by Kathy Brasby | Apr 29, 2013 | Personal

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In my father’s last morning on this earth, I was privileged to sit alone with him for over an hour.
The night before, I realized that the family had come to tell Dad goodbye and assure him of their love. But Dad wasn’t able to speak at that point and I went to his bedside that last morning with one idea in mind: to speak what I thought he’d like to say to us.
I assured him that we knew he loved us. We knew he’d worked hard for us and that he had provided very well for our mother. I told him that we knew many practical things because of his teachings.
And then I launched into stories that I knew he’d remember.
“Remember our neighbors up north? Remember when they had a sick horse and called the vet but by the time he arrived, the horse had died. So the neighbor met the vet at the driveway. ‘The horse died. Do you want to see it?’ The vet shifted his pickup in reverse. ‘Naw, I’ve seen plenty of dead horses.'”
My dad loved a story and had told this one to the family many times.
I took his hand that morning and searched my memory for another story.
“Remember when you were tired of buying fly swatters for Mom? She was murder on those flies but the swatters splintered under her stern hand.” I swabbed some water in Dad’s mouth before going on. “You decided to cut a fly swatter from an inner tube and punched holes in it. That fly swatter could take on Flyzilla. The only problem was the black marks left on the walls when Mom went fly hunting.”
Once Dad would have snorted with laughter. Now he blinked and swished drops of water in his mouth.
“You’ll remember this one better than me,” I went on. “But I hear that when I was two, I could escape the fence around our yard and go exploring. When a guy doing groundwork with grader found me watching at the edge of his field, you decided to fortify that fence. I could shinny under the gate and I could climb up the wire fence. So you jammed railroad ties under the gate and put barbed wire at the top of the fence. It was that way until we moved. I was 13 by then, Dad!”
No chuckle. Once he would have leaned his head to the side and told me that he couldn’t be sure about me at 13, either. Not this time.
I gripped his hand like it might slip away at any moment. “You were always a little slow to talk about your World War II days, Dad. Being an orderly kept you away from the front lines. Maybe that was a failure to you but it was great to me because it meant you came home in one piece.”
No one drifted down the hallway past our room. Even the horse in the painting on the far wall seemed to hold its breath this morning.
“I remember the story you told about the young soldier who arrived in a body cast. The nurse insisted on pulling the bedsheets tight and clamped that young man’s feet flat to the bed. When he cried in pain, she called him a baby. But you came behind her and jerked the sheets off his feet. I still remember you bobbing your head as you said, ‘And he said “thank you” after I did that.'”
As Dad’s health had declined over the years, so had his ability to fix things. Whether inventing a better fly swatter or freeing a soldier’s painful feet, Dad responded to problems with a solution.
In his final years, Dad had not been able to solve what he had once easily fixed. He needed his children, whom he’d taught.
On that last morning, I wanted him to know that his gifts were remembered. And that his family, who had watched him for many years, could carry on what he had begun.
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by Kathy Brasby | Mar 29, 2013 | Personal
I remember walking somberly into my church as a child on Good Friday, surprised at the dimness of the sanctuary and the absence of candles on the altar. A black cloth hung over the cross and no music played.
It was a powerful reminder of Jesus’ death and the hopeless of a world without God.
I had a time several years ago when I believed God had abandoned me and so I allowed a wall to form around my heart. But eventually I found I missed him. I didn’t want a world without God.
So today I reflect – again – on the thorns of my own pride and find my heart longing for the abundance of God’s fruit.
Fortunately he’s promised never to leave me or forsake me. I don’t have to wait until Easter to celebration.
My joy happens moment by moment.
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by Kathy Brasby | Mar 8, 2013 | Personal
The photo came via a text on my phone along with a message:. “Tell Mom the daffodils have finally pushed through.”
Our mother loves to garden. She ordered the bulbs for her yard last summer, before her stroke felled her. The bulb package showed up the week after Mom’s stroke.
My sister and her family managed to get 75 bulbs in the ground before the temperatures plummeted.
You plant bulbs with hope. The bulbs look too dead to endure a harsh winter. But the vision of the spring’s new life and colors spurred the family on.
