Eight letters: the space between their world and mine

Recognizing that the space between her world and the one she is slowly but surely entering is drawing closer, Pat Summitt, who has won more basketball games than anyone in NCAA history, stepped down as coach of the Tennessee Lady Vols last week. Summitt was diagnosed with early onset dementia last year, at the age of 58.

Early onset dementia attacks people younger than 65. Many are in their 40s and 50s, and some even in their 30s.

Alzheimer’s disease, a form of dementia, affects millions. The statistics are staggering: According to the Alzheimer’s Association, in 2011, 5.4 million Americans were living with Alzheimer’s; 15,000,000 caregivers provide 17 billion hours of unpaid care at home; Alzheimer’s costs the nation $200 billion annually, and someone develops the disease every 68 seconds.

If all the Alzheimer’s patients were placed in one state, it would be the 5^th largest in our nation.

It is predicted that if a cure for dementia is not found by 2050, 16 million Americans will have some form of the disease, with Alzheimer’s being the most prevalent.

Life is by no means over with a dementia diagnosis. Like any good coach, Pat Summitt has a strategy to stay healthy as she faces Alzheimer’s. And her son, Tyler, also a basketball coach, reminds us that we can learn from those with Alzheimer’s. “Despite (it), she has stuck to her principles and stayed strong in her faith. Her confidence to be open about this disease has taught me the importance of honesty,” he said in an interview with Carol Steinberg of the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America.

Tyler is right: Victims of this disease still have much to teach us. Entering their world on a fairly regular basis, I learn from them.

 And every time I look into their eyes, I’m reminded that the space between their world and mine is only the length of that eight letter word: dementia.

One, whose blank stare appears fixated on the other side of the room, no longer recognizes me.

Only several years ago he was in the early days of retirement. I remember him then, still robust, vigorous, and active. And today, I miss that wry, almost cocky smile of his.

“We love you,” I remind him.

“You’re a good man,” he says in a monotone voice with no facial expression. I wonder if his answer is a standard response he learned years ago, like “hello,” “good-bye,” “how do you do?”

Stepping into the world of another, I ask this former leader in our church, “How are you doing?”  

Without fail he answers the same: “Can’t complain.”

“Looks like you just finished eating. What did you have?”

Like a little boy who has been asked a question above his years of comprehension, he doesn’t attempt to formulate a response but innocently looks to his wife for the answer.

Down the hall, I step into the world of another whose life changed years ago.

Walking her to the dining hall, she surprises me. Instead of the same question she normally repeats over and over, “Where am I?” this time she asks instead, “Who put me here?”

Not sure of the answer and not wanting to agitate her with a guess, I appeal to the highest source possible: “The Lord,” I instantly tell her, masking my hesitation.

“The Lord,” she says, repeating it back to me, seemingly satisfied with my response, at least for another evaporating moment in her life, and then slowly, deliberately she declares, “Yes,” like a math student who has just discovered the answer to an algebraic equation that became suddenly obvious.

Walking out of their world, I get in my car, and as I turn the ignition, I ponder how the space between their world and mine is encompassed by the same love of the One who has us both in his caring hands.

In 10 Gospel Promises for Later Life, Dr. Jane Marie Thibault tells about a nurse’s answer to a dementia patient’s question, “Honey, what’s my name?”

After the nurse told her, the patient said, “Oh, that’s right! Half the time I don’t even know who I am!” Then, pointing to a cross on the wall, she said confidently, “But he does, and that’s all that counts!”

Indeed it is, no matter which side of that space you are living in.

