Rabid Fun

Time To Think

05/18/2013

Saturday, May 18, 2013

The more I think, the less I have to say.

God willing, I plan to take a few days off just to think and ponder where to go from here. In the all the activity of getting Ginny buried, I’ve scarcely taken time to grieve for her. I’m setting aside the next few days to do that.

God willing I’ll begin posting again after Memorial Day.

Direction, Mercy, and Grace

05/14/2013

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

I need to pray again an old prayer that Ginny and I often prayed when perplexed about what to do next:

The prayer asks Jesus to guide us so “That in Thy light we may see light, and in Thy straight path may not stumble”.

Now that I’ve taken care of much of the business related to Ginny’s death and burial, I live at a loss of what to do next. Her death came so unexpected—six weeks between diagnosis and death. I feel I should be devastated, but I’m not. Merely numb.

My most usual reaction in thinking about her is thankfulness. It was such a privileged to be her husband. To this day, after 43 years of marriage, I can not fathom what the woman saw in me. When she first encountered me, I was damaged goods, rejected, second-hand, useless; But for some reason known only to herself, Ginny saw something worthwhile in me that no one else seemed to see, something that I do not see myself. It was a matter of grace and mercy that she came to love me.

To this day it is a wonder that such a beautiful girl would care about me.

Now, I seek that straight and narrow path the Scripture talks about… Oh, there it is, dead ahead:

God has a wonderful plan for your life. All you have to do is follow.

Right!

Who thought up that bumper-sticker-religion?

I’ve heard that it takes time to heal… But I’m not sure I want to heal.

I may wallow in despair, but it’s my despair and I’m quite comfortable in my wallowing.

At times I wonder if I should continue working on one of the book manuscripts I already had in progress before Gin ever got sick. Then I ran across this photo which adequately portrays my literary ambitions at the moment:

I live in a state or perpetual grumpiness around friends and family. I snap at people who love and want to help me.

And religion bugs me. I feel as though as a Christian I should be handling things better. So I feel guilty about expressing my true thoughts and feelings as though I’m letting Christ down by being me.

However, He does seem to value honesty, vulnerability and transparency. It’s more important for people to see through me to Christ than for me to put up a stoic false front.

My daughter-in-love, Helen, reminded me of this yesterday when she came over, God bless her, to trim my toenails (Yes, I’m too fat to reach my own toes).

Helen, recently named one of Jacksonville’s most influential artists, just returned from a motor-scooter trip through the Tail Of The Dragon, a mountain road on the Georgia/Tennessee border which features 385 hairpin turns in eleven miles.

She said it frightened her but doing this trip built her confidence!

Mountain biking, fine-art, clipping Grump’s toenails—what a versatile woman my youngest son married! And spiritually profound too; in spite of rounding all those curves in the Dragon’s Tail, she knows a lot about walking the straight and narrow too.

Over a lunch of Chinese food, Helen reminded me that:

Mercy is when God does not give us what we deserve;

Grace is when God gives us what we don’t deserve.

The Bread Lifter

05/13/2013

Monday, May 13, 2013

When I was a Boy Scout I learned how to toast bread over an open campfire.

First, I’d fry strips of bacon, then tear a hole in the middle of a slice of bread and lay it on top of the bacon in the frying pan, then I’d crack an egg into that hole—fry the whole lot a few minutes and eat the feast.

Not so nowadays.

The other morning I wanted to toast breakfast bread. I dropped two slices in the toaster, pushed down that thingamabob on the side of the appliance—and my bread popped up again untoasted.

I tried again and again.

The bread would not stay down.

I had to eat raw bread.

Obviously the toaster was defective. I threw it in the garbage can and drove to Wal-Mart to buy a new toaster… and here’s where things got complicated.

Modern toasters feature a microchip in a computer brain.

Now why a toaster needs a computer brain, I can’t fathom. Space rockets may need microchips to orbit Mars, but a toaster!

