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its a wonderful life, love abounds, the Right Kind of Pride

What it means to lose a longtime friend

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Five Luther College teammates, from left to right: Dani Fjelstad, Steve Corson, Paul Mullen, Keith Ellingson and Christopher Cudworth.

I’m driving out to Iowa today to share in the visitation and funeral for a longtime friend, Keith Ellingson. He was a freshman year roommate at Luther College where we were also cross country teammates.

After that, we worked together in college admissions, then parted ways as we got married, raised children and engaged in our careers.

He built a legacy as an excellent coach in track and field and cross country. His worked earned him a place in the Simpson College (IA) Hall of Fame. Dozens of his athletes earned All-American status, and one of his decathletes made the United States Olympic trials, no small accomplishment for a Division III collegiate athlete.

His achievements were many, but he was perhaps proudest of his three daughters, Jessica, Bailey and Catie, all of whom I’ve followed in their careers and family life as well.

Back in 2010, Keith lost his wife Kristi to ovarian cancer. Then in 2013, I lost my wife Linda to the same disease. That was a strange convergence for two longtime friends. Our wives met several times at our college reunions where they quietly shared the challenges of chemotherapy, surgeries and survivorship.

As if that weren’t enough of a rough outcome for my friend Keith, he was later beset by Parkinson’s disease, a condition that muted his physical and social affect. Despite that challenge, he never lost his wry sense of humor or his love of storytelling. Sometimes I had to lean in to hear what he was saying, but it was always worth it. Every. Single. Word.

Then he was diagnosed with a form of Alzheimer’s disease as well. None of this was what I ever expected for him. Throughout his life he was an active athlete and vividly social being. Many times in his presence I was reduced to absolute laughter by his incredibly quick wit. He had a laugh that seemed to say so much as well. It was a welcoming and yet objective sort of laugh. As in, “Can you believe this?”

Over the last year Keith had become more animated, the result perhaps of some medications that worked well. A large group of his friends and former athletes conducted Zoom calls with him, swapping stories… and asking Keith to tell a few of his own. Those calls were akin to the Knights of the Roundtable, sharing old “war stories” of track and field triumphs and failures. We laughed at ourselves some, and Keith laughed along with us.

Along the way his daughters got to know some of us a bit better as well. We exchanged some direct messages, and I was in the process of gathering information to nominate him for Luther College Hall of Fame status when I learned of his passing. He deserves that HOF honor for his work as an athlete, as a coach, and as a longtime supporter of the institution. Even through his struggles with Parkinson’s, he led our class reunions several times, and I did as well. His classmates revered his perseverance, I can assure you.

The time that has passed does indeed make me think about what it means to lose a longtime friend. I think of all those college reunions and can count the years, but it would require more than a few hands these days. Yet I don’t feel old, because having lifelong friends keeps you young in many respects. Those shared experiences are sustaining in the long run. It means something to work together through thick and thin. To offer that call of commiseration when needed. To extend condolences when appropriate.

Then we get back to the business of living.

That’s not always easy. But that’s what it means to lose a longtime friend. It means you can have gratitude for the time shared and even the time apart. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. Well, with longtime friends it is often the case that once you touch base again, it is like you never left.

The physical Keith is gone. That needs to be said. I’ve been with my mother when she passed away, and my father too. I was by the bedside when my wife died in the company of her two children, and not long before that, her father as well. A few years ago, I lost a longtime friend that had been my baseball coach when I was thirteen years old. He was my running coach in high school and a longtime friend thereafter.

These bonds are important to all of us. One of the interesting products of social media is that people who knew each other from “back then” reconnect and find out they’re friends in new ways. That has redefined how some of our social networks exist and flourish. I consider it a blessing to have met some of my longtime friend’s daughters through Facebook. Now we’ll meet in person today.

The loss of a longtime friend is hard. If I know anything about Keith Ellingson, he would like it if his passing led to emotional support for his daughters and their families. I think of my own daughter Emily and my son Evan, and how much they’ve missed their mom since she passed. In so many ways we are all family, and through that hope we might all find healing. That is the right kind of pride.

