I was suffering a bout of insomnia and decided to go through some of my old stuff. I wrote this back in 2000. It's strange sometimes to look back and see the progression of some the lessons I learned and how they affected my future. It's a little long, but there was a lot to put into it.
I hope it means something for you.
My sister Diane recently showed me a collection of letters
that were among some of my mother’s possessions. They are providing me a great deal of insight
into many different aspects of my parent’s lives that I had not previously been
aware of.
My parents divorced when I was 10, and the end of that
marriage was not pleasant. Since they
both died when I was still too young to really understand the reasons for the
failure of the relationship there are many questions that will remain
unanswered for me. I can only go by what
I experienced directly. I remember many
nights when I could hear them arguing in the living room. I would lie in bed listening to the sharp
words through my bedroom wall desperately hoping it would stop. I remember one particular night after I heard
one angry retort after another I called out to my mother. The argument stopped suddenly and she came
into my room.
“What’s wrong?” she asked quietly.
“Please stop fighting.
I don’t like it.” I said
“It’s ok, Danny.” She said as she stroked my cheek, “We’ll
be all right.”
“Ok. Can I talk to
Dad?”
“Sure.”
She gave me a kiss and a hug and went back into the living
room, and I could hear her say to my father, “Your son wants to talk to you.”
My father walked in a few seconds later. His step was slower and gentler than I was
used to hearing.
“What’s a matter son?” he asked. Maybe it’s just me looking back with a
tainted view, but I would swear he was close to crying when he asked me that
question. My father was never one to
cry.
“I just want you and Mom to stop fighting.”
“Ok. We will. But don’t worry, we’ll be fine. Ok?”
“Ok.” I sat up and
gave him a hug, and he held me tight.
“You go to sleep now.
I love you.” He said.
“I love you too.”
Looking back I realize that this occurred near the end of
the relationship. I have no idea what,
if any impact this incident had on them, but for me it came to define in later
years what I thought their relationship was like. It was the last thing I saw, and the first
thing I remembered when I thought about their marriage. I allowed this to color my thinking without considering
the fact that they had been married for almost thirty years at that time. I assumed their relationship had always been
like this.
As I began to read my mother’s letters, I found they had a
union that was worlds removed from my perceptions of it. Some of these letters are written in the very
early years of their marriage, around 1943-‘44.
In some my father is in Europe fighting in World War II. She is writing to her parents in Petaluma,
California, from where she had moved to Cleveland, Ohio where my father’s
family lived. She is pregnant with my
oldest brother Bill. She writes about
daily life, the clothes she is sewing for the baby, the price of food and the
things she is doing with his family. She
also talks about my father. She talks of
how much she misses him, and how much she wants to see him again. She tells her parents what a “great guy” he
is. There is no question that she loves
him.
There are also letters from my father to her parents. He talks about what a great wife she is, and
how deeply he loves her. He talks about
how much he misses her and their son while he is overseas.
I will never know all the reasons for their divorce. I will never know exactly what led to their
disillusionment. Some answers are locked
within lives that I have no access to.
There are times when answers to some things are simply beyond my reach,
and no matter how great I think my need to know is, that chasm between question
and answer is not going to be bridged.
As much as I cry out what I think are the right questions the only
response I get is the empty echo of my own voice. With that in mind I look at what I do have at
my disposal, and I find that though the end of my parents’ marriage was not
happy, the end did not define the whole.
I am given the opportunity to see the beginning that I was not there to
see. I can infuse my memories with some
of the happiness that I have discovered did indeed exist in their life
together. I can see that there was a
time when their relationship was a good example of what a marriage should be. I can only guess at the changes that occurred
between them that led them to their point of no return. They were probably very gradual in their
nature. A slight change of habit here, a
different need appearing there. A desire
expressed by one refused by the other. I
don’t know. There is always more to any
situation than I can see.
The first document in this binder is a poem that was apparently
written by a good friend of my mother about her. I do not know exactly when as it is not
dated.
“Hollywood Episode”
Once there was a little girl,
A sweet and wholesome maid,
Who heard of glamorous Hollywood,
And its lure could not evade.
She thought she’d like to be a star,
And live in regal splendor
With closets full of lovely gowns
And rings on every finger.
She envisioned every week a check
Too big for simple math
And clearly saw outside her door
The crowds awaiting autographs.
And so we find this lovely miss
Leaving friends and home
Telling those she loves farewell
To seek fame on her own.
But this little country lass
Fools no one with such chatter,
It isn’t a career she wants
It doesn’t really matter.
What her heart is really set on
What she dreams about at night
Is the day she’ll finally meet The One
And know that He’s just right.
In a cozy little cottage
She’d love to settle down
And raise a happy family
In a shady country town.
Her friend compares what she initially thought she wanted
out of life, and what she later realized that she truly wanted. She did indeed go to Hollywood for a little
while, and did some acting and dated some actors that went on to make names for
themselves. Yet she also left it behind
when it did not satisfy her true desire.
