Pop’s Page

I have in front of me as I write two pictures of my beloved, taken about 30 years apart. In the first she is 28, or maybe 29, I’m not sure of the date. She is absolutely gorgeous in this picture, in the red dress she made herself and highlighted by a long string of white pearls. I was totally infatuated with her. I loved to just sit and look at her because she was so beautiful.

In the second, she is still beautiful. In fact I’ve never seen anyone 59 years old who could compare with her. But it’s clear in this picture that she’s no longer 29. Yet this picture captures a new beauty that has grown in her over the 30 intervening years. A certain maturity and peace that passes understanding.

Which Susan do I truly love? In some sense I can’t love both, because even though they are the same woman, they are also different. When she was still alive—just last year—there was no way for me to go back and kiss that 29 year old I see in that picture, or experience the emerging Susan that was to become the mature Susan that I loved even more.

I know that these words seem somewhat paradoxical and perhaps even contradictory. But they get to an element that was raised by C. S. Lewis in his own grief in the quotation I used in yesterday’s posting. Lewis wanted to have back that circle that touched his circle in yesterday’s life. I do too. But yet if you were to ask me a year ago if I would want to be transported back in time to live again with the 29 year old Susan, I would have had to say “no,” if it meant I couldn’t live with the 59 year old Susan. The latter Susan was more of the “real” Susan than the former one. Sanctification is real. I observed it day-by-day in my beloved. And so, in distinction from Lewis—immersed as he was at the time in his grief—it occurs to me that the future glorified (not just sanctified) Susan that I will someday know will likewise be one I would never want to leave. And so the longing that I shouted yesterday, I WANT HER BACK, is tempered by the sure knowledge that the glorified Susan—seen by, yes, the glorified John Dishman (as she would say it)—will be a far, far better thing. And so, I wait for it in hope.

Yesterday marked the eighth week since Susan’s passage into glory, and my entrance into grief. Perhaps in tribute to the degree of recovery I am making, I was not even home to mark the time, 12:14 pm, of her passing. I was out eating lunch with a good friend on a day chocked full of activity.

Yet that phrase, “degree of recovery” sounds strangely like something someone in AA might say. Instead of saying, “I’m a recovering alcoholic,” I say, “I’m a recovering griever.” And just like alcoholics—who say their recovery goes on until the end of their lives—so I likewise wonder will this grief haunt me until the end of mine?

C. S. Lewis seemed to think so. Long ago, when life was beautiful, and Susan and I were blissfully happy in Morris Township, NJ, I for some reason read the book, “A Grief Observed,” by Lewis which recounts his own grief after the loss of his wife (whom he married for “convenience” after a life of bachelorhood) to cancer. But I lost my copy in various moves and was forced to obtain a copy from the Plano Public Library. I have been devouring the book since. I realized that in reading the book the first time I could hardly relate emotionally to what he was writing. Now I can. Here are some quotes that find deep resonances in my soul.

An odd by-product of my loss is that I’m aware of being an embarrassment to everyone I meet. At work, at the club, in the street, I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they’ll ‘say something about it,’ or not. I hate it if they do, and if they don’t. Some funk it altogether. R. has been avoiding me for a week…Perhaps the bereaved ought to be isolated in special settlements like lepers.

This is very much how I have been feeling, except substitute “church” for “club”. Yet the last week has been much better. I’ve had some very significant conversations with friends that I love about what I’m going through and it has helped both of us. I now routinely say to anyone I meet, “I give you permission to talk about Susan. In fact, I desperately want to talk about her. To remember her. To not forget her.”

To some I’m worse than an embarrassment. I am a death’s head. Whenever I meet a happily married pair I can feel both of them thinking, ‘One or other of us must some day be as he is now.’

And this is true. I am a walking advertisement for the fact of a fallen world. Seeing the reality of my grief, the incredible pain and sorrow of it, tells those who encounter me that all attempts to cover up the fact of “death by sin” will some day be futile even for them. And oh how I must fight the resentment of those couples my age. The immediate thought that rises is, “They will live the blessedness of growing old together, of having each other to cling to as they struggle with the aging process. But I will have a cold bed, sad Christmases with only me to select the grandchildren’s presents, and a lonely death with no one to find me until days later.”

