Redneck Pride

  Not long past I saw a link on “Facebook” to watch a video called “Redneck Pride”, With an idea in mind. I clicked on it.

  It was a litany of monster trucks slinging mud, obese women in spandex, rotten teeth and mobile homes with junk cars in the yard. The video was a hog sloppin “yee-haw”  of offensive, stereotypical garbage that many ethnic and or racial groups would have been up in arms about had their “ilk”  been drug through the mud (no pun intended) in such a way

  You see, for a brief moment I had thought that when I clicked on that link there would be a tribute to someone or something like my stepfather.

  I had in my mind’s eye a man as self sufficient as any on earth, a hunter, fisher, planter, mechanic, carpenter, musician, patriot, dutiful father, husband, son, in other words a true renaissance man.

  When I saw the title “Redneck Pride” for a brief moment I had deluded myself into thinking that someone had taken an opportunity to recognize those who take pride in taking care of their own. I thought that they might want to elevate, just this once, a group of folks in the southern region of these United States who came from the land and live in communion with its bounty and its hardships. I dreamed they might praise a type of human being who knows the truth of God like frosty breath on a freezing winter morning in the woods, rifle in hand, matching wits with the environment that is their birthright, that flows like honey in their blood.

  I was naïve or maybe just hopeful enough that they might show someone building a cabin with their own bare hands as the wife carries, cleans and organizes; just the two of them alone on a mountain top toiling in the grace of God for a future they believe in.

  I mistakenly thought that maybe for once a vertebra in the backbone of America might be honored for the core of life that it is rather than some stale joke that is told over and over until many believe that it’s true. 

Decision

Month's before my son was diagnosed with cancer I wrote this. Somehow it rings of a deeper truth to me;  a place in the mind that transcends ... portends ... delivers.

  Pacing under the garish fluorescent light his heart pounded in his temples and his lips trembled. His adolescent son was dying. Just days before he had been pacing the sidelines while the boy sprinted up the soccer field for a shot on goal.

  Tyler’s kidneys were failing. The only way the doctors could stop the insidious attacker was an immediate transplant. Ben was devastated but couldn’t donate. A few years prior he had been diagnosed with an autoimmune condition.

   His wife was not a match. The fraternal twin brother Cameron was a perfect match but had a heart condition that was inherited from Ben’s side of the family. The odds were not favorable for surgery on Cameron. There was no time. He felt responsible for it all.

   The two boys were like a photo and its negative. Cameron was like his father, Tyler a carbon copy of the mother. He loved them both … his tall gray-eyed blond and the sinewy brown-eyed athlete with tangled dark hair.

  How could God ask him to make this decision? He was afraid. He wanted to puke. As he paced further he cast a furtive glance through an open door and saw the stained glass and pews of a small hospital chapel and entered in.

  He walked to the front of the dimly lit room. Here the antiseptic institutional smell became a thicker, sweeter aroma. He moved quietly to the cross at the front of the empty room and dropped to his knees. Clasping his sweaty palms he bowed his head and began to plead for the life of his sons.

  Memories of the boys flooded his mind’s eye until he remembered. Once, he had heard a woman share about the death of her infant daughter. She had told the story of standing on a balcony begging for her child’s life … some miracle to change the reality as it was. She had shared that suddenly in her anguish she was suffused with a light that told her to let go. “Let go of your pain. Surrender your will to God.”

    The frail, lovely saint shared that it was in that moment she had become free from the burden of her agony. She’d been able to surrender the life of her child to the heavenly Father. She understood, as her Bible had taught her, that she was only a steward. God had always been the Father and He would take her daughter into his loving arms.

  There was no peace in this for Ben but he no longer felt so alone. His gut churned and the horror of powerlessness threatened to consume him.  Suddenly he sensed the presence of someone near. He looked up and Cameron stood there crying.

  “We know what you’re doing Dad and we need for you to stop,” the boy croaked..  “Never, for a moment, has either of us questioned how much you love us. Not for one second have we ever thought you loved one any more than the other,”

  Cameron knelt down beside Ben, took his hands and with quavering voice explained, “There’s no choice to be made. Were Tyler to die and I hadn’t done everything in my power to save him … I don’t think I could go on. One thing I’m certain of is that I’d never forgive myself. It would be worse than death to let my brother die knowing I could have helped him and didn’t.”

   To this day, Ben says he’s not exactly sure what happened next. He tells me his only memory is of his gray-eyed child kneeling before him, as through the blur of his tears, Cameron became a man much too soon.

Back Home

  It’s been a while now since my son was diagnosed with bone cancer. Eight months to be exact. Eight months of chemo and wasting away while we tend to him and try our best to be good parents to both him and our other boy.

  I’ve been trying to keep my head on straight with some eastern practices of qigong and meditation combined with some martial arts. There’s been flute and drum music to go along with it and it’s all been helping.

  I ceased to write and post for a while. You see I got tired of crying. Tired of writing my pain and wanting this to go away. God as I have always known Him just can’t help us much here you see. I have a saying, “ He built the race track but He’s not driving the cars.”

  Folks tell us “You’re in our thoughts and prayers.” I know they mean it. When a child suffers, we all suffer but each day we wake and he hobbles to the car or couch to find his way through the haze of medicine and fatigue that has been his world too long.

  It’s slow at work today so as I was looking for some information online when I saw a video of Carrie Underwood singing an old song called “I Told You So.” When she was done they asked her to be the newest member to the Grand Old Opry. After a gracious joking moment she cried. You could see her life’s fruition on her face like a child who’s run the race and won. My heart went out to her as the memories flooded in.

