I'll See You There

My beloved Uncle Dean is on my mind much of late. He turns 91 this Friday (though he insists he's 93 because, he says, he feels he's 93). He may look frail and paper thin in his hospice room up north, but he remains a giant of a man for the life he lives within.

Despite his fading days, he lifts his hands in praise. Despite his failing strength he lifts his voice in prayer. He points to heaven and shouts, "I'll see you there!" It is both a promise (for he knows where he is going) and a challenge, for he has a burden for the gospel and sharing it with others.

"The worst thing that can happen," he confides, "the worst that can happen is that you find the way is shut and you hear the Lord say, 'Get away. I never knew you.'"

It breaks my heart when he cries, "And so many good, good people I know, people I love will hear those words."

And there, I think, is the reason he is still here with us in that little room up north. He still has work to do, prayers to offer, praise to make. He still sees the work God has laid out for him to do and, despite his dwindling days, he takes it up with purpose and with joy. He remains, indeed, a giant of a man, within and without.

Happy Birthday, Uncle Dean.

Epilog - April 2, 2013

                       Safe in the arms of Jesus, Safe on His gentle breast;
                       There by His love o’ershaded, Sweetly my soul shall rest.
                       Hark! ’tis the voice of angels borne in a song to me,
                       Over the fields of glory, Over the jasper sea.
                                                                                     - Fanny Crosby

Dean Marquis Huffstutler entered his promised rest at the invitation of his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ this morning. His release is a powerful, positive answer to prayer, yet bittersweet in that he will be deeply missed if only for a little while. Because He lives, Dean lives. (John 14:19)

The Little Boy Who Wouldn't Say His Prayers

Della with Susan Leona and Robert Kim Huffstutler.

Once,” Della said (and rather ominously at that). “Once there was a little boy (and here, always, always, she looked at me with cold, dark eyes) who wouldn’t say his prayers.” 

You could hear the horror of that thought in her voice as she moaned. Her face, in shadowed profile, tilted up away from the light and we watched, oddly fascinated, as the loose skin of her neck quivered. Right on cue, her wicker rocker let out a “screeeeeeeeeetch” that made us all jump a foot in the deep dark of the front porch.

Growing up, this was Halloween. With a pinch of salt thrown over one shoulder, we whistled past the graveyard hoping to escape the notice of the powers of the air. Halloween was frowned upon in that house, tolerated for the sake of us children who merely saw it for the entertainment that it was. Fifty years ago, it was an entertainment – a harmless bit of fun tempered with a little vandalism, a spot of tooth decay and a dash of outright illegal behavior.

Today, Halloween seems to be a quite different thing. When we were kids, boys dressed up as super heroes. We only had two: Batman and Superman. Or we dressed as cowboys or Indians, astronauts or hobos. Girls dressed as princesses, Indian and otherwise, and Raggedy Anne or (shudder) Barbie. Back then, Halloween was a sort of dress rehearsal for our future ambitions. 

Today, I think Halloween has undergone a warped reformation. It's stripped away the fun and the playfulness and embraced death with open, vacant, decaying arms. Halloween has returned to its roots of demons and devils, blood and gore. Since when is death fun? Some still see no harm because it “isn’t real.” They don’t believe in monsters. As for me, I see monsters every time I watch the news or read a paper. I believe in monsters. I have met monsters. The evidence is everywhere – especially in my Bible.

Perhaps I’m naïve. Or perhaps I was a little too fully taught about the consequences of foregoing prayer and a respectful relationship with the Lord above. For, as Della warned us…

Once there was a little boy who wouldn't say his prayers,
and then one night he went away upstairs,
his mammy heard him holler, his daddy heard him call,
but when they pulled the covers back he wasn't there at all!
They searched him in the attic room, the cubbyhole and press
and even up the chimney flue and everywhere, I guess.
But all they ever found of him was pants and roundabouts
because the goblins will get you if you don't watch out!

Don't Tell Me About Your Lifestyle

Kathleen and Jim with Cheryll, 1970.

Most of my memories of my cousin Kathleen revolve around the small, private war she fought against her parents and the other older adults in our family. As a baby boomer, I think she was the first of our generation to experience what it was like to have different life expectations than our parents.

It cannot have been easy growing up in a family of steadfast, unchanging Christian values against the backdrop of one of the most tumultuous periods in American history. There must have been times when she felt caught between a rock and a hard place. Her friends had so many things--color televisions, life-size dolls, closets full of store-bought clothes--while she (and the rest of us) had only black-and-white screens, rag dolls and home-sewn jumpers. It didn't help that our family had no money or that illness and circumstance demanded frugality from all of us. She could have become bitter about our lack but instead she became inventive and inspired--a crusading Auntie Mame of our very own who led us on a seemingly never-ending series of adventures.

