it all day; both of us thinking about my sister and her mum…we needed to touch one another…we needed to reach out just to know we were there…we needed to share a moment of love and of sorrow…we needed to remind one another, once again, that family does matter – for better or worse, that love may not conquer all, but surely conquers much. 

In the darkened theater of life, this is one of the scary places where we looked down…you know…just to be safe...  But then the magic happened once again…we found each other’s hand for comfort and to remember the common bond we both so deeply shared…a quiet moment…a human connection…something we all understand, don’t we?

- ted

A house is not a home…

“For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed

upon with our house which is from heaven.

If so be that being clothed we shall

 not be found naked...”

- 2 Corinthians 5:2,3:

Bible, King James

Everything was gone.  The house was empty and yet it seemed smaller…

It had been a couple of months since last we saw one another, and while the movement of time had been the same for both of us, a universe of change had occurred.  The inclination of descent into darkness seemed to have accelerated at a faster rate than I had expected.

My sister stays in an assisted living facility in Missouri.  ‘Assisted living’…that would be the broadest of ways to describe her place of residence.  The wing where she lives is called “Harmony Hall,” the portion of the facility where Alzheimer’s patients find themselves.

Harmony Hall – the ultimate euphemism for confinement…”Oh yes, my loved one stays in Harmony Hall at the assisted living facility where she lives.”  It has an almost melodic ring, doesn’t it?

While she is safe and well taken care of, ‘harmony’ is not the first word that comes to mind when visiting.  She is the youngest person living in her unit, where all of the residents, to one degree or another, find themselves in diminishing worlds of reality – worlds of thought known only to themselves.

Leaving home

With her departure – when it became clear there would be no return – Nancy’s home became simply a house; an empty space where a lifetime of personal things quite suddenly had no place…no context…nowhere to fit in.  The photo’s on the mantle, just photos – while familiar…the circumstance for their placement now missing, their meaning now unspoken.  The furniture arranged by a keen eye with a rationale…now just furniture.  Little curiosities around the place, the kinds of personal little things we all gather in our lives, no longer having a story teller to advocate their meaning…now just curiosities.  While her things were still in the house, there was a feeling of vacancy and a small but lingering sense of intrusion, brought about by her absence. 

Once the course of no return was clear, the house would need to be cleaned up, cleared up and touched up to see if it could attract a new occupant who would have the opportunity to take possession; a new occupant who would have the opportunity to arrange their furniture…place their photos…put their little curiosities around, making this house…their home.

It’s not that easy

None of this, of course, just happens.  After all, when you go to the market place hoping someone will like you enough to take you on, you must be spruced up…you know, look your very best.  Any house knows it cannot do it without help, so in come the workers and the task commences.  Lots of things begin to happen…carpets removed…kitchen emptied of its appliances, cabinets, sink and flooring…bathroom fixture all gone…all gone. 

Time for a fresh coat of paint, new carpet, appliances, flooring, bathroom fixtures…why if you didn’t know it, you would have little idea these things had been done once before, when this structure had put on its best appearance longing to attract someone to its empty, sterile rooms, waiting…hoping to be occupied and changed from a house into a home.  Someone did, and that someone was my sister…she made that house into her home.

It was a good run you know.  That Nancy Jeanne knew how to turn a house…yes indeed, she knew how to bring love and joy and laughter, where nobody that walked through the door was a stranger…where hospitality began with a capital ‘H’ and ended with a capital ‘Y!’  It was the legacy under which she had been raised, and she carried the tradition with enthusiasm.  She had the kind of charisma that willed the four walls of that house to be a home…her home or anyone else’s who happened to be visiting.  Yes, it was a damn fine home and a damn fine run wasn’t it?…wasn’t it?  It was fine…wasn’t it?

That was then

Now they both sit waiting.

One with hope to once again be filled with ornaments in its nooks and crannies –  making it unique and different, given new life by its new occupant…hoping to become a home once again.  For you see, houses don’t always become homes…sometimes they just remain houses.  A house doesn’t always get the opportunity to become a home.

