Sacrifice

Speaking of a family's sacrifice in the time of war, this scene from "Saving Private Ryan" never fails to move me deeply.



It is, indeed, an actual letter written by Abraham Lincoln to a woman whose five sons served in the Civil War. However, Lincoln was incorrectly told all five were killed in battle.

In truth, only two of the five sons died in battle. The other three survived the war.

When a family member dies....

....it rips a hole in your heart...your life...your sense of belief.

In a very real way, it ends life as you know it. Your life will never be the same again. The sense of shock, of grief, of gut-wrenching pain is so intense it's as if the rest of the world fades into the distant background. Your world stops.

It can be startling ---- painful, even ---- to see the rest of the world go on as if everything was normal. "Can't you see?" you want to scream. "How can you act as if nothing has happened??? My world has been shattered!"

When you lose a loved one, you no longer know what 'normal' is - particularly if it's a child or someone with whom you were still sharing a roof. Their absence, that gaping hole in your life, is palpable.

Adapting to the way things now are is a slow, painful process filled with pitfalls and moments when your loss feels as fresh as if it happened just yesterday.

Relatives and friends can try to help. But when Dad died in 2006, most of what people said or did in trying to comfort me made me wince.

And for the first few weeks, especially, it was jarring when people would ask, "How are you doing?" I wanted to say, "How do you think I'm doing? I'm doing horribly!"

It was painful and exhausting to even try to answer the question.

I'll never forget the one long-time friend who asked me, about 6 weeks after the funeral, "So, are you about back to normal now?" When I said, "no," he acted as if I was doing something wrong.

As if losing a parent was like spraining your ankle.

A friend of mine lost a niece to a horrific, senseless traffic accident this past week. She was only 6. There was nothing anyone could do to save her, though they tried desperately.

Everyone close to her is understandably devastated. I find myself wishing I could say something to ease their overwhelming pain.

But what words can help? I'm not sure there are many.

In such times, I guess it's the ministry of presence that is the most powerful, through a hug, or holding a hand, or performing a simple household task or errand so they don't have to.

It's always a difficult journey when we have to say goodbye to a loved one, no matter how many times we've had to do it.  And it can only be managed a day at a time. Sometimes even just an hour at a time.

It's the cycle of life, they say. There's something to that, I think. Those who have endured such grief can be helpful for those who have freshly entered that dark, seemingly endless valley - simply because they've made that walk themselves.

It seems to be a natural way to have some good come out of something so painful.

A soldier returning home sees his son's first steps

That may hardly seem noteworthy....except Michael is 6. He was born with cerebral palsy, and doctors said he would never walk.

Good thing he didn't listen. He learned to walk while his father was away on deployment, and his family decided to surprise his father with the great news upon his return.

I was in tears before the video ended.

"Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up"

I've just returned from several days out at the farm.

I spent the time gathering information for the family history I'm writing, going for walks and just hanging out with my mother. I'm blessed with a strong relationship with her, and she welcomed the opportunity to just stay at home for a few days and veg. She's 85, yet she has been blessed with good health and is still able to get out and about quite well (despite hip replacement surgery and sciatic nerve issues in recent years), so for her to stay home for 3 straight days was noteworthy.

Someone new is staying out at the farm these days, too. He wandered in a day or two before I arrived, a mixed breed (looks like a poodle mixed with something else) who obviously was abused wherever he was before. He won't let us approach him, but he desperately wanted food, water and warmth. Mom has dubbed him "Curly" for his black, curly hair.

He keeps us at a distance, but liked to keep us in view most of the time. He also took to napping on the front porch, and just watching us through the patio door. (We have had a long-standing rule of no pets in the house....make sure they're taken care of, but none inside. I agree with that rule for many reasons).

Anyway, for all his stand-offishness, I had to chuckle when I took a picture of Curly just before I left the other day. He was looking at something out by the creek, away from me. But when I called his name, he turned, saw me with the camera, and plopped down on the grass in a beam of sunlight. As if he was posing.

See for yourself.

Mom's fussing already about who is going to take care of him when she's off on one of her jaunts to see family or friends - trips that can last several days. Curly may end up at my sister's house in rural Reno County, where she still has a young son and a teenage daughter at home.

We'll see. He's clearly fond of Mom already.....and that makes me smile.

Why should you wear your seatbelt?

