VOICES FROM THE EDGE: Waiting for Dad

"As it was in the beginning, now and ever shall been
world without end. Do we get more comfort than that?"
                                          
                                          Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

Allen jumps out of the car, excitement in his step. "The train's coming!" he says. "It worked!" And for a slice of one instant I am nonplussed: it can't be real. My son runs along the sidewalk next to the train track, rushing towards the station where a gray-haired woman waits with a suitcase.

I lower the window on the passenger side of my Nissan, letting the early autumn breeze carry in the sounds and scents of the incoming train. The lady smiles at my son.

"Waiting for someone?" I hear her ask.

"My dad," Allen says. He bounces from one foot to another.

"You must be excited to see him," she says. "Has he been away long?"

But Allen is suddenly bereft of words to explain, so he merely nods. As the train brakes with a screech, he moves away.

I watch him from the driver's seat of my car. Despite Allen's dedication the last eight weeks to the art of magical thinking, I know his father will not be on the train. I take three deep breaths, a calming strategy I have used often. I can't let myself get upset now; Allen will need me.

The train comes to a halt and a conductor jumps down, taking the suitcase from the gray-haired lady and helping her up the metal steps. Allen stands to the side, watching closely.

No one gets off the train.

"Help you, sir?" asks the conductor.

"I thought my dad would be on this train," Allen says in a rush. "We did everything right, Mom and me. This was the train."

The conductor looks up and down the length of the train. "Maybe he took another train," he says.

"He was supposed to be on the 906," says my son.

"Ah, that's the problem," says the conductor. "This is the 730."

Allen, dejected, hangs his head and saunters slowly back to the car. I take another deep breath. We have been back to Smedly Park to check the shirt Allen left hanging on a branch; we have found the biggest tree at Rosetree; we've found the strongest horse at Linvilla. In the eight weeks since Ron died--passing away peacefully in his easy chair--my youngest son, who has high functioning autism (Asperger's Syndrome) has handled a variety of "scrambled emotions" (Indiana University, 2019). He's had trouble sleeping, is vigilant about locks and dead bolts, and insists on wearing the same shirt he wore the night his father died. Each of my three children--Dennis, Bonnie, Allen--has had to find their own ways to grieve the loss of their father, but the issue for Allen is compounded by his brain's atypical function, making the finality of death hard to accept.

According to Dr. Tony Attwood, a noted expert on Asperger's Syndrome, an increase in spectrum behaviors helps the neuro-atypical keep calm and block negative thoughts. Allen's belief that his father will come back if he follows a certain procedure of carefully designed steps is called "magical thinking," a psychological concept that protects the thinker from the unthinkable. Writing in The Seven Laws of

Magical Thinking (2012), author Matthew Hutson contends that such thoughts provide an evolutionary advantage, encouraging us to be more participatory in life if we have some control over the outcomes.

At its most simplistic, "magical thinking" is a form of bargaining such as Audry Huff displayed during the 2010 World Series when he wore the same red underwear for every game, convinced it helped the San Francisco Giants win. Writer Joan Didion (2005) used magical thinking to recover from the sudden death of her husband, John Dunne. It took Didion two years to realize that any amount of bargaining would not bring her husband back. Life continues it's cycle. She learned to find comfort in that. 

For Allen, it's only been two months. He slides back into the car. "Wrong train," he says and sighs. "I'm doing everything I can to bring him back. I don't know why it's not working.

I speak carefully, aware that while I grieve for the man Ron was before the car accident stole so much from him 19 years ago, Allen grieves for the only father he's ever known. "Maybe he's not ready to come back," I say. "Maybe he has somewhere else to be."

"Why wouldn't he want to come back to us?" my son asks.

I shake my  head. "I don't know, Allen. But I know he was tired of being sick."

Allen nods and I know he is fighting back tears. I reach across the car console and touch his shoulder, expecting him to flinch. He does not. Then he starts to laugh.

"It would be just like Dad," he says, "to get on the wrong train." He says it without judgment. "He always needed you to tell him what to do."

I smile, conceding his point. "So, what now? Do we wait for another train?"

"No. We need to check again next week."

"Okay," I say and put the car in gear. Each Saturday brings another magical outing. We pull out onto Rose Valley Road. I venture another thought. "Maybe he's not coming back."

Allen's shoulders sag as he considers the possibility. "Maybe," he whispers. 

There is silence in the car. I take a few more deep breaths, telling myself that in time Allen will accept his father's death.

