The Journey

It was an odd day, the day that I died. I don’t think that it is worth getting into the details of the event, they weren’t very meaningful, at least not to me. Not in the long run. I think it is also worthless to talk about lights and tunnels and things, not because I didn’t see them, it just… wasn’t important to me.

See get this, I was lying there… I was in the hospital, I remember having to argue with my wife about what I wanted, there were a few things that were obvious that she already knew. She knew my flair for the dramatic and my desire to utilize what many have called, meaningless gestures, partially because I believe and also for the dramatics.

Its funny, I didn’t have to argue with her about getting a priest, a specific priest. Yes I know, I am not Catholic… but he was a friend, and he used to sneak me communion during Mass. It was funny I remember once over a beer I told him I wanted him to give me last rites, he figured that he’d go first so we just toasted our glasses and he said all right. I won’t tell the diocese if you won’t. I still remember him praying the rosary for me. It was neat, maybe the cross between Morphine and Dopamine… but I saw Mary there… She was behind my youngest son, there was a tear in her eye, and a smile on her face… her face was so warm and inviting, I wonder if everyone knows how warm and inviting her face is. Sure I know it is crazy for a protestant to talk about visions of Mary but hey… it’s what I do.

The room was strangely warm, I thought I would be cold… I wasn’t, I don’t know what was warming the room up… maybe love… maybe frustration… You know there was a chaplain there. I had hoped there would be one, this was a Southern Baptist fellow… I think I was conscious about two hours, he was there the entire time. At one point he sat with me and talked, just he and I, I had to smile, he was so young, and his eyes an odd mix of warm and cold. Like he was full of emotion, but fuller of a desire to only let it squeak out. He was a good guy, I don’t remember his name, he was in training, I told him a little about my training, I told him how I wanted to die… I opened the door for him.

"It seems like your ready," he said to me in a haunting voice. I always wondered if I would have that conversation with someone. The truth is, I was tired, I suppose a little young but still, I have two kids and a wife I love very much… The oldest is married, I won’t get to see my grandchild this side of the shadowlands, but I know he is coming, I know it’s a boy, they don’t believe me, think I am a damned old mystic. I will get a chance to speak with him before he goes, I will send a message, I wonder if they will get it.

Now the youngest, he is the most like me, he is in seminary, followed in my footsteps, I can’t believe it. I argued with him about it, talked about the hours, about pain, about the tears I had shed, about living paycheck to paycheck, God’s forced faith, knowing that he will provide because otherwise we starve. I knew I had lost the argument when I saw a gleam in his eyes… later a vision… I made the arguments of his grandfather, but my heart welled with pride. I know he doesn’t know about the pain that is coming, but I know he can take it. I feel that I can stand before God and feel redeemed because of my children… because through all the mistakes I made… they will change the world, maybe that is just the father in me… but God is a father too.
I will never see him wed… be he will. Its funny when Mary left his side she was replaced with the shape of a different woman, olive skinned… seemed cute… holding his arm. I don’t think he was open to the vision fully but I saw him shiver, then scratch his arm where she was touching him… he would meet her soon, maybe two years out, but soon.

The oldest… successful bastard, he is like his mother. I never thought I would spawn his kind. The popular kind, the sporty kind, but he was a little different. Sure I had to adjust his attitude as a kid but he seems to have gone a different direction. He seems to have… grown. He will be a good father, I can’t believe the woman he married. Every day I wonder how he got her… She is so kind, I think she is the reason he went back to church. My vision of him is interesting… a rose… he will be a leader someday… a leader in the church… not like my young son… but a lay leader… an elder...

My wife, she is funny. She has two silver dollars in her purse… because I asked for her to carry them, to pay the boatman. When I die I want them over my eyes. She will hand one to each son; they will cover my eyes. She is okay with that, but she wasn’t okay with me dying… at least not at first. I keep telling her I won’t make it, she keeps talking about miracles. I keep telling her I don’t want those miracles. I am not afraid of death, or at least wasn’t until that damn chaplain asked me a question.