Why bad boys are bad

Last week was a bad week for bad boys. First, 51 year old Bobby Petrino, at the height of his career, got himself fired as the University of Arkansas football coach for allegedly trying to deceive the University’s Athletic Director about the coach’s relationship with the 25 year old football employee and former volleyball player, Jessica Dorrell. Then 11 Secret Service agents were placed on administrative leave for allegedly being involved with prostitutes in Cartagena, Columbia, while preparing for President Obama’s visit. Petrino, the father of four, was one of the top coaches in college football. It took years of successful steps before he could stand in that exclusive realm. And those secret service agents worked long and hard to gain their honored positions in the Secret Service, an elite group whose job it is to protect the president and other high ranking officials. Now, the University of Arkansas is embarrassed by Petrino’s actions, just as the Secret Service is by those agents. Why would these men take such a risk? There’s a scene in the movie, The Help, where concerned friends are trying to set up Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone) with a man. The two are making conversation at a restaurant, waiting for their double-date partners to arrive, and already, Skeeter’s date is half-drunk and making rude comments. Skeeter, the unsouthern southern girl, wastes no time in telling him what she thinks about him. As she stands up to walk away, she asks, “I’m sorry, but were you dropped on your head as an infant?” Maybe someone should ask Petrino and the Secret Service agents the same question. More pointedly, why do men do such incredibly stupid things? After all, Petrino and the 11 men in the Secret Service are only the last in a long line of men who have done stupid things: Tiger Woods, Rick Pitino, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and John Edwards are only a starter list for a huge catalog of names that stretches across history. It can be traced all the way back to the original stupid guy: Adam. From the time Adam took the forbidden fruit from Eve, men have been trying to please women. The problem is, men seem to get confused about which woman to please. Thus, tempted by the fruit of another, men mistakenly imagine the new fruit is different and therefore better than what they already have. And one bad decision leads to another. But, where Adam started it, Jesus stopped it, or at least he gave us reason to hope we could. And he understood that we’ve all done things we’ve later regretted. He stood up for one who was about to be stoned to death for getting involved in one of those stupid things. Two people were caught in the very act of adultery; it was only the woman who was dragged before the moral majority. That’s when Jesus intervened: “Let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone” (John 8:7). One by one those arrogant men lowered their heads, dropped their stones, and walked away. The only one without sin that day turned to the woman and refused to condemn her. Then he left her with a command: “Go and sin no more,” he admonished. That’s the seemingly impossible challenge: stop doing stupid things. But, he who issued the command gives us himself, and in him, we discover the possibility of fulfilling it. That should give hope to all of us: bad boys and bad girls.

When travelers find each other

My wife and I were the only customers in the souvenir and gift shop, lone shoppers during an off-season in Daytona Beach, Florida.

The lady at the cash register was kind but guarded, like the person checking your ID at airport security. But something about this lady intrigued me: Was she shy or resentful? Uncaring or prudent? Calloused or bruised?

Directing me to the next aisle, she snapped, staccato style, “Sweatshirts and hoodies over there; caps, next aisle.” Her accent, which I guessed to be Eastern European, was heavy.

Rummaging through the sweatshirts, I found one I liked. “How do you think this one fits?” I asked, trying to draw her into a conversation.

“Da large, better. Medium, too small,” she glowered at me over her reading glasses.

Feeling like a grade school student who had asked a question with an obvious answer yet still unconvinced of it, I was afraid to state my disagreement with her size assessment.

“Where are you from?” I cautiously queried, realizing the question was risky: I feared she would ignore me, refusing to reveal that much about herself, ceasing any possibility for further conversation.

“Europe,” was her blunt response.

I plowed on: “Eastern Europe?”

“Greece.”

“Oh, a beautiful country,” I said, smiling. “I visited there many years ago. I loved all the historical sites in Athens--- the Acropolis, the Pantheon.”

My tourist resume drew no response. But I wasn’t ready to give up, not yet.

“I studied Classical Greek in college. In fact, I majored in it.”

Straight faced, she continued staring right through me as if I weren’t there.

Unable to break the conversation code, I finally turned and walked away.

Three steps down the aisle, I turned back around.

“Someday I would like to visit the monastery at Mt. Athos,” I blurted.

