What I would have said

The last two weeks has been a flurry of funeral, festivities, and freaking out. Funeral for my Grandpa (Mom's dad). Festivities for Thanksgiving and greetings relatives that I had seen a year ago at Aunt Sue's funeral (Mom's older sister) and didn't think I'd see for another five years; as well as long lost cousins of my mom's who she didn't think she'd ever seen again and hadn't seen since she was 20. Freaking out as my family minus dad crashed at my apartment, ate, went to TN for the funeral, came back, and I tried to get finals (that I didn't study for) done, finish papers, find rides down to TN, ask for an extension, get my apartment somewhat clean, return sleeping bags and pillows, pack for South Dakota, say goodbye to those I could, and then drive with family to South Dakota. Only to realize once I reached here that my packing had been done in the mindset of college girl and not in the mindset of farm girl. My 16 year old brother graciously offered to loan me whatever jeans and t-shirts I wanted. However, the dear boy has no hips. Therefore jeans = don't fit.
. And on top of all of this, trying to push off processing the fact that Grandpa is no longer there on the edge of my peripheral vision, with his random appearances every year or so into my life.
Most funerals you get to say something about the departed, especially if you are related to the deceased. However, for whatever reason, this funeral didn’t have any of that. So I am now going to take some time to pretend that we are back in the Episcopalian church where Grandpa attended the last few years of his life and pretend that I have the microphone in front of the black clad crowd. And I am going to say what I would have liked to say, or the gist of it anyway, and in typical 21st century send it out into the void of cyberspace where it will do very little good but at least get it out of my head.

I was able to see Grandpa this summer, which was really fun. After we got over the awkward fifteen minutes of, “Well, we are related yet we somehow don’t really know each other’” we were able to start swapping stories, comparing movie opinions, playing the piano for one another, and looking at herbs and flowers in his garden.
I have been described as eccentric the last few years, and sort of wondered where I got it from. But visiting Grandpa this summer sort of cleared that up. He was loud, dramatic, loved oddities of culture, history and religion, tried new foods and cooking methods regularly, and when he dropped me off for my friend to take me back to camp, clean forgot to put on his shoes. We stood in the parking lot of a restaurant with Grandpa barefoot, laughing at something I had said and exuding charm and good manners at my friend, who apparently never noticed the lack of shoes.
He and Grandma, who passed away in 1999, loved to travel. The more you traveled, the higher you climbed in their ladder of estimation. The more cultures and languages you had under your belt, the more prepared you were to grab life by the horns and wrestle all the fun possible out of it.
They weren’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. The ability to depend on them and their consistency levels were about nil, because they were too busy having fun in their various ways. And heaven help you if you got on their bad side. However, as a grandchild, I was protected by cuteness and the wonderful forces of nature which make grandparents biologically susceptible to grandchildren’s doe eyes and alligator tears.
Grandpa loved performances, of any kind. Whether it was me merely tinkering on his piano or my cousin delivering a speech at his mother’s funeral, Grandpa would offer hearty praise and edifying critique. Then he would ask if we wanted to improve, because he had a store of ideas for how we might do so. If we didn’t, though, he assured us that we were gifted and talented and he enjoyed the production very much.
After Aunt Sue’s funeral, we all crashed at her house. The boys stretched their long frames out on the couch and Mom and Monica dove into old photo albums, laughing and commenting on how people had grown and changed. Grandpa and I gave each other neck rubs and foot massages with some kind of ointment that filled the room with lemony, peppermint smells.
The day before his funeral we all gathered at the house he and his wife, Corinne, had shared for the last several years. Kendra and I pranked Monica by telling her Kendra was getting married when the unsuspecting cousin asked us what was new. Aaron and I took turns playing the Piano in between Uncle Mark and I discussing Eastern European culture and which languages we had learnt or were learning. I gave and Kristi a shoulder rub and Mom enveloped various cousins in bear hugs and commented on how they had grown while laughing with Monica about her difficult girls. At one point, Yahiya – ‘Grandma’ in Greek and Uncle Mark’s mother, but who we all call Yahiya and she calls us all sweetie – said, “Roy would have loved tonight. All the laughter and performances and the kids; it’s a party and he would have loved to be here and enjoy this.”
The evening after his funeral, we all gathered around the table in the kitchen with our various beverages and laughed long and loud about our crazy family. “Remember when you did this embarrassing thing and Grandpa said this” or “He did that and Grandma said this and then we all did such and such” stories were told. Some old ‘hush hush’ family secretes, and stories us Grandkids hadn’t known but the kids all did and had forgotten to tell us, or hadn’t wanted to before, or stuff we grandkids hadn’t thought to tell but the kids were shocked to hear, came out. And it was good and healthy and fun and loud. There was laughter and tears and cries of good natured indignation.

