Tag: dealing with death

  • Sweep the Grass

    Sweep the Grass

    Why do we as children fail to realize the constant sacrifices made by our parents?

     How can we be so blind to the ever abundant fountain of  love, compassion, and patience afforded to us every waking hour of the day?

    Why is it  only far later that we wake to the fact that our parents pushed us in front of themselves in every way to better us, and better our world? 

    Why does this realization too often only occur after the death of a parent?

    Maybe it is intentional. A child should never feel as though they owe a parent back in return. Instead they must only learn how to reciprocate their love and their parents love onto their future children. 

    Every year for Christmas as I got older,  I would receive among my bounty of undeserving  presents, an occasional book. A Christmas gift no child covetes, especially me,  but as I did not ever own  a video game system, most of the books actually got read.  One particular year I received a book from the “ Chicken Soup For The Soul series.”

    (I do hope that I can figure out the proper way to cite this in its entirety in final print.)  

    NO CHARGE

    A little boy went up to his mother and he handed her a piece of paper that had list of chores he had completed and a price tag next to each item.

    Well, his mother looked at him standing there expectantly, and you could see the memories flashing through her mind. So she picked up the pen, turned over the paper he’d written on and this is what she wrote:

    – For the nine months I carried you while you were growing inside me, no charge.

    – For all the nights that I’ve sat up with you, doctored and prayed for you, no charge.

     -For all the trying times, and all the tears that you’ve caused through the years, there’s no charge.

     -When you add it all up, the cost of my love is no charge.

     -For all the nights that were filled with dread, and for the worries I knew were ahead, no charge.

     -For the toys, food, clothes, and even wiping your nose, there’s no charge, son.

     -And when you add it all up, the full cost of real love is no charge.

    When he finished reading what his mother had written, there were great big tears in his eyes, and he looked straight up at his mother and said, “Mom, I sure do love you.” And then he took the pen and in great big letters he wrote: “ALREADY PAID.”

    Why are children and young adults unable to realize all that our parents do for us? 

    As a father now, I laugh to myself when I ask my children for a spoonful of their  ice cream or a bite of a cookie. The repulsive looks I get.  It is as if a bum had walked to them on the street and asked if they could have a lick of their lollipop.

    “How dare you?” “Who does this guy think he is?” “This is my cookie.” 

     I can of course empathize with my children , as I too  gave the same responses not too many years ago. What further puzzles me is that even as an adult with my own family  I sometimes  choose to prioritize my needs over assisting my mother, even though I am seldom asked, and often financially compensated. 

    Understanding that this is the way of the world, I admit that I do carry some guilt because of it, and like most, I am probably doomed to only regret it after her passing.

    This is not to suggest that my  children owe a sliver of anything in return, as they are now my reason for being, my very purpose.

    But still, our inability to recognize the sacrifices, work and unrelenting love that we receive from our parents, sets us all up for a great deal of hurt and regret down the line. Often only when it is too late do we realize the deeds let alone still possess the time and will to express the appropriate amount of gratitude let alone reciprocate the effort. The truth of the matter is that we can never repay our parents. In order to raise us, they had to pause their lives and help us build ours. The amount of selfless giving can not be quantified, as it is a constant.

    This chapter is not meant to express my guilt. There is no purpose in that. Rather it is a reflection of the way things are.  The scales of love between a parent and child are tipped.  It is the way things have to be.  A child must be told they are loved constantly. A parent knows they will always love their child from the moment they set eyes on them.

    Another thing that children struggle with is realizing that their parents are a huge source of wisdom and experience.  We don’t realize that our parents literally just went through what we are about to go through. Oftentimes, when our parents tell us not to do it’s because they already did that and know what the consequences will be. When trying to stress this point to my son who is 4 years old, I tell him that I may not have all the right answers, but I certainly have all the wrong answers. Any way you can fail, fall or stumble, I have already done. (Probably more than once.) 

    As my father would say, “ been there, done that, got the battle scars.”

    One particular story that makes me appreciate my father’s wisdom occurred several months before I entered basic training for the ARMY . My father asked my older Brother David and myself to help him prep the house, so that it could be put on the market. Cut the lawn, trim the hedges, clean windows etc. Regretfully, in hindsight as my brother and I were 21 years old and 20 years old respectively, neither he or I wanted to be there at all. 

     I for one,  just wanted to do the bare minimum and get out of there as soon as possible.  As for David, he used to have a saying that we mocked, because it seemed like any time my parents  asked him to do something he would say “ I have plans.” At the time I understood  how disrespectful,  and how inconsiderate that would be to say to a parent. That’s why I would never say it out loud. But, I sure was thinking  it. 