Perhaps it is a little ironic that, perceiving a lack of "fun" in our lives that Kathleen introduced us to freedoms and activities that are unavailable to kids today. I saw my first drive-in movie (Live and Let Die) with my sisters Susan and Donna, cousins Becky and Colleen along with Kathleen, her husband Jim and daughter Cheryll. Eight people in one car must have been bad enough but Kathleen (surely silently screaming "Live! Live!") made sure each of us was liberally supplied with popcorn, candy and soda. I shudder today to recall that Jim calmly allowed a few of us to watch the adventures of James Bond while perched on the roof of his beloved, fire-engine red Charger.

Jim was always Kathleen's silent partner in crime (which, incidentally, is a shame because he happens to be wickedly funny). With his help, Kathleen simultaneously horrified our parents and delighted us by giving us our first lessons in driving (I was 12), taking us bowling (rented shoes!) and making that most pernicious of childhood dangers--candy--freely available (tooth decay!).

Strangely enough, Kathleen and my father were cohorts of a sort. Both regarded "bored" as a four-letter word, and both constantly pointed to the myriad of activities available to us that could be undertaken without parents. Fireworks, for example, were best watched from the roof (although they did require a certain hushed secrecy and ready access to a ladder). If a parent absolutely had to be present, then he or she was expected to chauffeur us from one suburban display to the next, chasing the bright explosions across the county until we were too tired to "ooh," ah" and "oh."

However, whereas Dad had a tendency to counsel caution for fear of inevitable lifechanging ínjury, Kathleen urged abandon for the sake of joy. Challenged by authority, her response was a call to arms, "Don't tell me about your lifestyle!" and she preached a message of curiosity, exploration and wonder. Thanks in large part to her, my cousins and I share a love of laughter, board games and good chocolate. Hers is a legacy I fondly remember.

So much of what we experienced as kids has been lost over the years. There were times when we could roam literally for miles on foot without causing our parents any concern. We could chat with people we hardly knew or didn't know at all without fear of being compromised in any way. We could build houses in alien trees, cavort with strange dogs and ignite ill-gained cherry bombs without any adult supervision whatsoever. The world is a darker place today with a dearth of open spaces and a surplus of fear. It's not safe for children any more, and we have to accept that. At least that's the way it seems until I hear those immortal words in my head: "Don't tell me about your lifestyle!"

Driving Miss Della

Great Aunt Della with Dean, 1938.

Shortly after I graduated from college in the summer of 1984, Mom and Dad sent me to live with my Uncle Dean on Hastings Street in Elgin. The idea was to give me a base of operations from which to job hunt in Chicago. Unfortunately, my sense of timing was off, and I had the unfortunate circumstance of graduating in the midst of a recession.

However, being unemployed amongst family allowed me to spend time with my great uncles and aunts, including my most favorite, Great Aunt Della. As Della's designated escort, I chauffeured her to a variety of activities--family birthday parties, Sunday services at Elgin Bible Church and weekly shopping at Gromer's Supermarket. Our itinerary also included her brother Lymand's funeral in September 1984.

Anyone who knew Della knew how playful she could be and, on occasion, self-deprecating. She was also a little alarmist when it came to her health. That's not to say she was a hypochondriac. Rather, that she was not one to hide how she felt. Bert, as my grandmother Kate called her, had a weak stomach, a condition for which---much like the Eskimos and snow--Bert had a seemingly endless vocabulary of moans and groans.

"Oh, honey," she would confide with a strangled gasp, "Ah'm dyin'."

Over the years it became a game between us with established dialog. Back and forth we would tease one another. Throughout it all, however, I refused to be mean to her and point out that changing her diet might do wonders for her disposition. After all, she routinely snacked on liberally salted, raw cabbage, salted apples and copious amounts of Skippy peanut butter.

During the drive from Lymand's funeral service to the gravesite I was curious to find myself engaged in a different conversation with Della for a change. This time, she was genuinely upset about her dress.

"I hate this dress," she snapped, smoothing the dark wool fabric over her knees.

"What are you talking about?" I said. "It's a nice dress. You look good in it."

"It's an old dress," she countered. "I haven't had a new dress in years."

"You could get a new dress," I conceded.

"With what?" she countered again. "I can't afford a new dress. Social Security barely covers things as it is."

