Last post before…

One more day until Beatrix’ vacation begins! Then we are off to Winnipeg, Moose Jaw, and then Val Marie, to walk in the hills along the Frenchman River. Nice quiet vacation.

In my usual fashion, I started packing yesterday, and have just about everything laid out on the living room floor. In contrast, Beatrix won’t start until after work tomorrow, the eve of our departure. My practice is based on, “What have I forgotten?” With time to remember and correct the error.

The garage shelves are up and – thanks to Angus’ help – loaded with stuff. We need a twelve-foot extension ladder to get to the top shelf, but that will wait for September. It feels really good to have that whole project completed. As we complete these little alterations around the house, if feels more comfortable, and permanent to me. I like that.

I’ve walking – very early on these hot days – in the “cool” so to speak. Swimming is hard, gasping for breath at the end of each length, watching with envy as others, not as trim as I, swim length after length with apparent ease. I have a long slog ahead of me! Twelve individual lengths in one morning is my record. Ten is the usual. I hope to go tomorrow at noon – last swim before vacation. I have no idea if I’ll have the chance o swim in Winnipeg or in Moose Jaw, so when I get home, I will essentially be starting over. Walking will get done, either on the street or on the hills of southern Saskatchewan. How many of you think that’s an oxymoron: “the hills of southern Saskatchewan”? Amazing topography and history as well.

Angus (and parents) is taking us out to dinner tonight at Cilantro and Chives, a local fine dining place. Really! He phoned and booked the reservation, and I teased him about not having a tie to wear. He didn’t bat an eye. He’s been to Ponoka before.

There is something about going on vacation that unsettles me. It means ‘change.’ Routines go by the boards; surroundings are different. In some ways, I’d rather stay home, as I did last year. There are blessings in the change, of course. I see all my kids; have an 80^th birthday party; see some friends in Winnipeg; and get a tour of the half-finished Canadian Museum of Human Rights courtesy of Gail Asper. Her family is the major contributor to this project, and she is justifiably proud of it. It was her father’s dream.

Another blessing of the journey to Winnipeg is that I get to see some friends and a cousin as well. Also get to tour the highlights of Moose Jaw. Not many people know that Al Capone used Moose Jaw as a way-station on his liquor trafficking route in the 20’s the last century. There is a series of tunnels under the town that we hope to see. There are other features as well…which I forget at the moment! (What else if new?)  

We are taking a laptop computer with us, so I may well have the chance to add to this journal during the next three weeks. Things I’m looking forward to in the hills along the Frenchman River; hilltop tipi stone circles, many thousands of years old. Aboriginal people camped on the hills and watched for bison, so they could hunt them down for winter food and other supplies. I have read that they used absolutely every portion of the animal, guts, bones, skin and tongue! Nothing was wasted. The animals were literally their life. Killing off the bison was like killing off the ‘people,’ as they called themselves.

So, you’ll hear from me soon, I hope, either from Winnipeg or Moose Jaw, or our B&B in Val Marie. Hope summer is good to you. It’s 30° here!

Prelude to vacation

Ten days since I’ve written. It seems like a lot has been going on. Not a lot of important stuff happening, just routine bucketing along one day after another, and suddenly it’s the weekend, and I have commitments in Rimbey. This return to worship conduct has been good. It finishes today, and I’m glad, because I’ve realized that preparing for three weeks hand running is more work that I’m ready for. I guess being almost 80 does that to a person. I have things I want to say, but I need lots of prep time between times to share those things. They don’t come together overnight.

I’ve managed to get swimming lengths down to a three-time-a-week routine: Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 6:30 AM. It is still very demanding. Get easier on the body muscles, but very slow improvement in the lung/heart development. I reach the end of a length gasping for air, and I need 3 or 4 minutes to catch my breath before I start back. I have begun to notice the real swimmers in the pool. Back and forth…back and forth, making barely a ripple. Poetry in motion. “Oh,” said one man, “I did 73 lengths this morning.” I gasped internally. Seventy-three lengths! If I ever get to twenty, I’ll want a medal. I may need a wheel chair to get to the pool by then!

