My Brother...the Virus...and all our Griefs

One year ago yesterday my brother died. My baby brother—79 years old. I have on my desk two pictures of him. In one photo his back is to me, he is staring at the ocean which he loved. The other picture in the corner is Gene when he was vital and very much alive. Just almost a year ago he did income tax for about 500 people. He was sick when he did this. Did not feel good and had lost a lot of weight. Getting through each day was hard. Yet he left his fingerprints over 500 IRS forms. Weeks later he put away his pen, closed down his computer went to the hospital and died just one year ago.

Someone has said that losing a brother or sister is largely ignored by most people. But not the grievers. Brothers or sisters. Just knowing I can’t pick up the phone and call him is a great sadness.  And saying goodbye takes a long time. And a year is not long enough for the healing to work its way out.

But if his death had occurred this year—this May. My mourning and all those who loved him would be far different today. There would no goodbyes for family members surrounding him as he slipped away into the mystery. The coronavirus changed it all. We couldn’t even go into the hospital. Many, many could even see their loved ones in Hospice. This virus has left too much unfinished business. There would have been a small grave service for just a sprinkling of family. There would have been no hugs or tears together or sharing “I remember…” stories. So after the funeral we would once again move our separate ways. Wearing masks—or should. Standing six feet away from others—even those we love the most. This loss would be different. 

photo courtesy of www.vperemen.com

Just ask those 5.7 million who have contracted this virus around the globe. Or their loved ones. 357,254 of these did not recover. We have lost 101,217 in our country. We mourn their passing whether we know them or not.  

 I remember the first time I visited the 9/11 Memorial. One room was filled with pictures of so many lost that terrible day in New York. I did not know a single one of them personally—yet they all had names and dreams and family members and children and parents and friends. I was overwhelmed to see all those faces caught in that 9/11 net that came from all over the world to our country.

And so as I ponder our over 101,000 dead I have the same feeling I had that day in New York. I knew not a single one of these that had died personally. Yet like 9/11 they were somebody’s child or mate or loved one or friend or neighbor or companion at work. That day I thought of all the firefighters that climbed shaking stairs to save somebody but never came back. And today I think of all the brave soldiers—doctors, nurses, aides —scientists and gravediggers who have done what

photo by Andrew Dallos / flikr

needed to be done. They did what they could and yet so many were lost.

This virus has changed it all. Working at home for months—if we were lucky to have a job. All those living hand to mouth whose jobs are gone and will not come back. All those kids and their parents hoping the bus will come and bring food they could not afford to buy. And all those brave ones in grocery or pharmacy stores that work at great risk.

But I weep over all those who, night after night, are afraid that they will be evicted and all their meagre possession dragged out to some street. And the jobless—millions of people—some working two-three jobs and now their work has vanished. What are they to do?

What are we to do? Not only with the personal losses from other times that quietly come back yet again as if these we lost had just left us. And what are we to do with all those on TV Hour after hour and day after day reminding us that we not only have lost but we keep losing. 

After 9/11 for a brief time we came together, a band of brothers and sisters knowing we were in this together. Knowing that somehow we would make it through. And we did—for better or for worse.

But this terrible loss that touches everything and everybody has driven us apart. Spitting on Chinese that walk our streets. Social media run amuck with the ugliest and the craziest of rants. Death threats abound.The Tweeters charging some of the best and brightest of us all with murder or hatred so deep it is scary. Some carrying AK47’s into Courthouses and malls and trying in their own sad way to defend or hold back or just protect their little turfs. This loss has divided us even further than we were. Of course some grief works its way out as anger and rage. Name-calling and distrust of one another can be found in almost any town or county. This strange distrust of those who know something. Fake everything.  Where we are going and where will we wind up?  

I think of those cities in Europe that we have visited. They lost almost everything in the Second World War. Ruins everywhere. Death piled up on top of death. Economy in disarray. Yet they carted away the rubble, they rebuilt and they moved on even though they would carry their scars as long as they lived.

Grief is a scar. We are all the walking wounded whether we had buried anyone or not. Willy Nelson sang, in his plaintive way, “It’s not what you get over—it’s what you go through.”

And we must slosh through this. We must be kind, hard as that may be some days. We must sit in stillness and wipe away tears not knowing where they come from. Yes, it all seems like utter helplessness. But it isn’t. 