It was like I had said the magic word that opened a secret door; she now invited me in for a visit. Grinning, she looked directly at me: “Holy men of God are there.”

Encouraged, I asked, “Are you Eastern Orthodox?”

“Ahh, yes, Eastern Orthodox,” she nodded, as if I had mentioned a close personal friend.

“I often pray using the comboschini of the Orthodox faith,” I continued, pulling my prayer rope from my pocket.

Smiling like her long awaited dinner guest had finally arrived to enjoy her gyros and baklava, she showed me her prayer rope and then turning around, opened a drawer and pulled out a picture album.

“You look,” she commanded, opening the book for me: “Pictures of my home.”

She was beaming now, pointing out photograph after photograph of her church, her town, its beaches, the mountains, the grandeur of her homeland.

I could imagine her carefully lifting the photo album from the drawer when no one was in the store and gazing into the pictures, slowly inhaling the fresh air of Greece.

“You miss your home?”

The tears in her eyes were her answer.

There is a common thread among us, connecting us to places so dissimilar and so alike. Sometimes, like travelers on the same road, we meet at the intersection of different faiths, and in their diverse expressions we find a commonality reminding us of familiar beginnings, a spiritual likeness that stays with us on the road to new discoveries.

Other times, we bump into each other on the entrance ramp of a shared place, a common culture, even though on that traveled, yellow bricked road, it’s obvious we’re no longer in Kansas anymore, for had we stayed where we were, never venturing to ask---Where? Who?--- we wouldn’t have noticed the other travelers. We’re too familiar with them in Kansas.

Sometimes it’s a prayer rope, or a holy book, or a religious symbol that jars our unconscious longings for traveling companions whose presence carries the scent of our spiritual origins and whose eyes squint toward our ultimate destination. And having waved bye as we travel on, we realize we have just met old friends for the first time.

Again.

But you have to look for them, or you’ll swish by them---clerks at cash registers, waiters at restaurants, seat mates on airplanes---and they’ll miss you, too, as casually as you pass strangers on opposite escalators.

And in those moments when we do pause to look, when we dare to inquire, we sometimes, even if only rarely, find ourselves sharing photographs of our mutual pilgrimage.

And along the long and winding road, those encounters can soothe the loneliness of the lonely, the bitterness of the bitter, the weariness of the weary.

Against her earlier recommendation, I bought the medium, not the large sweatshirt.

But my new friend didn’t seem to notice.

She was too busy showing me her life journey in photographs.


Contact David B. Whitlock, Ph.D., at drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com or visit his website, www.Davidbwhitlock.com

“Correcting our failure to communicate this Easter”

George Bernard Shaw once said, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” Communication is an imperfect science, to say the least.

I picked up the phone just the other day and thought I correctly read the caller ID: “Lebanon Elementary School,” the school where my wife works. So naturally, I assumed it was her.

But that’s not what it said. And it wasn’t her.

I didn’t have my reading glasses on, and though I held the phone at arm’s length and squinted, I still missed the name.

But, convinced it was Lori, I blurted, “Hey, Babe, why didn’t you call me on my cell, like you always do?”

I could feel tension on the other line, then a timid, “Could I speak with Lori?”

Oops. It definitely wasn’t Lori.

Then I wrongly assumed it was another teacher: “Oh, I’m sorry,” I chuckled, a bit chagrined at the thought of how I had referred to the caller as “Babe.”

I tried to recover: “You want to speak with Lori? But Lori’s with you isn’t she?”

“No, sir, Lori isn’t with me.”

“Then where is she?” I asked with confusion oozing from my voice.

Now, with the faintest hint of irritation, “Sir, I’m calling to confirm her appointment tomorrow.”

Ahh, I finally got it, even without my reading glasses.

I wished I hadn’t answered the phone and just let the voice mail get it. I imagined the receptionist hanging up the phone, twirling her seat around, and giggling to her co-workers. The whole thing had probably been recorded for quality control.

