I always think of him as a laughing boy. I remember his giggles as he played with the family dog, a white fluff-ball named Nicky, in honor of his having been a Christmas present. When his parents had other families over for dinner or a cookout, I remember the way Andrew was kind to the younger children, including them in his play, being the perfect host. I remember New Year’s eve of his senior year of high school. His parents had a few folks over to celebrate and wound up calling Andrew for instructions on how to operate their new surround sound. “Dad,” Andrew said, “I’m not going to be around here forever to help you with this. You’ve got to learn to do it on your own.”

What he meant, of course, was that he would all too soon be leaving for basic training. He’d joined the Marines. Like a lot of boys his age, he had no idea of what he wanted to do with his life. Unlike many of them, he didn’t want to waste time and money in college while he tried to find out. He both wanted and needed to refine himself and find himself against the hardest challenge imaginable. He became a Marine.

His first time back to church after basic all the girls (and a few of the older women) swooned over him in his dress blues. The first time back in church after his first tour he shared a brief and deeply thoughtful reflection on his experience and we gave him a standing ovation born both of pride and relief. He’d had a belly full of taking life. When he got back for good he was thinking of becoming an EMT or firefighter.

The last time I saw Andrew he was standing in his kitchen. He showed me a huge Marine tattoo covering one shoulder. He generally rolled his eyes at what he called, “the oo-rah stuff,”  but he told me he’d gotten the tattoo so that in years to come, he could prove that he was a Marine.

Everyone knows that now. Every one will know that forever. His name is inscribed on a monument at Camp Lejeune. Andrew was killed by an IED in Iraq on October 20, 2005.

He is forever 21.

As a child I used to look through my parents’ high school yearbooks and was always struck by the list of names on a page, known collectively as the boys who didn’t come home. Andrew’s story is unique and yet it is also a story shared by hundreds of thousands of families who will forever have a hole in their midst… and by a world cheated of so many gifts that young men and women could have offered.

Remember this day in whatever way you will but if you can, spare a moment to say  a prayer for those who have fallen and those who remain.

Maybe because it was nearly the end of May but the teacher seemed to be checked out. There were no shouts of encouragement, no words of prodding. Just silent waiting. It was all I could not to revert to coach mode and start yelling at them myself.

As I watched them endure the torture of a lap or two around the track, I felt very sad. I felt sad for a group of kids who were so oblivious to such a fine morning and who were so disconnected from their bodies. But mainly I felt sad because they didn’t have anyone to push them to do better. They didn’t have it on the track. I wondered if they had it anywhere.  I knew what my own  running coaches and mentors meant to me. Three and a half years ago I could barely shuffle around the track. Last Saturday I ran ten miles. Between there and here I had people who pushed me to keep going, to take one more step, to do the things that my mind was convinced was impossible.

The late Wake Forest basketball coach Skip Prosser was found of using the quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Our chief want in life is someone who shall make us do what we can.” We all need people in our lives who will push us. If we have been open to growing as we grow up, we internalize those people. Eventually we are able to find inside our own selves that voice, that push, that word of encouragement.

Recently  I saw a tweet from the “life is good” folks: “You can give up, give in or give it all you’ve got.” We all need that part of ourselves that’s able to say, “Come on – give it all you’ve got.”

I was sad because those kids wasted their walk this morning. And I was sad because I didn’t know how many of them would also waste their walk through this life, shining less brightly than they might have done, doing less than they could have done, being less than they were created to be.

What about you?

I’m not talking about the time where I threw away a bag of garbage and heard the unsettling clink of my office keys also hitting the dumpster. (Luckily they landed on top of a bag of trash and  I was able to rescue them with a coat hanger.)

No, I’m talking about clearly and with forethought throwing a set of keys into the

2701 Ashburton Lane

trash. The thing is, I don’t know what they were keys to. I wasn’t missing keys. I have reason to believe that they belonged to the house at 2701 Ashburton Lane, my childhood home. If you go there now, you’ll need no keys for there’s only a school ball field there now. After being sold, the house was moved away. I feel certain they also changed the locks. So why was it so hard to throw those keys away?

