I have never really done much to take care of my skin. There are times when I wish I had, but now that I’m in my fifties I know that the wrinkles signs of aging on my face are always going to be there. If you haven’t seen the up-close and personal evidence on my face in recent years, click here.

My skincare regimen consists of washing my face with lavender soap whenever I take a shower, and moisturizing my face a few times a year. I feel guilty admitting it, but I have just never remembered to put cream on my face before I go to bed at night. I remember to read, I remember to make sure the covers are just so, I remember to turn on a soothing CD before turning in for the night, but my skin rarely gets the attention that Lancôme and Clinique tells me it should.

When I was growing up in Southern California there was no talk of skin cancer, and we didn’t know that blistering sunburns dramatically increased your risk for it. I slathered baby oil all over my body and roasted in the sun so many times I couldn’t count if I tried. The bridge of my nose and the back of my shoulders have been blistered on numerous occasions.

Now I see that getting just the right amount of sunlight is needed — my family tends to be deficient in Vitamin D because we live so far north. So I still go out in the sun, but I no longer lay down on a towel and purposely broil myself. If I’m going to be out in the hot sun for very long, I use sunscreen.

About two weeks ago I happened upon a skin cleansing/moisturizing method that really got my attention. It’s called The Oil Cleansing Method and instead of me explaining everything myself, you can quickly read about it here. And here’s a great post by a blogger who tried this method and has been using it for years now. You can also find some videos on YouTube showing how to do this if you like.

I shared this information with my daughters, and Sara decided right away that she would try it with me. We found some people online who used a little Castor oil mixed with olive oil, and others who preferred a little Castor oil mixed with sunflower oil. Sara came home with a bottle of Castor and a bottle of sunflower, and we mixed our formulas.

My skin tends to be drier than Sara’s, so my personal little bottle has 10% Castor oil and 90% sunflower oil. Sara tried the ratio 30% Castor and 70% sunflower.

I’ve been faithfully cleansing my face every night for one week, using the methods found in the links above. I intend to do this every day for one month and then evaluate the results.

It makes sense to me that oil removes oil…I’d never thought about that before. Supposedly people with clogged pores have experienced wonderful results with oil cleansing…I hope to see the same for myself. 🙂 I also like that I’m not putting seventeen chemicals on my very absorbent skin, which would transport those chemicals quickly into my bloodstream.

So after one week, here’s what I’ve observed. In fact, I noticed it after one oil cleansing. No skin flakes! I used to have very flaky skin on my forehead and no matter how much moisturizing or exfoliating I tried, I always had flakes. All I had to do was run my finger across my forehead and it would start to snow little white flakes down in front of my face. Yes, I know, you don’t even have to say it. Blech.

Not a bit of soap has touched my face in a week, and not a bit will touch it for another 24 days. Sara tells me she sees a difference in the way my skin looks, but I’m not doing too much scrutinizing yet. I just know that it’s easy, cheap, and that all the flakes are gone.

Have any of you ever tried this method? If so, what did you think? If not, after reading the directions and the reasons why, do you think you’ll try it?

Once upon a time there was a little girl who couldn’t pronounce her “L”s.  “My name is Cawoyin Beth Yahpine!” she would declare to anyone who asked what her name was.

Her mother thought it was such a sweet thing, she never bothered to correct her daughter, knowing that someday she would learn to pronounce her L-words properly.

The little girl and her family lived near an enormous lake, and there was rarely a day when they didn’t see a view of it in some way, whether driving close by the shoreline or sitting on the bed and looking out of the upstairs bedroom window.

“Yook! Yook at dat big yake, Mom!” she would point and exclaim when they would drive over a hill and see the lake’s dark blue vastness laid out before them. “I think dat’s Yake Su-PEER-iter!”

“Yes, you’re right Carolyn. It’s the lake that looks like an ocean.”

And the little girl’s mother would smile to herself and close her eyes and revel in the moment of innocence and sweetness.

Years passed, and “yake” turned to “lake,” and “Caroyin” became “Carolyn,” but the mother never ceased to occasionally close her eyes and smile and revel in the memories, even though the little girl had grown up into a lovely woman who could easily say her “L”s.

