Veterans of Grief

 I'm sure I have written a post like this before with a similar title.  I am taking another stab at the subject.  My youngest brother Keith was born on Nov 11th 1970 aka Veterans Day. .  This is the 54th anniversary of his birth. I was born in September of 1964, so I was already 6 years old when he was born. 

. Keith's last Veteran's Day was 16 years ago when he turned 38. He died 5 months later in an Elgin nursing home when I was 44. Since then I've turned 60 and he's perpetually 38. Keith loved math and I'm pretty sure if he was still around he'd call me up today to announce that he had now been alive for  90% of my lifetime. The truth is that he was on;y alive 63.33% of my lifetime time and that number goes down each year I outlive him.   

Now Keith would want me to provide a more accurate accounting of that number by factoring in the 5 months between his 38th birthday and that day in April of 2009 when he shuffled off this mortal coil.  Let's be real, Keith would want me to calculate the percentage down to at least the day, factoring in the leap days as well.  He probably wouldn't be satisfied with even that and want it down to the last minute.  

But That's not what I would want.  What I would want of course, is that his multiple health problems were all resolved and that he was here with us celebrating his full deck plus 2 jokers (that's 54th please try to keep up)  birthday with us.  What I would want is that his children now in their 20s would still have their Dad with them instead of hardly remembering him or not remembering him at all.  What I would want, is that instead of struggling to recall his legendary dumb jokes, there would be another 15 1/2 years worth of them to smile and nod at. But I did not get what I wanted. Instead, I got grief. Now Veterans Day means more than just Keith's birthday to me.  It reminds me that I'm a veteran, a veteran of grief.  

I'm going to spend the rest of this post unpacking the last sentence of the previous paragraph. When Keith died Amy and I had been attending a small group at our church for only a few weeks.  We knew the leader of the small group pretty well because he was the children's ministry pastor and all our children were in the children's ministry at the time and we were both volunteering there.  So when he showed up at Keith's visitation I wasn't too surprised.  What did surprise me, however, was that the couple whose house the small group met at came to the visitation. We had just met them a few weeks before.  They didn't have children, and they didn't attend the same service as we did. It really meant a lot that he came.  He explained to me that a few years before when his father had died, he had a similar experience.  Some people he hardly knew came to the funeral because they had lost someone and knew how important it was having people there not only to pay respect to the person they lost but to also be there for those who had lost someone.  Both the couple who came to Keith's visitation and the people who had gone to his Dad's funeral had one thing in common, they were veterans of grief.

When I think of a war veteran I think of someone who's been through something devastating and life-altering and has been permanently changed by it.  Grief has that same effect on you. There is something else I've learned about veterans they try to be there for each other.  There is a camaraderie, a family bond. It's a community that doesn't require serving in the same unit or even the same war.  The same could be said about a veteran of grief.  I don't know if this is true of all veterans be it war, grief, or something else.  But as I dealt with losing Keith, empathy for those encountering the same thing grew in me.  I was never one to shy away from the funerals of people I knew, but I started gravitating to the funerals of family members of people I knew. As a veteran of grief, I have been able to comfort people and try to help in tangible ways as people begin their journeys with loss and grief.  

Keith is often front and center in my heart and mind during these times.  I have not yet lost someone closer than a sibling and have not experienced what it is like to lose a child, a parent, or a spouse.  I have done my best to comfort those who have lost more significant people in the time since Keith's passing. A dear friend lost his father and wife in short order.  I have to be honest I can't imagine losing Amy.  I know it would devastate me completely and while I know God would bring me through it, I know it's just a drop in the bucket in comparison to losing Keith. Amy herself lost both her parents within a few years of each other.  It broke my heart to see her "orphaned" knowing that her loss was far greater than mine.  Yet knowing how God has helped me through this lesser loss of Keith has helped inform me how I can minister to others as they become more experienced with grief.  

I still miss Keith, especially on days like today.  Tomorrow my remaining brother and I head over to Keith's house to help his widow with some practical needs.  It will be bittersweet just a day after his birthday.  All my siblings have tried to look out for our sister-in-law and our niece and nephew and I think we would all say that we wished we could do more.  In sports veteran players often act as a surrogate coaches to rookies and other new team members.  Grief is not a team that anyone chooses to play for. Isaiah 53:3 prophesies about Jesus describing Him as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.  Jesus, His word, and His people have equipped me as a veteran of grief.  I'm not sure if I'm paying forward, or pointing backward but regardless of the direction I'm so glad to try to be there for others when grief has them upside down. 

\

Weekly Writer's Workshop: Brand Names and Store Brands, and Fictional Lands. Oh My.

