Mysterion

            Lardas Johnson has a decision to make. Not an ordinary 'smoking or non-smoking' type of decision but one that truly troubles him. It perplexes and taxes his mind. There is a deep-seated doubt in Lardas that he cannot shake.

Faith.

            That is the core of his quandary. He cannot decide whether or not to send more money to Brother Carl Wayne Speck, the pastor of the Blood Bought Baptist Church Of The Risen Savior Who Bled For Us.

            Lardas is a big man, just a smidgen over 350 pounds. His suit de jour is a faded and oft repaired pair of bib overalls over a blue t-shirt. Unless he's going to work when he puts on his white mechanic's shirt under the overalls. Handsome is never used in the same sentence as Lardas. Except by Stormy. Stormy is the other half of the Johnson clan and built to fit Lardas. She knows he is a gentle man and always content with his lot in life.

            Until a year ago when the miracle happened.

***

            "But Darlin' I feel obliged. We pledged to send the money and we ought to keep our solemn oath," said Lardas.

            "I don't care. That man ain't nothin' but bad news. He is a liar and a cheat and I hope he burns in hell for what he done to us."

            "Come on Stormy we got to keep our promise. What happened was not his fault."

            "The answer is no Lardas. As long as there is a breath of life in me that man will never get another penny of our money."

***

            The Johnsons live in the middle of a barren field in Cumberland County, Georgia at the bottom midsection of the state not far north of the Florida border. Not quite the middle of nowhere but somewhat west of Hahira and the Okefenoke Swamp

            The doublewide is in Hidden Oaks, a community of trailers just off of State Route 188 between Cairo and Ochlocknee. In the yard there is a battered blue plastic swimming pool full of stagnant brown water and black bugs. A brindle mongrel dog, vicious now from the captivity, is staked in the middle of the yard. His only respite from the unflinching Georgia sun is a doghouse made from an oil drum. It has been seven human years since the dog has been free of his chain. He believes his name is Shut Up.

            Stormy and Lardas have been married for 10 years. They married because they both realized they had found someone they could at least tolerate. But over the years as they shared life they fell in love and Lardas, like most married men, wanted to perpetuate himself by siring a full brood of little Lardases.

            But despite their enthusiastic and not infrequent exertions the younguns were not coming. Both went to the doctors in Jacksonville and medically they were fine. So Lardas and Stormy started praying and seeking the Lord. Lardas was especially smitten by the program from the Blood Bought Baptist Church Of The Risen Savior Who Bled For Us.

            The show was broadcast from Valdosta where Brother Wayne Speck and his bee-hived wife Sister Angelica Jean preached a peculiar message they called plantation faith. They seemed to be saying that if you sent your seed (money) to God (but addressed it to them) then He was scripturally obliged to use all the workers on his earthly plantation to bring about doubling your harvest (usually money) and send it back to you. Brother Wayne and Sister Angelica Jean never came right out and said God was willing to swap favors but it was clear that Brother Speck was willing to grease any palms, even those with scars.

            But that was not what necessarily interested Lardas. He was interested in the miracles Brother Wayne performed. It was American primitive kabuki. The stock characters, the obese woman, the child in a wheelchair, the blind man or the gaunt heroin/crack addict Satan worshipper would be pushed into the frame and Brother Wayne would announce their malady. He approached them like a man with a newspaper ready to swat a cockroach and smack them dead center in the middle of their forehead with the palm of his healin’ hand while screaming with holy spittle thick in the air, “In the name of Jeezuz I rebuke Ye Satan, flee this child of God in the name of Jeezuz I command it!”  Suddenly the blind could see, the lame could walk, the mongoloids quit drooling.

Lardas, despite believing in his heart of hearts that some of the healees made repeat performances, secretly sent off a substantial love offering for a miracle prayer cloth and reverently placed it on Stormy's stomach while she slept.

            A month later she was with child.

            "See Honey, I told you it would work if we had enough faith," he said.