And that is what it means to lose a longtime friend.

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As the crocus petals fall

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A close friend has been at the hospital the last few days tending to his mother. She injured herself severely in a household fall by tripping on a braided rug that her husband has long refused to throw out in their bedroom.

Such are the vagaries of old age, and sentiment. Her broken ribs and swollen brain are being treated at the hospital, but she’s not sure it’s a good idea to go on. There is fear, and there is pain.

Her son is also in pain, of the emotional kind. There has been no more faithful a son than he. For two decades he has tended their garden. Mowed their lawn. Taken them to church when necessary. His own life is intertwined with that of his parents. Because he cares.

And because he cares, he is suffering now at the thought of his mother’s passing. She is alive, but barely. Sooner or later most of us go through this experience with a parent. A spouse. Or a friend.

I know people that have even lost children. Such abrupt dissolutions.

Crocus

As I entered the house today, I glanced down to notice that the crocus in the front garden are already starting to drop their petals. We wait all winter for the first signs of spring. Then spring comes and sheds these bright signs of life as if they did not matter at all.

I have watched my mother die. I was there when she passed away 10 years ago. Recently I watched my father die as well. We emptied their house this past week. Filled a three-yard dumpster with all their former belongings. Kept a few keepsakes and practical items for our own.

My brother said, “I’m going home to get rid of 25% of what I own. If this is what happens to us when we die, I don’t want that.”

Time passes

Three years ago this March 26 my wife passed away after an eight year go-round with cancer. She lived fully right to the moment she passed away. I have always said that I am proud of her for that. But life itself sheds its hold on us like petals on a crocus.

We are reminded of all this come Easter time. According to Christian tradition, even the Son of God shed those petals of life here on earth. The faith holds that our souls are borne into heaven if we have accepted the grace, and shed the brand of pride that prevents it.

Instead, we should hold pride in the mercies we can show others. I told that to my friend, the selfless man that has cared for his parents all these years. “You are in pain because your love is wrapped together with her life. That is pain your have earned through caring. God knows that we feel that pain, and it’s the knowledge that we are loved that sustains us through it.”

Walking right into the pain

Three years ago on Good Friday, I walked into the church I attend with tears barely concealed behind my eyes. My brother asked me why I attended the service so soon after the death of my wife, and I told him, “I’m walking right into the pain.”

That’s really the only thing we can do. You can’t escape it by walking around. It follows you like a shadow. And when I walked up to meet the pastor for a blessing that Friday evening, he was the one shedding tears in my family’s name. “You are in the right place,” he told me.

That does not cure it all. There is still the absence and the loss. The profound depression knowing that someone is gone, for good. That is grief. It must be reckoned with as well. But first we must acknowledge the pain. All else is folly. That can take time. It cannot be rushed. Yet neither can we dwell in the past, lest we forget there is life to be lived.

Preaching to the choir

I understand that church is not for everyone. I get that more deeply than you might think. My own father relinquished his churchgoing ways. He loved the camaraderie of the choir, but the words ultimately didn’t mean that much. It doesn’t mean he did not have a soul. And I do not worry for it. That is not the brand of faith to which I ascribe.

We are all flawed people, who need forgiveness for the things we do. And, we should do all the forgiving we can muster. Because the real purpose of those falling petals should be to let go the lies, and the hurts, the harsh words and the lost opportunities to say that we love someone.

That is the faith to which I ascribe. It is ultimately transcendent, even in all its fallen glory. It is not keeping the crocus past its time, but knowing that its coming and going is the real sign of hope, and of caring, and of things planted for the right purposes.

