Forgetfulness

No, this is not about Billy Collins’s poem. Although, that poem is awesome and you should totally check it out if you have not heard it.

This is about my own tendency.

Scenario #1.

I was there on Day 1 of  the devastating Visayas earthquake. The energy of the earthquake was described to be equivalent to 32 Hiroshima bombs. People got injured and died. Houses were destroyed and unsafe to live in. Hospitals were shattered. The term in-patient was then inaccurate since patients could be found along the road, in the parking lots day and night. There were even birth deliveries occurring in the parking lots with just curtains covering the patients. This happened with each of the hundreds of aftershocks felt every day. My team’s mission was to do rapid health needs assessment in as much area as we could survey. Yes, I’m one of those who count casualties and report which health facilities are functioning or not, and recommend health care priorities.

I remember interviewing one of town mayors about the health situation in his town. He couldn’t help but cry as he shared his experiences and the state of his people. I thought then that I would never forget that experience. It was just too sad.

It has been a year since it happened. But, I did forget.

Scenario #2

As the airplane landed, I saw the extent of the devastation in Leyte a week after the super typhoon struck. It seemed like a nuclear bomb had been dropped in the area. Body bags lined the roads as they were prepared  for transport to a morgue the moment I stepped into the City of Tacloban. I was there to augment with the public health services. A friend of mine who was a health worker in the area recalled her experience. She was so sure she would die the day of the storm. As ocean waters started to surge inside the house, she ensured her body could be identified by wearing on her neck a big identification card with her name written on it. Miraculously, she found her way to the ceiling of the bathroom and stayed there until the waters receded. She was carrying a set of underwear when she was telling me her story. Someone had given them to her because everything she owned had been washed away, she said.

I told myself I will never forget this… But, I did forget.

Scenario #3

I was interviewing widows of men who died of a mystery disease. We were in the area for an epidemiological investigation. Nine families lost their main breadwinners. While there was no definite cause and source of transmission at that time, I can’t help but think about the children who were left without fathers because of some weird disease those men had acquired.

I thought it was just so tragic and that I would never forget these families… But, I did forget.

These suffering poor made me feel that I would always appreciate what I have in life. To always be thankful for a daily provision, family and friends, and to simply enjoy a roof over my head and a warm bed. To always be thankful for life.

Instead, I can whine about the barista who brought white sugar instead of brown. I whine when I was given Coke Zero, instead of regular. Or, I can whine about Brazil losing the World Cup.

I do forget the grander scheme of things.

In an interview, when Bono went to Africa with his wife the first time, he also said something like, “I will never forget the suffering I saw in this place.” But then, he also confessed that he did forget about the suffering he saw, and, basically, moved on.

I guess we all have that tendency of forgetting as we move on in life. I know God wouldn’t want us to feel melancholy all the time.

While I may forget the suffering I saw, may I not forget what it reminds me of…

“But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” ~ CS Lewis

 

Seeing in Color

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights…”
– James 1:17

In junior high biology we learned about the cones of the human eye. Cones are in the middle and perceive color. (Rods, if you recall, are on the perimeter and detect black and white.) And we humans, with the sum of our three cones, are able to see the rainbow’s spectrum in all its brilliance from red to cerulean blue to a deep, dense violet. Although we have three cones, butterflies have five, and mantis shrimp have an astonishing sixteen.

Which makes me wonder: Do they see colors we can’t? And if so, what, exactly, are we missing?

A few years ago I began a gratitude list in response to the national bestseller One Thousand Gifts that was reviewed on noted blogs, and swept through small groups as a way of recognizing all for which to be grateful. Although I started strong, the entries gradually waned, ceasing altogether on October 24, 2012. Thankfulness had become, as with so many other things, another should, as in: I should have more patience, I should have a sparkling, dust-free home, and I should keep a gratitude list.

But the keeping of it – or rather, not – only led to more feelings of too much busyness and guilt.

Recently, I re-read the list: Number 548: Wayne home safely from trip. Number 587: Living in a house we can afford. Number 659: Dinner with friends. Number 668: The sound of the coffeepot, brewing. These details were mixed in with others like the morning after rain, a loving husband, and the sound of the girls’ voices in song.

Overcome, I had to sit down. The beauty was almost too much to bear.

Genetic testing has determined that some people – a rare few females – have not only three cones, but four. In other words, tetrachromats might have the ability to see colors the rest of us can’t. Though the theory was tested for years, it found little success; almost all women with an extra cone were unable to perceive the finer shades of amber, emerald, or indigo. But one woman could. Her ability however, had come only after years of work with color, and the slow, but practiced recognition of detail.

She had learned to see it.

After my grandmother – GranMargie – had a stroke, I would sit by her bed and read Psalm 23 at her request; it was her favorite passage from the Bible. A few years ago I told the girls about it, and even read its few lines out loud to them before bedtime. But the entire experience would have been forgotten to history until I saw this: Number 571: Sarah asked me to read GranMargie’s favorite psalm.