            "I wish you woulda told me you was puttin' that thing on my stomach every night," Stormy said. "It's kind of spooky is what it is. How do we know that ain't nothin' but an old cheap piece of pillowcase?”

            “That don’t matter. What matters is Brother Speck putting his healin’ hands on it and praying to the Lord. My faith paid off and God answered my prayer. And now we gonna have us a son.”

            “How do you know it’s gonna be a boy Mr. Smartass?”

            “Because that’s what I prayed for.”

            Despite her initial misgivings Stormy succumbed to the power of Mommyness. Her love for Lardas deepened as she slowly accepted the idea that here was the opportunity to create their own family and to break the chain of some of the issues that plagued both their families. Together they would raise their boy right. Wayne could teach him to hunt and fish, to respect the land to only kill what you can eat. Stormy would make sure he had good manners and treated women right. He would be a little gentleman.

            And so they did. Darnell Wayne Johnson (they both called him Bubby) came fully into their lives as the days cooled and the world turned brown, red and yellow. It was love at first sight. Bubby was a handful, curious and gregarious. Lardas insisted he wear overalls and a Mohawk. Stormy insisted he brush his teeth and say Sir and Mam. Lardas took him riding on the four-wheeler. Stormy made sure he was buckled correctly in the carseat. Lardas taught him it was OK to pee in the yard so long as no one saw. Stormy insisted he lift the lid and wash his hands.

            The only thing missing was another one just like him. But as a girl of course. Stormy longed for tea parties and calico dresses. Lardas longed to meet a little version of Stormy, to watch her grow to be as beautiful as her mother. To be able to say, “That beautiful young lady is my daughter.”

            So they tried. And tried. They tried to count their blessings, to be grateful for the precocious boy who filled their days, who hijacked their lives and set them free with his unadulterated, unconditional, non-judgmental love. He saw only the good, still blind to their faults, still innocent. Still. Another child would complete the family picture.

***

            “OK, OK. We’ll talk about it later.”

“No we will not.”

“But Stormy I feel like I owe him for all he done for us.”

“And just what has he done Lardas other than bringing us more heartache than anybody oughta ever have?”

***

The call came at work.

“Lardas you gotta meet me at the hospital.”

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s Bubby. Just get to the hospital fast.”

The boy was in the grasp of many monitors. Unresponsive. Asleep. Lardas hated himself as soon as the thought crossed his mind, but it looked like a pit crew. They were checking the boy's oil, looking under his hood while others filled his tank and checked the pressure. The crew chief/doctor said it was like a coma but not. Such trauma was hard to treat but children are very resilient and can often endure much more than we believe they can.

Inside himself the boy was at peace. He was playing, running and jumping with his father on a cool November evening. Outside his inner reality, unable to pierce the veil, Lardas and Stormy were stunned, frenzied, unable to cope with their only son, their only child, reduced to this.

“What happened?”

“I’m so sorry. I was backing the truck up. I didn’t see him. I told him to stay in the house. He could not have moved that fast. The back wheel, it ran over him. It was the mudhole, the ground was soft but still I run over him. I am so sorry.”

“Oh my God Stormy how could you do that?”

“I didn’t mean to I love him just as much as you do don’t blame me please don’t blame me it was an accident oh God oh God please don't blame me.”

Together they stood lost on the tide of grief and unbelief.

            Next came the vigil. The boy was never alone. Always Stormy or Lardas were with him. Lardas began putting the prayer cloth on the boy’s head. Weeping in prayer, crying out to a deaf god. Stormy talked to him hoping her voice would pierce the veil, having to believe her son could hear her. Her voice was the voice of God for the boy. He more felt than heard her but it eased his pains, slowed his decay.

Lardas wrote a letter to Brother Wayne telling him what happened and asking for a new prayer cloth, a new miracle. Instead Brother Wayne came and stood all night with the father joining him in prayer, easing his mind.