I’ve been really close to my Dad’s side of the family, and they have helped form and shape me into the person I am. They also love music, and traveling, and gardens. While my Grandma claims that any herbs I may sneak into the dishes when I cook for her are ‘grass and cow food’ she likes it in the long run, and what makes it especially nice is that they grew in the garden Grandpa has in the backyard. They occasionally do sporadic stuff as well, such as when my Grandma heard of the Czech couple who were going to just arrive in the US and go backpacking and insisted they stay with her until they had sufficiently learned how America works.

But it was nice to get to know my Mom’s side of the family as well. The obnoxiality is a bit more loud and in your face, and you can always count on some kind of mishap to occur and words of indignation to be expressed and if it is loud and people overhear, so be it.

I’m not going to end with any remarks of Grandma and Grandpa watching down on us in love and pride, because that doesn’t follow what I see Scripture telling us about the afterlife. If one has made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ and accepted Him as Lord and Savior, then once one dies and goes to Heaven, one is too preoccupied with the majesty of God’s glory to heed anything happening in our fallen and depraved world. This makes the grief a bit harsher at first, because one must completely let go.
However, there’s no lingering or holding on to the past.
And honestly, Christ is sufficient.
So for the foundations of both sides of the family, I am grateful and proud, because they enable me to so much more effectively serve my Savior and live out convictions.
To the ones who are now in the past of my life and no longer in the present, I am grateful for what was, wish there had been more, and say farewell.
To those who have been in and out of my past and hopefully will reoccur in the pages of my future, it was fun despite the pain and I hope there is more fun to come.
To those who have always been there, I hope you will continue to be there for many more years to come.
And to Jesus, who has given and taken away all of this, I say, The learning curves have been steep and the road bumpy and the sky rainy for quite some time. Any time You want to let up… sooner rather than later would be nice! However, as deplorable as sanctification may be, I know You work all things together for Good. So Thank You. Although I might be saying that through clenched teeth every now and again.

The End.
Now I'm not sure if I've offended, and if so I humbly ask pardon. But as I said, those of my maternal side of the family are not ones to sugar coat what they think or feel, they just put it out there. So I'm merely following my genetic predisposition. :-) Which is inconsistant with my views of sanctification and biblical living, but thats a discussion for another day. :-)

Quick testimony

I hate writing book reports when you've only read half the book. The trouble is I LIKE all these books, I just don't have time to finish them. Doggonit. Anyway. I came across this cool story in my Political Science class and felt the need to share. I finished 1 book report. 3 to go tonight. *sigh* But I have successfully found warm meals for my family for tomorrow night and the morning after, and comfortable beds for all of them to sleep in. Now I just need to find a way to get to the funeral after I finish my horrible math final. AAAGH! Prayer please. I'm not going to sleep much this night.
Anyway here ya go. Hope you enjoy.