"I just can't stop trying yet," says Allen. "Not yet. It's too soon." And it is too soon,

only eight weeks into the rest of our lives without Ron. 

"Okay," I say.

We drive down Rose Valley Road, past the college where Allen-despite having special needs--earned an associates degree in technology and Ron proudly clapped as his son received his degree.  I spy Hedgerow Theater where Ron and I saw "A Christmas Carol" and "Noises Off" and "Our Town." I make a right onto Brookhaven Road and we drive by the house where Ron grew up. We are all the way to Bridgewater when Allen speaks again.

"I just want him to know much much we miss him," he says with a sigh.

"He knows," I tell Allen. "I tell him every morning and every night."

"Me, too," whispers my son. And this time he is the one who reaches across the console and pats my shoulder. 

WIDOWED: It ends with an "E"

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

John 13:34-35

The phone rings at 6PM Sunday evening, the display flashing the number of the medical examiner's office.  The two older kids have gone home with their partners, Allen has taken over the computer in my office, and I am sitting in the living room, sipping from a cup of tea and trying not to look at Ron's empty chair. I pick up the phone.

"Hello."

"This is Jenny," says the voice on the line. "From last night." I inhale sharply, the images and sounds replaying in my brain. EMT's. Flashing lights. Ambulance. Police. Hurried phone calls. Panicked offspring. 

"I wanted to tell you that we've ruled your husband's death as natural causes, due to cardiac arrest. He simply fell asleep and his heart stopped. He would have felt no pain, had no warning."

I let my breath out slowly. "Thank you," I say. "It helps us to know that."

There is a pause on the other end of the line. I take a sip of my tepid tea. My relationship with this young woman will be brief, based only upon this heart rending loss. I know nothing of her faith, but I say it anyway. "It helps us to know that Ron fell asleep and, when he woke up, he saw God."

Jenny does not respond. I wait, years of practice in hospital ER's and trauma

wards teaching me patience. "You know," she says quietly, "this job is pretty sad. I see a lot of the same thing, day after day. And the families I meet sort of blend together. But," and I think I hear her voice crack a bit, "I'm going to remember your family."

I manage a weak laugh. "Well, we're pretty memorable," I say, thinking of how my tall children--most over 6 feet--towered over the petite young lady who came to examine Ron.

"You are." I can imagine a smile. "Because your family showed me something I seldom see in this job. Love."

Love. It hasn't always been easy. There have been too many surgeries, too many hospitalizations, too many chunks of Ron torn away from us in the last 19 years. Things that should have been his responsibilities fell onto me. And the last two years, when Ron needed help with everything, were particularly grueling. To the outside world, it would appear that Ron's later life held little worth.

But the world would be wrong. Every time he was hospitalized, we were given a chance to demonstrate our faith. Not a surgery or an infection or a treatment happened without prayers for doctors and nurses, without hymns and Bible verses filling his room. Without cards from my students, holiday decorations, visits from our children, and as much love as we could pack into a ten by ten foot space. 

Matthew 28:19-20 tells us to " go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,  and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." As a new believer at the tender age of fourteen, I wondered if I would have the courage to enter the mission field and go to foreign and unknown places.

There are few places more foreign, unknown, terrifying, and unpredictable than hospitals. Yet those became our mission fields. 

"When I was examining your husband," Jenny continues, "I could see he had been well cared for. He was clean, no bruises, no sores. It was evident to me that he'd had excellent care. But even more than that was what I heard from you and your children in the kitchen." She sighs. "Too often I hear people arguing when someone dies, blaming each other, fighting over possessions. But you and your children were telling stories about your husband, crying some and laughing some, sharing good memories." Her voice gentles. "He was someone I wish I had known."

I am touched by her words and I choose my own carefully. "We know Ron is in

Heaven," I say. "We have faith that his struggle is over and he is with God."

"It was nice to see that faith," she says. "And I just wanted to tell you that, well, your husband and your family shared something special with me. Gave me some things to think about."

Jenny and I talk a few more minutes. She says I should feel free to call her if I have any questions about Ron's death. I know I will not. Jenny's entrance into our lives has been brief, but I cannot help but believe she is richer for it.

As I hang up the phone, I see in my mind flashes of the many hospital rooms Ron has inhabited. We planted seeds there. It had not been our choice, but we went into the world we had been thrust into and preached the gospel the best way we could (Mark 16:15).

