Little Brother, Big Sister

We fought like cats and dogs, bickering about everything from splitting the bottle of Pepsi to the way I pronounced Po-lice. I teased and tormented that boy mercilessly just for the joy of it. He was intense and focused setting up an entire battle field on our playroom floor oblivious to everyone and everything beyond his plastic army men. I could not resist sneaking up and scaring the bajeebers out of him, causing plastic army men to go flying. I can hardly recount the event without laughing today. I could not stand that little brat; mommy’s favorite. But caring for him was one of my chores. Waking him each morning for school packing his lunch and making sure he got breakfast that included Tang, Instant Breakfast and toast. It was also my job to boss him around. How else was he ever going to turn out right. He became a broken record, “Mom, Shari is bossing me.”

As we got older the fighting often ended up being physical. Walking behind me on our way to school one day he was kicking stones at my feet. He didn’t stop even after my repeated warnings. Finally I swung around and wacked him in the head with my metal lunch box at which time I needed to take off running like HELL. On this day I managed to out run him and find safety at school. The time came when I could not longer out run him and his fist would leave bruises, so I had to get smarter in my torment.

It was all fair in love and war between brother and sister, until we actually needed each other. His mechanical skills proved useful when I ran over a parking block, or numerous other incidents where calling my father might have resulted in loosing my car keys. And a sister with a car was convenient for him at times even if he was a bit nervous about my driving. He tends to exaggerate stories like almost getting hit by an oncoming freight train while I was applying mascara. He had the option of taking the bus to school if he didn’t want to ride with me. But when I got to college, and he was still in high school, it was pretty cool to have a sister with her own apartment and cute girl friends. Then, when I lived in Memphis, it made for a great place to visit and bring friends; Graceland, Mudd Island and Beal Street.

Somewhere along the line he got less annoying and I got more compassionate. I am still bossy and he is still focused on some strange things. But, I think he turned out pretty well, and maybe just a little bit of it is due to his bossy older sister. Sorry for all the terror.

Today, I am glad we are side by side as we navigate through the last days of our father's life.

Love You, Bill

The Promise

Snow covers everything except the roadways and wherever people have made the effort to clear it. It is piled high at intersections and in parking lots, covered with the black grime from car emissions and scraped asphalt. Most of the trees are but grey black sticks piercing the frozen snow. Even the evergreens aren’t recognizably green. Flying into Columbus, the world below looked black and white, void of color. I had forgotten how ugly Midwestern winters can get. Snow is beautiful when it is fresh, fluffy and falling. Its beauty does not last as people have their way with it. Tromping it, scraping it, shoveling it and salting it down change it from a beautiful white heavenly blanket into the dirty, tattered and torn, misfit coat of a skid row alcoholic. The beautiful and the ugly each in the eye of the beholder and neither eternal are my lessons of life and death.

The scene outside is not so different than the scene inside my childhood home. The floor is covered with green and blue shag carpet, once proudly purchased and installed as part of our remodeling in the early 1970s. I remember with a chuckle the classmate who came home from school with me one day and asked if she could do my chore of vacuuming the carpet. She wanted the experience of vacuuming our new shag carpeting. Today it not only dates the house but matted and discolored it looks old, worn out and years beyond the point of needing replaced. What was once beautiful is now ugly and depressing. Wallpaper stained, paint chipping and the smell of antiques adds to the feeling of eminent death. What was once new has become old. What was once bright and shining is now dull and cracked. For everything there is a cycle of life.

For two days, I have sat by my father lying in the hospital bed provided by hospice. I have learned to give him Vicodin, Ativan and Morphine. I have closed my eyes and helped him take care of personal needs that a daughter never imagines she will be doing. Interspersed with the care giving are brief conversations about the past. We remember the way I used to come running into the same room and jump into his lap. Oh, what a difference forty plus years have made. Today such a move would probably kill him, put me in the hospital and break the chair into pieces. We laughed at the absurdity, then reminisce about the winters I sat on the arm of his recliner, weaving potholders and watching Ohio State basketball with him. He would crochet the edges of my potholders when I had one completed. Such was the way we spent our winters waiting for spring and the new life that would bloom.

I bought this bunch of tulips home from the grocery store yesterday, beautiful pink with spring green leaves. As I trimmed them and arranged them in a vase, my mother removed the poinsettia from the kitchen table and replaced it with the vase of tulips, remarking how she hopes the bulbs she planted last fall will bloom this spring. In a household waiting for death, the tulips remind us that spring will come and new life will spring forth. It is the promise of creation.

Hymn of Promise

There’s a song in every silence,
Seeking word and melody;
There’s a dawn in every darkness,
Bringing hope to you and me.
From the past will come the future;
What it holds, a mystery
Unrevealed until its season,
Something God alone can see.

In our end is our beginning;
In our time, infinity;
In our doubt there is believing;
In our life, eternity.
In our death, a resurrection;
At the last a victory,
Unrevealed until its season,
Something God alone can see