Jack came by my office on Thursday.  If you don’t know who Jack is, make your way down this page several posts to one that’s titled:  “I Know Jack”.

He stopped in right at lunch.  I don’t know what time it was, but it was when I finally had the chance to have lunch.  Instead of taking him into one of our formal rooms, I invited him right into our little kitchen where I had taken the first bite of a chicken salad sandwich.  (Gorgeous makes the salad with her homemade zucchini relish and they are to die for.) 

I chose the kitchen to talk with Jack due to four reasons:  1)  He saw me first and aimed his crutch in my direction  2) I wanted him to feel he was enfranchised, a part of “us” because, simply put, I like him that much  3) I wanted to offer him hospitality with a cup of coffee and a cookie or two 4) To be honest, I can’t imagine meeting Jack in a formal setting. 

We must have talked for 40 minutes or so.  I asked him about his acreage in Lucerne Valley, the twenty acres.  What it was like to choose this barren landscape over acreage near Lake Shasta because it was too cold and damp up North.  He told me how he built from scratch the home in which he and his beloved Beverly spent over 30 years of their marriage.  Why he positioned it as he did.  What it’s like every morning to get up and walk out into a sunrise and smell the aroma of sage, creosote bush and a myriad of other desert plants.  How every season of the year has its own explosion of color to whet your expectations and keep your attention.  He talked about being able to look up onto the San Bernardino National Forest from the side few people see.  To see cloud cover and rain before it ever hits the ground.  To smell it wafting across the desert tableland before it shuffles the droplets in any number of directions before they find his home. 

While I was standing next to him and his RV in our parking lot, I realized Jack was short.  I don’t know why I hadn’t recognized that before; perhaps because he impressed me as a big man by voice, character and countenance.  We talked for another ten minutes or so there next to the van.  I really hated to say goodbye.

Sometimes someone walks across our path and fills us with good.

The last meeting of the Bobbitt Memorial Chapel Grief Support Group met Wednesday, October 28, 2009.

This effective group met for over five years and helped hundreds of people in their grief journey.

I want to thank all of you for being a part of this endeavor.  It has been a wonderful experience being your facilitator and friend.

Norm Kidd

Morsels For The Journey

A grandmother pretends she doesn’t know who you are on Halloween.    Erma Bombeck

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!
Scottish Saying

Those seemingly interminable dark walks between houses, long before street-lit safety became an issue, were more adrenalizing than the mountains of candy filling the sack.  Sadly Halloween, with our good-natured attempts to protect the little ones, from the increasingly dangerous traffic and increasingly sick adults, has become an utter bore.  Lauren Springer

I’ll bet living in a nudist colony takes all the fun out of Halloween.    Charles Swartz

You meet likeable people just about anywhere.  It’s usually when you least expect to make a new friend. 

We’d driven for a couple hours to get to the home of a woman who had died several hours earlier.  We drove by the mailbox and made a u-turn over near a half-built mobile home with a beat-up Plymouth beside it.  Coming back south, we found the right mailbox and looked up the serpentine road across from it.

The home was obscured by two or three shipping containers; the kind you see on ships going or coming from the Port of Los Angeles.  This was a long way from Terminal Island, I can tell you that.  These containers were fenced in with eight-foot chain link fence.  There were sundry other wooden boxes of the cargo kind inside as well.  Old used-up tires made necklaces to each side of the lane.

Once we made our way around the container fortress, we spotted the house about a half-mile on up the road into the scrubs, sage and sand.  A 1960 Buick LaSabre two-door set out front.  With the brush and sand around it, I couldn’t tell if it was on blocks or not. 

The mother’s son was standing outside to welcome us.  He had probably watched us miss the turn, make our u-turn and then slow down at the proper lane and make our way up the winding trail.  As we arrived he looked comfortable; like he’d welcomed many others in much the same way as he watched us make the mistake and turn back again.  About my age, he welcomed me onto his dad and mom’s place as I got down from the Ford van.  My associate remained in the van as I made my way, with John, into the house.  The wind was blowing so hard I had told her to remain there until I came back for the gurney.

I was welcomed with almost adoration as I entered the sliding glass front door.  A dozen family members must have circled the room; grandchildren, kids and their spouses . . . and, of course, Jack, the husband of the deceased.  He looked like a collection of Santa Claus, Gabby Hayes and Heidi’s white-haired grandfather in the movie.  His eyes sparkled as he saw me and a “hello, Norm” greeted me from a rich baritone, hammered through the lungs of an 80-year-old man.  He had me right there.  I felt a kinship with this man who had just lost the love of 53 years of his life.  He made his way around a daughter and son-in-law and I saw the metal, forearm-encompassing crutches on each side of a timbered and weathered frame.

They greeted me with offers of a chair, coffee, soda and sandwich.  I’ve never been more welcomed into a home at the time of a death.  These were affectionate and mannerly people.  You could tell Jack was a strong patriarch and his kids loved him, as, I’m sure, they did their mother as well.  The way they touched her and kissed her as we stopped at the door later was testimony to a deep respect.

Well, I made my way back to mom’s bedroom with the guidance of two of the daughters.  I did my usual inspection to map out where we could place the gurney, if mom had jewelry that needed to be removed and asked a few questions of the daughters and the hospice nurse.  Content that I understood what needed to be done and how, I made my way back to the living room followed by an entourage of relatives who had bunched up in the hallway watching my every move.

