Last weekend I officiated at the memorial service of a beloved congregant. I was up until 1 AM working on her eulogy because I didn’t want to write it. I don’t want to accept her death. But such is life, and we had a beautiful day and a full church for her service. I got through it fine (a few choked up moments during the prayer, but okay) until we stood to sing “Amazing Grace.” I had requested of my Music Director that she modulate and go up a key between the third and final (for us) verse:

Through many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come
Twas grace that brought me safe thus far
And grace will lead me home… (key change)

When we’ve been there ten thousand years
bright shining as the sun
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
than when we’ve first begun.

But I couldn’t sing that last verse. The moment I heard that key change, I opened my mouth to sing and was able to produce only sobs. Even with a lifetime of theatre experience and two years of breath work and meditation practice, my body refused to obey my mind. Firm admonitions to self along the lines of “YOU HUGE LOSER, GET IT TOGETHER” did not work. So I stepped even further back from the pulpit, lowered my face into my program and sobbed as quietly as possible through that last verse. “You’ve got about ten seconds to pull yourself together, girl,” I told myself. “Breathe, breathe, breathe.” I breathed from way down in my gut. I made my voice work. The benediction was not the vocally strong proclamation of faith, blessing and peace I hoped for, but hey, it came out and people could hear it.

But… holy cow!!! Such is power of music. I had gone over the words of the memorial service late Friday night and many times the morning of the service. I had already shed many tears for Jackie.
I had cried that morning the shower, for heaven’s sake: I thought I had got it all out! I was emotionally prepared to sing “Morning Has Broken” and to hear a meditative piano version of “Rank By Rank Again We Stand” and to sing “Amazing Grace.” Hey, I’m a pro! But THAT DAMNED KEY CHANGE. Key change happens, my composure goes out the window. Even though I knew it was coming!

Even after all that, I’m sure the next time I hear “Amazing Grace” I’ll be fine. However, I was unable to hear the song “Claire de Lune” by Debussy for probably six or seven years after my father died; it was the last song played at his memorial service.

Other songs that often produce an “Augh, I totally can’t handle hearing this” reaction when I’m feeling at all vulnerable are:

1. “Hearts” as sung by Marty Valen
2. “Lonely Stranger” sung by Eric Clapton (on his “Unplugged” album)
3. “If You Believe” from “The Wiz” as sung by Miss Lena Horne on her live Broadway album
4. “Little Water Song” by Nick Cave as sung by Ute Lemper on the album “Punishing Kiss” (the creepiest, most chilling song of all time, seriously)
5. “I Fall To Pieces” as sung by Patsy Cline
6. “The Valley” by Jane Siberry from “When I Was a Boy”
7. “Love Is Everything” by Jane Siberry (ditto)
8. “Kooks” by David Bowie from “Hunky Dory”
9. “Wild Is the Wind” by Nina Simone on “Nina Simone’s Finest Hour”
10. “You Take My Breath Away” as sung by Eva Cassidy on her “Wonderful World” album (and almost anything by Eva Cassidy from “Songbird”)
11. “Elegy: Snow in June” by Tan Dun
12. Karen Carpenter singing “Bless the Beasts and Children”
13. Chopin’s Nocturne in C# minor
14. “Vissi D’Arte” from Tosca as sung by Monserrat Caballe
15. “Not A Day Goes By” as sung by Bernadette Peters on her London Sondheim tribute album, “Sondheim, Etc.”
16. Johnny Cash singing “In the Garden”
17. Judy Garland’s Carnegie Hall concert (any track) and “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from “The London Sessions”
18. Ray Charles, “How Long Has This Been Going On”
19. Shirley Horne singing “So Here’s To Life” by Artie Butler (on “Shirley Horne With Strings”)
20. Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” — I mean, is that not the all-time heartbreaker?

… and so many more!! So get out the hankies, gang, and share your own tearjerkers!