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Go naturally

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photo (33)A few weeks ago I attended a live music show led by my sister-in-law’s boyfriend Tom, a professional guitarist with a really good voice who performs with a crackshot bunch of horn players. Midway through the show the band played a couple numbers by the 60s group Blood, Sweat and Tears. One of the guest singers absolutely nailed the BSWT song, “God Bless the Child,” but there was another song running through my head the rest of the night. It’s a tune called And When I Die that was a part of the amazing lexicon of music produced in the late 1960s. The lyrics start like this:

I’m not scared of dying
And I, don’t really care
If it’s peace you find in dying
Well then, let the time be near

If it’s peace you find in dying
Well then dying time is near
Just bundle up my coffin
‘Cause it’s cold way down there
I hear that it’s
Cold way down there, yeah
Crazy cold, way down there

As a kid of 12 or 13 at the time, those were odd words to read. At that point in the life, the idea of dying was so mysterious, and most of the deaths of grandparents had happened before I even arrived on earth. My mother’s parents were both gone years before, and my father’s mother too. They were ghosts, essentially, about which people did not even talk all that much. It spooked me to think about anyone dying, for these reasons. But there was some strange hope in the song with the lyrics Go Naturally as well..

And when I die, and when I’m gone
There’ll be, one child born
In this world
To carry on, to carry on

Many years passed before anyone close to me died. I lost a classmate from college track who became too dehydrated from having a cold while competing in track. His fever shot through 107-degree mark and he passed away in his room.

During that time of life (and like so many young people) I was grappling with the meaning of my faith, and whether it existed at all….

Now troubles are many
They’re as
Deep as a well
I can swear there ain’t no Heaven
But I pray there ain’t no hell
Swear there ain’t no Heaven
And I’ll pray there ain’t no hell
But I’ll never know by livin’
Only my dyin’ will tell, yes only my
Dyin’ will tell, oh yeah
Only my dyin’ will tell

I had my own brush with possible death as early as my freshman year in college. Someone made a punch for the cross country team party and it nearly cancelled my liver that night. I could easily have died of alcohol poisoning. And what a waste that might have been. So much life left to live…

Give me my freedom
For as long as I be
All I ask of livin’
Is to have no chains on me
All I ask of livin’
Is to have no chains on me
And all I ask of dyin’ is to
Go natrually, only wanna
Go naturally

Through the mists of the years I learned that sadness and anxiety and depression could be scary things, but not as scary as giving up. On the few occasions when I felt like life was too much to bear, my mind considered what it would be like to end it all. But there was no motivation to do so. Perhaps my personal faith really did have a purpose.
Here I go!
Hey hey
Here come the devil
Right behind
Look out children, here he come
Here he come, heyyy

Don’t wanna go by the devil
Don’t wanna go by the demon
Don’t wanna go by satan
Don’t wann die uneasy
Just let me go
Naturally

Then came middle age, and the challenge of managing a parent through the final year of her life. My mother died at age 80 in 2005. I was there when she passed away. Sitting inches from her bed, I could see that the week she spent in hospice was the right thing to do. She had experienced a stroke after a try at chemotherapy and her body was done with this world. That was so clear that my mourning was rich with that knowledge. It strengthened me to know that dying is in many ways not the end we all dread. It is a part of life.

And when I die, and when I’m dead
Dead and gone
There’ll be
One child born, in our world
To carry on, to carry on

That same year my wife was diagnosed with cancer, and I can tell you that scared the ever living daylights out of me. More than dying, cancer was a ghost of dastardly proportion. And yet we helped her survive through bout after bout of chemo, and our personal faith delivered small miracles that added up to one big miracle. She was still here. She had not yet died.

But after eight years her body was also through dealing with the rolling effects of chemo and surgeries and stress. I was sitting with my two children in our living room when she passed away. And days later, an astronomy student friend of my daughter staying over at our house to keep us company awoke in the middle of the living room in the middle to the sight of three floating orbs of light right at the spot where my wife had lay when she died.

There was nothing frightening about this to us. This was no hooky spooky ghost or something imagined by my daughter’s friend out of fear of death. This was a person with the mind of a scientist witnessing something beautiful and wondrous being the sphere of human imagination.

You can doubt us if you like. Or you can wonder aloud to yourself if what we see day by day is everything we can possibly know. There’s more than one way to go naturally, you see.