“Hey, come on over here and listen to this guy,” I could hear her saying as she bent over in her chair laughing. The whole office is now primed for a funny one before they even hear my voice. I could see them all gathered around the recorder, laughing hysterically till their sides ache.

“We needed that,” one chortles.

“Talk about a confused hubby,” says another.

They shake their heads in pity at me as they return to work.

Having located my reading glasses, I try and dismiss this scene by calling my 87 year-old father. Sharing my embarrassing moment with him will be cathartic, I think. But first I ask him how he’s doing.

“Ok, now,” he says, “but yesterday we saw the worst movie ever.” (Dad and a group of men at his retirement center go to a movie once a week.) “Foul language, horrible. I don’t know why people think they have to talk like that. And this couple lived together just to have sex. Terrible.”

“Well, what was the name of the movie?”

“I don’t even know.”

“You didn’t know the name of the movie? Why did you see it?”

“Didn’t intend to. We misread the marquee and went in the wrong theatre!”

I started laughing at the thought of these perplexed men, well into their 80s, sitting in the wrong theater, grimacing at each other, trying to figure out what’s going on.

Then, I caught myself. “What am I laughing about? I haven’t told him my story.”

As the saying goes, “The acorn didn’t fall far from the tree.”

And if you think about it, it didn’t fall far from you either.

We’re all communicatively impaired. The Tree of Communication Confusion, planted in the Garden of Eden, blossomed when our first ancestors ignored God and misread Satan. Then the confusion went viral at the Tower of Babel. Though down the centuries, through word and prophesy, God kept trying to grab humankind’s attention, most just didn’t get it.

As a last resort that was always in the works, God himself came in the flesh to talk like one of us in our language.

“Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand” (Mark 4:9), Jesus said. But even after the resurrection of Christ, it was difficult to read the message, at least at first sight: “It was Jesus, but she didn’t recognize him” (John 20:14), John noted of a disoriented Mary Magdalene.

But it’s a true and wonderful story, even though we still struggle to understand, and this week Christians celebrate it---the Passion of Christ, culminating in his death and resurrection.

So, put your reading glasses on and find the right theater. You don’t want to miss this one.

Drive-by Memories

The yellow street sign warned: “Stop ahead,” so I tapped my brakes, bringing my car to a complete stop at the intersection. I glanced to my left before releasing the breaks and stepping on the accelerator.

Then it hit me.

No, it wasn’t another vehicle. It was a series of scenes from the past, swirling around my car, streaming by me one by one and all at once, hurling me back in a time warp before swooshing past my car like a comet, leaving me craning my neck to grasp another glimpse as I idled by.

I was passing the house we lived in seven years ago. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been that way since we had moved. But for some reason today was different.

Caught up in a past moment, it’s suddenly a time when it’s just the kids and me living in the house. On the front porch I’m checking the mailbox, anxiously awaiting the mail, anticipating a letter from Lori, who was then living in Edmond, Oklahoma. I had gotten her address when I saw her in a restaurant while I was visiting back home. Stumbling through my “Hello, how are you?” I stalled, trying to think of a way to get her address without her thinking I was trying to get her address. “So, can I put you on our church’s mailing list?” It was the best I could muster. It worked. I don’t remember if I ever got around to the newsletter, but I did write her. And so, there I am on the front porch, one hand holding the front door open, the other hand searching in that mail box for her letter.

That’s what I saw when I drove by.

Then, around the corner in the back yard, it’s suddenly a few years earlier, and Dave is throwing the shot put, training for the thirteen year old regionals of the AAU Track Meet in West Virginia. Before it was over, the shot put had divotted holes over most of the yard so that a stranger might surmise that a herd of wooly mammoths had stomped through eons ago, or maybe some aliens from outer space had misfired their laser guns and splattered the yard.

That’s what I saw when I drove by.

