Looking Up in October

When I'm 97 I'll be Painting

I met a man this week
while visiting in a local nursing home.
He was not a hospice patient...
just someone I met along the way.

He was sitting in his wheelchair
in his room,
bald and almost completely deaf.

I noticed two paintings of ships on the wall
and pointed to them.

He first showed me his certificate
of service in the Royal Navy,
then rolled himself over
to a bookshelf next to the bed
and began pulling thin canvases
off a foot tall stack.

He showed me painting
after painting
of ships
and flowers
and even the penguins
carefully copied from this month's calendar page.

I noticed the shelf above
covered with painting supplies
and he laughed as he showed me
the paint on his pants and shirt.

He nodded towards his roommate,
asleep in another wheelchair.
"He's 97," the man said.
"I'm just 90."
He studied his sleeping roommate carefully.
Then he swept the air with an invisible paintbrush.
"When I'm 97, I'll be painting!"

I decided right then
that I wanted to be him
when I grew up.

I came home and got out my watercolors
and painted a sunset.
Better start practicing now.

Energy Conservation

I've been working full time lately,
a full day-a-week more in hours
than I worked for several years.

So far, so good--
but I do get a little weary of being around people
by Friday evening.

Today (Saturday) I went to a one day retreat at church...
dreading it a little, because my extroversion tank
felt completely empty. (Ever the true introvert....)

But the morning was great.
Fun activities...a chance to get to know people better.
Veggie soup with ample hot bread and hot sauce for lunch.

When I reached my next limit of energy,
I helped keep the babies in the nursery for a couple hours.

Rocking chairs and flirty little round faces with fuzzy hair.
Happy laughs, the good kind of baby smells, rolling and kicking fun.
And then I left...still at least a couple hours before the event ended.

I'm feeling tired, but glad for the time with my church family.
A quiet evening should help round out the day.

Sometimes it pays to push yourself a bit.
Sometimes it pays to pace yourself a bit.
Generally it pays to do a bit of both.

Cats' Eye View

Cats Contemplating Color

Home Brewed Whine

And now we've moved into the exciting new

realm of video. It is a wee tad slow the first time

through, but seems to pick up speed on a second

showing.

Spring and Summer garden

As I look out my window, the corn is still standing,

but it is brown, with a few bare cobs clinging to the plants,

after squirrels shucked them and ate the goods.

The squirrels have had a hard summer

due to the early spring freeze

that nipped the acorns in the bud

and the summer drought.

They've been picking Roma tomatos...

even burying a few,

despite me telling them,

"Honey, that's not going to keep."

I'll have to provide some nuts and corn this winter

so they can make it through the thin times.

I'm sad, in a way, to see the garden turning brown,

but also looking forward to the quiet fallow time.

Here are pics of the garden in spring and mid-summer.

The Wisdom of Grandfather Mountain

Take Care of Your Eyes

Okay, so I admit it.
Sometimes I use hospice patients
like a horoscope or a magic eight ball.
One of my dementia patients
who goes months without speaking
will look me in the eye and
speak a complete sentence
and it will sometimes feel like
a word straight from God.

Today I visited two women of advanced years
in two different nursing homes
on two different sides of town.
Both were still in their right minds...
both were able to converse with comprehension
and both have shared many visits with me.
Both are also legally blind.

For some reason, both ladies
took me by the hand today
and said earnestly...
"Take care of your eyes."
In the past, both have shared
the incredibly frustation of blindness,
but I don't remember either of them
saying this to me before.
Why both in one day?

I don't think this is a warning from
the heavenly powers...
perhaps it is just good advice.

Kind of an odd thing
when visits run parallel.

Tonight the vision I need to keep clear
is vocational.

Why do I love my job?
I need to keep a clear sight on
what it is about being a hospice chaplain
that has meaning for me.

This week I got a little caught up
in the politics of administration
and productivity
and other bean counting controversies...
which made me cranky
and threw me off kilter.

I need to keep my eyes
open
to the things that matter...
and keep the other details in proper perspective.

Daisy Loves Walter

Joy to the world, peace has come to my home.
When Ernie died and Walter moved in as our replacement cat,
I first thought we had broken Daisy.
Our playful, friendly girl retreated under beds,
growling and hissing her dismay and misery.

Then, she came out, still NOT HAPPY, but at least more present.

Now, where there is one cat, there are two cats.
They play, they wrestle, they chase, they snuggle.
They are the best of friends, two peas in a pod.

When company comes, there are now two cats greeting,
doglike in their affection.
Two happy kitties. Peace in the home.