Here’s producer and journalist Anne-Marie Dorning on how a woman named Millie Garfield and I inspired her to start a blog called Massachusetts Mom.
I first met Anne-Marie when she called to see if I would be willing to appear on “Nightline” two winters ago. I declined at first, then went to my Parish Committee to see what they would say. They were all for it, so Anne-Marie came with her crew and filmed this little segment for “A Sign of the Times.” I hated the lead-in, which insinuated that I give fashion tips to my congregants (hello Martin, the name of the blog is Beauty Tips FOR MINISTERS — what about that isn’t clear?), and my congregation and I cringed at the cut-in of the cross that doesn’t exist on our building. Other than those small details (oh, and the suggestion that I spend most of my spare time cruising the malls maniacally pawing through the racks at Macy’s seeking clergy-appropriate garb) and my squealing embarrassment at my own appearance (does anyone really like seeing themselves on camera? Can we re-shoot this now that I’ve lost 30 lbs.?), it was a good segment, a fascinating day, and all the more fun and memorable for the involvement of my delightful colleagues Donna and the Eclectic Cleric.

Mazel tov on your blogging, Anne-Marie!

So she rested, and slept a lot. I’d call to check in. “Vicki, I just can’t get it going like I used to.”
“That’s understandable,” I said. “On my best days I can’t get it going like you used to. Do you realize what a whirling dervish of focused energy you’ve been for decades?”
We’d chat and I’d catch her up on church goings-on. She was my North Star.
She understood church better than almost anyone I’ve ever known.
We missed her a lot around the office. Before she took this “sabbatical,” she had been there at least three times a week. She was involved in everything. She had a furiously passionate view on everything. She read everything the UUA put out, attended GA something like 35 times, and knew what was going on at every congregation in the district.

She was devoted to what she called “the care and feeding of ministers.” I had been warned before I began my ministry at this parish that she would be a troublemaker to me. We laughed over this recently and I remarked that I was still waiting for the trouble to start.

She was my spiritual bodyguard for six years and although we argued, she was the one to constantly remind me to take care of myself. Sometimes she offered specific commandments on how I should accomplish that. “Take a walk and don’t bring your cell phone!” she’d demand. “Watch some TV tonight and TAKE THE PHONE OFF THE HOOK.” “Get out of town — we don’t need you here,” was her response when I considered attending the Festival of Homiletics in Nashville in 2007. She was my Worship Committee Chair and she simply informed me that they would fill the pulpit while I was gone, waving away my thanks.
She insisted that I take the Sunday after Easter off. She was there to assist at every wedding and every funeral: opening the door, showing the florist and caterer around (okay, sometimes ordering them around), turning on the sound system, thinking of things I might need before I knew I needed them.

I never asked her to, but I know she ran interference with parishioners who complained about decisions I made; with far less patience and sensitivity than I would have, perhaps, but trying to protect me from “petty complaints from people who don’t know their ass from their elbow when it comes to our tradition.” Try as I might to pry them out of her, she remained tight-lipped about details. “If it IS a real problem, Victoria, I’m sure you’ll hear about it. In the meantime, you have enough to do. Let me deal with the dummies.” I’d say, “C’mon now. Just because someone doesn’t agree with me or you doesn’t mean they’re dummies” And she’d respond in an arch tone, “I’ll think about that and get back to you.”
When I was involved in helping a family through a particularly sensitive crisis, she managed to get the word out without exposing confidences. “Step it up, people, and run your own church,” is the sort of thing she’d say. “The minister isn’t God here.”

At congregational meetings she held a minority viewpoint on most matters, and for that alone the church will sorely miss her. “LISTEN, FOLKS,” was her customary way of beginning a phrase that would express her rockbound view that we were heading straight to hell in a handbasket unless we listened to her. We’d all sit up straight and listen. The vote often did not go her way but she never quit the church. Many people actually feared her — especially newer folks who didn’t know what a solid gold heart she had beneath the crusty exterior, or who had never eaten her chocolate cake or her ham and beans.

“He couldn’t organize a one-car funeral” was her disdainful assessment of anyone whose leadership skills she thought were less than up to par. But she did not hesitate to lavish direct praise on those whose dedication and work she admired. As I remarked recently in a tribute to her, her dedication to the church was such that she had earned both bragging and bitching rights to it.

By March, when she still wasn’t rested enough to get back to church and I was obviously in denial, someone noodged her to go to the doctor. She hated doctors and had avoided them for decades, cracking, “Why in the world do I need to pay someone to tell me to quit smoking!??” I think she smoked at least two packs of Maverick 100’s a day.

