NANNY

“Nanny” was the name her five granddaughters and five great-grandsons called her. She was always “Nanny” to me as well, from the first time I met her almost 35 years ago until she passed away three days ago at 99. She lived a long and full life surviving, if that is the word, the Great Depression and World War II when life was really difficult. Those of us who think the restrictions we had to endure during the pandemic were hard don’t know what hard is. Those were tough times.

She raised two sons and a daughter while working fulltime. Both sons, tragically, as far as a mother is concerned, proceeded her in death, as did both of her husbands. Both of them were PTSD victims of the War in the Pacific and made her life sometimes not so pleasant and certainly not easy. What made it worse was back then there was no notion of PTSD. They just called it Battle Shock or something, as if the sights you saw were supposed to be forgotten when they never could be. When they were haunted by those memories and images and acted out, she paid part of the price. It wasn’t easy.

Even though I called her Nanny, she always regarded me as another son. I still remember the time when we showed up and she yelled at her husband, “Bill, the kids are here.” At that time I was a kid of about 65. At 79 I was still a kid in her eyes, a big kid who did for her what her sons who had passed away could no longer do for her what I could and, of course, did lovingly and thankfully.

She lived a full life almost to the end. She only stopped driving two years ago, albeit no more than two miles to Kroger, only because her arthritis had gotten so bad that she could not turn the ignition in her big Lincoln Town Car. (God does work in mysterious ways.) But that arthritis did not stop her from doing fantastic needle work. In her closet are dozens of quilts she made over the years. Her daughter has carried on that legacy.

If you could ask her, she would tell you that she indeed lived a full life and had few regrets, the biggest ones certainly being the loss of her sons before their time. Even during those times of loss, she was a trooper. It had to be what we call Those Lighthtner Genes: the women in that family seemed to live forever and, more importantly, took and continue to take no guff from anyone, especially any man, son-in-law included.

She will be missed but she will always be remembered. And she will live on especially in her granddaughters who have inherited those Lightner Genes. They have her spunk and determination and, as I am well aware and as the men in their lives are quite aware, they take no guff from them either.

We give thanks for the life she lived and give thanks for all she was for us. We rejoice now with her knowing that she is now rejoicing with all those she loved who proceeded her in death. Rest in peace, Nanny.

GRANDPARENTS REVENGE

My wife and I love being grandparents and, in all honesty, more that we loved being parents. The only downside for us is that the grandchildren live so far away that we hardly ever get to see them. And even though we are retired, the distances are still a little overwhelming especially when we want to see them and be with them as much as possible. Besides, if we wanted to move to be near them, they do not live near one another. So we are reduced to phone calls, texts, emails and face time. 

But when we do get to see them, especially when we have them to ourselves, it’s payback time. It’s grandparent’s revenge time. The idea is that you spoil them enough that it takes two weeks, once they get back home, to undo what we did. Carter still reminds his parents that he didn’t have to eat vegetables when he spent a week with us last summer and that he really doesn’t need to wear a pajama top to bed because Pap doesn’t. We just smile and smile.

One of the responsibilities of being a grandparent is to be the giver of unconditional love. It comes with the job description. And while we always truly loved our children unconditionally as they were growing up, it was often hard to love them in that manner. When they acted their age, especially as teenagers, we still loved them but certainly didn’t like the way they behaved even though we knew that a lot of that acting out was because of their hormones acting out. We knew because we were their age once and realized what our parents had to endure. Of course we were never that bad. Of course!

What enables grandparents to be so loving is that we have time on our hands to do just that: love them, love them, love them. Parents have to work in that love between work, whatever that work is, and there are all sorts of it in raising a family. It sometimes seems overwhelming being a parent and, in truth, sometimes it is. It’s no wonder trying to love your children seems to have conditions attached to that love. Unconditional love? Who are you kidding?!

That’s where grandparents come in. Yes, when the grandchildren are with us and away from their parents, we spoil them. But that is the price their parents are willing to pay for a break in their responsibilities as parents. By the time Carter, for instance, comes to visit, his parents are ready for a break. And he’s not even in first grade yet! Our spoiling, of course, is nothing huge: no vegetables, no night shirt, a few more snacks and a little later in going to bed get redone when he gets home. It may take a week or two for the remake to take, but it does.

What is left are fond memories for grandparents and grandchild that can never be taken away and always relived. Grandparent’s revenge? Tongue-in-cheek really. Rather, grandparent’s reward and joy and pleasure to love someone unconditionally and not care about the consequences because they will only be good ones.