"Yeah I’m ready," I heard myself say. "How about you, you ready?" I know the expectation of the chaplain, I know what the staff thinks he should do, I smile at him. I can’t help it, I tell him stories about CPE: About the years I spent as a chaplain and as a preacher, the years as a husband and a father, the years alone… in transit… wondering if I would ever find a home. I saw a tear in his eye… That bastard, he knew what I needed, and I think I knew what he needed. I needed to talk… he needed to hear… yes I was ready… it was right

"You are Catholic?" I always laugh when people ask me this question.
"No sir, never got around to conversion," my priest friend laughed.
"I think you understand what Catholic means better than most…" my Priest said.

My new Southern Baptist friend didn’t understand that comment, so the father, it feels odd to call my friend father, explained about the big church. This chaplain is just a kid, we both know he isn’t going to listen too well, but I like him. He is me… I am him…

My niece and nephew are there, and a man who became like a brother to me later… my sister-in-law’s brother. A good guy… I was glad he was there. I look forward to seeing my brother again. I wonder where he is…

All the sudden there is pain… God awful pain… So I do the only appropriate thing… I start to curse… the nurse gives me more morphine immediately I get loopy, it’s almost time… I glaze my eyes with the look of goodbye, I try to speak but I am too tired, I can raise 1 finger, I wave… the circle around me joins hands. Mary was back, Jesus was there, and Grandma, that is where I saw you first… My brother standing next to his wife… I hadn’t seen that in years… I can’t exactly remember why… oh now I remember. I don’t think she knows he is there…. Mom… Dad… smiling, holding hands. I really appreciate that theology about "believers but not knowers."

They are gone and I get up… blue lab coat… chaplain coat… I am in the hospital… "Code 1 to ICU 3" I rush to the code and find out it wasn’t a code… the chart says, "do not resuscitate." The family is standing around the body; Mary is here, Jesus is here… Mom, Dad… why are you here… Anna… Adam… why is my family here? I look down on the table, me… all the sudden I am looking up from the table… and I am filled with breath.

Grandma, that is when you handed me my chaplain coat… my sons placed the silver dollars over my eyes. I put my coat on… I walked through a corridor… another chaplain next to me… he wore black… pretty macabre for a chaplain… oh, he is "that" chaplain… I walk to a river… there is a boat, and a man with a lantern. "Charon?" I said. He smiled at me and held out his hand, I reached into the pocket of my lab coat, lets see… papers… more papers… census’… there they are. I hand over two silver dollars to Charon. He smiles.

The journey is short… peaceful, and oddly enough seemed like forever… I was a little nervous… now judgement it coming, now I stand before God… now the decision… Elysium or Tartarus… All the sudden no fear… I should be afraid, I am not… I got off the boat onto a dock… I walk through a door… I am in the hospital again… but it is a dream I had many years earlier… I walk into employee orientation… I state my name to the man behind the main desk… the bookkeeper opens a large book… this was just like a dream… he smiles… "St. Peter?" I ask. This is no longer the dream. I begin to walk and turn to ask a question, "can I check on my family?" he showed me a monitor. There was crying… even the chaplain… but it was okay… Mary was there… so was my Dad… and Mom… I looked to the right; Grandma was with me… she had never left me. Uncle Bud on her right… smiles… all smiles… The journey, I plot my course.

You're like a bear man!!!

Went to the casino's last night, not to play the slots but to see a concert. The Big Bad Voodoo Daddy were playing. When the song "You me and the bottle," came on and I started dancing I thought back to college. It was BBVD and the movie swingers that lead me to wanting to learn to dance. Shoot that goes back to freshman year at college, what did we call it, "The ultimate guy movie." It was a great show got a phone pic (really blury) pic with the lead singer. Got a few signatures on my ticket. They commented on my dancing and I told them about watching the dance scene in Swingers and then wanting to learn to dance. The dude just smiled and nodded, letting me know he rememebered the movie.