This commercial is a poignant answer:

A night of near misses - and one that didn't

I found myself watching an episode of "Storm Chasers" on the Discovery Channel tonight. The series follows groups of storm chasers through spring in Tornado Alley...some trying to gather scientific data that will help researchers and meteorologists better understand tornadoes and the conditions that create them......and some just trying to capture video and photos that will draw large numbers of hits to their Web sites.

This particular episode struck close to home, because it was in late May in Kansas last year. The Friday before Memorial Day, when tornadoes touched down awfully close to Quinter - the small town next to I-70 in northwest Kansas where my oldest brother, Don, lives. I remember blogging about those tornadoes - one of which hovered in the sky and passed over I-70 and Quinter before finally touching down north of town. Talk about a close call....

Later that night, a tornado touched down in Kiowa County and seemed headed right for Greensburg...which had been decimated by an F5 tornado just the year before. Thankfully, it fell apart prior to reaching Greensburg.

Hearing the tornado sirens go off in the wrecked town that Greensburg largely remained was particularly chilling. As threatening as the clouds appeared, the poor souls of Greensburg had to be shaken to the core as those sirens blared, given what they had been through the previous May.

I was glad to see the researchers check out farm damage north of Quinter the next morning, to remind viewers of what tornadoes can do. There was something important missing from the episode, however: perhaps 50 miles east of Greensburg, on that stormy Friday night, a couple from Colorado was struck and killed by a tornado as they drove east toward Wichita. Driving through a storm in the dark, they probably never knew what hit them.

It would have been wise to mention the fatalities, to remind viewers what can happen when tornadoes strike.

Sights and sounds of a family Christmas

Our "official'' family Christmas was smaller this year than in most years past, with only a couple of my siblings and their extended families joining Mom and I out at the farm this year.

But it still offered a bevy of delightful memories.

Jameson, my 3-year-old great-nephew, was convinced every present under the tree had his name on it.

"I hope he has help distributing the presents, or they'll all end up in the same place," I told my goddaughter Rachel as we waited for everyone to settle in for the opening of gifts on Saturday afternoon.

The presents duly distributed, I did what I do every Christmas: sat back and watched everyone else open their presents.

"Dinosaurs! I got dinosaurs!" Jameson shouted, holding up an Allosaurus and Stegosaurus, battery powered beasts that roar and have movable legs.

He was also thrilled with the dinosaur movies he got for Christmas, and I'm sure they're the first thing he watched once he got home. The homemade pajamas? Um, not so much. But they sure looked like they'll keep him nice and warm the rest of this winter, and a few winters still to come.

I could relate to his enthusiasm about dinosaurs, though. I was fascinated by them as a boy, too...and that interest didn't wane even into adulthood. When my girlfriend, Karla, and I went to Salt Lake City to visit her sister, I figured out a way to swing by the Dinosaur National Monument on the way back, pestering the curators with questions as closing time bore down on us.

Gillian, at 7 months old the newest member of our family, was most fascinated by the wrapping paper her presents came in. Oh, and that other baby she kept seeing...in the mirror she was given as a gift. Darned if that other baby didn't look just like her! She also is the spitting image of her mother, my niece Stacey, at the same age.

I don't remember Stacey chatting as much as Gillian does. Gillian just loves to talk, even if it's still baby babble and no intelligible words have formed yet. It makes me smile, because it's a sure sign she's content.

When I was little, we saved Christmas wrapping paper as if it were made of money - no surprise, really, when you consider my parents were stretching their dollars as tightly as they could so they could keep eight kids clothed and fed. Later on, as more of us left the nest, they didn't feel the need to be as cautious --- so the grand finale of our gift exchange was usually a blizzard of "snowballs" made from the remnants of the wrapping paper. This year's version was merely a few flurries.

We didn't take our usual walk along the farm paths and fields after the big holiday feast - perhaps because it was so cold and windy out and also because a couple of my siblings were eager to dive into a round of Nertz. That card game, sort of like solitaire on steroids, has been a family passion ever since I was little. We usually pair up in teams of two, though one person can handle both duties - the pile of 13 cards and the main pile from which the player turns over three cards at a time just as in solitaire. I think we played until supper time, losing track of the score along the way. Mom was right in the middle of it, which was probably the best part of all.

After supper, I set up Mom's new Netflix account, a modest gift from her children that will allow her the joy of seeing movies from decades past that she always wanted to but never did because she was too busy raising a bushel-basket full of kids and there never seemed to be money around to catch those films in the theater.

She'd be the first to say, however, that the presents which mean the most to her are the presence.....of her large and often boisterous family.

I can only second that emotion.