Today I had to meet a man I haven’t seen for ten years. And all the time I had thought I was remembering him well—how he looked and spoke and the sort of thing he said. The first five minutes of the real man shattered the image completely. Not that he had changed. On the contrary. I kept on thinking, ‘Yes, of course, of course. I’d forgotten that he thought that—disliked this, or knew so-and-so—or jerked his head back that way.’ I had known all these things once and I recognized them the moment I met them again. But they had all faded out of my mental picture of him, and when they were all replaced by his actual presence the total effect was quite astonishingly different from the image I had carried about with me for those ten years. How can I hope that this will not happen to my memory of H [the initial he uses for his late wife]? That it is not happening already? Slowly, quietly, like snow-flakes—like the small flakes that come when it is going to snow all night—little flakes of me, my impressions, my selections are settling down on the image of her. The real shape will be quite hidden in the end. Ten minutes—ten seconds—of the real H. would correct all this. And yet, even if those ten seconds were allowed me, one second later the little flakes would begin to fall again. The rough, sharp, cleansing tang of her otherness is gone.

How, like Lewis, I fear losing the memory of my precious wife. Will ten years from now her memory be like that of a pleasant day at the lake ten years ago? Will she be no more than that? She, who impacted my life more than anyone else—who as a tool in God’s hands shaped me and molded me by her love and her example and her compassion to me as me—is that what she is destined to become in my mind and memory? I see it happening already, just as he does: the snowflakes falling. I tend to idolize her, remembering all her good points—they are innumerable—and forgetting that she, too, was a sinner saved by grace. Someone asked me recently, “Was she the same with you as she was with us: always loving, always more concerned about others than herself, never complaining about her illness?” “Yes,” I said, “exactly.” But later I realized this was a bit of a distortion. It’s true that even to me she never complained about her cancer or what she was going through. “We know Who’s plan it is, and His plan is perfect,” she said even to me, not just to others. But sometimes she did get crabby with me. She would—yes I admit it—say mean things to me, particularly when it must have been hurting her so much. Yet, she would almost always catch herself doing it, and immediately ask for forgiveness.

A few days ago—at the urging of the book I’m reading about the loss of a spouse—I played a video I took of Susan last Fall. (This is where I have an advantage over Lewis, I can produce many more real images of my wife per unit time than he could back in 1960.) As the tape rolled I saw all those precious mannerisms of her that so charmed my heart. The tilt of her head. The movement of her mouth. The way her eyes sparkled. The timbre of her sweet voice, and its sudden change to sternness at the end when she told me, “now turn that thing off.” What longing for her that tape produced. What joy to see her “alive” again. What terror to know deep down inside that I could not touch that face or kiss those lips or embrace her and just hold her next to me so tightly that I could feel her heart beating next to mine.

Kind people have said to me, ‘She is with God.’ In one sense that is most certain. She is, like God, incomprehensible and unimaginable. But I find that this question, however important it may be in itself, is not after all very important in relation to grief. Suppose that the earthly life she and I shared for a few years are in reality only the basis for, or the prelude to, or earthly appearance of, two unimaginable, supercosmic, eternal somethings. Those somethings could be pictured as spheres or globes. Where the plane of Nature cut through them—that is, in earthly life—they appear as two circles (circles are slices of spheres). Two circles that touched. But those two circles, above all the point at which they touched, are the very thing I am mourning for, homesick for, famished for. You tell me ‘she goes on.’ But my heart and body are crying out, come back, come back. Be a circle, touching my circle on the plane of Nature. But I know this is impossible. I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get. The old life, the jokes, the drinks, the arguments, the lovemaking, the tiny, heartbreaking commonplace. On any view whatever, to say ‘H. is dead,’ is to say, ‘All that is gone.’ It is a part of the past. And the past is the past and that is what time means, and time itself is one more name for death, and Heaven itself is a state where ‘the former things have passed away.’

Yes! Yes! You’ve said it perfectly, Lewis. That’s exactly how I am viewing it. Pastor Dave rightly preached at her funeral that her sufferings are past, her future glory has begun. I know that. I believe that. I want that for her. But for me I want to have the life that we just had to continue forever. It was so pleasant! But it is now dead. And how that hurts. I WANT HER BACK!!

Today, one day late, I went again to the rose bush. Again, I cut one beautiful rosebud off the bush—sniffed it (I don’t usually do that) and inhaled the delicious rose scent unique to that species. And then I sadly took out the old bloom which has wilted—just like my emotions—and replaced it with the new one. It now sits—full of hope, yet tinged with grief—at the spot next to where she died, and in front of her picture. You know the one. It was on the Christmas card we had made. She’s sitting in a elongated pose in her blue slinky knits smiling at the camera that sweet smile that I will never see again in this life.

