"Amount to something . . ."

       His small midwestern town of the 1950's  offered little encouragement to 'be all you can be'.  Then a family with a less provincial perspective moved into the area.  Recognizing the young man's native intelligence and potential, the older man encouraged him to "amount to something" with his life.  There was nothing in the admonition that belittled, that demeaned the ambient culture.  Rather, it was encouragement and recognition that someone believed in him more than he possibly believed in himself.

    En-courage has been defined as 'putting heart into someone'.
The older man was not trying to 'clone' the teen-ager nor attempting to have him be someone other than who his own potential could achieve.  Consequently, the young man experienced a new  'Hope' for his future.

   Thereafter his life fulfilled the promise inherent in a long ago song "I'm just an old chunk of Coal" by Billy Shaver: "I'm just an old chunk of coal but I'm gonna be a diamond some day. I'm gonna grow and glow till I'm so  blue perfect ".  Because of his professional and personal life, I know that countless lives were changed for the better.  

    I wonder how many others in this life need someone to 'believe in them' . . .
      
       Satchel

"I NEED TO MOW THAT DOOR . . . "

         "When my teenage daughter threatened suicide, my world turned upside down", the client said.  "For a couple of years we had known that she was 'troubled' but figured that, for the most part, these  behaviors were part of being an adolescent."  That all changed on the Spring afternoon when the daughter specifically threatened self-destruction and fled their house.  Disappeared !   Several hours later,  she called from a friend's house, talking nonchalantly as if the events of a few hours earlier had never occurred. Somehow, they were able to coax her home,  alerted the police who transported the daughter to a local hospital where a child psychiatrist determined that indeed for her safety hospitalization was mandated.

    The days that followed became a blur of tasks, details, 'have to's' with many routine chores falling unattended, such as mowing the grass. Consequently, the front lawn which was already grown up at the time of the tumult, had grown well past the point of needing attention.  Three days after the crisis, entering the  the driveway  the father in his peripheral vision caught a glimpse of the high grass.  Parking the automobile in front of the large sliding  garage door, he remarked, "I need to mow that door". The incongruity of having conflated the two scenes  prompted his immediate laughter.

    When the client told that story, I immediately knew that stress
does funny (not necessarily humorous ) things to our brains.  I thought of that story this week when two other clients who have recently experienced family deaths told me that they were having difficulty remembering and feared that it indicated 
the onset of some form of dementia.  In their cases, such a diagnosis is highly unlikely.  

   Loss is usually experienced on several levels of our very being ---including physical functions.  Among the effects can be short-term memory issues.  It also follows that if grieving is allowed and expressed, at some point memory and other brain functions return to 'normal'.  Along the way, basic A,B, C's of self care need to be observed:  adequate rest, good nutrition, etc. 

   Occasions of 'mowing the door' I hope will not aggravate our grieving.
     
   Satchel

The story is true.  Details have been modified for privacy/confidentiality.
  
      

MY FRIEND DIED . . .

With J.R. in younger days

      Just a few weeks ago in a blog post on male friendships,  
I wrote of my long time friend and soul brother, J.R.  We first met in the Fall of 1960 when at Boston University School of Theology.

Fall 2016 visit to his West Virginia home

   Last October when  we were together with him and his wife,  I read him some of my writings and he offered strong words of encouragement to continue and expand my efforts and to send him pages that I wrote.  Being minimally interested in the world of technology (specifically computers), he asked that I call him when I had published and he would have his wife to print it from her computer.  So, on a Sunday evening I wrote and published the piece. The following morning, I called him to let him know that it was 'out there'.  From the moment he said 'Hello', I knew something was amiss.  He had been diagnosed with metastatic cancer and advised that he probably had a year or year and a half remaining.
 Just a couple of years ago, his oncologist had told him that he was free of the Stage IV lymphoma diagnosis.

   Facing what he called this "next chapter", he told me of two books that he intended to read as he died with intentionality.  Ironically, he had given me a copy of one of them in  1997 ---Stephen Levine's A Year to Live --- with a personal inscription.
The other book had been recommended to him by his long time mentor, Father Thomas Keating.

   We spoke by telephone on two later occasions and agreed that we wanted 'face to face' time.  So, when I called a few days later and his son-in-law, a highly respected physician, indicated that his condition was deteriorating, we made  plans to drive there on Friday, February 23, the day after my 80th birthday.
For years we  kept the tradition of calling each other on birthdays.
When my telephone rang early on the 22nd, I was not prepared for the news.  His daughter told me that he had died during the night.

   This, of course, is not my first experience with grief . . . but it is, what ?, different.  And, my clients often teach me about the many faces of grief, including not to suppress it, not to be impatient with it, and that we never 'get over' it but eventually . . . again, what ? . . . adapt, move on, etc.  I just had a new 'nominee': 'Remember' and remember with gratitude that our lives intersected in the long span of Time.  As Bob Hope said, "Thanks for the memories!"

Beethoven quote that J.R. kept on his bookshelf

    Satchel