Baby ducks and clergywomen

I like to joke that everyone in south Georgia
has their own fishing pond.
It is not much of an exaggeration...
most folks with more than an acre
seem to have a small pond as part of their estate.
Even my dad's property has it's own little fishing pond,
with turtles and catfish and bass and brim.

On my trip to Georgia in April
I went to my cousin's little pond
to see the 18 ducklings they had released there
the previous day.

At first we thought some thing had 'et them,
because the pond was still and clear,
with no sign of baby birds.
But then I looked with my ears as well as my eyes,
and heard a persistent peeping
just down the bank from my feet.

All 18 ducklings were stacked in a little duck pile,
peeping and wiggling and snuggling
as close as they could get.

We're not sure if they were resting
after a busy day of swimming and adventuring,
or if they had been startled or frightened...
but they had returned to their huddle
to protect and warm each other
in the face of the big wide world.

It reminded me of the gathering
of the southeastern United Methodist clergywomen
at Epworth by the Sea only days before.

One evening after worship,
we threw out a few quick invitations,
and ended up with somewhere between
20 and 40 clergywomen from Florida
lining the perimeter of our hotel room.
Sitting hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder,
we shared our names,
our current life situation...vocational and domestic,
and offered one another laughter, support
and salt and vinegar potato chips.

People wonder why I stay United Methodist,
why I keep driving back from North Carolina
for Florida events and gatherings.

It all goes back to the ducks.
While the world is a grand and wonderfilled place,
it is nice to return occasionally
to the huddle
with my family peeps.

Smashing Good Easter Fun

The house was more lively than usual
Easter weekend.

Six loaner children
and five accompanying adults

Sports and music and art
and toys distributed evenly throughout the house.

Barbeque and birthday party
for the 70th birthday.

Chaos and laughter
and the discovery that
Walter LOVES children.

While Daisy doesn't love Walter,
she likes him okay these days.
She tolerates children
from the other side of the room.

Dogwood Winter

Late in the evening on Good Friday, snow began to fall.

Saturday morning, the white blooms of the dogwoods

found accompaniment in the white of the ground.

The tulips, still bright, drooped sadly.

The local apple crop was destroyed,

as blooms were nipped by the cold...

something that hasn't happened since around 1955.

This wouldn't seem so odd if we'd gotten

any significant snow during the winter.

It all seems to be coming in spring,

when everything has budded and bloomed.

Snow forecasts again for tonight....

The locals tell me that we still may have blackberry winter

yet ahead.

Twitching

Had a temporary derailment this week.
Last Friday I got called in to work at 2:30 in the morning.
Got up, shook the fog off my brain, drove through the rain
to attempt to offer comfort to the parents
of a seven month old baby
who had died in our hospice inpatient unit.
Stayed at hospice until a priest came
and offered comfort from the family's own tradition
and drove back home in the rain.
No surprise, I couldn't go back to sleep.

In my four years of hospice work
and my fifteen plus years of ministry
I've mostly made my peace with death...
but it is different when the deceased is an infant
(and a beautiful one, at that).

I've talked a lot to coworkers
and friends...
looked into different vocations
just in case I can't do this for the next twenty five years...
and gradually settled back into myself.

I found some comfort in remembering
that my smart ass cousin,
the funeral director,
told me one time that he cries
every time he works with a child or baby.

So...

Continuing to grow
and struggle.

Today I'll plant my spring vegetables
and focus on the earth
and the hope of new life.

Walter

On Thursday I moseyed by the Humane Society

to say hello to the kitties there.

I had in mind a young female cat,

to fill out the household

and keep Daisy the Destroyer company.

Things don't always turn out the way we plan.

The girl kitties were there in abundance,

sleeping off a hard night in the back of their cages.

This little man was wide awake,

greeting us as we entered,

talking to us throughout our visit.

After holding a pleasant

but largely unconscious little girl named Lucy,

I caved in to the flirting pressure

exuded by this boy named, for the moment, B.C.

B.C. snuggled into my arms

and purred mightily.

Sighing, I turned to the staff person.

"Wrap him up. I'll take him."

It took B.C. a few hours to tell us his real name,

but after reading the names of authors

off every book in the house,

Walter Wink rose to the top and stuck.

When asked, "is your name Walter?"

he climbed up in my lap and rubbed against my face.

Daisy is discombobulated by the new addition.

She growls, she lurks, she hides, she hisses.

She watches Walter very carefully,

and avoids him when she can.

These things take time.

Pictures fall short of the full effect of the loud growls issuing forth at the time of this photo.