It’s a good thing that this noodging church friend was so persistent. She finally did agree to see a doctor for that nagging cough and arthritis pain and was sent for an MRI immediately, which showed a cancer that had already progressed significantly through her lungs and into her back. All her doctor could offer was radiation to shrink the tumor in her spine so that she might be more comfortable. She, who had always cared for everyone else, realized right away that she might have to begin to accept help herself. It was her last great work of spiritual growth.

A team of church friends mobilized right away. They took her to doctor’s appointments, and on a few emergency hospital visits when the pain got too bad to bear. One friend escorted her out of the hospital waving “SORRY” behind her frail back for the insults she had hurled at doctors and nurses at moments of pain and fear during her stay there. Church friends brought her food, pink gerbera daisies and picked up her laundry to do at their own homes because she had no washer and dryer. They even bought her cigarettes, because as she said, “Why quit now, for God’s sake?” They made visits to the Social Security office and tracked down her Medicare benefits for her, purchased her additional health care coverage, sent in a plummer to fix the toilet, drove her several hours out of town to visit her son, and purchased airline tickets for her daughter to fly in from Florida.

She was always a very proud woman, raised on a farm in Arostook County, Maine and tough as nails. She didn’t have indoor plumbing as a child and comfortably used a chamber pot until the last week of her life. In the winter, she did not use heat but kept up a steady fire in a wood-burning stove with recyclable items (she recycled or composted everything), dressing in layers and keeping warm upstairs under layers of wonderful old quilts.

She appointed me her Health Care Proxy in early April and we talked about the fact that she wanted to die at home. No hospitals — she bitterly hated them. No nursing homes. At home. Cigarettes and black coffee available at all times. Everything on her own terms. No hospice. No strangers coming in. When I washed dishes for her she fussed at me: leave them alone or I won’t be able to find anything. Always her terms.

We gave her The Good Egg Award at the Stewardship Celebration Dinner — her last appearance among the wider church community, and established a GA Scholarship in her name. She stood to accept the award and then made an unexpected speech. In her direct way, she told everyone that she was dying, that she wanted to say goodbye and thank you, and that for those who wanted to know if there was anything they could do for her, yes there was. “Love this church.” I was holding the microphone for her. “And take care of this lady, because this is going to be hard on her.” I put on my best neutral “pastoral care” face but I think the tears streaming uncontrollably down my face probably gave me away a bit.

As she got sicker, we adjusted the expectation that all her care needs could be met by non-medically trained folks. First she allowed the Visiting Nurses Association in, thank God. And then the hospice branch of the VNA. Pharmacare delivered to the house. Meals on Wheels came in. A wonderful nurse named Mary Ann. A social worker. Just a few days ago, she agreed to the first visit from a home health aid although she was very resistant to being attended to by strangers. She did it for those of us who loved her, who were afraid to make her pain worse while changing a shirt or a Depends, who were terrified at the prospect of dropping her or touching her painfully swollen ankles by accident. “Will you do it for us?” I asked. She closed her eyes and nodded.

Eventually it became clear that she would need around-the-clock supervision. The care team confronted the fact that her own home was an impossible environment to provide sufficient care in. Church friends offered their home. She could move into the guest room and church caregivers could stay in another guest room. She would have her own bathroom on the same floor, a washer and dryer in the house, a dishwasher, and working shower. She could smoke on the porch; some of our church guys could put together a wheelchair ramp in no time at all to get her down the one step if she needed it.

This past Monday she and I discussed it. She sat thoughtfully, cigarette in hand and agreed that when things became “unmanageable,” she would be willing to go. It was not,after all, a nursing home or a hospital. We agreed on a code word for when things became unmanageable. If she said, “STAT” to me, it would be time to move her out.

The STAT moment came yesterday in the morning during what the hospice nurse called “another pain crisis.” I got there just after the nurse had administered more medication and sat on a footstool in front of her, both of her hands in mine. “Is this STAT?” I asked. “Is it time? Are you ready?” She nodded yes, weakly. By the time the ambulance arrived she was in a blissfully deep sleep brought on by the medication. Free from pain. But I had to wake her. “Honey, they’re almost here to take you to Karen and Larry’s,” I said. “I’ll be right behind you in the car. I’ve got everything you need. Don’t try to get up. I just wanted to wake you early enough to have a moment to say goodbye to the house.”