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Years ago I used to love scrapbooking, and I made a “Life Book” for each of my daughters and presented it to them when they graduated from high school. The scrapbooks are chronological pictorial accounts of their lives up until that point, and I used to stay up late into the night and work on them. I sat on our living room floor with old photographs spread out all around me, colored paper and stickers and markers and special scissors strewn about, and I prayed as I snipped and glued. I often cried over the pages I worked on too, recalling the innocence of their youths and how terribly fast the years had flown by.

Here’s one double page spread from my middle daughter Carolyn’s scrapbook. It has a picture from each year of school, from Kindergarten to her high school graduation photo. You can click to enlarge if you’d like to read the little caption I put under each one.

Now Carolyn is married and is the mother of four beautiful children. The oldest three will be in fourth grade, third grade and Kindergarten this year. I see a little of each of those three in the corresponding grade photos of Carolyn above.

Carolyn loves autumn and cool air and changing leaves. She dislikes fast rides and extremely hot weather. She’s a meat and potatoes kind of gal and is an excellent cook. She isn’t fond of coffee or soups with a light broth base. She loves to read and can still hide herself away in the midst of chaotic activity and disappear into a great book, just like she did when she was little. She likes old show tunes and can belt them out with the best of them. She believes in having a bit of candy every day. 🙂 She loves her family. She might rather listen to Rosemary Clooney sing instead of many of our current day sensations. She loves dogs. She’s really funny. She often sees things through a black and white kind of lens. She is resilient and forgiving.

Carolyn also loves the theater, and has been in more plays in our local community playhouse than I can count. She can sing and act, and has had the lead roles in Cinderella, The Last Five Years, The Trip to Bountiful, Carousel, Picnic, The Philadelphia Story, Moon for the Misbegotten, The Miracle Worker, and so many more. This coming Christmas she’ll be in the holiday musical The Sound of Music and I can’t wait for that.

I marvel each time I sit in the audience, watching the beautiful and gifted young woman on the stage…who used to be my little girl who wore the big glasses and couldn’t say her “L”s.

And I love her so.

On Saturday morning we were able to sleep in two whole hours later than usual, until 7:40. The sun was streaming in the window, the birds were singing, and I felt rested as I stretched and looked at Michael next to me.

Most people who know us are aware of Michael’s Parkinson’s and the number it has done on his speech and ability to convey what he’s really thinking.

We said good morning to each other and after a minute or two he looked at me and said, “You look pretty.”

“I do?” I asked as I looked over at him.

“Your face is full of straight lines,” he said lovingly.

“My face is full of straight lines?” I asked, amused.

“Yes, and it looks puffy,” he said softly. “In a healthy sort of way.”

“Thank you Michael,” I responded.

I may be the only woman in the world who can happily hear those words and know that they were truly meant as a compliment, even if they didn’t quite come out that way.   🙂

I’m beginning to think there’s something about me that attracts strange episodes having to do with our house.

You may or may not remember how difficult it was for me to get three ornithological prints matted and framed. It was such an unbelievable and drawn-out ordeal, and you can see amusing photos and read about it…

1. First here

2. Next here  (I promise you’ll laugh)

3. And finally here

There was also the floor episode which I never wrote about. We had lots of new flooring installed in our newly renovated kitchen and laundry area before we moved into this house; flooring that was highly touted as the flooring of the future for various reasons I won’t list today. Within one week of all the new flooring going in, it “failed.” It began to pop up in corners of the flexible planks. It had adhesive on the back so I would press the little curling corners back down and they would seem to be fine, until we returned the next day (and the next) to find a few more little “failures” here and there. The representative of the company was called by the retailer we bought the flooring from, and he came out to inspect it. He agreed that it was doing what it wasn’t supposed to do. All that brand new flooring was torn up, and we had to choose new. Of course the kind I liked was more expensive than the flooring that had just been torn up. But I’m happy with this kitchen flooring, anyway.

There have been other things, odd occurrences, that make me wonder what’s up. The one I’ll tell you about today is about a window. When we moved into this house, a window in my office had a crack in it and we knew we would someday replace it. We took a long time getting around to it, but since our house is up for sale we’ve fixed every last thing that needed attention so it would be in excellent condition.

