Lately I find myself in a state of chagrin, with much of my life seemingly so out of my control. I doubt my every decision, all the way down to the simplest of every day things, like what to eat for breakfast, or whether to do another load of laundry before when the last load stil sits wadded up in a basket at the foot of my bed. You can imagine how tough a big decision must seem.
I wish for a path of less resistance. I remember my old lover who used to say, "Expect the best, but plan for the worst." I think of my dad, and wonder how he made so many tough decisions in his lifetime without creating a wealth of huge regrets deep in his soul. So, when I ran across this picture today, the memory attached to it suprised me. It should have lightened me, but somehow I feel heavier in my shoes.
My daddy had several rehab stays in a nursing home. During one of those stays I lived only minutes away, and dropped by to see him almost every day. Looking back on that time now, I treasure it, though at the time, I often felt tired and weary of sitting by his bed as he nodded off. The best days were the ones when he was alert and conversational. He was confused much of the time and didn't understand where he was or why he was there, but one day in particular, I hold so close to my heart. I sat on the bed beside him, my head on his shoulder, just the way we'd sit at my house after Thanksgiving dinner, both of us falling asleep to the sounds of football on the TV.
As a child, he infused my life with music. I fell asleep many a Tuesday night listening to him and my uncle Marice playing their guitars in the livingroom. He taught me guitar chords, bought me a piano, gave me the courage to sing in public--something it seems, is a skill you lose when you stop using it often. But this particular day, I started singing an old hymn he taught me when I was a kid. He listened, smiled, said he'd never heard that before but he liked it.
We talked about old times for a while, and I reminded him that he always lived a full, happy life.
"I didn't spend enough time serving the Lord." He said, tears welling in his eyes.
Tears welled in mine, too.
My dad wanted nothing more in life, than to serve God, to be a good man, to do what was right. His imperfections no more deplorable than the worst in most of us, he could not abide the thought of failing, or more succinctly, of failing God. Despite his dementia, I struggled to believe that he could ever feel righteously inadequate. I rattled off a list of all the things he spent his life doing in the service of the Lord, but he shook his head and said, "Yeah, but I could have done more."
Last week I picked up a sweet gentleman in Travelers Rest and took him to Slater Baptist to be with the seniors there. He lives a far piece (a fur piece if you're from these parts) out of the way, but is isolated, lonely and hemmed in by his living situation to the point that he doesn't even really have room to get up and walk around. Someone said to me, "You sure are going to a lot of trouble." Someone else said, "I can't believe you're going so far out of your way to do this." What they meant was, they couldn't understand why I'd put myself out for someone when I'm not getting paid for it. I did have to stop and take inventory--why was I doing it?
Tired and hot and so stressed, I walked beside Phillip as he slowly made his way from my car up the ramp to his back door. I thought to myself, "I don't know if I can keep doing this. I don't know if I should." Then, like a film in my head, I saw my dad pulling up to the back of Blue Ridge nursing home in Easley, then disappearing through the double doors for a few minutes. I saw him making his way back out again, pushing Harold through those big doors in his wheelchair. I saw my dad opening the front passenger door of the church van, pushing the wheelchair up just-so, helping Harold pull himself into the seat. This had been our Sunday morning routine for all of the childhood I can recall. The realization hit me, I do this because it's what I was taught to do. Because it seems like the right thing to do, even if it also feels like too much sometimes.
Phil's dogs barked madly at us as we approached the door. I fished his key out of the little pouch attached to his walker and unlocked the door for him, stood back and waited while he shuffled inside. The air conditioning from inside pushed its way through the heat a short distance before it got cut off by a blast of humidity. Inside, it was dark, empty, like a tunnel of sadness waiting to swallow him up. Part of me wanted to shut the door and run for my car, and part of me wanted to tell Phillip to turn around, just come home with me for a couple of days. We could watch TV together and maybe go get a hamburger one day.
Some part of me knows I can't save the world. I know I can't work for free, I can't help every single elder-adult I come across. I know that I often am just as in need of help as those I'm trying to help, I just don't like to admit that.
And that's probably why I feel so heavy inside; like maybe I will never measure up to my own expectations, much less those of my father or perish the thought, The Lord.
My dad did the best he knew how. I say that, knowing him so fully, his weaknesses and strengths, his inequities and virtues. I envision him often with sweat dripping off the end of his nose as he worked the garden in July heatwaves. The way he could turn up a glass of ice water and dump it down his throat, then hand it back to me and say, "Brng me some more." This thirst of his, seemingly contagious, I would take a sip of water from his glass on my way back outside. His thirst for life so fierce, I think it must run too, in my own veins.
I longed for summer to arrive this year. To run outside in a sundress and bare feet, to grow tomatoes and Zinnias and take the kids swimming. I never saw the troubles coming, so focused I was on glorious sunshine and lazy mornings with my boy. It's already the middle of July and I only now am starting to feel the sun on my shoulders and see some light peeking in from the dark corners of uncertainty that seemed to cover me over for a while. I don't know if I can ever feel good enough, if I will ever feel the assurance of living life the "right" way.
But July is already fading away into August, where yellow-hot days will singe the Earth and time will march on. A new school year will start. New milestones for my family, a new job for me and the realization that I must let go of what's behind me if I'm ever to reach for what's ahead.
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