    With a 7 Am Saturday morning start. ( A 20 year olds favorite time of the day to not be working.) We began banging away at the seemingly  endless list of chores. Again, it started out with the basics, lawn care, window washing, and hedge cutting. Then it turned into little dirty projects. Tasks like “Let’s move this boat trailer with a flat tire by hand. Prior to this day,  the trailer  had been sitting in this location for 5 years, and also never had a boat on it.” Then it was “ hey let’s organize the wood pile.” Again, we did not have a wood burning stove. Why this pile of logs was in our backyard, let alone needed to be “ re-organized”  set steam from my ears. And so the day dragged on like this. Every time it would seem like things were wrapping up, out came the extension ladder so my father could replace a screw in the gutter. 

    It was a winter month, so the sun was almost gone early, and all I could think about was leaving. With a heart of shame I confess that all I really wanted to do was leave so I could go and get drunk somewhere. Pitiful excuse of a person I was. 

    But still, we labored on. In my mind, I was working up the nerve to lie to my father and tell him I had an emergency, or forgot I had to do something, or some other story to relieve me from this torture session. But I didn’t want to lie, because he would know I was lying, and I didn’t want him to think that I was a liar. This made me mad. So for an hour or more, I just stewed in my brain with hate and anger, “Why is he being such an asshole?” “Haven’t I  done enough?” 

     I had to say something.  I thought to myself, “I’m an adult now.” “Am I not a man?” “I have earned the right to tell someone no.”

    So at the next juncture when it seemed as it was all over, my father picked up a broom off the sidewalk and started sweeping the grass. 

    I snapped. I said the worst words. I said the worst things. I accused him of being the worst kind of person. I told him that he was deliberately wasting my time. I told him he was taking advantage of my kindness. I told him that I had my own life to think about, and that I didn’t have time to help him with his.  And I ended it by saying  “I will not sweep the grass.”

    He only responded by asking “ what are you gonna do when you are in the Army, and someone asks you to sweep the grass?” I responded , “no one would ever ask me to sweep the grass because it is the most ridiculous, unnecessary idea in the entire world.”

    Flash forward 1 year. I am in Fort Benning Georgia, an Airborne Dropout, on a detail doing groundskeeping for some headquarters we were assigned too. Our task was to rake leaves this day. And as fate would have it, there were 6 soldiers, 5 rakes, and 1 broom. 

    And guess what I did.

    I swept the grass.

  • Baseball and Balloons

    Chapter 1

    Capture a moment
    On a late summer afternoon in the early evening, a black Chevy pick up truck comes roaring through the side streets of a small New Jersey shore town. The truck is loud because it has no muffler or tail pipes. The windows are rolled all the way down because it does not have a working air conditioner. The bed of the truck is scratched from hauling loads of scrap metal, and the right rear side is dented from a hit and run accident several years back. The bumper is also bent, and the back window has been replaced by Plexiglas. The town is quiet this time of year because most of the tourists had gone back home, and all of the kids were going back to school soon. The sky is a pretty light blue, with a slight tinge of orange and raspberry red. There is one tiny white cream puffed shaped cloud sitting just above the setting sun. It is 90° or so, and the hot summer sun is refusing to set. The truck pulls around the sports complex behind the elementary school, passing the football and soccer fields. The vehicle comes to a stop in the fire lane right besides the baseball diamond where the local high school varsity team had lost a heart breaker to their crosstown rivals just a month before. The truck is parked in the long shadow of the flagpole near a deserted snack stand. The motor remains running and the humming from the engine echoes off the brick school building and a few seagulls disperse because of the commotion. A squirrel is frantically deciding whether to eat the piece of bread he found in the dumpster he’s sitting on, or duck back inside it for cover.

    The passenger side door swings open, and out jumps an eight-year-old boy. His name is Andy. He is wearing his Little League baseball gear. From toes, to earlobes, plus a hat, he is dressed like a real New York Yankee. He has his brown baseball glove in his right hand and his bat in his left. He trots onto the field and begins tossing the ball up in the air to himself. The grass in the infield is long. It hasn’t been cut since the season ended. The grass in the outfield is longer and has many burn marks. The bases have all been removed and put in storage, but Andy is marking an “X” in the dirt where the bases should be. The field is very large. It has a fence that creates a barrier between the outfield and the road about 100 yards away from home plate. Some local business signs are hung along the fence. Andy likes to watch the high school games, and sometimes his mom will allow him to stay after school to watch. Andy had only ever seen one boy hit a home run on this field. The backstop is a giant metal cage that is half rusted out and bent. There are two dugouts and they are littered with paper cups and sunflower seed shells.