Here in Colorado, we’ve been hammered by the lack of snow this winter. The ground is so dry that many farmers are considering parking their planters this year. The cost of buying seed and fuel may be greater than the potential harvest.
Our family has been hammered, too, this winter. Not by lack of snow but by loss and disappointment. As I’ve mentioned before, my father died in September and my mother suffered a major stroke in October. Our winter has been consumed with therapy and fear.
For a time, we wondered if we’d lose both parents back to back. Then we wondered if Mom would regain anything stolen by the stroke.
Mom has learned to sit up again, lift herself with one arm and a grab bar, and swallow again. The therapists have her walking – stiffly, awkwardly, but one foot in front of the other.
“She’s doing great,” they tell us.
My sister’s photo of the emerging daffodils made Mom happy. “We’ll have to go see those one of these days,” she said.
When those bulbs went in the ground, we all wondered about Mom. Would we be able to show her the new plants? Would the bulbs even grow in this drought? Would she survive the winter?
Yes, yes, and yes.
And I think those daffodils mirror our hearts as well. It’s been a long dry winter but spring’s coming.
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by Kathy Brasby | Feb 1, 2013 | Personal
If it weren’t for apple pie, I’m pretty sure I would have been a high school dropout and begun a checkered career involving recycled bicycle parts and horseshoes.
But that’s a story we won’t have to write because my mother was an ace pie baker. None of this thawing a pie and sneaking it into the church potluck. My mother wouldn’t even use canned pie filling.
She would buy 30 pound cans of frozen cherries at the end of summer and re-package them into pie-sized bags, sprinkling the cherries with corn starch and sealing each for the winter pie season. That was as close as she got to prepared pie fillings.
Her children were devoted but naive fans of her pies. If we ever got a bowl of the cherries during re-package day, we’d sprinkle our cherries with corn starch just like Mom’s pie filling. Even though the corn starch squeaked against our teeth as we ate the fruit, we couldn’t imagine cherries any way but Mom’s.
Our Thanksgiving feasts were not much about the turkey and a whole lot about the arrangement of pies, from pumpkin to apple to mincemeat. We saved room for an afternoon of dessert.
Mom baked a pair of pies the day before her stroke. Now her left arm hangs limply at her side and we don’t know if she’ll ever make another pie.
I am going to learn to make pies. I have avoided that arena because Mom’s pies are legend in our family. They were beauties with a golden crust sparkling with the sugar sprinkles. Mom’s pies were the reason to invite family and sometimes a lucky neighbor over for dinner.
It seems right to learn. Not to replace Mom’s heritage, for I can’t begin to do that, but somehow to honor it.
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by Kathy Brasby | Jan 28, 2013 | Personal
I know the last three months of my life have only been unique for me. I’m not the first to lose my father followed shortly by my mother’s stroke.
We’re still walking that ragged path of stroke recovery with my mother. We’ve seen astonishing progress when we look back three months. Looking back a week, not as much.
Perspective matters.
My sister and I, as our mother’s primary support, have not collapsed into a puddle of tears or wafted into dramatic hysteria. It’s not our way but that doesn’t explain much.
Certain things matter to help stand firm in the face of overwhelming fear and stress, such as:
- Flexibility. My plans for my day can change in a moment and there’s no point in hand wringing. Change gears and go on.
- Priorities. Maybe I haven’t cooked as many meals for my family, but I’ve made it a point to eat dinner with them. We make times for laughter and conversation even though I’m with Mom at least three hours a day.
- Faith. Our family believes God has not left us or Mom. We don’t question whether God did this to her. Neither does my mother. She trusts him to care for her now and to take her home one day.
- Good health. Even my mother, felled by the stroke, is in pretty good physical health and so are my sister and I. It’s tougher to maintain a stringent schedule with nagging health issues.
- Optimism. Our family assumes Mom will get better, although we know there’s a chance she may never return to full activity. But we’re looking for the gifts God gave her, such as the ability to talk and use her right hand and leg.
- Friends and family. Not only do many neighbors and friends check up on Mom and prayer for her, but total strangers are weighing in to encourage and support her recovery.
We walk day by day. And we’re doing all right so far.
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by Kathy Brasby | Nov 12, 2012 | Personal
“Sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.”
Violinist Itzhak Perlman upon finishing a concert after breaking a string.
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