With every last ounce of strength she had, she struggled to rise, swinging her legs one by one over the side of the bed. “No,” she said. And then “No!!!” I had tricked her. I had drugged her and lied to her. I had been plotting this for weeks. I tried to reason with her as she lurched slowly through the kitchen. “We discussed this, remember? Remember our code word?” She wept and reached the sink where she began to try to wash dishes. “I’m sorry, I know…” I said helplessly to her back. “NO, you DON’T KNOW,” she said. There were daggers in her voice.

The ambulance drivers arrived– two young females.

As she allowed herself to be strapped gently onto the gurney, she hollered and railed at me. She called me obscene names. She spat further accusations about my motives, my betrayal, my conniving. “We can’t take her if she doesn’t consent to go,” said the ambulance driver. “I understand,” I said. “So don’t.” But then I remembered that the hospice nurse had found her just that morning sitting half slid off her kitchen chair, a cigarette lighter in mouth, just about to flick her Bic without a cigarette end to put it to –and I became very frightened. I prayed for guidance and immediately received an image of a mother bear with a cub in its mouth, shaking it.

“I agreed to be your health care proxy because we trust each other, you ungrateful brat!” I yelled. “You can stay here and set yourself on fire and break everyone’s heart who loves you or you can come to the home of friends where we can stay with you 24 hours a day and keep you comfortable, safe and manage your pain. We have busted our butts for you because WE LOVE YOU. No one is STEALING FROM YOU, I am collecting your medication!” She hollered and I yelled back until the ambulance drivers were in tears and begging, “Stop, please stop.”

I waved at them to let us go on a moment more, I would explain later that she needed to rage rather than to grieve, it was always her style, and I needed to be the villain for this part of the story because there needed to be a villain.

“Are you ready to go? Do you give your consent?” asked one of the young women at last, and she swallowed and nodded. “Just keep HER away from me,” she said, gesturing at me. “If I see you again, I’ll kill you.”
“You won’t get that close,” I responded. “I’ll throttle you first.” I knew that was a come-back she would have ordinarily loved. As I hurried to get in my car, I thought we’ll laugh at that line in the next life, honey babe. She called me honey babe sometimes.

I followed close behind the ambulance and minutes later I was sobbing in the kitchen and trying to get a grip on myself to help unload her supplies and go over her medication protocol for the rest of the team. She was having a cigarette outside — still strapped to the gurney, mind you. At last they rolled her in. “How are you feeling now?” one of the gals inquired and she said with customary sarcasm and surprising energy, “Have you ever heard the expression ‘mad as a wet hen?’” All three of them laughed, along with the parishioner who was there to welcome her to her home and lead them down the hall.
They gently transferred her to a hospital bed in a clean, blessedly quiet room, tucking her into fresh sheets while I quietly placed photographs of her family and get-well cards around where she could see them when she opened her eyes.

When all the technicians had gone, I sat by her side in a chair as she rested. She eventually opened her eyes and we held hands. She was peaceful, relieved, comfortable. “I’m sorry I yelled at you,” she said. We exchanged loving words. Nothing that hadn’t been said already, just nice to say again for the last time. The dog barked once and she opened her eyes in surprise. New sounds. And then she drifted to sleep.

Our DRE came and spent long evening hours with her, and then another church friend arrived at midnight. She had one last pain crisis, trying in her agonies to get out of bed. Brave church friends remained with her to keep her safe until the nurse arrived and doubled the Diladid dose. She slept comfortably at last, surrounded by friends, and died this morning at around 8:00. I came and anointed her and sang “Amazing Grace” to her; something I had hoped to do while she was still alive. More church friends arrived to keep her company until the nurse made a final visit and pronouncement, and then the undertakers arrived to take her away. We formed a little receiving line in the hallway to touch her covered frame one last time and say our goodbyes.

When she was gone we gathered in the kitchen as women will do, telling stories about the past months and piecing it all together, laughing about funny things she had said or done, figuring out further logistics, phoning people. We went into the backyard and Peg and I both smoked one of her cigarettes in tribute. It was an impromptu wake, girl style.

