Apprehension

I take my mother to see the urologist. Another visit, another day. Complicated news after the cat scan.

My mother is completely anxious and even the Book of Miracles that we glance at is not enough to calm her.I think we need a miracle.

I have her breath deeply. It almost helps. She is frantic and out of her skin with anxiety.
Perhaps because she knows and I know that we have to face difficult news.

The doctor examines her and finds something else.

It all gets to be too much to bear, to think about. As we leave I ask a nurse for a Kleenex.I cry and cry walking down the hall. I turn to look at my mother. She walks behind me with the most radiant happy smile. Calm, happy and radiant.

The Cat Scan

The Cat Scan

(First I will put some melodic Chopin music on in the background as I describe this moment)

She lays there, her young green eyes darting nervously about the room. I quietly hold her hand and reassure her, that yes, she will be fine.

My dear mother is in for a Cat Scan. Laying on the bed she looks small and thin. I stroke her face and hair. To me she looks both young and ancient. There’s an eternal liveliness to her eyes. I go sit in the hall while she goes through her procedure. It is both completely factual and it is a mystery. Health. 88 years old, soon to be 89. Yes, there she is, laying on the gurney looking so intact, so complete, so fragile and so strong. I marvel at her.

I sit in the neutral hall while the computer voice tells her to breath, or raise her arms or do something else. I sit under a perfect circle of light in this completely neutral environment. The circle of light is calming to me and it mutes my growing apprehension as to what will be found in the cat scan. Under this neutral light I allow meditative thoughts to emerge, to quietly flow while I look ahead.

Of course part of me is scared and wishes to just drift off to some safe fetal position somewhere away from here. But I am called back to the room and there she is, my own dear mother laying there on the white bed. So helpless, so strong, so wise.

The procedure is almost over. I gaze past this moment, past the sterile environment to muse on the richness of my mother's life. We pack up and leave. I hold her arm as we walk together under the calm pool of light into a future of questions and more doctor visits.

Bikkus Cholim ( for an old friend)

It's winter and here I am at Abbott Hospital again.It smells just as I remember and I know my way around. I hardly need to ask for help. There have been so many times and so many visits.
Today I am here visiting an old friend who I have not seen for years. I heard through the grape vine that he was in the hospital after major surgery. Ostomy and colonoscopy.Long words that mask a very long condition for him.
I think I've been in this room before, or have I? All the rooms blend into one long memory.

There he is, tubes and bandages.It's been a long road for him. We connect at once and regale each other with true tales and philosophical ramblings that come to the crossroads of tears and laughter. It's easy to go down either road. The road to laughter is wet with tears and the tearful road makes us really crack some good jokes.
Life has handed him these complexities and it's been tough. He is no stranger to pain and pain is his companion.
Yet he laughs and we make bad jokes.

Bikkur Cholim is the hebrew word for the mitzvah of visiting the sick. There is the feeling that through visiting the sick one can take away one sixtieth of their illness.
I enter his room feeling overwhelmed by the problems of my life. Family, finances, future...what? what? what? I ask.

I leave feeling light and happy. Somehow my problems have been put into perspective and I feel like I have wings.

There is a mystical light that shines through our most difficult situations. It is not easy to find, but it is there. It is like the streetlight on a snowy night, shining out and illuminating the hidden spiral of insight traced in the snow. You have to really squint to seet it...It is so hard to see, but just look, it's there.
You really can walk that inner road, yes, you can reach that inner destination. Just look, it's there.

Difficult moments have their own brightness and illumination. Not by the light of day, but the hidden light of intuition and insight. Look up. Look in. It is there.

Phone Conversation

"Hello Mom..

"Dad wants to get on the bus and go downtown and go get a car."

"Oh"

"What should I do?"

" Put him on the line."

"He'll only yell at you."

"I'll try."

"Hello Dad....I have really enjoyed putting your poems on the blog and honoring you in that way....
Dad, the roads are really bad now, why don't you wait until Spring to get a car??"

Pause.....

Long pause...

"Okay, Darling."

End of conversation.

I do not want to be a dictator and I feel my parents need and desire to get a car. I see how cooped up they feel. But..........

Thank you Peter M.

Today I happened to run into a former student of my father's. There, as the afternoon sun fell on us as we stood by the ATM card machine at Wells Fargo he recalled my dad and his love of poetry and how he quoted poems.....Yes, he remembered him as his teacher long ago.., as did his wife.

It was a lively and solemn moment for me...as I turn to honor Dad and his wide, brilliant life as a lover of words, books, poems, wisecracks, and jokes. I am grateful to Peter for remembering.

