When I Can’t See Ahead

I used to walk in tennis shoes, miles under my feet, until I wanted to climb around on the mountains and bought a pair of boots. Lately it feels every inch of my life is a mountain worthy of those Danners. After another Saturday in the winery kitchen, I laced them up and kept pace on the trail with James Taylor as he reminisced, helping feelings go where they need to go.

I wonder if others cry just a little, like me, when he sings,

“One time I saw my Daddy dance, watched him moving like a man in a trance. He brought it back from the war in France, down on Copperline…..”.

Click the song and feel the feelings with me as you read with me. 🙂

Life is beautiful and it is hard. I know yours is too. One season and then into another; joy and pain, sun and rain. I’ve seen it all by now.

I thought of the man I knew for 21 years as Sonny. He was my father.in.law. I thought of his all-leathered-face and leather hands, how his pens stuck out of his shirt pocket and a small screw driver did too. He liked one joke which he told on occasion; “A duck walked into a bar and asked the bartender, “You got any grapes?…..” He wore only cowboy boots, heavy cologne, drove a backhoe with the posture of a knight riding a black stallion, and made sure everyone around him was well fed.

Eleven years ago, I gave him a haircut and trimmed his thick nails just days before he reluctantly left his home for a nursing home room. He was too sick to be cared for at home —days later, three of us kept vigil in the night as he lay dying–or should I say as he was getting ready to really live? When the others ran to find a nurse, as his breathing abruptly changed, I found myself alone with him, leaning over his old, dear face, caressing his dark brow…softly telling him it was all ok. I could see the next step in front of him much better than I can see mine. I had never touched his forehead before and never had I comforted a person leaving the earth before. I tried hard to be there for my own father’s parting, but he left while I was on my way to him, still hours left to go. How odd it seems to me that it was I who sat with Sonny as he lifted from his body–it seemed as if he flew right past my face. I could smell diesel fuel heave from his lungs with that last earthen breath—the fumes from his old backhoe trailing behind him as he flew. I understand my death and Sonny showed me it is easy to do. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, the apostle Paul said. (2 Cor. 5:8) His death was serene and I felt unafraid as I watched him go. Though he didn’t speak, I was sure that he was unafraid too. It is my life that keeps me guessing–this daily living. It still seems good to remind each other that it is all going to be o.k.

The creek was flowing heavy tonight as I walked by, like life has sometimes. It runs in a course whether swollen with rain or summertime-slow, but I have felt unable to see even one step of my life in front of the other for some time now. I muse that as long as I stay in the river’s flow, I needn’t fret about where it will carry me, as long as I’m moving in the currents of God, and like that ancient text, “asking for the ancient path, the Good way.” Jeremiah 6:16

James Taylor is singing again, now back in this room he says…

“First kiss ever I took, like a page from a romance book, the sky opened and the earth shook, down on Copperline.”

I remember the blond-haired boy in Illinois who took my first kiss at a 7th grade dance. I remember the summer past our eighth grade year when that boy grew so much taller than me, as most of the boys did, and seemed muscular, and athletic overnight. The days of my beating them at dodge ball were over for sure. Years later, I learned he died in a wreck when we were all still just too young to leave like that for good–he left little girls behind too. I wonder why, and me still living, chasing creeks, taking walks, and musing about it all right now.

What I can see are my feet propped up on a stool tonight, the screen is getting blurry as I’ve been here looking into the light much too long. I see some of my things placed around the pretty room, photos of my sons, a Christmas cactus and a vine that will go with me when I leave here for a home of my own some day. I can see my work week just ahead, the daily walk, the daily quiet-time, but this is all I can see. Flung away are the days when the next steps were piled up ahead of me; a trip to KY, a class to take, little boys with a myriad of needs to fill, always the next school year, hay to buy, the next garden, the next meal to prepare. Last year was a year of broken routines, broken meetings, broken plans, shut down churches, and my sons-turned-young men seem suddenly on the verge of moving on.

There is a great comfort in a creek and in a river. They know where they are going. The path is carved out and someday when I finally get on the Buffalo or the Mulberry with my lil’ blue boat, I will be carried where all you who’ve gone before have been carried too. And I want to go where the saints before me have gone; on the good path, the ancient way, the will of God, the river that leads to the crystal sea. This is the hope I have…..that even when I cannot see ahead, the path is ready, sure, and real as the Buffalo.