"So what's wrong with this dress?" I asked. "It's a perfectly nice dress. It still looks new."

"But everybody's seen me in this dress! I've been to every wedding in this dress--every funeral in this dress! Gonna be my funeral soon."

"Now, now," I said, warming up to my usual side of the conversation. "You look good and you're in great health. You're going to live forever and bury every single one of us."

"Well, if I do," she drawled slyly, "it will be in this same, old dress!"

I miss Della, and I think of her often. I wonder about all sorts of things, such as was she lonely? Had she ever been in love? Did she miss not having any children? Did she regret leaving her husband, setting aside a life and a decision that those around her insisted was not in her best interests?

She didn't talk with us about Fred, the man with whom she had eloped to Oklahoma when she was 20, but she did confide in my mother, Helen, towards the end of her life. From what Della had shared, the family had taken the correct measure of Fred, for he had threatened Della's life if she ever asked for a divorce. The opportunity to do so came and went some years later when she met a widower named Elroy Schultz with three children whose wife had died in childbirth. Della and the children were very fond of one another, and she probably would have eventually married him had he not become gravely ill with kidney disease and died.

On the surface, her failure to marry him looks like a lost opportunity when in fact it proved to be a major turning point. Years after the man's death, she told Helen that it was better for her that they never married because he had no interest in spiritual things. She felt she would never have come into close fellowship with the Lord if she had married him.

Della's life after Elroy Schultz was one of service to others. She was a founding member of Grace Evangelical Church where our family worshipped. She headed a weekly Bible study for women and actively supported the church's missionary efforts overseas. Children were her special charge, and she was extremely active with youth outreach through the church's AWANA, Sunday School and Vacation Bible School programs. She even volunteered at a local community center where everyone knew and loved her as "Miss Della."

Della also touched her family's lives with love, warmth and beauty. She was an artisan with a sewing needle, and her gifts of handmade dolls, quilts and Christmas ornaments are still prized (and fought over) by our extended family today. Her greatest gift, however, was herself. She was the undisputed expert on family lore, the family's reigning Scrabble champion and the undeniable favorite Great Aunt to us all.

I miss her deeply. But when I think of her and ask those questions--was she lonely? had she ever been in love? did she miss not having children?--I'm quick to remind myself that, although her first marriage failed and she declined to enter into a second, she had a very fulfilling life. She surrounded herself with family and enriched the lives of hundreds of children with her affection, guidance and love for God. She made a choice for spiritual things and was rewarded with riches on earth and in heaven above. Could any of us, I wonder, want for more?

In Like A Lion

When I was a kid, my kindergarten teacher taught us about the seasons. She shared a number of little sayings about the passage of the months, but the only one I can ever remember is the one she had for March. "In like a lion, out like a lamb," she said.

Yesterday's severe weather across the midwest brought that saying to mind last night along with a storm memory of my own and a cautionary tale from my grandparents Kate and Ira's beloved Hamilton County.

In 1999, my mother Helen wrote about living on the farm outside McLeansboro during the Great Depression. In the course of describing the place, she made an oblique reference to severe weather.

"The farm had three big barns, a chicken house and a smokehouse. Below the smokehouse was a fruit cellar where we took cover if a really threatening storm were brewing. One of our neighbor families (who Uncle Perry dubbed "the John Rabbits"--I don't even remember their real name) used the storm cellar more often than we did. They had lived through a cyclone or tornado, and just the sight of a dark cloud sent all of them hustling down the road to ask if they might take cover in our cellar. No one had basements, and the underground cellars--like Dorothy's in The Wizard of Oz--were our storm refuges."

DeSoto, IL after the 1925 Tri-State Tornado.

I chuckle, albeit nervously, when I read this for two reasons. First, I immediately think of my cousin Kathleen Layne and the time we rode out a tornado in Elgin (more on this later). Second, I am surprised that my mother wasn't aware that the "Tri-State Tornado"--the single deadliest and most severe (F5) tornado in recorded U.S. history--passed right by Ira's farm in 1925.

Granted, Helen was only six years old when they lived on the farm in 1930, and the family had moved to Elgin shortly after her brother Dean was born in 1922. Still, the event was very fresh in people's minds (as evidenced by the haste in which the John Rabbits went to ground). The storm started in Missouri and ended in Indiana, lasted three and a half hours and killed 695 people. Winds were up to 300 mph, and the storm maintained a forward average speed of 62 mph as it raced across the county. It obliterated Braden, the small hamlet just south of Ira's farm where Kate's sister Della had been born and killed 60 people in rural Hamilton County alone. Frankly, I find it a wonder that the neighbors didn't live in the storm shelter year round.