As I’ve cleaned out family homes and even moved my self, I’ve found numerous sets of keys, most of which I have no idea as to where they belong. Even so, it’s still hard to throw them out. I always have a nagging feeling that one day I’m going to come up against that door where those keys fit and I’m going to need them. Throwing keys out seems a bit reckless to me, a little bit of living on the edge. (I know that as living on the edge goes, it’s not much. Bear with me.)

I see my clients struggling with much the same thing. Most of the time it’s not actual keys but rather old beliefs. Someone along the way told them, by word or deed, that this was a key to life. This was what was true about the world. This was what was true about their place in the world. This is what was true about God’s place in the world. They’ve held onto those keys for a long time.

The only problem is that they don’t open any doors for them any more. In fact, sometimes they get in the way of opening doors. My clients have no place for those keys in their lives. Still, it’s hard to let them go. They worked once. Or someone they loved very much gave the keys to the client. Or someone they felt like they should have loved passed along those keys.

One of our tasks as adults is individuation. That’s a fancy psychological term for claiming our own lives. We have to look at what others have taught us about life and faith and even who we are and  see if it really rings true in light of what we know about life and faith and our place in the world. Does it open doors for us or does it keep the doors closed? Letting go of those keys doesn’t mean betraying that person or loving them any less. It’s just an indication that as we grow and grow up, sometimes we bring with us the things we learned. And sometimes it’s time to let them go.

Joe and Harmon

And yet, every time I think of my father’s childhood, I think of the richness of it. There were always stacks of newsprint at the house for drawing. He and his brother Harmon made papier-mache football helmets that they baked to a hard finish in the oven. When they loved playing Monopoly at a friend’s house, they knew they had no money for such trivial things. and so they made their own. The two brothers carefully measured out and painted the board. They melted on the stove scraps of lead they’d scavenged and poured it into sand molds to make the game pieces. (Whose mother doesn’t let her children play with hot lead?)

There was no money for entertainment but my grandmother packed up the kids and drove them to a local college for their free summer classical music concerts. And, of course, there were always books. As my aunt observed, “They read about boys having adventures. Then they went out to have their own adventures.”

One day my father happened upon Harmon building a boat in the basement out of an old bookcase.  After the slightly less than seaworthy craft  named Jeep was built, Harmon suggested that they tie it to the top of the car in order to get it to the James River. When my father replied that he didn’t think their mom would let them do that, Harmon replied, “Let’s assume she would have said yes if we had asked her, and go ahead and do it.” (Sailing the Jeep down the James became one of our legendary family stories.)

I feel that at this point I should insert the disclaimer: Do not try this at home.

Except that I think that the spirit of it is what we all need. (Second disclaimer: I am not advocating that your children sail their homemade boat down a major river.)

Joe and Harmon had an unfettered childhood. Their mother insisted on using correct English grammar, but she let them explore. Create. Use their imaginations. As a result, they grew up thinking that they could do anything. And they did.

I’m not talking about the sense of entitlement that we see far too often, children thinking that they should have anything or that everything should be done for them. This is the opposite: a sense of empowerment.

Joe and Harmon got to use their imagination a lot a boys. Some of it was encouraged, like always having paper handy. And some of it was necessity, like making their own Monopoly set. As a result, they grew into a natural belief that if they wanted to do something, they’d figure out a way to do it.

When my father started sailing seriously, he learned celestial navigation. He designed much of the furniture he built. My uncle dropped out of high school but then went on to earn a PhD and spend much of his career as a university professor. They believed they could find a way to do it. And they did.

Children need unfettered play. (Once again, a disclaimer. I am not advocating sailing down the James River by themselves in a boat that is barely afloat.)

Children need an opportunity to create, to imagine, to make up their own games and their own worlds. Children need to gain a sense of mastery by  facing a challenge and then overcoming it. The thing is, children will do this if allowed. Ever see a two-year old at Christmas having much more fun with the box rather than the toy that came inside?

As adults, sometimes we need to help and encourage them in figuring things out (What do you think we could do here?) And sometimes we just need to get out of the way. Give them blocks. Or boxes. Or a stack of paper. Or a yard to explore. And let them play.

One of the saddest comments I can remember reading came from a preschool teacher who said they children in her class had no idea of what to do when they were turned out onto the playground and given free playtime. They’d never been allowed just to play. Some adult always organized the game for them. They didn’t know how to turn the jungle gym into a pirate ship.