A few months before my wife died her own father died in a hospital bed. My wife raised herself from a cancer surgery two days after recovery and we made the trek to visit her father. The look they exchanged upon greeting each other was beyond the realm of language to describe. It was an eternal connection, something made from the fabric of time itself. A few days later, having seen that his own daughter had survived her surgery, her father passed into eternity itself.

And this past week my father died of ultimately natural causes. He was a stroke survivor for thirteen years. His four sons all visited him the last week of his life, and when his youngest had made a visit to the hospital one more time, my father passed quietly into death that afternoon.

The hospital called to tell me the news and I made the trip up to sit with my father in his room. I had a good, long cry at his bedside before kneeling down to say the Lord’s Prayer. He was no longer a praying man himself, I think he would have told you. But he said many prayers in other ways over the years.

Which leaves more than one more child to carry on. To go naturally is the greatest gift of all. Even if there are bumps and sways and difficult operations along the way, in the end we all go naturally. Death is part of life. It teaches and it cajoles. It offers us an ending to consider, one that we may try to write a little differently, and delay indefinitely, but it will come eventually.

Let’s admit this is not a bad thing. The enigmatic lead character in the movie the Green Mile is both blessed and cursed to live on, perhaps into eternity, watching his loved ones and found ones all pass away before him. He cannot go naturally into the night. He is given a glimpse of the burden of God and Christ himself. There is great love in that, but also a burden to care.

Which is why people speak of going to their final resting place. A good rest will often do you good. We may not know what comes in the great beyond, but what we know of getting there is enhanced by the fact of our very ephemeral being. It is ours to go naturally through our days, and love life in every way we can along the way.

appreciate what love means, God is love

The 10 ways I’ve most changed since I was a kid

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This morning while pouring cereal into the bowl, the box of Maple Pecan flakes ran out. Seeking to fill the dish, I picked out the Ginger Granola and poured it into the bowl to create the right portion. Then I thought, “I’d never have done that as a kid.”

Growing up I liked my cereal pretty much homogenous. If it was Cheerios or Rice Krispies, that’s what went in the bowl. Never would I think of mixing the two.

I also had a favorite spoon with which to eat my cereal. It had a raised image of the United States Capitol building on it. I loved that spoon, and ate my cereal with it every day.

These little moments of recollection set me thinking about how many other ways a person changes from a child to a grown up. At one point my own son at eight years old confessed that he would rather not grow up. He could see that being a grownup came with all sorts of challenges that did not seem to be that much fun.

And yet, there are some things that you do and feel as a kid that are not that great either. Here is a list of my Top 10 ways I’ve most changed since I was a kid. Perhaps you can share a few of your own in the comments below.

