Category Archives: spirituality

The Neighborhood Elders Are Dying

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Mareska Glass, Dot Lawson, Johnny Jarrell, Drudy Jarrell and, just yesterday, Euel Spriggs.

These are the neighbors who were twenty-five to thirty-five years older than me and became my friends. They have all died. Thee last three in just the past two months.

Mareska, aka Marsha, and I meet most every Thursday morning for coffee. She shared her life stories and how she survived World War 2 as a young Jewish girl in Poland after losing her entire family. (A story I still need to write for her).

Dot lived across the street. Her son was married to a friend I hadn’t seen since high school. A reminder we are circle back around one another in life. Dot made wedding cakes and my husband and son regularly benefited from her cast offs. I rescued a baby owl once who’d found its way down her chimney. We differed in how we interpreted God, but always respected the other.

Johnny and Drudy were the cute couple holding hands and walking their dog. More often than not, their evening walk timed perfectly with mine and so we’d stroll around together. Johnny loved his annual trip to Boston in the winter to represent his company at the annual fish market. Drudy never failed to ask about my son. They had two accomplished, good men as sons themselves.

Euel died yesterday morning. It was expected and his beloved great niece, Michelle, has been with him through it all. He and his late wife, Marie, weren’t able to have children, but they spoiled all their family. The strongest memory of Euel will be that he truly lived a life of kindness and respect for all. He LIVED it. He didn’t go around pontificating.

My childhood was spent around aging relatives and so that may be why I gravitate to the elders around me. They can often have a way of being that enriches my life in small and large ways.

Let Me Crawl If I Can’t Walk

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It finally happened, my friend, and ninety-four year old neighbor, fell… and hasn’t walked again.

It didn’t have to be that way. His loving family was startled by how much he complained about his leg hurting. He never complains. It was a deep bruise and would need time to heal.

The family and the doctor, however, immediately flipped him from being someone in his home who had a housekeeper, physical therapist twice and week and a nurse check-in once a week ,to being a man told “not to try and get up because you’ll fall again.” He has literally been pushed down in his chair.

Overnight his bed was switched to a hospital, his walker was switched to a wheelchair and 24/7 caretakers added to the day.

He looked at me early in this process and said, “I guess they just want me to sit here, get old, rot and die.”

His 24/7 caretakers and I know he could have walked again. Not now. It’s been too many weeks and now morphine has been added “so he’s never in pain.”

My family has had the conversations about medical power of attorney, end of life procedures, wills, etc. Now we have had the conversation about the “just before” stage when my husband and I can and want to push ourselves as much as we can to keep moving and functioning.

I told them, let me crawl if I can’t walk.

Whoa-man!

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I never imagined that reading, writing and watching romance would have such a powerful affect on my appreciation of WOMAN in the world.

We need this balance of the female more than ever. In fact, I believe the world is in the mess it is because we have not honored the Female the way way we honor the Male.

We need both. Balance.

Separate AND equal energies for creating a world wwhere we treat everyone and everything with kindness and respect.

So be it.

I Feel Sorry For Jesus These Days

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https://cooking.nytimes.com/article/high-fiber-protein-recipes
  • When I see white men gathered around for Bible study I wonder who or what group will be persecuted next.
  • We were bike riding yesterday and went past a Mosque where evening services concluding the holy day Eid Al-Fitr were being help. Outside on the sidewalk was a man with a megaphone and a sign proclaiming to be Christian. he was shouting how everyone inside the place of worship were the evil of the world.
  • The Texas State Attorney General, once indicted on multiple felonies but cut a deal, constantly harasses and impedes citizens ability to worship as they choose.
  • The only time I’ve ever had anyone shoot the middle finger at me was when a truck with Trump flags drove by me at a No Kings Rally. What was so horridic about my sign? It said, “Treat Others the Way You Wish To Be Treated.”

We can, and must, be better than this.

Valuable Life Lessons from a 94-Year-Old Neighbor

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Last spring, my 94 year old nextdoor neighbor, Euel, voluntarily turned in his car keys. “I’m concerned I’ll hurt someone or myself and I don’t want to risk that.”

