II. HUMOR--in, “Give us this day our daily ... Pearls.” Brotherly grief explored

“For I trust that, in whatever manner I die
I shall not be deprived of the mercy of my God—without which—eternal ruin is inevitable,
whether I die an unprepared death, or whether I have long anticipated my end.
--St Gertrude the Great

Winter, 1970

“How much water do we need,” I asked Joe.

My little 8-year-old hands were red and raw from the cold metal bucket handles. I poured my sorry amount of water on the basement floor There was a half-inch of standing water.

“A few more buckets should do it,” thought 10-year-old Joe out loud. “Let’s get in our bathing suits.”

The Minneapolis basement was finished to accommodate five noisy children. The basement included a girls’ bedroom, a boys’ bedroom and two connected recreational rooms, among others. Years later, we learned they were not “wreck” rooms.

One of the rec-rooms held an old Zenith. In those days, a good TV got three channels on a clear day. If the dial did not come off, turning the OFF button made the screen hold a dot of light—forever. This mesmerized the neighborhood.

"Death is not a foe, but an inevitable adventure." —Oliver Lodge

The forever thing hasn’t been proven, since no one waited long enough to see it disappear. Otherwise, we would be in the Guinness Book of World Records. Next to the TV was a black, polyurethane couch held together by silver duct tape. Under this couch, lived alligators and a spider the size of a laundry basket, allegedly. I never saw them but once I did see a mouse and a few crickets emerge. Joe was an expert about alligators and the spider, he said they were our guard dogs.

In the corner, was Mom’s squeaky ironing board. She could play it like a musical instrument. Unless it was during our favorite shows. Then it was just noisy.

“God is faithful & He will not let us be tempted beyond our strength.”
—St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

One of the rec-rooms, housed a ping-pong table and two game cabinets that bookended Mom’s sewing machine alcove. In one game cabinet was a mysterious outfit Mom was sewing for a Vietnamese baby. Baffled, we were told that people who went to Vietnam, never came home. My cousin Michael was proof. He was a field medic, but unlike M*A*S*H, he dealt in real blood not make-up. Nothing was funny when he was killed. Every time I hear Lee Greenwood sing “God bless the USA,” I think of Michael.

When my oldest brother Patrick returned from deployment in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Michael’s parents were visiting. They declined meeting Pat’s plane at the airport. Probably, they didn’t want the memories of Michael’s palleted/crated body arriving. After all that background info, why would Mom sew an outfit for someone to bring to Vietnam if they would never come home?

“The world is thy ship, not thy home.” —St. Thérèse of Lisieux

Meanwhile, back to the wet basement floor. The shiny tile was under 3/4 inches of water. Joe pronounced the floor ready. We turned off all the lights to eliminate attention and kept our voice volumes quiet. However, quiet is a relative term to a child. Whoever can define it someday, deserves a Nobel for Peace. More family battles rage because no one can define “quiet.” Perhaps Alfred Nobel established the “peace” category because of the noisy dynamite he invented?

Joe and I took turns running and sliding across the wet floor. With arms and legs flying, we hydroplaned like Florida Everglades fan boats. Brilliantly, we invented the Slip-n-Slide.™ Joe was good at bringing outdoor-sports, indoors. Since then, indoor hockey rinks plagiarized our idea, adding a freezing step. Our idea was more lucrative. We were not trying to freeze water in a heated building.

"Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil,
for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, ..."  —Psalm 23 

With all due respect, perhaps a better ending to the above quote is, “will beat the @#$% out of anyone who touches us, sheep.” Why else is He armed thusly? Trust the man-God in His euphemisms. Millstone necklaces, anyone?

After the water events concluded, we used 7-9 towels to hide the evidence. If you try this at home, wring out 1 towel repeatedly to contain the crime scene. If he was so smart, why didn’t Joe know this? Later at dinner, Mom asked the family about the wet towels smiling, “if the flood is coming, I want to meet Noah.” Everyone looked confused, then immediately glared at us. Luckily, we had the right to remain silent. Ghost Joe? — will you please say hi to Noah for Mom.