I read the 18-page instruction booklet that came with my new toaster and I discovered the term “Bread Lifter”.

Never in my life have I ever heard of a Bread Lifter before.

I envisioned a priest in a sacramental church elevating the Host to show his congregation that the bread was indeed broken as the body of Christ was broken for us—but is that priest ever called a Bread Lifter?

I viewed the cut-away schematic breakdown of the new toaster. That thingamabob on the side, the one you push down to make toast, the thing that pops the toast up when it’s toast, that thing is officially named in the literature as “the Bread Lifter”.

I didn’t know that.

It’s called the Bread Lifter because—get this—it lifts the bread up when it is toasted.

What will they think of next?

The Toaster Instruction Manual went on to tell me that “The Bread Lifter will not function unless the toaster is plugged into a power source”.

Power source—Oh, they mean a wall plug.

Of course I’m not so stupid as to try to toast bread with an unplugged…

Or am I?

I dug my old toaster out of the garbage can and wiped off coffee grounds—why would the old toaster ever have been unplugged? It has sit in the same spot on the sideboard for years…

Then I remembered.

During Ginny’s last days before she died, we turned the house topsy-turvy making room for medical equipment to keep her as comfortable as possible. We took end tables out of our bedroom, we removed the bathroom door to allow wheelchair access, we gave away the dinning room table to make room for her hospital bed in there—and we unplugged kitchen appliances so we could plug in her breathing machines, etc.

Nothing was wrong with my old toaster’s Bread Lifter; I’d been trying to toast bread with the appliance unplugged.

That’s understandable. The toaster always sat on Ginny’s side of the table and she always toasted our bread—I’m not allowed to operate heavy equipment.

Yesterday my son John drove me back to the Wal-Mart where I returned the new toaster and explained to the counter girl that I did not need a new toaster because I’d managed to get the Bread Lifter fixed on my old toaster.

She had no idea what I was talking about.

In My Garden–With Minnows

05/12/2013

Sunday, May 12, 2013

During Ginny’s fatal illness many people brought her flowers, both cut and potted plants. For the past few days I’ve cleared an area around our backyard birdbath, leveled stones, carried bricks, re-potted the flowers and worked on creating a memory garden in her honor. I’m about two thirds finished; this photo shows my progress so far:

Click to enlarge

However, as I’ve grieved in my garden, the minnow have been nibbling.

I mentioned a few days ago how big problems, whales, can be faced easier than multitudes of the nit-picking, soul and spirit destroying little things I call life’s minnows.

Of course, Ginny’s death is my whale and I think I’m coping with that as well as can be expected. But the little things that constitute daily life—leaking roof, ringing phone, buying groceries for one, washing clothes, negotiating with Social Security, having a charity return my check—these problems, which are tiny minnows in themselves, get me down.

The most recent minnow involves life insurance.

Turns out, Ginny had none.

The timing of her death fell in between her insurfance coverage under her employer and private coverage we bought after she retired. The one has expired, the other would not begin coverage for a couple of months; therefore, neither pays any survivor benefits.

Although the new company does generously offer to refund the premiums we’ve already paid to them.

Just aggravating minnows to me in light of the overwhelming loss of Ginny.

I’ve been intimate with poverty most of my life so nothing new there.

I sort of trust God. After all, when the Jews faced the whale of wandering in the wilderness, He made sure their shoes did not wear out for 40 years. Shabby shoes are just minnows but the Lord deals with little things too.

But discovering the lack of expected insurance money is a pain (won’t say where).

Anyhow, instead of wallowing in despair over impending poverty with my monthly income cut by two thirds, I chose to dabble in my memory garden. It is shaping up beautifully.

A thought occurred to me today as I scrubbed on hands and knees in mud transplanting plants between pots:

After the crucifixion, Mary Magdalene visited the tomb.

The risen Lord approached her and said, “Woman, why weepest thou?”