 John Holton from The Sound of  One Hand Typing is hosting the Weekly Writers Workshop.  Here are his prompts for the week.  (I am doing the ones in bold.)

Here are the prompts for this week’s Writer’s Workshop: 

1.  Write a post based on the word rules. 
2. Write a post in exactly 9 sentences. 
3. When you grocery shop, do you prefer “name” (i.e. national) brands or “store” (or generic) brands? Or a combination of the two? Why? 
4. Tell us about something you learned in October. 
5. If you could spend a year living in a fictional world, which one would it be, and what would you do while you were there? 
   
6. Do you think you would be a good leader of your country (e.g. president, prime minister etc.)? Why or why not?

National Brands or Store Brands

Generally speaking, I'm a generic or store brand guy.  There are multiple reasons for this.  One, I generally like most foods and don't notice a big difference between store brands and name brands.  Two, I like the savings that shopping at a store like Aldi produces in my budget.  In fact, I quite prefer the Aldi brand brownie mix to any other brand name brownie mixes out there.   We often still refer to the Aldi products by their brand-name counterparts;   Aldi Sandwich cookies are Fake Oreos and  Aldi Woven Wheat crackers are Fake Triscuits.  

That being said, there are some brand-name items that I will spend more money on.  I think one of the reasons for that is that most of these items are "splurge" items so since I'm buying them infrequently I don't mind the occasional additional expense.  Nutter Butter cookies, for example, don't always have a store brand equivalent and they are good for an occasional treat.

My Fictional Sabbatical

If I could spend a year living in a fictional world it would definitely be the land of Narnia.  You may think that I'm too old to enter Narnia.  But some adults like the Cabby and the Cabby's wife (The Magician's Nephew) have entered Narnia.  So there is hope for me.  As for what I would do there,  While I wouldn't mind meeting Reepicheep the mouse, or going to the parliament of Owls,I would do whatever the adventure Aslan brings me.  This is a common phrase used in many of the Chronicles of Narnia books by C.S. Lewis, who just happens to be my favorite author. One advantage of spending a year in Narnia is that no time would pass while I was in Narnia, so I would not miss a single minute of my time with my family.  I enjoy my life with them much more than any fictional world could afford me.  

If you'd like to participate or see other submissions to this week's workshop click here.  

"Recent" Posts from my Blog Roll

Blog Insider: An unsolicited and superfluous look beyond the minutiae 

 Today's Episode: Recent Posts from My Blog Roll

What is a Blog Roll?

It is a list of other blogs that appears on a sidebar of blogs and websites.  Each blog listed contains a link to the blog and often contains a link to the most recent post.  Some will include a snippet of the most recent post, and the date last posted.

Are Blog Rolls still popular?

Blog Rolls used to be a very popular feature of blogs because they were an easy way to find other blogs to follow.  Just as blogs have lost popularity over the years blog rolls have as well.  One of these is due to technological advances.  At the height of blogging popularity computers were the main way blogs were accessed.  Now that cell phones are supreme, many people access blogs on those or on iPads.  When you access a blog on a phone, the blog looks different and a lot of the features like a blogroll can not be seen readily.  On my phone, I can switch to the regular computer view on the bottom of my screen but I assume very few people do that.  Also, many people just subscribe to blog content and don't access the entire blog that way.

Call me a Blogosaur.

I continue to use my blog and format ir like it was 2009.  I use my blogroll as a way of keeping up with my favorite blogs and even in my lean months (June through October) when I'm not posting as much, I am still on my blog using it to access the most recent posts from other blogs that I follow.  

I currently have 53 blogs listed on my main blogroll.  I have them listed by hy how recently they posted so the most current content keeps on coming to the top.  I do list on my blog roll how recent the posts are so I can tell you that as of 1:00 p.m. central time today (November 5th) I  follow fourteen blogs that have posted in the last 24 hours. Nineteen more blogs were posted at least once in the last week.  An additional eight more were posted between a week and a month ago. Seven more were posted between a month and 6 months ago, leaving five more posted in the last 12 months.  On another blog roll that I have titled" These blogs are so last year,"  there are 3 blogs that haven't been posted on for over 12 months. For the rest of this post, I will link 1 blog from each of these categories and state how I've come to follow it,

Posted in the last 24 hours

For the most part, the blogs that fit into this category are blogs that post very frequently often with multiple posts a day.  This isn't always the case, sometimes I might catch a blog that only posts every 5 or 6 weeks immediately after their recent post.  But as I said, for the most part, these are blogs that are constantly providing new content.

