July 4ths, Past and Present

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota -- I think this road trip must be wearing me out. After a noon arrival at Brett and Angie's full of fanfare -- with much waving, signs and I think there might even have been tickertape -- I promptly passed out on their couch in the middle of a conversation about something that I'm sure was very important, although I swear the only thing I remember is a vague sense of someone laughing at me just as I was drifting off.

I like to think this was a backhanded compliment, and I sincerely hope it was taken this way, that I would be comfortable enough among this family to become so quickly comatose, sprawled out before them, within minutes of our arrival.

They have a good and comfortable couch, excellent for passing out on. Which is good because apparently I slept for several hours, awaking only as everyone returned from a trip to a nearby playground.

Angie and Brett made us a wonderful dish of grilled chicken and shrimp fajitas that was eaten down to the very last crumb. From there it was over to some friends' house who had perhaps the best yard possible for watching Fourth of July fireworks. It was a great show with lots of ooohing and ahhhing, and not only because that's what you do, but because there were a lot skysparkles that none of us had ever seen before, including one that I'm pretty sure was a smiley face.

A year ago, I spent the 4th at the lake of my youth where I spent nearly all of my summers with my father. Spofford is a small lake that sits like a lower hinge between the New Hampshire and Vermont. Some of my fondest memories growing up revolve around Spofford.

When I was Amelia's age, it was the Nation's 200th Birthday and my father, his brother -- forever known to me as Uncle Ka-kas (don't ask) and I had just completed refinishing an old whaling longboat that we'd gotten out of an old woman's barn. Painting it in long stripes of red, white and blue had been my idea and it looked grand to my seven-year-old eyes. We put an old Johnson 30 horsepower engine on the back and Marc, my best of childhood friends, and I drove it proudly around the lake by ourselves in the Fourth of July regatta that year.

There were many uncertainties in my life as a child, but the Fourth of July at Spofford Lake was always something I could count on. Even now, so many years later, it feels strange to not be there.

But last year I was at Spofford, for the first time in a very long time.

I had been staying with Alice, my father's widow, for about a month and was preparing to leave. Before Pete's death, Alice and I had never really taken the time to get to know each other. We had, however, been fellow travelers in Pete's descent. I wish we had become friends sooner, because it would probably have been easier for both us and maybe even made a difference in Pete's situation.

But, as they say, better late than never. And in this case it that could never have been more true. Alice is a very special woman, who carried herself through the most difficult of times with a such a degree of quiet grace and dignity that even now is hard to imagine. I learned a lot of this, and so much more I didn't know, during my month with Alice last summer. Our days were filled with a lot of crying and laughter, often like a series of passing rainstorms, switching quickly back and forth between the two.

We did what people should do when they're mourning -- we ate a lot, we talked a lot, we cried a lot, we ate some more and we talked some more. While I lost a father, in the end, I gained a stepmother. And if there was any redemption in Peter's death, I cannot think of better.

I have struggled this past year with the horrible images of how Pete died. They have haunted me. Shortly before the 4th last year, I finally worked up the courage to go to the hotel where he killed himself. I felt compelled to speak to the person who had found him. I didn't know what to say, an apology seemed somehow inappropriate, but I wanted to recognize the terribleness of it. As it turned out, it was the same person who greeted me at the front desk as I walked in, part time hotel maid, part time receptionist. A shadow crossed her face, when I fumbled through my introduction. I could tell she was still very effected by it all. The trauma was still very real.

As she stood by saying very little, the manager told me of my fathers last few days of life. She said he had been so nice and friendly. How it was such a shock.

It. That unspeakable thing that he did, that for a few moments we talked around, but never actually about. I told the woman who had found him how sorry I was that she had to see such a terrible thing. She wiped away a tear, trying to maintain her composure. I felt awkward, unsure of myself, of what to say or do.

And then she looked me in the eyes, her own eyes still moist, and she thanked me. They will forever be among the kindest words I have ever heard.

As I drove the Heart of Gold to Minneapolis yesterday, thinking of July 4ths past and present, I was hit like a ton of bricks once again by what that woman must have seen when she opened the door. Tears rolled down my face as I imagined what Pete's final moments must have been like. How terribly alone he must have felt, how painfully hopeless he must have thought he was. As I drove and cried I found myself wishing that I could have been there. To tell him he was not alone, nor hopeless, but loved, so very loved.

And then I heard the words, "But, Jon, I was there." And then in my mind I saw it so very clearly. A man, like a light in the very heart of darkness, standing there in the room that night, crying, holding Pete as he died, praying "forgive him father, for he knows not what he does."

I'm not sure what to make of that and I feel awkward, the most awkward in this blog so far, in sharing it. But I will say this, it was remarkably comforting, like an undeserved gift. One of the things Aram told me that Sunday at Lookout Mountain is that God does not call us to shame. I believe that shame, like any pain, can be a good indication that something is wrong, but Aram is right -- God doesn't call us to shame, but only to love and to be loved.

I have a friend who is going through a particularly difficult time right now. The other day I read something in a book Marley and I have been reading throughout this trip by Dan Allender that immediately made me think of him.

“Hope compels us to live for the future by pouring ourselves out as offerings to God in our relationships with others. The primary way we give God glory is through loving others. Evil intends for us to succumb to betrayal by giving up on relationships; it intends for us to resign to powerlessness by giving up on the future. Once we lose faith and hope, then we are more susceptible to ambivalence and shame. But just as God restores faith and hope, he redeems shame and births love. He calls us to dance with unbridled passion.”

I sent him that passage the other night, the night before we drove here. I don't know if it has made any difference for him specifically, but they have resonated deeply with me. This trip has been that kind of passionate dance for me, of restored faith and hope, redeemed shame and remarkable, remarkable love.