JANUARY 28, FOREVER

 

My mother Nina Naomi, born November 6, 1922-died May 25, 2005

My son, born January 28, 1972-died July 17, 2005

His daughter, born July 29, 2005

His nephew and our younger grandson, born January 28, 2005 

Everyone has a hardest year.  Ours was 2005. Our house was filled with love and grief so intertwined that swirling molecules of one collided with molecules of the other.  My mother was in a nursing home dying of cancer and her first born grandson could not visit her because he was dying of his own cancer. She was 82 and he was 33. My daughter had a 4-year old son and a baby born January 28 (today as I write this) the day her brother turned thirty-three. We have a photo of them together, our son, a tall man with soft light brown hair worn long in front--now bald from chemotherapy--and his nephew with the downy scalp, held high, matching bald head for bald head. Our son looks quizzical. 

Twelve days after our son's death, his daughter was born, a healthy amazing child with straight-up punk-style strawberry blonde hair. 

I still remember being in the hallway when a nurse asked me, is the new mother your daughter?  No, she's my daughter-in-law I said.  She made the connection and looked stricken for me. "Oh, I'm so sorry," touching my arm. 

But even then, just twelve days after our son's death, his daughter closed the circle. Our grief was cushioned by our love: for him, for her, for her mother.  Our daughter-in-law was sleep-walking.  She went from nursing a husband to nursing a baby; flush with all her new-mother hormones, yet asking God "why?"

I got through the day of the funeral holding the precious baby who had been born just six months before.  Our daughter handed him to me as we came home from the church, knowing who I needed to stay upright as friends came by. I focused on his silky soft head (99th percentile, his father bragged). By six months this baby boy was already saving a life.

From the moment of her birth our son's daughter filled the family with joy and admiration. She is a smart, willowy college junior.  As God's gift to her and to us, she has never shared our grief. She has her own knowledge of loss, I believe, but not with the depth of ours. When she holds out her arms for an embrace, no person is luckier than I.  

I am writing this small remembrance on January 28, the birthday of my son and my younger grandson.  Now, 21 years after the death of my son, it is my grandson who I awake thinking of.  His happy birthday, away from home in Scotland at St. Andrew's University, living his best life and sharing it during long phone calls, with us. 

In the midst of this remembrance of love and sadness, I get a call from our granddaughter.  It is Daddy's birthday, she says to me, and I am thinking of you.  Who raised such a girl I wonder.  How can she know I need her voice today?  

We are home with the flu and she drives partway up our icy drive, then walks the rest of the way carrying a bag of cough medicine and spicy Peruvian chicken.  She leaves it all on the back stoop and taps on the window and waves.  We are snowed in and feverish but now we have enough chicken, rice, beans and Robitussin to last till weekend. There are yucca chips in the bag too.  

The hardest year is long over.  We survived it.  We do, don't we?  Our daughter-in-law stayed a widow for ten years, until that no longer seemed right, and then married the man our granddaughter calls Dad.  But Daddy is still our son, a man who has filled her with his tenderness of spirit and so many other qualities.  More than any other feeling, I feel lucky and blessed.  I feel hope in the younger generations. I feel God's gifts in my marriage, in the snow softly falling again, in the candlelight glowing by my computer.   

In Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) said, "I can't go on.  I'll go on."  This is supposed to reflect the essence of human persistence despite despair, and it does.  But to Christians, surely a statement of God at our side. 

Thank you for reading.  Nina Naomi 

 

WHERE BETHLEHEM LIES

 Have mercy on us Lord,

And hear our solemn prayer.

We come to hear your living word;

It saves us from despair. 

These are the words of the hymn we sang this Sunday.  As we sang, I hoped that God's Word would save us from despair.  There is much to despair of these days. 

For so long we've been thinking of the Ukranians.  We have no trouble sorting good from evil in that war.  Now we have something more complex.  People switch from anger to grief and back again.  There are no simple answers, maybe no realistic answers at all. As we await Advent and the countdown to Christ's birth, we cannot help but grieve.  Not only for the Israelis killed wantonly on Oct 7, but also for Gazan children killed randomly today. 

