A Rocking Chair Because Life is Mystery

A Rocking Chair Because Life is Mystery

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            When I was little I had a small rocking chair. It was a loan. It belonged first to a cousin, a year and a half older than I. One day he no longer needed it. We had played together, or at least that is what I was told. But when he was around three his parents were given the news he had cancer. He didn’t live much longer after that. His mother could not bear to look upon the empty rocking chair they had bought for their eldest. I filled the rocking chair. I would wrestle it until it was upside down and used it for a walker when I was learning to walk. The arms on the rocking chair were rounded where I had pushed it upside down along the floor. I don’t remember those days, I was told stories about them. St. Paul described how we know only in part and not the whole. I always thought that pertained to God, but it also pertains to my own humanity. When my cousin quit coming with his parents when I was but one, did I understand something was not the way everyone thought it should be? Did I somehow as an infant grieve over the loss of my first friend and playmate? Did the experience shape me even when I had no ability to collect my thoughts about what had happened? I have no idea. If I have no idea about that, then how much or how little of life, of my life do I actually understand?

            I remember a summer I was sick. In those days we passed through childhood diseases like children going through the rites of passage onwards to adulthood. There were the mumps, two week measles, the flu, and the three day measles. For me those were all experienced in one summer between Memorial Day and Labor Day. I spent a summer mostly in bed. Those times when I was somewhat recovering I would amuse myself by looking at a dictionary page where all the American presidents were listed. I would amuse myself by trying to recite them from memory in order. By the end of the summer I had memorized all the presidents of the United States. I had been the last child in my class to learn to tie his shoes, people could not understand the words I said when I started first grade, I would be the last kid to learn to ride a bike in my class, but I had memorized the presidents going on eight years old. It was the first time in my life I could do something before I was the last in my class to learn how to do it. One friend visited me that summer and gave me my first baseball cards. I began memorizing baseball statistics too. I became pretty good at that also.

            A couple of summers later the friend who had given me the baseball cards invited me to his house. We saw the old one room schoolhouse. You could see where the blackboard once was. But it was a hog-house on their farm. I remember the last time I visited his house. I am pretty sure he got upset with me. He had two younger sisters, so he asked me over. He would tell the older of his two younger sisters not to bother us that we were playing boys’ games. But that day I thought the older of his two younger sisters was pretty neat for a girl. I guess it frustrated him. He had waited for my coming over when we would be able to do boys’ things and I wanted his sister to be able to play along with us. He never asked me to come to his house to play again. You never know sometimes how important one day is going to turn out to be. I didn’t often see his sister but I always felt after that day whenever I thought of her that she was pretty neat for a girl.

            A couple of summers afterwards, things would change. My Dad was going to the grain elevator and he took me along. I always enjoyed going to the grain elevator with my Dad. I am sort of an old guy, but he would take a couple of dimes out of the change purse in his pocket and give to me. That was just enough for one soda pop and one candy bar out of the machines at the elevator. We didn’t get soda pop or candy bars at home, so that was a special treat that I associated with going to the grain elevator. This day as I was getting the candy bar and soda pop the grain elevator manager told my Dad he had something to tell him. They went off a little ways while I got my candy bar and soda pop. My Dad said to me, “We need to go home.” On the way home he told me how my classmate had been in a tractor accident and had been killed. I couldn’t believe it was true. Twelve year-old boys don’t die. Sometimes they do.

            A few weeks later a kind neighbor lady asked the mom of my friend if it would be alright for her to take the girls with some other girls in the 4-H club. It would give the mom a chance to be alone and the girls a chance to be with other kids. Then one of the kids in the back seat of the car was acting up. The neighbor lady turned her head towards the back seat to bring a little peace and quiet. As she did so, she pulled the steering wheel in the same direction. The car swerved off the road and hit a bridge. In those days no one was wearing seat belts. The neighbor driving the car was killed. The sisters were badly injured. As they made the way to the hospital, my friend’s youngest sister was in a coma and they were afraid she would die. The older sister, the one I had thought was pretty neat for a girl was alert but injured.

            When they reached the hospital and were able to get a better diagnosis of the injuries, it became apparent that though the older sister’s injuries had not seemed as bad, she had internal injuries to vital organs. The news was grim, they would give her blood but the body would not heal fast enough before her life would pass from her. The youngest sister given a fifty percent chance of life spent six weeks in a coma before recovering. The family’s heartbreak would never be fully healed. I didn’t tell others at the time, but I still thought how the older of the two sisters was pretty neat for a girl.

            There was darkness in my growing up years after that. I thought of death a lot. I remember hearing Browning’s words that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I thought the words were stupid as anything I had ever heard. I thought only that I did not want to lose. I wonder how much that desire contributed to my being a bachelor to this day. I am not sure that was all, but I know it contributed. I only know that I don’t know in full, just in part.

            I began trying to find words of wisdom about life, especially in the rock songs I would listen to. I would listen over and over again to “Paint it Black” by the Rolling Stones. Perhaps the song that seemed to sum up how I felt about life was the song by Blood, Sweat, and Tears written by Laura Nyro entitled “And when I die.” I didn’t know it at the time but Laura Nyro had lost her mom to cancer when she was young, so before she had graduated from high school she wrote the words to “And when I die.” Her words seemed to speak truth to me: “I swear there ain’t no heaven, and I pray there ain’t no hell. Swear there ain’t no heaven and pray their ain’t no hell, but I won’t know by living only my dying will tell, only my dying will tell.” I spent a couple of years believing nothing was more real about life than dying. Everything else seemed insignificant to the reality that death was going to interrupt whatever plans you had and bring an end to everything.

            One day I saw different words. I read a poem that began “Death be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, thou art not so.” The poem ended almost making fun of death, saying: “One short sleep past, we wake eternally, and death shall be no more, death, thou shalt die.” I looked over those words and thought them to be the words of a madman. Or the words of someone believing in a fairy tale; or were they the words of someone who knew something I did not know? Gradually those words began holding the weight of truth as I began to believe that whatever I knew or didn’t know, Jesus had words of eternal truth and eternal life.

            I suppose if I could change anything about myself in the years since then, it would be for me to be bolder in living life to the full. I have always lived cautiously, somewhat fearfully, rather than boldly. It is easy to lose life in anticipating a thousand deaths before that one blow that actually cuts you down. It is less sad to die than to never have lived and sometimes I believe I have failed to live. But on the other hand I never wanted that for another, so I would encourage others to be bold, to love, to live, when I couldn’t quite bring myself to do so. I am trying to live more than sometimes I have allowed myself but it is a struggle.

            I am now reaching my older years in life. Pretty soon I will likely be spending more time sitting in a rocking chair. I will be trying to figure out the truth about life. I am pretty sure that I will discover that what I have discovered about life is that we get to know about life in part, but not the whole. Ultimately we live a life full of mystery by faith. That leaves us free to chart a path beginning afresh with the next step taken forward in the mystery that is life.