Joe had 2-years on me. Since we were the youngest of five, we had similar interests, bad habits and bedtimes. After we were sent to bed, we got dressed, slipped out of the basement windows and played “kick-the-can” with the neighbor kids who were also “asleep in their beds.” Mom was so proud of how well we went down, with nary a peep.

"Pale death with impartial tread, beats at both the poor man’s cottage door and palaces of kings." —Horace, 65-68 BC

Joe taught indoor-science. We learned how to melt live light bulbs with snowballs. Our hypothesis was the alternate, that light bulbs melt snowballs. Not true. The thin glass gets confused between the heat and cold. It can’t decide whether to contract or expand. So, it has a nervous breakdown instead. Or was that, Mom?

Joe taught how to build indoor bonfires with Christmas candles. First, take a Clorox bottle and shape it into a miniature fire pit. It only works for a short time so please make quick work of it. Fireplaces may work better since they don’t melt, although, paper burns well either way. We recommend using the older sisters’ love letters, diary pages and/or Tiger Beat centerfolds.

Joe taught how to play strip poker—with modified rules. We dressed in every piece of clothing we had—and sometimes—the siblings. The loser was the first to get down to PJs, becoming the other’s slave for the next day--as youngest--that was my baseline. Yet somehow, I always lost. Removal items included Band-Aids, several belts and hats, jewelry, hair ornaments, stickers and other creative attachables. One day, Patrick walked in while we played cards asking, “cleaning your room?” He noticed the missing clothes-carpet. That day, it was on our backs.

"My big brother was so good to me. When we were kids, he always let me go first.
The night he died, he looked up at me, smiled his crooked smile & said, “Sis, this time, let me go first.”
--Connie Danson, about her brother Frank Darnell

Joe was my childhood. I cannot think about being little without him. When he left—he took the little girl in me—with him.

He wasn’t an angel. Joe taught “how-to” disgusting behaviors. He was the undesired belching champion at the school bus stop. Only he could belch the ABCs and go 300 times in a row. We lived in a rural area where the roads/buses were inconsistent, so our wait-window was painfully large. The only reason Joe stopped at 300, was the bus arrived. To be fair, he taught me chess and monopoly. No matter how hard I cheated, I could not win. He cheated better. “Only-child” families have no clue of these horrors.

At one immature event, he was paid $10 for every raw egg he ate, shell and all. He ate three. I will never forget the jaw-crushing sound. It echoed through his sinuses and skull in a super scary way. That was the only time I saw tears in his eyes. Yet, he managed to swallow every shell, then drink a gallon of water. I will never know if he got hemorrhoids. That was the exact moment I realized that dares can be declined.

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted & saves those who are crushed in spirit.” —Psalm 34:18

Joe taught how to torture wasps. Our large, Midwest bee population was due to black dirt as fertile as chocolate cake, native clover and regular rains. In winter, bees lie dormant in their honeycomb apartments. They would tuck themselves away and snore until spring. Or so they thought. On a below zero-day, Joe would gently disconnect a beehive, then shake it like a martini, lay it in the snow and stand back. The bees would stagger awake and come out fighting. Unfortunately, they were in a drunken slumber.

They would fly and drop. With a final adrenaline surge, they would fly around for a determined last few seconds and then assume the dead cockroach position in the snow. Joe would shake the hive again to wake the laggards. Rinse and repeat until the stampede stopped. Moral—don’t remove beehives in the summer. Although, he did summer Olympics with hornets.

“Christ’s martyrs feared neither death nor pain. He triumphed in them who lived in them;
and they, who lived not for themselves but for him, found in death itself the way to life."
--St. Augustine of Hippo

In summer, Joe would hide inside a window near the hornets and wait for passers-by. When a harassable person approached, he took dead aim through the screen at their nest with a squirt gun full of cold water. It was great fun to bombard a hive through a screen window and duck. Let the dancing and cursing begin. He learned not to do it around adults because it leads to guaranteed-grounding.