A couple of weeks ago when I had been sitting with her and she said, “I wish I could make it easier on you,” I said, “YOU wish you could make this easier on ME? I think that works the other way around, kiddo.”

This can’t be her eulogy, of course. It’s just part of the story of the end of her life, told from my point-of-view — a story of how we find our way through the work of ministry one step at a time, one decision at a time, one phone call, one plan, one meal, one fiery confrontation, one cigarette, one prayer, one organizational chart of medication, one cup of coffee, one life and one death at a time.

She liked this blog. She liked that it allows me to initiate conversation about ministry, the church and liberal religion — all beloved to her — with a much wider community than our one congregation. I told her one time that I was committed to not writing about specific people in the church unless it was to make a shining example of them. “I don’t care if you write about me,” she said, “Just make it good.”

I hope I did, Jackie.

In memoriam
Jacqueline Lee Magazu
August 3, 1940 - June 13, 2008

I just came back from a reunion in New Canaan, Connecticut where I grew up amid considerable affluence, and even I was disgusted by the obscenely huge McMansions that have cropped up where once there stood grand and beautiful colonials. We lived in a nice house when I was a kid and certainly wanted for nothing, but we were not as wealthy as many of my peers. I suppose I noticed it and perhaps even cared about it at one time, but after I left New Canaan and lived in other places I left behind any thought that I’d live like that again.

I do live in an affluent suburb now, but in a parsonage that I most certainly couldn’t afford to rent or buy if I had to do either. I have some very wealthy members of the congregation and some not-so-wealthy. Some are truly struggling. I see them all as people: they all have legitimate stress, they all have problems, they all have strengths and weaknesses. It is my observation that in some cases poverty builds character, and in some cases considerable wealth builds character. Sometimes wealth makes people shallow strivers. Sometimes poverty makes them bitter and accusatory. As an observer of the human condition, I can’t say that wealth creates any particular dysfunction that folks without such financial means can’t also fall prey to.

As for myself, I am a lot happier not trying to keep up with the Joneses, as I think we all felt when I lived in New Canaan. It was an incredibly materialistic community and if you didn’t have Silver Star skates and belong to the Winter Club (as well as to some summer country club), you were looked down upon. Thank God my parents always warned us not to get caught up in the nonsense, with their constant mantra, “This is NOT the real world, children.” It wasn’t. As a minister now, I occupy that funny middle-class position of serving a mostly middle and upper-middle class congregation and appearing to be one of the wealthy Main Street home-owners. Now that’s rich! Neither SweetieBang nor I could ever take care of a house this big on our own: we’re completely useless around the house, and we hope to someday be proud condo owners. If I won the lottery, I’d still live here to serve the church but buy two small apartments: one in Cambridge, Massachusetts and one in New York City. And if the lottery jackpot was big enough, a little flat in Paris or Barcelona. I would never want a big McMansion; I truly think that kind of size madness is evidence of a serious spiritual problem.

But this isn’t about me and my lottery plans. This is about honest folks who wrote in to say that they have hostile feelings towards the very wealthy, and I think we should talk about it. What’s that about? What does it mean for our congregations? What are our assumptions about the rich? What constitutes “rich enough” to earn hostility (for those who have those feelings)? Is there any corollary here about the un-rich? Do they merit special favor for those who harbor hostile feelings for the extremely wealthy? And finally, is this a personal prejudice or is it a liberationist stance aka “God’s preferential option for the poor?”

Are we called to love our neighbor only so long as they’re not stinkin’ rich? How do our religious values guide our thinking on this matter?

What a joy it was to walk into that familiar choir room at 9:30 on Saturday morning with one of my best friends from that era, and to fall right back into the arms, the care, the laughter and the camaraderie of the old mads from my cohort. Chris was there from Seattle, and Jase and Steve from New York City. All three are still in the arts. Kathy and Pat and Beth and Betty came from pretty close by. Eileen had come from Oklahoma (where she is a member of the UU church there!), and Kristy from Kenilworth, Kerry from Vermont, Cindy from California. Tracey’s beautiful blue eyes are bigger than when she was in high school, with just a few crow’s feet for character, sharing photographs of her babies adopted from Russia. There were lots of groovy rectangular spectacles on faces that have aged just enough that you can tell we’ve lived, some leaner bodies, more paunchy or (in my case) meatball-shaped ones.

