September 2, 2012

I stopped mid-sentence and left the conversation quickly.  Were my eyes playing tricks on me?  I nearly ran across the crowded lobby, not caring who I pushed out of the way.  It seemed as if the multitude parted and the light was brighter right where he was standing, smiling right at me.  Clad in the kelly-green polo with the little yellow alligator insignia, the shirt stretched tight over his healthy round belly (that shirt always was a size too small!).  He wore glasses from a few years back and held  a styrafoam coffee cup in his left hand where I knew his crooked index finger would be visible.
"What are you doing here?"  I asked incredulously.
"I drove here from the nursing center."  He spoke the words but it wasn't actually his voice somehow.  There was a part of me that did want to hear his voice.
His answer didn't really matter to me, as I hung on his neck, for if I stopped to think about it, I knew what he said couldn't possibly be true.  All that mattered was that he was here.

It was only a few seconds that he appeared in my dream, whole and healthy, but I am so thankful to have seen him that way.  Hours later, I sat beside his chair, as he silently watched me and smiled twice at my children.  I did want to hear his voice, but it was not to be on this visit.  However, my sentiment remains the same, dream or reality---all that matters is that he is here.

Photos of cousin Ray (part two)

RAY COLLINS

1960-2012

June 12, 1914

The heat rose in waves from the ground.  The stillness was stifling.  Not even a warm breeze to blow the dusty, dry earth.  For the farmer, the dust billowed around the plow, covering him from view in a cloud of parched earth.

She watched from the two-room house, squinting her eyes against the morning sun.  All she could see was that distant cloud of dirt, tiny on the horizon.  The time had come.  Would he notice?  They had an agreement:  when she knew it was time, she would hang out the bed sheet from the window, he would see it from the field and go for help.

She did what she could to prepare, her body continually preparing itself.  Set out the needed supplies.  Pace the floor.  Breathe.  Pray.  Surely help would come soon.  Surely he would see the sign in the window beckoning him home.  With sweat beads forming and trickling down her face, dampening her skin, her body racked with pain, reprieve would allow her to catch her breath for a minute or two until the next wave.  Time was running short.  The children (the oldest not yet three) now must be called inside and the door latched.  She couldn't risk them being out of her watchful eye.  Oh, where was the doctor?  She lingered like this until her body and the child within could wait no longer.  Alone with her two children, she languished to give life to another.

As daylight faded, she gazed at the peaceful face of her newborn daughter, thankful for what blessings she had received.  With the coming twilight, cooling the air of the scorching day, the work day ended for the farmer and he turned toward home only then to realize "the sign" now gently blowing in the slight evening breeze.  Fearful for what he might find inside those four walls, his pace quickened.  The sounds of his young children greeted him as he approached. He entered the house out of breath to see not two children, but now three--the youngest just hours old in the arms of his healthy wife, weary yet happy.

Help had arrived for the young mother that day.  Not in the form of another person, the doctor or her mother, but help from On High, giving her courage and strength from within. Strength she would need her entire life; for events, both tragic and joyous, that would shape the direction of an entire family for generations to come.  Strength to face what each day brought.  This day it was a glorious new life, her precious baby girl, Viola.

Photos of cousin Ray (part one)

RAY COLLINS

1960-2012  

 

 

Could I go back for one hour? ljf

Father's Day

Dad and me (circa early 1990s) 

I keep this picture on my kitchen window sill right above my sink; not a day goes by that I don't look at it.  I love this picture of Dad and me for several reasons.  Number one, Dad has such an ornery look on his face.  Based on the smile on my face (it's a smile only from laughter), he was most likely making some wise-crack about Mom's picture taking ability as she snapped this shot.  It's such a candid pose as he is talking when he was supposed to be holding still and smiling---classic Dad antics!  Also, check out the background:  it appears to be at a gas station or more accurately a rest stop...we were probably en route to Tennessee!  And that I can assume because of the object in Dad's hand.  See the dark spots on the white cloth?  That's oil.  Dad was wiping his hands on the same rag he used to check the oil in the car!!  He was famous for keeping a paper towel (from drying his hands in the rest room) tucked safely in his back pocket for whenever a need would arise, you know, cleaning the bugs off the windshield, wiping a grandkid's nose, drying his eyes after a hearty laugh and of course: checking the oil.

From behind the window--by all appearances

Dad was in my dream again. This time, I could see him through the window as I approached my house. He was wearing the blue puffy winter coat and "old man" cap that he wore so often in the early stages of the illness. He also wore a faint but pleasant smile on his lips. I had been looking for him--he wasn't where he was supposed to be, so I walked back to the house to look for him. He had been trying to open the door to come outside to follow us, but his feeble hands and disabled mind couldn't quite work the doorknob.

So even though it didn't appear like it at first glance, he was trapped. He couldn't get out and he couldn't communicate his need for assistance. He just had to wait for someone to return to help him. He could only observe the outside world from behind the window.

While there were many real life incidences similar to this one (even though we're long past that now), this snippet pictures this wretched disease as a whole. It serves a reminder to me to love the helpless, as Jesus did. And not just those with Alzheimer's; helplessness comes in many different forms, sometimes appearing from the outside that all is well.

Worth the silence of waiting

Calculating all the hours of sitting in silence with Dad would be too big a job. His responses are rarely more than a few words, limited mostly to a delayed reaction of nodding his head. Conversation (if one could call it that) is almost never initiated by him.

Mostly, I'm OK with that.

It's a privilege to sit by his bed or wheelchair and simply watch him sleep. (There are occasions of desperation, less frequent now, when I silently implore him to remember---teetering between sadness, the "giving-up" kind, and anger of wanting to shake him to remember---to say anything, to string a few words together, even if they don't make sense.)

Today was one of those common "sleep in the wheelchair" days. Sometimes I can tell his sleep is more peaceful than others. Out of the blue, his left eye peeked open and he spied me. I was clearly in his line of vision. Recognition crossed his face. "Hi there!" he said. ".....beautiful...."

I came closer to put my hands on both of the arm-rests of his wheelchair, so I was right in front of him. "I'm glad to see you, Dad, I love you."

"I love you, too." He held my gaze a moment longer.

Then, like somebody flipped a switch, it was gone. He was back into oblivion, out of my reach. He slept soundly again.

I can visit Dad for "a month of Sundays" and not have as much lucid "conversation" as I did today. Those 15 seconds were worth countless hours of his silence. The sunshine streaming through the window seemed to shine a little brighter.