  1. No longer afraid of the dark. At some point in my late 30s I was running down the dark stairs to our basement and realized that the haunting feeling of fear at entering a dark space was no longer there. No boogeyman. No devil. No ghosts or other imagined dangers in the dark. It was a liberating feeling.
  2. Sex is no longer such a mystery. I can remember having sexual feelings very early in life. Children do, but they often don’t know what to do with them. Most masturbate their way through puberty and early teens, then experiment their way with sexual partners into some form of knowledge. It took me a long time to understand anything about sex, and that is not to say I know all about it now, either. But the giant wall that was “sex” looming ahead in life from the perspective of childhood was quite difficult to figure out. I was always jealous of kids who seemed to know so much about sex. And some just did. It’s a gift, I guess.
  3. My sense of wonder is not the same. This is both a relief as a person, and a shame as well. As a very sensitive child there were many moments of experience so deep and heartfelt it was difficult to function at times. I recognize now that some of this was tied to an anxious mind. Gaining control of my ruminative nature has been necessary to function in this world. And yet, I sometimes miss the intensity with which I felt a keen sense of wonder at nature, or in a moment.
  4. My trusting nature has evolved. I still trust people, especially those I love. But through many experiences in life, one learns that some people simply cannot be trusted. That was not me as a child. I trusted everyone. I often got teased or tricked as a result. The long journey to loss of naivete is the hardest road many of us travel in life.
  5. Money is just something, where it was once everything. As a kid you’re happy as heck to have money to buy candy or cheap stuff to entertain yourself. Our acquisitive nature drives us to want way more than we need. We obviously need money to survive in this world, and one learns through odd jobs and real jobs that you have to work hard to earn it. Some people judge themselves (and others) by what they earn. They see it as a mark of adulthood. And that is to some degree true. But there’s also an immature or childish nature to liking money too much. The Bible warns us that the love of money is the root of all evil. It is also the mark of adulthood to balance your love of money with gratitude in life.
  6. I put competition in perspective. For some crazed reason I could not stand to lose as a kid. Hated it. As an athlete I became one of the most competitive people you could meet. My brothers called me The Mink because I’d get spitting mad in the heat of competition. That fire to win served me well for the most part, winning races as a runner and leading the teams on which I competed or coached to victories. But at some point I recognized that the desire to win must be tempered with the understanding of what it really means to win, and when winning actually represents some sort of loss. Because that can happen in relationships, for example. But I have always, always fought for the underdog and for fairness to the best of my ability. I’m proud that I have not changed or lost that childhood sense of fair play to this day.
  7. I’ve learned to forgive myself. In my case childhood essentially lasted through the age of 29 years old. That’s when I woke up pounding the pillows in anger over some of the things that happened in my upbringing. I was confused by these angry feelings all through my teens and 20s. As I began to understand their source and grow out of the vexing events so many of us experience in childhood, it became evident that I was beating myself up all the time by not being willing to forgive those who might have wronged me. But it was a wise counselor that finally asked me this question: “You seem to be good at forgiving others…how are you at forgiving yourself?”
  8. My sweet tooth really is my enemy. We all want candy without the consequences. Back home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania there was a candy store a quarter mile from our home. A dollar would buy you tons of sweets, and that foundation of candy-loving carried through my college years and well into adulthood. But the harsh truth is that sweets are bad for your body in a lot of ways. Between sugar and carbohydrates, the supposed fuel of athletes, there lies deep danger to your heart, stomach, liver, kidneys and other organs. Reigning in my sweet tooth is hard, but it truly is the sign of a wise adult.
  9. Love has changed me. For all the flaws we see in our parents as we grow up, it often takes a lifetime to appreciate how they loved you. I no longer have any doubts about that, even with my father, who at times was a hard and exasperating man to abide. Time has given me insight into how many ways he did nurture me, and my mother too. As a result, love has changed me from a child who felt hurt due to a sensitive nature into a man who is sensitive to the power of love to heal those emotional pains. I’ve also grown in my understanding of faith from a child taught through bible stories to think of heroes as outsized personalities to a person who sees heroics in the small and wonderful things people do for each other. That is true love.
  10. Death is no longer so scary. Dead things were always both interesting and scary as a kid. The only funeral I attended as a child was for some relative I knew little about. It reduced me to tears seeing my aunt and uncle cry at the loss of their loved one. Yet when I lost a treasured former teacher to a heart attack in 1993, the funeral turned out to be a celebration of his life. I learned from that. Then my mother passed away in November 2005, and I was there when she ceased breathing and I saw that her body was through with life. Of course, during the eight years in which my wife struggled through cancer treatment, death was the frightful thing that always lurked ahead. When it came to us n March, 2013, my next worries were how to help my children deal with the loss of their mother. That is a challenge that will never abate. I think about my own mortality as well, and if you do the math and add up the years you have remaining on this earth, life itself can seem pretty scary.

So how delightfully ironic it is, that one of the best ways we can learn to enjoy life is to bring back our inner child. That’s when we begin to experience life in new and meaningful ways. It doesn’t mean you need to relinquish all the things that you’ve earned for yourself as a healthy adult. It may mean setting aside some of your more restrained behavior so that you can try new things, take chances and live a little. Or a lot.