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The Finality of Her, Again.

By in Personal, Relationships Tags: ,

 

The Finality of Her, Again. The June gloom gray sky today tells all.

We parted two years ago today. We sat around her bed, her children and grandchildren. We cried, then laughed. We reminisced. On the bed lay fresh-picked rose petals scattered around.

She really loved roses, Mom. She loved them unlike anyone else. She’d always stop and smell them while walking, even in a hurry. And she would always get mad if you didn’t stop and smell them with her — not angry, more like “mad,” if you know what I mean. She believed stopping to smell the roses was a remedy for being too busy, too occupied with matters of less importance.

To Mom, few things mattered more than beauty: sights, sound, smell, taste.

The sky was gray on that morning of May 29, 2001. For over an hour, her inhales and exhales became weaker and weaker. You could see her frail chest with just a thin layer of skin. Up then down, then up then down. And you knew the last one was imminent. We watched and talked and laughed and cried with a sort of suspense in the back of our minds, knowing these were the final moments.

Then her last exhale. There was peace, unlike the day of that stroke.

The reality of a last breath, the finality of it all. By all I refer to life. As I said during her eulogy, she no longer is, she was. The finality of her. The end. You read about these kinds of things — death — but when it’s your mother and when she’s the love of your life.

And when it’s over, it’s over. Not her soul, if you believe in souls. But the other part, the physical part.

The sky is gray today as it was when I grabbed her hand, squeezed it slightly, and took one final look at the saintly woman who was my mother. Then turned my back on her and walked away to tell Dad.

You would think I’d be “over it” by now, but I’m not. Not one bit. Some of you know the feeling too well.

Something about the color gray, and the dim light — there is light for sure — that perfectly captures my internal feelings now.

Light, but muted and lacking.

Bree sent me this today, and it made me cry a bit. Something about when your children mature and start caring for you. The feeling I find surreal.

And I smiled because no way Mom had room in her house for another photo of her children.

Protect Was My Word: Day 24

By in Foster Children, Parenting, Personal, Relationships Tags: , , ,

Protect was my word

Today Bree turned 25. Bree, my eldest, my baby.

She lives in New York City. She attends Columbia University Medical School. Her graduate work is the field of genetics.

I wish she was here. But her life is there now. She finished her first year, last week. Her second year begins in a few days. She will intern at Presbyterian Hospital, this term.

We had a Zoom call, this morning – a surprise Zoom birthday party for my 25-year-old baby.

The call was her mother’s idea. Not all of la familia could get on the call. But I and her mother and her siblings and aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins and stepfamily all joined at 8:30 a.m. PST.

Protect was my word.

We wanted the surprise Zoom birthday party to actually be a surprise. We all dial-in. Then it dawns on us that nobody told Bree about the call.

We laughed. Would she be available? She could be taking a shower, be on a walk, her phone could be dead. 

Planning isn’t my specialty.

I text her. 

No response. 

I text again and again and again and finally she replies: “hi.”

Told her I wanted to Zoom with her. Suspiciousness must have been in her; we have never Zoomed. We use FaceTime.

Anyway, she gets on a few seconds later and her face beams.

Our family is very close. 

After a few minutes of catching up and laughing, her mother suggested that each of us say a word or words describe Bree.

Her mother and siblings and aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins and stepfamily all joined and revealed their words with an explanation. Their words were radiant, fun, loving, music, joy, intellect, sweet, peacekeeper, lovely, caring, intelligent, diligent, fun, caring, brilliant, dance and funny stories.

It was my turn. 

I said something like this:

Protect is my word. Because 25 years ago, at about this exact time, you came into this world. And I hadn’t known what love was until that moment. Then the nurse said she was going to take you and clean you. I told her I would accompany her. And she took you into this room and she placed you on a small bed under this warm light. And she stepped away to gather the cleaning materials. And you lay there, exposed, without touch, crying. And I put my two hands on you and whispered into your ear and told you that I would always protect you, until the time I breathe my last breath.

