Rights of Passage

In Münster, Germany

June is one of those months, you know!  Weddings, graduations, and more weddings.

Did you know that in the Netherlands, when you graduate from secondary school, you hang your backpack outside your bedroom window…or somewhere in the front of your house, even on the flagpole!  The other day while walking in nearby Utrecht, we saw four backpacks hanging from a row of houses next to each other.  They’ll be friends for life, you can be sure.

Oh, and don’t forget all those June birthdays.  In my birth family, 3 of us 10 were born in June.  Yesterday Mom would have been 98.  Tomorrow brother Bennett would be 66, 3 years my junior.  He made it to 47.

Which leads to death, of course.  We don’t like to talk about this rite, even though it’s the surest of them all....

But where Astrid and I live in our senior community, it’s closer than I’ve ever experienced, except for when working in assisted living.  And it's here, surrounded by those so close to death, where I am learning to cherish the beauty of this rite, especially after a life well-lived.

For instance, Pie (pronounced pee), at age 98, is one chic lady who attends every Friday’s Happy Hour with the grace and stateliness of a queen.  If you ask her how she’s doing, she might mention the pain in her back but will add, with a serene smile, “Other than that, I’m just fine.”

And there’s Arend, age 86, who walks past our apartment two times every day to eat with his lady friend, Bettie, who’s 91.  He’s a widower, she a widow, both still wearing their wedding rings from past lives.  They do everything together, including cruises, bus trips and flights to nearby countries.  Though she’s quick to tell you they are NOT married, they are definitely companions…a right they both enjoy.

Speaking of Arend, I’m quite sure he is the model Shel Silverstein used in The Giving Tree for the caricature of the Boy who became the Old Man.  Every time I look at Arend’s wrinkled, gnarled face at Rummikub on Fridays, I see the boy a tree loved....

And I see death as a rite that is…a beautiful right to cherish.  Our last rite.  Our last right…even if totally unexpected (as with Marcie’s mother) or seemingly before its time (my brother)!

But way before that…and the Holy Communions and bar/bat mitzvahs, the sweet-16s, the driver’s licenses, the coming of age, giving birth, the marriages and divorces, job promotions, retirements....

It’s this Pacifier Tree that stops me dead in my tracks.

I suppose we chose the rite of birth for our own children but did we know then anything about these trees popping up all around the world today?  They’re usually in neighborhoods near schools where the youngest siblings of school children get strolled by their parents.

When exactly the light goes on that the binky in the child’s mouth is like those up in the tree, I don’t know, but one day the wee child “gets” it and decides it’s time to “hang it up.”  Whether encouraged or prodded by others, she’s lifted up on the shoulders of Mommy/Daddy and SHE does it.  SHE gives it up.  I don’t know if she’ll remember it the rest of her life but…it’s as much a rite of passage as any that will follow.

Let’s call it the first rite of passage:  giving up the pacifier.  Do you suppose it'll be a good kick-starter for those other rites/rights to follow?

This Do in Remembrance of Me

Collegiate Church of St. Boniface, Freckenhorst, Germany

For every Sunday I can remember before going off to university, I sat on the front row of my preacher dad’s church tracing with my mind’s eye the Old English letters on the Holy Communion table in front of the pulpit:

 

 

I’m guessing everyone here knows not only WHO said that but WHEN and WHERE, no matter what religious background.  Eucharist words.

But when you trace things like that, repeatedly, over and over again, they become stuck somewhere in your subconscious, taking on a mind of their own.  That’s probably why I took a calligraphy class in a past life and inscribed names on Dale Carnegie certificates.  Before that, in another life of wild dreams and great expectations, I labored over the Book of Kells as a female scribe!

Did you know that, over recorded history, Easter Sunday has occurred as early as March 22^nd and as late as April 25^th.  That’s a spread!

It goes like this:  Jesus’ death and resurrection occurred at the time of the Jewish Passover, which was celebrated on the first full moon following the vernal equinox.  By 325CE the Christians (à la the Council of Nicaea) decided Easter would fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

Got it?

