Now it becomes difficult...

And now it becomes difficult

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Tuesday afternoon in my classroom: I am cleaning off my desk at the end of the day. I open my lesson plan book to put some papers to grade inside the back cover to take home with me. But there in the back cover are two pieces of paper with color the same color photo printed on each: cindy, dad, and me, dressed in our warmest Denver Bronco blue and orange clothes, standing in front of Soldier Field in Chicago. We are on our way into the Bears-Broncos game on November 25 of last year. I look at the picture, and remember that it was from Mike, my dad’s cousin, who took the picture and used the fourth ticket for the game. Of course, he was rooting for the Bears, but we didn’t mind- so were tens of thousands of other people at the game. :) I put the pictures back in the lesson plan book, and think to myself, “I’ve got to email Mike and ask him for the electronic files for the pictures he took that day.” He was the only one with a camera, and he took several pictures at my request of Jason Elam, the Broncos (now former) place kicker, who was one of my favorite players. He also took some pictures of us in the stands. I laugh as I think about how COLD we were that Sunday afternoon. How the second quarter it actually rained a light constant cold rain and we were very wet, which made us very cold. I kept thinking that Mike was going to wish he’d turned down the ticket. But dad said later that they both had a good time. Mike’s a big Bears fan, and he enjoyed it.

I have Spanish tutoring after school on Tuesday, so I rush home and have my two hours of Spanish class, then cindy and I go run some errands. I forget to log on to look through my email from family members looking for Mike’s email address in the header of one of the mass mailings. Probably, I think, it will be in the one that Anita sent out about the Christmas gathering in January. Anita is married to Mike’s younger brother Jim, so I’m sure that she’d have included Mike in the email, and I’m relatively sure Mike HAS email…

So, yesterday, at school, I see the pictures again, when I take the papers that I graded out of my lesson plan book. And I think again, I’ve got to remember to get Mike’s email and ask him for more pictures. My computer is at home, and I’m at school, and I end up not leaving school until 9:45 p.m. (Yes, I know that’s late. But I was on a roll, and very productive.) Needless to say, I didn’t think about emailing anyone when I got home. I pretty much came home and got ready for bed. “I’ll email Mike tomorrow about the pictures, and copy dad on the message, just in case Mike’s already given them to him, and then he can just reply to both of us that he has them so Mike doesn’t have to send them to me.”

Today at school the pictures fell out of the back of my lesson plan book, and one of the kids picked them up for me. They’ve seen them before (the first time they fell out weeks and weeks ago) and so they all know the story and who’s in the pictures, etc. So Diego smiles and says “oh Miss Leinbach, this was when you went to the American football game with your father and the other Miss Leinbach.” (Isn’t that funny- “the other Miss Leinbach”? but what else can they call her? Sometimes they call her the P4 Miss Leinbach.) “Yes it was, Diego.” “Yeah, and but your team was not the one to win.” (love that ESL English). “No, my team didn’t win” I say laughing, thinking: geez, kid, thanks for reminding me! and I’ve really got to get the rest of the pics from Mike so I can show them to the class.

Sometimes I stay late after school (like yesterday) but I was exhausted today and wanted to just come home and take a nap, so I left around 3:40. I cross the street to the park facing the school and begin walking down the path toward my apartment. Thirty yards into it, I catch sight of cindy walking toward me. Her classes end at one, so she’s home earlier than I am. Why is she coming back to school? I wonder if she’s coming to ask me if I’m staying til 9:30 again, and if so, can we go get something to eat NOW.

“I’m happy to see you leaving school now,” she says.
“Why?”
“Well, cuz you tend to stay at school very late sometimes. Actually, a lot of the time.”
“Yeah, well, I have a lot of stuff to do, and it isn’t ever done. I have a lot to do today, too, but I’m so tired, all my body and brain want to do is go home and take a nap.”
“Ah. Okay. Um, they found Mike Ramer in his house dead today.”

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And now it becomes difficult.
Death visits my family and I can’t visit them.

Mike is the son of my grandmother’s sister. Heart disease runs in my grandmother’s family history. Her father died of a heart attack relatively young- like 60? My father, as most of you know, had quadruple heart bypass surgery a year ago last September, and only did NOT have a massive heart attack by the grace and mercy of God. Mike lived in the home that his parents had lived in until their deaths, first Walter, then Elsie years later. Lots of good memories in that house. His brother Jim, went over to the house this afternoon and found Mike. Apparently he had died during the night. Heart attack? Don’t know. I know only what I’ve written, what mom emailed to us as soon as Grandma called her, as soon as Jim called her. I am glad that it was Jim, the veteran firefighter, who found him, not his sister Janet. Janet lives just a mile down the same road as Mike. She just retired and is enjoying cooking classes. She makes the awesomest jams and jellies and wonderful hand-sewn potholders. I brought two of her potholders with me, just to have a bit of Janet with us here in Peru. But I digress.