"Come he slow or come he fast, it is but Death who comes at last." —Sir Walter Scott

Oreo cookies dunked in milk was a favorite snack. Both were scarce resources in a family of seven. Therefore, neither were wasted. After finishing the cookies, he poured the milk back for morning cereal. The next person got milk, gifted with Oreo floaters. You're welcome.

Speaking of milk, full bladders were a favorite pastime. Never could the girls pre-announce impending bathroom visits. Joe was a 6-foot wall of arms and legs. If he smelled urgency, he could guard a toilet like a linebacker. Step two was turning-on faucets. Step three was tickling. Only for a negotiable fee, could the bathroom be entered. The more desperate, the higher the entry fee.

“If you embrace all things in this life as coming from hands of God,
and even embrace death to fulfill his holy will, assuredly you will die a saint."
--St. Alphonsus Liguori

Joe rewrote popular songs for shower-solo concertos.

• John Fogerty’s “Bad Moon on the Rise” became, “don’t throw up tonight, but if you think you might; there’s a bathroom on the right.”

• The Royal Guardsmen had a catchy tune about the WWI, “Bloody Red Baron” dog fight deaths. Joe’s new lyrics were, “10-20-30-40-50 or more, Rose let a fart in a little store. 80-men died trying to hold their breath. Rose let another one and killed the rest.”

Once, Joe forgot to flush after a satisfying scatological event. Patrick, the next person in the bathroom, discovered the remains of Joe’s weeks’ worth of eating. His eventful comments were, “Joe, you left your brains in the toilet.”

One night when we were “asleep in bed,” we managed to crack a window playing kickball with a basketball. We borrowed black electrical tape for reparation and rehung the window. It screamed like a newsprint headline, “blatant crime committed here!”

“Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take nothing that you have received,
only what you have given: a full heart enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and courage."
St. Francis of Assisi

Brainstorming, we realized it was only a storm window. Black electrical tape and all, we decided to hide it behind sheetrock in the garage. The event was soon forgotten, until we moved away.

A funny thing occurs since Joe’s death. Now, if something is lost or broken, it is conveniently blamed on Joe. There is no chance of getting caught without him able to defend himself. Example, “what did you girls do with the fingernail clippers?” asks Mom.

“Ask Joe,” we say. He had been dead for years.

It was time to move to Wisconsin. On closing day, the house was shampooed and blow-dried. With nothing out of place, Mom told the older kids to keep the little ones outside and out-of-trouble. When the closing was over, we would be allowed back in. Ha! It was in that moment, that Joe decided he was an older kid. Thinking ahead, he got us all drinks, set up a game of kickball and locked all the doors. Great idea, in theory. In reality, the small bladder proportions are inversely proportional to the amount of ingested lemonade. This created a ticking time bomb. When the critical moment arrived, with locked doors, I was desperate. I pounded on the front door. My enthusiasm broke the window, unintentionally. Smartly, I reached inside to unlock the door and successfully solved all my problems. Suffice to say, the older kids got the blame. Should I have dropped my drawers in front of the whole neighborhood?

“Mary’s sorrow was less when she saw her only-Son crucified, than it is now,
at the sight of man offending Him by sin."
St. Ignatius of Loyola

England and France are not interchangeable. Nor are Minnesota and Wisconsin. ‘Sconies wear food on their heads during the fall and winter. They rationalize it by calling themselves cheeseheads. I prefer to eat food rather than adorn myself in it.

Gas was cheap, so belongings were convoyed sequentially across the Mississippi River. Gas was 33 cents a gallon and candy bars were a dime. Pop was a quarter. There was no such thing as cholesterol or saturated fat. In those days, we thought the cost of food equaled the calories it contained. Therefore, candy bars contained 10 calories and pop had 25. This is a much less complicated than today’s math. Nothing is measured in cents anymore. Show me the cent sign on a keyboard, I dare you.

“Turn your eyes to the Blessed Virgin. She is the Mother of Sorrows and the Mother of Consolation.
She can understand and help you. Looking to her, your grief will turn to love."
St. John Paul II

Crossing the state border was a big deal. Approaching the mighty Mississipi, we pretended to be thieves smuggling interstate goods. If the Feds caught us, the plan was to ransom me. I was Dad’s favorite so he would pay handsomely. Mom always threatened to throw me out with my dirty diapers.

