The Whisper Space

Monday, September 25th, my brother Mark and I traveled down east and south to the little town of Dublin, NC, in Bladen County, to attend the funeral of our Uncle Ewell, the last brother of the Robeson clan to pass on. (Our Daddy has been gone for almost 12 years)

It was a beautiful day, and it’s always good to see dear relatives that we seldom see anymore. Uncle Ewell had lived a long and blessed life, having turned 91 in August. He was a Godly man who loved the Lord, his family, his church, and playing Scrabble. (I thought it was ironic I had a game of Scrabble in my car:))

The service was special. Two retired pastors spoke who had known him well. We heard the details of his life that Mark & I didn’t normally see. He was a lay speaker and active in the community all of his life. We sang “Beulah Land” and “The Land of an Uncloudy Day”.
I knew he was creative as well. He made grapevine wreaths and baskets in his later years after he retired from farming and running a grocery store. He also liked telling stories and would slyly “pull your leg”, as the old saying goes:) All the Robeson’s loved to laugh:)

We caught up on news from our many cousins, and enjoyed the fellowship of family. Uncle Ewell and Aunt Isabelle had 10 children, so you can imagine how much fun it was for our family to go to their house as we were growing up:) All ten were there and everyone felt the day was one of celebration.

A day of happy rememberances, a day to get reacquainted, a day to say good-bye to a gentle man who loved to grin and smile.
He always loved a visit from his neices and nephews too:)

I write this with fear and trepidation.
I have not faced the ultimate pain of losing a child.
But I feel such sorrow when it happens in our community.
I take it personally.

Last weekend a student from Apex High school was killed in a freak accident. Oh, what a great tragedy to lose a child. Oh, what sadness to lose a young person on the threshhold of adulthood. Oh, the emptiness of losing someone so dedicated to helping others.
Then again, oh, the emptiness of a child if they were struggling to find their place in the world.

This past week I sent a card to a precious friend who lost her son in Iraq almost 2 years ago. Her son’s birthday was September 13th. She is suffering deeply, fighting to stay afloat as she navigates through this sorrow. She’s attempting to come to grips with this wound, a wound that will never go away.
People remembering Brad is some comfort, and she emailed me that it was good to get a card.

I have another dear friend whose son commited suicide more than 10 years ago. Oh, the pain and agony in that is hard to describe:( She allowed me into some of her deep pit. I must say that was a gift to me. That I could be with her and cry with her. There may have been a little comfort there. In time, and with God’s mercy, she has come to a place where she lives with heartbreaking sorrow but is not controlled by it. Her big fear? People forgetting Paul.

How do we comfort others?
We pray, we give a hug or hold a hand, and/or cry. We send a card or a note, or two or three. We say very little. We listen. We call or email on birthdates and anniversaries.
We remember.

I know I need to send a card to the family of the student that died.
Every word sent in comfort is a balm of tenderness in the darkest of times.

Just spent the day with part of the Robeson clan celebrating Mama’s 85th birthday. A fun day. A tiring day. My brother Lindsay was the gracious host. We had a cookout and, with my brother in law George’s help, Lindsay cooked the hamburgers and hot dogs. Seth picked up the KFC:) Cameron brought drinks. My sister Christy and her daughter Michelle and I made the potato salad, deviled eggs and cole slaw:) My nephew Jake and his wife, Krystal, had made a beautiful white two-tiered birthday cake topped with a young photo of Mama–it was so pretty and delicious!

Christy’s twin daughters came for a while, Amy & Michelle. And cutest of all, Christy’s twin granddaughters Harley & Kendyll (8) and Chrissy (5), all who kept darting in and out and around and about:)

From the time Keith and I drove into Lindsay’s driveway with Mama, she didn’t recognize where she had lived for 50 years. She wondered if we knew the folks who lived there?
She refused to believe it was her birthday. She was frustrated when we gave her cake and presents. Actually, she was agitated most of the day:( We think there was too much going on, and she didn’t understand why she wasn’t in Lobelia, her childhood home, with her Mama..? (That monster Alzheimer’s always rears it’s head somehow:( )

After Mama opened her gifts and while Christy and Keith kept her company, the rest of the McFarland crew, Amy, George and Lindsay hiked to the creek and up the back rise along my property lines. It was a beautiful day for it:) Plenty of spider webs everywhere though, so Lindsay and George took turns leading the group waving a stick back and forth to remove the invisible clingy nuisances. Thankfully Lindsay had used the bushhog to mow a wide path throughout the brush and weeds which made our walking easy. The wide meadow, my favorite place on the farm, was freshly mowed also. It looked tempting enough to draw us over to play ball or tag or catch fireflies–which is what we did as kids:)

Cameron, Seth, Christy, and Lindsay played horseshoes for a while when we returned from our walk (Seth was the champion:)). Then it was time to go. Mama couldn’t be put off any longer. She had been ready for an hour or two and was getting antsy. These days she’s not content anywhere long.

