Never Again

Something is tugging at my heart right now. And I do mean tugging. Right there, at the bottom of my ribcage, right about where you'd do CPR (two fingers below, to be exact). It's tight and pulled-in feeling, seeming to pull straight through from my physical body to my deepest emotions. Grandpa Ken may well be dying.

Normally chemo patients have a rough time, especially a low point after their first dose, and work up from there, and continue on. Grandpa just continues to get worse. The doctors are saying it's very unusual. After his immune system was wiped out he contracted double pneumonia, which remains now after his white blood cell count has returned to normal. He has fluid in his feet and ankles, and there's more I couldn't quite make out from Dad's phone message about an oxygen tent and barely avoiding going to intensive care. He's got some fungus thing in his nose that has potential to drag on for a long time and really eat up his tissue. It keeps going on, basically.

I myself have been distantly allowing it to enter my pragmatic thoughts, and now Mom is having to think about it for the first time herself: Grandpa Ken may not make it.

But what twists me down there below my ribcage is that, whether he makes it through or not, life will never be the same. All of my existence Grandma and Grandpa have just BEEN there. You didn't think about it, they just drove down and were there for Christmas, or for a random visit, or there in their stately ranch house plunked in the straight-streeted tall-treed suburbs of midamerican Chicago, the paradise of my youth. They got tireder as the years went by, and Grandpa did less and less of the house repairs he used to fill his time with on their visits, but they were just THERE. You could enjoy them with no thought of "last time," no painful dealing with severely limiting health conditions, no gap of what used to be. They were just there.

Keith Foley, Julie Andrews, The Canadian Brass--all our favorite Christmas music--would fill the house. The top of the fridge was covered with Fannie May chocolates, Jay's and Oke-doke (snacks endemic to Chicago), and Wrigley or Dally's food, bowls and biscuits. There were people around and things going on, always. Whether a football game, home repairs, shopping excursions into the brittle white crunchy winter world, meals out, or birding trips, there was always something to hook onto for the ride. That indescribable colored glow of Christmas lights touched everything with a tangible Christmas air, and we padded around the house in socks, heedless of time or days, for it was Christmastime, somehow arrived again after an interminable year--that time of all times with food and music, free time and lurking presents, and those special special people who brought such a different and exciting air to everything that went on.

Most likely never again. Quite possibily not with all of those same special people. Certainly not carefree. Never again carefree in the same way. I know 15 years from now I'll be celebrating Christmas with Mom and Dad and Uncle Dan and Uncle Ken and my wife and kids, but there will still be that little hole, back in those warm deep memories, were Grandpa used to be, and Grandma, and maybe even Uncle Keith. Different things are not always worse, but they are not the same. That most elevated time of the year, which stirred indescribable joy and anticipation and specialness in my heart at the mere thought of it, will be different for the rest of my life.

I'm really trying not to wax sentimental with all the mushy language we've heard a million times. The holiday magic of my childhood memories will never be the same, blah blah. That's mush. This is something I'm feeling right now (yes, feeling. Remember that.), something I've known for years was coming, and something which is now real and bottomlessly unescapable. I've just realized a little bit more, as I've been unloading the dish washer while Julie Andrews sings from the stereo and Dad is upstairs in the darkish and cooling and unfilled house, the weight of what is happening. Friday Dad and I drive out to Chicago for Christmas. Uncle Keith and Ken will be there, too, so we'll all be together, but most likely Grandpa will still be in the hospital. Christmas day will be painfully strange, stretched between the hospital and home, tainted by Grandpa's condition. So we sit at home and open presents with Grandpa laying in a hospital bed? So we bring them over to the hospital and sit around a sterile room with Grandpa racked-out and hooked-up on a bed? It will not be the Christmas I have looked forward to every other year of my life.

I pretty much felt like squeezing out a tear or two as I looked at the Christmas tree in the living room just now. Dad got it earlier than normal this year as we anticipated everybody, lymphoma and all, coming here for the holiday. We didn't have time that day to put lights on it, and since then we've gotten used to it bare, and actually I kind of like it--green, natural, and different. I'll pull up to the house after 8 hours of driving next week, walk in the door, plunk down my suitcase in the deserted house, and that tree will be there. Christmas will be past, and it was never surrounded with the happy happenings expected. The cold mean task of Christmas decor tear-down will eventually claim it, after it sat in the lonely house, bare and unattended, while Grandpa toiled in the hospital and we toiled in our hearts over Christmas. That tree stands there and wrenches my heart (in the mood I'm in right now, as I think about it) over what is happening right now.

I could really go for a shot and a half of neat Jack right now. Or some AIM with Nate or Shannon or Rebekah. Or a nice phone call to Steve or Jess. Or heck, even a tape of Get Smart TV shows. What is it in talking to other people that makes it seem like the only thing that can assuage the tugging grief in my heart? I do not understand it. I do not understand that powerful powerful living warmth that contact with other people brings.

But I'm not talking to anyone on AIM right now. I just checked, and my inbox holds no new emails. One new blog comment provided a spark of light, but that's it. The Simpsons are over for the night, and I know that only empty crap is on TV. Suddenly my 9.24 gigabyte iTunes library that normally beckons like a treasure chest of musical gems seems as hollow and friendless as an empty hotel lobby. Times like this are when I see again that Johnny Cash is my favorite musician. If I was to put anything on, it would be him. I just wish, cry out, for something to sit down with and be happy. The Christmas music playing is perfect, but it too pangs me with what is lacking, and what will never be again.

This is what I came to again on Monday as I had a quiet time--I rarely, basically never, come to God to have longings like this met. And not in some stupid mental pondering of the somber wonder of God dying for man, but these real freaking feelings MET. Addressed. Dealt with in a way that actually is better than AIM or email or movies. Not merely forgotten or turned aside or numbed, but met-with full-on, and transcended to reach joy beyond them. It happened a few times after Youth Camp this year, and what a glorious taste that was. But still prayer and Bible reading seem in an entirely different league than talking with Autumn, who just signed on now, or watching a new episode of the Simpsons.

Folks, I have no choice but to give it a try. It's 11:40 now, curse the damned clock, so I shouldn't really take any more time from the sleep my body is already lacking. But I will retire and think on God, read a Psalm or two, and seek in God refuge and strength, comfort for the afflicted, and "a very present help in time of need." They say He's real, and Dad and Mom seem to find something real in reading and prayer, so I can but try, and see if, once again, the God of the universe will make Himself seem actually real to me. It is extremely tempting to purse my lips in self-pity, cynicism, and bitterness, but I've been through that for years, and I do not want to go back. He was real at Youth Camp, and if my spiritual life is actually to change, He must become meaningful consistently, to some degree. So I plunge ahead, for as I am a man and God is God, I do not want this to be the story of my life.

O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise. For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. God, God sitting enthroned in Heaven this very moment, existant and reading these words, Your sacrifices are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart--these, O God, You will not despise.

--Broken Ambassador

[Note to my readers: The clock is damned. The trumpet of the Lord shall sound and time shall be no more. Perhaps I shouldn't curse it, for it is God's creation, but when mankind fell, time fell too, and its end is coming. I will be glad to see it go, the scourge of my days, though eternity still holds the fear of the endless unknown.]