FAMILY DYNAMICS

The past weeks have been filled with roller coaster emotions, brain-numbing road trips, and endless analytical phone calls as our parents have endured the breaking down of body parts and the necessary hospitalizations and after-care. CA's mom's successful second hip replacement and the ensuing care interspersed with helping Aunt Margie get into assisted living and dispersing most of her worldly goods, then my dad's declining health and subsequent collapse.

Aunt Margie loves her new home--just one small room with a shared bath--in a clean and lovely care facility. She tells everyone that she's loved it since day one. Thank you, God. CA's mom, Gigi, is 90% back to normal and loving life in her independent living community--back to playing bridge several times a week and driving her friends to dinner and club events.

My dad is happily ensconced in a skilled care facility rehabbing from arrhythmia and related bodily failings. For a few weeks we've thought he would continue to fail, but he's gained a bit of ground and is rehabbing and again eating normally. His spirits are encouraged and he, too, loves his caring environment. This is a temporary solution--if he ceases to progress or when he's reached his limits he will be sent home or we'll seek other arrangements.

My dad is married a second time and has been for 10 years. They've done well together, but her health is fragile and she's stated frequently that she can't care for him at home. As he's gaining strength, she might change her mind, but it's seemed that he'd rather not go back home and she'd rather not have him.

But, this weekend I noticed an affection between them. When we delivered her to his room on Saturday afternoon, they seemed happy to see each other and then segued into gentle bickering. Might end up being a case of can't live together, can't live apart.

So, dad's current state is stable and improving slightly, whereas one week ago we thought he would tumble downhill gently or abruptly. I lived in a state of nerves for a couple of weeks. I like to know what's coming and then deal with facts. No one knows what's next for dad or how soon or how much. He's happy and somewhat optimistic, and so are we.

I wonder how reflective he is and how real his faith is to him as his body fails him. I've struggled with the reality of my faith and with half-remembered feelings and hurts that he's inflicted over the years. Forgiveness is daily and I have to seek it often. I know that my affection for him is shallow and my attention to him is a lot of "Honor thy father..."

I always say that he's been a piece of work, and he is. I know that my trust issues are traced to his fathering. I know that he's had his own demons to vanquish. Self-awareness is my generation's thing, and his generation's thing was survival. He was a child of the Depression, a WWII non-combat vet, and a parent before the pill or reliable birth control. My mom's mental health issues also shaped him, as he shaped her.

I had a moment of clarity last week when I realized my tension was more related to navigating the rest of his life with a presumed roller coaster of health issues and less related to actually experiencing grief or loss when he dies. I'm not proud, but that's honest. And, I'm fully aware that as I realized with my mom's death 12 years ago, I've spent a good bit of my adult life grieving the loss-lack of parenting and stability and unconditional love.

One of my sisters used to say that they did the best that they could. I don't think so. At the base of each parent's personality is-was a self-centered immature focus. As Christians they had the Bible and God's teachings on how to love and his offer of guidance and wisdom. If you seek God's wisdom and direction, he gives it to you. My mom prayed without ceasing, but mostly she was praying for her own peace of mind and heart. (I profoundly regret that most of the effective drugs for depression and anxiety did not exist in her lifetime.) I don't know about my dad's prayers. I'm guessing he prayed, too, but I'm really clueless about how he lived his faith.

Yet, I cannot complete these ruminations without acknowledging that they took us to a Bible-believing church and they taught us to pray. There are six siblings and we all actively worship and follow God.

MIRACLES

The loud whirring of the treadmill, the force of my feet as they rhythmically beat the track... Eyes closed and clinched, my mind uncomprehending... Tears flowing; thoughts racing. Prayers formed and unformed wrenched upward. It was just before 5:30am on a dark February morning and I exercised not from discipline but from a need for release from some of the tension and confusion that had frozen my brain and emotions. My sister would probably die that day.

* * *

For weeks, and months as it turned out, she had faced a puzzling array of symptoms that her doctors had dismissed. Christmas overwhelmed her and the new year was daunting. Even her unfailingly loving and supportive husband didn't comprehend her situation.

In a telephone conversation less than 2 weeks before, she described her symptoms and frustrations and asked me, "Don't I sound sick to you?" Yes, she did and she was frustrated because no one was taking her seriously.

And then within days, she was very sick and in the hospital and the doctors weren't sure what was happening. Yes, there seemed to be some liver infection; not hepatitis. A diagnosis was not forthcoming, and as the doctors pondered her illness worsened. She was terribly sick and still they dithered.

Finally, days too late, they sent her by ambulance to the University of Chicago Medical Center. GJ's husband and oldest son followed the ambulance, hearts heavy with fear and thoughts racing. JL drove from Michigan and I from the NW suburbs of Chicago. We left our jobs and homes and schedules and took a leap off an unfamiliar cliff to be close to and support and comfort our sister.

As I headed to my car that morning I grasped at ideas for comfort because I knew my limitations--I could bring my sister my prayers, my support, and maybe some comfort. I grabbed my favorite afghan, a cross-stitched sampler I'd made of a Bible verse GJ had offered me a few years earlier when I needed comfort, and a cassette recorder with the tapes I found most comforting--My Utmost for His Highest, Amy Grant, and Rich Mullins.

On admittance to that famous teaching hospital, GJ was diagnosed with liver failure. Acute liver failure. Her situation was deemed critical.