Daughter Kathryn and family spent three days with us this week, delivering grandson Angus for a week long stay. Great company…very quiet and introspective. To get him talking and sharing his life, I just get him to walk with me. When he walks, he talks. We had a great visit yesterday after the 24-hour rain. Today he will come to worship with me, and then we’ll shift the remainder of the garage contents back into place, and unlock the gates. We are planning a trip to the Telus World of Science in Edmonton tomorrow. They have a neat film on the Lemurs of Madagascar, plus new science exhibits that both of us will enjoy.

This is a whole new dimension of recovery: encountering real life, the things that go on every day around my therapeutic walks and swims, things that must be managed, because they are the stuff of life.

I have been making phone calls and sending emails to Winnipeg friends. We’ll be there next weekend for my early 80^th birthday party, and there will be time to see some of them. Then off for a weekend in Brandon, a few days sightseeing in Moose Jaw, followed by a couple of weeks roaming the Grasslands National Park in southern Saskatchewan – a favourite haunt of ours. It will be interesting to see how my heart/lung recovery will manage climbing hills. An unanswered question, to be deal with.

One minor/major item I’ve had to prepare: making sure that I have sufficient of all my meds for the trip. Lots of counting and listing, with a trip to the pharmacy thrown in tomorrow to fill all the prescriptions. It’s always a hassle with Alberta Health and the insurance company, while they make sure you aren’t abusing the system or chintzing them out of money. The pharmacists tell me about the difficulty of arranging meds for snowbirds who go south for extended periods, like three months!

Enough for the moment; I must shower, shave, and become presentable for worship. Presentable…not fancy; the blessing of a rural congregation of people who know me. No need to be impressive, just real!

How I cope…

Tonight I had an inspiration as I reflected on our recent past. Out of that reflection came the following piece, which I will submit to our local paper next week, when it's my turn to publish a column. I have entitled it "Five Years."

"The past five years have brought a veritable deluge of medical crises on my family. Between my spouse and myself, we have endured cancer, a stroke, and a variety of serious internal surgeries, capped off with a triple bypass and valve replacement! Fortunately, most of this is behind us and we are on the road to complete recovery.

Through all of this, however, we – like others in the same situation – had to get up in the morning, set about our work and other responsibilities, most of the time among people who were not fully aware of our distress and loneliness. I’m quite sure that this situation is not unique in any community. As you read this, there are likely people in town who are struggling with the same burden of illness and stress.

When one is living through such a time, two questions emerge. The first is “Why is this happening to me?” The second is, “What spiritual resources do I have to face these issues?”

With regard to the first question: I am not the sort of person who believes that life’s personal problems are visited upon us by God as a punishment for past sins. Nor do I believe that these burdens are sent to us by God to teach us something. It’s certainly true that some of our ailments grow out of our past behaviour, and that, inevitably, we learn things from our struggle with illness. A myriad of causes for physical ailments confront us, including the fact that some things just hit us randomly, in the course of life.

The second question – what resources do I have to deal with this situation? – Is much more immediate and demanding. You would assume that a Christian believer would be untroubled by catastrophe, since Christ has promised to be with us. But, in my experience, it’s never quite that simple.

How do we find comfort and certainty when our lives are threatened and we feel alone? Certainly, we can turn to the words of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures to read of the experiences of others facing similar situations. I’d like to share with two such records from the Bible that have been supportive to me in times of deep trouble, and may be for you as well.

In 587 B.C. the Babylonian empire crashed down on Israel and literally wiped out the nation, sending hundreds of Israelites into exile in Babylon, where they sat for over seventy years. For a time, they were a people without hope. Into that despairing situation, Isaiah the prophet spoke and wrote. He brought his people powerful words of hope. In Isaiah 40: 28-31, Isaiah lifts his crushed countrymen with these stirring words:

“Don’t you know anything? Haven’t you been listening? God doesn’t come and go. God lasts. …Those who wait upon God get fresh strength.
 They spread their wings and soar like eagles, they run and don’t get tired, they they walk and don’t lag behind.”

As a person who spent twenty years of life engaged in daily long distance running, those words were – and are – a powerful encouragement to me, especially when I feel like life itself is on the line.

