It is Well With My Soul

This morning I attended a funeral of a good friend from church. She was one of those people who has that magic ability to make you feel as if you were the most important person in the world at the moment she talked to you. She was always cheerful, always optimistic, and throughout her battle with cancer, she proclaimed how at peace she was about it all. She even told the pastor that she was thankful for her cancer, because it gave her a chance to share the Lord's peace with others. Carol came to faith late in life, but I didn't even realize that until today, it seemed such a part of her - not in a pushy, in-your-face way, but in that subtly beautiful way some people have.

While I listed to the song, "It is Well With My Soul," sung beautifully as a duet, I thought about that peace, and about loved ones who have gone before me. This is not too surprising, considering the circumstances, but the person with whom my thoughts were occupied the most were not those family members who I know were confident in their faith and final destination. It was the one I'm never quite sure about, my stepfather, LL.

I'm having trouble putting my feelings about him into words. My mother met him when I was in 5th grade, and married him the following summer. At the time, I was thrilled. I wanted nothing more in my life than to be "normal," and bouncing between my grandparents' and great aunt's homes was not that by any means. All my friends had nice two parent, two-to-three kid homes. It's not that anyone made fun of my odd situation, and we certainly did not lack for opportunities, but I was acutely aware of being different, and the promise of normality, with a mom, a dad, family dinners, etc. appealed to me. At the time, it was fun.

We didn't move in with mom & LL right away, but the Thanksgiving following their marriage, we went to their house for the evening and never went back to Grandma's that night. Our stuff was brought to the new house, and Boom, we were moved. It was very sudden, and the home was not one which was prepared for children. We slept in sleeping bags in the living room of the small two-bedroom house, until eventually I had a cot in the back bedroom, and my brothers had bunk beds in the dining alcove of the kitchen. Add to that my Mom's burgeoning hoarding behaviors, and it was a very "cozy" living situation.

I won't get into the history from that point. It wasn't all bad, and I know that our situation was far from the worst out there. We lived there for 18 months, and in that time things progressively worsened, until we were removed to emergency foster care at the end of my 7th grade year. By the time I left, I lived in fear of LL, fear of what he would do to me if we moved back, fear of what he would do to our Mom if we weren't there.

LL was a Vietnam Vet, and I mention this first because in so many ways, it defined him. He was extremely intelligent, but he could not escape the war which, I realized later, haunted him until the day he died. He wore army fatigues daily, had a long handlebar mustache, a drill instructor's mannerisms, and when he was mad, he was terrifying. He made his own bullets out of hot lead for his antique Colt, and shot a .22 into old phone books out in the garage. He used that same .22 to shoot yellow jackets (to which he was deathly allergic) and black widows out in the yard. He used that same .22 to hit my Mom over the head during one argument, which resulted in a late-night emergency room visit (my brothers were there, for some reason I was not home that night). He smoked several packs of cigarettes a day (Camel, unfiltered), and about a 6-pack of Old English 800 beer (tall cans - 16 oz.). He taught me how to make a two-fingered rum & coke so I could get his drinks for him, and set it up with the local grocery store so that they would allow me, at age 11, to buy cigarettes and beer and save him the trip to the store. He also taught me trigonometry at age 11, giving me $0.25/problem solved, took the time to make tiny brass rings on his lathe for my toy mice (don't ask), and taught me how to throw a throwing knife.

For years after we left, just the sound of his voice or a glimpse of him would leave me shaking. When I was in college, calling Mom sometimes meant talking to him to ask for her, hoping he wouldn't recognize my voice (which, of course, I'm sure he did), hearing him yelling at her to get off the phone. One movie, Born on the Fourth of July, which came out while I was in college, gave me a panic attack, it so reminded me of him. I mention this not as a "woe is me" story, but to explain that I was the last person to have wanted LL to end up with heaven as his final destination.

When we arrived at the house in January 2007, I was completely unsure of how that first encounter, after 25 years, would go. I knew that for years, my mom had pushed for me to meet with LL, to tell him that the things of which he had been accused weren't true so that he could have peace. I was never ready to do that, but I had always known, even as a teenager, that his actions were a product of his past, and he had tried to raise us the way he had been raised, for better or for worse. His actions came more from ignorance than malice, and I had forgiven him years before. I had even gradually started to engage him in brief conversation when I called for my Mom, to make peace and move on. I'd realized that my fears were unfounded - there was nothing he could do to touch my life as an adult.

So I was incredibly surprised when he immediately put the entire estate in my hands, asked me to be his executor, asked me to get legal paperwork started so he could give me complete power of attorney for financials and his health care. He was planning his own death. At first, it was going to be immediate, then he decided to get the paperwork in order first (he wanted to make things easier for me later).

As we started cleaning out the house, we had nothing to do but talk, and talk, and talk. My SIL, whom I love dearly, was there helping (and sometimes other family members), so for days (and nights) on end it was just the three of us in that small living room. Now, my SIL and I have very similar senses of humor, very wry, very dry, and easily set to giggling about the oddest things we both find funny. We often said that it was our humor and camaraderie that got us through these difficult days - we could either laugh or cry about it all, and laughing made it so much easier. Turns out that LL had a similar sense of humor, and the smart-alec jokes would fly like cannonballs through the house.

