I know. I am posting on 11/12/11. Really, I don't get hyped up on dates because they are arbitrary. Dates, calendars, gemstones, the zodiac, all those things are just ways of measuring time or making categories based on time. It's always been interesting to me that from the Roman calendar to the sundial to the measuring of years Anno Domino (the year of our Lord) every way measurements are made bases the system on Jehovah's creation or the ransom sacrifice of his only-begotten son.
You know how the KJV says Adam begat Cain and Able and Abraham begat Isaac and Ishmael, etc? It's interesting to me because I think the women did most of the getting and the gatting, but anyhow, when we say Jesus is Jehovah's only begotten son, we are saying that back when in the past tense, Jehovah begat Jesus. I may have said that in this blog in the past. If so, forgive me. I'm not really senile yet that I know about (would I know about it if true? Alzheimer's patients seem pretty happy and oblivious) but I have certain linguistic ideas that are "staples" of how I think about the world. So I may be repeating myself just because I like my topic.
Anyhow, I would have blogged yesterday just because I like writing and just because I would have found something to say. Unfortunately, I got the news yesterday morning via email that the man's father passed away in Oklahoma at 5:05 p.m. on 11/10. When I say "the man," I always mean the man I married and with whom I share two lovely daughters. I had to tell that man, the father of my children, that his father had died.
Last night, I did not blog because I was listening to him talk about his family. In some very real ways, we are his only family now other than a mom and brother 1600 miles away, people he had not spoken to in about a year prior to yesterday.
My father-in-law was a cool guy. I say that because I never divorced him. I always liked him. He was from Poland and he had those Slavic features I kind of like in a guy. He served three tours in Vietnam and I'm against war, but his stories were interesting. I gave him a copy of the book "The Things They Carried" when I read it for a class and he was not much of a reader (newspapers, CNN kind of guy) but he read that and told me he couldn't put it down. Funny how we always got along better than he did with his sons.
He lost a daughter almost exactly my age when she was 13. He never talked about that much except to say the military doctors were idiots who let her go misdiagnosed. They were treating her for a back ache when she had kidney failure. From what I have heard from them of her symptoms, I think she had a severe sleep apnea, so you can understand how panicked I was when Kimberly had the same issues at age five. I went to doctors till I found one who had a diagnosis.
We did go our separate ways. Their other daughter had the first granddaughter six months before Carly was born. And they showered her with love and gifts and attention. My kids really got the shaft for grandparents on both sides. It's kind of ironic because I was reading in Dear Abby this week, a day or two before he died, about a woman who always went to her mother with her children and now that her son's wife goes to her mother, she feels left out of her grand children's life and she wants a time machine. That is pretty typical in society. There's a reason for that saying: "A man is a man until he takes a wife. A daughter is a daughter for life." I do not say that smugly as the mom of two girls. But I am happy about it.
Not that I'm getting grandchildren anytime soon, and that's okay too.
I guess the man is upset. It was his father. The man is now 51 and a half years old and is stubbornly refusing to realize he can't do everything he used to do. I don't like this realization either, but putting your head in the sand like an ostrich accomplishes nothing even for an ostrich. It doesn't change anything.
My father-in-law was 79 and went through a bout of cancer related to Agent Orange about five years ago. This year, it came back. No funeral, no burial. He was a very practical man who donated his body to the OU (Oklahoma University) medical center. He was down to 85 pounds. When they are finished, the school will cremate his body and send the ashes to his widow. Still, nobody can say he got cheated out of a long lifespan. Well, nobody but us. All of us are sinners thanks to our original parents and cheated out of the lifespan our Heavenly Father desired for us.
And I know a peace that the man cannot have because he will never listen to anything from the Bible, but today I know that someone will be welcoming Mitchell Randall back to life someday and it just might be me. This makes me entirely happy not over his death this week, but his prospect for resurrection in the future. Man can cremate. Jehovah can create. That one little letter in the word cremate can be so easily dropped by Jehovah.
That is why I did not blog last night. I was listening while holding the hand of the father of my children.
No comments:
Post a Comment