Month: June 2019

Touch…..from 2006

Since I wrote this piece, I lost the ability to touch my parents. I last touched my Daddy on May 21, 2010 at about 11:45 p.m. I rubbed my hand across his forehead and asked if he needed anything. He asked for a drink of water and I got one for him…and touched his hand as I took the glass back from him.

I last touched my Mom late in the evening on December 10, 2010….holding her hand as she drew her last breath. My Daddy died early on the morning of May 22, 2010 just minutes…perhaps just a couple of minutes before I could get to where he was….his forehead was still warm. But, I was too late to be there at the very last…which I deeply regret.

——————————————————————————————

Touch….from 2006

Out of all the senses that we as humans possess, I believe that touch is the most important.

For over 37 years now on most nights, I rub my wife’s back while I read and she is going to sleep. It’s sort of a habit now, but many times I do consciously think about it. I don’t think anything symbolizes love between two people more than touch does. I feel very grateful that I have been allowed during my lifetime to touch so many people that I love. I feel incredibly sad sometimes that one day I will not be able to touch those people any longer. Either I will move on, or they will and that ability, that privilege will be lost.

All three of my kid’s were touched a lot by my wife and me. I can’t count the times I heard people say: “You’re going to spoil that child by holding them so much!” Not so. I don’t think you can hold a child and love them too much. You can figuratively hold ON to a child too much and do it for selfish reasons, and cause problems. But to hold and lovingly touch a baby or small child? Nah. I don’t believe that. I think (I hope) our three children are well adjusted. Sometimes if you can’t even bring yourself to say the words “I love you” a touch will suffice. It will communicate that love. Don’t get me wrong though, I think it should still be said with words. The people you love NEED to hear it, for confirmations sake. But at the very, very least give them your touch.

Now, our grandchildren have also been given the same treatment as our children. Both by us, and by their parents. I still sometimes hear “You’re spoiling them” but at this point I don’t care.

Even if they had been blind and deaf like Helen Keller, they would have known, someway, somehow that they were loved. They would have known by touch. That’s all that Helen Keller had to go with, and look what a human being she turned out to be! Just through touch and touch alone.

Many times we look but we don’t see, and we hear but we don’t listen. We taste this wonderful life and then never give it a second thought.

Our other most powerful sense, the sense of smell we reserve for our subliminal memories most of the time. We catch a sniff of something and a memory automatically pops into our heads. Sometimes pleasant, sometimes not. But touch is the one that we have to consciously associate with things. It serves us well as a protector when things are too hot or too cold, and we might remember when it saved us from getting badly hurt because of that. But, to associate touch with love is something we don’t often do. It’s something we have to learn to do.

Even when we are touching someone in an act of love, with love, we have to teach ourselves that that is the reason we ARE doing it. We have to teach ourselves that touch is best.

Michelangelo painted God with his hand reached out towards Adam in an effort to touch him. That is the most poignant scene of the entire Sistine Chapel ceiling to me. God reaching out to touch us, to imbue some of his spirit and his soul to us through his all powerful touch. I think he touched us, but do we appreciate it? He reached us, but do we think about it? That touch made us what we are. It elevated us above the state of being just an animal and imbued us with a spark and a soul that will never die. Wasn’t that a wonderful gift?

I really believe that when we die that our sense of touch is the last thing to go. I can’t say for sure, I haven’t died yet and hope not too for a while longer. I HAVE seen many people lying in a hospital bed unconscious and seemingly oblivious respond to a slight squeeze of the hand, or a brush to the head. I know that they know that someone they love is reaching out for them, and touching them. I think as people slip out of their human costume and into their next form, that when that last vestige of touch leaves them, that last connection to everything they have been and are leaving behind, that there is just a moment of sadness that is felt before the call of the next form of existence takes over.

I don’t think that touch will be a part of our next path….a least not the way that we know it in this life.

Think about it next time you touch someone you love, and revel in that moment. You never know when those moments are going to run low…..and then run out. You might regret that lost opportunity. I don’t want to.

My Dad was my best friend. He did so much for me during my lifetime that I could never list it all if I tried.

He was an encourager when I needed it, and a disciplinarian when he had to be. He helped me cut wood to keep my family warm. He gave me vegetables out of his garden when we needed food.

He loved my children very, very much. He loved my wife like she was his own daughter. He was not perfect, and neither am I…so he taught me that you don’t HAVE to be perfect to be a good Father, just be there.

The last time I heard his voice was on May 22 2010..about 6:45 a.m. I wish almost every day that I could talk to him just one more time. I try to be half the Daddy that he was to me.

