Random Strangers

Never before have I worked somewhere that has given me the opportunity to meet so many brokenhearted people with so many touching stories. To be fair, they aren't all brokenhearted anymore; many of them I talk to have just moved on in their lives.

The busiest time of the year to work at a cemetery is Memorial Day weekend. I'm always amazed at how many people come to spread flowers and stand over the graves of their loved ones to remember them. Personally, I remember my brother Chris throughout the year. Sometimes with tears, sometimes just with happy memories. I've no grave to stand over for him, which suits me just fine. He would find that morbid anyway. Instead, I have the South Falls at Silver Falls State Park. What a glorious place to stand and remember the funny, kind, intelligent, loving man I was blessed enough to have in my life for 28 years.

But this post isn't about Christopher. However, I see within myself the need to tell his story. This post is about a gentleman named Mr. Guan .

Mr. Guan is an 84 year old gentleman from Thailand, whom I first saw in April during the Chinese Memorial Day weekend. I noticed him instantly when I walked up the stairs at work because this distinguished gentleman had his eyes sewn shut. He was sitting on a couch in the reception room waiting for his ride home after having delivered flowers to his wife's grave. He looked to be sleeping, so I left him alone.

This weekend, Mr. Guam came back to deliver more flowers to his wife's grave and I had the opportunity to talk with him. Well, to question him, because I am always full of questions. He seemed happy to have someone to visit with, and after the niceties of polite introduction, my first question for him was "How did you lose your eyesight?" I'm not one to shy away from people's physical infirmities, obviously.

In 1964, Mr. Guan worked as a boat hand. Now, the language barrier between us made it difficult for me to follow every word he spoke, but I was able to glean this: The boat he worked on was bombed, and the heat of the explosion burned his eyes. He was taken to the United States where his eyelids were sealed shut against the dead orbs that would no longer allow him sight. In his mind, he still sees the blue sky, flowers, his loved ones faces. He recently told a friend who also in her 80's, that to him, she will be forever young, because that is all he *sees* of her in his mind.

When Mr. Guan decided that he wanted to stay in the United States, immigration mistakenly assumed he was Chinese and translated his last name to Kuan. For 45 years his passport has him listed with the wrong last name. How odd to me that he didn't insist they change the K to a G.

His wife, whom he had known and loved since they were ten years old, immigrated to the States to be with him. Because she was a nurse in their native land, she was able to find a job in Portland working for one of the hospitals there. Mr. Guan got a job working at the same hospital as an x-ray film developer. How a blind man is able to develop film I will never know. That was one question I didn't ask.

It's easy to look at someone like Mr. Guan and be impressed with his ability to overcome the obstacle of blindness, find a career he enjoyed for more than 20 years, raise three children in a new country and maintain the gentle nature he seems to have. That isn't what impressed me about him however.

Twenty years ago, his wife came down with Alzheimer's. From what he told me, she became somewhat violent which is typical of the the disease. Still, he cared for her at home. She had a stroke in the 90's to top off the Alzheimer's and her doctor insisted that Mr. Guan wasn't in the position to care for her full time. His love was moved to a nursing home, which he visited daily. She died when they were both 80 years old (70 years of knowing and loving each other) of pneumonia. The only real anger he carries to this day is that she wasn't properly diagnosed and taken care of. She was four days into the pneumonia before anything was done. By that time, it was too late.

What impressed me most about this gentleman was that he was able to love one woman his whole life, through thick and thin. That to this day, he misses her enough to get on a bus, come to a cemetery and rely on others to take him to her grave where he places 4 dozen of her favorite roses. Once the task of his remembrance is done, he sits in our lobby for more than an hour alone, waiting for the bus to come back and drive him home. When I asked him why he didn't move to California or Texas to be near his children, his only relatives, he said "I can't leave my wife here alone. Besides, I can't *see* my children but I can hear their voices on the phone."

I wonder, when he passes away, who will remember him? How many lives has he touched? Who will think about this gentle blind man who loved his wife so much? I will certainly try. Maybe I'll come back and read this now and again just to remember. This will be my way of spreading flowers on a grave. Until that time, I look forward to seeing him again.

Pack rat

I am a bipolar pack rat. I love stuff! The more stuff, the better! And I don’t mean big screen televisions, artwork, cars and electronic paraphernalia. I like doohickeys… paper things… glass items… old stuff… antique stuff… dug up out of the ground stuff. I’ve rescued a cabinet and hutch from an alleyway that has now been with me for 20 years, gleaned through an abandoned house and confiscated some great kitchen gadgets, and built up my scrapbooking materials while digging through the recycling at work.

Because of my love of stuff, my home IS stuffed! Every shelf, every cupboard and every corner overflows with my treasures. I hate it. I have a very deeply hidden urge to scream so loud and hard that every item is carried away with the vibrations and wind of my scream - blown out of my home never to be seen again. So I purge.

Today is a binge day. A dig in the dumpster, box up the cache and drag it on home day. My treasure hunting today netted me 9 brand new leather bound binders for scrapbooking. Who in the world would throw away unused leather-bound binders still in their boxes? Funeral Directors. No imagination at all.

So today I bring home a huge box of stuff to add to my other stuff. That way I can rebuild the nice geometrically stacked stashes that I decimated during my last purge. Gotta binge to get to the purge.