The Sound of One Hand Typing  is a blog I have discovered through my association with the A to Z blogging challenge that takes place every April.  The most recent post by John Holton is his prompts for the Weekly Writers Workshop that he holds on his blog.  I have participated in this the past few weeks and hope to join the fun again later this week.

Posted in the past week.  

The blogs here could be of the variety where they post on average once or more e  a week or they could be recent posts of blogs that blog a little more sporadically than that. Lindy Scott is someone I've mentioned on my blog multiple times.  Back in the mid 80's he was one of my first pastors, and has been both a mentor and hero of mine.  He has recently retired from a career in academia as a professor of Political Science.  His most recent post is called "Trump's Plan to Eliminate the Federal Income Tax: Why would any Sane Person Support it?" Its title indicates that it is an analysis and critique of Trump's most recent idea,  

Posted in the last month.  

\Some of these blogs are updated every 10 days or so and some of them are updated quarterly or more it just depends at what point you catch them.  Andy Unedited is one of my favorite blogs about literature, editing, publishing, and biblical living.  What else would you expect from a former editor at Inter-Varsity Press?  Andy Le Peau's most recent post, A True to Life Allegory, a review of a book that combines John Bunyan's A Pilgrim's Progress with Peter Kreeft's  Between Heaven and Hell.  It sounds intriguing as it intertwines two of my favorite books by two of my favorite authors,   The retired editor did spell Bunyan wrong, but, then again,  he once wrote a post called Confessions of a Bad Speller, so that's understandable.

Posted in the last 6 months

The 6 blogs listed here run the gamut from "where blogs go to die" (formerly prolific posters now on their last legs), semi-whenever posters, and some who are still on hiatus after finishing the April A to Z blog fest.  Another Fearless Year may look like it's on its way out.  After averaging over 80 posts per year between 2019 and 2021, it has only generated 18 posts since then.  I am hopeful, however as two of those posts were in September of this year.  The most recent of which, Grief, A Brief Description, is an excellent poem.

Posted in the last year

This is a kind of an endangered blog list.  Some of these still publish but are now on yu tube or another type of platform.  Some only post during the A to Z challenge which now ended over 6 months ago.  The A to Z challenge blog is an excellent example of the latter.  Its most recent post is about the A to Z Road Trip.

Posted more than a year ago

At midnight on New Year's Day each year, I change the name of my blog roll to "These Blogs are so last year."   As the blogs post new content,  I remove them from that blogroll and then decide whether to put them on the new blogroll or part company with the blog. Generally, by the end of March, almost all these blogs have posted again.  There are always some stragglers.  The Star Trek Sci-Fi Blog  , for example, went 22 months between January of 2023 and October of 2024 in between content. I just changed blog rolls on it at the end of this month. 3 blogs have not added content since 2023 and I really don't expect any of them to do so before the end of the year.  One, near and dear to my heart, is a blog I encourage my oldest daughter to share her poetry. The last poem she shared on the blog was called Growing Up. Fortunately, she has other outlets for her poetry and continues to write just not on her blog.

The deep dive into the minutiae of this blog is over for now.  But when I thin of more information less exciting than watching paint dry, Ill be certain to share it again.

The Protestants are here

The Protestants are here. 

 That's what my father-in-law would say when our family would come to visit. My father-in-law and my father, as I mentioned in my last post, were both the oldest of 7 children and were both raised Catholic. I was thinking of my F-I-L today . There is a student in my school with  his exact first and last name, and I was subbing in that student’s first period class today.  Their first name is Donnell so it's not exactly an every day name.

My wife's Dad was not only raised Catholic, but he also was a Benedictine Brother living in a monastery before he gave up his vows and married  my mother-in-law.   So when he called us Protestants,  this was a little more than the average layman's opinion. 

This opinion was true. We were in fact, Protestants.  We never referred to each other as such.  While it was true that both Amy and I had grown own of our Catholic beliefs and were attending a Bible church when we married, we simply referred to our selves as Christians. 

It was on this day in 1517 that a professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg by the name of Martin Luther is credited for changing the course of religious history and making a distinction between Protestants and Catholics.

What's A Catholic?

The first use of Catholic dates back to 110 A.D. It basically means universal.  Saying the Catholic Church in it's original meaning was talking about all Christians.  In AD. 380 Christianity became the state religion of the Roman empire.  In essence the Roman Catholic church just means the Christian church operating in Rome.  

What's a Protestant?

A Protestant is called this because historically  they protested against the teachings of the Catholic church.  These protests led to the Protestant reformation.  The reformation was meant to reform the Catholic church not to necessary split from it,

Martin Luther was one of the original reformers. He nailed 95 theses on the wall of the Wittenberg Door.  These theses were protesting Catholic practices like indulgences.