Here’s how it went with the window.

First I called a reputable glass company and they happily came out and measured the pane that needed replacing. They said they would be out in 10 days to put it in.

Secondly, it was more than ten days, but that part was okay. I know people are busy.

Thirdly, when they finally did come out to put in the new pane, the workmen found that the man who measured and ordered the glass was quite a bit off. The new glass they brought was too big for the spot. So they measured the space, then off they went with the wrong glass, and apparently the right size was ordered.

Fourth, the company never called back (in three weeks) to tell me if the new pane had come in and when they would replace it, so I called them. Yes, it was in, and they would be coming the end of next week, was that okay? Perfect, I said.

Fifth, the end of next week came and we made sure we were home on the day the workmen were coming to install the correctly-sized glass, but no one ever showed up. So I called the measurer/owner man and asked if they had forgotten about us. They had. (A phone call would have been nice.) He apologized and I said that was fine. He promised he would pull people off of other jobs and have the new glass installed Monday morning first thing.

Sixth, they just left, and here’s what they installed….look carefully and click on the photo to enlarge if you like. The one they put it is the one on the left.

They got the new window installed and then came to tell Michael and me that…uh…ahem…it was wrong again. The man who initially came out to measure also counted the number of panes incorrectly. All our office windows are 12-paned. He ordered our replacement to be 15-paned.

So for a while we’ll have a mismatched window, until they order the new one and come back to put it in.

Some might say “the universe” is trying to tell me something. But I really think it’s God speaking, and I think He’s trying to work out Galatians 5:22-23 in me:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

I know I’m probably the only one, right?

Yesterday I picked up my friend Kim and took her on a “surprise adventure.” At least those were the words I used when we were playing Words With Friends (Kim on her iPhone and I on my iPad) and I invited her to set aside an upcoming morning for some fun. She trusted me enough to say yes when I told her I was going to keep it a surprise; in fact, what she said was “I’m game!”  I like that about Kim.

So, I took Kim to ride the Timber Twister for the first time. And I wanted us to try our city’s newest attraction, the Timber Flyer, which is a zip line at the same place.

Little did we know that at the top of the hill where you board the zip line ride is a nice platform scale they make you step on before they allow you to ride. They want to make sure that no one exceeds the 450 pound weight limit. I am pleased to report that I did not. While standing in line it alternately rained and sunshined, and even getting wet wasn’t a deterrent to the good visiting we got to do while together.

Kim and I rode the Twister and the Flyer and we both agreed that our favorite was the Timber Twister — you can go a little faster on it, and the ride lasts longer too. I have to smile even now as I think of us two middle-aged women standing in line with all those young people so we could enjoy a little rush of adrenaline. Take it from me, when you’re in your fifties, adrenaline rushes tend to be few and far between. 🙂  I mentioned to Kim that one of my daughters doesn’t like fast rides of any kind, not because she’s afraid, but because she doesn’t like that “feeling” you get when you go extremely fast and your stomach seems to drop. Kim grinned and said, “I love that feeling!” and it just reaffirmed to me what I’ve long known — Kim is a real kindred spirit. Ever since I was a little girl I’ve loved fast rides — twirling, upside down, falling, swooshing, spinning rides — I want to try them all.

After enjoying the thrills and the views and the good conversation, we drove to our local Red Lobster and had their delicious soup and salad lunch. Kim and I talked about the mysterious ways of God and how hard it is to figure out why He sometimes does things the way He does. We agreed that He’s trustworthy and inscrutable both, but that the older we get the more we rest in one conclusion: if we love and walk with Jesus, no matter what befalls us, we’ll eventually be okay.

I have found that when you’re experiencing surges of adrenaline and satisfying conversation with an old friend, time really does fly. In what seemed like no time at all it was time to drive Kim home. We said that when we’re much older women, the memory of our adventure will bring a smile. Hopefully one with teeth.

When I arrived home I went through the mail, turned the savory-smelling roast that was cooking in the crockpot, let the dogs out, and visited with Michael. (He likes the Timber Twister almost as much as I do, and I hope someday soon he can be persuaded to try the Timber Flyer…I’ll be the one most appreciating his woots and the look on his face.)