John’s Gospel says, “She, supposing him to be the gardener” said “Sir, if thou has borne him hence, tell me where thou has laid him, and I will take him away”.

That’s when Jesus spoke her name and told her not to cling to him but to go tell that He was risen.

The thing that struck me is that she thought Jesus was—not a writer, nor a computer programmer, nor a preacher, nor a bus driver—but a gardener.

Much of the time I wallow in squalid sin but sometimes I want to be a Christ-like man.

As the Scripture says, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus”.

That is the purpose of life.

God calls us to be conformed to the image of His Son.

And eventually we will be. As Saint John said, “When we see Him, we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is”.

But now, I doubt that anyone ever under any circumstance would confuse Jesus Christ and John Cowart. Not even before dawn in a graveyard.

Seeing me, the lady would have thought she’d just run into the muddy spook of a dirty old man.

Trouble In The Camp; Peace In My Heart

05/09/2013

Thursday, May 9, 2013

I attended court yesterday morning because of a matter which I feel does not directly involve me, but one of my children. The parties directly involved say I am blind, naive, gullible, and without understanding.

I strongly suspect they are right.

I live in my own little world.

My primary crime it appears is answering my phone when it rings.

I asked the attorney to recommend that I be placed in solitary confinement for a few months, but no such luck.

After court, I talked with the salesman at the cemetery and drove out there to visit Ginny’s gravesite and sign papers related to her funeral (and eventually to my own).

So, I moved from turmoil to peace in one short morning.

As I sat on my wheeled walker near Ginny’s grave watching the fountain, fish pond, and waterfowl, I decided to comply fully with the attorney’s suggestions. I do no0t think I have wronged anybody in this matter, but I want time to grieve and I have been too busy with the business of getting Gin buried to give her much thought.

Ginny enjoyed the remarkable ability to let life’s aggravations swirl around her without touching her contentment.

That’s a talent I lack.

Took my eldest daughter antique shopping Tuesday and in every Ye Olde Shope I kept seeing things I’d start to buy for Ginny. The memory of her loss kept hitting me afresh. I actually started to the cash register one one cat picture she would have enjoyed, abruptly realized that she is not here to enjoy it, then I placed it back on the shelf.

What use have I for a cat picture?

Religious thoughts do not help me much at the moment. Yes, it’s good to believe that Ginny is in Heaven with the Lord Christ. But knowing she is There with Him, does not overshadow the fact I want her Here with me.

I think the Scripture most meaningful to me at the moment is the He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

Where I am, He’s been.

Once home from the cemetery, I enjoyed the Social Security Administration’s phone peppy tune on hold for 45 minutes, only to have the customer service guy tell me to call back in June.

An e-mail slugged DANGER appeared in my in-box this morning: Here is the text:

Today I had to go to court for the restraining order. The judge said that she has not CURRENTLY threatened me so he denied the restraining order. Despite all the evidence I had of the ongoing stalking, intimidation and using Dad to continue to emotionally abuse/stalk me. Judge Gregg McCaulie saw the woman who said she is “good friends with John Cowart”

My lawyer spoke with Dad and told Dad that he has to not speak with her or see her in order to keep me and the rest of the family safe. My attorney warned Dad how unstable she is and that she meets every legal definition of an obsessed stalker. Dad says he is going to tell her if when she calls not to call again and not to come by. This will certainly set her off against dad and now she also knows that I live near Dad.

I spoke to my older brother tonight and found out that somehow she got his cell phone number and called him to “get dad’s address”. He says has never given her his cell number.  He did not have that cell number when she and I were together, he only has had that cell number since he moved to Jax. In all of the chaos with mom dying he forgot to tell me she called.  Which I really should have known for court today.

I want to warn all of you that she might call you. If she was able to somehow get his number she might get your numbers also. 