Euel has been a widower about six years, but remained active driving to Denny’s each morning to see the “regulars” at breakfast, bowling with his long-time team and chairing the local Coca Cola Club meetings.

All that stopped when he quit driving.

It took a couple of weeks of his car not being parked in front of his house for me to realize something had changed. He told me he had made arrangements with a grand niece (the only relative in the state) to take him grocery shopping, the doctors and other errands. She was only coming by once a week though.

I take multiple short walks daily and so started knocking on his door once a day asking, “Do you want to take a walk?”

he was unsteady at first I decided it was the cane his doctor told him to use. Not sure who’s idea it was to put people on a cane for balance when the cane actually causes one to lean over.

So I went to REI and bought Euel trekking poles. He immediately stood straight and had much better balance. We walk not once, but twice a day now. He always says “yes” when I knock on the door.

He knows more about current events than most anyone you’ll meet, but we agreed we have to limit those talks because we are both horrified at what our country has become. So he tells stories and I listen to clues about what he wished he’d done to be better prepared to be ninety-four.

His first lesson: Keep Up With Technology. Euel has not. He has an old computer and basically can only look at existing files. he’s not updated the program and so can’t view most of what he searches.

He has a flip phone and struggles to see who’s calling and how to return the call.

He can’t order Uber or Lyft or Door Dash.

In short, he is radically dependent upon others for everything. He knows that not such a good thing.

Other neighbors have noticed I take walks with Euel and their reactions have been interesting:

-One said, “You’re making us look bad, Betheny.”

-Another said, “I don’t really know what to do around old people.”

-A third has started taking him to the market with her each week and asks him to walk on the days when I’m out of town.

I remember Euel’s Lesson #1 : Keep Up With Technology each time I want to be lazy and have my husband or son do something on the computer for me because I can’t figure it out.

Ugh, but good for my future.

A Land of My Own for Thanksgiving

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This is my favorite week of the year. Thanksgiving. It always has been and I think it’s because my family spent it at my grandparent’s farm where I could take long walks with the birddog, find a spot along the creek, sit and write, for as long as I wanted.

I didn’t have the responsibly of planning, purchasing or cooking any meals, my mom did that. So I was free to roam, dream and write.

To paraphrase Virginia Wolfe, my “room of my own” was the outdoors. That’s where I could be alone for long periods of time. I didn’t have to engage with family, do chores, hear the TV.

We drove from our suburban home to the farm almost every weekend when I was growing up. So I had weekends to wander and much of the summer to do the same. Thanksgiving week held a special appeal and I’m still sorting out why it felt so different.

It might be because that was when the Texas weather switched from hot and dry to chilly and wet. The clouds created a tent of privacy where it was ok to lounge. That’s what I was doing, lounging outside with my journal and imagination.

The yearning to be outdoors has never left.

I live in the city though and it’s so hard to find a remote place where it’s ok for me to wander, sit and write.

Rather than a “room of my own” maybe I need “a land of my own.”

Promoting My Book: A Day at the Bookstores

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Yesterday was the first day I visited bookstores to introduce myself and ask for them to carry Under The Autumn Moon and schedule in store appearances.

I had my book, a bookmark and a promotional flyer to provide the decision-makers. I went to two bookstores. One asked if I’d been to their website and registered my book. “Yes.”

“Good. That’s the first step because we have more than one hundred authors apply every month.”

“That’s why I also wanted to stop by in person to introduce myself.” (hoping you’ll like me)

The second bookstore was more disappointing as they couldn’t find my book in their system. I googled it for them and showed it was in their system.

“Hmm. Well, let me give you the email for the person who can help you better than I can.”

On and on.

Writing a book is the easy part. Promoting it is rough.

This morning though, I was fine-tuning, probably for the seventeenth time, my next book. I felt very good about my edits and realized I was done. It is ready to send to my editor and publishing partner.

Then I felt tremendous sadness. The loss of not being able to sit every morning and listen to what my characters want me to write about their lives. We have completed that part.

Now I need to do all the things that have to be accomplished to share their story with the world.

Already the next lead character is whispering in my ear, “Can you please tell me story now?”