It is thanks to this storm that we have an Early Warning System (EWS) administered by the National Weather Service. In 1925, no such system existed and radio broadcasters were forbidden to use the word "tornado" for fear of causing widespread panic. Nearly 700 people died because they had no warning of what was coming. With a forward speed estimated as high as 70 mph, death, at least, came quickly.

Yesterday evening, I received a terse text message asking friends and family to pray for my niece, Kate, who, at that moment, was taking shelter as tornado sirens roared in Nashville. I immediately offered up a plea and turned on the television news to watch the storm unfold from a distance even as she, up close and in its midst, ran to ground and safety. The storm passed over, no less furious for not stepping down to earth, and set its course for places further east. While I was grateful for Kate's safety, I couldn't help be mindful of the less fortunate 30 people who lost their lives in Indiana and Kentucky.

Some time in the early 1970s, my sister Donna, my neighbor friend Craig Lieberman and I had run out of things to do. Bored and looking for adventure, we decided to sit at the end of the driveway and enjoy the thunderstorm rolling in from the south. Donna, seated between myself and Craig, held an open umbrella to shield all three of us from the anticipated rain. Across the street, our neighbor Mr. McDonald was working on one of his cars in the driveway. I looked up and marveled at how the sky, nearly black a moment ago, was now the most intense glass green as if one were looking at the world through a bottle of 7-Up.

Three things then happened at the same precise moment: "RUN!" yelled Mr. McDonald; "GET IN THE HOUSE!" screamed my mother from the open front door; "BAM!" the wind slammed into us like a wall of water. The three of us struggled to turn around and make our way up the driveway to the house, pushing against the wind like Sisyphus and his rock. I turned my face up to a loud, whirring sound and watched in disbelief as the next door neighbor's kiddie pool sailed like a frisbee over our heads and soared over the rooftops behind us. Donna, still between myself and Craig, struggled with the umbrella until she inadvertently tilted it back. The wind caught it and suddenly Donna was lifted into the air like Mary Poppins. Mom shrieked as Craig and I scrambled to grab her. The umbrella, overburdened with her weight, collapsed and set her down. Arm in arm, we made it into the garage where Mom hustled us inside and down to the basement where Kathleen--storm savvy and focused on survival--had long been firmly situated beneath the stairs.

To her credit, Kathleen did not say, "I told you so." She had been in the basement for hours before the storm hit. She didn't mess around with tornado warnings. Once a tornado watch was announced, she headed for the stairs. She was a veteran of scary weather, and she knew enough to pack a bag full of snacks and games to distract everyone--including herself--from what was happening above our heads. She understood what was involved and had the patience required to wait out the life of the storm--not just its peak.

In my mind, there were so many people in the basement that day. We played Battleship, Scrabble, Uno and Flinch. Something tells me that that memory has to be an amalgamation of all the times we hid ourselves away from the wrath of God and nature. I can recall glimpses of huddling downstairs in the dark without power hiding from a storm so severe and so longlasting that we brought down the mattresses off our beds. But whatever the specific instance or occasion, what made all of us feel safe was the fact that we were with our family and those we loved the most, focused on prayer and waiting on the Lord.

Voices Carry

The photo is somewhat faded and blurred, but not to a point where you cannot make out the features of his face. He holds a child in his arms and, while the rest of the family stares forward and smiles at the photographer, he is captured looking deep into the child's eyes as if he meant to ask a very personal question.

Family reunion, 1919.

Despite his prominent placement within the family portrait, his existence was never discussed nor were his foibles, maladies and flaws listed and dissected like those of other family members at our holiday dinner tables. He was omitted, for he was insane.

Insane is such an ugly, dark, outdated word. It conjures up images of babbling maniacs wandering drafty halls dressed in stained hospital gowns. Today we use technical terms that keep those images at arm's length--terms like schizophrenia, bi-polar and fugue state. Medication makes these conditions palatable to some degree and allows those who suffer from them to blend into society's woodwork where they are free to practice and enjoy anonymity.

What must it have been like for him, I wonder. What was it like for the rest of the family? The picture of him with the child is disturbing in that one cannot imagine giving him the small responsibility of holding her. What were they thinking? Was he mad then? Or was it much later in life that the voices drew him aside from the family to become his closet confidantes?

The questions are intriguing but the answers are not forthcoming. The disease stalks others within the family and therefore remains an impolite topic of conversation. I can imagine, though, that I know the question he asked the child: "Do you feel as I do?"