Still. It was not enough. At shift change with Lardas and Stormy both in the room Bubby’s body jolted, his small body tensed and went limp and he released/set free a long slow breath as this life left him. Alarms screamed as all signs of vital activity ceased. Stormy’s soul erupted in a scream, a primal otherworldly blood chilling lament, the sound of all hope and joy forever gone into the ether, the cry of a mother left bereft and now childless by her own hand.

            Lardas found he needed to rest. He could no longer hold his body upright, he fell to his knees, his head slumped onto his chest. His mind slipped into a void of nothingness, the pain, the grief too visceral, too much.

The doctor and chaplain came. One offered only physiological reasoning, the other trite observations on our inability to understand God’s plans or his reasoning. In essence he told these two no longer parents that they would just have to reconcile themselves to the ways of an unknowable and unfathomable God and wait for time to ease their burden.

            The funeral was standing room only. Family friends and complete strangers gathered to remember the boy, to love the parents. Wayne Speck sat and wept unobtrusively on the back row. An unfamiliar sensation overwhelmed him. Prayer cloths and plantation faith were no solace as the fist of God held him.

Lardas arranged with the funeral director to have the prayer cloth that brought them Bubby put into the boy’s hand before they sealed the coffin. He felt the boy should have it with him over on the other shore.

            After the red-hot grief had cooled enough to speak the boy’s name without it burning his tongue Lardas continued the conversation with Stormy. She had resolved within herself that the trouble lay with that piece of shit so-called preacher in Valdosta. He had done this. If he had stayed out of their lives none of this would have happened.

            “But Stormy it ain’t his fault and I gave him my word.”

“If it ain’t his fault then who’s is it? Tell me Lardas, who’s fault is it?”

“It ain’t nobody’s fault. We just have to remember the time we did have with Bubby. They were good times Stormy, the best times of my life.”

“I’m telling you right now and you listen good Lardas Johnson. You send that man another dime and I will leave you. You gotta decide, me or him.”

Lardas decided his wife, blind in her rage was wrong and he took the biggest gamble in his life. He sent cash money to Brother Wayne to get another prayer cloth as full of the anointing of God as Brother Wayne could make it.

            At night when left with only his thoughts and his regrets and the sound of his forever wife succumbing to the solace of sleep he took the cloth from it’s hiding place, unfolded it like an altar cloth and laid it on her belly.

 © 2010 William Terrell

In A Surrogate Tomb

D___,

I have a visitor.

I possess a deadly seed. The doctor, young and arrogant in his omnipotence, told me It had spread.

It.

The cancer. This is, I suppose, the ultimate irony. A body that has always been clean, almost immaculate, would turn upon Itself. What triggered the malignancy? I smoked for a lot of years, ate too much red meat and was as sedentary as a tree. Or maybe it was the bran muffins, the vitamins or the sun screen.

Carcinogen. Car-sin-o-gin. Such a ghastly word. It is inside me now, blind and voracious in Its' hunger and unaware that the host It feeds upon is Itself/Us. By consuming me It consumes Us. The damage is done. Inoperable. Malignant. So do not weep, do not pity. I do not need or want your cheap consolation, your words, your unbearable sorrow. Do not come to me with tears, or cards, or flowers, or cheer.

But, if only. The memory is forever etched in my mind of the shafts of summer sunlight slowly slide up the wall as the sun dipped away. The room is quiet, the dust slowly swimming in the sun's amber beams. Outside boys played a noisy game of basketball oblivious to our presence. Many days we spent there forgetting the world moving on around us. Or the embrace of my child, to watch her sleep. Her unadulterated love and energy held at bay only by sleep. Do not think me vain or shallow. I know the embrace of a good thought, the immeasurable joy of a solid book as well as I do the pleasures of the flesh. But in those arms, in the embrace of my child I was whole.

No. Enough already. The past has passed and the future is futile. Please accept my apology. I have been feeling sorry for myself again. My intention was only to let you see that I am well and to describe this odd habit that I have recently developed.