I see the tide of old age coming in and with it the painful onset of dementia...and the attendant loss of memory as to the present moment.... So we swim against the tide my father and I, even though it's pull is so strong.....and we go out into the deep waters . There we dive deep retrieving memories, and poems....all the good things.....

Back on shore we see memory slowly being erased...I hold onto the goodness, the abundance in my hands....

thank you Peter...for remembering as well.

It is five weeks since my dad rolled his car. Every moment I see him is a blessing, every conversation is a gift.

read all about him as I hold onto, celebrate and enter the abundance of his inner life:

jamescwhite.blogspot.com

shalom Anita

To Life!!! A celebration for my father

Greetings. I am happy to celebrate my father's survival from his car accident by starting a blog that features his poems, quips, quotes, and Texas humor. The title
is
James C White's poem, quips, and quotes.

The blog address is http://jamescwhite.blogspot.com

I am just in the process of adding pieces to it.

Enjoy!!

L'chaim!! To life!!

JACOB'S LADDER

JACOB’S LADDER

Ladders and angels and a stone for a Pillow. Even though that Torah Portion has passed I find myself thinking about a lot. My second graders are using the images from that Torah Portion for the Collage they will make for their presentation in a few weeks.. I find myself returning to that imagery as I contemplate the weeks that have passed since my father crashed his car.

It’s been a hard. I think I can relate to the stone for a pillow most of all. It feels like I have been trying to rest on a stone of stress for my pillow. Despite returning to the frailty of old age and the onset of dementia my father is intact. Even if he thinks he went off to Wilmar, and not Northfield it is such a relief to have him here.
We awake from this time and mark the place.

Anything is better than having to arrange shiva. It is so clear to me that he has been given one more chance.
Jacob. Stone. Ladder. Angels. As we rest on the hard stone of the aftermath of his accident I like to think that there are metaphors for us to hang onto. For that is how my dad thinks. Metaphors and poems. Let’s say those angels are going up and down the ladder holding poems he has written. Let’s say that mysterious forces combine to help him at last get seen.
When he held out the scribbled sheet of his writing after the accident I bent in close and listened. He feels low. He feels frustrated. His work has not been seen. He has not been published the way he would like.

And yet he sit there unharmed voicing these feelings. I can’t help but wonder about the unseen hands and angels that attended to him.
When I look closely at the map on Google I can see the roads surrounding the place where he had his accident. There is a Kerrville Trail, a Marion Lake and a Anita Road.
So did his sister who once lived in Kerrville, Texas come in close on angel wings and hold him so he remained unharmed. Did my Jewish relatives whose last name is Marion swoop in and hold him so he remained unharmed. Or was it just me and my intense worry that icy Thursday that held him as I phoned hospitals wondering where he was and filing a Missing Persons Report. We’ll never know. But seen and unseen forces were there. Did his Baptist preacher father Charles H. White hold onto him. Did the thunder from one of his sermons about Jacob keep the ground clear for Dad to land on..Who knows…it is all a great mystery.
As the car rolled was his father also there in that moment. Both holding onto him and pushing him away from death. My dad’s father was a farmer who got the call to preach and became a Southern Baptist Preacher. Later on in life he was obsessed with Jacob.
It’s been a hard time. I’ve had my usual financial stress, the roads are icy, winter. There has also been the maze of phone calls and worries to attend to. Sometimes you wake up and you realize that just a stone has been your pillow. Nothing soft or comforting. And then you mark that place and know that G-d has been with you and had held you for his own. When you wake up and your stone has been a pillow, know that it is a holy place. Know that it is holy ground. Know that from now on out nothing will be the same.

I look up into the mystical sky. I see angels going up and down a ladder. They are holding poems my dad wrote. They are holding them up so all can see them. We awaken and say, now, this is holy ground, this hard place we have been in. and now it is time for his work to be seen.

Once upon a time I had a stone for a pillow when I lived on an island of stone far away in a Gaelic sea. I was there because my father helped me stay there. He supported me financially so I could live out my dream. I lived in the house of the storyteller and yes I had a stone for a pillow.

Now it is time to tell his stories. We mark this place and call it holy ground.


Weeks pass. Regular family tumult resumes. There are hassles here and hassles there. The $3,000 from the Insurance company for the totaled car is deposited into my parents bank account. It will help.

It is grey and wet and drizzling out. I look out at the shiny snow and inward to the Torah scrolls as they are put away. We sing the song I love:

“It is a Tree of Life for all that hold fast and all its supporters are happy!!”
I see mystical mysterious tendrils extending beyond the physical scrolls. They wrap around me, illuminating my life with light that shines from an ancient source. I feel courage to navigate the mysterious road that lies in front of me.