It was by sheer luck (or should I say “providence”) that I saw him without him seeing me. As I braked my bike to stop at the overlook at the dam, I caught a glimpse of the back of his head through a small opening in the tall grass. By the time I stopped I was now behind the taller grass where he couldn’t see me even if he turned his head. He was fishing at the bottom of the dam—where the water from Rowlett Creek spills over to form two giant eddies. These eddies actually sweep water from the center of the creek back upstream toward the dam to produce an ideal fishing spot. In the Spring, large sand bass get caught right at the spot where he is fishing, as they try futilely to jump over the twelve foot high impediment to their upstream migration. I never see him here in the Spring, however—only late summer and into Fall.

Usually as I approach this spot, even when I am trying to be stealthy, he sees me. His modus operandi is to have one eye on the dam, and the other eye looking back towards the overlook. And even if I creep slowly to the place where I can just gain visibility of him, he sees me first and takes off. His huge, six foot wingspan, flapping slowly so that his retracted feet just barely miss the surface of the creek, and then with one mighty stroke fifty yards downstream he rises like a giant blue kite that suddenly has caught a fresh breeze and alights on large branch that overhangs the water. He looks back at me and waits, knowing that eventually I will leave and he can return to his lonely fishing spot.

But today is different. His head was turned totally towards the dam as I went by, and he missed spotting me. Now I could view his long blue neck that supports his head and turned-down beak. I want to see more of his big blue body, so I push my bike slowly forward careful not to make a sound. But then, just as always, he sees me and the blue kite maneuver is once again executed.

It occurs to that I never see the fisherman with any other matching blue heron. Is he, like me, a widower? Perhaps he had a mate that used to go fishing with him at the dam, but she came down with a long illness and is now departed. Or maybe they were fishing together and some beast, whose sneaky traits are superior to mine, ambushed his female mate and terminated her life.

But there is another possible scenario. Maybe blue herons by nature live solitary lives. Maybe they are all solitary fishermen, an introvert’s introvert, spending each day alone, except for a few hours a year when they decide they must come together male and female to produce progeny to extend their gene pool.

I’m sure that with enough time and Internet resources I could search this out and determine which of the two scenarios is correct, if either are. But I prefer to think that scenario 1 is right. Then I feel a certain kinship with the lonely fisherman. He was living his life, totally independently, a young heron with a wonderful future, and then “she” came along. And his life was changed forever. For the better. Together they fished , feathered their nest, and raised their brood of baby herons. How happy he was, how good life was with his soul-mate doing the things herons do. And then disaster struck, the children left the nest, and he is left to fish alone at the bottom of the dam.

But then after reflection, I thought of how even the second scenario could produce resonances in me. Thirty-eight years seems like a long time, but from an eternal perspective it is just a few hours of heron-time equivalent. I had a life before “she” came along, just like my friend the fisherman. And now my “she” and “me” are on divergent paths again, just like before our marriage. Oh, we would never have chosen this if left to us. Each day, even each hour, we loved one another more with an attachment that only death could break. Our lines had fallen in very pleasant places. We often talked of simply wanting the life we were living to go on and on and on as we became almost the same person in our thoughts, our words, our loves. Only the Lord could know that there was something better for us than the life we were living. For her it was to be taken to a disembodied glory that is now unimaginable to me until some day I go into that life myself. She is alive, but it is a very different kind of life—a more glorious life—than I am living here. Yet, I am alive here in this world. I have my missions to accomplish, my “fish” to catch like my friend the heron. It’s a lonely life, but it is a life nonetheless and I am called to live it as best I can—-alone.

I climb on my bike to resume my daily route, glancing back to see the fisherman still waiting for his fishing spot to be vacated. “See you tomorrow, friend,” I say half aloud to him. “Perhaps when I come again, I’ll see another smaller matching bird standing by your side, and you will look up at me and wink.”

Why We Are Like We Are
I know that several people may have concerns about my behavior since Susan’s death. “Something’s different with him,” they observe, or “something’s not quite right with how he is behaving and interacting.”