I like to grow cold as the warm soapy bath water gurgles away down the drain. I lie still as a corpse, forgive the morbidity, and concentrate on the sensation of the minute ebb and flow of the water as it follows the unalterable principles first articulated by Johannes Kepler and spirals down and away. I bathe because I can. The bath keeps away the ghouls. Every trip to the tub is potentially a matter of life and death. So I am careful. I bathe every night. I keep my home so cold the hot water makes copious steam clouds that flow out into the hall like a cheap magician's act. Step right up folks and see the dirty old man perform his death defying act before your very eyes. Watch and be amazed as he soaks beyond any measure of human endurance and then soaks some more.

But I digress. When I have soaked until my fingers are prunish I slide down into the tub and pull my head under. I would pull my whole body under but the tub is short and I am long so my old knees stay exposed like gnarled Cyprus roots in some bubbly primordial swamp. I bring my head out of the water and kick open the drain.

At first there is no sensation as the molecules fight gravity. As my warm skin is slowly exposed a ring of chill starts on my neck and knees. It is an eerie, ethereal sensation. The sensation grows as the water continues to fall away. Eventually my shoulders, calves and thighs feel the creeping chill. The water spirals full force now, pushed down by gravity, the drain choking with the flow. The soapy water slowly reveals a faded prison blue tattoo of a snarling bulldog on my right forearm. A constant companion in my journey to stupidity. The flow slows because I sometimes put my foot partially over the drain to extend the sensation.

As the water drains, more and more of my body chills. Old age has not been particularly kind. You are as old as you feel. Forget the platitudes. Old age sucks and then you die. My memory is shot, I can barely hear and my glasses make me look like an owl. If only the memories faded as fast as the flesh.

My torso is prison camp gaunt and unearthly white. I look, and feel, like the victim of a personal holocaust. An unholy ghost. Spindly legs, with ankles like rocks under my opaque skin. Oh, such ghastly horrid flesh.

Epiphany. Last night as the last of the water drained I realized what I have been doing. These long baths letting the water drain as my body chills.

I have been practicing.

© 2010

This is a work of fiction. I am healthy and whole.

A Great Loss

Pictured above is Col. Charlie Easterling and his beloved wife Wanda. Charlie passed away a few days ago after a short battle with cancer. He was only 57. Charlie was one of the two dozen of us fired by the new sheriff when he took office in January. Charlie worked in law enforcement for more than 30 years and served as Chief Deputy for the last two decades. I'll write more about Charlie later but please pray for his family as they try to come to grips with the realization that their patriarch is dead. Pray especially for Wanda, his daughter Renee and his granddaughter Candice.

That's Charlie peeking in the window. He and I were out riding around looking for photo opportunities. Though not a native of Camden County Charlie knew the county and its people very well.

Charlie had long since made his peace with the Lord. May his memory be eternal.

Mother Of Despair

Oh, Mother of despair

A mind unquiet

A mind dis-eased

Desperate in loneliness beyond measure.

Stumbling, fumbling

Tripping through life’s darkness

Her lantern of deliverance long since lost

Her guide, her companion cruelly cut off.

Crying from the other side

Too soon, too soon.

A refugee in the land of the dead

Give voice to the defilement

Cry out!

Too cruel, too cruel.

The wait too long

The weight too great

To bear.

A prose companion to this piece is at The Bosom Serpent

Love The Little Children

As Orthodox Christians we are called to follow our Lord’s example and to refrain from casting the first stone, we are enjoined to judge not. And our American criminal justice system rests upon the Constitution’s bedrock guarantee of a fair hearing and of being treated as innocent until being proven guilty. What I learned today made it very hard to leave that first stone at rest, to not cast it in anger. I suppose you could say I am casting it now.

Earlier this week we arrested a husband and wife for abusing their 23-month-old son. From all appearances and from interviews with the parents this young boy lived a life of horror, subject to severe beatings, beatings bad enough to produce the deepest and most dangerous bruises. There was deep bruising all over him, on his abdomen, his buttocks and even his scrotum.