Then I fell further back it time, still in the back yard, only now Dave, Mary, my brother, Mark, his wife, Joy and all their kids--- Tangie, Melanie, and Brian, are throwing the football around. Moments earlier Mark had randomly announced, “Hey, let’s go throw some passes,” just as he had done hundreds of times when we were growing up, in hopes that I would become a decent football player, only now he said it, not randomly as we had thought, but to lift the somberness that had settled around our house like a heavy fog because it’s the afternoon of the day we buried my wife, Katri. We are running after the ball, laughing despite the pain of that day, and I’m hoping no one trips in one of the shot put holes and breaks a leg, sending us to the emergency room on the same day as the funeral.

That’s what I saw when I drove by.

Glancing back, because I’ve almost driven to the next house now, Katri is trying to walk up the ramp that the loving men of our church had built for her, since she could no longer step up the back porch. With the walker in front of her, she clickity clacks it along as she struggles. And I’m watching. And then I can’t.

That’s what I saw when I drove by.

Then, we are in our cars, leaving that house for the last time. I see Lori, Dave, Mary, Harrison, and Madison, and of course the Schnauzers, Skittles and Casey. Harrison and Madi don’t remember much about that house, since they were there only a few months, but Dave and Mary probably do, and as we drive away, Mary peers straight ahead, but Dave asks me to stop the car so he can run back in and take one more look at his old room before we drive away onto a new and very different avenue of life, a life that speeds by quicker than you can read the street signs as you enter the next new town.

Or drive by your old house.

And that’s what I saw when I drove by.

Let's hear it for the underdogs

“The thing I like about the NCAA College Basketball Tournament is that any team can win it all.”

I was explaining to my wife why I was standing in front of the TV, eyes glued to the NCAA Tournament and not sitting in my usual place with her watching the evening news. The truth is, although I have a few favorite teams, my main attraction to March Madness is in anticipating the little guys, the Lehighs, the Virginia Commonwealths, and the Norfolk States taking down the big boys, the Dukes, the Michigans, and the Missouris.

But why? Why do I and so many others pull for the underdog? Is it just because we want to see the mighty fall?

There’s more to it than that.

Certainly, the thrill of the unexpected is part of it; it is exciting to see the number one seed go down. But when you start thinking about the psychology of why we choose to cheer for the underdog, it gets complicated.

The underdog brings out contradictions. A part of us hopes the underdog will win. Maybe we have an inherent desire for social equality, for the haves to know what it’s like to be a have not, for the privileged to trade places with the underprivileged, for the aristocracy to experience the common life.

On the other hand, we like to see talent and effort rewarded. We like to think that if we try hard and take the more difficult courses, we will be compensated accordingly. After all, there is a reason why underdogs are the underdogs: Based on prior performance and level of competition, they are not expected to beat their more successful and sometimes more disciplined opponents.

And to further complicate what’s going on in our minds when we support the underdog, think about this: The less attached we are to a team, the more likely we are to root for the opposing underdog. It’s okay for the underdog to upset a team we are neutral towards or don’t like. But we don’t want our team to be a victim of the upstart. When I heard that Norfolk State had surprised Missouri, I smiled. But when South Dakota State shot ahead of Baylor, my alma mater, early in their first round game, I wanted absolutely no part of an upset.

The narrative of the underdog has deep cross cultural roots in our history. From David and Goliath to Robert the Bruce to Rocky Balboa to the Arab Spring, the underdog is a constant player in our communal psyche. We can relate because we have felt like the underdog, and when we are down, the fantasy of overcoming engenders hope for us to rise from the ashes.

But, while we find inspiration in those stories of the long shot winning against all odds, our sympathy for the underdog is fickle. Scott Allison, professor of psychology at the University of Richmond, cites what he calls the “Wal-Mart effect.” We root for our small town store when the dominating corporation moves in, but when it comes to the best buy on our television, we opt for the cheaper price at the powerful chain store. He concludes that our affinity for the lesser team is “a mile wide and an inch deep.”