I’ve just found a very helpful book on grieving that I’ve checked out of the library and have been devouring ever since. It’s written by a husband and wife team, each of whom lost their own spouses to death prior to their remarriage. Its focus is on the death of a spouse, and I am finding it to be a very powerful help to me in my grieving process. It’s entitled Getting to the Other Side of Grief: Overcoming the Loss of a Spouse. The female co-author is Susan Zonnebelt-Smeenge, a practicing psychologist, and the male author is Robert De Vries, a pastor and teacher. Their use of the Heidelberg Confession (and their location in Grand Rapids) leads me to believe they are members of the Christian Reformed Church. Eventually, on these pages I will attempt to give a full book report. But for now I want to share what they say about the changes that happen to grieving spouses, because they seem to capture a great deal of what I am going through, and I’m guessing that other bereaved folks in our community of friends and acquintances may be exhibiting similar traits that seem strange to the outside world. Hence, my title above of “why we are like what we are” where the we is us grieving folks. Here is the excerpt:

Feelings. Anxiety, fear, anger, guilt, loneliness, sadness, and depression often emerge during the grief process. They are frequently experienced in a wavelike fashion, where their intensity ebbs and flows. You may initially experience shock or numbness even if your spouse’s death was predicted. This numbness is a normal protective response. Gradually, however, the numbness will dissipate. Anxiety and fear about one’s own survival are not uncommon. Powerful or intense anger may be directed at God, medical personnel, other people, or circumstances. At times anger may be combined with guilt and turned inward. Self blame and shame may come in the form of embarrassment, remorse, and regret. You may exhibit a number of symptoms similar to that of depression, which are associated with the expression of intense grief. Actual clinical depression may occur if these feelings are internalized and not dealt with. Feelings are important and need to be expressed, examined, and worked through over a period of time. Try not to dwell on the negative statements about yourself, since this only attacks your self esteem. You are a valuable person. Keep reminding yourself of your significance and that you did not die when your spouse died.

Behaviors. Grieving people also exhibit a number of common behaviors including crying, preoccupation, absentmindedness, withdrawal from others, detachment from surroundings, decreasing involvement in activities, being unaware of time and/or place, and a general sense of apathy. You may dream about your deceased spouse or sense your spouse’s presence with you. Some bereaved people experience forms of visual or auditory hallucinations–actually thinking they saw or heard their loved one. These reactions are all normal in the initial grieving process. Widowed persons often cling to treasured belongings or some articles of clothing of their deceased spouse. They may find an uncanny closeness and connectedness to their loved one by wearing or focusing on these visual reminders.

Cognitions. Grief also manifests itself through cognitive changes. Widowed people often find they are preoccupied with themselves and the death of their partner, and they are often disinterested in normal activities. They may want to stop the world. After all, a significant person just died; how can the world just keep going on? Often they find it hard to concentrate on normal tasks. They can be confused and really begin to think nothing is important or relevant anymore. The bereaved’s spiritual life may change. Some embrace God and their religious practices more tightly. Others may reject them all together because they feel abandoned by God. Though it may sound strange right now, don’t fight these reactions. Many people who experience the death of a spouse also face a crisis in their faith. But most often, they are able to return to a revitalized faith. So if you are angry at God and want to push him away, at least know that God understands you and what you are going through. If, on the other hand, you are clinging tightly to your faith and are afraid of expressing anger at God, trust that God can tolerate that as well. Eventually you can resolve your spiritual battle and be at peace with yourself and God. Work on the grieving process; God will continue to take care of you.

The noisemakers and party hats sit in their packages unopened on the shelf where Susan had placed them waiting for this date. This was to be the celebration of Nelle Frances Flanery Dishman’s 100th birthday, born on September 14 1903, which as it turned out was her mother’s 19th birthday. The poem that I was to recite commemorating this centenary remains unwritten, only a lingering memory in my mind. And though the National Weather Service predicted that this would be a sunny Sunday, unexpectedly it rained all morning, as if nature itself was shedding tears that my mother was not here with it to celebrate such a noteworthy day.

A year ago we had been quite confident that Mom would “make it” to this date. After all the experts in the actuarial field had noted that once you passed your 95th birthday, your life expectancy actually goes UP! Mom was in great health, had a wonderful mind–and all of us silently thought to ourselves that she would probably outlive Susan, given the latter’s serious illness.