Out With the Old

For Lent this year,
my spiritual practice is one of
streamlining...

I started with light bulbs.
Out with the old energy hogs,
in with the new energy savers.
They look odd, with their spiraled glass,
but they save significant energy.

If you have not seen the documentary
"Kilowatt Ours," I highly recommend it.

Begin with conservation.
In the long run, I'm researching
replacing the oil furnace and air conditioner
with a geo-thermal heat pump system.
Don't know how affordable that is...
time will tell.
But light bulbs are definitely within my range.

The second piece of streamlining for me
involves digging my way out of the clutter.
Not a new idea...
it showed up on my 2006 New Year's Resolution list.

But this Lent, I'm decluttering with new gusto.
So far a whole box of paper has gone into the recycle bin...
some of it moved from state to state and home to home
in boxes never before unpacked.

Yesterday I deleted 500 emails...
Only 1500 to go.

Perhaps the most profound step...
this week I put four years of hospice timesheets
into the shredder bin at work.
They had filled my file drawer,
representing to me
my four years of work,
my four years of names and faces
and experiences.
It left me a little winded and queasy
to throw them out.

But better to carry those folks lightly in my heart
than to live with the anchor
of a foot tall stack of paper
in my file drawer.

My Valentine, Daisy the Destroyer

You may remember Daisy

from her funnel headed days of youth

or from her exploits with beanie babies.

She has been healthy and funnel free

for lo these many months,

but the beanie babies still migrate around the house

when no one is looking.

She's an odd cat...

she plays fetch,

drools when you pet her,

loves her belly rubbed,

has never met a stranger...

is she a strange looking cat

or a stranger looking dog?

The household debate

currently in progress:

Oh, Daisy, do you need a sister

or is the whole household happier

with just one cat?

Changing Perspectives

Thought I would add
before and after pictures
from my day traversing the cliff...
the moment I first went over the edge
and a moment several minutes later
as I neared the bottom.
The bottom pic, unfortunately,
shows that my camera
peed itself, being so close to the edge and all.
A little light pollution...
but still a good picture
to get a bit of a sense of the cliff
and its size.



Like the views that day
changing so drastically
as I bounced my way downward,
this week has brought
many different perspectives.
Today, a quiet day off...
my repaired mandolin sings,
my surviving cat purrs mightily,
and again,
the harness and ropes hold firm.

Buckle Up

That little slash of red, blue and green on the side of the cliff...
that's me, around seven years ago.
One small problem.
I'm really not good at coping with heights.
Standing at the top of that cliff filled me with anxiety.
My feet and hands sweated,
I wouldn't walk close to the edge.
The teenagers I took on this Tennessee adventure
had a really hard time talking me over to the point
where the camera could take such fine photos
of folks on their way down.
They got me there, but it took persuasion.

Here's the irony....
once I strapped on my harness,
I was fine.
I backed right off that cliff with no hesitation,
and enjoyed the whole trip down.

Today, about halfway through the morning,
I found myself feeling like I was teetering
on the side of a cliff.
Too much sorrow and bad news.
Ernie died on Saturday afternoon.
My mandolin (number one stress reliever)
went out of whack last night with
buzzes on the G and D strings
and a blowout on one of the E strings.
(We go to the shop later today for repairs.)
Then, some awful news this morning...
a friend with a dreadful medical diagnosis.

I muddled through the morning,
then came home and cried in my soup
and watched Mr. Rogers.
I'm taking a REALLY LONG LUNCH today.
I felt a need to retreat,
to get back in my harness,
to get reconnected to the ropes
tying me securely to the tree.

I felt a need to buckle up.

I'll be back at work this afternoon.
I'll be back, swinging merrily down the cliffs
of everyday life.
But for a while, today,
I'm going to take the time I need
to tie the loose pieces back together.

Hospice for Cats

Well, the winter storm avoided us entirely, except for about ten minutes of sleet. On the weather map there was snow in a doughnut all around us, and we were the doughnut hole.

While I'm glad my power stayed on, and driving was not dangerous and we escaped difficult winter conditions, the ten year old within me is seriously disappointed.

Instead of snow, the storm came from an unexpected direction. Ernie, pictured on this blog earlier this summer, has continued over the past six months to have periods of health, and periods of not so good.
A week ago, Friday, I took him to the vet, because he was losing weight again. We went back yesterday, because he was dehydrated and weak. Today he is actively but peacefully dying. It is some help working for hospice, and knowing the process. Mostly it is just sad and hard, losing my friend of the last 12 years.

Today's pictures date back to the late 1990's,

when Ernie was young and full of vim and vigor.