We are, at least to a degree, motivated by our own self interest, are we not?

So I’ll cheer for the underdogs until they play my alma mater or step on the court against the favorite team of the folks I would have to console come Sunday morning should their team lose, the fans who because of their team’s loss may not listen to the sermon, or may, in rehearsing the nightmare of their defeat, forget that the offering plate was passed, after all.

So let’s hear it for the underdogs!

As long they aren’t playing the teams we like.

There's a Cat in our House!

My wife was doubled over, laughing hysterically at me. And I wasn’t the least bit amused.
A recent storm had unhinged the door to the crawl space beneath our house. For a few days, our two Schnauzers, Max and Baylor, had been nervously smelling the floor vents. I finally put my ear to one of them and heard it: a faint but unmistakable meow.
A cat was under our house.
My apologies to cat lovers: I am not one of you. Cats and I have an understanding: I don’t bother them, and they don’t bother me. It’s not that I’m actually scared of cats; they just make me nervous. And the closer I get to one, the more uneasy I become. My natural defenses kick in. If your friendly cat jumps in my lap, I will smile, and say, “Nice kitty,” but I will be suppressing a flinch; your lovable pet will put me on edge.
So, ok, maybe I am a borderline feline phobiac.
I can trace my cat aversion to my childhood friend’s cat. Rex Martin’s cat joined us as we were playing under a cardboard table with a sheet over it, pretending it was a secret hide-a-way. All was well until something made his cat want out. I was in the way. Rex was laughing uncontrollably at the specter of his cat wrapped up with me in that sheet, the cat clawing and scratching, me crying and screaming.
The cat did eventually find its way out, but when it was over, a permanent maker had written the words in my memory with large letters: BEWARE OF CATS. In fact, it took a birthday party with cake and ice cream to coax me back over to Rex’s house. Even then, I stood on the doorstep and required the promise of cat security before I would enter.
So, the other night, when I realized a cat was underneath our house, I first tried leaving the crawl space door open, hoping the cat would find its way cat out. Nothing doing. Finally, that fateful night, Lori leaned over the vent in our kitchen. “I hear it too,” she whispered. “Poor kitty, probably starving.”
Then she did the unthinkable. Pulling the grate off the vent she called, “Here kitty.” I stepped back, shaking my head, “no,” but before I could warn her not to do that again, she did it, “Here kitty, up here kitty.”
Then it happened.
Maybe it was Lori’s sweet voice, or perhaps it was the smell of dog food to a hungry cat, but it happened.
Suddenly that cat crawled up the vent and into our house. Lori ran to open the door, but the Schnauzers intercepted the cat, chasing the feline fugitive around, under, and over the kitchen table.
Where was I? I don’t know how I got there, but I was standing on our couch, horrified, palms of my hands on the side of my head screaming, “There’s a cat in our house!”
The cat circled around the couch where I was standing, Max and Baylor in hot pursuit. Lori took one look at this bewildering scene, and like Rex Martin of years ago, howled with laughter.
I was pointing to the grate, thinking one of us should put it back over the vent, forcing the cat out the door. I froze; Lori kept laughing.
And then, as quickly as that cat had emerged from the underworld of my house, it found its way back down, a cat’s paw in front of the Schnauzers who screeched to a halt, yapping and peering down the vent at the disappearance of the cat’s tail.
Lori was trying to gain her composure; the Schnauzers ran to me, stopped in front of the couch, and looked up as if to say, “That was so much fun, can we do it again?”
And there I was: standing alone on the crouch, feeling like Quasimodo before the crowd, crowned the king of fools.
Some stories have profound moral implications; others are simple reminders that most of us suppress secret, seemingly silly fears deep within our psyche. And sometimes it helps to know that about ourselves. And even admit it. It might make us more understanding of others’ anxieties.
In case you’re wondering, I, yes even I, finally got the cat out alive from beneath the house and in doing so, somewhat redeemed myself.
But that’s another story.