We will get through this with all its scary complications. And we will be different. I tell my grief groups that losing someone we love is like an amputation. That’s the way I feel about my brother who died a year ago.  And this is really how we all feel—amputated from so much and so many.

The whatever is out there is not over. It may come raging back—we hope not. But whatever happens we must do what we can for ourselves, for all those we love—and for the nation and the world itself.

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Memorial Day 2020--Remembering Time

  

(This is my favorite Memorial Day story. I have told this story many times and written about it in several newspapers.  I share it once again because it has so much to say to us all.)

As this Memorial Day approaches I remember a powerful scene that expresses what I feel about this day. It comes from a book by the Kentucky writer, Bobbie Ann Mason. The book is called In Country and told a Memorial Day story in very human terms. The central figure in the story was Sam who lived in this tiny town in western Kentucky. Sam was conceived while her Daddy was home on leave but died in Vietnam before Sam was born. All her life she heard stories about her Daddy, Dwayne and tales about the in Southeast Asia. Emmett, a good friend of the family was also in that war and kept telling Sam about her Daddy and what a hard time it was. He told about many soldiers he knew who never came home. He also told her about all the Vietnam veterans who were on the streets or were crippled in mind or body. Sam took it all in and kept fantasizing about a Daddy she wished she had known.

Emmett decided one day that it would be a good thing to take Sam and her grandmother, Mamaw to see the Vietnam Memorial. He wanted them to see her father’s name on the monument.  So one morning they got in Sam’s old car and drove to Washington. It took a long time. Mamaw brought a geranium to leave at the Memorial.  Finally they got to Washington, fought the traffic, and found the sign which read: Viet Nam Veterans Memorial and an arrow pointing the way. Parking was a real problem but they found a spot on a side street. They got out of the car and helped Mamaw up the path to see the Memorial.

And there it was. A black slab that just looked like it emerged from the ground. It was massive and held the names of the 58,000 men and women who had died in Vietnam.  That huge black slab was nothing like they thought. Name after name really told the story of those that had died in the war. People were everywhere. All ages. Some were kneeling and touching the Wall. Some brought notes and flowers. An old vet dressed in army fatigues held his hand over his mouth as he scanned the names. A woman wiped her face with a handkerchief. 

Emmett, Sam and Mamaw found the directory that told where all the names were. They finally found Dwayne’s name and the direction to where his name was. They found the section where the name was to be but there were so many names. They keep looking and way up high they saw the name: Dwayne E. Hughes. They just stood there looking up. Emmett took the Geranium from MaMaw and knelt down and placed it at the base of the granite panel. Mamaw said, “Oh, I wish I could touch it.” So Sam rescued a ladder from some workmen nearby, opened it. Slowly they helped Mamaw up rung after rung. She found the name of her grandson. Ever so slowly she reached up and touches his name. The old woman ran her hand over his name etched in granite. She didn’t say a word. After a long time she said, “Hep me down.” 

Then it was Sam’s turn. She climbed up and touched the name of the Daddy she never knew. When she backed down the ladder Mamaw clutched her arm and said, “Coming up on this wall of a sudden and seeing how black it was, it was so awful, but then I came down in it and saw that white carnation blooming out of that crack and it gave me hope. It made me know he’s watching over us.”

This ought to be a day for memories. Remembering all those that have died for us and for this country. Remembering all the brave soldiers of all the professions who have worked and dreamed and labored and lived and loved. Remembering all these brave heroes who have risked their lives in hospitals and nursing home--nurses, doctors, aides during our epidemic. All those who delivered food for those in need, all those who reached out in multitudinous ways. We would be different people were it not for some soldier, some teacher, some Mamaw—some person whose name is not inscribed on anybody’s wall—but it etched on the wall of our hearts. None of them died in vain. Take a few moments and remember all the fallen. And all the heroes who really do make this country great. It is touching time—running our memories over the names and the faces of all those who have made a difference in our lives. And in our country.

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Hopeful Words in a Hard Time

photo by Indraneel Biswas / flikr

Frederick Buechner writes that if St. Paul was writing today he would not say: Faith, Hope, Love but the greatest of these is love. Buechner says in this strange time if Paul was writing today he would say: Faith, Hope, Love--but the greatest of these is Hope.  

