hemmerhaging

Speak no evil

I want to say up front that this is meant to be neither a defense of nor an attack on our sitting president. It is more about the conversations that I observe us having as a nation and as a society. Conversations around the dinner table. Conversations at the water cooler. Conversations on social media. Conversations with family. Conversations with friends. Conversations with anonymous people we we will never meet. Conversations about President Donald Trump.

Often times when President Trump is making the news for calling political opponents or world leaders derogatory names, tweeting verbal attacks against the media, or allegedly using profanity to drive home his point about other countries, his most staunch supporters say they admire him for it. They like that he speaks his mind, that he doesn’t hold back, and they don’t have to guess what he’s thinking.

But is that always an admirable trait? Should we all imitate that in our own daily lives? Would you give your waiter a bigger tip if he told you exactly what he thought about your cheap taste in wine or your unhealthy menu choices? Would you praise your child if he got suspended from school for telling the teacher just where he thought she could shove her homework assignment? Would you give your employee a promotion if he stormed into your office to let you know he thinks you are an a**hole head of a sh**y company?

If you answered ‘no’ to any of those questions, shouldn’t we hold our president to an even higher standard? Instead, some seem willing to make excuses for him or give him a pass or even sing his praises.

I am not naive enough to think he would be the first president to use foul or demeaning language. Nor can I pretend that I have not been embarrassed by my own mouth before. But to quote my mother (and probably yours) two wrongs – or three or four or more – don’t make a right?

It’s a new world we live in today with 24-hour news coverage and all forms of social media – a world President Trump has embraced. There is nothing secret or private anymore. Everything we say and do can now potentially have consequences.

Then there is the other side of the coin – those who did not vote for him, will not acknowledge him as their president, and will never approve of anything he says or does. They hold back nothing when using vile and profane language to describe what they feel is a vile and profane president and his vile and profane supporters.

I think, if we are completely honest with ourselves, the voters on the right would have to admit they would be outraged if former President Barack Obama had said some of the things President Trump has been accused of saying since he entered the political arena. Likewise, those on the left would have to acknowledge that they would be just as quick to jump to Obama’s defense.

Now, as a nation, we seem emboldened to say whatever is on our mind through the unaccountability of social media. Gone are the days of ‘if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.’ What is most striking to me, however, is that we don’t hold ourselves to the same standards to which we hold those on the other side of the argument. Some of the most mind-boggling posts I have read include the ones about “the hateful, mean-spirited and name-calling snowflakes and libtards (liberals + retards)” and “the f***ing president’s potty mouth” and “there is no room for intolerant people in my life”.

Just this pass week, I’ve read or heard people on both sides refer to each other as morons, idiots, and lowlifes. We’ve described each other as braindead, useless, and a waste of space. We suggest that those who don’t agree with us should leave the country, shut up, or crawl back into the whole from which they came. This is just a small sampling and doesn’t include the ones I would have to bleep.

For my Christian friends, shouldn’t we also hold ourselves to a higher standard? John tells us that “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:35. Is that the message we are sending out?

Instead we are cursing people who have been made in the very likeness of God, those for whom Christ died on the cross. He created them and gave them life. He loves them. But we curse them.

When I started a blog, I said it would sometimes be a place for me to vent. And the way we speak to and about each other is an issue that grieves me deeply. It is not my intention to offend anyone or to suggest that I am not guilty of the things I have written about here.

My hope is that we can become more civil in our political discourses. Or all of our discourses, for that matter. How many have changed their minds because of repeated badgering or belittling on social media? How many are more inclined to listen to someone because they are calling them names or telling them where to go?

We are in this life together. In this world and in this country together. And there is much work to be done in all three. Together.

But enough from me. Below are just a few Scripture versus in which God’s Word admonishes us to control our tongue. If you disagree with what I have said in this post, maybe your argument is not really with me.

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” Psalm 19:14

“Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.” Psalm 34:13-14

“Whoever keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps himself out of trouble.” Proverbs 21:23

“A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.” Proverbs 25:28

“It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” Matthew 15:11

“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” Ephesians 4:2

“But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.” Colossians 3:7-8

“Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.” Colossians 4:6

“If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless.” James 1:26

“ From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.” James 3:10

The mission trip ends, but the journey begins

“Orphans are easier to ignore before you know their names. They are easier to ignore before you see their faces. It is easier to pretend they’re not real before you hold them in your arms. But once you do, everything changes.”

