A BIZARRE REQUEST

As I walked into her hospital room, she said to me, "Sit down so that I can see you better." So I did. But before I could say much of anything or even ask how she was doing, she said, "I have a bizarre request." When I started to smile, she asked why I was laughing. "I'm just wondering what you mean by 'bizarre'," I replied. "Get a paper and a pencil and I'll tell you," she said. So I did.

"These are the songs I want played at my funeral," she said. "First, I want 'The Poor People of Paris' before the service starts. Then I want 'I Wish You Love.' That's were the kids cry. Then I want 'Amazing Grace.' Then you, meaning me, get to say a few words." She caught my smile but said nothing. "Then I want 'The Entertainer.' as they go out. Life is for the living and I don't want anyone dragging their feet at my funeral."

No one did either. When Trudie died six days later, she was ready. Her family and I spent those six days alternately remembering and forgetting the tune to "Poor People of Paris." It became a running joke, and not gallows humor either. Trudie wouldn't stand for that. At the funeral, I had to play the tune over a tape recorder. When I announced the song that I had just played, the expression on the faces of the people present said, "I knew

I heard that song somewhere." And when I told them why it was played, they also had a knowing look. Typical Trudie. The kids cried in the proper place. I said two words, give or take a few hundred. And we went to the cemetery humming Scott Joplin's music. Some tears, yes; but mostly it was good feeling and joy and happiness.

Bizarre? Depends. You can't find two of those songs in any church hymnal. It wasn't bizarre music, just not typical. It certainly was different, but "different" is not a synonym for "bizarre." What made Trudie's funeral different was not so much the music but the fact that she actually selected it. What was even more different, maybe even bizarre, meaning "remarkable," is that she was willing, even wanted, in fact, to talk about her funeral while she was alive, albeit on her death bed.

That is remarkable, and, all right, bizarre. We just don't like to talk about death, you and I; death in general and our own death in particular. That is bizarre, weird, you name it. A lot of us have a great difficulty simply writing a will so afraid are we to even broach the subject of our own mortality. And age makes no difference. Young or old, death is a subject we avoid even more than we avoid talking about religion and politics.

It does no good to ask "why?". We really can't explain why we avoid the subject of death whether we are in the prime of life or in the prime of death. Death frightens us because it is an unknown. Of course ten minutes from now is just as an unknown even though we might not admit it. Now I am not advocating that we start talking about death, although there is nothing wrong with that. Nor am I proposing that we sit down and decide what music we want played at our funeral, although that, too, would be a good idea. The fact is, I am not proposing anything. I just thought you might like to know how someone I knew approached and prepared for her own death.  There was nothing bizarre about it.

I LOST BECAUSE THEY CHEATED

It’s an interesting time in which we are now living. But, then, interesting may not be the correct word. How about frightening? The mindset for so many is that if we lost, whatever it is that we lost, it was not our fault. It was because someone else, or many other someones. did something, somehow in some way, to make sure we came out on the short end of the stick and now it’s payback-time. That scares me.

Sometimes the loser or losers are correct. The Black Sox Scandal back in the early 20^th century and the Houston Astro cheating a few years back are testaments that cheaters sometimes win. But what price that kind of victory? The players on both of those teams who engaged in the cheating were and will be marked for life.

This mindset that “We was robbed!”, as the old Brooklyn Dodger mantra had it years ago, is still very much prevalent. The last presidential election is a glaring manifestation of this false belief, but it is belief nevertheless and one that seems not to want to go away quietly. In fact, it is not going away and certainly not quietly. I just shake my head in sad disbelief and wonder why. That mindset interests me but is also frightens me.

Perhaps it goes back to a time not so long ago and, unfortunately is still present, that everyone wins; everyone gets a trophy. I can’t image my Little League baseball manager giving each of us a trophy because we finished dead last with a 3 and 18 record. We enjoyed our few wins, moped when we lost, but quickly got over it. It was the simple joy of playing the game that mattered. Winning wasn’t the be all or end all. Now that’s what it seems to be. What is even worse is that we get angry and act out to the harm of others.

As Christians our hero was considered a very big loser, even among his closet friends. He was kind and caring and loving and healing and forgiving, a real hero; and yet they hung him out to dry on a cross. And when Peter tried to defend him, he told him to put down the sword. Some winner he turned out to be! Some winner he did turn out to be! But the victory came in ways no one expected: resurrection and new life.

But that is how all seeming and even real loses turn to victories: through resurrection and new life. They don’t come from trying to undo the past, take away the victory from someone else and claim it should have been ours. It comes from acknowledging the loss, whatever that loss was, and doing what needs to be done to find resurrection and new life in the days and weeks and years to come.

There will always be winners and losers. Reflecting on our past, we learned more from our defeats than from our victories. My team lost all those games back then not because the other teams cheated but because we weren’t a very good baseball team. Resurrection and new life only come from loss because that is often the only way we learn. Cheaters, in the end, never win. Losers usually do if we are willing to admit defeat and move on.