And there Sjogie was, white-haired and balding now but bustling-around-busy as ever, just as organized, just as focused, just as funny. As soon as he snapped us into vocal warm-ups we were upright, attentive, and owl-eyed with concentration because no one wants to screw up in front of Arthur Sjogren. Not Wall Street tycoons, not accomplished medical doctors, not well-regarded playrights or composers, not ministers, not teachers, not NO ONE, not NOhow.

He remembered everyone’s names, of course (and didn’t hesitate to admonish even the oldest alums by name if we fooled around) and we telescoped back through time as he conducted us through passable renditions of “Cantique de Jean Racine” (”Yes, I remember this one”) and “Sing We And Chant It (”Oh, I always loved this”) and through new pieces and three movements of a Mozart mass I had never sung in my life. Through sheer terror I sight-read it and by the performance on Sunday afternoon was trilling my way through the Gloria with the best of them (well, if not the best of them, at least not making glaring errors, which I saved for the very first song, and I wasn’t alone. Whoops).

Who knew I still had those high F’s and G’s in me??

So much fun. I thought that my old friends and I would have grown so far apart by now that the weekend would be full of shallow chit-chat and posturing. Oh me of little faith. The friends whose humor, intelligence, talent and goodness I had admired in high school were every bit the dear people I had bid farewell to in 1984 when I graduated and moved away for good. They were cool kids in the 1980’s and they’re cool adults now. I’m proud to be one of their crowd.

And this guy, Art Sjogren. As I said to this year’s madrigals at the Saturday night banquet, they have no idea of knowing yet that there’s no one like him, and that they’ll never work with anyone finer, more devoted, or more brilliant. “Good Lord, Sjogie, haven’t you slowed down and lowered your standards like everyone else by now,” I joked with him on Saturday morning. He responded with his wonderful, big laugh. Because he knows both of us so much better than that.

I love him a whole lot. No one deserves a more fulfilling and fruitful retirement. He gave New Canaan students 34 years of his life. You can’t thank someone enough for that kind of gift. You can just try to live into their vision of the excellence they always passionately declared is within you.

(Yea, you’re #1, alright, Sjogs.)

Which reminds me of one of my favorite true stories. Some years ago I was on a fun weekend outing in Williamsburg, VA with Scott Wells (TheBoyInTheBands) and we were in our hotel room unpacking. We turned on the television set and ignored it while we chatted and put our things away. At some point I asked, “What channel is this, anyway?” And Scott replied, “Oh, it’s probably Lifetime Channel or something.” “Naw,” I said. “If it was Lifetime it would be a movie about Mare Winningham as an abused wife fleeing her sociopathic husband.” Scott grabbed the remote control and turned on the volume just in time to hear the actor on screen say in a sinister fashion to another actor, “Are you insinuating the I BEAT MY WIFE?” Moments later, Mare Winningham came on screen. We laughed so hard I threw my back out.

ANYWAY, Ready To Love Again isn’t a Lifetime channel movie. It’s SisterBang’s excitement over this little gal born on November 10th:

Some people say when their dog dies that they can never have another dog because it hurts too much to lose the first one. I can understand that, and I respect it. But SisterBang and I both feel that doggies need loving people to care for them and that if you’ve made room in your life for a dog, it’s a wonderful thing to just keep welcoming them for as long as you can, if you can. Gordon was such an extension of SisterBang’s life — the rhythms of her days and weekends were synced to his needs. They were a team. Watching him decline from a robust, shiny-coated canine stud to a deaf and blind, winter-faced, creaky old gentleman was very hard on both of them. He was such a good boy, pushing himself to stay active and to engage with her until he was just too sick to do so. It hurt her terribly to watch him suffer. She will miss him always.

But all kinds of dogs need homes, and SisterBang has been talking to breeders of miniature dachsunds for some time now in preparation for the time she would no longer have Gordon (who was a shelter dog). She may be going to get this pup in February and I’m so happy for both of them. Look at those ear buds! And just imagine the puppy smell.