So a nice day came to an end.
It was meant for Mama, but, in the end, she was only with us in spirit.
Today was a day for the rest of us:) I will remember it fondly as time shared eating, hiking, visiting, playing, laughing together on the farm:)

I spent part of today with a dear friend. She graciously asked if I’d accompany her to a doctor’s appointment in Raleigh. I felt honored. It’s not easy to ask others, even good friends, to join in on a time consuming trip to the doctor. Her husband was out of town and she can’t manage to do things like she used to. It’s very frustrating to her but she doesn’t show impatience and seldom complains.
She’s a lovely, graceful, sweet person. She is elegant, tall and slender, in the prime of her life.

But a monster has stolen her independence.

It has robbed her of her balance, her quick thinking, given her slurred speech and numbness in her fingertips. It gives her sleepless nights filled with great pain.
This monster is scary, lurking around the corners of her and her family’s lives day and night, night and day. It pushes her down, takes away her appetite, makes dressing a chore, ties her to a walker and, more and more, to her home. It reduces her to living moment by moment, seeking God’s mercy.

The monster?

MS!

I have another precious, kind, friend who suffers from a different form of MS. She struggles to carry on, unrelenting in her daily activities. She is still mobile, driven to help others. She serves her church with great devotion, a woman of faith. Oftentimes I marvel at her energy! She’s not one to sit still, but she has found within the last year that this monster demands she use a cane once in a while, and it demands rest. So, now and then she listens and does become still for a time.

MS—-the culprit, the evil one. One day, in God’s mercy, it will be cornered, arrested, and put to death.
What a day of rejoicing that will be!
Till then, friends are good medicine:)

Today I visited my mama. She lives in Pinehurst at Carolina House, an assisted living home, in the Discovery unit. I try my best to go down weekly. Sometimes we go out to lunch, sometimes we drive around Aberdeen or Southern Pines or Pinehurst, sometimes we drop in on my sister and brother who both live on the family farm not too many miles away, or, every now and then, we go shopping.

When I headed south from Apex this morning I decided, spur of the moment, I would take Mama shopping at Walmart for only the second time since she’s moved to Carolina House. One big reason to go: it has a wheelchair. I have scoped the Sandhills area and found only 3 places with a wheelchair for customers; Belks, Goody’s and Walmart.

One big reason not to go: the last time we went to Walmart, it was difficult. The handicapped parking was full, which meant I had to pull up in front of the store, run in and find a wheelchair, help Mama into the chair, then leave her while I found a place to park. I worried about her forgetting where she was or who she was with while I searched for a space. I finally had to settle on one in the “lower forty”:( Seems in a retirement community Walmart tends to be busy all the time! After we finally got in (and Mama was relieved to see me return!) we got along fine, but I was exhausted, and we had only begun!

Today was a treat. The Walmart Greeter gave us his ‘best’ chair. Then a dear lady stopped and held the wheelchair while I helped Mama from the car. She wheeled her into the store and stayed with her until I parked. And the closest handicapped parking space became availabe just when I needed it—Somebody was looking out for us:) The wheelchair was easy to maneuver and could turn on a dime:) We had a grand time checking out isle after isle of items in every size and shape and color. We bought a blue brush, a blue knit shirt, and pink and blue socks–she loves pink and blue:)

A day shopping at Walmart can be quite a gift, especially when strangers perform little acts of kindness:)

Well, it’s come to me lately that we are closing in on the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Fran–that vicious ‘lady’ that slammed through the Raleigh area in September 1996.
If you know me, you know I love rain, and crave rainy days that don’t come often enough for me in North Carolina. They are peaceful and calming. Now hurricanes and tropical storms usually bring the gift of rain in our region, except they often are accompanied by tremendous winds and even tornados. Not good!

On September 6th, 1996, Fran arrived, roaring in around midnight, with a vengence. Greg Fishel had forcast the possibility, but he didn’t realize we were going to experience a direct hit. Somewhere between 12:30 and 1 pm, as the wind began to howl, a tall pine tree beside our house was twisted by a downburst and broke into three pieces, crushing my Pontiac van and Seth’s Celebrity, stabbing through the living room wall just missing the fireplace, and spearing the roof countless times. It ripped off the gutters and the fashia boards on the front of the house, and the railing on the front steps. (Little did we know it would stay that way for 6+ months!) Next, a second pine fell, blocking the driveway and smashing through our shrubs and crepe myrtle!
The power died soon after. Keith and Seth went to the attic and attempted to make a few temporary patches with trash bags to keep out the pelting rain. Then we huddled together in the living room and hunkered down for the duration; Keith, Seth, Skye, Charlie and me, scared silly! Shivering and praying! Our Basset hound Charlie whined and trembled, hiding under our feet–he was no fool! He knew it was serious!