ACTING OUR AGE

At one time another, perhaps more times than we would like to admit, have been told, "Act your age!" We were doing something silly, maybe downright immature, and an elder called us to task by reminding us that someone of our years does not act in that sort of manner. They were right; but they were also wrong, for the most part most of the time.

So, too, would someone be wrong if we were told to "Act like a Christian" when catching us doing something that is unchristian. You see, the problem we all have is not so much in acting our age or acting like a Christian. We do that all of the time. I act like a seventy-nine-year-old, almost all of the time.  What I don't always do is react as a Christian. We all know what actions are demanded of us both by society and by ourselves according to our age. We don't expect a six-year-old to act like one who is sixty – and vice versa.

With age and maturity come a knowledge of how to act, how to live. The same is true for us acting like a Christian. Six-year-olds and sixty-year-olds act differently. The emphasis is not on acting, as in faking it, pretending, playing at it. It is on acting as in actions, Our actions, what we do, should be done according to what our age and maturity require.

Our reactions, often, are not. All too often we tend to react, not according to our age, not according to our faith. Someone hurts us and we react quickly. And in that reaction we turn, not the other cheek but the back of our hand or the backside of our character. We do and say things that, given time, given thought, we would not say or do. Reactions, all too often, are passionate responses to a situation.

What all this means is that we must react like a Christian. Our quick response should be the same as our slower, thought-out, reflective response. If that were always the case, we would save ourselves much grief and torment. But it is not always the case. I suspect that in the vast majority of the situations where we do something selfish, sinful, foolish, what we do is react in an unchristlike way. They are reactions of passion. We get hurt and we immediately react. We become defensive. We pout. We shout. We repay in kind or worse.

Acting as Jesus would, responding as Jesus would have us, is not in the forefront of our thinking at that moment of real hurting, at that moment of our life. What we wind up doing then is something stupid...and paying for it for a long time because the person whom we are reacting to reacts to our immature, unchristlike reaction -- and then the whole vicious cycle goes on and on and on.

There will probably never be a time when we always say and do what we should.  We will never always react as a Christian. But that does not mean that we give up. We must keep working at it through prayer, good works, reading of Scripture – through doing all those actions we know are necessary in order to grow up into a Christian person. When we fail, we ask for forgiveness and start over. When we succeed, we simply thank God for he is the One, through his Son and Spirit, who enables us to react our age, to react our faith.

ALEXA

No, not that one. Not the one that can tell you the time, play a favorite sone, show you a recipe to make chocolate chip cookies, turn your lights off and on – do lots of things almost beyond your imagination, at least beyond a seventy-nine-year-old’s one-time imagination. No, not that Alexa. This one: the one who was my 7:00 PM to 7:00 AM nurse for the three nights I was in the hospital to have a pace maker installed in my body. That Alexa.

She is in her mid-twenties, a very recent graduate from nursing school. She is an RN and will soon begin studies to obtain her BSN. She was once very overweight having lost 150 pounds in the past year. She told me that most of her friends hardly recognize her now. I told her she should be very proud and she said she was. I was proud for her having been on countless diets over all these years, knowing how difficult it is to not only stay on one through it but to maintain the weight afterwards. That Alexa.

The difference in the two is, of course, profound. While the virtual one can keep us informed and up to date on myriads of subjects, it cannot provide what we really need when we really need it: TLC, tender, loving care. That is what my Alexa provided. And it wasn’t easy, not because I was a bad or contrary patient but because she was/is such a loving and caring nurse. She always apologized for waking me up in the middle of the night, several times at least, to take my vital signs or hand me a pill the doctor ordered. She did not have to, of course, but she did, and I always told her that she didn’t have to. She was taking care of me. What was there to apologize for anyway?! That Alexa.

She worked three straight twelve-hour shifts, actually twelve-and-a-half, because she and the nurse she replaced and the one who replaced her always came into your room to discuss your situation before handing on nursing duties to the other. It was comforting to be in attendance as they conversed. They cared. And it was not as if my Alexa cared more than the nurses who worked that day shift. They were simply busier running here and there as their patients were being moved from here to there on a constant basis as I was on the cardiology floor and every other person on my floor had serious heart problems. Mine was simply a tune-up, if you will.

For my Alexa her job is her ministry, her vocation. In fact, it isn’t a job. It is easy to spot the difference in any field: for all-too-many what one does is simply a job, a pay check. For many others, like Alexa and, truly all the staff who attended me, what they did was, yes, a pay check, but it was also their vocation. Even the three transporters who wheeled me here and there for tests loved their job. Imagine that!

I am not saying that my Alexa was more special than all the other nurses who ministered to me. It is simply to say that it is heart-warming and uplifting to have had the opportunity to get to know, even in such a small way, someone who is a true caregiver. There are millions of them and we sadly take them so much for granted. No virtual Alexa, no matter how smart, can replace my Alexa. She was such a blessing and I will always be grateful and thankful for her.