One More Jewel In Her Crown

It started with a check made out to me for $100. I desperately needed it at the time; I was newly sober, looking for a decent job, and felt without any sort of real anchor in the world. It had been hard up until then; but easy, too. I was young, and who believes when they are young that anything will really happen to them? We're on top of the world - and don't even realize it.

The check came with a note: "I expect no thanks; but, when you are able, please pass this gift on."

It was from a college friend, Jan, who - along with roommates - had taken me in when I got out of alcohol rehab and had nowhere to go. Nowhere to run to, it seems sometimes.

I cashed her check and paid the bills. Some months later, I had a decent job, but still had many old college friends in financial trouble. One time, I dropped five dollars between a friend's couch cushions and "found it." - Oh look! How did this get there? Another time, I put $100 in cash in an envelope, because I really didn't want to be found out, and slipped it under the door of a friend’s house and played ding-dong-ditch: you know the old game: you ring the bell and run, waiting for someone to come out and look around in confusion for who might have called.

It's been well over a decade since I played this particular game of ding-dong-ditch, but I called the recipient today. I reminded him of the incident, and revealed my identity. Not for thanks. Not for praise. But because my original and first benefactress - Jan - lies dying in her mother's house. She is forty years old, and has breast cancer.

I remember when she told me about it. One day, just after the new year, she found a lump. Little did she know that six weeks later the doctor would pronounce her cancer advanced. Her breasts were removed and she felt she'd lost her femininity. And she was so feminine! Long, plain hair that fell to her waist; big glasses and rather plain features. But she always wore those high-collared Victorian-style blouses that were somewhat popular in the 1980s.

The cancer receded; and she came to visit last year. I hurried our visit; she only spent a night in my home, and I drove her to another friend the next day. Now I am very sorry for rushing that visit.

It's odd, don't you think? There are some people who touch your lives in a way you find dismissive, almost. You remember them, but they certainly remember you so much more clearly. These are the people who keep you in their prayers. They think about what you are doing, how you are doing, what your life is like. And you think of them maybe every six months.

Jan and I went to Gordon College; an evangelical Christian school. But never mind the particular religion it is affiliated with: it is spirituality. She never forgot me, although I often forgot her. Yet, her generosity in my time of need has stayed with me.

And, it has borne fruit. Not just the $5 and the ding-dong-ditch; I've given the same $100 many times, and never without remembering her kindness. Now, her life is ending. Ending in pain and crying, which - personally - pisses me off sometimes. I don't understand, but I don't pretend to. I will keep helping where I can, and will always remember her when I do so.

Sometimes we think we do not matter much. Like Heraclitus, the philosopher, who believed that all things were in a constant state of flux and eternal transformation. But Gerard Manley Hopkins - a poet underrated both because of his ingenuity and the fact that much of his work has been burned - wrote beautifully about this juxtaposed nature of things. It may be difficult to read, for his works had a rhythm and made-up words (like another famous writer, being named Will Shakespeare) that are hard to process as mere words, but instead conjure up images. If you have the patience to read the following, close your eyes over the unfamiliar language, and taste and feel them instead.

Jan; thank you. One act, one gift, one obedience to love your neighbor, and you will never be forgotten.

That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection

CLOUD-PUFFBALL, torn tufts, tossed pillows ' flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs ' they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, ' wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle in long ' lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ' ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest's creases; in pool and rut peel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed ' dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks ' treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fuel'ed, ' nature's bonfire burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest ' to her, her clearest-selv'ed spark
Man, how fast his firedint, ' his mark on mind, is gone!
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
Drowned. O pity and indig ' nation! Manshape, that shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, ' death blots black out; nor mark
Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time ' beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,
A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, ' joyless days, dejection.
Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. ' Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; ' world's wildfire, leave but ash:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, ' since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ' patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.