~~ from “Radical” by David Platt

I have not read David Platt’s book and am not, therefore, recommending it. But I came across this quote, and it rings so true for me. Now I know these names, have seen these faces, and held these orphans in my arms. Now I can’t seem to get them out of my mind.

There are about 70 of them at the Open Door Ministries (ODM) orphanage in Tocoa, Honduras, where my husband and I recently traveled with a mission team from our church and two other churches. I went hoping I might make even a little difference in the life of maybe one child. But it was the children who have changed my life – and my heart – forever.

I had assumed that the children, the orphans, had lost their parents to death or disease. While that is true for a handful of the children at ODM, there are so many more stories of how the children have been orphaned – each sadder and more horrific than the other. They have been abandoned, sold, resold, physically and sexually abused, found sitting on top of trash heaps, and seen sleeping in the streets. They have been brought in by the local police after they have been abused by family members. Some have been born at the orphanage to mothers who are just children themselves – children too young to know how to be mothers. These young mothers were sexually abused by a trusted adult or pulled into vacant buildings and raped while walking home from school.

UNICEF estimates there are over 180,000 orphans or abandoned children in Honduras. Many of them become beggars, child laborers, gang members, and easy prey for traffickers.

One study shows that 10,000 Honduran children are prostituted and sexually exploited each year. The average age for a first pregnancy is 15.3 years old. More than 60 percent of the female population are introduced to their sexual life by rape or abuse. We were told it is “just part of the culture” there. According to another study, 70% of the Honduran population believe the child is the one responsible for the sexual exploitation. Only 5 percent blame the clients and the offenders.

Honduras is also, by definition, a third-world country. It is among the poorest countries in the world and the poorest in Central American. Roughly 65 percent of the population live below a poverty level the equivalent of $2 a day. Eighty percent of Hondurans live in an area without clean drinking water and sanitation.

That’s a lot of statistics, and the numbers can seem daunting. But behind every number is a person – a child.

So, what did we do while we were there? We worked on projects at the orphanage while the children were in school, and we played with them when they were dismissed. One team spent a day pouring a concrete roof on a house being constructed for the girls. The work had to be done without concrete trucks, so an assembly line which included Honduran laborers was formed to pass buckets of concrete up a ladder for 14 straight hours. We repaired toilets, light fixtures and broken windows. We installed a countertop in one of the children’s houses. We set up a library with books we brought with us in our 21 checked bags. We visited feeding stations and made hospital visits where we distributed diapers, onesies, nursing gowns, and children’s clothes and toys which we also brought with us. We brought some Vacation Bible School materials in Spanish and set up VBS-style stations for crafts and learning. We played Legos which we also brought in our luggage. We gave the girls a spa day including manicures and pedicure. We played soccer, frisbee, cards, and board games. And we hugged and loved children.

Cement bucket assembly line

Visiting the hospital maternity ward

The universal language of Legos

Mani-pedi customers

Easily the most heart-wrenching experience during our stay in Honduras was the day we went to one of the feeding stations in the squatters section of town. In this area, people make shelters out of whatever trash they can put together to make a roof and four walls. We were warned to keep moving our feet and to watch were we stepped so we wouldn’t be swarmed by red ants. We were advised not to leave our water bottles anywhere that children with infectious diseases might pick them up and drink from them. And we were told to avoid contact with the children because they may have skin and scalp conditions and infectious diseases.

One of many shanties

Our team arrived in two vans filled with bags of shoes, tubs of clothes, and cases of toiletry kits to distribute with the food. We stepped out of the vans to see children already running toward us with bowls in hand, anxious for one of the three feeding station meals they receive each week. We set up a bit of an assembly line to distribute the items and food. And the children just kept coming. We tried to keep some order to the distribution, and some of the area women linked hands forming a human chain to hold children back in line.

Normally a mass of children running toward me and crowding around me would make my heart smile. But I was fighting back tears at the sight of these children. Most of the them were not wearing shoes. Their feet were dirty and had sores on them. Their skin was patchy with rashes. Their eyes were sunken. Their hair was dull and disheveled. But what I noticed mostly was that not one of them smiled. These were not happy carefree children. They withdrew from attention and stiffened when I hugged them. They were focused simply on getting a bowl of pasta.