The words and the scene came to mind: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…he prepares a table before me…he restores my soul.

And gratitude once again fell upon me, dazzling, like diamonds from the sky.

My work, then, is to pay attention to the colors; for in this I learn, through the slow and practiced recognition of detail, to see beyond the surface shades to a deeper, more subtle palette of hues. And the picture I had once perceived as having a backdrop of endless gray is transfigured before my eyes into a brilliant mosaic of color; an explosion of beauty, blessing, and grace.

So I have again picked up this practice of list-making, and add entries daily. It is in this work of conscious gratitude – of giving thanks for all that is routine, mundane, or commonplace – through which I hope to be transformed as well; if, by no other means, than by the dropping of scales from my eyes.

For my cup indeed runneth over.

parking lots

 

[A memory… a miracle… from 2008.]

I try to grocery shop only once a week. Rylie has reached the age of recognizing boxes and their contents… and the fruit section- well, that’s a whole other beast. I leave with half my groceries already open and bananas with teeth marks in them. You know what I’m sayin’.

A month ago, I unloaded my cart into my trunk, returned the cart, and strapped Rylie in- all while keeping tabs on a woman having an argument on her cell phone in the next row. She was barely 50 years old, pushing a full cart of groceries, and crying. As I got in my steaming car, I turned to reverse and saw her standing 2 rows over with her phone now closed and her head in her hands. Sighing, I got out and yelled a bit abruptly, “Are you ok?”

She turned toward my voice and looked at me with pure panic in her eyes.

“I’m lost,” she said. “I have Alzheimer’s and I can’t find my car. I don’t know where I am.”

I stared at her, shocked. Tears choked my throat as everything around me stopped. The parking lot was silent and I suddenly had nowhere to be. I smiled as big as I could and said, “We can figure this out! Hang on one second.” I unbuckled Rylie and headed over. She handed me a small address book.

“I wrote every person I know down in this book in case this ever happened. It’s their number and how I know them… in case I forget. I’ve just never forgotten before. I’ve never… it’s never been like this before.”

I realized I was looking at a woman whose life was falling apart. This would likely be the last day she drove alone. The last time she went grocery shopping alone. The last time she would do anything- alone. I opened her address book.

“Alright… we’re at the grocery store in Greenville. Do you live in town?”

“Yes.”

“Great. And you’re sure you drove a car today?”

“Yes.”

“Ok. How ’bout Matt here? He’s your mechanic and it says ‘good friend’ next to him.”

“Yes! Matt knows my car!”

“Alright. Let’s call Matt.”

She dialed and I listened as she cried, but with less panic now, and explained the situation. When she got off the phone, she told me Matt was on his way and then described her car to me. We found it a couple rows over, but I walked her to a bench with her cart and left her smiling and calm outside the entrance, waiting for her friend. I was, you see, just the middle man… my job was done.

Honestly, I don’t have a super-great nature. I’m crabby when I’m hot (and sometimes when it’s pleasant outside), and I can’t seem to put laundry away in the same week it comes out of the dryer. I battle the demon of depression daily, I am slow to compliment others, and I’d eat popcorn for dinner every night if left to my own defenses. We all have things like this… I know. But for those short 15 minutes in that parking lot, I was almost good. I could feel it. I was more of the person I want to be… more like the God who made me. I’ve no doubt my actions were in large part because my child was in the backseat and deep down I wanted her to see what I can be when I really try. When I pay attention. When I forget myself. The Big Man continues to make me a better person through her. Thank God for her.

 I want to remind you to take your time. To look around. To smile at strangers and to share hurt. To do what you can when you can. I know it’s an impossible task, but we can try. And on those rare days when we succeed, we can celebrate with each other the absolute joy that floats up to the top of our little worlds.

Circles of Light

by Margie Boswell Miller

I once walked through a circle of light.

My husband and I had driven up 10,023 feet through heavy fog and rain and emerged, at last above the clouds, to see the sunset.

Mist hung in the air and the reflected light upon it was, in fact, a completed rainbow; unbroken by land or horizon or clouds, it circled the stairs onto which I had stepped to retrieve a jacket from the car, left behind in our haste to see the brilliant ochre orb dip below the mountain’s peak.

For a fleeting instant with my back to the sun, I stepped through the circle’s midpoint; that singular place between the visible, shimmering light and its disappearance in shadow, its only vestige the clinging dampness on our skin.  For a moment I was dazzled with wonder and the transformational idea that I might, perhaps, be changed.  On the other side, I questioned whether I had seen it at all.

This year, I have struggled in this job of running the home, of raising the children.  This year, I have sighed over my marriage and over the continual need for groceries and gas and bigger shoe sizes, and wondered if I was cut out for the responsibility.  Though on the whole we are content, I often feel tattered and careworn; weary.  One evening I stood in the kitchen and a picture of a long highway – flanked by dirty dishes and unfolded laundry and the sounds of the girls’ voices – flashed before me; the endlessness of it haunted me for days.