Bethlehem lies less than 10 miles south of the city of Jerusalem.  Jerusalem is only 62 miles from Gaza.  We will be singing carols about the little town of Bethlehem but the disconnect between Christ's birth there and the advanced warfare of today sickens the heart. Tensions between the Palestinians and Israel date back decades, but tensions is not the word to use anymore.  On October 7th over 1,200 Jews of all ages were butchered.  Over 240 were taken hostage.  Since that date over 11,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children.  The number grows daily.  Some premature babies who need medical care are surviving evacuation, some are not. What is left behind is rubble.  Pictures from Ukraine and from Gaza look the same. 

I am not an ethicist or a historian, but I expect they have no more or better answers than the rest of us.  "Thoughts and prayers" has become a platitude.  Politicians use it after mass shootings as the rest of us wait for the next one.   

With the Holy Land a war zone, I wonder if anyone else feels like it will take extra effort this year to picture a baby born on a silent night in Bethlehem. 

One thing that we can hope for is that as the days march on to Christmas, the Lord will enter our minds and hearts and help us bear the sinful world in which we live. That has happened before.  We've had wars before.  We can ask the Almighty to be with the innocents--in their death shrouds, in hiding or held hostage, or digging through the wreckage--whether they pray to God, Jehovah or Allah. Mired in the world, we have often been lifted up to find gratitude and praise.  

I don't know what to expect.  But let us hope together for God's mercy and his Word to save us from despair.  

Old Mission Santa Ines, CA 1804
A Place to Pray

WISE WORDS, A COLLECTION

 

 

Reader, I've filled my 2021 collage journal with these words and would humbly like to share them with you:

Winter reminds us that every living thing, including us, needs quiet time.

The world is full of magical things waiting for us to notice. 

"Books are the destination and the journey.  They are home."  Anna Quindlen (b. 1953)

When the astronauts looked back, they saw that what they were leaving behind was perhaps even more beautiful than where they were going. 

Acknowledging the good you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.  Eckhart Tolle (b. 1948)

A healthy wish:  To live simply.  To sit by the window when it rains and read books, and never be tested on them.  

Another healthy wish:  To fall asleep when the moon is high and wake up slowly without penalty.

Go ahead, write about your life; it's completely yours.

"[Books are] the only time we really go into the mind of a stranger, and we find our common humanity doing this.  So the book doesn't only belong to the writer.  It belongs to the reader as well.  And then together you make it what it is."  Paul Auster (b. 1947)

Trees have given us shelter, food, warmth and healing for all of human existence.  Now we must care for them with love.

"Life is to be lived, not controlled."  Ralph Waldo Ellison (1914-1994) 

"Make your life a little easier, especially in your head." unknown 

What we pay attention to thrives.  What we ignore fades away. So place your attention carefully.

"It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in this broken world."  Mary Oliver (1935-2019) 

Peace doesn't mean no noise, trouble or effort; it means to be in the midst of these and more, yet still be calm in mind and heart. 

"The greatest wealth is to live content with little."  Plato (428-348 BCE)

Change is inevitable.  It's OK to change your point of view, change your priorities, change your beliefs, your mind, your behavior . . . .

"One short sleep past, we wake eternally." John Donne (1572-1631)

There's more to come, and some of it will be beautiful. 

Just connecting to beauty is consoling.  It helps us know the best we can do; the worst gets so much publicity. 

As life progresses, there are certain things we just have to get used to.  

"Something that is loved is never lost."  Toni Morrison (1931-2019)

"You are never stronger . . . than when you land on the other side of despair."   Zadie Smith (b. 1975)

It's easy to love life when everything is new to you, but surprising to still love every day as I get older. 

We don't live to ourself or die to ourself.  If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. Romans 14:7-8

How wonderful when you realize that you can save yourself.  How amazing it is to be brave without forethought.  

Learn to stop rushing things that need time to grow.

Sometimes just going forward is superhuman.  Give yourself credit. 

A Star led the way to the Light of the World.   