THE PLEASURE IN PAIN

Sometimes in life doing good things can cause us pain: mentally, physically and spiritually. We help a neighbor put in a fence and the body aches with pain afterwards. We sit with an aging parent and are mentally stressed. We see so much hatred and division around us and are spiritually wrought with pain: mankind’s inhumanity to one another that should not be.

The pain can sometimes be overwhelming and, yet, at the same time there can be pleasure in the pain. It is good that we can help a neighbor in need; and though our body aches afterwards, the joy and pleasure we feel having done something good alleviates the pain to a great degree. It doesn’t remove it, nor should it; but the pleasure makes the suffering worthwhile.

Sitting with a parent who is near death is painful. We can do nothing to relieve whatever suffering the person is going through nor can we make it end. We are there to hold hands, to make a meal, to help bathe and dress. There is joy in the thankfulness that is ours because we are doing all we can do for the one we love. We’re still mentally and physically exhausted doing what we do. It is painful. That is a given, but joyful in its own way even though it’s difficult to explain or even understand that joy and pleasure.

Trying to find joy and pleasure amidst the anger and division among us is certainly difficult to do, sometimes seemingly impossible. But it is accomplished in the same way as helping a neighbor build a fence or tending to the needs of an ailing loved one: it is done one-on-one, one person at a time. And because it is so much of a spiritual dialogue that is going on we can never be certain if the anger has abated or the division begun to heal. But the inner joy comes because we tried as painful and as difficult the effort was.

The pleasure that comes in pain is almost always and after-awareness. We tend to be oblivious while enduring the pain. The body aches from all the lifting. The mind is overwhelmed with all that we have to do to make her as comfortable as possible. Our souls are heavy because we feel we are up against it when in conversation with someone who believes we are the enemy. There is no pleasure in the here-and-now. It only comes in the hereafter, sometimes the real Hereafter: Death. But it comes.

When we set out to help another in need, we do not do so because we are looking for some kind of reward in doing so. We do so because that is what our faith is calling us to do at that moment in time. Then, afterwards, when we have time to look back on what we did and reflect upon the pain we endured, we also become aware that we are pleased, pleasured, by what we were able to say and do.

In many ways I think that finding that there is pleasure in pain is life’s, God’s, little secret that we only discover afterwards. And what a joy and pleasure that is!

THE SCARS ARE THERE FOR A REASON

If anyone were to look at my unclad body (perish the thought), one would see very clearly two four-inch scars on my right hip and one on my left, the result of three hip surgeries. I also have one on my knee and another on my shoulder, each the result of surgery. Each also the result of some physical abuse on that body over the years. The scars, thus, are there for a reason.

Scars are reminders of the past and warnings for the present and future. If we ignore the scars, we are primed for more of them somewhere down the line. That is why I find it foolish, and I dare say wrong, for this obsession on the part of many to remove statues of former heroes (at least in the eyes of many) because they and their deeds were wrong. Removing the statues will not remove the scars. It will simply make it easier for the present and future generations to forget the lessons those statues are reminding us about.

My scars are a constant reminder that if I abuse my body, I will pay a price for it now and in the days (and years, God granting them) to come. Erasing the past won’t make the past go away but it will also lessen our abilities and even willingness to address the mistakes, sins, wrongs of the past and the lessons we have or should have learned from them. Those reminders of the past that many want to erase, those real scars on our history, need to remind us that we must never forget what happened and, most importantly, why.

As we have so often been told and have, if we are honest, experienced it in our own lives, that when we forget our past mistakes, we are set up to make them again and again. Those past sins, wrongs, foolishness have left scars on our personal and national psyches that will not go away as much as we might want them to or try to erase or forget about them. They are there for a reason.  

That reason, of course, is to teach us about how to live in the present and to try to ensure that the mistakes we made in the past are not made now and in the days and weeks and months and years to come. We certainly do not like to be reminded of our wrongful and foolish past because we believe it somehow lessens who we are in the present. But there is nothing wrong and, in fact, a blessing to acknowledge our humanness and frailness and, yes, sinfulness. That’s why those scars are so important, so vital, so necessary for us as individuals and as a society.

The saving grace about most scars is that they don’t constantly stare us in the face. Yes, some do and we have to live with the pain they are still inflicting. They are there to remind us of the lessons we have, or should have learned. As painful a reminder it is, Germany has not erased Auschwitz. That scar is a continual reminder of a sinful past and has made them a better country. All those scars in our personal and collective past are meant to do the same for us: make us a better person and a better people. There is a reason for them. Trying to erase them is foolish and wrong.