The thing was, that once I got to know him, as an adult, I actually really liked him. He was quick witted and intelligent, and we had similar intellectual interests. I have a scientific, engineering bent, as did he. We both realized that had we met at a different time, in other circumstances, we would likely have been friends. I could see what my mom saw in him, and appreciated that in her last, sad days, she was still loved.

That doesn't mean it was all sweetness and light, and that the guy suddenly developed a halo. He still was cranky and ornery, lived on cigarettes, morphine and beer, and spent days on end in a filthy, stained, stinky recliner wearing a filthy, stained, stinky, one-piece sweatshirt/sleepshirt thing filled with cigarette burn-holes in all the wrong places. He'd still had a terrible, stormy relationship with my mom which enabled her mental illness issues, rather than improved them. And he was still my abuser. But I could at appreciate him as a human being, and I could enter the house without fear.

I will always be grateful for the opportunity to find that resolution in our relationship. At several points, LL apologized, and told me that he would understand completely if I hated him. I told him that hate was never part of it, and I had forgiven him years earlier, realizing even as a child, that he was the product of his past. My life has no room for hate, and I know that my life now is the product of my past, a life I would not change for anything. I would not tell him that nothing had happened (we agreed to disagree on what had happened in the past - I saw no point in arguing about 25-yr-old memories), but I would not lay years of guilt at his feet either. Had I not been in foster care, had I not lived through that past, I would likely not have adopted my children, touched their lives, with the hope that someday they will touch others.

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." - Romans 8:28

LL planned his death very carefully. Once the paperwork was completed, he said he did not want to see his 60th birthday (Jan 16). He wanted to select a means of death which would not decrease the value of the house, and he did not want any of us to be the ones to find him. I had come out for 1 1/2 weeks following my mother's death, and he wanted me to have a week at home with my kids, who needed me, before I had to come back again to deal with his death. This was no decision made in haste or passion - he was very reasoned, very sure of himself, and very determined.

I am not going to debate the value of suicide. It is not something of which I, or anyone else in my family, approves, but I could understand his decision. He was alone, disabled, in constant pain, losing his eyesight, addicted to alcohol and medical morphine (with dr. approval - the addiction was a lesser evil than the pain). His home was scheduled for foreclosure shortly, and there were no funds. At all. (The previous week he had found a book online he wanted, and couldn't buy it because they had no more money - it was $0.25). He had no family, beyond three estranged stepchildren whom he hadn't seen more than briefly in 25 years. We told him we would find a solution, we made the proper calls, informed the county social worker, informed the police. But we knew we couldn't watch him forever, and his mind was made up. He would tell the right story to any visitors, and then do what he wanted after they left.

He called two days before he died, thanked me, and told him me he loved me. He understood I couldn't say those words, it was way too soon, but I could tell him I cared, and was glad we had made our peace. He died, alone, on January 21st, 19 days after Mom. There was no hero's welcome, no church full of mourners, no comforting words of peace. We held no funeral - there was no one to invite.

So this is what haunts me. Here is a man who did not deserve heaven because of his deeds. He had not lived a life of faith, though he was raised Catholic. When I was a child, he claimed to be an atheist, and I know he had dabbled in Satanism years before he me my mother. And yet he approved and cried when we read Psalm 23 when we scattered Mom's ashes, and asked that we do the same when it was his turn. He said he did not deserve heaven, and so wouldn't ask for it - I think he feared that if he let himself believe openly, then he would have to abandon his plans for suicide, which he refused to do. But despite his protestations, I think in his heart of hearts, he still believed. And isn't this our assurance, that we are saved by faith, not by works; that our salvation comes through no action of our own, but by our Savior's grace?

I want to believe he is there, that he finally found the peace which eluded him in life. I want to believe that our Savior, who sees into the hearts of men, saw through that crusty exterior to the damaged soul that lay underneath, and gave him rest. I had a realization during that song today - it's not that it's unfair for those who come to faith the last minute (i.e. deathbed conversions) to get the same reward as those of us who have believed for years. Instead, we are the ones who get the better deal - years of life knowing the peace and comfort of our Savior. Think of all LL's wasted years; years in which he was tortured by guilt, by memories, by his past. He missed out on that peace in life, that I can only pray he found in death.

I have a song on my iPod that comes up periodically. It is a haunting song, "Brothers in Arms," by Dire Straits. I leave it in rotation, because I feel it is fitting that someone remember him periodically. To me, it is about war, its pointless suffering, and its impact on the soldiers, and the last line in particular makes me think of LL each time I hear it. Lonely, lost, in pain, haunted forever by his war.

"Let me bid you fairwell, every man has to die. It is written in the stars, and every line in your palm. We are fools to make war on our Brothers in Arms."