I Never Wanted To Know

I never wanted to have to find out, and prove, how tough I can be - never.

I still don't want to.

I don't want to.

I don't want to.

At the moment I'm not feeling the least bit tough. I'm in the process of soaking my way through a roll of paper towels, having already used up my box of Kleenex.

The loss of this oh so dear friend is hitting very hard. 

Part of it is that I was not with her; we never got to say goodbye. The last thing she said to me were the above words, 'You will do what you have to do.' They seemed such a non-sequitur at the time, just a couple of days ago. We smiled, her eyes as always giving me strength and peace. I was so very looking forward to seeing her today, her smile, the smile reaching her eyes as she recognized me.

All these tears, this plugged nose, red eyes, sopping wet paper towels - they are my selfishness, which doesn't help the situation any. I weep not for her but for my own loss. I am bereft, bereaved.

Part of it is that I cannot really grieve except here, alone. I can't take the time it would require to find my peace - and what peace is there for me to find? This dear friend is the one I sought out when I was in need of peace, and strength. For years, from the day I met her, she was my go-to person for peace, and strength. Now I feel as though I have lost my balance and fallen. It is times like this that I seek my friend - but she is gone from me so where am I to turn?

Part of it is the cumulative effect of continual loss.

Every other loss over the years of our friendship was somehow eased a little by the touching of our foreheads, the touch of her hand to my face, the understanding in her eyes that I needed her. Every one. She was there when I needed her, and I ... I ... where was I when she might have needed me? 

Part of it is my own guilt. I should have been there, should have spent more quality time with her, with everyone ... 

Her words are in my mind, in my heart, in my soul. She didn't always talk a whole lot. These words from her are precious to me. So very precious. You see, although she never read a word of the books I write, the words of this dear friend are quite very familiar to me. They have been many times the words of Characters who have never held my hands in theirs, never touched foreheads with me, never smiled into my eyes - yet it is their words I heard from my friend, out of the blue just a couple of days ago. They seemed so out of context but it turns out that they were not.

And so, what am I to do?

I've been weeping for hours; you'd think I'd be out of tears but no, they keep coming.

They do not belong to her, nor to any of the others. They belong to me and I ought to have known they were coming.

I cannot be as tough as I think I ought to be. 

I cannot.

In reality, I do not want to be.

I would rather go through the grief, the hurt, rather shake my fist at the sky, rather weep and weep and weep - and God it hurts, it's a soul-wrenching hurt.

If the tears flow through this night, so be it. If they are still flowing come daylight, so be it. I will weep them, let them rise, course, fall, and carry with them from my heart bits of that hurt until their task is done.

If they do not abate I will call in for tomorrow's shift. It is not right, not fair to the others who deserve the best I have in me to give to them. Someone will ask me, when they answer the phone, 'Are you sick? What are your symptoms?' And what will I say?

I am heart-sick. 

What do you mean, you're heart-sick? You have a heart condition? You need to see your doctor.

Not that kind of heart-sick.

Well, what do you mean then?

I'm grieving.

Oh. Did your mother die? One of your children? Who?

When I tell them who, they will remind me that I work in a nursing home, what do I expect? Taking time off work every time somebody dies? Are you kidding me? You'd never be at work. Suck it up Buttercup.

No, this is only the third time in almost six years. I can't even count the number of my people who have died in that time, I can't remember all their names even - yet I loved them, each and all, cared for them and about them. And I learned from them, each and all. From them all I learned. Hard, harsh lessons.

I've learned the hard way about courage, tenacity, resilience, peace, strength, endurance - and love.

It's the goodbye part I'm still having trouble with.

Yes I know all the platitudes and yes they're all true.

It's me that is the problem here, you see. It is I who am bereft, I who am grieving, I who now feels pain. I'm not yet as tough as they are. One day, if I am lucky, perhaps I will catch up to them.

Meanwhile, the lessons continue.

This year and a day is going to feel like eternity.

Listening to the Elders

Opinions are indeed a dime a dozen. Everyone’s got at least several.

Options really do abound, but options they will remain – sitting right there on the table but so far off to the side that they’re more likely to get knocked onto the floor by somebody’s elbow than they are to be noticed.

Viable Solutions have become rarer than hens teeth. As more and more of those Options hit the floor, unseen and unnoticed, the Viable Solutions they could have been used to both generate and implement are rapidly dying out and disappearing before our very eyes.

What are we going to do about it?

We don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, nor to offend – yet what of our own feelings, the offenses directed at us?

Rise above all that, we are told. Reach out to those who are doing the hurting and the damage. We smile rather bitterly, and nod our obedient heads.

Our elders offer a different approach.

We look askance at our elders, appalled at the words coming out of their mouths. I work with lots of elders; it’s my job. When it comes to that, my own years are quickly carrying me into the Elder Zone. I find myself appalled at the thoughts coming into my own mind these days and sometimes look askance at my own reflection.

But nobody’s asking for their opinions, nobody’s listening to the options they’re talking about. Nobody wants to hear that harsh measures might not be so harsh in the long run if you use them with some judicial wisdom and mercy.

No they’re not talking about raising taxes.

