September 25, 2011  7:12 a.m.

For many days I have not felt like writing.  I have checked in on others’ blogs, but haven’t added to my own.  I have been keeping myself very busy and have not felt like visiting my emotions.  Writing here would have made me visit my emotions.  I have given some thought to what I would write when I came back here, but as you can see, it has been several days until I have.  Anyway, for today, I am back in the saddle.

Two weeks ago today we had arrived in Pens*cola for the funeral of my mother-in-law, who passed away at the age of 68.  She didn’t have an easy life.  She spent most of it battling bipolar disorder.  I learned this month that she was an incredibly popular schoolgirl, and intelligent bordering on genius, and then the chemical imbalance hit right around the same time that hormones do – seventh grade.  Back in 1956, the treatments were not nearly as effective as they would have been today, and they fair well broke her in trying to treat her symptoms.  So much so that she was much more feeble than a typical woman in her 60s.  They had basically added about 25 years to her age, in some ways.  So she was dealing with various physical symptoms of older age, while at the same time trying to better her life by getting things like dental implants (her medications even messed up her teeth), and more recently cataract surgery that pleased her a good deal (she had gotten one eye done and was about to have the other one in two more weeks).  She, for various reasons, had cheated death before on at least a couple of occasions, but was not to do so this time.  One of the problems that plagued her in recent years was frequent falls.  We were amazed at how well she recovered from so many falls.  If anything was still strong, it was her bones!

Anyway, as I reflect on Dorothy, I recognize that she may have been “mentally ill”, she may have had a psychotic disease, but in my eyes, she was the least neurotic person I knew.  She never played the “victim”, and she certainly had many reasons to be one.  She never placed unreasonable demands on people, even though her mind tended to only let her view mostly her side of things.  She had an unwavering faith and hope in Jesus Christ.  The last seven years our relationship has been based mainly on the phone and on visits to her in her assisted living facility.  We had good visits, and some not so good ones, but mostly good ones.  It was always better for us to surprise her.  If we announced our visit too much in advance, she would go through a rollercoaster of anticipation that would make her nearly too ill to see us.  Even so, she would pull herself up by her own bootstraps.  I remember one such visit years ago in which she couldn’t even get out of bed when we had arrived.   So Chips just stood in the doorway of her bedroom and played the violin.  He played all the music he knew at the time.  Then we sat out in her living room and waited.  Eventually she did make it out of the room to sit with us a few minutes, and by the second day was able to visit with us in her living room.

Dorothy reminded me of the subject of Isaiah 42:3.  She was the kind of person who would not break a bruised reed, nor would she extinguish a dimly burning wick.  She was that type of gentle soul.  But she finally raised a stir on Tuesday morning, September 13, in the city of Pensacola, as her funeral procession drove across the city.  Pensacola is still one of those old-fashioned cities where the oncoming traffic comes to a stop when a funeral procession is passing.  And where several police officers on motorcycle keep just ahead to stop every intersection in town so the funeral can pass through.  She was nearly a lifelong resident of the city, and I guess in a way this was Pensacola’s way of honoring her life.

Another thing I want to mention about the funeral.  The afternoon before, Dorothy’s sister asked if our children had brought their violins.  She asked if they could play something simple.  It turned out that due to the short notice, Sweet Girl thought it best to skip this opportunity, but Chips rose to the task.  So at the small, graveside service, Chips got up and played an incredibly emotional Fairest Lord Jesus on his violin.  It was beautiful and it made his mom and dad proud.

More in another post.