My days are spent teaching school. These are not happy times in schools. Many of my colleagues from across the county are worried that they will lose their jobs. It seems our "Jobs Governor" meant something other than what you might think when he was elected Presid...Governor in the Fall. At school this is the stress time; the month before the high stakes state examinations. How I'm professionally treated next year largely depends upon how well my children do on the examinations this year. Some nights I spend my evening at school board meetings listening to how bad the financial times are for schools. Those poor teachers have every reason to be worried.
After school these days I sometimes head over to my mother's house. My father passed away on January 17 after a long and courageous battle with emphysema. Spring was our time together. I used to visit after school and perform many odd yard jobs for him. In the past few years, I'd prepare his garden and eventually plant most of it. After all work was done, we'd relax on the deck with my mother and sister sipping beers.
My mother has difficultly remembering things these days. When I visit her, I usually have to remind her of where my children go to school and who is currently living at my home. Sadly, I have to frequently inform her that her husband has died and won't be coming back. We've recounted the story over and over since January 17. Today was no different.
"My mind just keeps going in and out and I just can't keep things straight."
I wait for her to go on. I know where she is heading with this conversation. I've heard it before.
" I need to know... is Dad here?" Her tone seems resigned to the inevitable answer. It's as if she knows already, but is hoping to just wake up from the horrible nightmare of reality.
"No Mom, Dad passed away on January 17." I see her eyes well up in pain. "He died peacefully on his own terms. You know he had struggled so with his breathing this past year, and he just couldn't go on anymore."
Her tears flow freely now.
"I know, I know. It's just so frustrating. I can't keep it all straight. I know now that I was there that Sunday sitting beside him on his bed. He didn't say anything, but he could hear everything I said to him."
My thoughts were taken back to that particular moment in that long vigil. I'll never forget my mother sitting beside my father that last time as she gently stroked the peaceful face of the man she'd loved for 65 years. His breathing became slower as the blessed morphine allowed his body to finally give in to the nature of his disease. Then, without a word, he stopped.
By now I was crying as well. As I watched her relive her husband's death again, I couldn't help but view it as some sort of cruel, heartless joke. Day after long day, her mind erases the events in her life and scrambles her thoughts. Several times each day, she confronts and tests her "horrible dream", checking reality. Each day she discovers that her husband is dead and never coming home. Each day, she grieves all over again, as fresh as the moment death walked into her life.
Sometimes when I feel so melancholy, I reach for a random book, one in which I've only lightly read in the past or that I have long forgotten. I'll page through that book until I find something that strikes me.
The book I picked out this evening, is one I used for an Appalachian Folklore class a few years ago. It's called The Earth-Man Story by Darwin Lambert. In this book, Lambert journaled about time spent in Shenandoah National Park. One passage I flipped to lifted my spirits and helped me remember times I've spent outside in the woods at night as the clouds whirl through a moonlit sky.
Clouds come from behind the ridge imperceptibly, as if accompanying the moon, at first seeming to overtake and play at blindfolding it, then lagging while it finds a thin spot to shine through. I blink, and seem to feel earth floating in space. The moon and the widespread dimpling clouds constitute the firmament as the ridge sinks to reveal more of that stationary sky...Whatever else the moon has been-a reflector of romance or light from the sun-its primary function now must be to serve as a mirror of earth, helping us see ourselves and our home in the heavens in truer perspective.
I wish so many things were different about my life right now. Despite the troubles of the day or the pain that surrounds me, I'm buffered by the calmness gained through immersion in the complexity of simplicity; a bird calling from a tree, an individual snowflake melting on a leaf, a crow flying by with straw in his beak, and orange sunlight returning the day.
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