Feeding station

All too quickly we ran out of supplies and food. Someone had counted that we fed 211 children. And we estimated that we had to turn away 50 to 60 hungry, barefoot, and sad children. I looked up to see that one unfed child belonged to one of the women who had been helping hold back the line of children. All I had to offer her was a hug. But even our hug was brief because we had been told ahead of time that, as soon as we ran out of food, we needed to make our way quickly to the van because things could change in a hurry. But I was sobbing. I looked for my husband and saw that he was also crying. People were going past me carrying empty tubs back to the van, but I couldn’t get my feet to move until someone took my elbow and led me to the van. The 15-minute ride back to the orphanage seemed to take hours.

When we drove back through the gates of the orphanage, I became acutely aware of the difference between the children at the feeding station and the children at the orphanage and of the good that ODM does. The orphaned children – those abused and abandoned children found on trash heaps or sleeping in streets – suddenly seemed like the fortunate ones. ODM has given them food, shelter, clothes, education, medical and dental care, and love. And it has given them back their smiles.

Children in town are required to wear uniforms to school, so ODM requires the same of the children who attend school at the orphanage.

Yes, it’s true that they don’t live with their parents and, except for a few, are separated from their siblings. But ODM has also given them a family. The children at the orphanage are a family. They are brothers and sisters. They have a bond, a common experience, that holds them together unlike anything between most siblings. You can see it in the way they play with each other, in the way they help each other, and in the way they love each other. They are a family without families.

Admiring the family

However, ODM has done so much more for its children than meet their physical needs. It has given them hope and purpose to their lives. And each child seems to know that their hope and purpose is in the resurrected Savior. They attend church on Sunday and chapel on Wednesday every week at the orphanage. They study Bible stories in the orphanage classrooms. They pray before meals and at bedtime. Their unwavering faith in Jesus’ promise of salvation was infectious and touched us all deeply. Despite all they have been through, they love the Lord.

Hearing the Gospel message

We have been back almost a month now and life is getting back to normal … but I hope I will never be back to normal. As I said at the beginning, these children and this experience have changed me. I don’t know how, exactly, but I know I’m not the same. Some things that once seemed important to me, things I thought I had to have or needed to do, seem trivial in light of the enormous needs of others. The things that used to annoy and inconvenience me seem insignificant when remembering the challenges others face. The longer I am away from the orphanage, the easier it becomes to slip into my old ways. I pray God continues to change my heart.

We knew when we left the orphanage that our work was not finished. We were with just 70 orphaned or abandoned children in a country with tens of thousands more in a world with many more third-world countries that also have tens of thousands more orphaned and abandon children. There are also abused and abandoned children in our own country and also homeless families as a result of so many recent natural disasters. Maybe I can’t do much, but I have to do what I can. I can’t ignore the orphans anymore.

Our week 2 mission team and some of the children of Open Door Ministries

📷 Many of the photographs are courtesy of team member Pattie Peterson.

Goodbye, Comet

My first post was a eulogy to my very old dog. I thought at the time I would not want to write it after he died, and I was right. Comet took his last breath this week. We made this video, which we will watch often, to remind us of the good times. To quote Ed Sheeran’s “Photograph,” “We keep this love in a photograph. We made these memories for ourselves where our eyes are never closing, hearts are never broken, and time’s forever frozen still.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D7Fv2lVHQI&t=85s

From seniors to senior citizens

I am a member of the Rock Island High School Class of 1972. Rocky, for short. Home of the Rocks. Our mascot was, and still is, a large rock that sits outside the fieldhouse. If you do the math, you realize it has been 45 years since my graduation, and it was time for a reunion.

I had not been to a high school reunion since my 10th. So before my 45th, I studied my yearbook, searched for classmates on Facebook, and googled their names on the internet. Okay, so I stalked them. But I wanted to remember as much as I could about my 700+ classmates then and learn as much as I could about them now before the reunion. What I discovered, besides that most of them are not on social media, is that they had all gotten old. Some had more, um, laugh lines then I remembered. Some had gray hair – if they still had hair. And a few that we would have called beefcake back in the day now looked more cake than beef. I would not have recognized most of them if they knocked on my door.