Wouldn’t it be great if the love between humans was so pure and uncomplicated that, after the loss of one relationship we would feel bruised but immediately ready to love someone again? Cripes, I didn’t dare date for about 6-7 years after the end of my last terrible, tumultuous relationship with a man who turned out to be a pathological liar and a cheating skunk. I figured if my judgment had been that poor (couldn’t have been worse unless it had been a Lifetime Channel character), I shouldn’t trust myself to fall in love with anyone. I haven’t since, and that little debacle was over in 1997. But there’s no need to do that with dogs. Dogs don’t have baggage — if you love them enough and can devote enough time to them, you’re pretty much guaranteed a true romance.

(Halloween 2006. “Pleashe remove this ridiuloush hat as shoon as poshible. Itsh not a good shtyle for me at all.”)

Thank you for the being the best, the handsomest, the sweetest, the most velvety-eared, most loyal, precious dog in the world. Thank you for being my sister’s canine familiar, therapist, beloved companion, wing man, and best four-legged friend for over a decade. Thanks for being there at all times and in all seasons. We thank God for you.

I’m so grateful that you won’t suffer any more, but we sure will miss you. Say hello to Dukey and Pippin and Henry and Trilby and Buster for us. Great spirits, all. Dearly beloved and sorely missed.

Big hugs to Aunt Kiki. As Lucas said just now to me (as I sit here typing and crying) with that special tilt of his head and in his typically dulcet toddler tones, “DON’T BE SA-AD!”

Let me just say for all of you who are dreading the family thing this week that I feel for you. I feel for you and I pray for you, because my immediate family and I have gone through some bloody battles indeed and fought for the relative peace and harmony we enjoy today. I remember when Mom was in rehab and immediately thereafter, when a letter from her in my mailbox at college would start my heart to pounding with dread. I’d have to take it unopened to my therapist Jan and read it in her office where I felt safe. And I don’t even want to tell you how much work my sis and I have done trying to better understand each other over the years! But it was worth every screaming fight we had because we had a common goal and we got there.

Family is an intense business, my friends. Nothing hurts like family. Romance gone bad comes close, but not very. Family pain is like nothing else.

So be careful out there as the holidays begin, with all their tremulous expectation, vulnerability, control freakishness on parade, and sarcasm that cuts. Keep your friends on speed dial, take long walks and breathe deep, and remember that there is One who loves you perfectly, as you are, and that you don’t need to perform, to achieve, to conform, to fib, or to make nice-nice to earn that love.

To my family: I am thankful for you every day. I wish we could all be together on Thanksgiving (BrotherBang, Sister-In-LawBang and NephewsBangs, it’s such a joy to have you here that I’ve been getting misty-eyed over it all morning) but it’s wonderful to know that we’re together in spirit. I love you a million, trillion hearts.

My first big trip abroad alone was to see Genie in England right after graduation. I had finished my student teaching in December and couldn’t find a teaching job, so I worked as a nanny and saved my pennies for a pilgrimage trip to the U.K. to honor my degree in English Literature. Genie was living in London and working for the BBC at the time, and I wanted to backpack around (using London as a home base) and visit an elderly distant relative — the sole member of my extended European family who had escaped the Nazi persecution.

Back in those days, we didn’t have e-mail (I can’t believe I just said that!) so Genie and I exchanged letters and I planned to show up at about 11 AM after my trans-Atlantic flight, phone her, and get detailed instructions to town. But when I landed and phoned, jet-lagged and painfully congested in the head, no one answered. What to do? I determined to find my way into the city by public transport (a habit I have maintained to this day — I like the mental challenge of navigating my route when I arrive at a foreign destination, as it keeps me from falling asleep on my feet and saves loads of cab fare). Much to my pride, I was able to find my way to her neighborhood, to change some money at a local pub, and to phone her flat again. Still no answer. You can see where this is going.

As it turns out, I was rescued on the street outside the apartment by Genie’s landlord who took pity on me immediately, let me in for a nap and took my passport by way of collateral. Genie showed up a few days later, having forgotten all about my arrival and taken off for the weekEND (British pronunciation) to Scotland with some friends. I have never forgotten that episode and still like to tease her about it, even though she has been impressively responsible during my subsequent visits to see her in Paris.