I wish every child such a childhood that creates adults who think they can do anything. And do.

So I want to focus a couple of blog posts on learning from one particular life.

Joe Haymes

My father, Joe Haymes, died earlier this month at age 87. He was, by all accounts (and not just mine) an extraordinary man. I learned a lot from him over the years, but I think he still has things to teach us.

So I start with the ending.

My father had Pulmonary Fibrosis, a progressive lung disease in which supple lungs gradually grow hard and unable to take in oxygen, probably the result of nearly 30 years of smoking, a habit he began in the war. At the end, he also suffered from dementia. The dementia really began after my mother’s death and  I am convinced that after a lifetime together, his mind could not accept being in a world where she was not.

In January he began going downhill sharply. He also started to tell us he was dying.

Lesson # 1 – Listen to what dying people tell you. When Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (EKR) began her work, part of what was ground-breaking (and scandalous at the time) was that she listened to people talk about dying. Before that dying patients were shuffled off into far corners of the hospital where they could be safely ignored.

When my father began saying, “I’m dying,” some of his caregivers became upset and told him not to talk like that. Because of my work and my training, I knew that it was important to pay attention and to begin preparing for the final stages. He was telling us what was coming.

Lesson #2 – Listen for symbolic language. After my father had been moved into the nursing care unit, he asked me one night, “Do I need to pack for my journey?” It took me a few seconds to realize what he was asking, and  I reassured him that no, he had everything he needed. He smiled and relaxed.

EKR used to tell stories of families who tried to correct patients who told them that they were going home the next day. The families didn’t want the patients to be disappointed when they were unable to leave the hospital. But, of course, in a deeper sense going home is exactly what they did.

Lesson #3 – Sometimes dying is a lot like birthing. Over the last weeks as I sat by my father’s bedside, I realized I felt a lot like a midwife. Now I’ve never actually been there when someone was giving birth (well, there was that one New Year’s eve party that wound up moving into the maternity waiting room, but I digress.) Even so,  it seemed so similar to me.

We were waiting for it to be time, a time no one could predict or control. I couldn’t make it happen or not happen. All I could was sit and tend to those elementary needs – a sip of water, rubbing his back, sharing a chocolate chip cookie, reassuring him. I felt like a midwife.

Dying seemed a lot like birthing, and as a Christian, that is exactly true. We believe that death is not an ending but a transition. There are times when our faith demands of us a dying as a gateway to a birthing – and in the end our bodies get in on the action as well.

Lesson #4 – Sometimes death is a friend. After being moved to nursing care, my father developed pneumonia. “I’ll call the doctor about prescribing antibiotics,” the nurse said. “No,” I stopped her. “If you cure this, he is still dying of lung disease.” Actually, pneumonia was known as the old person’s friend because when they were ill and frail with no hope of better, it came in and ended their suffering.

There is a temptation to do a medical intervention just because we can. We feel as if we are being mean or heartless or abandoning them if we do not do everything that can possibly be done (which these days is a lot.)

But we were not made to live forever. At least for now, all of us will come face to face with that point at which our bodies have gone as far as they can go. Even so, with modern medicine, we can be kept here beyond that point. Beyond the point of life having any meaning or value, the point at which there is only pain and discomfort. There comes a time when the most loving thing we can do is to let someone die as their body needs to die.

Lesson #4 – Hospice is wonderful. While Hospice had been involved in my dad’s care for several months, for the last week of his life he had the gift of being at the Kate B. Reynolds Hospice home in Winston-Salem. When he first arrived, the doctor announced that they were taking him off all medicine except what was needed to keep him comfortable. (I mean, really – did we care if he had high cholesterol at that point?)

They took it as their mission to make him comfortable and did not rest until they had the right combination of medication that allowed him to be peaceful. They also took it as their mission to care for me and other family members who were present.

I’ve occasionally heard older folks say they didn’t want to go to hospice because “my friend was there and they wouldn’t even give her food and water and that’s just cruel.” They took my dad off food and water for the last couple of days as well but not because they were cruel. It was because they understood that one of the ways that the body prepares for the end of life is to start disengaging from life. The patient no longer wants food or water. They are moving beyond those things. The patient isn’t suffering hunger. They no longer need those appetites.

