Hope in the Flames

I came across an article today entitled "Find Your Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin, in Issue One of Simplify magazine. Rubin writes," My college roommate was a dedicated journal keeper. She once told me, 'Every once in a while I have a big insight into myself or have a major epiphany about life. The thing is, when I look back in my journals, I realize that I had exactly the same idea a few years ago—but I forgot it.'"

I had, in fact, a similar revelation, but with dramatically different results.

Our family spent a year in India working with Youth With A Mission, a Christian organization with bases throughout the world. After training at the Lindale, Texas base, we'd gone on an outreach to Mexico City after their earthquake in 1985. We'd been housed in an unfinished hospital building with water so cold in the bathroom's overhead shower, that I got a headache the one time I tried to use it.

After that, we walked, my husband and our four young children, to the banyo once a week for hot showers. On the way, we'd buy pastries. I homeschooled the older children, my husband was on a construction team, I helped with meals. It was a great experience.

The following January, we embarked on an even bigger adventure. It is amazing now, post-911, to remember the bags of sharp tools we took on board the airplane that would take us to the other side of the planet! Four children, age two to eight, living in a foreign country, far from everything familiar.

For almost a year, we lived in one village, then another. We went on an outreach to northern India, where we visited the foothills of the Himalayas. We took rickshaw rides, bus rides, train rides. Our oldest, who turned nine, remembers the most about that year, but we gained so much, even as we slept on a concrete floor, had no running water, ate simply. 

All along that incredible journey, I kept journals. Many journals. By kerosene lamplight if the power had gone out during a brown-out, or sitting by the pond watching the kids swim, I journaled. In detail, whether writing about making love on the mat when we knew the children were sound asleep, or a visiting teacher's insight, or an argument that stung to the core.

Our year was supposed to be the first of a lifteime as overseas missionaries, but that was not what happened. Back in the States, we learned that our oldest daughter's medical condition warranted Western medical treatment. We took it as a sign that we should remain here. 

During the following three decades, we went through experiences much harder than that concrete floor, more challenging than adapting to a meager diet. It wasn't just the trials and tribulations every family faces as their children grow up. It wasn't just the challenges every marriage faces, or the way life meanders away from expectations and dreams. Issues. Death. Sorrow. Debt. Disease. Aging parents. Job upheavals. All of the above. 

Of course, there was also happiness, and growth, and abiding joy. And faith, which kept everything in perspective, that assured me all would be well, that there was purpose, a plan.

Then when our youngest son Adam died in 2000 following a car accident, I sensed -- deep, deep inside -- that as sad as I was, one day joy would return. I didn't know it would be 10 years. Faith was not shaken, but joy was. Moments of joy at graduations or babies or personal triumphs or holidays kept me going, but the overwhelming reacquaintance with joy as a constant companion, beneath whatever else life threw my way ... that was, and is, amazing.

At a writer's group I began attending, we read Writing Down the Soul by Janet Conner, and I found myself thinking about journaling again. I didn't, and don't, journal often, but I was reminded of the old India journals stored in a cedar chest.

One evening, I took out the journals alone and began reading. I skipped pages, skipped months, smiled as I saw thoses faces again, heard the lovely cadence of dialects and the ever-present beeping of horns in the city. I was also appalled at what I saw threaded throughout that wonderful year in India. Many of the same issues I might journal about today, I mentioned then. Some of the same negative aspects of my life. The same heartbreaks and questions. I could have written some of this yesterday, I thought.

I wept against the day my children might find the journals after my death. True, they might understand me better, but I would've already passed on, so what would that accomplish? I didn't want them to see, there in black and white, the undercurrents I had struggled with as they grew up, not without knowing all of the sides of all the stories. And that would be impossible.

And too, I remembered the ruthless room cleaning I had done just before my husband proposed. I had thrown away things other guys had given me, starting new, starting fresh, turning a corner. Within days, we were engaged.

I needed to turn a corner again, if only in my heart. I made a decision.

By then, it was dark. I took the journals to a small fire pit outside behind our house, along with lighter fluid and a lighter, and I burned them to ash. I sat there, poking the flames with a stick, until nothing remained that was readable.