The mother admitted to striking him with a closed fist in the past. She also admitted to throwing her son down so hard this week that the impact split his skull and caused swelling and bleeding of the brain. She also stated that she went outside to smoke a cigarette before calling 911. This incident led to the arrests. The child is in intensive care kept alive by a ventilator. The doctors want to do a full body scan to discover the full extent of his injuries but cannot because of his reliance on the ventilator. In the most bitter of ironies the mother is six months pregnant.

The father admitted to knowing that his wife was severely abusing their son and also admitted that he conspired with her to keep her actions hidden. He said he feared coming home one day to find his son dead. Under Georgia law they are equally complicit and face similar charges.

This young boy was truly a child of wrath, born into a world of pain, pain dealt out at the hands of his mother. I know that most of you who read these postings never come close to such evil. Many times these stories become a window with a view of the slaughterhouse. If these writing offend you please forgive me, but I feel compelled to tell these stories, to shed a brighter light on the evil with which we share this world. The least I can do is tell the stories, to lift up their names up in prayer.

I believe God created us to be especially sensitive to these issues, to lay down our lives for our children (as He did for us) without question or hesitation. Children are our greatest treasure, the storehouse of our memories, the mirror in which we see ourselves as we really are. There is no reality check quite like having a child mouth obscenities and to know full well you were his teacher. Children are quite literally our future. They carry with them a distinct, individual combination of genes handed down from parents and grandparents. We are all individuals but we are also all the same. Each of us is a being created in the image of our Maker and as such worthy of all the love we can create.

Our own salvation was purchased at the price of a Son. We understand this sacrifice so well because the thought of losing a child resonates deeply, at the very core of our being, the one nightmare all parents dread. Could we willingly lay down the life of a child?

Such barbarism, especially between a mother and her child raises many questions. How could a loving, omnipotent, omniscient God allow such horrors to happen? This question tripped me up for many years. Having suffered abuse and having seen the depths of depravity into which we can fall I rejected the notion of a loving, caring God. How could he not lash out in holy anger? How could he stand to hear the wailing of his children?

God does love us and Jesus is the proof. These horrors are not of God. This evil is man’s brutality to man and it wounds our Creator at least as much as it wounds us. Still, some days this answer is not enough. Some days I still doubt. On these days I fall back on prayer, on expressing my pain, my questions, on asking Him why. Eventually I always come back to the calming wisdom of Psalm 46. “Be still and know that I am God.” Lord, forgive my disbelief.

Here is a link to the story in our local newspaper.

Tears Of Joy

I will always remember the evening of Tuesday, November 4, 2008 as one of the proudest and most profound moments of my life. To repeat the clichés, it was history in the making. It was one of those moments like the first moon walks or the Challenger explosion that is forever etched into our collective memory. The first comparison that came to mind that evening (aside from weddings and new babies) was graduating from boot camp at Parris Island in early February 1978 as a 17-year-old high school dropout newly minted Marine. But that was a personal pride, a solo accomplishment. Tuesday night I was proud as an American, proud that enough of us could look beyond skin color and elect a man based on the content of his character (sorry I couldn’t resist), on the hope of his potential, on the faith in his abilities. As a 48-year-old grizzled and often ill-tempered old man I nevertheless wept. Such joy, such unbridled emotion.

I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. I voted for both Reagan and Clinton. I even vote for the deceased. On the local ballot Tuesday the position of Surveyor was open but there was no candidate so I typed in Henry David Thoreau. George Washington would also have been a good choice although he’s probably a little too old school for me.

Veterans (especially combat veterans) have a special place in my heart. When I used to put on a uniform and strap on my hand cannon I would never knowingly write a veteran a traffic ticket. I would simply send him on his way with the sight of my grateful salute fading in his rearview. The men and women who defended our country and our way of life do not need me giving them grief. Who better in our society to honor? We are a peaceful society but we rely on the mettle and resolve of our warriors, the men who answer the call, the men who stand in the breach, the watchmen on the walls, the eternally vigilant.