It was a dream to dance to BBVD live... after the dance we Lindy bombed (Ramdomly started dancing to a funk band) the Casino. We were dancing between slot machines, it was great.

The Creek pronounced crick

One of the other major memories of aquatic bodies is the creek, pronounced crick. I understand the creed differently than the river, let me explain. As a child many of my happiest memories came from the time I spent at my grandmother and grandfather’s house a few miles down Peter’s Run Road in Tridelphia West Virginia. I remember I would always anticipate the drive and even break down the various sections of the drive. It was close to a thirty-minute drive but my strongest feelings associate to the last five minutes.

From the main road we would turn left onto Peters Run Road. For three miles we would follow a creek on the right. As I would drive I would see the hill and vegetation on the left, and a series of bridges on the right. We would pass "Ye Ol’ Country Church" on the left then a hill with a series of steps for drainage (this road was prone to mudslides). As we pulled toward my grandfather’s bridge I would begin to get a deep anticipation. The bridge was small and some would say it was a little nerve racking to drive over yet it was a strong bridge.

I remember as a child putting my hands in the creek and feeling the cool water run across them. Many Creeks in West Virginia had turned orange from the coal mines, my grandfather’s was not one of them. We were never allowed to walk in them barefoot because people had the tendency to throw bottles from their cars into the Creek. I didn’t need to walk barefoot, Sometimes I would enjoy just standing on the bridge and looking down.

In the summers on some Saturday morning’s my father and I would go and drop a minnow trap. Grandfather’s Creek fueled my ability to go fishing. The minnows would swim in the trap and not be able to swim out. As I got older friends and I would go to this place and drop the trap ourselves, sometimes we would just use a sane, at that age we were old enough just to go into the creek in our shoes, unless we could get a hold of some waders. I remember feeling the cold water rush against the waders… it was calming.

The drive filled me with anticipation. It was a different anticipation from descending into the river. The later was an anticipation of rebellion, and the joy that comes with freedom and the ability to keep from being chained. Grandfather’s house was utopia. At my grandparents house I had no desire to break the rules, actually I was filled with a desire for just the opposite. At my grandparent’s house I wanted to act well (this is not to say my brother and I didn’t get into our own stuff there). I would never sneak down to the creek when I wasn’t allowed, and I didn’t get into things I wasn’t supposed to. I was trying to be anything, I just had no desire to have my grandparents view me unfavorably.

As I got older I would help my grandfather tend to his yard and sometimes his garden. After a morning of hard work I would join them for lunch and then we would sit on the front porch, Grandma and I in the swing, Granddad on a wicker rocking chair. I once preached a sermon called, "A Glass of Iced Tea and a Front Porch Swing." To me this picture was heaven. I had no where to run to, and nothing to run from, I was safe behind the Creek, suckling at the bosom of the hills around us.

It was a different kind of freedom from the river. The river involved chaos, crossing the Creek involved peace. Cosmologically the Creek is at the opposite end of the river. The river was a place to descend into, a place where chaos ensued and we allowed ourselves to be swept into chaos, the Creek though it was calm like the words of the song, "Ripple in still water, where there is not pebble tossed, no wind to blow." The ripple in these waters came from the hand of God himself, an angel that came and stirred the water once a day.

We looked out across the big Pine, across the river to the road where cars and trucks would go to and fro busy with life. We would watch life from the outside I liken it to Lazarus looking at the rich man. He could see, but he was not there.

Memories fill my mind of the old horse swing that hung under the pine, in the summers. I remember the snow on the hill in front of and behind, being driven out on a snow day from school, Granddad getting out his old runner sled, and then letting loose. From the hill we would leave with a "swoosh," toward the Creek, we would see how close we could get, yet we could never make it in. That was fine though, the winter was not a good time to feel the cool water of the Creek.

