Monthly Archives: May 2011

Ya don’t say….

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After being with Dad, Mom and Nate as their lives wound down, I’ve learned people on pain meds are not themselves. Trying to have a conversation with a heavily drugged person gives meaning to the word “hallucinogen.”

All of us wonder what we’ll say in our final days. Dad remained dignified, and Nate, who always had much to say, was accurate and gracious to the end.

But Mom? Absolutely goofy. Her colorful statements were so entertaining, we kept a log. She’d been a one-woman-show during her non-medicated life, and her words while drugged (for pain) stayed in line with her character.

Get ready to laugh.

  • Chewing on the hem of her hospital gown she said, “This tastes good, and I like the color. It’s also very nourishing.”
  • To a grandson: “Let’s play funeral. I’ll be the corpse. You be the soloist.”
  • To a sweet visitor: “I can’t wait to get rid of you.”
  • “The most important thing is my conversation with God. He talks out of the Bible, and I talk back.”
  • To me: “Let’s both get in the same bed and start a riot about same sex marriage.”
  • It’d be nice to see my apartment again, but I guess I’d rather go to heaven. I’ll wave down at you.”
  • Looking at our wrinkles: “Do I have strings all up and down my face? Because both Mary and Margaret do.”
  • To a nurse removing her dinner: “Save that food tray. When I’m in heaven, if the Lord decides not to return to Earth, I’ll have something to feed him.”
  • “Maybe I’ll go to bed now.” We said, “You’re already in bed.” Then she said, “Boy, that was easy.”
  • Son Tom asked: “How do you feel?” She said, “With my hands. How do you feel?”
  • After restlessly working both legs out from under the sheets, she began laughing hysterically. We said, “What’s so funny?” She sputtered, “My beautiful legs!”
  • To me: “I wish you a Happy New Year and that you’ll get prettier.”
  • “If I can do anything for you, let me know. I can only do things in my miserable way, but I am the way, the truth and the life.”
  • “It’s nice when parents are just starting out and know that ‘Jesus loves their little children.’ That helps when they don’t know anything.”
  • “Maybe I should change my mind about going to heaven tonight. There’s lots of happy people here, too.”
  • “I served 10 salmon. Put the rest over there. It’s brain food. It’s ok, but not great.”
  • “When I die, just drown the [pet] bird and throw him in the toilet.”
  • Pushing an invisible item around the end of the bed with her foot: “I’m trying to get that muffin over into the corner.”
  • A friend called and said, “Who’s there with you?” She said, “Just Mary and Margaret, if you call them visitors. It’s more like a zoo.”
  • “Today I’m better. I have happiness running out of my lips.”
  • To a visitor: “I’m going to throw up any minute…on you.”
  • Fingering her hospital gown: “I’m going to send this to Joyce. She likes blue and can wallpaper a room with it.”
  • “If I ever wrote a book, it would be about the magnificent mercy of God.”

These are just a few from 26 pages of Mom’s colorful statements. She spoke often of her approaching death but never with uncertainty or fear. One of her last statements while “under the influence” was, “Some stumble, some fall, but if we love Jesus Christ, we all eventually get home.”

She got home 19 days later… but forgot to take her salmon.

“We would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 5:8)

Straight Talk

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In 1972, my brother-in-law taught me how to hang wallpaper. Before he started on our red and blue hounds-tooth paper, he made a plumb line using a metal tool shaped like a teardrop, inside of which was a coiled string sitting in powdered chalk. Bervin pulled out the string and dangled it from ceiling to floor, a small lead weight tied to its end. One quick snap of the chalky string made a perfectly straight start-line for our wallpaper.

Today in my Michigan cottage, Drew began laying floor tiles with a similar process. After measuring and studying the floor, he stretched and snapped his plumb line in three critically important lines.

First he found the exact center of the room by criss-crossing red chalk lines wall-to-wall in both directions, making four 90 degree angles. Then he snapped a perfect 45 degree angle across the other lines so his first row of tile would line up precisely straight.