I’m thousands of miles away from her today. And if I saw her now, I’d, for the first time, kiss her 25 times on the forehead. (Whenever I see her, I kiss her years on her forehead.) 

I’ll see her soon enough.

I’ve been thinking of my 25-year-old baby all day today. 

But I couldn’t not think of the 125,000 children in American whose parental rights have been terminated. That means they live in the foster care system and have nobody — neither father nor mother nor sibling nor sister nor aunt nor uncle nor grandparent nor cousin nor stepfamily — to protect them.

Protect is my word. 

Writing Campaigns: Day Nine

By in Foster Children, Parenting, Spirituality Tags: , ,

I don’t know much about plumbing or civil engineering or heart surgery or geology. 

But I know a thing or two about children of neglect, abuse, and abandonment. 

I’m living during a time when I sometimes wish that I didn’t. 

All over the country, states and counties are scrambling about what to do, given COVID-19. 

I sometimes can’t find the words to describe the severity of this crisis. But many are with “writing campaigns.”

Friends, we are talking about children. Three-year olds and seven-year olds and 12-year olds. We don’t know how many, but we do know that close to 500,000 live in the foster care system. Because of neglect, abuse, and abandonment, the circumstances were so dire, that the government had to take them.

Countless have not been reported and are living with their abusers. And given COVID-19 and schools being closed, the reports are harrowing. 

Children are dying of child abuse at unprecedented rates. It can be exhausting at times, and very sad. I wrote about it here.

Local and state newspapers are begging for people to become foster parents.

Ironically, this tremendous need was pronounced mostly in the month of May, National Foster Care Awareness Month. 

A recent article in The Gainesville Sun titled How You Can Help A Child In Need, the need was stated simply: “Florida needs foster families, and Florida needs them now. Florida needs you.”

I commend the authors for their advocacy. As the President of an international foster care agency, I’d add one line.

Not everybody could be a foster parent, but everybody could make a difference. 

Thousands of RFK volunteers around the country and world, are doing just that with “writing campaigns.” Here’s a letter that was recently written by a counselor “Grandma” (many of the children don’t have grandparents). It was delivered to the child who lives in western Massachusetts.

Fixing It: Day Three.

By in Foster Children, Parenting, Philosophy, Relationships, Religion, Spirituality Tags: , , ,

Fixing it 

Because things break. Then they need fixing. They go wrong. Then they need to be made right. 

A crooked painting. Flat tire. Drop your phone and the screen shatters. Things get crooked and punctured and cracked. Then we straighten, repair, fix. 

Same thing with our bodies. Broken femur. High blood pressure. A new virus. So get a cast, change your diet and exercise, (hopefully) find a vaccine. 

The word justice is simply that – the idea of fixing or bringing rectitude to a thing that is broken. Making something right. 

Fixing it. 

Social justice is fixing or brining justice to a social issue. After a hurricane, we bring food and medical supplies to victims. After September 11, 2001, we rushed to ground zero to bring physical relief. 

Much philanthropy consists of people caring for people — feeding the hungry, giving clothes to the naked, helping the sick in body, advocating on behalf of the marginalized.

If you study the life of Jesus, bringing social justice to the poor, sick, oppressed, outsider — this is the great legacy of true religion, caring for widows and orphans, including speaking-up on their behalf to their oppressors.

A kind of social justice consumes my heart daily: social justice toward children.

Of course, children are always innocent and vulnerable, always. Those in foster care — our modern-day orphans — suffer perhaps the worst kind of injustice. It wasn’t a bomb or an earthquake or famine that caused their horror – it was their parent. 

Neglect, abuse, then abandonment, from the one who was supposed to love, protect, nurture. 

It is National Foster Care Awareness Month. I am writing a post each day of May. I wrote on the first and second.

