A is for Alzheimer's. C is for Cancer.

The ABC’s of the last two months (well, two years, I guess) are pretty intense. Just in the last eight weeks or so, I have experienced a week in the bed sick, my maternal aunt’s passing, my beloved cousin’s cancer diagnosis, the continued decline in my father’s health due to Alzheimer’s, additional health scares for several other close family members, some significant relational tension, an ice storm, and an uncle having Hospice called in for the last days of his life.

In all truthfulness, while I am radically blessed, my life is also definitively stressed. I hoping the coal of my existence will be effectively pressurized into a diamond to place in front of the Eternal One. But until that day comes, I find that sometimes, it’s cathartic to just settle in and write about “the real”… the real hardness of life and the transformative pain often found in the waiting.

I’m fully trusting in all things working together for good. And even without Eternity, I’d still not be an atheist. The world is too beautifully ordered in the chaos of it all to be the result of a serendipitous coagulation of primordial soup -- but that’s another writing for another day. This penning is about the alphabet of my current reality… or at least how it’s finding expression in the wee hours of a new day.

A is for Alzheimer’s – that damned disease.

B is for Breathe in; Breathe Out…. Just Breathe.

C is for Cancer – may it rot in hell.

D is for Dementia – that accursed thief of thought.

E is for Eternity – and the hope that holds on for it.

F is for Family, and Friends, and Friends who are Family… and Faith, of course.

G is for my Abba, The Triune God of the Universe.

H is for Hellfire and Damnation – the place I want to send earth’s diseases.

I is for Insight – so needed within emotional malaise.

J is for Jesus and Joy – One brings the other.

K is for Kindred Spirits, who listen and lighten the load.

L is for Love and Life and the One who endowed us with both.

M is for Mom and the beauty and pain I see as she keeps covenant.

N is for Not ever knowing what the new day will bring… and letting that be okay.

O is for Opportunities to practice “just being” vs. always living in a frenetic state.

P is for Peace, the Shalom kind: holistic, inner peace regardless of the externals.

Q is for Quiet Times to rest and recalibrate.

R is for Redemption – and the gorgeous truth found therein.

S is for Salvation, a one-time and simultaneously ongoing gift.

T is for Time, our master or our servant.

U is for Understanding that not all things can be understood.

V is for Visceral living – refusing to build walls, even when the heart seeks protection.

W is for the Wind of the Holy Spirit, blowing out the cobwebs in our soul.

X marks the spot of the

Yearning fulfilled to revel in the

Zeal for Life more than the Shadows of Living.

Memories Linger in the Spirit

Note: This column appeared in The News Reporter  (www.whiteville.com) on Dec. 21, 2013 as a guest feature for "People, Places and Things."

Having been a bit of a world traveler, I’ve celebrated the holidays in England, Slovakia and on both coasts of the U.S. From London to Los Angeles, I have recollections of holiday festivities that always bring a smile to my heart. For example in England, crackers are often shared… but they are not little edible things you eat with soup; they are wee gifts and a paper crown wrapped up in a tube that “cracks” when you unwrap it. Oh, the fun!

In Slovakia, fried fish (carp) is the holiday meal and it’s eaten on Christmas Eve. Often on Christmas Day, kapustnica – a sauerkraut soup with mushrooms and sausages – is eaten and then enjoyed again and again throughout the holiday week following. In Los Angeles, you can sit on the beach at Christmas or ride down Rodeo Drive and see the fancy shop windows with all their expensive holiday décor. Of course, no holiday is delightful if you’re lonely or sad, as is the case with many people… it doesn’t matter the locale. It’s important to keep the hurting hearts in our thoughts and prayers during the holidays.

But this year, in Columbus County, I’m experiencing a whole different kind of holiday; it’s poignant, even painful…and yet beautiful at the same time. You see, my beloved father has Alzheimer’s and Vascular Dementia. This brilliant man, Lionel Todd Sr. – had a brain that could add columns of figures in his head and a heart that was, and is, full of love and support for so many people in the community and the world. Yet, now, he is in a season of life where the aforementioned multi-layered disease process is a thief to his thoughts. Some days, the demon of dementia angers me more than any other thing I’ve faced in this life.