Then I looked at my own yearbook photo and realized that girl doesn’t exist anymore, either. I have gained weight, lost hair, and I can play connect-the-dots with my age spots. I thought if I could pull my face back all evening to smooth out my skin, maybe someone would see me hiding under all the wrinkles. Then, in honor of my reunion, I grew a giant pimple on my chin. Well, one of my chins. This, I thought, could actually help my classmates recognize me.

But all my research had not prepared me for the weekend ahead.

The first reunion activity I attended was a tour of the high school. I told my husband on the drive north that I honestly could not remember anything about the school itself except detention hall. Before you jump to conclusions, one detention was given for every ten tardies, and I could easily rack up ten tardies in a couple days. As soon as we drove up to the school, however, and especially when I stepped inside, the memories came rushing back. The crimson and gold, pep rallies, first-period 😝 swim PE, homeroom (which looked much smaller than I remembered), biology lab, art class (not my best subject), sleeping through economics (which came as no surprise to my banker husband) and, yes, detention hall which I learned on the tour was also the study hall – who knew?!?

This nostalgic walk through the halls was just the beginning of what would prove to be an emotional and reflective reunion weekend for me. And the main event was yet to come. I was nervous. What if I didn’t remember anyone? Or worse – what if no one remembered me? Had I been mean to anyone? Would the ones whom I thought had been mean to me be there? Would my high school boyfriend be there? Doubtful. He was never one for school and I was pretty sure he had not been to any reunions yet. We had a very large graduating class and I had only kept in close touch with one friend after we all graduated from college, got married and started new lives. Most of the other classmates that I was casual Facebook friends with had been to the 40th and were not planning to attend the 45th. I had heard that a little over 100 people were coming. What if I didn’t know anyone there? In a class of over 700, there could have easily been 100 people that I never knew.

The first thing I thought when I entered the reunion ballroom was, well, maybe I shouldn’t have come. No familiar faces. No sign of recognition. We headed straight for the bar. I was going to need a glass of wine – or three – to get through this. Then, standing in front of me in line was one of my good friends in high school! I didn’t recognize her at first, but as soon as I saw her nametag I could see my friend in this stranger standing in front of me. And that’s how the rest of the night went. I didn’t recognize anyone until they told me who they were, and then it was so obvious! I felt like I was meeting them for the first time and I felt like I had just seen them yesterday. Not everyone looked the way I expected them to look. Not everyone’s life had taken the path I had expected it would take. The evening was a simultaneous and surreal mix of the strange and the familiar. We reminisced about the way we were and we shared information about what we had become. And some people at the reunion I did not know well in high school. So I made new friends.

Many classmates had stayed close to home while others had made their homes around the county and even beyond. Some friends were married to their high school sweethearts while many others had found spouses elsewhere or lost spouses to death or divorce. Many are still working while some have retired. Many have children and grandchildren (whoda thought?) and a few even have great-grandchildren. Some classmates are nowhere to be found. And maybe that’s the way they want it.

Not all of my classmates, however, had grown old. There are at least 41 people from our class who are no longer with us. Some I already knew had passed and others I was surprised when I heard their names read. How many more names will be read at the 50th?

It’s been a couple weeks since the reunion, but it has taken me this long to process why seeing my classmates had such an impact on me. We had grown up together. Some of us had been together since junior high and even grade school. We had shared experiences we would never share with another person. We had discovered things about the world around us together. Together we had begun to plan our futures. Every classmate in the room that night and those who could not attend are a part of my past, my history. Each one has played a part, big or small, in the person I am today. We have all been molded, in part, by the events that occurred during our three years together in high school.

But although we had grown up together, most of us had not grown old together. We were seniors when we walked those halls. Now we are senior citizens.

We have all lived so much life in these past 45 years. We have all been touched by disease, death, pain and sorrow. We have all known joy, life, love and happiness. We have all changed in so many ways. And we have remained unchanged in as many ways.

There were no personal computers when I was in high school. No internet. No cell phones. And no social media. (There was, in case you young’uns are wondering, electricity and running water.) When we graduated and went our separate ways, we really did just that. Now, in recent years, we have begun to reconnect on Facebook and Instagram. Through social media, I’ve learned that my classmates are republicans and democracts, conservatives and liberals, Christians and atheists, dog lovers and cat people, black and white and many colors in between. None of that came up in any of my conversations that night. Instead, we focused on what we had in common. We were Rock Island Rocks. We were all seniors in the largest class to graduate from Rocky High. We all became adults together.