I get up from my seat and head to the kitchen to warm my tea and as I do, I pause at the chair where Ron so recently sat, the chair where he died. I give it a pat and smile.

Even at the end of his life, Ron was an example to other people.

VOICES FROM THE EDGE: The Art of Magical Thinking

You will go out in joy
    and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
    will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
    will clap their hands.

Isaiah 55:12

I am at my desk, editing a dissertation for a client, when Allen slides a piece of white paper to me. Before I turn to my son, I put on my "I-believe-anything you say" face. "Hi," I say.

"This will be Dad's new body," he says and taps the paper.


"Oh." I study the sketch he has made. The facial features are blurred, but the outline has broad shoulders, muscular arms, a slim waist, long and rugged legs, slender feet. It is clearly human, but I know certain attributes have been influenced by the places we have visited in the past two weeks: the tallest tree at Rosetree Park, the strongest horse at Linvilla Orchards, the oldest bridge at Smedly, the fastest speed skater we could find on Wikipedia.

This is magical thinking at its best and most concrete, Allen's firm belief that if he can just concoct the right ingredients, his recently deceased father will come back again in a new body, one not broken by illness.

It began with the trees of the field.

Allen, who lives on the high functioning end of the autism spectrum and grapples with a world that is too loud, too bright, and too overwhelming, came in from the Plaza down the street one day last week and said to me, "The trees are whispering Dad's name."

"That's nice," I said. "God made the trees and Dad is now with God."

He gave me a curious look. "Not yet," he told me.

"But you know Dad died. You know he went to Heaven and God gave him a new body."

Allen nods. "I know. But I also know that Dad fooled death before. Maybe he can do it again. Remember?"

I remember. The night of the car accident, the surgeon who put the pieces of Ron back together again said to me, "Your husband is a strong man. Only a strong man could survive that." Time and time again in the last nineteen years, surgery after surgery, Ron defied the odds. Until on July 13th, he didn't.

I try to reason with Allen. "But you saw Dad at the funeral. You were there when we buried his body."

My son nods. "That was his OLD body. He didn't need it anymore. This," and he taps on the paper, "is his NEW body."


I get it, or at least I try to. Even before Joan Didion wrote her landmark book on grieving, A Year of Magical Thinking, the strategy Allen is using was a known anthropological concept. In short, it is the belief that a series of actions--performed carefully and in order--will result in a desired event. It is an illusion of control sorely needed by my son, to whom the forever loss of his father is just too much to accept.

And that's where magical thinking comes in. According to St. James, Handelman, and Taylor (2011), magical thinking provides a connection to what has been broken and helps the thinker cope with cultural expectations of control. During the days between Ron's death and his funeral, Allen needed to hold himself together, shaking hands and accepting hugs, saying "thank you" to those who expressed their condolences. 

All the kids miss their father keenly, but Dennis and Bonnie have their adult lives, their jobs, their partners. Dad was an everyday fixture to Allen, a large presence in his life. It's left a gaping hole. It's not the same with just the two of us, he complains. Hard to play Monopoly with only two people. I murmur in agreement.


"So, just how does all this work?" I asked Allen on Wednesday as we trudged through Smedly Park in the rain. I breathed a sigh of relief when I remembered where the old stone railroad trestle was. Allen needed something "old and stone that was from ancient times." It was ancient enough for him, part of my ancient childhood. 

Allen whirled and faced me quickly, tears in his eyes.  "You can't ask about it," he said. "You just have to let it happen. You just have to believe."

And I do. I believe that any amount of magical thinking will not bring back Allen's father, but I also believe that at this moment it helps Allen to feel safety in an unsafe world (Philosophy Talk, 2018). Every time he proposes a new expedition we need to take that is part of his carefully constructed script towards designing Ron's new body, I remind myself that autism grief is not neurotypical grief (Fisher, 2012.)

In a way, we're all guilty of a little magical thinking. Is his insistence that he hears his father's name in the leaves of the trees any different from Joan Didion's inability to part with a pair of her late husband's shoes because he would need them when he came back? Of if he thinks his father will have a new body with the strength of a horse far off from the lady at the bank who told me that each morning she wakes up and smells the breakfast her husband, gone 17 years, made every morning?

You just have to believe. I believe Ron is no longer in pain. I believe he is happy in Heaven. I believe I will see him again. 

And sometimes, I hear the trees whisper his name.

Can you make it to the end?

VOICES FROM THE EDGE: RULES FOR GRIEVING

Therefore, you too have sorrow now; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.