Yet, midst it all, God is teaching me something I have frequently found challenging to do…. To Be In The Moment.  In today’s rush-and-run existence, our minds are often trying to be in several places at once and our bodies’ blood courses through our veins in a less-than-healthy way. We’re not fully in the present because we’re making mental lists of what we should be doing, or agonizing over something we should have done in the past, or worrying about something we’ve yet to do in the (unguaranteed) future. Many times, we’re doing all those things in a nearly simultaneous sequence, would you agree?

This last 18 months or so – when a planned two-month visit after graduation and ordination became a complete relocation from L.A. to Whiteville – I have chosen to slow down, breathe deep and be more intentional about the memories I’m making. Dad’s memories continue to disappear from his mind… but not, I believe, from his spirit… or mine. Christmas is not just another Hallmark holiday. It’s the celebration of the Incarnation of Christ.  I trust that Jesus came so that any and every human on earth had the opportunity to spiritually spend eternity in the full presence of the Triune God… if they so choose. Free will is a powerful gift, often abused, and never to be taken for granted.

In this season of watching my father’s mind and personality fade, I am ever aware that my choices and the acceptance of the Gift of God’s Son really matter. So, I choose to sing “old familiars” with Daddy, even when he can’t remember all the words to the hymns, the carols, or the camp songs. I choose to dance with him, even when his steps are more shuffling and his twirling me is less smooth. I choose to allow myself to gain weight, if it means Dad smiles while we eat sweet potato pies together in the afternoons or vanilla ice cream cones at night.

All the while, I endeavor to live more and more in the moment, and to hold tightly to my Savior’s hand while my heart hurts and my head grieves. But there will be beauty from the ashes of grief. There are many who are saying the longest goodbye to my father or to their own loved ones in these days. Yet, we can experience shalom (holistic peace) in knowing that our goodbye is God’s hello. We can feel His presence even in our pain.

For, I believe, in eternity, if we’ve chosen to accept the atoning grace of Jesus’ salvific gift… His Holy Spirit will remind our own individual spirits of the love and the memories we made here on earth. We will have a different access to the mind of Christ…and that mind will remember the good in it all… even when our flesh has forgotten.

Do you have an aging loved one? If you do, I encourage you to spend time with them during the holidays, and beyond. They likely don’t need many more “things.”  Make memories. Even if they, like my dad, have a mind that can no longer recall everything… they have a spirit that is eternal, and what you do now will impact them – and you – for time immortal.

My father & my "Mama P." (Frances Price) at her piano. Music ministers to Dad's soul & spirit. 

My Mom

My Mom is amazing. A woman who was the blue-eyed blonde my father fell in love with when they were both juniors at UNC-CH. Oh, the stories I could tell you about how they were meant to be.

Now, fifty years later, my mom’s sweetheart, the man who correctly vowed he’d marry her… before he’d even met her…. is disappearing more and more each day. While there are sparks of his personality - his memory, his essence, his intellect… are all being affected by his multiple dementia (Alzheimer’s/Vascular Dementia).

In these last years, we knew Dad was changing. His personality had shadows in it that we had not experienced in all our years as a family. Mom had the most regular and intimate interactions with these changes. They weren’t easy. Anyone who has loved one who had dementia reads between the lines in what I write and “knows” what I’m talking about.

All of us hurt for the loss of our Dad’s mental acumen. All of us mourn the changes we see in his personality and his physicality (a shuffling walk, a timidity still laced with a frequent stubbornness to “do things on his own” and so forth). However, for my mama, it’s hard in ways I cannot empathize with, only sympathize… because my dad has not been my best friend, soul mate, lover, spiritual head of my household, father of my children… he’s been Mom’s. And while similar, he’s not the same man any more.

But he’s still her husband, and he holds onto to that fact even when his mind gradually loses other information. She is written in his mind, but she is forever engraved in his heart… the man she covenanted with all those decades ago. Each day, she becomes more and more his anchor in a world that has to seem riddled with high waves of change.