Jack stood in my path at the living room.  Those sparkling eyes dead on mine.  I told him, step by step, what we were going to do to take Beverly from the bedroom to the van and on down the hill and to our funeral home.  He hung on every word and reached out his hand and said, “Thanks for coming and taking care of Beverly.”    I don’t remember what I said, but it wasn’t as deep as what I felt.  I was reminded again of the trustworthy stewardship laid in the hands and hearts of every person who ever enters a strangers home and has to say something like, “Hi, my name is Norm.  I’m from the funeral home and I’m here to pick up mom.”

Tami, my associate, stepped out of the van as I came out and we fought the wind at sundown to make our way to the back and open the double doors to the gurney.  As I slowly removed it, I told her of the lay of the land and the folks inside.  We made sure we had the portable cot with us because we’d need it.  Together we made our way up and over the short railroad-tie embankment, across the front yard and to the double cement blocks that served as a stair-step in front of the sliding glass door.

As the door closed behind us, Tami stepped out of my shadow and one of the sons-in-law shouted out, “Look, he brought a woman!!”  His wife immediately whacked him on the shoulder, everyone began to laugh and Jack walked over, took Tami’s hand and welcomed her to his home.  I’m afraid I got to laughing . . . so hard I had tears in my eyes.  As I looked around the room, many of the others were doing the same.  I can only believe the Lord knows when we need a little laughter and there we were, in the home of a woman who will never speak again on this side of the veil and we all laughed.  Good laughs all around.  No one, to my knowledge, seemed self-conscious.  These were laughs of relief.

The hospice journey was over.  The suffering stilled.  The cries in the night silenced.  The family, one member short, but still full of family . . . and full of Beverly.

These are moments I’ll treasure for the rest of my life.

Morsels For The Journey

The best and fastest way to learn a sport is to watch and imitate a champion.
-Jean-Claude Killy

Morsels For The Journey

It’s so beautifully arranged on the plate – you know someone’s fingers have been all over it.
Julia Child

Morsels For The Journey

Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.  Will Rogers

Morsels For The Journey

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.  Orson Welles

We call this Indian Summer.  It’s cloudless, sparkling blue sky all the way to the Pacific.  Slight breezes and it’s 97 degrees in the Inland Empire of California. 

Indian Summer is an informal expression given to a period of sunny, warm weather in Autumn in the northern hemisphere, typically in late October or early November, after the leaves have turned but before the first snowfall. (Wikipedia)

Well, I’m not holding my breath on that whole “snowfall” thing, but the leaves are beginning to turn, ever so slightly on some sycamores and a few cottonwoods, and the hint of Fall was in the air last week for several days.  We had light rain for three days this week and we just “knew” Winter was around the corner.

Some corner, Gorgeous and I went over to the pool last night and the flagstone was still very warm from the day’s sun.  Nocturnal critters hid under the Mock Orange and Mexican Heather not wanting to curl their digits on the oven-like stone.

It’s like this every year . . . yes, every year.  I don’t know why I build up these big expectations for Fall.  I guess I’ve still got Kansas seasons in my subconsciousness and they come to the fore each September.  That’s why we love the cabin in the Fall, but it’s hard to get there at the right time because the weather is so dramatically different when 6,000 feet of altitude is involved.

Tuesday I and an associate went to Hesperia in the high desert and then on to Lucerne Valley, in the middle of the Mojave Desert.  It’s about a 100 mile trip, one way.  Out in Lucerne Valley, you are on the backside of the mountains we look at from the front side here in San Bernardino.  It rained on us all the way up the pass and into Hesperia.  The weather broke somewhere forty miles east of Victorville and we were in a barren land filled with everything from shacks to near-mansions in the middle of nowhere. 

As we peered up the north face of the San Bernardino National Forest, the mountains were shrouded in roiling gray and black clouds full of snow.  Ol’ Jack, the guy whose wife died that day, said, “Don’t go by way of them mountains.  It’s an early storm and I know storms from this side of the mountains.  When ya think ya know what it’s gonna do, it’ll do somethin’ else.”  Jack is a whole other story, I liked him the minute he said, “Hello.”

So we made our way back across the Mojave Desert, into Victorville and to the lip of the Cajon Pass, facing downhill toward San Bdo.  The furious winds making their way up the pass hit us broadside like a cattle-truck full of heifers.  The van rattled and moved half-way into the next lane.  The rain came in sheets on a 20 degree angle.  Half the cars ahead of us had their “warning lights” blinking and we couldn’t tell if they were on the side of the road or filling the lanes.  My associate, a Tech Sergeant in the Air Force Reserve, was driving so calmly I wondered if she was in the same van as I.  We said not a word most of the way down the pass; she, captivated by the demanding task at hand; me, fulfilling and repeating all the prayers I have prayed for safety since I was a boy in Milford, Kansas.

I don’t know which of us provided the most wherewithal to make it down that pass, but I suspect we equally contributed to the trip’s success.  Prayer always does better if there’s a seasoned veteran involved.

Next day . . . Indian Summer.  Maybe my winter of 2009 was 30 minutes on the downhill side of the Cajon Pass this year.

Morsels For The Journey

The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity.  Benjamin Franklin