It is imperative if she contacts any of you or if she comes by your home or work or comes to Dad’s that you DO NOT open the door, DO NOT engage her in conversation and IMMEDIately let me or the police know. I am having to document each contact and I absolutely need to know what is said in any conversation with her. I am very concerned that she will hurt ya’ll to get to me. She used to threaten me that she would hurt/kill my family then me then herself. I cannot stress enough how much of a danger she is.

The one great thing that happened today is that while I sat there in court I felt happy. Strange but I realized how thankful to God I am to be alive, to not be living in fear and danger and control and beaten anymore. I thanked God for helping me get away from her alive, for my wonderful family, for my beautiful and wonderful friend who has supported and encouraged me and helped train me to defend myself and who loves me more than she can stand! LOL! I am so lucky. Even if the stalker does ever kill me, I will die happy and free from the violence and pain I took for so many years and free from the shame I felt every day while I was with her.

Anyway, I love you each so dearly. I am sorry to have to send this to you all, but I want you to be alert also especially around Dad’s house.

Fun, Faith, and Mammograms

05/07/2013

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Yesterday, as we are wont to do most Monday mornings, some of us guys got together for breakfast at Two Doors Down, then stopped at the cigar store for religious supplies, then lounged in my living room to explore the depths of our Christian faith… So naturally, we talked about breasts.

We also talked about Shakespearian plays, and Keystone Cops movies, and burlesque shows, and computer viruses, and vampire slaying, and whether Spencer Tracy (Bad Day At Black Rock) could beat up Arnold Schwarzenegger, (The Terminator).

I bet on Spencer.

We talked about biology, and Canada, and how much a stuffed moose head would cost. We talked about various brands of perfume and aftershave. We talked about catching fish by hand in Samoa, about Jacksonville history, about Ginny’s death, and about riding/driving a segway.

We talked about the old Batman tv series with Adam West, and about English comedy tv shows like the Benny Hill Show, The Vicar Of Dibley, and that hilarious BBC program which reminded the guys so much of my own mother— Keeping Up Appearances staring Patricia Routledge.

Hard to believe that this is Hyacinth Bucket, but here is a YouTube link to Ms Routledge’s excellent reading from John’s Gospel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBoAge80pEw .

I highly recommend watching it.

And following that serious reading, like all Christian guys who gather in prayer meetings without adult supervision, we naturally discussed mammograms:

Here’s is Wes’s contribution to our intellectual discussion:

HOW TO PREPARE FOR A MAMMOGRAM–

Many women are afraid of their first mammogram, and even if they have had them before, there is fear. But there is no need to worry. By taking a few minutes each day for a week preceding the exam and doing the following practice exercises, you will be totally prepared for the test, and best of all, you can do these simple practice exercises right in your home. 

EXERCISE 1: Open your refrigerator door, and insert one breast between the door and the main box. Have one of your strongest friends slam the door shut as hard as possible and lean on the door for good measure Hold that position for five seconds. Repeat in case the first time wasn’t effective. 

EXERCISE 2: Visit your garage at 3 a.m. when the temperature of the cement floor is just perfect. Take off all your clothes and lie comfortably on the floor sideways with one breast wedged under the rear tire of the car. Ask a friend to slowly back the car up until your breast is sufficiently flattened and chilled. Switch sides, and repeat for the other breast. 

EXERCISE 3: Freeze two metal bookends overnight. Strip to the waist. Invite a stranger into the room. Have the stranger press the bookends against either side of one of your breasts and smash the bookends together as hard as he/she can. Set an appointment with the stranger to meet next year to do it again. You are now properly prepared! 

Whales and Minnows

05/06/2013

Monday, May 6, 2013

If a whale attacks you, you can harpoon that sucker; but what can you do when you’re being eaten alive by minnows?

I think that’s the way it is with troubles. The huge ones, I gather inner resources of strength and cope with the problem. The annoying petty problems of everyday life overwhelm me.

Ginny’s death was my whale. I faced it headon with prayer and work and help from family and friends. And, in a measure, I coped.