When I told my writing group what I had done, some of them were aghast. Your writing! It's gone!

For me, though, it was cathartic, a symbolic act that the ways in which I had settled, the ways in which I had cheated myself out of happiness, the lessons it had taken me so long to learn but finally had...it was a dramatic gesture, but a grand one. 

We talk about "burning bridges behind you" as if it's always a bad thing, but we forget that some bridges shouldn't be built. Some bridges should only go one way. At the time, none of that was in my thinking, and I don't even care if the analogy fits my actions. I didn't try to analyze why I needed to burn the journals, I just knew it would be a good thing. 

I wept a little at the loss, yes, but there was hope in the flames.



(c) Ellen Gillette, 2018

Ullage

I attend, for the most part faithfully, a writers' group called Use Your Words. The Inner Truth Project, an outreach to victims of sexual abuse and violence, hosts us, but we are a group of women and man (occasionally more than one) who share about current projects, do homework, respond to writing prompts, and eat chocolate. Sometimes a guest facilitator or speaker runs the show, but most of the time, sweet Wendy Dwyer keeps us on track, or at least sort of. Writers, nay, women, often get sidetracked.

The homework assignment for the last session was this: Write about an area where you'd like to do better. I left it until the day of, which happened to also be the day I got a Dictionary Word of the Day: ullage. Could be the amount by which contents fall short of filling a container, could be the quantity remaining in the container that has lost part of its contents by evaporation, leakage, or use.

How appropriate for the assignment, I thought. The ullage of our lives could be said to be that which needs more work to fill us completely up, round out our character, etc. And at the same time it could also refer to a measure of what has been used up between our birth until this point.

The irony of one word meaning both things is that we are containers. As babies, we are mostly full. Fill us with joy and love during our infant years. Think of all the nurturing we receive when people hold us as if we are worth all the gold in the world. In that moment, we are precious. Fragile. Complete strangers will sniff at us, as if faced with expensive ambrosia. Our skin is stroked gently. We are bounced up and down rhythmically and immediately when grandmothers (not necessarily our own) get to hold us.

Early on, then, many of us are full. Over time, however, we leak, the holes and cracks we get in our containers the result of stress and strain or outright damage. We give of ourselves, using our storehouse of joy and love and patience on others because it feels good to us, or it's the right thing to do, or to get something in return. Sometimes we do, sometimes it's from a different source than the one we expected or thought we needed. We are neglected and the good, the love, the feeling of being in sync with ourselves and with the universe begins to evaporate.

How to make up the ullage? Where we actually lack – in knowledge, needed skills, hobbies to embrace – we can learn. We can increase the contents of our vessel. But we can never stop giving out, either. There will always be the ullage, because we will have always lost part of the contents. The trick is how we lose it. As with so many things, the choice is ours.

I don't want to evaporate. I don't want my love or joy or peace to respond to the heat of stress or anger by vanishing, little molecules of me breaking off and being swallowed by the negative force coming against me. I would say this even more strongly: I refuse to evaporate. There are people who ignore me, or neglect me, or act as if what I want or what I say is not important. Whatever. I refuse to go up in their puffs of prideful smoke. I'm here, and until God calls me home, I'm here to stay. Ignore me at your peril – or at your preference. I'm still here.

I also don't want to leak through rifts of unforgiveness and bitterness I've allowed to develop and widen. When you ignore a crack too long, there will be a break eventually. A shattering. Spillage that is difficult, if not impossible, to sop up. Never does it all get put back together as it was before. Not to say we can't heal, we can and do. But the fault lines remain, even if we find ways to hide them. They say it is easier to build men than to repair them, which is true. When a tiny crack appears, I want to address it. Forgive the one who hurt me, or ask the one I hurt to forgive me. Keep short accounts, in other words. When we don't forgive, we give our offender power over us, a power that he or she doesn't deserve.

The best way to have ullage, I am thinking, is to use what we have, and find a reliable source for replenishment. Spiritually, the source will be God, not a religious thing but one of relationship with someone who has proven to be trustworthy and faithful. We only scratch the surface, any one of us, in true understanding of how unfathomable the depths of his love for us are. Fortunately, we don't have to understand his love to accept it.