I will go back for the 50th – as long as my name is not added to the memorial list. I didn’t get to talk to half of the people who were at the 45th and hopefully, many of the other 500 or so classmates will be at the golden anniversary of our graduation. In the meantime, I will try harder to keep up with friends through social media. The internet really has made the world a much smaller place. In fact, Facebook is a little like a virtual reunion. There are the good friends that interact frequently. There are the long-lost friends who are excited to reconnect and catch up. And there are the friends who don’t know each other very well and simply exchange a few pleasantries. I am excited to reconnect and catch up with classmates. It should make the 50th even more fun. As great as I think Facebook is, it can’t replace the face-to-face.

Oh. And the high school boyfriend? He was there and it was good to see him. I was glad to see him well and happy and married to a lovely lady. Well, there was that little part of me that was disappointed he didn’t forever rue the day he let me go. 😉

During my three-day blast to the past, we also drove by my old house that I lived in for 17 years before leaving for college. My parents, now both deceased, and two older siblings moved into that house on the day I was born. We drove through the old neighborhood where I could suddenly remember the name of all my neighbors and childhood friends. I visited my favorite hangout and drove by where my dad had worked. Not everything in Rock Island is as I remembered it, however. I looked for the places I had worked while in high school, but sadly, both are no longer there. Before we left town, we attended the church where I grew up and where my husband and I were married. We happened to be there on the anniversary of my dad’s death, and the memories of life growing up in this church flooded over me. We even visited with the last surviving member of my parents’ group of church friends.

It was a quiet ride back south as I relived all the highlights in my head. John Denver even came on the radio singing “take me home country road to the place I belong.” I smiled knowing my country road is now a two-way highway.

~~ Cheryl Riley Hemmer

I have become my mother

I first noticed that I was doing things I said I would never do as a mother when I picked up my first born during church service one Sunday to smell his bottom. Yep. Literally, right there in front of God and everybody.

And it was all downhill from there. I wiped runny noses with my sleeve or, when I had no sleeve, my bare hand. I used my own saliva to wash mashed carrots off of little faces and to tame wild strands of hair. And I pretended to not know what happened to their Halloween candy that I had eaten.

But when my husband really wanted to show me how I had morphed into my mother – and what guy wouldn’t want to do that when his wife is about to unleash on the nearest living being to her – he would tell me I sounded like my mom. Yeah, that was always sure to calm me down.

Growing up, I could never leave the table until I had eaten all my food. It didn’t matter if I genuinely didn’t like liver and onions or if I couldn’t possibly swallow another bite of peas because “children are starving in India.” (Children will still be starving in India even if I eat every bite of food on my plate, Mom.) “Children all around the world will go to bed hungry tonight and would give anything to have your vegetables.” (Let them have them. PLEASE!) My comments are in parenthesis because I would have never actually said them out loud to my mother. And yet, when my own children turned up their noses at their dinner, I reminded them of all the children who were starving in other countries.

When I misbehaved, my mom told me to go to my room. And I would gladly obey. My room was where all my toys and games and books were. But by the time I had children, parents had wised up and the new thing was to put them in time out. My boys had to sit there for three minutes without moving or making a sound. And if that really worked – and they were still too young to tell time – I kept them there way past three minutes while I enjoyed a few extra moments of peace and quiet.

In fact, I seemed to share a general distorted concept of time with my mom. Because when my mom and I were asked by our children to do something we didn’t want to do, what she and I really meant when we said “Just a minute” was “I hope after a minute you have forgotten about it.”

I learned fractions from my mom at a very young age. “I’m going to give you to the count of three to come here. One. Two. Two-and-a-quarter. Two-and-a-half. …” My boys also knew they were safe to wait until the two-and-three-quarters point before they had to make a move.

My mother’s words had the ability to fill me with fear at times. Like when she would tell me my face would freeze like that someday. And now I think how great that would have actually been. Sure, my tongue might have been permanently sticking out, but my face wouldn’t be wrinkly or spotted like it is today either.