During Covid-19, these children are suffering like never before. Incidents of death due to child abuse are escalating at alarming rates. In a March 24th piece in The Atlantic titled The Kids Aren’t All Right, the social injustice is made clear: 

“For children who spend time in multiple households, rely on outside figures for guidance or mentoring..prolonged social-distancing measures will mean profound separation from some people who provide care.”

It doesn’t have to be so. 

We can bring justice. 

Social justice.

Fixing it. 

For the children, 

Paul 

www.rfk.org

Day Two: Please Don’t Touch Me

By in Relationships, Foster Children, Spirituality Tags: , , ,

Please don’t touch me.

Up down up down, like an oil rig. Up and down and up and down. At a summer camp. For children in foster care. In a pool. In the shallowed end — José — holding onto the coping. Wearing goggles. 

Behind him, dozens of other boys swam and threw water balloons and fired squirt guns. 

But some boys didn’t swim; they sat, watched, afraid to touch that water.

Please don’t touch me.

May is Foster Care Awareness Month. Each day of May, I will write on their behalf. 

Yesterday I wrote of children locked in plastic containers. 

I looked over and noticed José, alone. The 11-year-old was one of the five boys that slept in our cabin.

Coming toward him I shout, “José, let’s swim.”

In an eerie sound of terror — with fear in those shaken brown eyes and the grimaced contortion of his lips — he screamed, “NOOOOO!” 

Almost in a shriek, “Get away from me!”

Immediately, I stop. 

Please don’t touch me.

Twenty thousand RFK volunteers spread across the country and world, all trained not just to identify those symptoms in children in foster care, but more importantly, how to respond. Trust-based relational intervention (TBRI):

I remembered the basics:

  • Stay calm: no matter what.
  • See the need: behind the behavior.
  • Meet the need: find a way.
  • Don’t quit: if not you, then who?

Backing away slowly. “Hey no problem, Jose. Your game looks fun.”

“Yeh, yeh, yeh yeah Paul but please don’t come close to me again. I don’t want to learn how to swim. Please don’t make me.”

“No problem buddy, I just liked your alone game. Dunking yourself over and over. By yourself. So cool! I want to do that, by myself, just like you.”

“Will you teach me how, José?”

“Well. Um, okay, but you have to go over there.” 

He points.

I slowly walk five feet to his right. 

“That’s too close, further! And you can’t come closer or teach me to swim, or touch me!”

(Please don’t touch me.)

“I just want to do your dunking game.”

I grasp the coping. I assume the position. I submerge myself. 

Then up down up down, like an oil rig. Up and down and up and down. At a summer camp. For a child in foster care. In a pool. In the shallowed end — Jose and me — holding onto the coping. I wore no goggles. 

Last month, the United Nations reported, “[h]undreds of millions of children around the world will likely face increasing threats to their safety and wellbeing—including mistreatment, gender-based violence, exploitation, social exclusion and separation from caregivers—because of actions taken to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The chilling symptoms of child abuse. 

The next day, I earned Jose’s trust. I said we should play “follow the leader.” Eventually, he let go of the coping as we walked along the side. Then I showed him how to walk from one end to the other. Then I showed him how to put his face in the water while walking, bending over forward. Then I showed him how to jump forward like a torpedo.

The process took two days. On the third, day, 11-year-old José swam.

An hour later, I felt these electric-like freezing cold tingles throughout my body – up and down up and down. This ebullient José — how to find words to convey the contrast in his confidence? —he sprinted through the cafeteria, announcing to dozens of children, “I know how to swim!”

Today, I wonder about José. I wonder if his father was released from prison. The father that “Got a new tattoo across his face.” The father he called “very rough.”

Is COVID-19 forcing José to stay in a home, alone, with that “rough” father?

If not, other children are. ER doctors are seeing a spike in severe cases of child abuse.

The chilling symptoms of child abuse. We must act…

For the children,

Paul

www.rfk.org

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