But the Lord had other plans, and so I sit here today–totally alone–probably the only one to remember that this is Mom’s hundredth birthday. Yet, I do not mourn as one who has no hope. Indeed, I picture Mom and Susan and Mom’s mom (we called her “Nannaw”) and Susan’s mom (Helen) sitting before the throne of Jesus rejoicing over the great gift that the Lord gave to our family in the person of Mom individually, and of all four of these much beloved women, collectively.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon at Mom’s house, attempting to clean it out prior to selling it. It was like going into a time warp, extending back 5 decades and more. You see, not only was Mom a voracious reader, she felt almost a moral obligation to keep everything she read. Perhaps she wanted to refer back to it some day. Not only that, when my Aunt Ara and Uncle Arving passed on, she felt an obligation to keep many of their books also. Interesting tomes such as a directory of all lawyers specializing in transportation issues in the state of Texas in 1938. And so on. As a result my mother and father had this pressing need to somehow store all these volumes that had accumulated over the years. My dad, who I think secretly wanted to be a welder, constructed a huge “bookshelf” in the hall of their home. I say “bookshelf” because that word doesn’t adequately describe it. It was more like a miniature of the World Trade Center lying on its side. All the supporting elements are made out of iron bars that have been carefully welded together. I have no idea how long it took him to make this work of art, and even less of an idea how he got it from his workshop into the hallway. Of all the items in the house, this is the only one that the realtor specified, “it has to go.” And so I am left with the task, not only of clearing all the books from the shelves, but dismantling the ironwork as well. As I finally found away to remove one of the wooden shelves screwed to the metal works, and carried it out back to the workshop, I pictured in my mind what a sense of pride that my dad must have felt when he carried it in the reverse direction. The last shelf to be placed in his pride and joy, the fruit of his long labor, and his act of love towards my mother to provide her with a way to store all her beloved books. And she would have interpreted it in just this way—a gift of love from her husband of many years expressed in iron and wood instead of the words of affection that he had trouble speaking.

So it was with sadness that I began to deconstruct this symbol of my parents’ love for one another. Some day my own children will haul away the artifacts of love that Susan and I had for each other. Items with a history unknown to them—of great moment in our lives but totally indecipherable to theirs. The hundreds of books I gathered from Mom’s shelves were only worth $25 to the book dealer; yet to her, they had a value not calculable in the crude currency of commerce. She was the last of the great historians of our family, and these books reflect that deep interest and concern to preserve the memories of her ancestors, and times simpler—and in her view no doubt better than our times.

One hundred years seems like a long time. Even 99 years and 4 months—the age at which my mother died—is a long time. Yet, as the psalmist puts it, man’s days are like grass. He (or she) flourishes like a flower of the field, but the wind passes over it and it is gone and its place knows it no more. In contrast the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him. He is the God of the living, not the dead. And so, though I cry along with the clouds on this rainy centenary of my mother’s birth at her absence from my life now, I know that these words of men that I discard off the soon-to-be-dismantled shelves will be replaced in glory by the eternal Word of the Lord which can never, no never, be erased.

Happy hundredth, Mom!

I’m afraid my earlier post (below) elicited some unintended consequences. I’ve already had some feedback from brothers who felt it was directed at them personally. For that reason I almost considered taking it off the this blog. However, since it expresses a situation that I think Christian men should be sensitive to, I’m going to leave it up.

However, please know two things: First, I wasn’t directing it at any individual specifically but rather at the community of Christian brothers which I think needs to remember the shortest verse in the Bible is: “Jesus wept”. We, too, must learn to weep with other men.

And secondly, I have met the enemy and it is me. Prior to Susan’s illness and death, I also had real problems coming along side those who mourned. I’m just a dumb engineer who can only relate to inanimate objects. Real people are a threat to me, as my precious wife often pointed out. Any compassion I’ve developed has come from the Lord using her as a model for developing the same loving heart she had.

Finally, my comments came on a day when my own grief sprang up in a surprising way. Perhaps sensitized by last night’s group which dwelled on the need to allow oneself to go through the grief–not around it–I found myself suddenly breaking down in sobs as the magnitude of my loss came home to me unexpectedly. I am doing fine now, but I apologize if the complexities of today’s emotional state has caused anyone anguish as they read the blog below.

Your friend in Christ,
John

Several people have asked me, “what are you doing to help you in your grief?” My answer: participate in a GriefShare group at a nearby Bible church. Last night was the first meeting. While I am pledged to keep the shared items confidential, there are some observations I can make of a general nature.

The first is the male to female ratio in the group There were about 20 women present, and only four men, one of whom was the leader. Affirming this statistic was a handout that we all received at the beginning of the class. It was entitled, “Many men find it hard to show grief.” Both in the article, and in the video presentation we viewed, the point was made that men don’t like to lose control. If they show their emotions, they become vulnerable.