And yes, as a mom, I threatened to turn the car around. We all knew full well that wasn’t going to happen. I told my sons that their punishment hurt me more than it hurt them. No one believed that for a minute. But sometimes moms don’t have anything else left to say. Let’s face it – there is a reason some species eat their young.

I remember the first time I broke my mother’s heart. I came home from playing at a friend’s house and I told her I wanted to live with my friend and her mom because her mom was “so nice.” I probably broke her heart many times before that, but that is the first time I remember making her cry. I spent the rest of her life trying not to make her cry – not necessarily a healthy thing to do – but I know I broke her heart many times after that.

I remember the first time my heart was broken as a mother. As a stay-at-home mom, I was very active at the boys’ schools. When they were younger, I would help on the playground or in the cafeteria or at class parties. They loved seeing me there. However, I remember clearly the day that my youngest walked through the cafeteria line with the biggest grin on his face because his mommy was there. But then shortly after, his oldest brother’s class came through the line, and that son shot me a glance that said “Don’t say anything to me or let anyone know you are my mother.” All his classmates already knew I was his mom – I was the same mom from the week before. And they were all happy to see me. But my son was embarrassed. Even though I knew that day would come, I wasn’t ready for it. But, I have been happily embarrassing both of them ever since.

Moms often get a bad rap. Except on Mother’s Day when each mom is the best mom in the world. But God created mother’s and gave them perhaps one of the most important jobs – bearing children. He made them nurturing, strong and wise … and perfect. It was Adam and Eve that made them all sinners. And yet, God still chose a mother as the means to send us the Savior of the world.

The importance of mothers can be seen in the way we have referenced her in our language. Think of the protection of mother hens and mother bears, the importance of mother boards and mother lodes, the origins in our motherland and our mother language. We refer to giving and caring women as Mother Teresas, wise and mentoring women as Mother Superiors, and, yes, bad moms as Mommy Dearest. And when we want to refer to something as the utmost, whether it be storms or surprises or events, we call it the mother-of-all.

I was asked recently what the best job I ever had was. That answer is easy. It is being a mom. And then I was promoted to mother-in-law and then grandmother. I am blessed to have experienced motherhood as both someone who had a mother and someone who is a mother. And I can tell you that neither one of us was a perfect mother. My mom was certainly no June Cleaver and neither am I. But then, who is? (You younger readers can google that reference.)

But I am who I am today – good and bad – in large part because of the mother I had – good and bad. I believe our parents are chosen specifically for us. Your mom may be biological, adoptive, a grandmother who raised you, a mother-figure in your life, a father who had to assume the role of both parents, or a mother who died too soon. Mother’s Day may even be hard for someone who, by all standards, has a bad mom. Maybe she is abusive, or negligent, or absent. But God still gave you to her. Maybe if for no other reason than to give you the chance to show her unconditional love. The love the Father has for you.

My mom, and maybe yours, too, did so much for her children. She had many sleepless nights when we were infants, when we were sick, and when we were teenagers. Especially when we were teenagers. She learned how to do everything one-handed. While she held us in one arm, she cooked, cleaned, and managed the house with her other. She made sure we were fed and sheltered and clothed. She carried a small grocery store, pharmacy and toy store with her wherever she went. She tried keeping us entertained and happy. She answered endless questions of “Why?” And she got us to school every day and church every week.

Moms pick us up when we fall. They bandage our scraped knees and kiss our bumped heads. They mend our broken hearts with their love and our pain becomes theirs. They cry for us when we hurt and they cry for us when we are happy. They are proud of us when we excel and they are proud of us for trying. They introduce us to the good that life has to offer and they try to protect us from the bad. They pray for us. They stand by us when no one else will and they love us when no one else can.

So, on this Mother’s Day, if you are blessed to still have your mom, I hope you will honor her. If you can, visit her. If you can’t, call her. I think I can speak for all moms when I say that card she will get in the mail on Saturday will not hold her through Mother’s Day Sunday. So tell her you love her. Honor her. Make her feel special on the day set aside to make her feel special. Why, you ask? Because I said so. Oh, sorry. That’s another motherism. Then honor her because it’s one of the commandments. Do it because God said so.

Mom on my last Mother’s Day with her

It’s a dog’s life

For the last several months, my thoughts – and my time – have been consumed by our elderly dog.