    The driver of the truck, Andy’s father, still sitting in the truck, was listening to the baseball game on the radio. He shuts off the truck,and joins his son on the field. Andy’s dad is about fifty years old. He is a tall and strong man. He has rough hands and scars on his legs and arms from doing construction all his life. He is wearing green cargo shorts, a Yankees T-shirt with the number two on the back, and an old pair of flip-flops, that had almost as many years, and miles as the truck did.

    As Andy ran from base to base,and kicked dust into the air, his father unpacked the red lawn chair, blue igloo cooler, and his radio from the bed of the truck. The radio is gray with three big silver knobs. It has a tape deck that doesn’t work, and it has no antenna. A bulky piece of tinfoil limps over the top of the carrying handle to replace it. The radio only has one speaker, and it only gets one station. He flips the power button to the on position, and he fiddles with the tuning knob until all the static is gone, and he could hear the baritone voice of the commentator whom he had listened to for almost 30 years.

    “What’s the score now dad?” Andy asked as he fixed his hat to a comfortable position on his head that desperately need a haircut. His mother had let him grow it out over the summer, but he knows it will all be gone when school starts up in a few weeks.

    “The Yanks are still losing buddy.” He replied. He kicked off his flip-flops. “Alright let’s see what you got.”
    Andy, now standing on the front of the pictures mound, hurled the ball, and it made a loud smacking sound as it hit his father’s glove. “Nice.”His father said. He tossed the ball back to Andy, and it hit the top tip of his glove,and rolled out into the outfield.
    “Keep your eye on the ball dude.” His dad chuckled a little, and reached into the cooler for a beer. Andy slapped his glove and took off after the ball. His dad opened the beer, and took a big sip. He walked over to the radio, and turned it up a little louder. Andy, now back on the mound, threw the ball back, again making a loud thud.
    “Whoa! “His father took his left hand out of the glove and rubbed his palm. “Pretty soon we are going to have to start calling you Andy Pettitte.” He threw the ball back. As Andy caught it, he smiled at the compliment.
    “Who is up now?” Andy asked.
    “Gardner. Jeter is on deck.” He walked back to the radio and adjusted the big knob again. He finished his beer with a long chug, wiped off his chin, then crumpled the can and tossed into the cooler. He took out another beer, opened it, and had another long sip. Andy threw the ball in, and said “throw me a high fly one dad.”

    “Alright, here you go.” He arched his arm back and sent the ball soaring into the endless blue sky. Andy got under it, placed his hand in front of his eyes to shield the sun, and caught the ball. His father smiled at his son. Andy had started playing baseball when he was five years old and his dad taught him everything he knew. Andy’s father was a big Yankees fan and naturally so was Andy. His father listened to every game that he could on the radio. He liked to listen to the games on the radio rather than watching them on TV because the announcers were more poetic and they described the drama of the game in such a way that it made him feel like he was actually there in Yankee Stadium, sitting in the bleachers waiting to catch a homerun or a foul ball. They would listen to the games together when they were doing yardwork or cooking dinner. And whenever they were in the truck, the game was on. When the Yankees made the playoffs, even if it was a school night, he would wake Andy up so they could listen to the last inning of the World Series together.

    “Okay, Jeter is up. Come on over here. Let’s see if he can do it.” Andy ran over to his dad, and sat in the lawnchair. His father gave him a scolding look, and Andy popped up and smiled and said “just kidding. ”
    His father sat down, and took a sip of his drink and said. “You’re too young to be sitting. You haven’t earned it yet.”
    “Do you think he’ll do it today dad?”
    “You never know, but I hope he does.”They were both hoping that their favorite player, Derek Jeter, would get his 3000th career hit. Andy had grown up listening to Derek Jeter. Derek Jeter was Andy’s hero.(Other than his dad of course.) Just then, a crack of a bat, and the announcer started screaming. “There it goes… It is high…It is far…”

    “Here we go Andy…this is it.” He turned the radio all the way up. The announcer bellowed “It is gone.” Derek Jeter just hit a game-tying homerun for his 3000th career hit. Andy took off laughing and smiling. He threw his glove and hat into the air, and he started running around the bases as if he had just hit the homerun. He was dancing in the base path, and waving to the empty field, but he was imagining himself running the bases in Yankee Stadium. He could still hear the radio. He could hear the fans at the ballpark screaming, and he pretended that it was him they were cheering for. As he rounded third-base he could hear the announcer say “Isn’t it amazing, that a man can capture a moment like that?”
    Suddenly as Andy past third base, he realized that his father was slumped over in a heap on the ground next to home plate. He ran to him. “Dad? “No response. “Dad? “Andy reach for the cell phone in his father’s pocket and dialed 911.