Seems to me that with everything is disarray we could all use a bucketful of hope. Well, maybe even just a third of a bucket. Even though things are beginning to open up many of us are not sure at all. Especially we golden agers (but a mite tarnished) still sorta under house arrest except for a few trips to the grocery store, etc. But not much etc. 

Once in another hard time John Updike wrote: "Fear is the mood. People are bringing the shutters down from their attics and putting them back on their windows. Fences are appearing where children used to stray freely from back yard to back yard...Locksmiths are working overtime. Once we parked our cars with the keys dangling from the dashboards, and a dog could sleep undisturbed in the middle of the street. No more. Fear reigns."

I don 't know if he was referring to the depression in the thirties, the Second World War when there were gold stars in many sad windows. It could have beem when so many were scared of the Atomic Bomb when we hid under our desks at school or blacked out our windows, or maybe even built bomb shelters. And many of us had nightmares of the dreaded Hitler. Maybe Updike thought of the Viet Nam war and that sad sculpture in Washing reminding us of over 50,000 dead. He could have had in mind the dreaded PTSD or the AIDS crisis. Or the opiod epidemic. Or September 11th or Afganistan. Maybe he thought of his Mother and Father's death and a friend's miscarriage and Grief piled on top of Grief. If he was here today he would know that fear walks down most of our streets or the wailing of more than 90,000 of our brothers and sisters dead many much, much too soon.

And in every terrible time we somehow made it though. And we will this time if we don't kill each other off first. Forgetting our past we still need a bucket of hope.

And this is why I sat down one day and calligraphed this piece. I remembered troubled churches, friends I had lost or the AIDS funerals I had--or just grief over someone or something that took the stars out of their skies. Dostoyevsky said it. That marvelous Russian writer who must have written in a very dark time. I give his words to myself and to you hoping may that feathered bird of hope just might sing again to me and to us all.

Not just God bless America but God bless us all. All. ALL.

--Roger Lovette/ rogerlovette.blogspot.com

If you think this virus is a hoax...

If you think this virus is a hoax you need to listen to my granddaughter-first-year-nurse, Libby. She works at a hospital in Spartanburg (SC). She has worked on the floor where coronavirus patients fight for their lives. Even with all the protection she and all the other medical people wear to ward off the virus--it is still very scary.

Let's stay safe, listen to the experts and pray for one another.  I can understand people desperate to get back to work but life triumphs economy. We really don't know how our future will work out--but we must stick together. This is not the time for name-calling, ugliness--ignoring the advice of those medical and scientific folk who really know. Like it or not we are all in this together.  Jesus said the greatest command we have is to love. We cannot forget this.

Patrick Overton in The Learning Tree is worth remembering:

"When we walk to the edge of all the light we have

and take that a step into the darkness of the unknown,

we must believe that one of two things will happen--

There will be something for us to stand on,

Or, we will be taught how to fly."

God bless us all.

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Mama--She's Still Here

Sunday is Mother's Day. And across the land florists will be busy and happy. Department stores will be flooded at the last minute--as will UPS. Greeting cards will hit an all time high. And streaming from mailboxes to Nursing Homes and apartments and condos and homes and even prisons--gifts will flow in their direction.

Ta Dah--it's Mother's Day. Memory stirs for many of us this week-end. We remember Mama. We might not sing: "M-is for the millions things she gave me..." But many, many of us will follow the trail of memory lane back through the years.

Mine began in a little four-room mill house. My father and mother, knee deep in the depression, fled the farm where they were starving for a better life in Columbus, Georgia. They lived in a three-room apartment with another couple. Then they graduated to three rooms of their own. Later they moved to a four room mill house across from the mill where they worked and where they would live for the rest of their lives. They had bare lights that hung down from the ceiling on a black twisted cords. They had an indoor toilet and running water. It was all they could dream for.

They had tried for years to have a baby--and no baby came. Finally--at long last--a baby stirred in my Mama's stomach. And so I was born in that little house one cool October morning. She named me Roger after Will Rogers who had died two months before in a plane crash. "Why did you name him Roger?" She said, "He makes me laugh."

