The Parting Glass, The Passing of Richard Laue. Unfolding

 Friday Morning, August 12th, Year 3 of the Virus

An Update to Last Sunday's Meditations 

Last Sunday I shared how we had received a, "You must hurry and come quickly if..." phone call informing us my cousin Rich would soon be crossing the bar, and if I wished to have any last words with him we best leave for Momence Illinois immediately, which we did.  On the way out we drove through some incredibly heavy downpours, not thunderstorms with lightning and high winds, but just torrential, straight-down rains.  I imagined Rich sitting in the back seat saying something like, "...Well, the corn and beans didn't need this, but the sloughs and wetlands sure did".

Richard had a connection to the soil that expressed itself in his deep love of farming and his strong spiritual ties to nature.  Rich collected old farm equipment and had an idealized view of farming in the 1950 and 6o's, something we would debate on the infrequent times we got together.  Richard loved nature and had a spiritual relationship with it that's a bit difficult to put into words.  It seemed to me Rich traveled to the boundary waters wilderness area in northern Minnesota every opportunity that he could.  I think it was both his sweat lodge of healing and immersion in it's pure sparkling waters, his baptismal renewal.  Looking back I think my cousin was a Sensitive Soul and had a frequent need for both.

At the very end, the levees broke and the cancer spread.  I understand the doctors removed some tumors that were causing intense pain and sent him home, stating the cancer had become very aggressive and Rich had just a few days to live.  When we pulled up to their modest restored Victorian home, I could see Rich, laying motionless in a hospital bed on his big front porch with his wife and a daughter near by.  That was the Rich I knew, no exit to the next world from a back bedroom with dead air and closed heavy drapes for him!  No, Rich would want to be where he could see big sky, smell the rain, and hear the jays tormenting the squirrels.  Ideally, I think he would have preferred to be wrapped in a blanket on a pallet of driftwood on a sandbar deep in the boundary waters, but instead found contentment in his screened in front porch with those he loved at his side.

We arrived during a lull in the rain and only a few relatives, his wife and daughter were present.  I think the youngest was a little north of 50, if there were kids present they were off in other parts of the house.  Coming through the screen door and seeing Rich motionless in the bed, while at the same time being warmly greeted by relatives long not seen, brought on an overpowering mixture of emotions.  Like oil and water they refused to mix, the deep sadness on seeing Rich laying there, his body ravaged by the cancer and the friendly fire the doctors had thrown at its relentless advance, while at the same time experiencing the spontaneous Joy of being hugged by a beloved relative who had also driven in to pay their last respects.  Sadness and Joy are powerful emotions in and of themselves and when experienced together can be overwhelming.  It's difficult to breath when the lump in your throat is the size of a tennis ball.

The relatives respectfully retreated into the next room when I sat down in the chair next Richard to have our last words.  Though he lay motionless and his eyes mere slits, I sensed he was conscious of his surrounding and knew who I was.  I'm not Irish enough to have told a joke and there was nothing to confess or forgiveness to to be granted, nothing of consequence that could be put in words to be said.  I wondered aloud if a summer's rain was as beautiful up in the boundary waters as it was in a backwater slough of the Kankakee.  I told him he had run the race well, and had been a life-changing example to those around him, including me.  I told him I would miss him, but never forget him.  Lastly I told him he was always welcome to sit beside me on the tailgate of my pick-up truck parked in the middle of a sweet corn patch, and watch the sunrise, marking the peak of harvest.

bobb