Let my heart be light

Shannon joined us, so, we kept the talk of cancer to a minimum. We did go back to the Italian place, which had a big fountain in the middle.

Neither Mom nor I cried at all, and Daddy and Shannon kept the tears to a minimum. Daddy started it. I don’t know how or why he started to preach, but he loves preaching. Once he gets a topic, off he goes. We just watch, smile, and nod. He gets so animated, with his “preacher voice”, clearly and passionately stated thoughts . . .and he just looks like the sweetest and gentlest old man sitting there in clothes you know he got at Goodwill, twenty years ago. (He’ll never wear anything new. His mama taught him how to get by in the depression, and that’s how he gets by to this day.) He always wanted to be a preacher. But since he never got out of the eighth grade, he had to settle for being a brakeman for the railroad.

Again, I don’t know how we got to this, but here’s the sermon as best I can remember:

A wife asks her husband to join her in a marriage improvement exercise. She wants each of them to take a pad of paper and write down everything that the other says or does that is irritating. So, reluctantly I think, the husband agrees. Every time she wrote something down, he would think for a moment and write something down himself: until they had filled a whole page. Somewhat fearfully, the wife handed her page to him, and he to her. She was breathless when she read what he had written. For every transgression she had listed; he had simply written “I love you.”

And that’s when they choked up, Daddy first, then Shannon, both grabbing paper napkins to dry tears before fully flooding. I thought it was funny, and Mom looked irritated.

The point was supposed to be about Jesus Christ forgiving every sin . . . but he didn’t make that point very well.

After dinner in their kitchen, we did talk about cancer. Shannon went downstairs so the adults could talk.

“Well, Mom, Dad says that the doctor’s don’t think the prognosis is very good.”

She is so sad. “No, he said I may have two years,” she said while pressing the wrinkles out of the poinsettia table cloth.

The details are still unfolding. I suggested that the Doctor may have meant that she would be in treatment for two years, after all this type of cancer (Carcinoid, it is called) is supposedly very manageable. I doubt she thinks that’s what he meant, but she just said “Maybe.”

As I was leaving, when I was on the front step, she said: “Just so you know, I don’t intend to sit around and talk about this all the time.”

At home Rolf held me, sat next to me, held my hand, caressed my hair, and let me tell my story. And cry.

O come, Thou Day-spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.