Janet and Mike are both single. Janet always has been, and Mike was married years and years ago but has been single for the duration of my generation’s experience with him. Because they are both single, the kids in my generation tend to like them a lot- single aunts and uncles are always more fun. Granted, they were “Cousin Janet” and “Cousin Mike”. Mike was the one who helped with fireworks. Mike was the one who made his own potato launcher guns and brought them to grandma and grandpa’s house to fire off potatoes into the field behind their back yard. Mike was the one who, every year for Christmas for years on end, would bring brown paper lunch bags stuffed to overflowing with candy- one for each person. And not cheap yucky candy, he used good stuff. The last few Christmas gifts from him were pints of real maple syrup, with a homemade custom label- syrup he’d made from the maple trees he tapped. He went to a sugar shack that a friend of his had, took all his syrup over and combined it with theirs, and helped make the syrup, and then got a take of the product. This past year, Dad started doing the same thing with his syrup. Instead of dad standing out by the fire in the back yard for hours on end, boiling sugar-water, he loaded up the five-gallon buckets full of sugar water every day and took them over to Mike’s sugar shack. No, it wasn’t really “Mike’s” sugar shack, but that’s what we called it, since it was through Mike that Dad started doing it. Mike was a welder, and had quite the shop on his property, and Cindy asked him this last winter if she could come and learn to weld from him. Who knows when- just sometime in the future, could I come hang out at your shop and learn from you? (she’s always wanted to learn to weld. Go figure.) so, yeah, sometime in the future, mike would be happy to show her what welding is all about.

Except now, there is no future sometime. There is only an unexpected funeral to plan, and an unexpected hole in our lives. And I am thousands of miles away, and cannot be at the funeral, cannot be with the family to grieve and to celebrate my Cousin Mike’s life and wonderful spirit. I can’t go play games at Grandma’s and talk and remember her nephew Mike, unexpectedly gone to be with our God in the company of angels. I can’t give my Cousin Janet a hug. I won’t be there on the fourth of July when there’s no potato gun. I won’t be there for mush breakfasts where the dry humor of the men in our extended family will no longer include Mike. I am far away. And besides, I don’t want Mike to be dead. His nephew’s children need to know their Uncle Mike. His nephews and surviving niece (one niece passed away in 1995(?) after heart/lung transplant complications) need to continue to know their Uncle Mike as adults- it’s so different than when you’re a kid. He was solid. He exuded silent loyalty- you knew he’d be there for those he loved. His presence was always one of quiet, just-under-the-surface gentle, happy, mirth. Our gatherings need him. We need him. We don’t want him to be dead.

I’d somewhat prepared myself for the circumstance of a family member dying while I was in Peru. But I’d been thinking about Grandpa and Grandma (especially Grandpa, since he was in the hospital when we left for Lima). I’d prepared myself somewhat, knowing as I hugged and kissed goodbyes that when you’ve got more than eighty years of life, every hug and kiss might be the last. I’m not ready to start losing the other people in my life- the ones that AREN’T dying at an old age. I dealt with the specter of sudden death a year and a half ago when Dad’s surgery prevented a heart attack at a location cardiologists call “the Widow Maker”. My mind played through the scenarios of losing my father, losing my mother, before they were 85 years old. Of losing them while I was “still young”. My friends have lost grandparents, sure, but my parents were both blessed with parents who lived fairly long lives. They were blessed with their presence well into their own adulthood. My mom’s dad died in 1992 or 1993(?), but then her mother lived until just two years ago. My dad’s parents are living well into their eighties, and have mostly been in relatively good health. I’m not ready to start losing the next generation, my parents’ generation. I want my family to always be here. And they won’t be. I will go to Peru, and things will change. I will go to Chicago, and things will change. I could live next door, and things will change.

I don’t especially enjoy change.
And I really don’t enjoy unexpected change.

Death for me is not frightening, not when I know Jesus is escorting that person to his Father. Death is loss and change over which I have no control. If I didn’t have the peace of the Holy Spirit living in me, the fear of that certain but unpredictable loss and change would paralyze me. I realized that sitting in the surgery waiting room during Dad’s surgery, and then four days later sitting at the funeral of my mother’s younger brother Bob, who died after a long struggle with cancer. It would freeze me emotionally, were it not for the peace of God in me that assures me that He will help me through anything that happens, and that separation from my loved ones is only temporary. I have to focus on that peace, on that promise, on my Savior, my God, and my Advocate (the Holy Spirit of God within me). I have to focus and dwell in their sustaining presence and power, so that I will learn to live through the loss and change of the unexpected and expected but still unwanted deaths that will only become more frequent as the years proceed.

Lord, help me live my days loving those around me, living in their presence and appreciating their life and love. Help me live in the peace of Your care. Help me be thankful for the opportunity to see them and love them and be blessed by them and be a blessing to them every time I meet them. Or email them. Or call them. Help me remember that every day is a gift from you, our merciful God, and that you will call all your children home sometime in the future. Help me remember that “sometime in the future” has to at some time also be “today”. Help me remember that with you, there is an after “sometime” that will go on for all future. That that is truly my future. It is truly the future of everyone.

But God, I wouldn’t mind if you allowed my family to have a lengthy future here on earth.
:)

And now it becomes difficult.