Rendering Passing Honors...



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 There's a tradition in the Navy to render passing honors to ships of other nations or ships that have distinguished themselves in battle by assembling the crew, saluting with cannon fire, flags or such. I wish we had the same tradition in our families and communities. Too often we wait until it's too late and at most fire some guns over a grave. Such honors are appropriate, but they are more about the family and ourselves. The honored will never hear the guns nor see the flags.

For more than 7 years it was my wife's privilege to stand beside men and women who had reached the end of their lives.  For three years of that it was my honor to help full time as her titular boss. We worked for an intergenerational day care center. She was the nurse in charge of the senior program and she was brilliant at it.

Her "little old people" were an incredible bunch. We had reporters, women who had been Rosie the Riveters during WWII. We had soldiers who fought at the Battle of the Bulge and defended Bastogne. We had flyers who landed WWII era C-47s in the jungles of Vietnam while guerrilla soldiers shot holes in the floorboards. We had mechanics and test pilots who spent their last years with us. We had a Mercury program flyer who transported astronauts home from missions. We had submariners and Army Rangers who liberated their fellow soldiers from prison camps in the jungles of the Phillipines. They suffered from Alzheimer's, strokes and other age-related disabilities. Their families wanted to keep them home and we got to help.

We became part of families. We stood beside bedsides with families as their loved ones left this world. We considered it an honor and a privilege.

There are four great passages we transit in this life. Birth we do not remember much about Our birth is celebrated by those we love, but we are at the center. Marriage we celebrate with our loved ones and again we are at the center of the festivities. At the birth of our children, we are no longer the center, but standing aside that new life may be the center.

In the final passage, we are too often alone again - the center of attention shifted now onto those who are being left behind to grieve.  I've seen it time and again, people sitting around talking about the person dying, but not to him; family and loved ones standing around shifting uncomfortably, not knowing quite what to do or say.

Miss Sheila always had a way of knowing when to sit beside a dying person and what to say.  When she worked night shifts in nursing homes, people on her wing seemed to wait till nights she was on before passing. She would sit and hold their hands and talk to them through the night, while other aids and nurses gossiped in the break room. She had an intuition about being there when her patients were passing.

I remember going to visit one of our senior volunteers in the hospital. I don't know how, but we arrived at just the right time. We found his wife sitting beside his bed looking worried. She stood and took his hand. Sheila went to the other side of the bed and took his other head. They talked softly to him as though he were the only person in the world. I'm not even sure what they said, but it was evidently time for the old soldier to move on. He breathed slower and slower and finally stopped. You could feel angels in the room. It was an amazing experience.

My family has always sat beside our elders who were dying. My great-grandfather's family were at home with him. My grandpa's family was there. My sister and his youngest daughter were with him the night he passed away. He was not alone. He knew he was loved. The last thing he said to me was, "Take care of my girl." I did my best to do just that.

At death you find out what your family is made of. Sadly the vultures always gather at death to pick over whatever the person is leaving behind. I've more than once stepped away in disgust from the spectacle of loved ones fighting over the dead. I refuse to take part. I'd rather not get a thing - not a keepsake than squabble over the things that belonged to someone I loved. 

I prefer to honor and cherish my loved - to render passing honors to a life well-lived before it is done.  

In life there are givers and takers.
You remember what Jesus said about the takers.  "They have had their reward."  You choose which you will be.
Just one man's opinion.

Tom

Who Would You Walk a Thousand Miles With?

One of my favorite weblogs "The Art of Manliness" is running a contest for a pair of Wolverine 1,000 Mile Boots. Brett and Kate ask the question "What man, real or fictional, would you like to walk a thousand miles with. A bunch of possiblilities immediately jumped into my mind.  My own Dad took a powder on us when I was 5 and he was not much of a role model for me. I wound up choosing characters from books as my models of how to be a man. But to choose one in that vast crowd was tough. Of course, Jesus is always at the top of such a list, but since he was more than a mere man, I figured he didn't quite count in this particular context.  Then, suddenly, I knew exactly who I wanted to travel with.

King David of Israel - Here's why.