Having said that I honor Sen. John McCain and the tremendous sacrifice he made on our behalf. He is truly an amazing man, a hero in the truest sense of the word, an example to us all of how we can maintain our dignity in even the most trying of circumstances. He would be a great president and truth be told he probably deserves it more than just about anyone. In his concession speech Sen. McCain quieted those who were booing and urged everyone to unite together behind President-elect Obama. He once again demonstrated the qualities we want in our political leaders, tenacious fighters who when faced with the inevitability of defeat bow out gracefully and support the victor.

But I did not think his would be the steadiest hand at the rudder. That feistiness, that bulldog response is not the best approach to dealing with the almost insurmountable problems now facing President-elect Obama. In my mind these issues are better resolved with a cooler head, a longer fuse. I suspect we will see that Obama is indeed a man of tremendous resolve and able to keep his head when those around him are losing theirs. A man who understands that compromise is not synonymous with weakness, a man who will be willing to trust but will also verify. For too many years now we have bullied our way around the world stage and alienated pretty much everyone in the process. We have been the ugly American. It is time to embrace the hope of a brighter future and to reclaim our heritage as the greatest nation in the world.

Two works come to mind:

The Second Coming
by
Robert Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

and:

Psalm 46

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;
Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah.
There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early.
The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted.
The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.
Come, behold the works of the LORD, what desolations he hath made in the earth.
He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire.
Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.

Love's Legacy

On the way home from Cairo (pronounced kay-roe) on Saturday we (my Primitive Baptist pastor friend Chris and I) stopped to visit with Chris' relatives Tom and Joyce in Moultrie. It is a heartbreaking story. Tom’s most recent checkup initially found that he was free of disease with no cancer cells. They were on their way home after receiving the good news when the cell phone rang. It was the hospital and Tom’s doctor wanted him to return to the hospital immediately. It was very bad news. Contrary to what they initially believed the cancer was not dead. Monday morning Tom went back into the hospital to begin an even more rigorous round of chemotherapy and to determine if he would be a good candidate for a bone marrow transplant.

Tom and Joyce see the end of the road, they know how this will most likely end. But it was not the specter of death sitting quietly in the room that moved me, it was their manners, their genuine-ness and the love that filled them both. I had just met them but I was treated as family. My hyper-vigilance set off no alarm bells (which is rare indeed) so I knew I could trust them. We went to them to offer assistance and prayer but we were the ones who were comforted. In the midst of what some days must be a nightmare they were genuinely concerned about us, about making us comfortable. It was not an act, no polite show of manners, it was genuine concern. I am in awe of such courage.

The terrible irony is that the cancer radiation treatment Tom had twenty-five years ago probably planted the seeds of this cancer. Tom injured his back and somehow it seemed to trigger the malignancy laying dormant in his cells.

Many times in our culture there is great emphasis put on how we die. Was it an honorable death? And I hope that when the day comes I will face my own death without flinching. But I now realize that the real test is how we live. What legacy are we leaving behind? Did we love our enemies? Did we love and honor our spouse? Did we raise our children? Do we feed the poor and clothe the naked?

While I spent only an hour with Tom and Joyce I have rarely spent an hour better. In their own time of need they offered love/comfort to a stranger. And I suspect I am not the first. Theirs is a legacy of love, of kindness, of sincerity. Before we left we stood in a circle and held hands while Chris prayed for healing, for endurance, for grace. Holding Joyce’s hand for that brief moment was like holding the hand of my mother.

Rough Road To Nowhere

One night last week a burglar struck in my neighborhood and made off with a large number of items including a riding mower on a trailer that belongs to the mayor. By midmorning the next day we had a suspect. When we arrived at where we believed he was living to serve a search warrant he fled into the nearby woods. After about an hour he was in custody and most of the stolen items recovered.