A second observation was a comment shared by one of the other male participants. He noted that his “Christian” friends had a lot more difficulty reaching out to him than many of his unchurched or nominal Christian associates. This has been my experience exactly. Christian men that I had felt close to for a number of years suddenly withdrew. They either said nothing during Susan’s illness, and after her death, or left it to their wives. And yet I craved male fellowship, and a listening ear from a man that I could pour my heart out to about losing my wife. Only another man could begin to understand what it meant to lose a wife of many years. In my experience, like the man above, it was often friends outside my immediate Christian community that picked up the phone and called me to let me know they cared. This meant a lot to me, even though we might not have shared the same theological commitments. They–like Jesus–gave the cup of cold water to a grieving person.

The conclusion from the experts, and from my own and other grieving men mourners, is that even in the Christian community–and maybe even especially in that community–men are fearful of showing their vulnerabiltiy and perhaps extrapolating the loss of a spouse to their own marriage, with all the pain that would likely give. This, of course, is very disappointing since the Gospel is clear that believers need to come along side their fellow believers and weep when they weep, and rejoice when they rejoice.

Having said all that, let me say that three men–outside my family members, who have been superb in supporting me–have consistently stood with me in my pain. Thanks Dave, Wayne and Jim for being there for me. I hope I can be there for you some day when the time comes.

Today is my father’s 99th birthday. Roy Edward Dishman was born on Sept. 5, 1904, in Collinsville Texas. His own father, John William Dishman (my namesake), was 51 when his younger son was born. He was almost old enough to be Dad’s grandfather rather than his father. In some ways that difference in ages impacted Dad’s personality development, since much of his upbringing was done by his older sisters (six in all) who were old enough to be his mother.

Because my grandfather (rightly or wrongly, I cannot tell) felt that his older son had not invested his college money wisely, his younger son got nothing. Dad worked his way through OU, laboring almost 40 hours per week at the Norman Inter-Urban station while going to school full time. He almost made it. Majoring in electrical engineering, he was just shy of finishing his BS requirements when the depression hit. He was forced to leave school and take a job in Borger, Texas.

Despite his lack of a degree Dad nevertheless was able to secure a job in engineering. Primarily safety engineering with Hunt Oil Company, where he was the Safety Director. But, in addition, he was also chief electrical engineer. He performed many tasks for Hunt Oil, including the design and outfitting of the first off-shore drilling platform using surplus World War II landing craft. He also received a US patent for a safety device for drilling rigs. But he never commercialized his patent: the man who sponsored him died suddenly and the funding went away.

Dad’s greatest love–after his wife, son and grandsons–was his shop. When he died in 1984 I considered selling all his shop equipment and even had a pretty good offer for the entire lot. But I just couldn’t bring myself to sell. So all that machinery has lain dormant for 19 years, gathering dust pretty much just like he left it. The air compressor with its huge air storage tank, that catches fire when you turn it on (David likes to do this); the old Sears metal working lathe; the drill press with a nameplate telling that it was made by students at Texas A&M; the metal shaper that he was going to use to build a huge reflecting telescope out of aluminum disks; the disks themselves, still sitting on the shelf where he placed them–never able to quite figure out how to do the shaping; and scads of small tools all scattered among traces of his pipe smoking paraphernalia.

It is somewhat sad to unlock the old shop and enter in and see all the unfinished projects, and my dad’s unfulfilled dreams. Because I am NOT a shop person, and none of the grandsons has an interest in the old tools and machines, they will undoubtedly be sold or otherwise disposed of as we sell off Grandma Tex’s house. It reminded me of Ecclesiastes:

So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil.

As the “person who did not toil for it,” I feel somewhat guilty not carrying on my father’s legacy of shopwork. When I was younger I did in fact use the lathe to make a wooden (not metal) lamp for my folks’ Christmas present–but that was the extent of it. And don’t get me wrong, there were some triumphs of my dad’s handiwork: the metal and glass end tables that someone actually wants to put in their house; the incredible all metal portable stairs that dad made so he could get up easily on the roof of his house or garage (so he could take his big reflector up there to view the planets); and the all metal derrick lamp that he had hoped to turn into a million dollar sales venture–the one and only that he made is now in my own little shop here at home.

