LONELYNESS

My friend is a retired nurse who graciously and generously still volunteers her time and talents at a nursing home. She spent her whole life carrying for people and teaching others how too, and I think she doesn’t know how to quit and that is good. But the reason I’m writing about this is, we talked a while back and she said the one thing that seems to standout in nursing homes is the loneliness of the people. My Father –in –law lived in a home for many years and each time my family would go to visit grandpa we too would see the vacant looks on the faces of people who never saw anyone but the staff. Christmas, Easter, and holidays were always the hardest and although you wanted to bring them all home to dinner you knew you couldn’t.

Each and every day the medical people in this country tell us how to take care of our selves in one way or another. “Eat this and you’ll feel better. Don’t smoke and get out and walk or exercise,” they tell us. “If you don’t use that body you will lose it. Your body doesn’t necessarily wear out but like an old car it slows down and unless you keep it up it will rust away.” They talk about your mind too and how you need to challenge it with conversations, reading and crossword puzzles. It, like your body and that old car, can deteriorate with of lack of use and your mind is a terrible thing to waste.

But back to the nursing home. For so many of these people the world has ceased to exist beyond the confines of the front doors. The staffs work hard to keep them busy and occupied but there are only so many things you can do with so few people. What the people really need is someone from the outside to talk with. Someone to take them shopping or to the Dairy Queen. Someone to take them to the cemetery on Memorial Day to say hi to the one they spent the better part of their lives with. Someone who will tell them they are still needed and loved. Many of them do have some family that visits and cares and that is good but those who don’t, feel the loneliness twice as bad when they’re left behind alone.

Our bodies cannot survive without food, water and medicine. Our minds cannot survive without love and interaction from people who care. We remember when we were kids and we used to whine to mom, “I have nothing to do. I’m bored.” Yes even then we needed to be occupied. Think how it must be now at the other end of your life. As kids we never thought about death and dying but for the old and shut-in’s you couldn’t help but dwell on it because there is little left to think about when you are all alone like that.

Maybe I should take this a step farther because there are shut-in’s and lonely people in their own homes who suffer too.  On July 4^th 1939, Lou Gehrig, sick with A.L.S. said in his farewell speech. “I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” He wasn’t talking about money or fame. He surely wasn’t talking about the disease that would go on to bear his name. He was talking about his fans and friends. For a lot of people in the twilight of their lives that’s all they have left, family and friends. If your one of them, try hard to be there for them.

114 3RD AVE NO.

                                                

The house I grew up in, in Staples doesn’t exist anymore. It’s just an empty parking lot now. But on the corner of that lot is a lonely survivor. A lilac bush, that was there when I was living there.  It was the one my baseball always got caught up in when the front yard was a ball field. It was the last thing I passed on my way to school and the first thing I passed on the way home. It bloomed for a few weeks in the spring but otherwise there was nothing significant about it when I lived there. Now it’s all that is left to remind me of the dozen years or so it was part of my home.

It’s been over fifty years since I walked down that dirt driveway and caught a bus to Minneapolis and five times as much time has passed, as when I lived there. Fifty years of working and raising kids of my own with my loving wife. Something still draws me to that place more than anywhere else I ever lived. I go stand by that bush when I’m in Staples and close my eyes and I can still picture that old house and all of the people who called it home.

Was it because it was such a beautiful place? No. By today’s standards it was a shack. Was it because it was so comfortable? No it wasn’t that comfortable.  Not with two adults and eight kids in a three-bedroom house with one bathroom. A wood furnace that went out at night and we left the faucets running to keep the pipes from freezing. I’m not going to bore you with what it was like to be poor, I just wanted you to know that in that house was something money couldn’t buy and something I could never forgot. For you see it’s not the house that mattered at all, it was the family that lived within those walls that I can’t forget. They tore down that house, save for that bush in the corner, but what I remember and what I am writing about will never be forgotten because I remember the home that was there.

House’s are just bricks, mortar, boards and nails. Homes are life it’s self. Every emotion you’re capable of came out of that home. Houses need to be cared for, painted, caulked and reroofed. Homes are with you as long as you live. You emulate the good home you had there no matter where you live. I drive around the countryside a lot and I see people who live in rundown homes and dilapidated trailers. Your first inclination is to feel sorry for them but then you remember that it’s what inside that shelter that is so important and in many ways, they may be happier then those who live in the mansions on the high bluffs of Whitefish Lake.

Mom and Dad are gone now but all eight of us kids are still here. We get together once a year in the summer time and poke fun at each other. I always look beyond the gray hair and wrinkles when we meet and into the eyes. Your eyes never change and they betray your emotions so well. They sparkle when you’re happy and well up and spill over when you are sad. They are the conduit for seeing and storing virtually ever memory we keep. That’s why when I go and stand by that old lilac bush and close my eyes. I still see and feel, what I saw, so many years ago.