We all seem to start out that way. We walk into life thinking we know what we
want, only to find that what we truly
want is either something completely different from what we are pursuing, or
something we had all along. In his book,
“Lake Woebegone Days” Garrison Keillor says it this way “Some luck lies in not
getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you
have it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you
known.”
My mother was a beautiful woman within and without. In her letters I find myself marveling that
the woman I knew who had all the right words of comfort for me growing up, and
all the answers to my questions, knew so little at times. She asks her parents for advice on many
things that I took for granted. She had
to learn things too. There was a time
when she needed to depend on her own mother for different things. It was a time when the things parents passed
on to their children were still considered worthwhile.
There are letters to my mother from my father, telling her
of events that are happening and hoping he will be home soon. My father was not what I would term a
sentimental man, but the pain of their separation is infused in the words of
his letters. He was not as hard a man as
I remember. He was lost at times, as I
am too. He was a much better man than I
have given him credit for. He was the
man who was my father, and he was worthy of the love I gave him even with his
flaws.
It was a time when they longed for each other’s touch, and
valued each other’s company. It was a
time that I had forgotten, or perhaps had allowed to be overshadowed by the
pain of their divorce.
There are other letters in this collection as well. They are from friends overseas in the
army. They describe different aspects of
the war. Some of them have holes in the
paper where the wartime censors have cut out words that describe their
locations. I had always heard that this
kind of thing had occurred but I had never seen it with my own eyes. Somehow as I read these 60-year-old letters,
they didn’t seem so old. The physical
connection of the actual paper that I was touching brought everything closer
over that expanse of time. So much of
our history is tucked away in the boxes in our attic. We have so much to learn from our past, and
yet we try so hard to forget it sometimes.
Sometimes we don’t want to give up our preconceived ideas for the
incontrovertible truth, and sometimes we would just rather not change. It’s simply too much trouble. After all, it takes a lot of work to change
your life when you find out that some of the basic experiences that have shaped
you as a person were based on misconceptions.
The marriage that I saw end in anger and bitterness began with love and
devotion, even longing. It was richer
than I had imagined, and all the years of my life that were influenced by
acrimony are now found to be incomplete.
This incompleteness within me was what caused me to search so hard for a
greater love, and a greater peace to put my faith in. It was this that allowed me to discover the
healing that takes place when I experience both the receiving, and the giving,
of forgiveness.
So then this begs the question: How will this change
me? What difference will this make, and
who will see it?
The answer is: I haven’t got a clue.
The fact of the matter is that I am a man who, when faced
with a personal epiphany, often expects to see great change in my life when I
am on the mountaintop. Yet shortly after
I return to the day to day tasks within the valley the changes I see aren’t all
that dramatic. I have a hard time
following through on some things.
But I will say this: I will appreciate that which God has
blessed me with more readily.
My wife says we should live every day as if it were our
last, and having so far survived a brain tumor she is more than qualified to
make that statement. I agree with her,
but I have no idea what I would do if I knew today might be my last. Did my father ever wonder about that when he
was in the middle of a battle? Did my
mother ask herself this when she was lonely and waiting to see if her husband
would come home? Do we ever bother to
wonder about this when we don’t face
a crisis in our lives?
If today were my last day would I bother to do the dishes or
mow the lawn? Would I still take out the
garbage? I doubt it. Or would I do the normal things with a
greater appreciation of my ability to do them?
Would I be able to spend more time with my wife and children, or would I
only be able to look at them and wonder how I could possibly say in one day all
the things that should have been said over a lifetime that could convey the
depth of the love I have for them?
Perhaps we can live our last day only as well as we have lived the days
that have gone before it. Can I make
each day the sum of all that have gone before?
Can I live well enough to be certain all of those whom I love will know of my love for them if I never
speak another word to them?
To express a lifetime of love to someone takes a
lifetime. It requires every day that
relationship exists, because each day builds on the next. It is a cumulative effect. It can’t be done in one day; rather it must
be done every day. And if it is done
every day, as it was the first day then the relationship will never end. Because when it comes right down to it the
only love that is capable of surviving in its purest form is the love of God,
and that will live beyond us as a legacy to those that come after. The legacy we leave our children goes far
beyond what is written in our wills.
There is always more left unsaid and unseen that still influences
generations yet to come.
Recently my pastor and his wife celebrated their 25th
wedding anniversary. At the surprise
reception the congregation had for them their children said a few words. I will never forget the words of their oldest
son. He said that while growing up
people would inevitably ask him what it was like being a “pastor’s kid”. He said, “It didn’t matter to me that my dad
was a pastor and my mom was a pastor’s wife, because they were always my
parents first. We always knew they loved
us. We always had priority.” He honored his parents by giving back to them
what they had given him: the love that never dies.
So I must consider the truth and substance of the legacy I
leave from this day forward, and pray that I leave behind something worth keeping.
©Dan Bode 2000