Unbeknownst to me, another “surprise” was lurking in our bathroom that day. I carried some laundry upstairs to our room, and noticed that the toilet paper was running out in the master bath. I reached into a decorative little container we keep near the tub that has extra toilet paper rolls in it, and I saw a maroon-colored speck on the roll. It was so tiny — at first repugnant glance I thought it was a tick. We have lots of ticks here in Minnesota. But the dark red color didn’t look like a tick, and the (horrors!) pincers didn’t look like a tick. I stifled a scream and quickly tapped the creature off the toilet paper roll and onto the side of the tub where I could get a better look at it. There are not enough words to describe the inner cringe and recoiling I felt when I saw it begin to move, waving its almost-microscopic lobster-like claws around. What in the world was this? Horrible! Gross! It gave me the willies. I could even feel my face flush in reaction to something that looked so creepy. I quickly wadded up some TP, crushed it (although it was so tiny — not even an 1/8 of an inch — who knows if it survived — probably did!) and flushed it down the toilet. And then I flushed again for good measure.

I did a search to find out what dreadful little creature was clinging to our toilet paper, and it was (prepare yourself)…a pseudoscorpion. I don’t even want to utter the word. Have any of you ever seen or heard of pseudoscorpions? They’re arachnids that are in my state, in my city, in my neighborhood, on my block, and one (please God let there be only one) somehow got into my house. If you would like to verify the existence of pseudoscorpions yourself, go right ahead and google it. Don’t get too close to the screen, however.

This photo I found of someone else’s fingers and someone else’s pseudoscorpion looks exactly like what I found yesterday (you can click to enlarge if you don’t have the slightest tinge of arachnophobia.)

So there you have it. Two adrenaline rushes in one day. One welcome, planned, fun and memorable; the other uninvited, sinister, startling and loathsome.

While my adrenal glands are recovering, I’m hoping the sieve-like part of my aging brain kicks in and helps me soon forget the pseudoscorpion in our bathroom.

I’m also hoping that the part of my brain that used to hang onto memories like a steel trap (or so my mother told me) will never let me forget the wonderful and satisfying time I had yesterday with my dear friend Kim.

***Update on Saturday, August 13th***

My friend Deb took this picture of the bug she found in her house and sent it to me. I think it’s an earwig — another adrenaline-producing species.

Here’s what Deb wrote, which I thought was so funny — can you tell she’s in the medical profession? —

“Hi Julie! Look what I found in my kitchen today! Because of my quick reflexes, this specimen is now missing some essential life fluids and has some tortion of his exoskeleton plus irreversible damage to his right extremities. Straight forward movement is no longer possible for this poor bug. Yes, alas, he is destined to navigate in a circular pattern for the rest of his short life….and I do mean short! His pincers are remarkably intact however. They seem to be the strongest part of his little body.”

Thank you Deb! 🙂

Have a great week everyone,

One of the blogs I visit had this meme on it recently, and since it’s about books, I couldn’t resist putting it on mine.

Feel free to put this and your own answers on your blog, or leave a comment below so we can all see and perhaps get some new recommendations! (You’re really supposed to list one book per question, but I’m feeling bookish and have decided to list two per question.)

One book you’re currently reading: Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, and Love Can Open Prison Doors by Starr Daily.

One book that changed your life: One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp, and A Place of Healing: Wrestling With the Mysteries of Suffering, Pain, and God’s Sovereignty by Joni Eareckson Tada.

One book you’d want on a deserted island: my Bible and my journal.

One book you’ve read more than once: the entire Mitford series by Jan Karon, and The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom.

One book you’ve never been able to finish: Green Dolphin Street by Elizabeth Goudge, and most books by Karen Kingsbury.

One book that made you laugh: A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, and The Plague and I by Betty MacDonald.

One book that made you cry: When God Weeps — Why Our Sufferings Matter to the Almighty by Joni Eareckson Tada, and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.

One book that was a waste of time in your opinion:  The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, and The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley.

One book that stunned you: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, and The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin.