HERE COMES SPRINGTIME

                                               

 Spring seems to have a reputation of its own amongst the seasons of the year. Almost always it evolves around the renewal and rebirth of our earth. For way back last fall, before the earth shed its fading summer colors and the cold winds of winter came forth to put the flora and fauna to sleep—and encapsulate us all in ice and snow—the seeds for this year’s summer scene were sown. Not only in and on this earth, but also in the warm wombs of a great many animals, that they might replenish themselves and propagate their species. Mother Nature knows there is only one season for birth in the wild. It’s a season that supplies food for those young, emerging babies, and gentle rains with ample warm sunshine to nurture plants. One, that only happens in springtime and it happens best right here. Even the birds that flew thousands of miles to escape the rigors of winter come back—knowing this is where they need to nest and raise their young.

But beyond all that, something called spring fever happens in the minds of people who have long endured whatever winter had to throw at them. Then, as if on cue, this rebirth comes to fruition. Nowhere is it more prominent than here in the lakes’ country. For nature abounds here, and it is such an integral part of life in this land, and it’s no accident this place was chosen to showcase it all. No accident at all that this is where it all seems to come together like clockwork. Where streams, freshened with melting snow and ice, team with fish looking to spawn; and the sky above is filled with birds looking for a place to nest. Musty burrows and dens are abandoned and creatures that lay forgotten and napping for months now, stretch their legs and show off their tiny replicas that were born in the springtime.

I remember being in school, in the springtime, and how hard it was to keep my mind on my studies. How I would go to the pencil sharpener by the classroom window so I could smell the soft breezes that came in the open windows; how the air outside smelled like freshly turned dirt and lilac blossoms. The maple trees across the street, swelling with buds, would be wet with running sap. The playground was inviting me to a game of marbles and I could almost hear the crack of the bat on the baseball diamond. My daydreams were a brief respite from my studies and from those dreams came a desire to leave the confines of that room to escape to the fields and forest.

I’m older now, and I have cashed so many spring coupons from the book of life. The woods are right outside my back door, and I go there quite often. No more daydreaming at the pencil sharpener. No more trying to reinvent the wheel or feel the pulse of government. Nothing on this earth compares with the beauty, the peace and serenity that is there just for the taking. For Molly, my faithful companion, and me, it’s always been there for us come springtime. New sights for me, new smells for her, and a new season for all of us as we walk the trails in Mother Nature’s own back yard.

ALL MY FRIENDS

                                                          

You know I’ve made a lot of friends in my life and not a day goes by that I don’t thank the good lord for that. There is a big difference between living on and existing on this earth and I truly believe that a man with no friends only exists. But I want to take this story in a different direction when I talk about friends. I want to put my human friends on the backburner, if only for a few minutes and talk about my four legged friends.

I have been blessed with many dogs over my life, just as I have been blessed with uncountable human friends. I do find one small but unforgettable difference however and this is it. When the chips are down the four-legged friends will never forsake you. I have one sitting on my feet right now as she often does. She has no idea what I am doing and you know what she doesn’t care either. She just wants to be close to me. If I get up and leave the room she follows me. If I go away and don’t take her with me, she sits by the back door and her look tells me she is disappointed in me. I’ve disappointed people too in my life. Sometimes on purpose and sometimes not. But the big difference here is when I come home to my dog, instantly all is forgiven and just that fast. Not always true with humans.

Gus my Chocolate Lab of fourteen years died at my feet a couple of years ago. I was already suffering with a death in the family and so this just added to my grief. But you know I was strangely calm that night. As much as I love my dogs I won’t rate them up there with family members or very good friends. I remember putting him in the back porch because it was late that evening when he died. I slept fitfully that night and the next morning when the sun came up I got my shovel and dug his grave where I had already visioned it being. Then I wrapped him in a clean blanket and laid him in the hole along with all of his favorite toys. I knelt there in the dirt and cried and thanked him for all the good times we had together. Oh there were bad times too, but I prefer to remember the good things in life and not just with dogs. I needed to be as forgiving with him as he always was with me. A few weeks later I bought a small rock marker with his name on it.

Now today it’s Mollie. I’m seventy-two now so it’s safe to say if she lives a normal life she will probably be the last dog for me. With any luck maybe we’ll both check out at the same time. Dogs are a lot like humans in one other way. They usually grow up to be about as nice as you want them to be or as bad as you let them to be. It’s been said, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Now I bet there are some wives out there that can tell you some tales about old boys too.

For now Mollie is a work in progress and I’m enjoying being part of that project. I’ve learned over the years that you want to be careful about teaching your dog something that you might regret because unteaching them is a whole lot harder then teaching them. I don’t like being embarrassed by my dog because I know that smart people see that as a direct reflection of me and you know what? They’re right.