For, you see, my mother took seriously the vows: “For better or worse, in sickness and in health.” She (and we) just didn’t know there would be a death before a death. But we’re learning… and it’s the longest goodbye.

Yet, even in that, my mom adjusts. She struggled to accept Dad’s condition, but she did, and now – while she will never embrace it; that’s not what you do to disease – she takes each day as it comes. Each morning sees her honoring her husband in so many big and small ways, all the while holding onto the hand of her Abba God until that day ends, that night comes… and then the next day sees it begin all again.

Yes, my mom is amazing… in details and dimensions that I’ve not even touched upon in one short writing. But on this Sabbath Sunday, as I contemplate the temporal within the eternal, I give thanks for my mother… a woman who personifies what is written in Proverbs 31, especially verse 28: Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.

The reality is: there just isn’t praise enough to fully describe my mom.

Red

Today, he wore red

And reflected the hue of his heart…

My mom, in her matching attire.

Their photo was clear

But his mind was not

And my heart felt the weight

Today, I wore red

It adorned my lips…

As a reflection of my parents’ love

And the button

Of the car seatbelt

Was Red… and the only way

Dad remembered how to

Unbuckle it and free

Himself from that which bound him

If only there was a red button

That when pushed

Would free his mind of this disease

The color Red

Has many shades…

Of Love and Sorrow.

Brilliance

I was probably a teenager when I began to realize just how intelligent my father was. Before that, he was just this amazing hugger, the man who held me above the ocean’s high waves, caught me in his arms when I jumped down the stairs in our house and loved me fiercely in so many ways that were seen each day. When I began to notice his intellect, I began to see just how high it was.

My dad could add columns of figures in his head. He had the ability and foresight (I would now even call it a prophetic gift) to look to the future and accurately “see” where different choices/paths would likely lead. People of all socio-economic, ethnic, religious and professional backgrounds came to my dad for his wise counsel and advice or for an authentic hug or honest deal on the furniture and floor coverings found in his family-owned business.

He was on numerous boards, councils, fund-raising groups, leadership teams, and pastoral search or deacon committees. He served as a leader or president of the Chamber of Commerce, the Lions Club, the Girls and Boys Homes of N.C., the State Merchant Association and more. 

In summary, my dad was brilliant, in the way a diamond is… there were so many facets to the man whose heart put God first, his family second and his work and community third. He considered a primary calling to be a steward of the resources he was given and gained through working six-days-a-week-for-40+-years of his life.

Growing up, it was an honor to be known in our community as Lionel Todd’s daughter. He was not perfect, but he was a man who lived a life of integrity and purpose to the degree that he took his multitudinous responsibilities more seriously than anyone else I knew.

Even today, after Todd Furniture Store is closed and Dad is not as actively involved in the community, I still hear stories of how my Dad helped that person, guided this project or gave of himself to this group or helped lead that effort. This was just the way my dad walked out his life led by his Lord.

Now, my father has Alzheimer’s and Vascular Dementia. The brain that could add up columns of numbers in his head often struggles to zip up his coat, put on his seatbelt, or remember details that give dimension to life. His thought processes are much simpler; his sentences aren’t often logical and his conversations are not frequently coherent. And there are more and more times when the diseases in his brain short-circuit his communication or suffocate his personality.

Therefore, is he still brilliant? Well, maybe not in the way he was. Yet, when I see him tell people he loves them or when a song or scripture moves him to tears or when he just reaches out and holds my hand while I’m driving or walking or just being with him during the days… then I realize he is manifesting a different kind of brilliance… that which is eternal and permeated by love… love from him and the love of God through and around him.

So now that I’m older and life with my dad is so much harder, how does it feel to be Lionel Todd’s daughter? Am I still proud to be the daughter of man who doesn’t always remember my name or where I live or what I do?

You. Better. Believe. It.

My Heavenly Father knew just who needed to be my earthly father. And nothing – not even the hellacious season that dementia dictates – will ever change the honor it is to be the daughter of my dad.