The wind moaned and roared, the rain came in buckets, and we could see the outline of the young pines bending down to the ground. Every so often we’d hear a pop when a tree split in two, or crashed to the ground, or into a house. We had a radio that was broadcasting the TV weather. That was a comfort. About 4am, the eye passed and the wind grew quieter. That night was one of the longest I’ve lived through! We certainly didn’t sleep a wink! Do you know there were people that slept through the entire storm? Amazing!

At dawn, neighbors began appearing on the street, checking out how much damage had been done. The Vineyard was in shabbles! Trees, limbs, and debris were everywhere. Other than Seth, who headed straight to bed, we ventured outside and walked through the neighbor in bare feet, like zombies, in a daze, just glad to be alive! It looked like a bomb had exploded. I must say, we didn’t sustain the worst damage, but our red house took the prize for looking the worst–all the gutters were dangling, the crown molding ripped away from the siding, the cars were smashed, and the rails from the railing were scattered over the yard like matchsticks! As the day wore on people would walk by and take pictures of our sad red house.

Then the chain saws came out. Whoa—nothing like fellas wanting to whip out their chain saws in a crisis! But what a wonderful sound, the roar of chainsaws–progress:) An old friend Bill and his son Brandon showed up to help cut and remove the limbs lying across the cars. What a blessing:) That was the first of countless kindnesses shown during that strange post-Fran September.

The rest of Friday, Saturday and Sunday people all over Wake County were scouting around looking for ice. I remember standing in line at the Harris Teeter at the mall for an hour or more waiting for bags of ice to be unloaded and put out on pallets. The power was off everywhere and food was spoiling. Some of the neighbors had cookouts so they could use up their meat. Some folks packed up and left town to stay with friends or relatives.

Sunday night around 9pm the lights in Shepherd’s Vineyard flickered back on. You could hear everybody on Apache Lane and Smokewood shouting in unison “HURRAY!” A community celebrating! I’m afraid SO many areas didn’t get their power back for a week or more. We were a blessed bunch!

We finally got in touch with Cameron Saturday night. He had been in Tenn. with a friend and missed the storm. Did he even know that Fran came through the area until I called; that is the question? I’m not sure to this day.

School was out for a week. Clean up crews came into Shepherd’s Vineyard and Cary and Raleigh from everywhere; Florida, Charlotte, Texas, Pa., etc. They used cranes, backhoes, roadgraders, dumptrucks, etc., whatever could cut, saw, move, grind, or haul the debris! It took months and months! Many days I watched and took photographs.

Our small damage took almost a year to clean up and repair. But it does give me some ‘inkling’ of what New Orleans and Mississippi are still going through a year after Hurricane Katrina. And they they had such devastating damage. It will take years and years to rebuild. Can most people stand that stress? Only through the help of others, and knowing that God is their hope. So many friends and strangers helped us through that awful time, and I am so thankful.

Central N.C.is facing tropical storm Ernesto passing through tomorrow and Friday. He’s welcome, at least for some much needed rain…..but that’s really all we need. Alberto visited earlier this summer, gave us precious rain, but he left some flooding.
Do be careful the next few days, listen to Greg, and pray for a gentle visit from Ernesto:)

I love Lake Pine walking trail.
It’s located right across Highway 64 from Shepherd’s Vineyard and our house, so it take me 5 minutes to get there (unless I catch the stoplight wrong).

It’s a winding path around a small pretty lake surrounded by trees and populated by Canada geese, a pair of swans and their one offspring, a blue heron, a crane or two, frogs, turtles, and mallards.

I’ve walked there now for 3 1/2 years, and am on the walkway by 7:30 almost every morning of the week. Once around is 2.2 miles, but I bump it up to 2.4 or 2.6 by adding on an extra side hill walkway–twice, or backtracking here or there and walking a portion twice. Now and then, I do a double loop and make it 4.4 miles; that takes an hour and a half, so I have to allocate time to do that.

I meet the same people every day, and some of us have become walking buddies. We don’t know names, but most everybody smiles and says “Good Morning”:) Every so often someone will even stop and chit-chat–especially about the swans and their “swanette”, or the weather, or someone may ask what music I am listening to (I listen to my iPod), or confide how their garden is doing, etc.:)

Speaking of the “swanette”, only one of three swan babies survived this year, and one day in June, he vanished. Oh, many of us were very upset over it’s supposed demise! No babies survived last year, and that was sad enough:( I grieved for a week! Then, amazingly, the “swanette” reapppeared!! It was a miracle, I’m telling you! A fellow walker from church told me later that the Apex Park folks had taken him to remove a fish hook he tangled with somehow.
Whew! I knew the swan parents were glad to see their baby—they have worked so hard to protect this offspring!!