As  I see it, the purpose of hospice is to create a place where a person may be  gently held as they make this last and maybe most sacred journey, a place where the body is allowed the grace of doing what it needs to do with the only intervention being for comfort. It is also a place where loved ones are held, sometimes literally as well as metaphorically. Families are given all of the support they need so that they can focus on the holy task of supporting their loved one.

For me, it was a place where I could relax and just be present with my father. And that is a priceless gift.

Next time we’ll have a little lighter look as we learn from a childhood in which adventures were had.

The ship nearly had a collision upon leaving Southampton, delaying her by an hour. When she struck the iceberg, she was still running an hour behind. If the lookouts had seen the iceberg 10 seconds earlier, they could have avoided it. If the ship had been going half a knot slower, they would have missed it. Small things.

Those small things added up to a huge event; in this case, a disaster. But it made me think about how much of our lives is composed of small things. The phone call we make – or put off. The book we read – or don’t pick up. The person whom we speak to – or ignore. Sometimes we see the impact of small things but many times we do not. Over and over again I hear from people the stories of how one person’s comment or question or caring made an impact on their lives.

We can approach this truth in one of two ways. We can live in paralyzing fear that one of our small things is going to sink a ship. Or we can live in trust, trusting that as we do the best we know how that we are in fact cooperating with something – or Someone – greater than ourselves. It’s not up to us to figure it all out. It’s only up to us to seek to be faithful in the small moments and trust that at least some of those small moments are changing our lives – or the lives of others – in ways we cannot yet see. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t seem like a big deal to us.

The other insight  I had from the interview is about the story of the gates being locked so that steerage passengers could not get out and go to the top of the ship. Both major movies about the Titanic have very dramatic scenes of hoards of poor passengers begging to have the gates opened so that they could escape. But it didn’t happen like that.

It was true that gates were locked, but they were locked when the ship left Southampton. Steerage passengers quite often carried with them lice and other infestations as well as communicable diseases. It was the regulation of US Immigration that they be segregated. When the Titanic was damaged, crew members unlocked the gates.

Steerage passengers had two barriers to survival. One was geography. Their rooms were at either end of the ship, meaning they had the farthest to go to reach the top and the lifeboats. The other obstacle was psychological.

The turn of the twentieth century was a time of huge class distinctions. The steerage passengers lived lives in which someone else always told then what to do. When things fell apart, they perished waiting on instructions from their “betters.”

It made me think about how many times we wait for something instead of taking action for our own welfare; for example, someone else giving us permission that it’s okay to do it. Or we don’t take action because of inner beliefs that keep us trapped just as surely as lessons of class and privilege kept those passengers trapped.

What are you waiting on?

And they lived happily every after

Marriage therapists these days hear a whole lot of sentences that sound something like this:  “I’ve fallen out of love with her”,   “I love him, but I’m not in love with him”, “I fell in love with someone else”.    This sounds as though love is some kind of an accident, a trip on a curb when you weren’t watching where you were going!!!   And perhaps, when we think of it like this, it is exactly that, we are not paying attention to where we are going.   It’s as if once we have the feeling of love, all else will take care of itself.  Sort of like buying a plant and never watering it.  That works for a silk plant, but not a living growing one. And love is a dynamic, growing, energy.

A good friend recently said when she wrote her wedding vows, she included her thoughts about how love is an action. She said that her uncle used to peel peaches for his wife because the skins gave her a rash.  Love is like this; full of many little deeds and expressions that sustain it to remain vital as it once was.  Sometimes it seems we have forgotten about the intentionality of love, and the day to day little efforts we make on love’s behalf in order to keep it vital.

When you think about it, none of us would have had a second date with our partner if we hadn’t both participated in a multitude of behaviors in which we conveyed our interest and encouraged the other.  We talked, we listened, we smiled, we complimented, we laughed, we agreed, we accommodated, and we took an interest in the other.   Of course, we were enjoying ourselves so we didn’t realize we were making an effort.   But effort it was, and that effort may have taken us all the way to a wedding ceremony.