Now come life’s minnows.

Calling the Social Security Administration phone-tree and dealing with government sticky-tape—a minnow in the light of Ginny’s death but a whale in my life at the moment.

And during last week’s heavy rain,two leaks appeared in the ceiling where no leak had been during the previous 17 years. Now I have to think about options—patch, new roof, put a bucket under it and ignore it?

And a huge limb from a tall sweetgumfell on Ginny’s little bottle-brush tree stripping branches down one side.

And as I pulled out of our drive, the car’s brakes started squeaking… Why now?

All I want to do is mourn my wife, but life gives me no time to think.

Some company wants me to pay for an on-line memorial to Ginny. How do I respond to that? A neighbor paid for one of those things for years.

Speaking of memorials, several people handed me cards with money at Ginny’s funeral. I dispersed those memorial gifts among four different food pantries—just as Ginny would have done. On the Pacific Coast, her brother Jack planted a tree in her memory and here on the Atlantic Coast, the staff at the mail library purchased a set of murder mysteries with bookplates saying the books are a memorial to Ginny—she’d have got a kick out of that too.

The Patriarch Job said that man that is born of woman is few of days and full of troubles. One way we know we’re alive is that we respond to a stimulus—and that stimulus usually is a prod or a poke to generate pain. Dead meat does not jump off a hot stove. Rocks don’t flinch when you poke them.

Responding to troubles, either whales or minnows, demonstrates the Christian life to men, devils and angels. Yes, the Lord is a very present help in time of trouble, yet (Hast thour considered my servant Job) He is the very one instigating the trouble in the first place.

Not that He is a sadist inflicting pain for the fun of it (In all their afflictions, He was afflicted) but troubles give focus, in some way purify us, benefit us, prepare us for future good—and yes that’s hard to believe!

What about God is easy to believe?

Non-believers take the easy way out; they need to face reality.

It occurs to me that in the beginning God created the great whales…and whales are mammals. They have hair. I’m a mammal; I have hair and Jesus said the very hairs of our heads are numbered—I don’t know where I’m going with this thought but it seems to indicate that God is God in big and little things.

Meanwhile, Social Security hot-lineplays my favorite kind of waiting tune; I think the ceiling drips are falling in time to the music, minnows swim around in my buckets. God’s in His Heaven and, in the empty-of-Ginny Cowart household, things are going on as usual.

Thanks be to God!

Goosed!

05/02/2013

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Here’s the sort of thing I miss telling Ginny about:

Many kind people brought Ginny either cut flowers or live flowering plants during her final illness; I’ve decided to create a new flower bed beneath the crepe myrtle tree to house the live plants in a single collection.

This project necessitated a trip to buy potting soil, cow manure, and a humming bird feeder. I may put in a new birdbath also but I’m not sure about that. I may just revamp one of the old ones.

At the store I parked in a shady spot overlooking a retention pond. Before braving the miles of store aisles, I rested in the car smoking my pipe and watching the pond.

A family of Canada Geese came into view—two adults and three round, fuzzy brown goslings. They mossed along in the green grass on the verge of the pond browsing at choice tender plants. A family out for a leisure stroll.

What’s this?

Another fuzzy brown thing—an alley cat lurking in a stand of taller grass. The cat hunkered down. Stalking. Watching. Ready to pounce on a plump gosling.

The family waddled unconcerned nearer and nearer to where the tense cat hid hugging the earth, muscles tense, ready to spring.

Cat thought of easy pickings. Nothing to fear from a couple of slow, fat, waddling geese. They have no claws. They have no teeth. Just peaceful birds in a pastoral setting…

Not necessarily.

Papa Goose spotted the lurking cat.

From a waddling bird, he instantly transformed into a war machine four feet tall. Running forward honking, wings wide-spread and flapping, head down, neck out, beak snapping, Papa Goose charged the cat.