One book you keep rereading: All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot, and Treasures of the Snow by Patricia St. John.

One book you’ve been meaning to read: Brothers Karamozov  by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Radical — Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream by David Platt.

One book you believe everyone should read: Disappointment with God by Phillip Yancey, and In Celebration of Simplicity by Penelope Wilcock.

Finally, grab the nearest book. Open it to page 56. Find the seventh sentence: “We forget the debt of love we owe each other, under pressure of the times in which we live — we forget to be spacious and generous and understanding, begin to be resentful and antagonistic, giving never an inch, insisting on our rights and our own way.”  (From The Hardest Thing to Do by Penelope Wilcock.)

Now it’s your turn. Feel free to answer all of them or just a few.

Happy reading!

**To read Part One of this post, click here.**

He’s gone? Two hours ago? While I was in flight from Minneapolis to Los Angeles?  My thoughts swirled as what my daughter Sharon said to me took hold. My father was dead, and I was not going to be able to say goodbye to him face to face. Of course I cried. Sitting there in my rented Altima in the Enterprise lot in Los Angeles, I turned the ignition off and the tears fell.

I called my stepmom Dorothy in San Luis Obispo and she told me how my dad’s last hours had been. She was sitting there in their home, with my father’s body, waiting for me to arrive. She was willing to wait the four hours it would take for me to get there to say goodbye to the empty shell that had housed the man with the huge personality, who had been my dad. At first I didn’t know what to do. I had flown to California to spend some last hours with my dying father, to sing to him even, and now that wasn’t possible.

I decided to fly home to Minnesota. I knew that Michael and I would be returning to California in a few days for my father’s funeral and I would be able to see him then, so I told Dorothy that I would not be driving up. She understood and was so gracious to me.

I called Northwest Airlines to see if there were available flights and was connected to the kindest, most compassionate woman who comforted me as I cried to her on the phone and told her what had happened. She instantly waived the fees to change my flight ticket home. She booked a flight from LAX to Minneapolis for me that afternoon, poured out a golden balm of love and grace on my soul through the telephone, and called me honey. I pray again this day that God blesses her for her kindness to me.

Like someone in a semi-conscious state, I pulled my bag from the trunk and locked up the car I’d never driven, returned to the line inside the rental facility, explained why I wouldn’t be needing the car after all, and boarded the shuttle back to the airport. I was stunned. I was sad. I was unsure about why this had happened, why I flew all the way to California only to turn around and fly all the way home to Minnesota in one long day, without having been able to see my dad again before he died.

Of course I inwardly berated myself for not having gone to see him sooner. His illness seemed to hit him like a fast freight train — he died 44 days after he first started feeling sick. It all happened so quickly, and since there wasn’t a diagnosis for so long, I thought he might get better.

On the 3 1/2 hour flight home I pondered what had obviously not been a word spoken by the Lord to my heart: “sing to him.” Why had I thought the Lord had spoken those words to me? I had prayed and asked, was willing to obey, and sensed in my heart something that definitely didn’t seem like it would have been my own thought. And even if I hadn’t heard the Lord correctly, the one thing that kept rolling around in my mind was this question: why didn’t God allow my dad to live just a few hours longer, knowing that I was on my way to see him? Why didn’t he either die before I left, or hang on until I arrived?

Aahh, these are the theological questions that men and women much greater and godlier than I, have wrestled with for millenia. If God can so easily do _____, why doesn’t He? Here’s what I think the answer is, in a nutshell:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the LORD.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.”   (from Isaiah chapter 55)

1. Either God cares and can’t do anything about our messes.
2. Or God can fix our messes but doesn’t care.
3. Or God cares, can do absolutely anything, but works in ways we often don’t yet understand.

I have chosen to throw my whole life into the third choice. Has He fixed my messes before? So many times I can’t count them all. But sometimes He just says, “Trust me” and that’s what I choose to do. Trusting in the dark is so much better than railing and flailing in the dark. I know this from experience. So I had to let go of the question “why didn’t He keep your father alive for just a few more hours?” and put that in The God Box, as my friend Sue R. has taught me.