And what is the vernal equinox, you ask???  And when???  SPRING!  And it starts tomorrow.

So, today is March 19, and I’m definitely in the ballpark…even though Easter isn’t until April 20^th this year.  It’s confusing, isn’t it!

All of that to explain why NOW, today, I’m thinking about Easter and how it has taken on a mind of its own.

It so happens that my dad, Carl Clarence, died on the Wednesday before Easter in 1995.  A year later, my brother, Bennett Williams, died a month before Easter.  A year later, my mom, Barbara Nelson, died 30 minutes before Easter.  (Three of my bright morning stars!)

Not that I come to this time of the year wondering if another of my 6 remaining siblings or our children or grandbabies will die, mind you, but rather that it’s a time of remembrance for me now…of those already passed...more than at any other time of the year. 

In fact, what I mean to say about this new mind of its own, is that when we remember those who have died, we start naming our children after them.  Have you noticed? 

Olive Nelson Bennett Sidney Rueben Reuel Barbara Carl Clarence Hodges Susan Elizabeth Virginia Louise Nancy Rebecca Williams James Thomas John Stephen Ruth Ann.

Every one of those names has either been passed on from the generations above and/or to the generations below.  I say generations, plural, because, one name, Ann, was just recently passed to the 3^rd generation below mine in our Hart Tribe.  Another name, Olive, set to be born any day now, comes from 4 generations above.  That’s a spread!

Death is about remembering.  Dying to not forget because nothing lives forever.  Right now we’re dying for spring.  We know it will come, just like every year before.  We don’t doubt it.  We expect it.  We add a spring to our step in anticipation.

It’s the cycle we relive over and over again:  death--resurrection.  The one thing we know for sure is it IS a cycle.  It’s not stuck!  And the good news about that is…we all remember! 

THIS DO IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME

Our Bucket Lists

The sweetest story I’ve ever told is the one when Dad died the Wednesday night before Easter in 1995.   

He had been diagnosed with lung cancer 6 weeks before, a non-smoker preacher.  The nurse said it was in his genes.  I drove to Michigan from Georgia with my children 4 weeks later to say our good-byes.  But when the nurse called us all back within 2 weeks, I wanted to go again, alone.

He was lying in a make-shift bedroom on a hospice bed in the formal dining room of their home.  7 of us 8 children surrounded his bed (Bennett, the one who himself died a year later, had been with him earlier in the day).  We chatted and laughed nervously. 

Then Mom walked in from the kitchen.  In her early stages of Alzheimer’s, with hands on her hips in utter exasperation, she said, “WHEN is the funeral!?!?”

I, sitting at the foot of the bed massaging Dad’s feet, said with a giggle, “We won’t know, Mom, until Dad kicks the bucket!”

HAHAHA!  Even Dad started laughing…and then began:  “That reminds me of the grandpa whose little grandson was visiting him in his study, playing with the old waste bucket.  The grandson,   tossing his toys in and out of the bucket, asked if he could have it…..”  And without finishing the story, Dad trailed off into a 6-hour coma before dying.

We laughed because he hadn’t finished the story, which woke him up with a giggle to start the same story all over again from the beginning.  Each time he got close to the punch line, he’d trail off again, we’d laugh, he’d wake up with a giggle, and start all over again.  This happened 4 or 5 times.  He never finished the story with grandpa’s answer (which we already knew from his sermons):  “One day, yes, but not until I kick the bucket,” to which the grandson replied “Grandpa, could you kick it now?!”

That was Dad’s last conversation with us before he kicked his bucket.

Now, to connect the dots.

We all know that our Bucket Lists come from that kick-the-bucket idiom.  That is, we list what we really want to do before we die!

What I’ve always wanted to do for eons is a European river cruise.  Don’t ask me why, though I’m guessing it’s the castles.  Now that I live in Europe, you’d think it’d be as easy as pie, right?  Wrong, if you have a Dutch wife who doesn’t get it!