But it’s more than that. It was during those European travels that I had my first experiences deeply attending to my own inner voice away from the demands and distractions of my ordinary life. I associate Genie with getting to know myself better, facing my own demons, and wandering in the world a pilgrim and sojourner at the mercy of luck, planning, my own savings account, and the hospitality of strangers. I still have journals from that first trip to England when I chronicled my discovery of my relentlessly cruel Inner Critic. During a subsequent trip (1989) from Denmark to Sweden to Germany to Holland to Belgium to France, I fully acknowledged residual grief and depression from my childhood. Those trips helped me enter more deeply into the truth of my life. I could tolerate and even somehow cherish those feelings on my solo travels because I knew I had Genie to meet up with at some point on the itinerary.

During the 1989 tour of European cities, I was supposed to meet up with Genie in Amsterdam, but she sent me a note via the American Express office and told me she couldn’t make it, I’d have to see her next week in Paris. During my stay in A’dam I was groped in the Sex Museum one day and traumatized the same night by a traveling Amnesty International exhibit of medieval torture instruments. Days later in Brussels, Belgium I was sexually harrassed by an amorous (and married) hotel manager (he let himself into my room with his own key in the morning, bearing breakfast on a tray and the expectation that I would let him join me for breakfast in bed — so naive was I! No wonder he had upgraded me to such a nice room!). I endured all these things with fairly good cheer because I knew that they’d make great stories to tell Genie. When I got to Paris we rode the TGV to spend a few days in Geneva, Switzerland where she was promptly groped on the street.

I haven’t seen my buddy in about four years… or is it five? My god, is it SIX? Lord, I think it is six. She has since gotten married and had the baby she always dreamed of having, and they’re going to be in NYC on a short stopover on Nov. 18-19. Look at her now, all grown up and with her own entry on Wikipedia, which describes her as an “animatrice de radio et de television.” It’s been fun watching her go from radio DJ to television personality (on France’s equivalent to “Entertainment Tonight” to culture reporter on “France 24.”

It’s going to be a real rush to jump on the Greyhound next Sunday afternoon after church and to get to NYC for a very brief visit. But unless something comes up at church, I am going to try. I want to see those Libertyville sky-blue eyes again, hear that wonderful laugh and to meet the man she married (lucky guy — she certainly kissed enough frogs before finding her prince!) and her little Jonah. It’s important to keep in touch with our touchstones.

In a funny way, I’m at my happiest and most focused when stuff is messy and edgy like it is now. I grew up in an emotionally nutty home with parents who were totally inconsistent so you never knew if you’d come home to “Leave It To Beaver” or “Troilus and Cressida.” I learned to ignore the twisted knots in my stomach and to concentrate on reading the energies in the household, diagnosing the problems, and fixing them. If Mom needed support, she got it, up to and including my burying the empty booze bottles more deeply into the trash bins. If Dad’s volatile ego needed massaging in the form of a delightful conversation with his precocious daughter, he got it. If I needed to triangulate between sister and father, I did it. If I needed to run interference on behalf of my little brother when dad went on a rampage, I tried my best to do it. I was a little clinician in a very small asylum, never realizing that I myself was an inmate. I have a lot of compassion for that kid.

Now when I see nutty systems at work in people’s lives I have a kind of sad fondness for them. It’s like, Oh yeah, I know this nonsense. It’s always all about fear and control, clutching tight to secrets and habits that aren’t even any good, are certainly not worth our protective loyalty, and which need to be exposed, taken out, and shot. Or at least sent over the side of the cliff like those demons Jesus put into the herd of swine. The thing that’s so poignant about human beings is how much tender care we give to our demons. We give them everything we are, and even feed our children to them. It’s just so hard and takes so much support, strength, courage and desperation to name them for what they are and be willing to say goodbye to them.

“Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!”
Anyone who has ever taken their demons out to lunch and broken up with them once and for all knows why that song has such enduring, deep appeal. Half the time we don’t even know how wretched we are until we let one of our demons go for a few weeks (just a trial run, you know) and come to realize that we’d been living choked by it for so long.

I asked Jesus to cast out all my demons about, oh, maybe 15 years ago just to see if he could do it. At the last minute I got chicken and said, “Do you think I could keep just one for a pet?” Jesus said, “Do you think I would or could cast out any demons you’re devoted to keeping around?” And I said, “Do you realize how much you irritate me answering every one of my questions with a question?”