As of this writing, our Bichon Frise is 17 years, 7 months and six days old. I’m told smaller dogs generally live longer than big ones, but 17+ years is a long life by any canine standard.

Comet has been showing his age for some time. He lost his hearing suddenly four years ago. He has been losing his vision more gradually and, although he can see light and shadows, he is nearly blind. However, he doesn’t seem to be in extreme pain or have any serious health issues. And he eats like a champ.

Everyone tells me I will just know when it’s “time.” For the first 15 or so years of Comet’s life, I told my husband that, when it came time to euthanize him, he should see if he could get a two-for-one price because I would want to be put down with the dog. (Sometimes my husband seemed to think that was a great idea. But I digress.) I simply couldn’t imagine going through that.

But now I’m ready for him to go. I don’t like seeing him like this. He just sleeps and eats and sleeps and does his business and sleeps. It doesn’t take long to eat or do his business, so he mostly sleeps. He doesn’t enjoy walks anymore or car rides or doing tricks or playing fetch and tug-of-war. He moves very slowly and sometimes his back legs give out on him. We carry him most places he needs to go, and sometimes we find him standing in the middle of a room waiting to be rescued and toted off to the sofa where I sit with him until he falls asleep so I can sneak away and try to get some work done. He no longer seems to get any joy out of life, and I can’t be sure that he remembers what a happy life he has had.

Comet joined our family when he was 11 weeks old. He was the first pet for our family of four. My husband, Gary, and I had been thinking about getting our boys a dog when they were younger. However, we were at a picnic and a dog licked our oldest son on the cheek. Within ten minutes, Jeff’s eyes were swollen shut. It looked like he was hiding golfballs behind his eyelids. After several doctor visits and some allergy patch tests, the pediatric allergy specialist told us our son was so allergic to dogs that we could never live in a house where a dog had ever lived or spend much time in homes where dogs were present. Just like that, our boys’ hopes of getting a puppy were dashed.

Fast forward several years to when Jeff was a freshman in college. His younger brother, Jared, who was and still is a huge animal lover and occasionally growing up would have preferred a dog to a brother, wanted to know if we could get a dog since Jeff was away at college. I reminded him that his brother would, um, come home from time to time and therefore it might not be a good idea to get a dog.

But Jared did some research and discovered a few breeds of dogs that are considered hypoallergenic. Bichon Frise is one of those breeds and the one that happened to have a local breeder who had puppies that would be a available in a few weeks.

Exactly a few weeks later, we brought home the sweetest, softest, cuddliest, whitest little pup I had ever seen. It wasn’t exactly the golden retriever or yellow lab that Jared originally had in mind, but he was thrilled to have a dog. I had never had a dog of my own growing up and I must say, I was pretty excited myself.

Actually, I was more than excited. I was in love. I marveled at his every move and catered to his every need. I remember my husband said to me, “You know, Jeff will be coming home for Christmas break soon. What if he gets here and he can’t be around Comet?” I thought for a second and said, “I will miss Jeff.”

But when Jeff did come home, all was fine and we were able to keep both dog and son.

The next step then was to give him a name. All four of us had a name in mind and none of us was willing to give in to another name. My husband, the banker, wanted to name him Buck. Jeff, the Star Wars fan, wanted to call him Yoda. Jared picked the name Skittles for no particular reason. And I liked JayJay after Jeff’s and Jared’s initials. Clearly that should have been his name.

But since we could not agree, all of those names were tossed. We told the boys to pick a new name to which they could both agree. Because he joined our family shortly before Christmas, they came up with Comet – like the reindeer. Comet it was. I let the breeder know his name. He comes from a line of champion show dogs and she liked to keep track of the family tree. She was thrilled because the name of her business was Clair de Lune which is French for “light of the moon” and all his siblings had been given space-related names. I didn’t have the heart to tell here he was named after a reindeer and not a celestial object. I have never liked the name and sometimes call him JayJay in private.

He has always been a good dog. Well behaved, gentle with children and good with other dogs – although he prefers people to dogs. He is fairly smart. He became house-broken quickly, learned tricks easily, and seemed to have a pretty good understanding of the English language.

He has been with us as our sons graduated from college, got married and got master’s degrees. He has welcomed four other dogs to the family when Jared got a beagle, Myles, and later another beagle, Cami, and Jeff got a hypoallergenic Portuguese water dog, Tego, and later another PWD, Magellan. Comet has been with us longer than Myles, who went missing from his yard four years ago, and Tego, who died unexpectedly two years ago.