Back to the writers' group assignment, though. What area would I like to improve? Beauty. Not physical beauty, although I definitely need to stay on top of things like my weight and health, the message I communicate to others through my appearance – do I value myself in this moment? Am I confident? Do I feel beautiful, and if so, why? Does it depend too much on this or the other, or another person, or can I hearken back to that moment in my infancy when all I knew, from everyone I encountered, was acceptance and love and affirmation? That all-encompassing awareness of love was the first awareness we experienced. Life has a way of throwing up roadblocks, but knowing we are loved is still important.

As a pre-teen, I remember reading something in a book titled Calico Palace. It was about the gold rush days in California, but what I remember was a man telling a woman that "every woman is as beautiful as one man thinks she is." That's always stuck with me. You could pick that apart and analyze the psychology of it, the political incorrectness, but it is part of who I am today.

Physical beauty – or knowing that we are confident and attractive and enough for whatever comes our way – that's one thing. But where I want to grow is another. Creating an atmosphere of beauty around me. Beautiful words. Beautiful artwork. Beautiful smells and tastes. Recently, I had the privilege of attending an artist's private showing in her home. Everywhere I turned, there was something clever and creative, something that said "A clever and creative woman resides here." It was invigorating. I felt like a little sponge, soaking up the artistic atmosphere.

My world is too silent. Too drab. Often I am a quiet English countryside when there is a touch of morning fog and a lone whippoorwill sings out now and then. There is a time for that. But I also want to be a raucous Calcutta marketplace full of overpowering color and spice and heat, a tabla and sitar speeding up their beat and melody in the background as my heart is beating faster and faster, exhilarated by life.

In what area of life would I like to do better? In living, really living, every moment. There is beauty inherent in life, all around us. I want to do better at sensing life, enjoying life, and celebrating its beauty.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2018

A Temporary Separation

My mother, Laura Jane Rogers Pendergraft, born on October 17, 1933, was named for her grandmother Laura Ellen Whitley -- I was named for her as well. She passed away January 12 a little over a year after being diagnosed with lung cancer. I was so surprised when we got the report. Mama hadn't smoked heavily ever, and hadn't smoked at all in half a century. She was a heart patient with Parkinson's, so those conditions were more expected to be the cause of her eventual end, but Mama didn't always follow expectations.

She went by Jane, but I only called her Mama. As my sister Rebecca (whom I only call Becky) shared at her memorial service, Mother sounds formal and distant. There are grown children who still call their mothers Mommy. Both our sets of kids refer to us as Mom. But in true Southern tradition, Mama was Mama.

When she was born at home, it was not an easy delivery. Growing up, we heard ... many times ... how the doctor used forceps to literally pull her out. which supposedly accounted for her long neck. Our grandfather said she screamed for three months. It's a wonder we wanted to have babies! This reminds me of something else - "Twilight Zone" was considered too dark for children in our household, and probably came on after our bedtimes. But the next morning at breakfast, Mama would tell us in great detail of the previous evening's episode, so vivid that we could relive every dark and scary moment.

Mama was a bit of a tom boy, but early on, she showed exceptional musical talent. At only 14, she marched into the local radio station and asked for her own show. She was given a spot in conjunction with a local minister, a Rev. Koestline, and she played the organ, specially trained by the organ company for three months. She played for school functions and the Rotary Club. She was also smart as a whip, valedictorian for the class of 1951 and voted as Most Likely to Succeed and Most Talented by her classmates at Albemarle High School. Later, I remember her sighing that she had more common sense than the psychologists she was secretary to at Western Carolina College when we were little, and we never doubted the truth of her statement.

Mama had entered nurses' training, after high school but left before graduating. Then, you couldn't be married in the program and she was discouraged from the long, hard hours taking care of lots of old men, she said, who tried to embarrass the young innocent students. Working at Starnes' Jewelers back home in Albemarle, she met a handsome red-headed teacher who came into the store. He was chaperoning a dance at her old high school, and asked her to be his date. At the dance, everyone parted just like in the movies she loved to watch every Saturday as a child, so that Herb and Jane could take the floor.