When smuggling games got old, singing killed time. Here is what I learned about drinking songs.

• Why put 100 bottles of beer on the wall, when a fridge kept them colder?

• Why pass them around, with mono and herpes floating around?

During the move, strangely, a broken storm window was discovered behind drywall. An interrogation ensued to which no one spoke. Why would anyone repair it with black electrical tape and then hide it again? Parents!

"Every great sorrow is easier to bear when shared by those who truly care …" — Unknown

It is no surprise that Joe died young. The evidence below is not exhaustive.

• He leaned into the wind while rock climbing with the eagles.
• He swamped Dad’s truck and Patrick towed it out. No one could explain the mud all over its tires and the white cement driveway.
• He lost car keys playing water volleyball, no worries with his hot-wiring skills.
• Once, a chainsaw began bouncing its way out of his tailgate-less truck. Gripping the wheel with his left hand, he half climbed through the back window to grab it with his right. He only crossed the center line twice.
• He juggled with 5 balls. Then, he juggled with knives. Don’t tell Mom.
• As linebacker, he scored more touchdowns on defense, then some offensive players.
• He feared nothing and no one.

After growing up—physically—we came home on rare weekends. With five schedules of work, school and dating, the planets aligned. That weekend, we were hot and heavy into a card tournament. Sunday afternoon, Joe volunteered to get drinks for all. We teased about the cost of bathroom passes upfront and negotiated the potential for volume-discounts. With sarcasm, he responded. “Such gratitude, don’t expect me to get drinks again!”

He never did. Within 24 hours, he was gone. His smile, his cowlick, his threat delivered in jest, still hangs in the air. Present became past.

“We must compare time and eternity—this is the remedy of all troubles.
How small will the present appear when we enter that great ocean of eternity."
--St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

Joe still laughing, after cards and dinner, we scattered on late Sunday like shotgun pellets. Soon, we would be recalled back, the next day. We felt like flying plastic bags, property of the wind. Blowing, darting and searching for rest; our only hope was to become impaled on some skeleton tree.

Am I crazy for having ghosts? Whether literal or figurative, they are familiar. And they are mine. Let me hug my grief for now, until it searches for its next victim.

Grief is not a 12-step program. In Natural History, author Stephen J Gould tells of a grieving, depressed man seeking psychiatric help during his visit to London. The therapist prescribed a night at the opera. “The great Italian clown, Giuseppi Grimaldi is in town and is performing tonight. Surely, he will raise your spirits.”

'Love that does not know suffering, is not love." —St. Clare of Assisi

“Grimaldi" is my stage name,” said the man.

We are all Grimaldi at times in our life. Yes, we have the Bible—the tools, formation—the training, and prayer—the treatment. Yet sometimes the best thing to say is, “I’ve got nothing.” It acknowledges that there are no words. It is better to admit the truth than pretend. Sending plants is not always helpful either. It creates reminders and adds work for someone overwhelmed, who cannot focus.

Some situations create family blame while others create closeness. This is a personal choice to make. If blame rears its ugly head, this is a situation where “I have no words” is the best thing to say. When everybody hurts, creating more hurt is destructive to everyone. When forcing family to choose a side, everybody loses.

"The Passion of Jesus is a sea of sorrows, but it is also an ocean of love. Ask the Lord to teach you to fish in this ocean.
Dive deep into its depth. No matter how deep you go, you will never reach the bottom of His love."
--St. Paul of the Cross

Acceptance cannot be forced. Grief is hard work which must take its natural course. Like hatching chickens, the chick’s struggle to emerge is—not a problem—it is critical development. Across many species; self-emergence, self-breaking or self-separation triggers maturation.

• strengthening muscles, finishing nutrient absorption,
• closing blood vessels, activating lungs, or imprinting behaviors.

Interfering in biology harms more than it saves i.e.; underdevelopment, injury, infection or death. Natural coping is best used in humans. No one should use drugs, alcohol or other addictive behaviors for coping.