It was a Saturday evening in Belfast, September 25, 1982. As twenty-year-old Karen McKeown drove her mother, Pearl, home from a special service at their Protestant church, she was still humming the song the choir had sung: "I will enter into His courts with Praise."
mother and daughter talked about Karen's classes at Queen's University, Pearl's early shift the next morning at the hospital, the contact lens Karen had lost.
Pearl watched Karen, thinking her daughter had never looked prettier. Her dark hair was glossy and thick with a determined curl that karen spent much of her energy trying to tame. Her new white sweater and skirt set off her dark eyes and pale complexion beautifully. She has so much ahead of her, Pearl thought proudly.
Karen dropped off her mother at home, waved good-bye, and headed back to the church to help clean up for Sunday services. She pulled into the church parking lot, got out, and was locking the car when a young man appeared by her side.
"I want you to know that I'm going to shoot you," he said, placing a heavy pistol against the base of Karen's neck.
He pulled the trigger.
The bullet ripped into Karen's neck and tore through her spinal column. She collapsed onto the concrete, bleeding and paralyzed, unable to breathe. Her assailant ran away into the night.
Friends in the church ehard the crack of the gun and called the ambulance, which took Karen to the Royal Victoria Hospital. By the time Pearl and John McKeown arrived, their daughter was fighting for her life in intensive care.
Pearl refused to believe that Karen was the latest victim in Belfast's endless violence. Only as she sat day after day by her daughter's bedside, did the full implication dawn.
Karen could still communicate, and Pearl would lean close to her face as she mouthed her words. It was through those words that Pearl learned the answers to the bloody bitterness of Northern Ireland.
One afternoon when she arrived to visit, she found Karen propped up on several crisp white hospital pillows with tubes coming out of ehr throat, nose, and arms. Machines, screens, and dials monitored her every breath.
Karen's eyes brightened when she saw her mother. "Mum," she mouthed, "Could you squeeze my hands?"
Pearl gripped the slender fingers.
Karen's eyes fell. "I can't feel anything," she said. After a pause she continued,"But it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that we trust the Lord and never give the Devil a victory."
The inverted glass container of an intravenous tube was dripping a solution into Karen's veins, and the drug made her sleepy. Her eyelids batted a few times; then she drifted into sleep.
Pearl sat down in the armchair next to the bed, bowed her head, and wept. A few minutes later she looked up and discovered Karen awake again.
"Mum," she whispered, "you think you have troubles. But just think about the troubles his mum has.
When he said he was going to shoot me, I thought he was one of the boys from church, and i laughed," Karen continued. "It was as if the Lord put His arms around me. When I hit the ground I was still laughing."
Late that evening at home Pearl went into Karen's cluttered room and picked up her thick leather Bible. It had been a Christmas gift a year and a half earlier and was already worn, its pages marked with Karen's notes and underlinings. Pearl looked at the inside cover page where Karen had witten, "To be a brave disciple is to be a bond slave to Jesus Christ, and to find that His service is perfect freedom."
In teh book of Job she found more notes. "this is not an explanation but an inspiration. Job's soul was a battleground without his knowledge. Could this be the reason for suffering today? In all cases, God is supreme and just. The Devil functions within God's purpose." Karen's underlining clotted the chapters of Job. "Though he slay me, yet will I hope in Him.... You will lie down, and no one will make you afraid."
pearls eyes filled with tears. Here in her daughter's strong, square script were notes that clearly prefigured what had happened. If this is how Karen views suffering, Pearl thought, then this is how I must see what has happened to her.
Meanwhile, the forensic results came back from the crime lab; the bullet taken from karen's neck was from the same gun used to assassinate a prominent attorney. The gun could be traced to the INLA, the Irish National Liberation Army, a Catholic terrorist organization.
The next day Pearl went home, tired and frustrated, to pick up the mail before returning to Karen's bedside. A thin white envelope fell out of the stack of get-well cards and letters. The handwriting was unfamiliar. Her eyes went to the return address: Her Majesty's Prison, Magilligan.
She slit the envelope and unfolded the sheet inside. The writer explained that he had heard about Karen's attack through a Bible stud in his prison. He was, he said, an ex-INLA prisoner who had become a Christian. he was no longer a member of the organization responsible for Karen's attack, but he wanted to ask Mrs. McKeown's forgiveness and permission to pray for Karen. Would she mind?
Pearl stared at the letter in her hand. The signature read "Liam McCloskey." she thought about ehr daughter's peaceful face, about the underlined verses in her Bible, and about her forgiving spirit and absolute trust in Christ. She realized Karen would welcome this man's request.
Pearl jotted a quick note to Liam McCloskey, enclosing an old photograph of karen and telling him a little about her daughter and her faith.
...One autumn evening as the men in the Magilligan Bible study met for prayer, a young girl named Karen McKeown headed their list. Dr. Holley had told them the week before about the young Protestant girl who had been shot by the INLA. Their prayer list always contained victims of the Troubles, but Liam had felt a special responsibility for Karen's suffering. He had written to her mother.
"I head from Mrs. McKeown," Liam said, passing Karen's picture around the circle. "I haven't been able to stop thinking about her."
The group bowed their heads and joined hands. Then, one by one, the former terrorists - Catholic and Protestant - prayed for Karen McKeown and her family, asking that God heal this latest young victim of Belfast's violence.
Liam closed the prayer with the words he ahd first prayed during his months on the hunger strike. "Not ours, Lord, but Thy will be done."