Across the Creek we were free, but it was a different freedom. The deer would be down in the winter by the dozens, the turkey in the summer by the hundreds. The garden, full of green beans and corn in the summer, in the winter the snow like a blanket allowing the land to sleep. Across the Creek was hope, the anticipation of the drive reminding me of what is to come. Across the Creek… maybe I could say heaven, but it seems more like Eden. A body reborn, casting off the fallen nature, resurrection in its best form.

Down to the River to pray

I have been reading "Memories Dreams and Reflections," basically Jung’s autobiography. Reading through it has been interesting even just into the second chapter. Reading the memories and dreams that were important to Jung are astounding. He talks about smelling for the first time, seeing the Alps in the distance for the first time, and seeing the stars for the first time. He discussed his awareness of the world around him and his understanding of it, even down to 3 years old.

If I were to think along these lines I would have to talk about growing up on the Ohio River. I don’t know if any of you ever grew up around water, there is something interesting growing up near water. Even though highly polluted the water from the Ohio is what I would drink, after a lot of filtering, and as a young child I was not allowed near the river itself, because of the undertow. I was told as a child that the direction of the water under the surface did not have to match the direction on the surface, that currents ran through the river all different directions, not just south. I imagined a river within a river flowing a different direction, I imagined fish passing each other going different directions, but just swimming, though I could imagine some animals talking, I have never much imagined fish that way, they were just fish.

I image that is partially because I don’t hunt but I do fish. I couldn’t kill a squirrel, a deer, or a black bear, I could imagine them with a voice but fish, they had no voice. That isn’t to say I kept any of them I caught them in the ol Ohio and nothing that came out of the Ohio was safe to eat. I think that is part of the majesty of the river, so powerful so dangerous with its undertows and poisons. I wasn’t allowed near the river as a child, so it isn’t strange that every day in the summers I was there.

You see, the river was cut into a valley, we had to descend to the river. I remember as a child my first time fishing, or at least as I remember was at the Dam. The Dam was itself a monster, maybe not a monster but a harness. Like the bridle of a horse the dam controlled the direction of the river. I have imagined canoeing from my house to my friend’s house in St. Mary’s. I think it would be a fun trip and I would have to survive the local dams along the way. It was an hour and a half drive how long of a canoe would it be? Maybe someday I will.

I think the most astounding thing about the dam was the echo. I recall my brother and I learning our voice hearing for the first time our own echo. The question came, "Dad, who’s yelling back." Dad explained the echo. I always looked forward to the dam because of the echo.
Descending toward the river was always a positive thing to me. Being close to the river and going through what I needed to just to be close. The river in one sense was my father and mother, in one way it was a river. To descend toward the dam I had to be sure footed (as my zodiac says I am) because the dike that had been built was walled by rocks some limestone some granite, some that were sharp some that were smooth, but all that were dangerous. It would be easy to slip and fall, rolling down the bank, but worst of all, spilling my tackle box. I have fallen many times but have never spilled my tackle box.

My old gang hung out by the river, every day we went down to pray. To which God’s I cannot be sure, but we did pray. With every drag from a cigarette every word we couldn’t say in front of our parents, we were baptized by the river. It was that baptism that symbolized freedom for me maybe even us. We named our places, they were like temples to us, temples with simple names: the hill, the rope, the rock bar, the beach, the dam, the rope swing, these were the places we would "hang" these were the places we would worship. For what is worship to a child truly but that chance to be, even if in farce, an adult?

That isn’t to say some had more dominion than others did, I was not the head of this priesthood, but a simple worshiper at the temple. Justice was like the river, swift and harsh. Not entirely physically but emotionally. It was at the river we learned to reduce one another to tears with words, it was at the river that we sacrificed our own scapegoats. We all played each roll; we each took a place as high priest, worshipper, or scapegoat. We had our own code, it was never written, but it was thorough and clear.

At our homes we lived under our parents, at the river we were free. My feeling climbing out was always different it was sadder, it was lower. Yet I was a surefooted Capricorn, and I could always survive away from my temple, away from the holy mother, the great river.