My father over his lifetime, cultivated a healthy hatred of morning glories. They grew around the perimeter of our garden, sometimes winding their way almost over-night past the edge of the row, winding themselves round a cornstalk or bean pole. I loved them, and never quite understood his disdain of them. They, like me, opened themselves up to the coolness of summer mornings. They showed off, low to the ground lying in the damp red Earth or covered in big dewy droplets, circling their way in and around the beans, swirling around the tomato plants. Again, like me, they closed their big dewy faces as the heat of the day hung overhead, waiting for the coolness to return, for the dew to fall, and for the comforting breeze of summer morning to coax them awake again.
My father also hated Kudzu, and like any good Southerner, I learned to hate it too. It grew like a scourge around our gardens, our barn, our back yard. Over many years, I watched my father chop at it with long machetes, watched him burn it back to keep it from encroaching on our territory. He chopped and poisoned and fought it with all his might, but a tenacious curse, it refused to give way to the human will.
After he retired, the gardens grew over with grass. Morning glories still popped up from time to time, but after years of no one cultivating the rich red soil, even they eventually faded away. The Kudzu though, it never gave up. It now takes over more than half the space where my father used to work, dripping sweat from his forehead into his eyes, working barefooted in his white T-Shirt and work pants all afternoon growing food for all of us.
This isn't a story about reminiscing over wandering out into the soft damp soil to find a ripe juicy tomato warmed by the sun to bite into. It isn't a story about how victoriously my father fought against the forces that conspired to choke out the plants he nurtured and needed to thrive.
My dad spent his life teaching lessons through the way he lived. He never knew anyone was watching, and certainly never thought of his routine life of hard work and determination as a metaphor for something much bigger and more important that what it actually was. He was a provider. He worked hard and played hard and devoted his life to spiritual things that even he couldn't quite comprehend. All the while, I watched. I saw things he did at face value, but as I've grown older and looked back I see so much wisdom in the way he lived and the lessons he left us to be gleaned from his life, if only we take the time to examine them.
When I was about 15 I developed a crush on a church boy. I liked him partially because I knew that if I won him over, I'd gain the acceptance of so many other people, including my parents. Of course he was too old for me and I never did win him over, but that never stopped me from dreaming and wishing and hoping. In fact, I spent most of my teenage years fixated on winning the love of this one guy, only to end up with a broken heart. I settled for someone else, got married too young, had two kids, got divorced.
After my divorce I thought life would just lead me to the right guy for me. The ex-husband, he was okay, but I never loved him the way I thought love should be. I knew he loved me, but I never learned how to BE loved. So I went searching. I dated the guy who cheated on me every chance he got. I dated the alcoholic guy. I got into a long term relationship with the mentally ill guy. I dated so many losers I lost count somewhere along the way--I felt at one point, like a lone warrior, fighting my way through a forest of Kudzu to find just one tiny blooming Morning Glory.
When I found out I had to start dialysis in 2013 I instantly decided the fight, for me, was over. No one wants to be stuck with a sick woman. My body changed in ways that most men would find off-putting, I decided. A tube in my abdomen, small but still there, hooking me up to a machine at night while I sleep so I can buy some time. I prayed a lot back then, that God would make me feel okay about spending the rest of my life without a partner. It felt inevitable, but scary. I didn't want to do life alone--I wanted companionship, a real best friend kind of guy who could accept me for who I am. Life in general didn't change much for me after dialysis. I had a little more energy, but my clothes still fit. I felt like the same person, but I knew that to the average man, I was and am, damaged goods.
Now before you feel sorry for me or try to tell me I'm wrong, just listen. Because over time God answered those prayers of mine. He answered them by letting me get myself mixed up with an evil, vile man who wanted to use me and toss me aside like yesterday's garbage. I'd be lying if I said it didn't hurt--It hurt far worse than any surgery or physical ailment I've ever had to endure. But you know what else it did? It made me perfectly content to spend the rest of my life alone. I learned by that experience that life without a partner is far better than life with the wrong partner, and I learned that because of my age, parental status and disease, the odds of my finding a man to share my life were minuscule.
A couple of days ago on NPR I caught the tail end of a conversation about young women will serious illnesses. It was stating statistics about what happens in marital relationships when the female becomes seriously ill. It said that in 60% of cases where the woman in a marriage gets a serious illness, her husband ends up leaving her. When men in marriages get seriously ill only about 20% of wives leave them. Some people have questioned my decision to give up on relationships over the last few years. They tell me "not all guys are bad." I never said they were. Or they say, "Someone out there would love you despite your illness." I doubt it. If more than half of married men leave the women to whom they've made vows for better or for worse, who he heck is going to sign up for a relationship with a sick gal right out of the gate--unless of course he's sick too. And that brings me to another dynamic with which I am not willing to live.
One sick person in a household is enough. Sure, there are nights when I am so tired that I wish I had someone here to get my dialysis machine set up for me. When I was training for dialysis I watched a video of a man on dialysis asking his wife to get his machine ready at night because he was just "too tired." His wife very sweetly set everything up for him while he rested in bed. I knew even at that moment that having someone do that for me--well it would never happen, and I know I would not have the patience or the energy to "mother" a sick man and still be a good mom to my son. I can't imagine making him live with TWO adults who are in the kind of shape I'm in!
My disease encroached upon my life in much the same way the Kudzu inched its way into our garden every year, only I had no fire or machete or poison with which to fight it back. It slowly took over my kidneys, and then my whole life, swallowing me up until I had nothing left but to accept it. It made my world smaller, it limited my options in life, it took away a tiny glimmer of hope I once clung so tightly to, that I wouldn't grow old alone. The one consolation in that? I likely won't grow old at all.
I can only hope that as time marches on and more and more of me is lost to this illness, some beautiful moments pop up along the way and wind themselves through the pages of my life in bright colors and temperate blossoms of dew-drenched color. Maybe along the way, those glorious moments of joy and contentment will line my path and leave behind a sweet legacy of a life beautifully lived and appreciated, even as I've walked the most abandoned pathways to my final destination. Maybe someone else will find them there and glean from them, a lesson the way I often find lessons in the every-day labor of my father's hands.
May my footsteps leave a path through the damp red clay from which I sprung; footsteps that lead to acceptance and peace, and a wisdom that only years of looking at where you've come from can give.