Flash back 1 ½ years to when we had American guests visiting us a week before their week’s river cruise from Amsterdam to Basel.  When we drove them to their boat and stepped onboard for all of 10 minutes, said wife immediately whispered, “Oh, I think I could do this!”

Long story to say that this Saturday we leave on a 15-day river cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest, the earliest cruise of the season in the cheapest room on board at two-for-the-price-of-one tickets.  Do we care that it will be cold?  Are you kidding?

Some more dots.  Though the above natal chart renders me naked, see that 9^th House of long-distance travel?  One of those 2 planets is Jupiter in his natural home, giving me “Good Luck” and expansion in travel.  In fact, our added 4 days in Budapest over Easter is when I expect Dad will be smiling down on us. 

As Astrid jokingly says, if we're gonna die anytime soon, please let it be AFTER our vacation! 

So…do you know what YOU want to do before YOU kick the bucket?!

Death Has Its Reason

The 12th Station of the Cross in the Maria Magdalenakerk, Goes, Netherlands.

Today is the 2nd Easter Day here in the Netherlands, an official holiday.  So, because it’s still Easter…. 

In my conservative, protestant, Christian, evangelical, preacher’s-home heritage of Easter, death was always-always-always connected to resurrection.  Death never sat alone.  Easter was proof for what we believed in, that life comes after death. 

The joke, however, was that we Protestants could always pick out our Roman Catholic friends by the crucifixes they wore.  While our crosses sat “empty,” their Jesuses hung forever dying around their necks.

I don’t quibble over these things anymore.  Nor do I feel sacrilegious in how the joke might go in my home these days: 

     Ginnie:  Did you read the article about how the use of microwaves causes cancer?
     Ginnie:  What do the Dutch think about the butter vs. margarine debate?
     Ginnie:  You eat animal fat?????

     Astrid:  But…death has to have a reason!  Something’s gonna kill you.

Think about George Burns who was guilty of everything that should have killed him decades before his 100^th year.  “He had good genes,” they said.  As opposed to my dad who died of lung cancer at age 78, having never smoked a day in his life!  “He had the gene,” said the hospice nurse. 

Then there’s Mom who faithfully did all those brain teasers that supposedly protect us from dementia, right?  Besides loving crossword puzzles, she’d play solitary Scrabble with a goal to beat 1,000 points every game, which she often achieved.  And oh yes, she also played the piano and organ, composed cantatas, directed the church choir, taught women’s classes, and raised 8 kids.  Officially, she died of Alzheimer’s.  She must have had the gene. 

Remember that gravestone epitaph, “I told you I was sick!” 

My brother Bennett, 3 years my junior, died of severe arteriosclerotic heart disease at age 47.  By occupation he delivered parcels in a courier van all over the Midwest, but by hobby he was a photographer and was in the process of building his log house.  A strapping young mountain man, you’d say, if you saw him in his flowing beard and flannel shirts.  The every-6-months physical required for his job never detected his arteries were clogged.  Maybe he, too, had the gene?

To be honest, this is how I think it works:  Mom officially died of Alzheimer’s but in actuality died peacefully in her sleep one abnormally lucid evening…30 minutes before Easter Sunday.  What was the reason?  I ‘spect it was Dad, her husband, who was buried two years previously the Saturday before Easter.  My brother Bennett, her son, died a year after Dad, a month before Easter.  He was the only one of us 8 kids who never married or had children.  He loved driving Mom and Dad all over the back roads of Michigan.  I think both he and Dad were tired of waiting for her and just said:  “C’mon, Mom, it’s time!  Let’s celebrate this Easter together.” 

Not that I advocate an eat-drink-and-be-merry, happy-go-lucky, toss-everything-to-the-wind lifestyle (more like “moderation in everything”), but sometimes I think we get too crazy about what might kill us.  Does death really scare us that much?  When did we forget that life comes after death?  Actually, it also comes before death and may make shaving off a couple years worth some of the fun?

Death is in our genes.  It's gonna happen!  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it happened peacefully in our sleep one night…for absolutely no reason at all.  Not that we get to choose, of course, but what a way to go!