When they'd settled her in the hospital room and JL and I were allowed to see her, we found her relieved and weak, hooked up to monitors--tubes of fluid moving in and out.  Her tears were amber--not tears of fear but tears of weakness and relief. Relieved that her illness was finally recognized and being taken seriously. God's grace and strength were with her.

The cath bag's fluid was an incomprehensible tea-stained hue. Strong tea. JL explained that without the purifying processes of the liver, the toxins were poisoning GJ. The liver was failing and no one yet knew why.

* * *

It's always alarming when a phone rings very early or very late--the noise of the treadmill masked the sounds, but CA heard and immediately brought the phone to me. Overnight miracles had begun to happen. True miracles. God-designed and controlled.

Late in the evening, JL had returned to her daughter's apartment and CN and SN to the nearest motel, exhausted and numb. With the lights out, CN could hardly think; barely pray. The prognosis the doctors had given was more than grim. GJ needed a new liver. Now.

I'm not sure how the transplant list works now, but 13 years ago wherever your name fell on the recipient list when the doctors classified you as critical, you moved to the top of the list. But, organs are not a commodity that can be warehoused or procured. In all likelihood, there would be no liver available in the short-term and the short-term was all that GJ had.

Laying in the dark but not sleeping, CN and SN were none-the-less startled by the ringing phone. As he reached for it, CN glanced at the clock and registered in that split second the time was 11:11pm. GJ's birthday is 11/11.

The hospital was calling. There was an available liver and the helicopter team was heading out to retrieve it. If the tissue matched, the liver was GJ's. I doubt CN or SN slept at all.

By the time my phone rang at 5:30am the tissues were matched and GJ was being prepped for the transplant.

Numbly, I began to dress and prepare to move forward into a day I could not fathom. Because I am a problem solver and a nurturer, I decided I needed to be in charge of food. I loaded our large, wheeled cooler into my car and started my journey. Recently a Byerly's had opened near Woodfield and while prepared and semi-prepared food is a grocery store staple today, Byerly's was a front runner and a mecca of possibilities. I decided that we were going to need top quality sustenance that day. Stopping off near Woodfield was a necessary detour.

I don't recall how many hours the surgery lasted. It seemed all day. The waiting room filled up throughout the day with GJ's sons and daughter and their spouses and babies, our siblings and nieces and nephews, dad and mom, friends of GJ's from church and her pastor. NC flew in from Seattle. I remember tension and silences, laughter and babies' cries. GJ's daughter JB was a new mommy with a 10-day old infant and a breaking heart. I have a vivid memory of CN's arm around JB, her head on his shoulder, and despair on their faces.

At some point GJ was out of surgery with the replacement liver, still critical but living. People migrated home and to the homes of friends and family--hearts heavy and prayers flowing we were citizens in an unknown land. All of us.

It was late, at least fully dark on this winter night and I only remember CN, JL, NC, and I being left, but there were probably a few others still waiting when the transplant doctor, the surgeon, came out to talk to us. Things had gone very well. GJ had the new liver. There had been a decision made as to whether to replace one kidney that had ceased functioning. They didn't, betting on the kidney to kick in once the liver was functioning.

GJ's liver had been the size of a baseball, where a normal liver is more the size of a football. The biopsy had shown that there were no living cells in GJ's liver. You can't live a day without a liver.

That day was not GJ's day to die, it was God's day to work his miracles. I don't know why it seems that God waits until the last minute so much of the time. I guess he really doesn't and that he performs miracles and acts in all of our lives so often and with such forethought that we can't imagine all he's spared us from enduring.

The road to recovery was long and rocky, but 13+ years later her life is full and dynamic. Her marriage is loving, her children are thriving, her grandchildren well-loved. She quilts and teaches Bible study; she's become the rock our aging aunt leans upon.

We learned to live life to the fullest and to marvel at God's provision and sufficiency. We learned that our family functions beautifully when challenges arise. When both our mom and brother-in-law died just over a year later, we accepted those losses as realities of life. As we learned to celebrate GJ's miracle, we also learned to accept the grief and pain of miracles denied.

Our family story has had many more chapters since then and we have many more still to be written. For now we are learning how to support and manage the care of our elders--the balance required to live our own lives while negotiating the time and energy required for the larger family unit.

We don't have a map yet, but each day and each experience is teaching us how to traverse this territory one day and one event at a time. When we project ahead we are overwhelmed, so we are beginning to remind each other of God's strength for today, his sufficiency in times past, and our eternal hope for the future.

We won't get it right every time. We will flounder and fail and complain. But, we will do the best that we can because we won't forget that God is in control. He does miracles that we can see and marvel at, and he does miracles that we can't even imagine.

GRIEVING

Today in the news... a helicopter has crashed. A medi-vac helicopter carrying a one-year old little girl and three crew members.

How do you survive the loss of a child? Just barely, and not very well must be the answer.

When my husband's grandmother died 15 years ago, her life-long best friend Pearl came through the receiving line at the wake. As I was introduced to Pearl, her daughter Doris said that Pearl wanted her to tell me about her daughter Joan. Joan was hit by a car in 1943 and died--she couldn't have been much beyond 20 years old. As Doris told the story, I saw one single tear drop rolling down Pearl's cheek.

50 years after the loss and Pearl was still a grieving mother.