They married on December 26, 1953, and stayed married 64 years. They were not always easy years, especially when they lost their third baby, but the two of them taught us a lot about commitment, sacrifice, and carrying on.

Mama was a worker. At some point, she had three part-time jobs, or was it four? When we moved to Florida, Mama continued to work, in addition to being church organist or pianist. Her fingers were nimble, whether winning a typing contest or finishing a tax return, whether accompanying a cantata, or adding to the contemporary worship.

One of my most peaceful, early memories is lying in a church pew at the Methodist church in Cullowhee, North Carolina. The church was empty except for Mama and me as she practiced for the coming Sunday. Her music was flawless, and lying there, listening to her, I felt close to heaven. I think it was an accurate sensation.

Mama's nimble fingers helped her playing cards too. That era's version of gaming involved sitting tother around a table, talking and laughing while Canasta or Shanghai was played. She never, ever "let us" win, not so much a sign of her competitiveness as, I think, wanting us to be prepared for the realities of life: Whatever you receive, you have to earn.

When we were growing up, we watched one channel together, took road trips on the weekends together, went to see the relatives at Christmas together - her parents, Daddy's family, her sister "Susie Q," all the nieces and nephews. We read books together, went to church together. Rarely, to a movie or out to eat, two very big deals. 

If I were to boil my childhood down to its core, I'd say that the two main things Mama and Daddy taught Becky and me were that there was nothing we couldn't accomplish, and that no matter what, they'd always love us. The first was perhaps a form of child abuse - who can live up to that?! - but the second always caught us when we failed.

One of my favorite Mama stories is the night we sat down to supper, David and I, our oldest daughter Terri and her toddler Jasmine. Before we said grace, Jasmine piped up. "I think we need to pray for GG." GG was Mama's nickname celebrating her role as great-grandmother. The grandchildren had called her Grambo or Grandma Graft.

It's important to understand that GG had babysat for Jasmine that day. The WHOLE day. When I asked Jasmine why, she said, "All day long GG kept saying 'Help me, Lord.'" Mama was famous for those mutters, simultaneously quick prayers for grace as well as pointed acknowledgment that things weren't going as she wished.

Mama was capable and strong, and a little, shall we say, controlling? She knew the best way to do some things, and felt a responsibility to share it, because she loved us and wanted us to ALSO know the best way to do it! I have, many times, heard her correct nurses or hospital staff about cleanliness. Because she and Daddy lost their son to a staph infection at a hospital, she was obsessive about germs. To her dying day, she would not let her bare feet touch the floor, at least by choice. That was Mama - refusing treatment to kill cancer, but worried that she might pick up something from eating cheese that might have gone bad in the refrigerator. A complicated woman, in other words.

Even in her last days, Mama would rally for a few seconds to tell us that they were out of paper towels, or remind us of an upcoming appointment. She didn't give up control easily. She was a caregiver who sometimes wished someone would take care of HER. God seemed to grant that request at the end of her life. Treasure Coast Hospice and Lake Forest Park Senior Living staff provided consistent and compassion care for her, for which the family is very grateful. That last week, though, when Ashley, one of the hospice nurses asked her about something, Mama didn't even open her eyes. She was too weak to shrug, but she simply said "Whatever." THAT was as significant a change to the nurse as her not wanting to eat, or her falling blood pressure. Mama was not a "whatever" kind of gal most of the time.

It was a relatively long and slow decline, going from getting tired on the way to the dining room, to needing someone to push her there in a wheelchair, to not leaving her room, to not leaving her bed. It's hard to watch someone so vital, become so weak. It was hard especially, I think, on the grandchildren, who had known her as the silly Grambo making scary faces or giving piggy-back rides. She stopped caring about wearing her wig or make-up, or was (more likely) unwilling to inconvenience anyone by asking for help. My son told her one time that she was the consummate Southern lady, make-up always perfect. That pleased her greatly, and to let that go was just another indication of how determined she was to be done with all this nonsense and get on to glory.