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

ANOTHER WEEK OF SHOOTINGS

August Rodin, Despair. 1890

Another week of shootings in our beautiful country.  Two massacres within 24 hours, one in Texas, one in the Midwest.  Twenty-nine dead and fifth-three injured in less than a day.  In Ohio nine dead in less than a minute.  The shooter in El Paso left a hate-filled anti-immigrant manifesto.  The shooter in Dayton wore body armor and carried multiple rounds of ammunition.  How can we talk about anything else?  Nesting, blogging, mindfulness, "thoughts and prayers," against the obscenity of armed and enraged young men roaming our towns and shopping centers?  The right to keep and bear arms has become the right to kill anyone anytime any place for any reason. Walmart, that most American of institutions, has a body count.  The US Attorney for the Western District of Texas promises "swift and certain justice."  We tighten penalties instead of gun laws.  The United States Senate sits mute.  Only the candidates running for president call for change.  Trump plays golf.  Tweets substitute for action. 

I don't know if any other country needs to keep a gun violence archive.  I suspect not.  But we do.  We keep count of mass shootings where 4 or more people are shot or killed not counting the shooter.  We're up to 251 mass shootings in the 216 days of 2019. 

We have perfected our weapons,

Our conscience has fallen asleep. 

Pope Francis 

Grief continues but disbelief is no longer an option.  Lamentation isn't enough. So what can we do?  

We can't give up, that's certain.  We can campaign.  We can vote.  We can lobby.  Where we have the skills and training, we can help the troubled.  We can alert law enforcement.  We can organize, we can boycott, we can write. . . . 

Many well-established groups are fighting for what are called "sensible gun reforms."  Every one needs money and volunteers.  Here are just a few: 

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence  (www.bradyunited.org) with 94 chapters across the US, named for Tom Brady who was wounded during the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan. 

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (www.csgv.org) founded in 1974.  This group works with scientific experts to identify individuals at risk of violence towards themselves or others without stigmatizing mental illness. CSGV was the first prevention group to identify the NRA's dangerous interpretation of the Second Amendment. 

Every Town for Gun Safety Action Fund through secure.actblue.com, info@actblue.com, a registered charitable foundation formed to democratize social welfare giving. 

And the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence (www.lawcenter.giffords.org) where legal experts research, write and defend laws proven to save lives from gun violence. 

What else?  We can raise the next generation to accept our diversity as our strength, we can teach by example.  I feel confident that each of us has skills that can be used to fight for a safer America. And when we need a respite from our activism, or from our fears, we can live simply, love nature, be mindful of each day, keep healthy attitudes and take the time to live well.  Nurturing ourselves and others that way is part and parcel of creating a mindset where the right to live safely outweighs all other competing rights.  We cannot despair.  

                                                                 Nina Naomi

 


 

PONDERING SILENCE

Van Gogh, Cypresses, 1889

Listen to the Silence.  It has so much to say.  

The silence after the final breath.
The silence of what could have been. 
The silence of pain. 

The silence of deception.
The silence of disloyalty.
The silence of dishonesty. 
The silence of the facts. 


The silence of feeling worthless.
The silence of being fooled.  
The silence of not being valued.  

The silence before confrontation. 
The silences after an argument.

The silence after telling the truth.  Or hearing it.


The silence of grief. 
The silence of heartbreak.
The silence of trying to forgive.
The silence of trying to forget.

The silence of being alone.

Auguste Rodin, Despair, 1890

The silence when deceit ends.
The silence after an apology. 
The silent request for forgiveness. 
The silence of change.

The silence of feeling loved. 

The silence of giving love. 
The silence of touch. 

The silence of closed eyes. 
The silence of a shared past. 
The silence of peace. 
The silence of prayer. 
The silence of moving forward. 
The silence of being together.
The silence of softness.
The silence of warmth. 
The silence of sleep.
The silence of warm breath in bed. 

The silence of staying home.
The silence of feeling special. 
The silence of remembrance. 
The silence of bravery.  
The silence of healing. 
The silence of truthfulness. 

The silence of being alone. 

Van Gogh, Still Life with Basket of Apples, 1887

The silence of a photograph.
The silence when the cicadas rest.
The silence of an quiet house.

The silence of a memory.
The silence in your mind.
The silence in your heart.
The silence in your throat. 
The silence of thinking.  
The silence of promises made.
The silence of promises kept. 

The silence of being alone.