She worked until her retirement in the mill across there street. During the war years she worked seven days a week. There was no air conditioning in that Georgia mill. Work was hard and pay was meagre. Thinking back I never heard my parents complain about their limited conditions. Maybe they remembered back to those hard days on the farm when they almost starved.

My  mother never was able to get past the eighth grade--she was needed for work at home. But it did not keep her from a mind that did not stop. She knew what was going on in the world. She read books--lots of books. The Book of the Month Club was a big deal in our house.

Did I appreciate those gnarled arthritic fingers that just kept working? Nah. Did I ponder never really having what she wanted because her two boys came first. Nah. She took her magic key and opened as much of the world as she knew for me. Church...books...friends...nice, clean clothes--safety and Sunday dinners, especially that couldn't be beat. She taught me values from her limited Southern Baptist background that stick to my 79 years.

She stood on the front porch that morning in September when I left for college. It must have broken her heart. She said nothing--then or ever about her pain. She just left the mill that morning, made sure my bags were packed.She stood on the front porch in her little print dress and waved goodbye. She knew what I didn't know that a chapter was ending--a chapter that would never be replayed.

Did I appreciate those packages of cakes and cookies that came to my college post office? Probably not enough. Did I ponder the sacrifice of that weekly fifteen dollars that came in the mail without fail to keep me in school. Nah.

I still see her on my graduation day from college--in that navy blue dress with the crocheted collar and the the big wide-brimmed blue hat. She was so proud and paid some relative good money to bring her to that graduation. We had no car.  She kept her hand over her mouth most of the time. You see her teeth were terrible and she did for us, her boys, instead of getting those teeth fixed. She never complained. Years later she finally got her false teeth--but by then she was near retirement.

She wrote letters faithfully telling me in great detail of the news and, of course, the neighborhood scandals. She never missed work and she never missed church and she never failed to provide clean clothes, good food or saying, over and over, "Son, it'll work out."

She left us in her eighties. Just went to bed and never woke up. I still remember the black lady that worked for us  standing at her casket. "Miss Ruth," she said, "you worked hard all yo' life. Hard. Now you just rest. You just rest." And she leaned over and kissed my Mama.

A great preacher left his church in Texas and moved to North Carolina. He had breakfast for years in a tiny coffee shop where everybody in that Texas town knew him. Years later one morning a waitress asked one of his friends, "Let me ask you something--is the preacher that used to come in here--still down at the church? I never see him  anymore." The wise friend paused and said, "Yes, he's still here."

My Mama's body may rest in a cemetery in my home town. But she's still here. She's still here.

(I wrote this piece years ago. I re-print it again because my Mama is still here. What about yours?)

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Hope in a Hard Time

   

In these hard days when so many here and around the world have died—where so many have lost jobs and livelihood—especially the vulnerable with few resources who live everyday in fear—where many of us are still wary of going outside—and grief piles up on top of grief—it is hard indeed to see any kind of silver lining. 

I have spent some time this springtime marveling at nature’s promise of better days ahead. The knock-out roses seemingly everywhere and blooming in riotous color. The dogwoods and the tiny buds I planted from seeds. The wonder of things I planted  years ago coming up, despite the weather and the trauma of our lives. 

I keep remembering that timely quote from Annie Dillard. In one of her books there is a funeral scene where one of the characters, Norval, reads pompously from Scripture, “O death, where is thy sting?” To which Hugh, sitting in one of the pews, thinks, “Just about everywhere, since you ask.” And Hugh is right—the sting is everywhere these days the loss, the grief and fear of our unsettled future. Now that you ask.

And yet we must look around, like this gorgeous springtime for signs of hope in a very tough time. And they are everywhere—now that you ask. All the nurses, aides and doctors and those delivering meals to kids who have nothing except what the bus or some car brings. Those making masks and the smiles we see in the eyes of those with covered-up noses and mouths. Talk about heroes and warriors as the President calls his selected few—these are everywhere like the tinder shots in my garden. Nothing can stop them. 