  Then I realized. I had grown weary of sadness so left my roots to be somewhere that did not pull so hard on my heartstrings. I had in fact run away. My Dad used to listen to the Grand Old Opry … and so did I.

  My Momma’s with the boy today at home. It won’t be long until I get to go there and see him. I’m going to hug his neck instead of petting his baldhead. Then I’m going to tell him how proud I am to be his father.

  You see there comes a time when a man’s got to go to sea and stand on a blustery deck headed for foreign ports leaving his heart behind.

  When he’s done he’s got to go home again whether it hurts or not because he’s needed.  One way or another this thing’s going to pass and when it does I’ll sing an old country song while riding down a back country road.

  I can cry then because I’ll know in my heart that we all found our way back home.

Blindness

What blindness comes with waking

That we only know ourselves walking

In this world?

What veil of sorrow hides the beauty?

Were we to pull back the mask of consciousness,

Would day and night blend into eternity?

Are we only a faithful step away from reality

As we cast about in our hopeful waiting?

Do we reach into the ether like a grasping hand,

Where no one is looking?

There they have ceased consciousness.

Are we the dream while awakening awaits our sleeping?

Thoughts From the Hospital

                                                  Thoughts From the Hospital

  We’re late in the ninth month of what is supposed to be a 12-month cycle of intense chemotherapy for my son. He was diagnosed with a cancerous bone tumor in his leg the day before school started last August.

    Early in the process it was daily anguish. Existence felt like a “crying out for mercy”.

We have watched him wither. We have watched him bounce back a little in between the cycles of toxic intravenous infusions at the hospital. It has become progressively more difficult for him to “bounce back”.

  I was writing a lot in the beginning. I intensified what had been an informal meditation practice. I also began to read and practice other Eastern disciplines and exercises including martial arts.

  I say this wondering if the aforementioned practices have “calmed” my voice or rendered it inconsequential? Simply put … I got tired of crying. I wearied of the agony and fear. I hardened the wounded part of me and began to search for balance and strength in places I have not known before.

  Writing has been a salve for a perpetual broken heart these past few years. It is also a way for me to share experience, strength and hope with folks. I believe that I am called to do this yet feel that here must be more than pain to share.

  Last night he asked for a hug and whispered in my ear, “ I’m tired, Dad. I’m so tired.”

Pain? Is that all there is? No … as I looked in the mirror this morning I realized there was something else lingering there. It’s name is anger … smoldering, breathing … anger.

  What powers that be would allow these children to suffer so? What omnipotent, omniscient being steals youth, replaces it with pain and offers no solace?

  I asked him did he want to pray?

  “No Dad. I don’t think so.”

  What can I do to help him? He asked for wet cloths and some water. I gave him that.

Then leaning in, clasping my fist I mumbled,

  “ All I can say, Son, is maybe don’t fight so hard. Roll with it. Let go.”

 This is it, I guess. This is what I have to offer. This morning I hugged him as he lay there and whispered, “I love you.” As I walked out the door to go to work my heart was breaking.  I turned the corner; wiping my eyes when I spotted two women and a small girl who stood not much more than knee high. The women pushed her IV pole as she tottered along. Blonde fuzz covered her head where once her hair had been. She had on pink cowboy boots and an off white frock.

   I walked past but as the electronic doors opened I looked back. She gazed up at me with that curious, friendly look children have that ask, “Do you see me? Will you be my friend?”

  Transfixed by her dark, flashing brown eyes I softly burred … “ I like your boots.” She smiled as her mother asked her to say thank you. I turned for the elevators thinking, “It’s me that needs to be saying thank you.”

 

  

And the Music Plays

  It was the late 60’s; we were young and had immersed ourselves in the music and culture of a new age. Mesmerized by the steady drumbeat we could not recognize the incessant beating of our own wings as we flew too close to the sun.

  We demanded change shouting that the “church of man” was built on nothing more than hypocrisy. If we could tear it down then something new would rise up and take its place. We lamented as CSNY wailed,  “Find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground.”

  What rose instead was a mindless culture of self. “If it feels good do it,” we chortled, denying the Sunday school teachings about Christ, self-control and deprivation in search of spiritual growth.

  We called it the “Age of Love,” but unlike Christ we loved ourselves more than our brothers and sisters. We confused sex with love while “throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”

  Today most have at least begun to breathe an air of reality that is no longer clouded by the smoke of blinding idealism. We can hear the message of our fathers. We know that as they toiled at the “machine”, they loved us. As they wearily trudged to church angry with the “hippies and protesters”, they prayed for forgiveness for us and for themselves.

  Yet we could not see them then there on their knees crying out in suffering that their children would be lost.

  Many foundered in a world without values, taking not giving, yearning for all the wrong things. So we sang with glee along with “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band” not recognizing our festering pride.

 Pied Pipers of the New Age we were steeped in drugs, unable to resolve our own inner conflict. We no longer wielded the bolt cutters that had once set us free from chains of delusion. We short stepped in our shackles until it seemed as if the music had died. All that remained was the haunted echo of a dream.

  Today we stand as fathers ourselves hoping like those before us that our children can find their way. Yesterday a man came and told me that one day he had met my son. He told me that my son was beautiful and I thought he meant his chocolate flowing hair and pearly smile. 

  Then this grizzled old warrior looked me in the eye and said, “When I shook his hand, I couldn’t help but see his clear, pure spirit. It made me love him. It made me want to hug him but I didn’t want him to be uncomfortable so I walked away feeling somehow better for having shook his hand and looked him in the eye.”

  Today the music plays again.

Dead Willow

The willow is dead.
Earth could not sustain his spirit.
The birds no longer nest.