Startled, the cat flipped backward in the air. It rushed to the fence in head-long flight. Cat scrambled in panic at this sudden monster bird’s attack.

Papa Goose ran into the chain-link fence and poked his head through still trying to skin the cat. Then, with the feline threat removed, Papa Goose resumed his normal shape and size, and resumed browsing peacefully with his little family as though nothing had happened.

Oh, how I longed to share that incident with Ginny.

I thought of the Psalm, “The Lord is my Shepherd”.

Gentle, Jesus meek and mild—but when something threatens us goslings. The wrath of God emerges. The Lord descends from Heaven with a shout. Rise up, O Lord, and make thine enemies flee before Thee.

Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Neither life nor death, nor height, nor depth, nor cancer, nor cat.

And here is the joy of Christian confidence in the face of all troubles—nothing can permanently harm us.

The enemy of our soul can do nothing more than kill us—no permanent damage.

Resurrection!

In Christ shall all be made alive.

Guess what?

Someday, I’ll be able to tell Ginny about the silly cat and the wrathful goose.

I’ll bet she will laugh.

Link To Funeral Talk

05/01/2013

I spent yesterday dispensing some of the charity stuff Ginny wanted me to take care of.

Under the bridges and in the downtown parks, Fred and John are giving out four cartons of stuff she wanted to pass on to the poor.

I delivered four cartons of medical supplies to Dr. Woody to use in his mission in  Africa or wherever.

Memorial donations given at her funeral, I plan to divide among four food pantries Ginny supported…

Lots to do, mostly just the mechanics of her dying. Staying busy.

Like the old joke from Great Depression days:

“Say, Buddy, got a nickel for a cup of coffee?”

“No. But I’ll get along somehow”.

Here is a new page link to “Lessons From Ginny”,  the talk Wes Bassett gave at Ginny’s funeral:

http://www.cowart.info/blog/?page_id=2980

Ginny’s Memorial Service

04/29/2013

Monday, April 29, 2013

A man who had never met my wife bought the urn her ashes were buried in yesterday.

He asked that I not name him, but he had read about Ginny and became so impressed with her life that he felt she deserved better than the plastic urn that I could afford. In kindness he paid for the finest burnished bronze box available for her ashes.

I may have seen him in the crowd at the memorial service, but in the press of people I did not get to speak with him of my appreciation afterwards.

Never before have I heard so much talk of love as I did at Ginny’s memorial service and reception yesterday .

Strange.

Here, as a besotted lover, I thought I loved her best. Alas, I am only one of many who treasure her. My voice broke as I read James Henry Hunt’s 1835 poem:

Ginny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have missed me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
Ginny kissed me.

But in the course of the day many other people testified to how Ginny spread an aura of love among them in her daily walk.

Odd, I though I was the one who knew her. At her service, I learned from others that she was even better than I had imagined.

A week or so before Ginny died, she told about a dream of being in a beautiful garden filled with hummingbirds.

The night before she died, as Terri and I were keeping watch, Ginny from her silent coma distinctly spoke her last word—John.

But it was her tone of voice that intrigued us. She was not calling for help. No, she used the same tone I’ve often heard over the years when she would say, “John, look at this pretty shell I found in the surf” or “John, here’s a perfect bluejay feather” or “John, I think this hibiscus bud is opening this morning”–Her tone in pronouncing my name was one of wonder at some beauty she saw and wanted me to know about.

Perhaps I’m reading more into what was a simple morphine-induced groan, but I suspect Ginny in her last hours caught a glimpse of something beautiful.

That’s what I’d like to think anyhow.

In case you haven’t noticed, Ginny married a Christian religious skeptic.

Last week, our daughter-in-love, Helen, was named one of Jacksonville’s most influential and inspirational artists at the One Spark Arts and Innovation Festival.

When I brought Ginny’s burnished bronze urn home from the crematorium, Helen, as an act of love, engraved it with Ginny’s name and this hummngbird picture: