Today, I felt cold all day.
I hate the cold and Bern hates the heat.
During the winter we play thermostat bingo most of the day and night.
Last night, with three layers of sheets and blankets, I was cold.
I'll find an additional cover for tonight.
No reason I should be cold today--but I was.
Right now I have on a tee shirt, a sweatshirt and a coat as I type.
It's no fun to be cold.
Not at all.
WHEN PEOPLE DIE
Intellectually, we all know that we will someday die.
But I don’t think we know that emotionally.
Sometimes, I feel eternal, though I know that’s self-delusion.
So, when someone we admire or love dies, it digs a crater in our hearts and mind.
When my mother died, on the way from the service to the cemetery, my father said to the mortician who was driving us, “With my wife dead, I have nothing to live for.”
I was about to ask, “how about living for me?”
But the driver said the perfect response, “You can’t imagine how many people have said that to me.”
Death is universal and so is grieving.
My father lived 12 more years and he did, indeed, lose interest in life. He paid very little attention to his grandchildren when they came to be.
When I moved him to CT, I discovered all my mother’s clothes were still in his house.
Most people survive from the loss of loved one. But it takes time and effort.
I was with him in the hospital the day he died. We had had the most cogent conversation we’d had in several years. After an hour by his bed, I said, “OK, Dad, I’m going home now.”
And he replied, “so am I”.
If he had been a parishioner, I would have sat down and held his hand. But he was my father and I assumed he’d slipped back into his dementia.
By the time I got home, 15 minutes later, the Hospital had already called.
I turned around and went back to sit by his deathbed.
The nurse’s aide who had been shaving him when he died, told me he sat up, nearly making her cut him, and said, “I gotta get out of here!”
Not bad last words.
I have a poem to share, written by a college classmate of mine. She wrote it for a friend who had died in Viet Nam.
I was the editor of the student magazine and published it.
I think it is full of truth.
WHEN PEOPLE DIE
When people die
It’s like a bird flying into a window
On the coldest morning of the year.
When people die
It’s like the bear’s have escaped from the zoo
And are eating children on the street.
When people die
It’s like a maniac has taken over the power station
And the lights go off and on and off
And on and off.
When people die.
Now, some other folks have some things to share….
(Yankees won last night--in case you're interested.)
The first 4 people to show up at my Bible class today are my age or older and we talked about falling.
All of us have episodes and stories to tell about falling.
As you get older, beloved, all of us have a falling risk.
Some of the stories were horrible and some funny.
My friend M. who was going to help me lead a distinction at a Making a Difference reunion tomorrow on zoom, fell and damaged her face going up stairs.
So, S. is going to take her place. S. has falling stories too.
Falling is awful. It happens without warning and can result in injury.
But as you get older the risk of falling increases.
It just does.
Just hope you fall safely....
It doesn't get anymore heated than this: the Yankees will be in Fenway tonight to play the Red Sox.
When I was at Harvard, I went to several Yankee/Red Sox game.
I was putting my well-being at risk!
I've been a Yankees fan my whole life.
When my father was in NYC getting ready to ship out to Europe for WW II, some people gave him and a couple of buddies tickets to a Yankee/Dodger World Series game.
My dad decided which ever team won would be 'his' team.
Needless to say, the Yankees won.
So I grew up in Southern West Virginia rooting for the Yankees.
Ironic, huh?
When I went to Fenway and rooted for the Yankees, people gave me looks that could have been murderous....
Tonight they play.
Go, Yankees!
Next Sunday we're going to have a service to honor the memory of a man I never met who was a long-time and faithful member of Trinity.
Others will be speaking.
I'm only going to read a poem by a friend in college who wrote it for her friend who died in Viet Nam.
It goes like this:
WHEN PEOPLE DIE
When people die
It's like a bird flying into a window
On the coldest day of the year.
When people die
It's like the bears have escaped from the zoo
And are eating children on the street.
When people die
It's like a maniac has taken over the power station
And the lights go off and on and off
And on and off.
When people die.
I'm also going to read the Prayer of St. Francis, which is probably my favorite prayer.
It goes like this:
"Lord, make us instruments of your peace. When their is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen"
Not much more to say.
When the pandemic began I wore pants that were 40 inches in the waist.
Now I wear 36.
I weighed 211 pounds.
Now I weigh 171.
I didn't eat much.
Part of it is I lost my sense of smell. So food doesn't taste as good as before.
My doctors don't know why that happened. It started before the Covid scare.
I had my third booster today.
Hopefully, I'll lose another 10 pounds or so.
I feel very healthy.
I like weighing less.
It's hard to believe that tomorrow will be the 21st anniversary of the terror attacks on our country on 9/11.
Hard to believe, but it is true.
Bern had gone to the grocery store.
I was brushing my teeth when the news broke.
I went into the TV room, toothbrush still in my mouth to watch it unfold.
Both our kids were in NYC.
Mimi came out of the subway just in time to watch the first tower fall.
Cathy, Josh's law school sweetheart and now his wife and our daughter-in-law was on a subway that would pass through the Twin Towers station.
Mimi and Cathy had to walk home across the Brooklyn Bridge because everything had been shut down.
I heard Bern's truck squeal into the driveway.
And I mean 'squeal'.
Then she came running up the steps.
"Have you tried calling the kids?" she shouted.
Of course I hadn't.
It took several hours to get in touch with them.
After that, I went to St. John's in case anyone needed to talk and mourn.
Lots more on the TV at the church about the ongoing tragedy.l
Talking to friends and parishioners took up the rest of the day.
21 years ago tomorrow.
Hard to believe.
And harder to believe it actually happened....