Someday, when I join my beloved in heaven, my dreams and projects here on earth will eventually be forgotten just like my dad’s. These words I’m writing now, for instance, will someday vanish in cyberspace, and those who come after me will hardly know of my existence except as an entry on a geneaological chart. Vanity, vanity—all is vanity.

Yet the promise of the new heaven and new earth, the Bible tells us, is that we will know even as we are fully known. Somehow, I think that promise implies that those memories that so easily vanish from the grey matter in our brains will be restored. Exactly how, I cannot say, except that since all that happens is in the mind of God, there really is no such thing as temporary storage. It’s all permanent. And in that day, even us forgotten engineers will be remembered.

To help me through this Labor Day Weekend, containing as it did Susan’s 60th birthday, I journeyed to North Carolina to be with Shari and Jamie as we escaped to the mountains around Asheville. One of my favorite movies is Last of the Mohicans, based on James Fenimore Cooper’s book by the same name, and starring Daniel Day Lewis as Hawkeye and Madeleine Stowe as Cora Munro. All of the film was shot in NC, and the last 20 minutes were filmed at the famous Chimney Rock Park. The latter is a privately owned reservation so named because of a large rock (320 feet tall) that resembles a huge chimney.

So, on Saturday, after a nice picnic at the base of the formation, we found ourselves waiting in line for an elevator to take us up the 320 feet to the top of the rock and the beginning of a mile and a half trail that leads to the famous Hickory Nut Falls where the final fight scene of the movie takes place. Since there was a line, the two girls–in their deceptively upbeat voices said–”let’s not wait for the elevator. We can walk!” Oh sure, I thought to myself, I’ll humor them; and then when they find out how steep the climb is they’ll turn back and take the elevator–just like Susan and I did about a year ago during the days when she was feeling well after her second remission.

320 vertical feet later I found myself huffing and puffing, with sweat rolling down my forehead and into my eyes, while I struggled to keep up with the two girls. It was OK to lag behind Jamie–she’s only 22 and works out. But Shari, too? She wasn’t that much younger than me. OK, she works out, too. But I do strenuous mountain biking, don’t I? It wasn’t fair that she should be so far ahead of me–and she wasn’t even panting!

After a long rest at the top (they wanted to go on immediately but I insisted that THEY needed to rehydrate), we set out on the waterfall trail. The first section consists of a four story set of stairs to get to the actual trailhead. As I wearily tried to keep up with the girls, I couldn’t believe that Susan and I had done this barely a year ago–and that Susan had no problem with it. I was so proud of her! Even with all the chemo and surgery she wanted to make me happy and endured all that climbing so I could see that special film scene location.

Finally we hit the trail itself, and no sooner than we began hiking it started raining. And thundering. “Isn’t this great,” the girls shouted. “I love it when it rains in the mountains!” Shari exclamed. “Ho, ho, ho,” I said–”do you know what causes thunder,” as I looked anxiously up toward the sky in the direction of the lightning. We were heading straight for it. I guess these girls are stronger Presbyterians than I am an electrical engineer. I immediately started counting the seconds between the lightning flashes and the succeeding thunder peals. Somehow, my warnings didn’t register with the two leading hikers. Even when we came to a rain shelter they rejected it. “Too many smelly bodies on the other hikers in there,” they said as they strode right by.

Soon we were at the falls themselves as the lightning storm peaked. I convinced Jamie to join me under the cover of a little bridge that spanned the creek. I noticed it was grounded: the perfect place to wait out a lighting storm. But Shari was by that time too enraptured by the “rain in the mountains” and stood outside admiring the falls. Somehow we survived the storm and since the rest of the trail was downhill I even managed to keep up with the girls as we trekked back to the base of the chimney.

That evening after we finally reached Asheville and checked into our adjoining rooms at the hotel, I heard Shari shriek from the next room. “Look outside!!” I turned and saw the most brilliant rainbow I’d ever seen spanning the window. It was not just one rainbow: there were two! A second slightly dimmer bow appeared above the first. “It’s the Lord’s gift to us on Susan’s birthday,” Shari observed. That double rainbow brought to mind the passage from Isaiah 61 where the Lord says He will comfort hearts that grieve. The passage closes with the following words:

Instead of your shame there shall be a double portion;
instead of dishonor they shall rejoice in their lot;
therefore in their land they shall possess a double portion;
they shall have everlasting joy.

In several ways that gift of the double rainbow, and the comfort of the two climbers (despite their blistering pace) were a double portion that helped me get through August 30, 2003–Susan’s sixtieth birthday.