You remember the story of David and Goliath?  Everyone was too afraid the giant warrior, Goliath, but here's this teenage kid who volunteers without hesitation, convinced that God would protect him.  He even turned down a free suit of armor, preferring to take the giant on wearing sandals and a loincloth.  On the way to the fight, David stops by a dry streambed and picks up five smooth stones for his sling.

This is what makes him a man's man in my opinion -- the reason he picked up exactly five stones.

So, why five? Well, in those times, it was tradition in that part of the world that if you killed someone, his family had the right to take a run at you and kill you. Well Goliath of Gath had 4 giant brothers.

David took one rock for each of 'em, just in case they all decided to take a run at him that same day. As it was, David and his men eventually had to dispatch all four brothers before they quit coming after him. Talk about guts, that kid had 'em.

Another time, King Saul was hunting David, believing him to be a dangerous rival and intending to kill him. Along the trail, Saul stepped into a cave to relieve himself, not knowing David and his men were hiding there. While Saul was taking a tinkle, David whacked off the tail of his cloak with a very sharp knife. When Saul stepped out of the cave, David followed him out and called to him, holding up the fragment of cloak so Saul could see it.


"I could have killed you, but I did not," David told him. "I am not your enemy." Saul was so shamed by David's courage and his mercy that he went back home and left David to go his way in peace.

David was a man of courage, a man of honor and a man of faith. He made big mistakes in his life, there is no doubt, but he always had the guts to admit when he was wrong in front of God and everybody.

I would be proud to walk a thousand miles at the side of such a man.

Tom King - Tyler, TX

Men in the Valley

It ain't gonna be no smooth ride if you're doing the right thing.

Brett and Kay McKay wrote a fascinating piece on the “Art of Manliness” weblog entitled “The Seasons of a Man's Life”. The article points out that the lives of men seldom go along on a steady upward track. At best it is a slowly ascending series of peaks and valleys. However much our spouses desire it, our fortunes rise and fall like a roller coaster. Often the great men among us—those who actually accomplish something significant in this life—pass through what King David called the “Valley of the Shadow of Death”.

David knew about those valleys. So too did men like Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan. Throughout history, any man who sought to do good, to accomplish some noble purpose has faced a Valley Forge winter as did George Washington, a wilderness time as Elijah did or betrayal and slavery, sold away to Egypt by his own brothers as Joseph was.

Satan does not like brave or good men. He wages war upon them without respite. Men who seem to live a charmed life—one of steady accomplishment and certain rise to power—often wind up having tell-all books written about them after they are gone, explaining what rotters they “really” were all along. Give me a man, however, who has accomplished something selfless and good for his fellow man and I will show you someone misunderstood, persecuted or tried to the limit of his endurance at some point in his life.

Many of these brave men die in the midst of one of these trips through the “Valley”, never knowing the full effect of their courageous actions. The men like Crockett, Travis and Bowie who died at the Alamo never saw their brothers in arms strike down the very Mexican Army that slaughtered them. Never saw their friends and neighbors, outnumbered 2 to 1 or better, charging across the field beside the San Jacinto River shouting “Remember the Alamo” and winning for Texas it’s freedom from tyranny.

Nathan Hale understood a bit of it when standing on the gallows, a rope around his neck, he told the executioner he regretted he had but one life to give for his country. He never saw the end of the revolution and the nation that would rise out of it to bless the world.

I’ve told here the story of Col. John Boyd, who always told his Air Force Tactical Fighter School cadets they could “do something” or “be somebody”. Choose to be somebody and you take the road to promotion, money, power and rank. Choose to do something and you will face persecution, obstacles and loss of position. Choose to be somebody and you will lie, betray, cheat and compromise. Choose to do something and you retain your integrity, remain loyal to your friends and you just may accomplish something worthwhile with your life.

Jesus said, “Lo, I am with you even unto the end of the world.” The end of your personal world may be the gallows as it was for Nathan Hale, early forced retirement as it was for John Boyd or financial ruin as it was for Oskar Schindler, the man who saved the lives of so many Jews and exhausted his fortune during the holocaust because it was the right thing to do.


When Samuel chose the unlikeliest son of Jesse as the future king of Israel, he said of David, “Man looks upon the outward appearance, but the Lord looks upon the heart." I look forward in heaven to enjoying the company of real men. It seems there are so few honorable men here on this sad little planet. If there were not so, how much better off would this world be?

Tom King