Miss you Dad, you were a good one. I’ll be thinking about you tomorrow, and wishing I could catch a fish, or whack a golf ball in your memory…or make somebody laugh like you always could.

If I had the chance…I put this arm around you….then the other arm around you….and squeeze hard!!

Paula and drove to Blue Ridge today for lunch and a quick drive to some places we went during our “honeymoon” 50 years ago. It was a simple week, staying in a little suite we thought would have long ago been torn down. To our surprise the little cottage units were still there, albeit a little careworn. I’m not sure what they called them back then. “Something” cottages. It was somewhere close enough that we could drive there in a couple of hours. It was right next to the lake. It was close to Cherokee N.C., which was going to be one of our main “trips” while we were there.

Paula reminded me that the cabin with the car parked next to it was where the National Forest ranger lived back in ‘69. We had driven our old ‘64 Ford Galaxy over onto the dam and it went dead. Had a bad alternator. We walked back to the ranger’s house and he gave me a ride to my Uncle’s house where I could get his help with the car. Paula stayed with the Ranger’s wife and kids.

Turns out, the car would have to be pushed off every time it needed starting…no much of a problem, just a little push. We lived with it while we were there. But, the day we were going to leave, I couldn’t get the locking gas cap off the car to put gas in it. We started back home from Blue Ridge with a half a tank of gas in a 350, 8 cylinder Ford…praying it would make it the 90 miles home. I coasted down from the top of Fort Mountain in neutral…could not turn the engine off because there would have been no brakes or steering, since they were power brakes and power steering.

The engine was running on fumes when we coasted into eighth street. Turns out, the gas cap was cross threaded onto the top, and we needed a new alternator. (And battery)

Fortunately, we had a luckier day today and had a nice lunch and a quick drive through some of the places we remember. Wish we’d had time to visit.

A Fathers Love, written in 2010.

I did a lot of writing before I got sick with heart disease and had bypass surgery. I’ll share a few of these little “essays” over the next little bit of time. Nobody has to agree or disagree…or even read them for that matter.

————————————————-

I know a Father’s love is advantageous, if at all possible.

With Fathers Day coming up soon, we all tend to want to pay respect to, and honor our Fathers.

Most of our Fathers are or were very precious to us. Most gave us unconditional love, and they gave us discipline when we needed it. They gave us guidance and advice. They raised us.

I also know sometimes Fathers totally mess up their kids. I watched Forrest Gump again the other night and pondered on how glad I am that there are not too many Daddies like Jenny’s Daddy.

I’m so glad my Dad was good to me, and I have tried my best to be good to my children. My wish is that all children have good role models and tight family units, but most of all that children have parents…People…who love them, and show them so, and tell them so. It’s of the utmost importance that the love is there.

I also remember reading that when his disciples told Jesus there were 5000 people following him, some of them sick…the first thing he did was walk among them and heal them, and then he took a small amount of food and multiplied it many times over …miraculously, and fed them all…with baskets full of food left over.

Bread and fish.

He did not “qualify” these people, nor did he care what class they were, what color their skins were, what their sins were, what country they were from, or who they loved and why. At least I didn’t read that anywhere.

He didn’t even really preach to them at that point…simply ministered to their physical needs, healed them, “taught them” and sent them away. He wasn’t mad because they senselessly followed him far away from civilization. He didn’t berate them. He dealt with them all equally with compassion . He was good at that. He acted like a good Father would act.

If you’re a Christian, or if you are some other religion, or no religion at all…It’s good to remember to treat all people with love and respect, but if you have responsibility for children…you must go even further because the need of children is far greater than adults.

If we are using Jesus as an example we must remember that he did not put himself above anyone…

except for that one last time.

It’s hard to fathom, impossible to describe, how much the world has changed in 50 years. I can’t begin….

I asked Paula, if she could go back to this day 50 years ago…would she? She answered just like I did. Yes, yes we’d go back again and do it all over, live it all over again, and not change a thing. Not one thing, for if even if one little thing was changed…everything would be changed, and there’s nothing I would want to be any different than it is now.

Oh, there have been hard times for sure, sorrows…pain. There’s been some days that I was a little bit like Jimmy Stewart in “Its a Wonderful Life”. But, things change. If you believe in life, and believe in those you love, things change. My life really has been a wonderful life. I couldn’t have asked for anything any better.

The world does not owe us anything. Life didn’t owe me anything, but it has given me so much. I’m grateful for every bit of what I’ve had , and I’ll take whatever I have left.