What's an indulgence?

In the medieval church, a system developed of how to earn your way out of purgatory into heaven.  It began as  a series of "good works" like fighting in the crusades and then devolved into a practice of purchasing indulgences from the church in order to get sins forgiven.  Lost in all these practices were the biblical teachings of Grace, Faith and Redemption.  One of the myriad reasons for this is that the truth of the Bible was not accessible at time to the masses.  The Protestant reformation  that followed changed 

Christianity back to its Biblical roots. 

What Separates Protestantism And Catholicism?

The Reformation highlighted 5 core beliefs that distinguished it from the Catholic church.  These are often referred to as the 5 Solas (Latin for Alone).

Sola Gratia  - Faith Alone 

Salvation is in no way deserved, cannot be earned and is entirely from God.

Sola Scriptura - Scripture Alone

The Bible is God's authority on how we are to live.

Sola Christus - Christ Alone

The Bible teaches that salvation  comes from Jesus Christ.

Sola Fide - Faith Alone

Faith (not works) in Jesus Christ is the only way to Salvation

Soli Deo Gloria - Only God receives the glory

There is nothing special in us that allows us to be saved.

My Father In Law would often use the phrase Sola Scriptura but not in a positive sense.  He disagreed that scripture in itself was enough.  This is not only a typically Catholic belief but it is also present in all of us.  It is in our nature  to think more of ourselves and our traditions than actually exist.  The truth is that we as individuals and institution are always in need of Bible based reformation.  I hope today on Reformation Day and every day you endeavor to let God reform you into his image. The image of God who created, lived for, died for , and redeemed you.  It sometimes may seem tricky but it really is a treat. 

  

95 Reasons by First Call

SOULMATES 34 years and recounting.

Here are the prompts for this week’s Writer’s Workshop: 

1.  Write a post based on the word soulmates. 
2. Write a post in exactly 8 sentences. 
3. Post photos of your Halloween costume or your (grand)child(ren)’s costume(s). 
4. Make a list of things you have planned for November. 
5. List the top ten songs that you never want to hear again, and why. 
6. Write an essay entitled “Giving a child an unusual name is a bad idea.”

I chose #1. I decided to write an Acrostic essay about my soulmate and best friend who is also my wife of 65 years.  (We've only completed 26 so far.)

Suited to one another? I met Amy in the fall of 1990. I was 25 and she was 21.  I was returning to the WIU campus after having to take the semester off for academic reasons.  She had just graduated from Northern Illinois University that Spring and was starting graduate school in Macomb. 

Our paths meet. She decided to go to the year's first large-group meeting of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship which met on the 2nd floor of the student union.  I believe the meeting was held in the Fox Room.  A majority of our meetings were held in that particular room.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, our meeting at the Fox Room (if it was the Fox Room), was not the first time Amy encountered me.  She had gotten to the Student Union early that night and was studying at the Hardees when she spotted me waiting in line to order. She thought to herself, self, that the guy in the ball cap stroking his chin and pondering what type of Hardee’s  fare he will consume tonight is just the kind of guy who is likely to be at this meeting tonight.

Lisle, Illinois is where Amy said she was from when I introduced myself to her at the I-V meeting.  It turned out her hunch was right I was one of the students on the exec committee for our chapter and introduced myself to all the newcomers that night.  It also turned out that Lisle was where my grandparents lived.

Many things in common. Besides Lisle, it turned out that Amy and I shared quite a few similarities.  We were both from families with 5 children.  Our fathers were both the oldest of 7 children.  We were both raised Catholic and we both became disillusioned with that faith when our Parish priests came into our Parochial schools in 7th grade to tell us that not all of the Bible was true.

A Friendship quickly blossomed. We were inseparable.  Because I did not have a car at school and because we lived in suburbs near each other we drove back to the Chicago area on holidays and vacations.  We both enjoyed watching and playing sports and so many other things.  Whether at school or back at home we spent most of our free time together.

Time Passed as it always does.  She was the closest friend I ever had.  But life outside of university beckoned us both and we began to make our way in the wide world.  We talked on the phone,  exchanged letters and tapes over the years,  and spent as much time together when we were in the same time zone. Many people began to realize that there was something between us beyond friendship.  If there was we were oblivious to that notion.  

Eventually, we realized what others had already figured out.  We loved each other, and one night in February of 1997 on AOL of all things, I got the memo that the Godly wife I had almost given up on finding was the same person who had sized me up at Hardees all those years before,

Soulmates? Certainly, but the best kind. Best friends who fell in love and never stopped being best friends.

Thanks to John Holton for hosting the Writers Workshop at The Sound of One Hand Typing.