"Suffering is the greatest treasure on earth; it purifies the soul.
In suffering, we learn who our true friend is..."
--St. Faustina

Sometimes, pain is God’s megaphone. Grief is a personal response when we lose someone or something important. It may include sadness, anger, guilt, confusion, loneliness or even relief at sufferings’ end.

Stages may not happen in order as we boomerang and regress. Sometimes grief come in waves, due to special dates, smells, holidays, foods, songs or even doppelgangers. Grief may never fully disappear but becomes easier through God’s grace. Allegedly, the soft sciences describe the grief process as denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Additional terms to consider are sufferance, tolerance, dependance and surrender.

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains."
CS Lewis, in The Problem of Pain

As CS Lewis writes, pain is God’s megaphone, to rouse a deaf world. Suffering awakens truths, ignored during comfortable times. When life is easy, our focus is success, possessions and/or personal plans. Quiet comforts numb us to our need for God and neighbor. Pain, whether physical, psychological, spiritual or other; interrupts comfort, structure and routine. Pain forces us to consider our weakness, loss, morbidity and death. Through suffering, we begin to ask the deeper questions.

• What gives life meaning?
• Where can we find lasting hope?
• How should we respond to the suffering of others?

Lewis does not imply that pain is good. Or that tragedy has explanations. Instead, he suggests that God uses painful experiences to urge us toward spiritual growth.

"Suitably, the virgin is called a blooming rose.
Just as the gentle rose is placed among thorns, so the gentle Virgin was surrounded by sorrow."
--St. Brigid of Ireland

The Church recognizes grief as a real, human experience. Funeral rites acknowledge sadness and loss, while pointing believers toward Christ’s death and resurrection. The Catechism teaches that Christian funerals express hope in eternal life and the resurrection of the body. Yet, this hope does not erase grief. Rather, it helps us endure pain through prayer, community and trust in God.

Pain can produce patience, mercy and compassion. If we have suffered, we may be more understanding to others in pain. Loving our neighbor means to support those grieving through presence, prayer and acts of mercy. Therefore, Lewis’s “megaphone” is not a reason to judge, rationalize or offer answers. It is a wake-up call that commands attention.

“To suffer with Christ is to let His Cross touch ours, and to let His love transform our hurts, into what saves.”

Pain does not make us wiser or more faithful—automatically. It forces us recognize weaknesses, reconsider priorities and hopefully, be open to God’s will. The “megaphone” metaphor suggests that pain makes us listen, when other methods fail. With pain, challenge, limits or finality; we have choices. We can choose despair or to deepen our dependence on God and journey towards everlasting hope. By uniting our suffering with Christ’s, pain can be a beacon to holiness and God’s healing.

A Prayer when in Pain

When suffering darkens dear ones’ doors & hurting hearts have hope no more.
God whispers in the roaring rain; “I’ll hold you close, in all your pain.”
Where grief has carved its deepest scar & thoughts of God are faint and far.
Christ will come in darkened nights, if we lift our tears toward the light.

Christ’s cruel cross was intently-staked, for earthly plans that bend & break.
His nail-holed hands, both rugged and real; crave lost and lonely hearts to heal.
So let us love while we are here, with open hearts and courage clear.

With every kindness, every prayer; we build a bridge through love and care.
As sorrows fade and faith burns bright, our aches finance eternal light.
And when our final breath is given, let pain be our ticket to eternal heav’n.

* * *

Click on links below for chapters, if underlined. Some may not yet be posted.

I. Ghosts—in, “Give us this day our daily … Pearls." Family grief explored

II. Humor—in, “Give us this day our daily … Pearls." Brotherly grief explored

III. Courage—in, “Give us this day our daily … Pearls." In-law grief explored

IV. Strength—in, “Give us this day our daily … Pearls." Paternal grief explored

V. Freedom—in, “Give us this day our daily … Pearls.” Grief for a child, explored

VI. Goodbye Ghosts—in, “Give us this day our daily … Pearls”