This brings me back to the directive I thought I heard from God before I left for California. I was obviously mistaken and it was disheartening for me at the time. But I’m still listening for His voice. Sometimes I get it right, sometimes I don’t. I get it right the most when I “hear” Him speaking to me from His Word. There have been times in my life where God spoke in such a powerful, unmistakable way that it took my breath away. (Remind me to do a post here someday about me almost getting arrested in Scotland, and the unforgettable way God spoke to me from His Word then!…still brings goosebumps.)  1 Corinthians 13:12 says that now (here on earth) we see through a glass darkly, and I also take that to mean that now (here on earth) we hear through a thick wall faintly, as well.

Michael and I flew to California a few days later to attend my father’s funeral. I was able to see what a small malignancy had done to a previously vigorous body. It brought such sorrow for my dad’s suffering, but it also reaffirmed to me that I believe we are here on a temporary basis. We dwell in flimsy tents, only passing through. We see spiritual realities blurry at best, as through a dark glass. We sometimes hear God’s voice loud and clear, and other times we don’t hear it at all.

I never got to sing “Precious Memories” or “The Old Rugged Cross” to my dad, didn’t get to hold his hand when it was still warm, didn’t get to see those blue eyes looking at his only daughter again. It took a while for me to be okay with that.

I was sharing the story of my attempt to see my dying father with a wise Christian woman named Vinita. These were her words to me:

“Perhaps what God really wanted was the process you went through in deciding to be at your dad’s bedside, choosing the songs, and singing them to him. Who knows the details of how we walk on God’s path? God wants an opening, that’s all, a place in which we say yes to whatever. The openness and the saying yes are the real dramas, probably more so than the actions themselves.”

What comfort, what new ways of thinking and seeing, she brought to me!

So whatever God had in mind for my seemingly fruitless flights, for the suffering of those I love, for times of clear direction and for confusion in the dark, I’ll leave it all to Him, and I will still trust Him.

But blessed is the man who trusts me, God,
   the woman who sticks with God.
They’re like trees replanted in Eden,
   putting down roots near the rivers—
Never a worry through the hottest of summers,
   never dropping a leaf,
Serene and calm through droughts,
   bearing fresh fruit every season.

Jeremiah 17:7-8, The Message Bible

No matter what, I’m a woman who’s sticking with God.

I am no longer my own but yours.

Put me to what you will,

rank me with whom you will;

put me to doing, put me to suffering;

let me be employed for you or laid aside for you,

exalted for you or brought low for you.

Let me be full, let me be empty,

let me have all things, let me have nothing.

I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things

 to your pleasure and disposal.

And now, glorious and blessed God,

Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

you are mine and I am yours.

So be it.

And the covenant made on earth,

let it be ratified in heaven.

Amen.

(The Methodist Covenant Prayer)

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On Sunday a man responsible for so much of the music I listened to during my teen years died at age 60. Dan Peek was one of the three founders of the group America. After he left the group, he started making Christian music, and our family had all of his albums. I still remember listening to the “ElectroVoice” cassette tape, turned up loud as we drove in our behemoth 1986 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser station wagon, and if I still had my vinyl albums and record player, I’d put that album on this morning and sit and listen to it straight through.

I know it would bring back many memories of a decade that flew by, a season of three young daughters with perms, huge plastic eyeglasses, big shirts and stirrup pants. And “ElectroVoice” has a remake of one of the group America’s most famous songs on it, one that Dan Peek re-recorded when he struck out on his own.

You’ll probably recognize the song, but listen carefully for the lyrics he changed:

*          *          *          *          *          *

God bless Dan Peek and his family…

“I’m so concerned about your dad, Julie. He’s just not himself. He’s losing some strength and his appetite is gone. He looks like he’s wasting away,” my step-mom Dorothy told me on the phone in late 2007. “If we could just get some tests done on him and find out what’s wrong, then maybe he could be treated and get well again.”