Right now it’s beginning to look like fall, with the leaves turning colors and fluttering down, and they crunch under my feet as I walk. With the leaves skittering and flitting around, it reminds me of the movie “Little Foot” where the baby dinosauer calls the leaves ‘tree stars’:) How sweet to walk through the ‘tree stars’!

FALL is my favorite time! I LOVE the leaves changing into every kind of red, orange, yellow, or brown imaginable. I LOVE swishing through the leaves.
(I even wait a while to rake my leaves in my yard, while most neighbors are racing to get them off the grass, to the curb and out of sight, quickly!)

I LOVE the humidity gradually dropping:) No more sweaty, sweltering mornings hiking at Lake Pine! No more stuffy, sultry air that makes you feel like you can’t put one foot in front of the other one more time:(!

I LOVE the sky in the fall. It’s so clear and blue during the day, and the sunset’s are brilliant on a clear night:) Then, as a rain lover too, nothing’s better than a showery day/night in September or October—it’s soothing and calm.

The end of a long, long, dry, hot summer and the promise of invigorating cool walks is in sight:)
Hurray for September lurking around the bend, in fact, just past next week!

I learned a new word this week.
It rolls off your tongue:)
I don’t hear it in normal conversations in my circle, and have forgotten it from my college days, but it was used in the most tender and kind characterization of Mrs. Elizabeth Turlington West, my dear daughter-in-law’s grandmother, at her Memorial service Thursday morning. She died earlier in the week after living a full and rich 96 years!
The service was at the historic Hay Street United Methodist Church in Fayetteville where Mrs. West was a devoted member for the majority of her century on earth.
Rev. Tyson elequently shared about the character of ‘Elizabeth’. He made you yearn to have met this lady and to have heard at least one of her stories, especially of Fayetteville:) A friend of Elizabeth’s, sitting next to me, offered that Rev. Tyson would fall asleep now and then listening to her:)

Now Kelley probably heard her share of stories from this ‘loquacious’ lady as a little girl growing up. She perceived her as a tiny ‘Queen Bee’, much in charge of her domain, and probably not too interested in what a young girl was thinking about or was involved in, but determined to tell Kelley something she wanted Kelley to know:) That may happen when grandmas are so much older.

(Unlike Mrs. West, my Grandma Blue wasn’t a talker and didn’t have many conversations with me that I remember. But, like Kelley’s grandmother West, she was 60 years older than me (Mrs. West was close to 70 years older than Kelley) and not a warm cuddly grandma. What a generation gap that is!)

Ironically, Kelley’s dad Paul, an only child, is rather quiet and not ‘loquacious’ at all! Guess he grew up listening:) Kelley is a listener too, like her dad:)

Now, I tend to be ‘loquacious’ at times, talkative, chattering, babbling, wordy. I do hope that word won’t be what people remember above all about me though, especially since I’m a Stephen Minister, trained to listen! What is the old saying? Something like “Keep your mouth closed and people think you’re wise; open your mouth and you remove all doubt that you’re not!

I wish I had known ‘loquacious’ Elizabeth:)

It’s a bright August Sunday morning. Keith’s at Peace, has been there since 7:30, to run the sound for the first service. Skye is up and gone as well, to check out the new College and Career leader, Tim, and his Sunday School class.

I’m taking time to catch up on answering my emails and read at least one article in the N&O. That article tells of a group of friends traveling through Scotland this summer. Included is a photo from the Isle of Skye.
It brings back fond memories of our 30th anniversary trip to England and Scotland in August of 1999. In reality, I had hoped, planned, and wanted to go there all my life. My mama talked about the Blues and the Stewarts and beautiful Scotland, especially the Isle of Skye, since I was old enough to remember! And with both sets of our families from that area of the world, it was a destination Keith and I hoped to see in our lifetime.

The plane trip itself from Pittsburgh to Heathrow was amazing to me, a girl that has traveled by air only a handful of times in my 56 years! But the pastoral scenery and quaint villages and large cities were far more beautiful and intriguing than I ever imagined—the land of poets and preachers.
It made me ponder what had forced so many people who loved their homeland (that ‘fair’ land) so dearly, to leave it and sail across the ocean never to see it, or their families, again….? A heart-rending choice:(

A place I hope to see again with Skye Chancel and Keith (plus Cameron, Seth & Kelley if they want to go)—-on a bright August day:)

I’ve discovered “CSI” this summer and, after watching years of “Law And Order”, I am hooked on this crime investigation series! Spike TV runs 3 shows in a row almost every night, and I’m in front of the TV to see them any time I can. It is an intriguing storyline, revealing the interplay between the “CSI” characters as they use scientific methods to solve each crime.
I am an unabashed addict:)