Paul of Tarsus was on his way to Jerusalem with an offering for the embattled assembly of Christians in Israel’s capital city, when he sat down to write an informative and encouraging letter to his friends in Rome. It is not coincidental that soon after this, he was captured by Roman soldiers, and shipped to Rome in chains, where he died a martyr’s death because of his refusal to worship the emperor.

In the eighth chapter of that famous letter, Paul gives voice to words that have stiffened the faith of many a beleaguered soul before my time in the face of desperate situations.

“With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us?…None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.”

Many times during the past five years, I have read or called to mind these words, along with the words of Isaiah, to restore my faith and encourage my spirit on difficult days. I share this very personal reflection with you, so that when your life feels overwhelmed and crushed, you might also reflect on them and feel lifted up."

It's a bit personal, but it's the real me. I hope you find it to be so.

A summary of stress…

First, a correction. In my last post, I said I hadn’t conducted worship since February. In fact, that should have read, February 2013, over a year and a half ago. Hence my nerves.

Two items have dominated my thoughts in the past couple of days. The first is reflections on my father. The second is the impact of the stressful time that Beatrix and I have shared over the past four years.

First, my Dad. I think this was prompted by my comments about my son’s enjoyment of being a grandfather. The Second World War took my father away from me for six years, from 1940 to 1946. I have some memories of him from my early childhood, not all pleasant. Like the time I was throwing rocks at passing cars – I was about four – and he came from work and caught me. I remember him laying me over the plush arm of an easy chair and spanking me with the back of a hairbrush. He was short on patience, and given to corporal punishment. I later learned a lot about his childhood. During which he, as a sickly kid, was punished for malingering in much the same way. I don’t think he was the recipient of much negotiation or talking to. He had no experience of it, and I was the recipient of what he learned as a wee boy.

The war took him away from me just as I started school, and returned him when I was twelve. All those years when a boy can idolize his father, and learn things from him were never part of my life. When he came home, I was a snotty 12 year old, a species of human with which he had no experience. Adolescence was not a good time for us. Even in my adult life we had little in common, until much later in his life. I spent a lot of time with him during his last days, during which he told me, for the first time in my life, that he loved me. He gave me a kiss. That is memory I treasure still.

Often, when I am working through something, I think of him, and realize how alike we are. I ponder the distance between my son and myself, and realize that, although it I for different reasons than with my own Dad, it remains a problem for me.  I wonder if my son will reflect on my life after I’m gone, and find some value in it for himself?

The past four or five years have been incredibly stressful for Beatrix and I. We cope with it, but it takes a toll on each of us. The “stress” has been our combined medical problems. During that time, she has been diagnosed with breast cancer, and undergone a mastectomy. Later, the process of reconstruction surgery began, and isn’t quite finished yet. Over the past two years, I have undergone prostate surgery – no cancer, just hardened tissue – followed by an internal hemorrhage and the wearing of a catheter for ten days. Not long after this event, I suffered a hemorrhagic stroke – a bleed with no blood clots. This was short lived, but its impact was huge. My only symptom was that I could not read! I had to learn that skill again over a three-month period. We had begun calling this a “minor stroke,” until a Doctor explained to us that such a stroke has only two outcomes: the bleeding stops…or you die. No intervention is possible. And I could have another one anytime.

Before this happened, I was seeing a cardiologist for a valve problem in my heart. He had planned to have surgery done on me in June of 2013. Of course, the stroke (in March 2013) meant that the surgery was postponed. It finally happened as soon as I was fit for it in February of 2014. Between recovery from a triple bypass plus aortic valve replacement, and a “drug episode,” I spent two weeks in various hospitals through February. I have been recovering ever since, as you will have read in past posts.

Through all this, Beatrix has continued to work, apart from a sabbatical time that was pre-arranged. At times, the anxiety was overwhelming for me, and for me, as the future seemed so uncertain. This summer’s vacation, coming in two weeks, will be a welcome respite from anything resembling responsibility…I hope.

I have, as I mentioned the other night, begun swimming, or rather, gasping my way from one end of the pool to the other. I do this about ten times each visit, and it gets marginally easier each time. My goal of continuous lengths is still a bit away, but I am moving towards it slowly. Emphasis on “slowly”, as my cardiac therapist continually reminds me.

Enough for tonight: I am still in recovery, and hopefully coming into some light at the end of a very long tunnel. We’ll see.