That Ingenious Hero

I left the worship service and walked into the bright Sunday morning air of northern Arizona, not too far South of the Grand Canyon.  As I walked out the front door of the building, I looked across a vista that seemed to go on without end.  I don't know how far it actually was because my East Coast eyes are just not accustomed to seeing that far.  At the far end of what seemed like miles, stood a magnificent, majestic mountain, rising straight into a cloudless desert sky.  I think in Arizona they call these 'ridges,' but to me it was a mountain.  The sun cast light and shadow in such a picturesque fashion, it literally took my breath away.  I had to stop and compose myself.

I grabbed a drink from the cooler in the bed of my pickup and walked to the tailgate where I leaned and stared across the vista to the horizon.  It was just so big and stunningly beautiful.  I praised God and thought, "This is the perfect way to end a morning of worship."

I turned back toward the building to see how many other worshippers would join me.  I suddenly realized I was alone.  How long how I stood there?  I couldn't begin to imagine but everyone else, all the locals, had gone on their way, leaving me alone in the parking lot.

Strange.  Didn't they see what I saw?  Didn't it arrest their attention and drive them to their tailgates to worship?  Apparently not.  They had come out into the bright sun, chatted for a bit and, perhaps without a second glance or moment's reflection on the Creator, climbed in their vehicles, kicked on the A.C. and hit the dusty trail.

All of this shocking beauty had left them unmoved.  It was just more of the same for them.  Another day in Paradise.  

As with so many aspects of life, sooner or later we grow accustomed to life as we know it.  We are so easily bored.  What once brought pure joy, now brings a ho-hum.  What once filled us with fear brings cold resolution.

So life has become with Dad.  More of the same.  It's not that serving dad's daily needs has ever been anything like a worship experience.  Quite the opposite, really.  But in the beginning, when everything was new, it definitely felt like an adventure.  A Journey in the Dark.

There was fear and apprehension and a lot of moments of, "Yeah...well...ya know what...no...I don't think I can do that!"  And eventually, off ya go and you do what seemed impossible and you survive.  Sort of like repelling off a one hundred foot high cliff or paddling down a dangerous rapid.  Fear followed by the joy of overcoming.

It's been a while since I posted here at Last Days.  Frankly, I just haven't found anything compelling to write about.  Maybe it is that I've grown accustomed to the daily nature of Dad's care or maybe its just that life with Dad has just gotten too routine for me.

Maybe the problem is I no longer feel like Ulysses.

In The Odyssey, Homer writes Ulysses was "that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy."  

That's who I was at the beginning of the journey.  "That ingenious hero."

But not now.  Now, I feel much more like...like Larry Daley.  He's the Ben Stiller character from the movie Night at the Museum.   Larry is a would-be inventor whose ideas never quite catch on.  As the story begins, he's once again out of work and forced to take a job as a night watchman or risk losing his visitation rights with his young son, Nick.  Having come face to face with his dad's failure once again, the young boy confronts his father this way:  "Maybe you're not special, Dad.  Maybe you're just an ordinary guy who should get a job like everybody else."

The concept of being an ordinary guy hasn't been real easy for me to grasp either.  And I suppose even hero work can get routine.

So here I am, average Joe, the ordinary guy, growing a bit restless with my heroic duties!

Everywhere I go, all sorts of people ask me the same question.  A clerk at the grocery store, a waitress at the local pizza shop, the ice cream guy, a friend at church, the mailman, the neighbor.  It doesn't matter.  It's always the same seemingly simple question.


"So.... How's Dad?"

I always pause when people ask me, "How is Dad?" as if an extraordinarily long ponder will add a certain profundity to my ill prepared answer.

Dad has Parkinson's disease among many other problems.  In his waking moments he is often in the throws of what nurses refer to as "the mask."  He stares blankly and doesn't seem to hear or comprehend who you are or anything you say.  He lacks ability to lucidly and quickly communicate in a one-on-one conversation.  If you were to talk to him while he's in "the mask" state, you would feel he is simply not there, not listening or unable to comprehend.  You would assume trying to communicate is a waste of time so you'd stop trying.   

Truthfully, I don't often know for sure how Dad is.   He rarely tries to speak to me anymore and when he does it is rare that his thoughts are coherent enough to be understood and when his thoughts are coherent enough to be understood I can rarely comprehend them over the TV noise and the bubbling, snapping, crackling sounds that come from lungs and throat that seem relentlessly filled with saliva and mucous and on those times when I turn down the TV and put my ear next to his mouth and I ask him to repeat, he rarely can remember what he was going to say but, instead, stares at me for a few moments and then looks past me to the TV and motions, with some annoyance, that I should turn up the volume.

If that sounds exasperating, you're starting to get the picture.

But that is not the entire picture.  Like so much of communication, understanding and knowing my father-in-law is all about taking time to ask and taking time to listen.  Maybe the question I need to ask myself is whether I still care enough to ask and wait for an answer, an answer that will come in his time and in his way.

He is like so many people we pass by day after day.  They live, they breathe, they walk past us at the mall, they sit in the next cubicle at work, in the next row at church.  They live out their days a few hundred feet away in the next house but we don't really know how they are doing.  We don't know who they are.  We don't know what they need or how they suffer.

Maybe like me, you aren't anyone special.  Maybe you are just an ordinary person.  But maybe today, maybe to this or that lost soul, you'll be Ulysses, that ingenious hero they happen to need today.

You could find out in a moment ... if you ask.