Waiting for God

It’s been a crazy few months.

And I’m not just talking about Trump’s upset victory.

Before Thanksgiving, the sewage system serving our condo unit backed up, resulting in $11,000 damage to our unit. It was supposed to take three weeks; it took more like eight. The work, finally, was completed a week ago.

Then, my 94-year-old father’s condition worsened, his dementia and frailty forcing a move to a 24/7 nursing facility.

It was stressful, emotional time made all the more difficult by timing and distance, that is, it being the depth of winter and 800 miles away.

My son, Rob, and I trekked north in (what we later learned) was a rented minivan with bald back tires on snowcapped, icy roads from Utah to Spokane, Wash.  Heavy snowstorms closed down first one interstate route and then another, forcing us to make the trip — both there and back — on two-lane roads winding through the mountains of western and central Idaho through the Nez Perce Indian Reservation and then the rolling, barely plowed roads of the Palouse.

White-knuckle driving for my son, who was behind the wheel during a total 30 hours round trip, often at speeds no more than 35 mph.

A couple times, sliding semi-trailer rigs had near collisions just ahead of us, and we saw easily a dozen vehicles off the road due to misjudgment of black ice.

We had prayed for protection, though, and we got it.

We also had prayed my Dad’s move would go well and without a hitch. It ultimately did. Preparation beforehand helped a lot, too.


But it’s always painful to see a parent entered the deepening twilight of life.

We remember them when they were younger, sharper; a hero, and occasionally nemesis to a know-it-all teen or 20-something; clueless or profoundly wise.

More than a year ago, it was my mother — in the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease — who had to be transferred to a “memory care” unit, leaving her husband of close to 70 years behind, alone.
On Jan. 11, Dad joined Mom in the same unit, his room next to her’s.

Nursing staff tells me they both seem at peace. Mom recognizes Dad for a few seconds, but usually know him only vaguely.

But it’s enough for them. Mom can no longer talk, but she listens to Dad’s soft, tender words through the day as they hold hands at meals and activity times.

Dad, once recognized as one of the most talented banjo players in the country, spends the in-between times struggling to complete pure, resonant chords on a ukulele. His sight nearly gone, he sees music with arthritic fingers, tentatively exploring the strings and frets.


Back home in Utah, I went through the boxes of file folders, photos, knickknacks, etc., we brought back with us from Dad's old assisted living room. Bittersweet. Tears fell for what was lost, but also for lives well-lived.


Happy photos of a young couple, just starting out in the late 1940s, their lives stretching ahead of them. Pictures of my sister and I as babies, and kids. Our kids.


But perhaps most precious of all were the love letters. Long, handwritten letters from a 20-year-old Montana girl to her 27-year-old soul mate, professing longing and love. Letters back from Dad to her, from various small towns where he was holding evangelistic meetings, dripping tenderness, punctuated with his silly cartoons.

Letters laden with the innocence of their love and dreams, the strength of their Christian faith that would sustain them through so many heartaches, and a few triumphs, in the years ahead.

So many decades later, their lives have been distilled to a handful of heartbeats, the clasping of gnarled, parched hands, and murmurs of love that, somehow, has survived the loss of so many memories.


The decades have wound down now. Months? Weeks? Days? Hours? What remains for them as they rise to sunlight and yawn toward the dusk of their time.


Then they nap or sleep the nights away, waiting for God.

Into each life a little (well, a lot) of poop much flow?

Twice our condominium has been flooded in the past few years.

The first time was from an overflowing toilet two stories above our ground-floor unit. That took six weeks to “mitigate” (i,.e., clean up the mess, replace damaged ceilings, dry out the interior framework, etc.)

Over the weekend, the flood came from below.

First, we thought our aging water heater finally had given up the ghost, expiring in a gush of its Luke-warm contents.

But several hours into sweeping the floodwaters out the front door while Barbara suctioned up what she could with our carpet cleaner, making endless trips to dump the tank on the lawn outside . . . we learned it was not the water heater.

Oh. no. As it turned out, I had been standing barefoot for several hours in sewage overflow from a clogged exterior line. Three other units were flooded, too.

Turning off the main water line, and thus depriving the sewer feeds of ongoing volume, stopped the flow. The stench, and questionable looking debris were left behind.

On the floor. On the walls. On the ruined rugs, shoes and baseboard and carpeting.

“The Flood Pros” arrived to assess and make repairs. The sensors showed our flood, indeed, was a “category three” contamination event. In other words, poop.

Two workers came in to tear away the affected walls, insulation, carpeting, etc., and treat the wall interiors with anti-microbial chemicals.

Exhausted, Barb and I watched them work from the couch. One guy, clearing the drain under the water heater from which the flow had gurgled and flowed, suddenly growled with disgust: “CHUNKS! I HATE chunks!”

That, of course, broke our mood of despair, if only for a bit. Laughter and tears.

The work goes on. The condo looks like a war zone. But it won’t always be that way. This, too, will pass.

Still, we’ve gotten far closer to our neighbors, organically speaking, than anyone would ever dream . . . .