But the girls are with my parents and my husband is on a trip, and my daily experience has quite suddenly changed.  Rather than a constant din of questions and call-outs, the washer on its third load or a bevy of texts about play dates, the house is silent save for the hum of the fridge and on/off cycles of the air-conditioner.

I spent part the day straightening and picked up fifteen jigsaw puzzles of various sizes Elizabeth had put together.  She had sought the collection one lazy afternoon from a couple of different bins stashed beneath the bed and turned her sole focus to the work.  It lent an easy tranquility to our time together, the sound of gentle tapping as the cardboard pieces were sorted and placed, against my own knocks and raps in the kitchen as I diced, heated, or rinsed.

I later put away the girls’ ongoing games of Sequence and Mousetrap, and came across our large wedding album stored on the cabinet shelf.  I scanned its pages and recalled the bright, hot morning in which I drove to the church with swept-up hair, and then donned a fitted dress to walk into the arms of the man I loved.

I miss their voices.

Days of dull routine fall over me like a heavy cloth.  But this time is not as endless as I believe, and our moments – from our wedding day to a six-year-old catching rain from the roof in her cupped hands, to an eight-year-old engrossed in puzzles on the kitchen floor – are those fleeting midpoints between the visible, shimmering light and their disappearance in shadow.

But when I notice them, suspended in the air and brilliantly shining, for a brief moment the idea of transformation, of change, becomes possible.  This is my life, I whisper, aware of the beauty before me; aware, too, that the vision will fade as the light moves away.

On that late evening on top of the mountain, when the sun projected its rays through the silky screen of mist, the dazzling fusion was manifested only upon a shift in perspective.  The spectral phenomenon had been at my back.

Until it was gloriously before me.

All I had to do was turn.

Yet.

*

Written by Margie Boswell Miller.

Of late, I am touched by loss: The mother of a childhood friend and the young husband of a sorority sister have recently, and quite suddenly, died, and another friend’s spouse is newly beset with terminal cancer. The heartbreaking news has me scanning Facebook and Caring Bridge posts with greater frequency and with the oft-murmured entreaty: “Help them.”

By contrast, it is springtime at my mother-in-law’s home in the rolling woods of East Texas. The girls and their cousins — barefoot and bare-legged — run in and out the back door calling each other scavengers as they search for treasure before racing scooters down the long, winding driveway with the sun on their arms and faces. Here, the greening has begun; against a background of as yet bare-limbed trees, grasses sprout. I spy a bee carefully alighting on a newly revealed flower even as I am called to Come! See! Play! amidst shrieks and laughter.

This season should come as no surprise, but when winter with its heavy brown coat obscures the living earth, it’s easy to believe the land will remain in a sort of permanent dormancy. Last year, we think, the flowers bloomed. But at the sight of the season’s new-birthed radiance we gasp, as beauty floods senses and spirit as if a promise — perhaps long-forgotten or, in some cases, doubted — is fulfilled.

The funeral last week of my friend’s mother, Nan, a lifelong Episcopalian and woman of the church, fell squarely in mid-Lent. During Lent all weddings, baptisms, and confirmations are postponed until after Easter, and even the altar dressing is minimal. The liturgy, too, reflects the arid aesthetic with a restriction of the word Alleluia. A Lenten funeral, then, would appropriately be as barren as winter.

Nan’s son Patrick and I, and our three younger siblings, rode many years to summer camp in her station wagon. She and my mom claimed the front seats while the rest of us piled up in the back. The heat was stifling in the vinyl-seated car in the ‘70s in Texas in July, but we were too excited to notice. At week’s end, they returned and we, now grimy and sunburned, climbed in again and rested in exhausted silences to the muffled and indistinct sound of our mothers’ voices rising and falling and laughing as the car lumbered home.

We believed life would go on like that forever.

At the funeral, Patrick said that as a little boy his mother allowed him to go down the sidewalk, “only as far as I can see you.” As an older boy, it was “only as far as you can hear me call.” As an adult, the sidewalk became the phone call “to let me know where you are.” Now, he said, “I can’t see her, hear her voice, or let her know where I am.” It is, as he said, a place of great grief.  A winter of the soul.

By contrast, his mother’s funeral was celebrated with the full Easter liturgy:
Celebrant: “Alleluia! Christ is risen!”
People: “The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!”

Through the tears of our grief and beneath the weight of our loss we said it:

Alleluia. Alleluia.

We strive to understand these mysteries: That grief will turn to joy, that suffering will lead to glory, that death will lead to life. And yet we ever bear witness to this truth:

Winter is the harbinger of spring.

The girls and their cousins are calling me outside to the sun, to the trees, to the new life around them. Their laughter peals even through the heavy windows and walls of the house, beyond which new-birthed beauty floods senses and spirit.

Easter yet flowers forth.

Alleluia. Alleluia.