When you Love Them So Much

How is it that another human can get so under your skin that you care more about them than you do for yourself? I remember when I was younger wondering if I had enough in me to love children the way they deserved to be loved. I needn't have worried. With each of my four kids, my heart seemed to swell to be able to hold the love I would automatically feel for them. I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. I've hurt people. I've been hurt. When my kids hurt though -- that is the greatest hurt of all.

My beautiful daughter Rae, had her heart broken today. When I say broken, I mean torn out, ripped apart, tossed on the ground and stomped into the dirt broken. Oh the torturous things I'd love to do to the young man who dared put her in this teenage torment! Not knowing what to say to her, I listened. Not knowing what to do, I held her. Unable to see the future, I counseled her to get through each moment one at a time. Each moment she makes it through will bring her closer to the moment her entire being no longer hurts.

The hardest part is being unable to plug a zip drive into my experiences and load them over to her head and heart so that she will have the full knowledge that I do. The death of this relationship will be the fertilizer for future more incredible relationships. Right now, all she sees is the fertilizer.

And all I see is a broken young woman. One who feels unloved.. unlovable. One who believes she lacks in beauty, intelligence and humor. All she really lacks are the eyes and the heart of the mom who can see so much more in her than she could ever imagine.

I'm not sure that I love my kids the way they deserve to be loved. I do know that the love I feel for them is more than I ever expected. I pray it's a healing love.

Excuses Not to Write

The dog ate my creative writing assignment. Seriously. I was in the mudroom pouring him a dish of kibble, and heard the oddest crunching noises coming from my bedroom! I rushed to see what the commotion was and found Fido sitting on the keyboard munching on my hard drive. All right, maybe it was my cell phone. Swallowed the SIM card. Waiting for a puppy bowel movement so I could retrieve my list of phone numbers takes up a lot of time.

Maybe I should carry a notepad and pen around the yard while he squats, but I'm not sure I remember how to form words by hand. I vaguely remember kindergarten. Possibly using the tape recorder to dictate my thoughts would help. Typing out a wonderful piece of work later would be more my speed. Nevermind. I hate the sound of my voice when it's taped. Definitely curdles the creative juices.

I'm sure that after Fido does his duty, I'll have plenty of time to sit down and jot down the wonderful ideas bouncing around my head. That is unless poker is going really well today. Tournaments can take a long time. I think it has something to do with reading my opponents expressions when we play. That can be very tricky to do over the Internet. The players get cranky when I post and fold while I whip up a story or two. I most certainly wouldn't want to be rude.

Once the tournament is over and I collect my 10 points, I'll have loads of time to be creative. Well shoot, speaking of loads The laundry needs to be done. I'll get the clothes folded and put away and then dish up stories. Or maybe I'll just cook and dish up dinner instead because by then my husband will be home from work. Writing can wait till tomorrow. I need to spend time with my darling husband, don't I? There's plenty of time to write!

Lessons Through Gardening

Living in a home on a large piece of land is an amazing blessing for a gardener. The ability to grow your own fruits and vegetables, put them up in quart jars that line the pantry shelves to enjoy for months to come is a great payout. Rows of lovingly cultivated corn, beans, zucchini, cabbage, cucumbers, beets, tomatoes, carrots - - - WAIT! Where are the carrots?!

When my children were young, two rows of full grown carrots disappeared one summer. Each of my four angels were questioned rigorously about the missing veggies. Oh, not ALL of the carrot was missing. Each carrot top lay neatly by the hole it was originally nestled in. Teeth marks were a dead give-away that at least one of my four rascals was lying. It certainly wasn't a neighbor since the closest neighbor was a mile down the road. Yet each day the rows grew smaller. The kids swore, solemnly, through tears or with disgust that they "really didn't do it mom!" Not being an idiot, I punished all four of them. Grounded. Banned to their rooms for two days without a chance to step outside. Pure torture for a small kid on summer break!

On the second day of "lock-down" I grabbed my gardening gloves and my knee rest and headed for the garden. The garden covered a quarter of an acre, carefully laid out on a gentle slope allowing for excellent run-off during rainstorms. At the bottom of the slope, a wire fence covered with vines bearing luffa gourds separated the property from a swampy pond. The pond was a great place to explore! Frogs! Lily-pads! Water-skippers! Our family had enormous amounts of fun sloshing around in that pond. What else did the pond serve as home to? Nutrias.

Now, nutrias are not native to the Northwest. They are in fact a small carnivore rodent originating from South America. They were brought to Oregon in the early 1900's by people in the fur harvesting business. When the fur business collapsed, nutrias lost their nice farm homes and had to take up residence in other areas, preferably near water such as the pond near my home.

As I reached the top of the slope that afternoon, my eyes were drawn to the carrot rows by the movement of two small figures. They were plucking carrots out of the ground, happily munching away, laying the tops down and moving on up the row. Nutrias.

My heart sank when I thought back on my stern treatment of my angels. I went back into the house, called to the kids and apologized profusely. I quietly walked them to the top of the garden so they could spy the perpetrators. The girls were thrilled, clapping their hands and giggling at the sight. My youngest son, however, folded his arms and stalked off with a well deserved "I told you so!" During the commotion, the nutrias dropped their lunch and headed back through a hole in the luffa fence to their pond.

Soon our fence was mended and the critters had no way to enter the garden. The crop was saved! The carrots were somewhat depleted, but who cared? From then on I learned to trust my children more when questioning them. As recompense the kids received a small area of their own in the garden to eat from whenever they desired. Nutrias not welcome!