H.A.H., Jr.

We lost a good man recently.  He was 80, so I guess it should come as no shock, but it certainly was a surprise.  He had been in good health.  He was dapper, and gentle.  He had the biggest hands.  I think they somehow matched his big heart.  He was a scholar, and wrote many things.  He was a teacher and taught so many people about God and His Son.  He was an Old Testament scholar, and well understood the righteousness and holiness of our God.  He was joyously grateful that God sent His Son to pay the price for our sin.  He spent his life helping to show that to other people.  He was kind and compassionate.  He modeled the sort of person that we should all strive to be.  He did his best to reveal Jesus to the world.  I will miss him a lot.  I'll miss his smile, and his warm greetings.  I'll miss his teaching and the way he gestured with those big hands of his.  I'll miss his suit & tie, and I'll miss his care for those around him.  I'm glad to have known him and I look forward to telling him one day just how much he meant to me.  I can imagine there was the angelic-equivalent of a cheer when he got to heaven the other day.  Saints who joyfully welcomed one of their own.

Here's to Lula

I've been thinking about my grandmother today.  Not the one who died last month, but the one who died in 1985.  My father's mother.  I always thought of her as kind of namby-pamby.  She was older than my other grandmother, and not nearly as much fun.  Also not really into the grandkids.  There are pictures of her from high school and she looked old even then, with the finger-waves and calico dresses.  I only recently understood about her, though.  She was born just after the turn of the (last) century and lived in a little town with a bunch of relatives in Wisconsin.  She was one of like seven girls.  The only other names I can remember are Veda (who later married Pink) and Blanche, pictured below on the right.  In this photo Lula (on the left) was only about 50!

Anyway, she had it pretty tough.  She got married and had a little girl named Ruby.  Several years went by and they had a son (my dad).  Ruby was at least ten years older, I think.  My "grandfather" ran off when dad was just an infant (with the secretary from the garage where he was working, if my childhood memories are correct.  He landed in eastern Iowa.)  So Lula was left with two kids; my dad was born in 1936, so it was the throes of the Great Depression and she did the best she could.  I'm sure she probably had a high school education, but nothing more.  She worked at the big dairy in town for a long time.  My dad had all kinds of little jobs to help make ends meet.  There were aunts and uncles around (especially Uncle Paul, who was like a father to my dad) but it still must have been incredibly hard.  She never got divorced and thought of herself as still married, so of course she never dated anyone else.  Eventually my dad did a stint in the Army, and afterwards they both moved to Lyons Township in Illinois.  She moved to Mount Prospect at some point, but when I was pretty little, she moved to Kokomo to be near Ruby and her family, where she lived until she died.
I was thinking about those visits to Kokomo, mostly.  Trying to learn stick shift; at some stop sign in Indiana somewhere, with a big truck downhill behind me (probably laughing his ears off) while I popped that clutch over and over.  She lived in public housing, on the second floor.  There was, of course, a huge flight of stairs that she fell down at least once and broke her hip.  I remember sitting at the top of those stairs, eating, listening to the grownups talk (mostly about other relatives).  I'm sure she looked forward to those visits (even though my mother didn't like going) and she probably really splurged on all that meat and stuff.  I can't imagine how much harder it must have been for her as a single mother than it was for me.  I at least had Murphy Brown as a role model! {insert eye-roll here}

So in her honor, this weekend's menu will include:

• Pot Roast with potatoes, carrots and onions (overcooked)
• Puffed Cheetos
• Cream Soda
• Brach's Pick-A-Mix (if I can find it anywhere!)

Doggone

Too much time to think today,  I guess.  I decided to spill my guts about a recent event.  Well, two events, sort of.

About 10 years ago, we adopted a dog from a local shelter.  Her name was Rascal, so we shifted it to Roscoe.  They were vague about her background, suggesting she was collateral damage from a divorce.  She was calmly hanging out in the cages with the cats.  Probably a Rat Terrier, about 16 pounds, black white and tan with a min-pin look to her face.  The vet figured she was a least 5 years old.  Over the years we put quite a few miles behind us.  I think she was actually a cat in a dog suit, as she had that aloof quality - "Hey, I'm glad you're home.  Good to see you, I'm gonna go continue my nap now."  If you threw a ball for her, she thought it was a game you were playing for her to watch.  She was a great pet.

A little over a year ago, something changed with her digestive system.  No gory details, but like clockwork, every third or fourth day, her back end would create a technicolor mess for me to clean up.  Trips to the vet gave us strategies, but barring the REALLY expensive tests, they couldn't find a solution.  I cooked all her meals for 5 months.  We tried every better kind of commercial dog food meant for sensitive stomachs.  She got no treats.  She got only Rice Chex as treats.  She got medicines, both prescription and OTC.  I spent more than I could afford on vet visits and fecal tests and blood tests.  I got really good at cleaning the tile floor with paper towels.  I washed my hands endless times.  My son lost some appetite.  I lost some of my appetite.  She was confined to the kitchen and the hallway where there was no carpeting.  We got used to walking over dog gates.  She spent nearly all her time alone.

So, one day I got tired of the whole thing.  I made some calls and discovered that I could take her to the county animal shelter and they would take her off my hands, evaluate her condition and deal with the results.  For $20.00, if you can imagine.  So we did that.  And now I can't help but feel guilty even though I know I did what I had to do.  You see, she didn't seem to mind the whole thing, the incontinence, I mean.  She never seemed to be in any pain.  She got used to making messes in the house and didn't seem particularly distressed by the whole thing.  But she was, like, fifteen years old.  And clearly had some kind of problem...

Well, that was event number one.  Two days later my mother called to let me know that her mother, my grandma, had died.  My mother was handling it pretty well, considering that just a very few weeks earlier, on the first anniversary of my father's death, she found out that she had breast cancer.  She is in treatement and the prognosis is excellent.

I have a feeling I'm not really handling things all that well.  Stoic.  Impassive.  Strong.  (Depressed, I think.  Maybe overwhelmed.)  Most of the time I keep busy, but other times I feel so...so...adrift?  Bad timing for raising a teenager, too. 

Here Roscoe is was, in her harness, no longer tri-colored, as the brown had faded to black and white.  Hated having her toenails trimmed (she would nip me!) so she was always clicking around the kitchen.  Now there's nobody to lick up the drips and crumbs.