Mama was resolute in her decision to donate her body to science. A heart patient, she also had Parkinson's and cancer. When her grandson, my youngest son Adam, died following a car accident, he saved five lives by being an organ donor. She decided she could help too. We don't know at this time how her donation to a group called Science Care was used, but we're at peace knowing she did exactly what she wanted. Eventually, her body will be cremated, and Science Care will send us the remains. Honestly, we're not sure what we'll do with them then, but Mama did say NO WATER. She can still get us to do what she wants, even from heaven.

One of Mama's greatest regrets was not finishing nursing school. She was so proud when "little" Becky, our youngest daughter, became an RN. But she was proud of all her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She was what Joyce Landorf Heatherley called "balcony people" in her delightful little book with the same title. Had geography and then her health allowed it, she would have been at every soccer match, every football game, every school program, every celebration. She was thrilled to attend her grandchildren's graduations, promotions, weddings, to be at the hospital for births. She loved playing with kids herself, making faces, dressing up, having them sit by her at the piano. She saved every picture, every card. She treasured us, her daughters, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. She prayed for us. At her memorial service, I asked those in attendance to really think about that. She prayed for both family and friends, so virtually everything each of us encountered or endured or triumphed over, in the midst of every good decision or horrible mistake, Mama's prayers were right there in the midst. 

In her obituary, it was stated that she encouraged everyone she met. She once said she had a "kissing ministry," the perpetual loving mother finding new children to support each day. She called CNAs by name and blew kisses to ladies across the dining room at the assisted living facility. She kept photographs of children whose names elude us. She loved. We didn't always appreciate that, because it motivated her to correct and instruct when we didn't necessarily want correction or instruction, but that's what mamas do.

In her final weeks, Mama said she wished she had something profound to say. There were family situations she always thought that if she'd just said this, or just said that, maybe she could fix it. She was a fixer. I'd remind her that some things may not get fixed, this side of heaven, but we could trust God with the details. She hoped that at the very least, the unity of family and friends at her life's end, would start a move in the right direction. Several things happened that seem to indicate that she, once again, got what she wanted -- good decisions, a softening of hearts, rekindling of friendships and other relationships as we stood around after her service talking of old times, looking at photographs, hugging one another in shared emotion.

Mama was raised in a church-going family, and rededicated her life to Christ as an adult, always faithful in attendance and service until her health prevented it. But even then, a pastor who held services at the facility where she lived said that she would challenge and bless him when he visited. She'd ask deep questions, quote verses of scripture that were especially meaningful to her. She trusted her heavenly Father with her life, as well as her death, although she was getting increasingly surprised, even disappointed, every morning she woke up here. She was so ready to be reunited with friends and loved ones. To see her baby, to see our son again, and her father (George Adam Rogers), for whom both boys were named. Her mother Polly (Pauline Whitley) and sister Marie Tucker. Friends from Lake Forest Park who went before her -- Julius, Howard -- friends from the Lunch Bunch who'd gone to school with her in Albemarle.

When she was diagnosed with cancer, she put in her order with the Lord to go in her sleep. Doctors had explained some of the possible scenarios, and she said no thank you. Like almost always, she got her way. We will miss her, every day. Some will regret not having visited more, or telling her they loved her one more time. When you think about it, no one ever says, "I wish I hadn't gone over as much as I did. I wish I hadn't spent so much time with someone who has passed." I encourage those people to stop.  Life is much too short, no matter how long it lasts, to live with regrets. Instead, let that wistful and wishful thinking motivate us to visit more, love more, share our lives more. 

As people of faith, we believe that this is only a temporary separation. We believe in eternity, in heaven. And if we believe that, then the transition to the "other side" is a promotion, a graduation, a healing to beat all healings. C.S. Lewis wrote that when people die, infants continue to grow until they reach their prime age, and the elderly get younger until they do also. If that is true, then Mama is now slender and beautiful with a full head of dark hair, unfettered by age and infirmity and devices to help her walk.

In Mama's senior year book, each graduate picked a phrase to go with their list of accomplishments at school. Mama's choice was a paraphrase from poet Bessie Anderson Stanley: She has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much.

I think that sums up Mama's life nicely.

A link to Mama's obituary and a guest book may be seen here: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/tcpalm/obituary.aspx?n=laura-jane-pendergraft-rogers&pid=187883633

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2018