He helped us move into a new house. He has seen our family grow by seven grandchildren. He helped me through the loss of my parents. He let me know whenever a stranger (or a good friend) was at the door, when the phone rang, and if someone opened the cookie jar.

I already miss so many things about him. I miss driving up to our house and seeing him sitting in the window waiting for me. I miss hearing him bark frantically waiting for me to come through the door. I miss the way he would hop up and down on his back legs when we would ask him if he wanted to go for a walk or a ride. I miss the way he would cock his head when we were having a conversation. I miss watching him run figure-eight laps between the sofa and kitchen table. We called him demon dog when he performed this possessed-like ritual. I miss the tricks for treats he would do every evening after dinner. He could sit, stand, lay, play dead, shake, wave, and high-five. He was so excited to do them, he would sometimes go through them faster than we could command them.

For the past two years, we have been celebrating “lasts” with Comet – his last Christmas, last birthday, last National Pet Day, last whatever reason we can find to celebrate. But our little Energizer Bunny keeps on going.

It’s taken me four sittings to compose this post. It’s too emotional. He is laying next to me now. It took a little circling and fidgeting and whining for him to find his comfortable spot. Every once in a while he lifts his head to make sure I’m still there. No, he can’t see me or hear me. But he can smell me. I put my hand under his nose, he takes a whiff and lays his head back down, assured that I’m close.

Sometimes he sleeps so soundly that I have to check on him, too. Every now and then I glance over to see if he is still breathing. Again, I tell myself I’m ready for him to go. I sometimes even wish he would die peacefully in his sleep. But then, conversely, I often find myself in a panic thinking has died while I wasn’t looking or worry that he is taking his last breaths.

I know many will disagree, but I am not a believer in the popular Rainbow Bridge notion that says deceased pets go to a beautiful place where they romp and play until their owner dies and then the owner stops by this other-worldly place to reunite with their pet before they cross the rainbow bridge together to, supposedly, heaven. It sounds great. Who wouldn’t want to believe it? But the belief comes from a group of poems by different authors writing in the 1980s and 90s. There is certainly no scriptural basis for it nor is there any other basis. It is just the wishful thoughts of the authors trying to ease the pain of pet owners. But I am not comforted by it and I find no peace in it.

So we continue our long goodbye. I wonder every time I leave the house what I will find when I get home. I wonder every night when I go to sleep if he will make it through the night. And I wonder if we are doing the right thing. If he was in a lot of pain or he had a disease or needed an extensive procedure, maybe it would be more clear. But for now, he’s just old. Very, very old. But he’s still alive so it must not be time.

Excuse my slippy blig pists

Perhaps my first blog should be a warning. A warning about what you may read here. I don’t intend to offend anyone, but sometimes it just happens. I can’t help myself.

You see, I have fat thumbs. And, if I post using my cell phone – which I most likely will do, there are going to be typos. Especially if my blog posts will be anything like my texts.
My most common error is to type “i” when I mean “o” – like when I texted my friend about her many grand sins instead of her many grandsons. Or the time someone asked if my bicycling husband rides on busy roads and I told her he dies. Another friend said she was considering having one of her chins removed (her words, not mine) and asked if I had ever had cosmetic surgery. Nine, I texted her. None. The answer is none. And I don’t live my friend’s life of exotic travel, but I do love it. Although I would love to live it.

Then there was the time I tried to text someone that I was going to give it my best shot. Think about it. She was shocked. And I have typed Gid for God so many times that my phone now autocorrects to Gid when I correctly type God.

But it’s not always the two vowels that cause me problems. I once texted my son about his precious wife – only I called her his previous wife. And I sent a group text once to my favorite perps instead of my favorite peeps.

But maybe it’s just texting that is my downfall. I was carrying on two simultaneous text fests one afternoon – one with my son who had the day off and was going to take his children somewhere and another with a friend who was awaiting the birth of her granddaughter. My friend’s granddaughter finally arrived. She texted me a picture of herself holding her newest bundle of joy and I texted her back, “Did you go to the zoo today?”

So consider yourself warned. I might not always mean what I write. Or was that wrote?