Somehow we have come to believe that once we have reached that brass ring, the work is over.   So we neglect to talk, or take time to listen, and stop seeing our partner in positive light, let alone letting them know we see anything positive about them.   We become disagreeable, and belligerent.   And then, one day, all of a sudden, we aren’t “in love” any longer.   What a surprise!!!!   Where did we get the idea that the feeling wouldn’t require action to sustain it?

What disturbs me, however, isn’t even how we have come to believe these myths about the nature of love.  I read the fairy tales, I watched Disney, I’ve seen enough Meg Ryan movies to be mythologized by the happily ever after illusion.  What frustrates me is how we have come to think that somehow, when that feeling ends,  that we cannot revive it by being willing to give the same kind of effort as we once did to the relationship in the beginning.  If we have a plant that is wilting in the corner of the room, and there is a little green left in the stem, all it takes is the desire to bring it back to life by, once again, watering, feeding and nourishing it.  Simple acts such as listening, talking, smiling, complimenting, laughing, agreeing and accommodating, as we did in the beginning, are water and food to a loving relationship.

Maybe we don’t want to give it that effort.   Perhaps we are eyeing a prettier plant in the store window.   Or possibly we have filled our head with so many negative thoughts about our partner so we are now incapable of saying or seeing something positive.  If we tried to talk, did we talk from the heart or merely yell our dissatisfaction to one another? Throwing out a revivable philodendron is one thing, but discarding a relationship has repercussions the rest of our lives.

My 5 year old niece was watching a Disney film.  Cinderella and the Prince were wrapping it up, and I heard the narrator say: “And they lived happily ever after”.  I told her, “Well, now the real work begins!  Tomorrow they will have to begin talking together and making decisions: where to go for the honeymoon, how much to spend, how much time to take off from work, who does the laundry!  Now the struggle really begins.”  It may have been a bit much for my 5 year old niece to grasp, but, you get my point!

I woke up one morning to the news that my friend was going in for a heart transplant. Since he’s a Welshman, I took it as a good sign that he got his new heart on St. David’s Day, the patron saint of Wales. I’ve not known this person for a long time but to know him is to love him and appreciate him. He has met challenge after challenge with strength, resolution and an infectious grace. He speaks of the blessing he’s found in our faith community but I am quite sure that we have received from him far more than we’ve given.

According to the updates, so far so good. With a new heart, he has a new chance at life. And we have a renewed chance to be blessed by the gift of him in our midst.

But my friend’s story wasn’t the only big thing happening in the last week. Someone, somewhere had to reach through their own shock and grief and loss to give the okay. Someone made the unimaginable decision to give up the heart of their loved one so that my friend could have a chance at life. I’m sure it wasn’t only a heart. Chances are that a liver, kidneys, eyes, perhaps even lungs and pancreas were also harvested and sent off to be transplanted into the bodies of other people who were down to just this last hope.

My friend isn’t the only one I’ve known who’s received a transplant. Many years ago a kidney transplant enabled a friend to realize her dream of becoming a mother, allowing her to live to adopt a baby girl. A pancreatic transplant enabled my cousin, who’d battled severe and unpredictable diabetes since childhood, to have years of life without a constant shadow hanging over her head.

The joy of all of these transplants has been tempered by the realization that they are only possible through the death of another. That’s still the case. Maybe one day we’ll be able to grow organs, but we’re not there yet. There is only one hope for people who wait; that somewhere a family will be brave enough and selfless enough to give the word to go ahead, to share the physical body of their loved one with those in need. No greater gift can be imagined.

Some people decline because they cannot bear the thought of their loved one being cut open. But if you’ve ever gone to a viewing at a funeral home, you know that after death the body is but a shell. A shell to be treated with respect, to be sure, but a shell that no longer houses the true soul and spirit of the person you loved. Some people fear that if we agree, then our loved one somehow won’t be able to enter heaven without a functioning heart or kidney or liver. Really? It seems that this would be the least of God’s challenges. If God can handle the whole eternal life thing, I think God can handle the details.

The decision is hard because it is the first acknowledgement that your loved one is not coming back to you. It is the first of the final steps. But sometimes it is hard because you have not talked about it. You know how you feel – but what would they want?

