intersecting milestones...

This past weekend marks another significant milestone -- the 10th anniversary of my stepfather's death. This sweet man had swooped down upon our (in some ways...) dark lives when I was 15. A prince of a man, he was, who redeemed my mother's sorrowful life and brought blessing to us all.

My mother had worked a full time job and a weekend job and occasionally took 'roomers' into our home to make ends meet, post-divorce from my father. There was something very sad about that time, of course. I remember being left alone at night while she and my next older sister went to work. It was sometimes frightening. I would have much preferred going with them and sitting in a corner of 'Ye Olde Hoosier Inn', watching the hordes arrive...dine...depart (the glory years of this now defunct establishment). One night, imagination running wild about who might break in and 'get me', I made my way to the corner of our kitchen and hid, shaking, under the table -- the only place I thought I could have a comprehensive view of someone entering. (Yet, that era did begat imaginative creativity in many, many positive ways...sewing, playing piano, reading, etc, etc... that necessary flow from 'alone time'.)

And then came Maynard on his white horse. Life, in technicolor, he brought with him. He & my mother had over 30 years of loving life together. In the end, his Alzheimer's robbed them both of some pretty important dreams. Pneumonia was his final ticket out. On the day he was moved from the hospital to the facility where he would die the next night, another person's life was rudely interrupted and forever changed.

Even as Fr C was saying prayers at my father's bedside, the St. J's organist's 30+ years of service came to a halt with a literal stroke. Kenneth recovered somewhat, but the next ten years brought new cataclysms and greater challenges to his fragile self. This year, in the same month my father had died, he went into the 'nearer presence of our Lord', with a loving send-off from those whose lives he had touched. I could not be there. From afar, I pondered how I was touched not only by this man's life, but by his impaired life.

Hours after my father's death and our organist's stroke, I hoisted myself onto the St. J's organ bench. And there I sat...and played...and struggled...and learned for ten years. And, thereby, an undeserved, grace-filled blessing from this 'work' entered my life. This journey was shared with amazing musicians and friends -- and even sweet, laughing children who came up post-service to try out the keys and offer gifts of artwork and hugs!

The 'one degree of separation' between these two men who had never met, who shared suffering on the same day, has facets that defy mere human understanding. Together, they do embroider the spirit within and around the many they touched.

I've already remembered...given thanks... during this, the January anniversary my stepfather's walk into the Light of God. I had carried with me the sadness of having wanted to be with him the night he died, but didn't. Knowing only his death was generically imminent, I went home to rest before rising to play at church. I recently found out that my oldest sister had gone over to stay with him -- with his body -- just after he died. That speaks the peace I had been seeking.

Holy Maynard, Holy Kenneth, pray for us.

Recently, a playful internet search of Maynard's complete name brought up an out-of-print book that mentions my stepfather twice. As a nurse then -- and also a manager of a doctor's practice -- his kindness made an impression on the author, a fledgling nurse . Fortunately, I found a copy of this book to send to my Mother.