 ‘We,’ they say, ‘have enough revenue, enough resources, to meet our own needs.’

‘What we do not have,' they say, 'is enough to carry the rest of the world.’

Well, nobody’s talking about us having to carry the whole wide world here, you know.

It just seems like there are a lot more people here in our land than belong here, and those we have been carrying.

‘Get them out,’ say the elders. ‘They can wait until they’re invited – and those who do the inviting will have them in their own homes – but nobody’s inviting anybody until we get our own messes straightened out.’

It’s like America decided to throw a party and got all kinds of party-crashers showing up out of the blue.

‘Sure we want to be hospitable but for heaven’s sake those people are taking what we prepared. Where’s the respect? Where’s the consideration? Where are the good manners?’

‘Get them out of here. We’d like to enjoy the fruits of our own efforts.’

More voices add their bits, beginning to show some of their frustration.

‘They’re going to eat us out of house and home. Who the heck told them they could just barge into somebody else’s home and help themselves to what they had nothing to do with making? Get them out.’

That would be the reaction of most of us to anyone who crashed any family or community event.

We would send the crashers packing and be rather upset at having to set guards to keep them from doing it again – but guards would be set and invitations issued and checked at the door from then on – at odds with the way things are supposed to be around here, but we would most assuredly do it. We wouldn’t be happy about it but we would do it.

What we spend on illegals in our country ought to be going to an equal number of our own – many thousands of our elders and other vulnerable folk could use that money. Think how many millions could be helped. As many as there are illegals.

‘We don’t want to be mean about it, but really – they’re being the mean ones, not to mention rude - and we just can’t afford them. Get them out and take care of your own, like their folk should be doing. Maybe when things get better some of them can come back, the ones with decent manners.’

‘I heard there’s a bunch who don’t think they even have to obey our laws, that they can just have their own. Who brought these people up to think that’s okay? Really. It is not okay.’

Onward.

The elders also advocate creativity and conservation of resources.

Some of these elders are from times long past, and they remember their own elders’ stories.

‘If we ran out of wood we burned corn cobs.’

‘The windmill brought up our water.’

We’re going to run out of fossil fuels one of these days. We aren’t likely to run out of sunshine, wind, water.

‘We didn’t have electricity. If we were running low on lamp oil we went to bed when it got dark. We had to get up early anyway to do chores. Then we’d hitch up the horse and go to school.’

‘Mama made my dresses out of flour sacks. We used what we had and made the most of it.’

‘We did the wash once a week and hung it out on the line to dry. The sun and wind were our clothes dryer.’

‘One year Daddy bought fancy glass lights for our Christmas tree and they were pretty but couldn’t light up without electricity. Daddy took the battery from the tractor and hooked up the lights. It was only for a few minutes but we had a lit up Christmas tree that year.’

So yeah, these folks advocate finding and using whatever forms of energy can be counted on for the future needs of our people.

‘The little ones fed the chickens and gathered eggs. When we got big enough we could carry the feed pails for the pigs and then could throw hay bales for the cows and horses.’

These are the folk who worked, and worked hard, from childhood on – because that’s just the way it was.

These are the folks we don’t want to listen to.

‘We were too busy minding our own business to pay much attention to anyone else’s – except we always found out, you know, if someone got sick or died or something. If their family needed a hand with the harvest, we’d all just do it. Or building a house or a barn for someone. We made it into a kind of party. And our mothers and grandmothers got together to make quilts. We built and made a lot of our own things. We used to make kites out of sticks and string and paste. We’d get a ball of yarn from Mama, wind it up real tight, and find a good stick to use for a bat – and we played baseball in the yard after we got our chores done. Sometimes we’d go swimming in the creek. And there was always school and church where we’d see our friends.’

Minding their own business, helping friends and family and neighbors when need be, getting their work done, socializing with each other, and just living their lives as best they could sounds like something out of a book.

It hasn’t been so very long, my friend. Only a bare generation or two back these bits of stories were lived by our own elders. Some things endure to this day in some places.

I for one cannot fault our elders for wondering about the rest of us. I cannot fault them for looking around them, hearing the news, and feeling as though a bunch of party-crashers are cashing in on what they spent their hard-working lives building to protect them in these their elder years, and for the future generations of their own families to continue to build on and appreciate.

‘What happened?’

A frustrated elder looks at me, news of terror on the television and a Social Security notice in hand.

‘What happened? Where did all these people come from and what are they doing here? Who invited them?’

‘I don’t know,’ is all I can say, an inadequate response.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well they need to go back to wherever they came from. Then close the doors while we clean house. And get our soldiers home. We could use them to guard our borders – and us. Let the rest of the world fight their own battles for once.’

Many of our elders would give just about anything to be able to go back and work even harder than they did.

‘We should have been able to stop this before it got started. We didn’t even see it coming. Now we’re stuck and so are you.’

‘Well, it is what it is.’

‘But how are you young people going to stop it?’

And I smile because I am not a young person.

‘We have some pretty smart young people these days. They’ll figure it out.’

‘Well, they better hurry up about it. I’m not so sure there are any smart people left.’

I smile again.

‘They’ll figure it out.’

‘They better.’

In my opinion we should listen to our elders.