John 16:22

"Can I have Dad's blanket?" my son asks.


 It is a hot day in July and I cannot imagine why Allen wants a blanket brought from a hospital visit but it has been a draining week and I haven't the energy to form a question and listen to a response.

"Okay," I say. "I washed it this morning. It's in the dryer now." Allen heads to the basement and I think of the soiled laundry I dragged downstairs a few hours ago; shorts and T-shirts, bed pads and sheets. Things to fold and place into neat piles and think of giving away.

Allen is back in a few minutes, the white blanket in one hand, a purple sheet in the other. "Can I have the sheet, too?" he asks and I nod. "They're just what I need," he says happily and carries them up to his room, the place that holds an assortment of eclectic items important to Allen.

I heave a sigh and settle into a chair, a pile of mail in my hand. An ad for tires. A credit card offer for Ron. Irony at its best. Four cards, all addressed to "Linda and Family." I open each one and cry a little, then place them in the basket Bonnie has designated "the card holder."

I hear Allen in his room, moving things around, murmuring to himself. While I am proud of all three of my children and the love they displayed this week, I am particularly proud of my youngest son, whose Asperger's Syndrome makes sensory input and social interactions painful. Yet from Saturday night when EMT's flooded the house and the blue-lights of emergency vehicles revolved outside to the burial at the cemetery five days later,  he has--with the utmost of strength--kept himself together and with us. His siblings and I have allowed him to process things in his own way.

Like all of us, he's had to find his own way to say good-bye to his father.

Bonnie and Dennis stood on the back deck, arms around each other, openly sobbing as paramedics tried and failed to save Ron. Allen sat in a kitchen chair, an ice cube in each hand, letting the sensation of cold block out the cacophony of sensory overload. He seemed calm and detached, but inside his neuro-atypical brain was trying to make sense of the insensible. Order and preparation are necessary tools on the autism spectrum, but death always catches us off-guard.

We'd had conversations about it. All three children had seen their father struggle through many surgeries and hospitalizations, seen his  body grew weaker, seen the pain he suffered on a daily basis. We talked about the "some day", never giving a name to it, hoping that by not naming it we could prolong its coming.

It didn't work.

On Saturday, July 13, at 9:45 according to the policeman who stood vigil, Ron passed peacefully away, the soda and pretzel Allen had gone up to WaWa to get him two hours before on the tray table next to him.

 Lynne Soraya, writing for Psychology Today (2014), says for those on the ASD spectrum, there are just no blueprints for some situations that have the potential for sensory overload. The death of a beloved parent--particularly when it occurs at home, where safety and security are assumed, can easily throw an aspie into a meltdown. Karla Fisher (2012) explains the "meltdown model" in her own reaction to her father's sudden death. A meltdown may not be an outburst--screaming, kicking, acting out--but an inward processing failure. The four emotions readily recognized by most autistics--happy, sad, anger, fear--collide and entangle in ways foreign and strange to neuro-typicals.

Those on the spectrum, like the rest of us, need to process grief in our own way. Dennis, our oldest, holds himself together carefully, afraid to let any cracks show lest he fall apart completely. He keeps his feelings in check, but sketches things out on scraps of paper. He hangs onto the things he shared with his dad, like trips to the Spectrum to see the WWF, and the complicated games Ron invented. I am grateful he has Laura to help absorb his grief.

Bonnie --Daddy's Little Girl--throws herself into projects, sorting through photos for favorite pictures of Dad, creating a memory box to stow precious moments. She spent most of the first, awful week with me, the same way she dealt with each of her father's surgeries and hospitalizations, project bag in hand. I am grateful to Jared who keeps her grounded.

I read and write in my journal, call my best friend every day, knit and watch movies I do not pay attention to. I think about what life will look like now for Allen and I. I think, irrationally, of painting the kitchen cabinets and getting a rug for the living room, now that Ron's walker and wheelchair can no longer catch on it.

And Allen, whose life is still here at home, asks me a hundred times a day if I am okay. I am his touchstone. If I am okay, he can be okay. When someone asks how he is doing, he says, "Mom knows." Right now, it is all that matters to him.

Well, that and a few of his father's possessions he carefully guards: a blanket, a sheet, a card game, a golf club, the chess board he and his dad used to make up a zany game with GI Joes.