By the end of her second week in the hospital, Karen slept a little more each day. Pearl treasured the moments she was awake. By the third week, meningitis set in, and Karen slipped into a coma.
Then, early one morning while the rain fell outside the hospital windows, Pearl watched her daughter die.
Shortly after that, another letter arrived from Liam McCloskey.
"Pearl, we make strange friends in this troubled land. It is to the glory of God and He who makes it possible. Remember John 8:51, 'And I tell you most solemly. Whoever keeps My Word will never see death.' Karen has left us, and even though it was no choice of mine, yet you can make a conscious decision in your own mind to see it as a gift of God. Your beautiful daugher to our beautiful Father who knows best. Surely the peace of Christ will be yours."

(Later, when Liam was released from prison and was speaking at a Prison Fellowship meeting)

Pearl climbed the stage steps and walked slowly toward Liam, arms outstretched. They hugged. Then Pearl held Liam's hand as she tearfully explained how Karen's death had been to God's glory.
"Liam told me his prayer is now that of St. Francis," she said. " "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is death, life. Where despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy." And Liam has been God's instrument of peace to me," she concluded in a chocked voice. "For he is the one who has showed me how to love God again."
By now tears glistened in many eyes as the audience strained to capture the incredible tableau: The two former terrorists, Catholic and Protestant, once sworn enemies, now standing together as brothers in Christ; the bereaved Protestant mother and the Catholic terrorist, holding hands.
Such is the reconciling power of God in Northern Ireland.

Charles Colson, God and Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith and Politics. Copyright 2007. Pages 394-396, 414-416

Finals week and funeral

Went to chapel on Tuesday and this was the sermon. It was interesting that the subject was death, as my dad called later in the day and told me that my Grandpa on my mom's side had passed away the night before from a brain anurism. Sudden and unexpected.

So the last twenty four hours has been a flury of coordinating with family out west about coming east, figuring out WHEN I'm going to get papers and finals done, going to work, trying not to loose it when people casually ask how my weeks been, figuring out when the funeral is, trying to remember to eat, etc.

Special thanks to all my friends at school and co workers who have been so understanding and compassionate the last 24 hours. I'm pretty sure I've been acting wacky. An odd mixture of stress, focus, and simply trying to blow off through swapping stupid humerous stories.

Am off to try and get four book reports done. Am drowning my sorrows in a cup of delicious cardamum-infused black tea from the iraqi store with whole milk and sugar.