The other?  Ah yes the other.  She just waits.  She had that special gift…she knew the secret that making a house a home was a collaboration between the two…you couldn’t just buy a place and move in…there was more, so much more.  She understood it took love and elbow grease to transform and give that building personality…life…light…you know…make it a home!!

But now her time seems to have passed, so she sits in her little room in Harmony Hall and waits…a bed, a comfortable chair, a wide screen television, a common gathering area just down the hall from that little room where there are…well, things to do, food to eat and “…others who in one degree or another, find themselves in diminishing worlds of reality – worlds of thought known only to themselves….”

Yes indeed, there are secrets in so many of those minds – secrets that were exercised in vibrancy and energy and focus and productivity and love and laughter – that are increasingly locked away as they wait...as their loved ones wait…relegated to brief, shallow monologues hoping to elicit a glimpse of the world that once was, the paradise lost. 

Is there meaning?

Empty houses reflect two possibilities – the coming and the going.  One a ‘hello,’ and the other a ‘good-bye’…the ‘hello’ filled with an anticipation of challenge and excitement… the ‘good-bye,’ a bit of sadness and melancholy at the inevitability of change. 

My sister’s home has become a house as surely as her mind has begun to slip away toward an unknown place of residence.  Her ‘…furniture, fixtures and curiosities…’ seem to have lost their context…so she waits.  Almost everything is gone, and of little doubt, she seems much smaller.

Somehow though, I believe she still has a secret up her sleeve; somehow I believe she knows there is a new home waiting for her special touch – her gift; somehow I believe she knows…

How could I not?

ted

We still had each other…

“I am not so much delighted by my reputation for

wisdom…as I am by the hope that the memory

of our friendship will always endure.”

- Cicero, MT: On Friendship

I have met few people I disliked from the beginning, but Bob was one of them. I had finished basic training and after taking a leave, was assigned to Air Traffic Control (ATC) School in Biloxi, Mississippi. The U.S. Army was an odd place for an expatriate Canadian – Green Card holding – private first class to find himself, but find myself there I did (one of the things non-citizens can do is serve in the military).  The Army did not have a training program for air traffic controllers, so we were sent to Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi…my first real exposure to the deep south, and Biloxi was about as deep as you could get.

The airbase was near the junction of highway 15 and coastal highway 90…its main gate some 2000 feet (400 meters) from the Gulf of Mexico. We were a small contingent on a compound of about 10 wooden, two story open-bay barracks, and a command building at the northwest end. The middle of the area was open, mostly the kind of shallow sandy gravel and a little grass so common to coastal regions of the South.

While it was wartime, or rather military conflict time, there were only so many instructors in the school. We trained along side Air force boys, which meant we had to wait until a slot opened up to start training. Integrating into the system took time…sometimes several weeks or more.

What to do…
What do you do with a group of testosterone filled boys in their late teens and early twenties and a little too much time on their hands? I’m not sure what other organizations do, but the military ‘makes work’ to keep you busy. Policing the yard, raking the sand and gravel ground, a little mowing between the barracks, physical training…anything to keep you occupied for several hours in a day. ‘Policing’ in this context: “…maintain order and neatness in (an area, as a military camp),” meaning to pick up litter and trash.

Every morning we would assemble for formation...order our ranks (line up in equidistant rows) and be called to attention. With mind-numbing daily routine, roll call would be taken, uniforms and personal hygiene inspected followed by morning assignments.

Typically formations were run by non commissioned officers (NCOs). Human nature, however, often dictates ‘do less’ rather than ‘more,’ so frequently the NCOs would delegate inspections and work assignments to lower ranking soldiers.