Without a doubt, much of what we think we know if false. Even being as “smart” as we humans think we are we don’t even know everything about our own bodies! When we move out from there, into the world around us, and eventually into the Universe that surrounds us, our knowledge becomes exponentially less and less.

There are SO many theories on how the Universe started, where it’s headed and how it’s going to end. Some of them are theological in nature, and some are scientific. None of them are right, probably not even near right. I’m talking all the way from St. Stephen, to Stephen King, to Stephen Hawking here.

I shudder when I think about how little I know. I have to take most things I do every day on faith. I have faith when I plug in the coffee machine that it is going to make me a cup of coffee. If it didn’t, I don’t have the knowledge to tear it apart and remake it so that it would. If I put my key in the car, and turn the switch and it doesn’t start, most of the time I wouldn’t know what to do. When I had my heart attack, I couldn’t fix my arteries. Of course there are people who DO know how to fix these things, and it’s a good thing too! Otherwise, most of us would be in a heap of trouble.

But, even those people who are “technologically” smart, don’t have all the answers. Every few years or so, a new theory comes out about how the Universe began. Of course, all religions would acknowledge that it was ‘created’ if you will, by God. A thinking consciousness started the ball rolling and made us what we are today. Makes sense to us as humans, because WE are conscious thinking creatures. That’s what separates us from the rest of the creatures….at least so we “think” (I am not so sure sometimes, when my little dog plays me for a sucker that she is not “thinking” about what she is doing) I guess there is all different levels of thinking, and I am SURE that we are not in ANY way close to the “thinking” if that is what it is, of a consciousness so powerful it could create the Universe.

Now scientists also have a hard time trying to explain how something like the Universe started on it’s on. I read somewhere a few weeks back that they think all the “matter” that it took to get the Universe started, could be compressed down into a ball the size of a basketball, but that it would weigh some astronomically heavy weight. Some basketball! When this thing decided to explode and start the Universe, it continually spread from a central point and made us what we are today. The scientists can look at light coming in from outside our Galaxy that took billions of years to get here. That’s cool. When we look up in the sky at night, and see the stars, we are not really seeing what is happening at the moment we are looking, but what happened years and sometimes hundreds or thousands of years ago and is just now reaching us. For all we know, some of those stars could be, and probably are, gone. Mind boggling ain’t it?

Well, I just don’t believe that either group has ALL the right answers. I personally believe the Universe was created, and didn’t just happen, but I don’t even PRETEND to understand the type of intellect it would take to do it.

I know that we have had books and bibles, and documents from the beginning of the time that man learned how to write, with all the theories about how things happened. All of those came from the minds of man, and have been shaped by the mind of man down through the centuries. None of them are totally accurate. I don’t think that we know accurate.

Now, don’t go all funny on me, and think I am being sacrilegious. I’m not. I don’t go around telling people what to believe, OR that what they believe isn’t right. I don’t have the right to do that, and neither does anyone else. There are, however, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, etc. who would disagree with me. All of those religions consider that they have been given the innate approval, by the being that created the Universe to tell everyone that their way of thinking is the only one that is correct. I happen to disagree with them. There may be some correctness in all of them. Being a type of Christian, I personally believe in that philosophy and some may think it is a conflict of teaching that I would state I don’t believe in telling OTHER people what to believe, but I don’t. Everyone has to decide for themselves, and I think on that particular point that the being that created us, God if you will, has been totally succinct. You choose for yourself whether to be good or bad, light or dark. This choice is yours no matter what your religion or philosophy.

It’s my personal opinion that we will all find out one day, of course. I think that God would be totally unfair to just leaving us hanging about the answer to things. Of course, I could be wrong about that too. We may go to Heaven, or we may lay unconscious of the passing of time until we come back around in the endless cycle of the Universes coming and going. We MAY know nothing, and that’s that. At least there would be peace in that, wouldn’t there? I highly doubt this to be the case, but….

If we are to beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks, somebody must go first. Somewhere, sometime, somebody must take the first step.

And yet I see nobody headed towards the anvils. I see nobody headed to the fields to plant their crops. I only see humanity continue to sew the seeds of hatred and discord.

I could have very well gotten into a fight this morning. Yet I did not. I sat and held my tongue as a table of “fine” men laughed about the killing of innocent people.

I bit the sides of my mouth as another table of younger men, with bible verses on the back of their shirts, looked up at the tv on the wall in the front of the restaurant and one big healthy, young bearded good old boy in that group laughed and said that they “got what was coming to ’em'” and then got up shortly and left…perhaps to “get ready for church”.

And I know fair well that while many expressed shock and sympathy at the murder of these innocent people, deep down in their secret heart of hearts, where nobody can see, they were not all that sympathetic.