Unfortunately, my father’s HMO in California wasn’t as anxious as Dorothy was for him to have those tests. And, shockingly, neither was his doctor. “Doc,” the physician said in a slightly patronizing voice, “you’re 87 years old.” And in that simple statement of fact, by the intonations he used and the almost imperceptibly condescending yet sort of compassionate look he had on his face, this young doctor was telling my father that because of his age, expensive medical tests would not be ordered. Because of his age, they would not be getting to the bottom of his illness in order to try to treat it. Even, it turned out, if there was begging involved. And pleading. No. Apparently in this HMO, there were some physicians (who all must have taken the Hippocratic oath, promising: “I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone”) who believed that octogenarians did not deserve the health care that younger people did.

To say that this was a great frustration and a deep heartache for my step-mom Dorothy is an understatement. What eventually led to my father being properly diagnosed was a visit to the local hospital’s Emergency Room. There, they gave him the CT scan his doctor had refused to order. It was there that the mass on his kidney was seen. Suddenly all his symptoms fit together — the painful backaches that Dorothy had tried to relieve by hours of massage, the lack of appetite and the literal wasting of his tall and vigorous body, the bloody urine and the debilitating exhaustion….these were caused by kidney cancer. But even if there had once been a chance of surgery and treatment, it was too late now. My father was dying.

I called Northwest Airlines and scheduled a flight from Minnesota to Los Angeles for the next day. I arranged for a rental car at LAX so I could drive the four hours north to San Luis Obispo, where Dad and Dorothy lived. After I spoke to Dorothy to tell her when I’d be arriving the next day, she put my dad on the phone. His normally booming and confident voice had been reduced to a hoarse whisper. He could only manage a few words at a time. When I told him I would see him soon, he rasped, “Love you love you love you….”

In the midst of trying to get everything ready in our home for my absence, I prayed. I knew my time with my father would be short, and I asked God to speak to my heart about what I was to say to him. Of course I knew I wanted to express my love to him, my gratitude for many things he had ensured in my life. That was a given. But as I pictured myself sitting at his bedside with him possibly suffering and being in and out of consciousness, I wondered what I should do. As I packed my suitcase, I prayed. As I organized all the medications that our Foster residents would be requiring in my absence, I prayed. As I made a list of appointments and things that needed attending to while I was gone, I asked God to make it clear what He wanted me to say to my dad.

Some of you reading might wonder why I was concerned about this at all. Maybe some of you have already been through this and you just sat at your parent’s bedside and did whatever came naturally, with no forethought given. But I had the sense that I needed to do some specific thing when I saw my dad. And that night, with everything ready, I thought I heard this: “Sing to him.”

Er….uh….sing to him? That couldn’t be right. I am not a singer, and I had never sung to anyone before, except maybe my children and grandchildren. But why in the world would God want me to sing to my dying father? And if I was hearing correctly, what was I supposed to sing to him? The more I thought about it and prayed, the seemingly clearer it became. I took an old hymnbook down off a bookshelf and paged through. My dad loved the song “Precious Memories.” He cried every time he heard it because it reminded him of his preacher father and their family. My dad also loved “The Old Rugged Cross.” Well, okay, I thought, as God helps me, I will sit with my dad and tell him I love him, hold his big hand if it doesn’t hurt him too much, pray for him, and sing some hymns. I unzipped the outer pocket of my suitcase and slid the hymnal in.

All during the flight from Minneapolis to Los Angeles I sat very still, overcome with my thoughts. I prayed for my dad, for Dorothy, for my own family of origin. Our family story was not one of the happiest ever written. There was (and is) a lot of dysfunction, pride and anger, and those traits rarely lead to a warm and cohesive family unit. I also wondered how my brothers would take the news of my father’s illness and imminent death. Soon the flight landed in smoggy and very familiar Southern California, and I grabbed my bag from the overhead bin and headed for the bus that would take me to the rental car agency. After standing in line there for almost a half hour, I finally stowed my bag in the trunk, strapped myself into the rented Nissan, and plugged in my cell phone. I was so anxious to get on the road, get out of LA traffic, and head north to see my father. I wanted to see that contagious smile of his one last time, even if a feeble one.

Before I even put the car in drive, my phone rang and it was my oldest daughter Sharon.

“Have you spoken to Dorothy yet, Mom?” she asked. My heart sank as I sensed what the next words out of her mouth would be. Sharon broke the news gently.

“Mom, Grandpa died two hours ago.”

To read Part 2, click here.

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