Fuchsia Pink Muffintop Moments

Today, I tried on the fuchsia pink lacy short dress my parents gifted me with for my recent birthday. As the great-granddaughter of a tailor-talented seamstress, I was wise enough to put on the  “right foundation garments.” (Y’know the best things to wear underneath your clothes to smooth out and “make the most of what you have.”) They helped. But they didn’t erase the extra curves I’ve acquired since I’ve come home to help care for my dad.

These days it is often true: I experience muffintop moments.

As a woman who’s always warred with her weight, well, at least since I was 11 or 12, I know - with a great deal of practice and intimacy - the ways my body loses weight… and gains it. I know that exercise helps my body and especially my brain…IF it’s exercise I enjoy, like dancing or late night walks.

I know these things, so I truly don’t really need anyone - no matter how authentically loving and “helpful” - to tell me more than once about a new way to get healthy or say: “If you would just do… such and such, you’d so and so…”  Now, I say “more than once,” because I am not closed off to people sharing things they think are important or helpful. However, I do have a decent intellect and recall, so I usually remember such things after being told once… and if I don’t, I’m definitely comfortable with asking questions or seeking reminders. For those who care and encourage and do not criticize (me or anyone)… may you have stars added to your crowns. J

I say all this because in this current season, I’ve realized losing weight is just not going to be the top priority. Therefore, while I don’t want to gain any more (but I may), I’m also striving not to get all uptight and bothered by the fact that my 42-year-old body doesn’t look like it did when I was a teenager, or the last time I lost significant amounts of weight (in 2008/9). And I’m certainly endeavoring not to let others’ differing perspectives, Hollywood’s definition of beauty – or my negative self talk – add weight where it’s most dangerous, in my heart and emotions and self-image.

Today, the pastor of my church spoke of how the Enemy (who, you know, has a job description that is to “steal, kill and destroy”) knows exactly when to tempt and to attack. My temptation, in this season, is to agree with his insidious criticism and/or to berate myself for not being what society oft’ says is preferred physically. As attacks go, it can do some damage.

But the truth is, grieving my dad’s Alzheimer’s, adjusting to a life that took a radical geographical and professional re-locate from where I thought I’d be after graduation, caring for my mom and helping other family members… and just living each day within the choices I’ve made to be “present” in this season… is enough for my mind and emotions to take on. Added denigrating mental trash to the mix, is just that – garbage.

Because part of being “present” in this season is to be ready at the drop of a hat to help my mom and to create adventures and opportunities for my dad during most afternoons and evenings. Many of those are food oriented. Tofu and carrot sticks don’t have the same Southern sensory relativity, as do waffles. He doesn’t respond well to random rides around town or to “Let’s go eat a salad,” the way he lights up when it’s “Let’s go to Waffle House” or “Hey, why don’t we have coffee at the local pastry shop?” or “Dad, you want some burger and fries?” Destinations matter, be they the library, the lake, or a local restaurant.

Now, I will always likely find it tempting to war with my body by mentally struggling with my physicality, regardless of my parents’ health or other circumstances around me. It seems to be a thorn that doesn’t get removed from my flesh, regardless of how I pray for and work towards its retraction. Like today, when I tried on the fuchsia lace dress, I noted that my tummy reminded me of my paternal grandmother’s, my face looked really round, and my unmentionables weren’t able to make all my imperfections magically disappear.

Then I decided to once again tell the Enemy “to go to Hell” (that’s his home anyway) and my own negative self-talk to cease and desist. And as for the echoes of others’ previous criticisms or the foreshadowing of future criticisms I may hear… I think I’ll just say, “Love you, but you can take your verbal and mental trash and shove it… into the landfill where it belongs.”

For you see, when I wear that lacy fuchsia pink dress and dance the night away in my oh-so-high wedged platform sandals that show off my gams, I’m going to be grateful I have a body that can move, a mind that can think, and a heart that can love… and well, my hips will just show one of the ways I do so…

That’s okay, cause that’s how I roll. J