As we move through the Lenten season, we journey towards remembering the gift of a life, a selfless and loving gift. What better time to have conversations with our own loved ones about our wishes in such a situation? Make it clear to them that your wish is that if anything can be used, then allow your body to be used to give life. With any luck, we’ll all live such long lives that our bodies will be quite used up by the end. But if that’s not the case, we have a chance to change someone else’s life – forever.

Those who support this change argue that it will make it possible for insurance companies to pay for treatment for the bereaved. The not-so-unrealistic fear is that the change will medicalize and pathologize normal grief. Those fancy “-ize” words are just another way of saying that grief will start to be considered an illness with symptoms that must be managed and made to go away.

Those people who are my clients know that I am not anti-medication. Sometimes it can be a very helpful bridge. If you cannot get out of bed, it’s hard to show up in your therapist’s office to do the work you need to do. But we need to be very clear that grief is neither abnormal nor an illness.

Perhaps Stephen Levine put it best when he wrote, “Grief is the rope burns left when what we love most has been pulled from our grasp.” Grief is a normal response to loss. Grief honors the heart connections that we share. Grief the honors the importance of what we’ve lost. Grief is not a problem to be fixed but a journey to be walked. In our grief our most pressing need isn’t for a prescription to make our feelings go away but for people brave enough to bear witness to our journey.

In the Hebrew Old Testament Job endures one unthinkable loss after another. At first, his friends come and sit with him in silence. (My professor, the late Dr. L.D. Johnson. used to say it was the last kind thing they did. Later they tried to explain it all.) In our grief, we need people who will sit with us without trying to make it all better. People who will not tell us not to cry or be sad.

In our grief, we need to hold our feelings with fierce courage. We need our tears and our sadness. Sometimes we need or anger. Sometimes we need to let loose with the screams that come ripping out of our guts. My friend had lost both her husband and her child, and when I asked her how she was, she said, “Sometimes I just stand in the middle of my house and scream.”

We don’t “get over” loss in a week. Or two. If the loss is deep enough and terrible enough, we will spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out how to live with it. That doesn’t mean we will never be joyful and happy again. It means that we live with the knowing that our lives will never be the same again.

As a counselor who works with grieving clients, I am not presumptuous nor foolish enough to think that my role is to make their feelings go away. My role is three-fold: to help them find containers for the expressing of those feelings, to bear witness to their story and their feelings and finally, to help them find their way to whatever the next chapter of their lives will be.

Grief work is soul journey. And soul journey can never be undertaken by prescription.

A little boy has just learned how to ride a bike, and he is more than enthusiastic about it. He is inspirational.

Here’s the video: I feel happy on myself 

For us psychologically oriented folks, we’d say that he was expressing a sense of mastery. He achieved something he’d never been able to achieve before. And the feeling of that achievement, in his words, was “feeling happy on myself.” That may be the best feeling description I’ve ever heard.

It’s one we adults tend to feel less and less. As we move through adulthood, the list of things we’ve mastered grows longer and longer. Conversely, the incentive for us to try new (and unmastered) things grows smaller and smaller. We might not do it well the first attempt. Why not stick with those things we can do well (or at least adequately)? Why risk the foolishness of failure? Besides, we might break something.

Learning something new can also take time. Artists and craftsmen know the value of repetition and practice. You don’t just read a book on making pottery. You learn about it and then you learn by doing it. You get your hands dirty. You make terrible, misshapen pots. and you keep working at it. And on that day when you throw a pot that comes out right… well, you feel happy on yourself.

I think that people age in one of two ways. Some people grow dry and brittle, like leather that’s been left out and never nourished. Their lives are brittle with fear and regrets and smallness. Other people have a glow about them, like the soft beauty of leather that’s been nourished over and over again, that’s worn but is worn smooth and beautiful.

The willingness to learn new things and risk new things is, I think, part of the nourishment of our lives. It helps keep us alive while we are yet living. It helps our lives to keep growing and keep shining.

So, what new thing are you going to learn or try or even allow yourself to think? If you need inspiration, here are some words from a very young but very wise man:

Everybody ! 

 I know you can believe in yourself. If you believe in yourself, you will know how to ride a bike.  If you don’t you just keep practicing. You will get the hang of it, I know it. If you keep practicing you will know it and you will keep getting better and better at it….You can do it.

Thumbs up everybody! 

Rock and roll!