It's January 27th. . .

. . .my late father’s birthday.  At 4 a.m.,  the Greeneville Tennessee LifeLine called to tell me that my 87-year-old mother had fallen. She is all right, they said.

All right, except that eight years ago, my then 80-year-old father had the gall to pre-decease her, leaving her in that bedroom alone, that bedroom where she fell, in the dark, last night.

My father was meticulous about his diet, exercised religiously at the YMCA, and played golf with his other semi-retired buddies whenever his work, church and community service allowed.  Reaching for the telephone, he fell - just the once - and broke a hip, went to the hospital and two agonizing months later, died of pneumonia.

My dear mother eats whatever she pleases, although she knows she shouldn’t; does not exercise, although she knows she should, and will quickly admit to both, to keep you from bringing it up. She has fallen countless times.  Her bones have been described as “paper thin”.  Her much thinner sister is recovering from her second hip fracture in as many years, having fallen, to my knowledge, just those two times.

Is there a moral to this story?  Should one eat fig newtons for breakfast and then stay in one’s chair? Was the relentless discipline worth it, to my father, who may still be astonished that his congenitally more indulgent wife lives on and on. Perhaps the moral, if there is one, is that try as we might to draw straight lines on top of this unruly life, the terrain is too bumpy. The rather pitiful results will not offer the ultimate reassurance we seek. We cannot get from here to there via a straight line.  That second point, the one required at the other end of our inflexible ruler, is always fuzzy.  Even if you are sitting right now with the bottle of pills and a giant glass of water, or the loaded pistol, or are reading this standing on bridge railing, that second point is a crap shoot.  The capsules are not strong enough, the pistol just misses the critical spot, a giant bird catches you by your shirt collar. . .its never a sure thing.  Miracles happen.  And on the other side of the scale, so do accidents. This is one of the issues I have with dogged insistence on "the bright side."

Life ain’t logical, despite our desperate efforts to make it so.  And it seems to me too enormously creative to be predictable.  It is my experience that a grateful attitude will get you much further in this life and I would far rather spend time with someone who sees the glass as half full.  And I am quickly exhausted in the company of Debbie Downer, especially when I am the one in the role.  But to claim that “its simply a flesh wound” when the stumps of all your limbs are bleeding makes sense only on Monty Python. 

If you have bleeding stumps, either physically or emotionally, (and who hasn’t been there?) it does no good, it seems to me, to ignore the growing red stain on your white carpet, while from some spiritual altitude, you point out the same color on the fragrant roses in the front yard.  Yes, it is true that it is the same color, and yes, they smell fabulous, but what in the sam hill are you going to do to stop the bleeding? Why don't we start with a quick round of antiseptic and bandages and then we’ll think about composing a psalm to the roses?

Life is both wounds and roses, treadmills and cookies, or mine is, and it is too short and too precious to ignore its fullness and its complexity.  It seems to me that we lose half the juice if we are not willing to admit that there are pieces of it that we don't understand, that don't make sense, that hurt like hell. 

Its not fair that my father should take such good care of his physical body and then - like that - be gone. We all miss him terribly, especially on birthdays and holidays when he would have had a new joke to tell us, laughing more than any of his listeners.

Its probably equally unfair that my dear sweet mother should still bless this planet with her generous and kind spirit, although I'm so grateful that she does.  And my heart hurts for her terror at her helplessness and for the ongoing dilemma around her living situation and her safety. If only her husband were still here. . .

My tiny speck of a mind cannot begin to fathom all the pieces and how they fit together.  Remind me of that when it sounds like I know what I’m talking about, perhaps even now. . .

Meanwhile. . .Happy Birthday Dad.