The mower was still on the trailer and sitting in plain view. The other stolen items were in a wooden shed on the property. Our quick response gave him no time to pawn or sell any of the loot. The home where the items were found is in an unincorporated area of the county largely populated by folks close living at or near the poverty line. We have responded many times to domestic disturbances, loud music, riding four wheelers, public drunkenness etc. I do not want to cast aspersions on the fine law abiding folks who call this neighborhood home. As is so often the case the whole neighborhood is identified by the actions of a few.
Searching the residence for stolen property brought back a lot of memories. There were piles of dirty clothes and dirty dishes everywhere. The child’s bedroom floor was littered with toys, clothes, blankets and the streamers from a set of pom-poms. We found a small amount of marijuana and a lot of drug related items including a box containing rolling papers and a syringe. The irony is that the box full of dangerous items sat on a sink with childproof locks on the cabinet. Childcare seemed to be just a series of empty gestures.

Despite the poor living conditions there were two large screen televisions (one of which was most likely stolen). I am not passing judgment on anyone but I do know what being raised in these conditions can do to a child. With little positive interaction between child and parent the child suffers. I have been very poor in my life and twice was saved from living on the street by a sister who loved me more than I deserved. Learning to make right decisions took a long, long time. Caring for your children should be at the top of the list and not something you do haphazardly. And I know that there is a big difference between being poor and being dirty. Being poor may be beyond your control but being clean and keeping a clean house is most certainly not.
I pray that the children in this household will grow to be healthy and happy but I know from experience the odds are stacked against them.

A Death Most Abrupt

I was stunned again today by the abruptness of death. At about 10:00 this morning I received a page stating there had been an accident involving a motorcycle and that the air ambulance was en route from Jacksonville. Before I could get to the scene the air ambulance was cancelled which meant the patient perished. The ground ambulance carried him to the local hospital where the formal process of pronouncing him was done.

On a flat straight stretch of road in clear weather a woman driving a minivan pulled out in front of a man riding a motorcycle. The man on the motorcycle tried his best to stop (as evident by the skid marks) but to no avail. No one in the van was physically injured (the passenger side of the van was smashed and the windshield broken) but the driver was inconsolable. She was on her way from her home in a subdivision to a yard sale in the south side of the same subdivision. Her failure to yield will forever haunt her. She and this stranger/victim and his family are now inextricably tied together. As I stood there and tried to gather information and take photographs the husband of the van driver was trying to make sense of it all and find out what possible outcomes faced his wife. Some of the outcomes would not be good but there wasn't much I could tell him until the investigation was complete.

I don’t know the story of the man riding the motorcycle other than he was only 34-years-old. Helmets are mandatory in Georgia and it looked like his took a pretty good hit.

This particular stretch of road holds a number of bad memories including several other automobile related deaths. In one case the victim was my nineteen year old neighbor. He had no ID but I knew who he was. I went to tell his sister at work at Wal-Mart. As I was telling her she called his cell phone repeatedly and left messages, messages he would never receive. I was certain death had arrived but she needed time to take it all in. It was one of the most emotional moments in my life and I hope to never again have to make a death notification. This road also reminds me of the death of an 11-year-old girl on an ATV, three suicides from self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head (one of which we listened to live on the radio, another was the conclusion of a chase as the driver killed himself with at least 15 cops looking on) and two young brothers who died in a house fire.

I guess the moral is that we should remain vigilant and pray as the angel of death can manifest himself anytime anywhere. Don’t carry grudges or hatred in your heart. Be the first to say you’re sorry, the first to offer the olive branch. Tell those you love how much they mean to you. Don’t assume they know. And lookout for motorcycles, they’re everywhere.

More Disney Madness

Daughter as Mother

After I dropped my daughter off at school yesterday morning this is what I found in the back seat, Buzzy Bee and Bunny. Bunny was a gift from her godmother and has been her boon companion, best friend and security blanket for most of her nine years (she just had a birthday). She is a wonderful beautiful child, loving, healthy, good natured and full of the energy of a third grader. The Lord has poured out tremendous blessings upon my family.

And yes Bunny desperately needs a bath.