I don’t say all…God knows that I do not say that.

I know hundreds of families in this country right now are suffering and grieving, and I know there are good people from all walks of life and of all describable characteristics who are helping them and grieving with them.

All I do know is that the more “swords and spears” which exist, which people willingly take up in order to harm others, not for protection…or as old Jed Clampett said: “to keep his family fed”…..the more of those which are taken up and used in hatred and anger…the harder, and harder, and harder it’s going to be to beat them into plowshears and pruning hooks.

I’ve already read all the same old arguments out there, read the same old lines of hatred, directed towards the same people about this murderous spree in Orlando. Same things were said at Sandy Hook, and Charleston. And tomorrow the sales of swords and spears will again spike.

So it’s going to be hard for peace to come. It’s going to be hard for love to prevail, when there is so much hatred out there, so much hatred…and a lot of it coming from the places and people who are supposed to be the emissaries of the words of life.

How are we going to beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks when they are so blood soaked that the blacksmith will not even touch them.

We cannot walk together in harmony when we are so many miles apart, and nobody will take the first step towards healing.

I thought today about some of the things I believe, and about some of the things I have believed but have forsaken.

I thought about the idealism of youth and how easily it is lost in the shuffle of the “mission creep” of aging. (Oh how I love the invention of that phrase!) I thought about how aging itself affects the human psyche.. particularly my own.

My memory is becoming weird. On some things I’m razor sharp, on others I’m blunt as a brick. My mind is like a block of unsliced Swiss cheese, sitting where a good aged gouda should reside. Very holey at times, and unexpectedly dense.

So, my thinking process takes unusual paths. But it still functions.

I find I believe that happiness requires a personal commitment and cannot be handed to us by other individuals, or groups of people pushing any certain philosophy. I have waited practically all my life to have the secret of true happiness revealed to me, when all this time I have had it packed away inside.

I have been an irritant and a pest many times. I have alienated some, and confused many others. In my understanding about what passes for conformity I have become a non conformist. I’m sure I often baffle those closest to me with my actions. For that I am so sorry.

Tomorrow is a new day and I’m certain I will not be perfect. I will try harder to be happy though. Even though I hold very little in worldly goods or riches. Even though I fight daily battles with my body, and as I have stated, with my mind. Even though I realize I have fewer and fewer dawns coming. Even with the world in turmoil. Even with all these things…I am happy with the people with whom I share this journey, and these daily challenges. By having the people I am richer than a king, and by having the daily challenges I know I’m still alive and still necessary.

May the creator of all things be with you.

I was looking at a little sterling silver ring that I have which has Amber on the top as the gemstone. I like Amber. It’s one of only a few things that humans use in jewelry that once was a part of another living thing. In this case it is tree sap, which dates anywhere from 150 million to 300 million years old, which has hardened and fossilized into gorgeous hues of color ranging from bright orange to a warm honeyed brown. Sometimes, and rarely, the more recent pieces of Amber have some type of insect trapped inside. They landed on the tree sap when it was sticky, got trapped, and ended up totally incased in the sap, which then hardened around it.

These rare pieces of Amber with the insects inside have been the subject of many fictional works. They were the entire basis for how dinosaurs were recreated in Michael Crichton’s “Jurassic Park”. A “Dragonfly in Amber” was a book by Diana Gabaldon which she used as a representation of something of great beauty which is preserved, and exists out of its proper time….in the case of this novel it was one of Gabaldon’s characters who represented the dragonfly.

Many human beings are interested in these types of things. To me, they represent something tangible which I can hold in my hand that has such great age that I can barely comprehend it. Here is something which has existed for thousands of a human’s lifetime, and within it is contained a once living creature who’s life ended by the chance of landing on something from which it could not escape.

Time also fascinates me. The age of our planet is almost beyond my comprehension. The fact that a creature which has been spawned by this planet could evolve to the point where he or she could consider that vast amount of time amazes me.

As a student in Geology classes, we learned all the ages, that are used to classify the passage of time of our home planet. We learned how life developed slowly over long periods of that time.

Ordinary days. There is something good to be said for ordinary days.

Quiet times. Still times. These are the times for meditation and thought. These are the times for spiritual renewal. You do not have to be in a large group of people. You don’t have to be in a large building.

These semi sleepy slow days are best. They restore my sanity and give me hope for the future. They help me to understand that the extraordinary things which take place that end up on the news every day affect a small percentage of the population. For the rest of us, there are these regular ordinary days.

I’m glad for them. I’d rather not have a day where I end up on the news.