Enter Private First Class Bob
Bob… he was a ‘first class’ something all right, but as we got to know him better, it had little to do with his military rank. For some reason, two cosmic forces collided to bring us into proximity. He had a delayed class assignment, and he had caught the eye of the senior NCOs – meaning, they delegated some of the morning formation chores to him. He seemed to relish finding inspection errors, and speaking for myself, had a knack for assigning people – of his same rank – to tasks they particularly did NOT like. When my class assignment came, I was finished with Bob and could not have been more pleased!

After basic ATC it was off to Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia for advanced training in radar approach control. In addition to a few hundred hours learning to guide helicopter pilots to a safe landings, I discovered that soldiers new to airfields were part of a broad practical joke conspiracy…sent on missions to retrieve buckets of ‘prop wash’ and yards of ‘flight line.’ Old hands seemed to never tire of sending earnest and naïve young men like me on these assignments. Everyone was in on it, so until someone took a little pity, it could go on for some time!! For the uninitiated, prop wash is NOT something you use to clean the propellers of aircraft; rather the slipstream of air formed by their rotation. Flight line is NOT rope used to tie aircraft down in the wind, but the parking and servicing area for aircraft.

The training ended…
At Hunter, I got my orders for Vietnam. All of us knew we would be going, but when the actual orders arrived, it became real. Next came a 30-day leave, a flight to Oakland, California and just like that, off to the war.

By the time I got to Vietnam, it had been several months and what seemed a lifetime from ATC School in Mississippi. Arriving in country, was a little like getting to Keesler. I was put in a holding unit until orders came for my in-country duty station. It took a week or so, but arrive they did. I hitched a ride on a helicopter that made its way to Vung Tau Army Airfield, on the edge of a small peninsula slipping into the pristine waters of the South China Sea – my home for the next 13 months.

I got off the aircraft and headed for Base Operations to report in and get my assignment. The exact sequence of events is not clear, but while getting organized I heard a voice, “Hey Dreisinger!” That voice – it had a familiar and unpleasant ring to it - ‘…slowly I turned, step by step, inch by inch…,’ and there he was - BOB!! He made some comment about the place, a familiar face, etc., etc., etc., …All I could think of was, “Damn...Vietnam AND Bob!!”

Judging books and their covers
As disappointing as it was to see this guy, there was something different about him. He had an energy, a drive and he did not have the attitude I had so resented during the earlier days in Mississippi. He seemed genuinely pleased to see me!

You know how it is said, “… you may not be able to change your circumstance, but you can change the way you think about it?” Maybe that was it, or maybe it was just a couple of youngsters a little afraid of the unknown with the slenderest common thread of experience.

I am not sure how our relationship evolved, but it did and fairly quickly. He was a tower controller and I worked radar from a small unit on the other side of the main runway.  Often we worked the same shifts, and found ourselves grabbing chow together, playing a little basketball when off duty, exploring the surrounding peninsula, in spare time teaching English in a small school to Monks, children and prostitutes, taking R&R to Japan and Australia – and so many other things. In that year little happened to one that did not happen to the other. In fact, his presence and friendship was so natural it seemed that it had always been. There was comfort in the implicit trust of friendship. We became not just brothers in arms, but brothers in deed.

It’s hard to express the fidelity – the love that grows between men when uncertain circumstances are shared; it is hard to express the loyalty that becomes ingrained; the growth and depth of understanding from unspoken words that takes deep root. It is also very hard to express how satisfying it is to be in an unconscious rhythm with another human being that is so resonant nothing needs to be said...so it was with '...my first class friend...' Bob.

As the subsequent years unfolded, we found ourselves drifting in different directions and on to different lives. We lost touch off and on, but lately reconnected. Yet, in the realm of the inexpressible, Bob – who at a certain time was the last human being I would have ever have expected – became an icon of friendship, loyalty and love that remains ingrained in the depths of my heart and mind.

It is hard to imagine, as I look back on that period of my life, I would have survived without Bob at my side, but as he recently said in a brief note, “...we still had each other...”

Indeed we did Bob…in deeds we did.

- ted