Scripture references plumb lines in several places, and Jesus, if he was a carpenter, surely had one. Biblical plumb lines were usually synonymous with God’s Word, his standard of righteousness. (The word “righteous” actually means “upright”, very close to “straight up and down,” which is what “being plumb” means.)

In Old Testament days, God measured his people against the plumb line of his Word. He hasn’t changed since then, nor has the Bible. Come to think of it, human nature is the same, too. Righteousness is as unattainable for us now as it was for them. None of us can measure up.

In building our lives as we please, our plumb lines become wobbly and wouldn’t even be good for wallpapering a room or tiling a floor. And wobbly standards make for unstable lives. In the ‘60’s young people used to say, “If it feels good, do it.” That reasoning draws a wiggly plumb line, and taken to its farthest extreme, becomes Osama Bin Laden. This man’s plumb line was a self-created standard of right and wrong having nothing to do with our God’s unchangeable measurements of righteousness.

But God has kept the books on Bin Laden, just as he keeps the books on the rest of us. Although we see ourselves as better than this evil man, Scripture puts us all in the same category. “All… are under sin. As it is written, ‘None is righteous, no not one’.” (Romans 3:9-10)

Being righteous can’t be found in our opinion of what’s good or bad. The only chance we have is to accept the righteousness of the one person who did measure up to God’s plumb line: Jesus. He offered to share his righteousness with us by dying for our sins, an offer that stood for Bin Laden, too, though he rejected it in favor of his own shaky plumb line.

Thankfully, Jesus Christ will one day return to earth as our ruling monarch. When that happens, one snap of his plumb line and everything we’ve made crooked in this world will quickly be made straight.

“This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the plumb line.” (Isaiah 28:16a,17)

The Upshot of Shots

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When newborns come into the world, they arrive with a clean slate which usually includes freedom from disease. We parents immediately jump in to keep it that way by yo-yo-ing back and forth to the pediatrician until our children virtually hate their doctor. That’s because every appointment includes a vaccination.

All 7 of our kids had the same pediatrician, a wise, gentle man we grew to love as a personal friend. When the kids would ask, “Am I having a shot today?”

He’d say, “No. Just a vaccination.”

Splitting medical hairs didn’t do much to cheer them, but by kindergarten, 99% of all needle-visits were over. The upshot of all their shots was freedom from the painful diseases former generations had to experience.

It’s been many decades since I had a vaccination. Well, until last week. Although I’ve never had a flu shot, the upcoming illnesses of old age are just ahead, and new vaccinations can prevent some of them. One virus I’d like to avoid is shingles, a painful skin rash that can hang on for months.

Even though doctors are promoting the vaccine for folks over 60, it’s not 100% effective. But a vaccinated person who does gets shingles won’t suffer the same intensity of pain.

Mom had shingles the year before she died, and nothing could soothe the fiery nerve pain on her neck and scalp. Shingles can even travel into ears and eyes, causing permanent damage. So last week, I decided to roll up my sleeve along with other shingles vaccinationees and get jabbed.

Too bad there’s not an inoculation for sorrow and heartache. We could all bop through life wearing big grins, and worries would be a thing of the past. No more middle-of-the-night anxieties or games of what-if. Happy thoughts would dominate, and contentment would be much easier to find.

The only problem would be our numbness. Being protected from the negatives would mean being deadened to the positives, too. If we couldn’t feel sadness, how could we feel happiness? Each human emotion needs its counterbalance.

On the day Nate died, all of us suffered raw pain. But would we rather not have had him at all? No, because that would have eliminated thousands of joy-filled days.

Thinking of this dilemma in a biblical way, if we were able to opt out of sorrow, we’d miss God’s special promises to the brokenhearted. If we didn’t experience affliction, we’d miss his deliverance. If we didn’t suffer guilt over sin, we’d never know the relief of forgiveness.

Even Jesus wasn’t inoculated against sorrow. If he hadn’t willingly been crushed for us, we wouldn’t now have access to spiritual healing.

So, if a vaccination against heartache did exist, we probably shouldn’t get in line for it. Just think of the counter-balancing blessings we’d have to miss.

Jesus said, “You may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)