Allen knows his father is gone. He knows we buried Ron's broken body at Lawncroft Cemetery last Thursday. But in some part of his being, beyond the senses and the need for ice cubes in his hands, he knows that death is not really the end. He told his therapist just yesterday, when she asked him how he felt, "I know what everyone says. I know they all say my dad is dead. I just want Dad to know that if he wants to, he can come back. 'Cause we love him."

It's not quite John 16:22. But it's close.

It is evening now and we have picked at a supper. Allen has joined me in the living room where I am knitting and pretending to watch a movie. He has his dad's blanket and the chess board. He sits at Ron's tray table, playing by himself the complicated game he and Ron made up. He turns to me and asks,"Do you think Dad is playing with your dog that died?"

"Yes," I say.

He nods and smiles. "All I'm asking," he says seriously, "is for you to believe in the possibility that we'll see Dad again. Maybe not for a really long time, but that we WILL see him again."

I nod. Tears spring to my eyes. "I can believe that," I tell my son.

In fact, I'm counting on it.

What's in a Name?

“Do not fear: I have redeemed you. I have summoned you by name; you are mine." Isaiah 43:1

 I passed out blank paper and pencils and asked my students to choose several colors. Then, using the room’s white board to draw my own example, I asked them all to write their names in the middle of the paper, nice and big. Puzzled, they looked at each other and then at me. Surely this was not content for a college class?

But as I wrote “Linda” in the middle of the space I’d made on the board, they followed suit. “This is the name the world knows you as,” I said. “But what other names or roles do you have?”

With no further instruction, I turned back to the white board and began to cover the square I’d drawn with other words: Mother, wife, sister, daughter, teacher, aunt, writer, reader, knitter, professor. Then I added nicknames I’d had through the years: Honeybear, Bubbles (don’t ask), Giggles, Lyn, Da (my brother’s childhood name for me).

 Still curious and unsure of the purpose, the 31 adults in the class began to fill their own pages. Within ten minutes, they’d loosened up, using a multitude of colors, writing in cursive and print and bubble letters.

 Finally, I turned back to them. “We all have a lot of names and a lot of roles,” I told the class. “Now I want you to circle the name or the role that YOU choose to identify yourself. Who are you?”

 Slowly, they all began to smile. Returning to college as an adult is not an easy task. They needed to see themselves as capable students, to break away from the naysayers who told them they could never earn a college degree. To be something other than what they had been.

 On Sunday, Pastor Tim told the story of a woman in Joshua 2 who was known by one name: Harlot. I imagine her blank piece of paper might have held other words: slut, prostitute, whore and additional derisive terms. But she could have added other roles: daughter, sister, spinner of linen, protector of family, seeker of truth. Roles no one else in Jericho called her, but things she saw in herself.

 All of Jericho knew what Rahab did. It was how she was known. Her house was built against the outer wall, the seedy side of town, and all her neighbors could see the many men that entered into the house. The travelers who came seeking “the harlot Rahab” told her stories of God’s miracles, such as the parting of the Red Sea and the overthrow of Sihon and Og (Bible Gateway). And while her neighbors only saw a woman with loose morals, God saw someone whose faith could make her a heroine.

 Can you imagine the scene? In Joshua 2, the spies come
to Rahab. Given her reputation, no one thinks it odd when strange men enter her house. The neighbors probably just shake their heads and wink at each other. But she, astute woman, knows the stories she has heard from travelers about the God of Israel are true. She makes the decision to throw her lot in with the spies; she takes a risk to save herself and her family.

 Pastor Tim summed it up this way:



1. Rahab knew there was a problem. In her case, more than one. She was not only a prostitute, she did not believe in God.
2. Rahab responded to God’s salvation. She did not let her name or her reputation stop her.
3. We are like Rahab. We might not have her exact sins on our piece of paper, but unflattering things about us are scrawled all over it.

 In Matthew 1:5, we note another name Rahab can add to her paper: ancestress of Jesus. Rahab lived the rest of her life as the wife of a righteous man, Salmon, and was the mother of Boaz. She is one of only four women mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus. Quite a change from the name she was known as on the streets of Jericho.

 After the initial “Introduction to college skills” class, most of my adult students went on to graduate. Some even asked for letters of recommendation to graduate programs. And many still keep in touch with me, years after they have gone onto other things. They came to see themselves, not as others saw them, but as they saw themselves.

Just as Rahab came to see herself as God saw her.

 It does not matter what happened before. All that matters is that God knows us and calls us by name.

 He has redeemed us! (Isaiah 43:1)

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