Remember the Apostle Paul’s promise in a very hard time: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or peril, or sword?…No, he says, in all these things (all these things , Paul?) we are more than conquerors through him that loved us . For I am convinced (and we need to hear it yet again) that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

So we find ways to hang on and wipe away some of our tears and move on—whatever that means. Weeks ago I kept looking at the stained glass piece that rests above our kitchen sink. We found it on a trip to Canada’s Niagara-by-the-lake years ago. We stopped in a tiny village and in the middle of the stores there was this shop that sold stained glass pieces. Inside that tiny room the walls and floor was covered in beautiful large and small pieces of strained glass. We asked the storekeeper about his shop. “Many of the pieces.” he said, “came from many of the bombed out churches of the war in England. I riffled through the debris.” he said, “and found pieces of stained glass scenes that were left after the windows had been shattered. I brought quite a few of them home. I took what remained of those windows and framed many of the center-pieces. I hoped to create from what was left maybe some beauty.” We bought one of his renderings. The center is the annunciation that came from the war. We have moved it from place to place where we have lived. And one day as I looked at the light shining through that colored glass I remembered the story the old man had told me. Since then I have thought maybe, just maybe some healing and beauty might just come to us all after this hard time. Annie Dillard’s character, Hugh was right: that sting of death seems to be about everywhere. 

Yet faith—slender though it may be—promises even this is not the end. My stained glass piece gives me hope.

photo by Ruth Hartnup / flickr

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

Coronavirus Musings

photo by Crow / flikr

 I haven’t written in weeks. I just did not know what to say about this terrible epidemic that has affected us all. I have found it hard to concentrate even in newspapers as well as books. I have thought a lot about all the faces of all the friends along the way. I have thought about my twisting circuitous journey until today—wondering where it all went, too fast—too, too fast— and how I have become 84 years old. (Not young.) And I do not want to consider the alternative. 

But as I sit here I am surrounded by pictures and memories. Llfe for better or worse has been good indeed. I look up and there is a wonderful profile picture of Gayle (my wife) drinking coffee in a restaurant in Scotland. There is dear Nancy Prichard—one of my favorites who took me in not only in home but also her heart. There’s Don reading USA Today…long dead—much too soon—he and his wife, Ann joined us for a wonderful week in Paris and many more fun times. There’s a picture of Battle Road in Princeton where Randy and I jogged year after summer year. One of my favorite places. And speaking of Princeton my screen saver has a fine picture of Jesus carrying the cross and inviting all of us to follow. I discovered it once behind the Episcopal Church in Princeton. There is a moving picture of my brother who died just last May. He stands at the beach—which he loved—just looking out. There is a tiny drawing Bonnie Veals did for  our church building project in Birmingham. It reads: Faith under construction. And it truly was—we had so little money but somehow faith really did prevail over the impossibilities we faced in building—and some other hurdles too.

I see an old yellowing picture of my father and Mother young and hopeful in the early years of their marriage. There is another picture of my Daddy holding tight to his two first grandchildren. There is a carving which I think came from Greece. It shows Jesus with one hand showing his scars and in the other a cup. Edward, dear Edward brought it back from one this trips—before he as murdered in our home town. There is a picture I took of a Gerber daisy—a gift from my mother still blooming after she was dead. 

There is a picture of the punting boats in Oxford where we spent two glorious Octobers. In another bookcase there is a picture of Matthew and Mark in their early days. And there is shot of our daughter, Leslie and our beautiful granddaughters—Natalie and Libby. And one of my all-time favorites is our eighteen year old red-headed daughter wearing a green rain coat in Bath. There is a picture of a Gayle and I and Randy and Diana and Rosie and Bob. There is a photograph of my Mother in her finery and my son in his tux on the day of our daughter’s wedding. And there is a photo of Gayle and her twin sister at a lake in South Carolina. A tiny picture of Randy and Bob—young and full of mischievous.There is a fine print of St.Thomas Church in Charleston. It’s raining and the choir, with umbrellas are getting ready to go in to worship. I love it because it says to me that church is the place where you come in during a storm. There and so many other friends and places that have left their mark on my heart. People who helped me--many not even knowing it—come out of the storm.

Frederick Buechner one of my favorite writers—who wrote about looking through his photograph albums and told us about all those whose names and faces have been a benediction to him. He says: “…Once I have put away my album for good, you may in the privacy of the heart take out the album of your own life and search for the people and places you have loved and learned from yourself, and for those moments in the past —many of them half forgotten—through which you glimpsed, however dimly and fleetingly. the sacredness of your own journey.”  

These are some of my musings as this virus rages on.  

photo by Ard Hesselink / flikr

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com