My wife and I got away recently for a few days. We went to a family reunion where my mother was raised in a community tucked way back in the hollers of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Mama was from a family of Swiss German settlers, strong and decent people who took care of each other.
I spoke with one of the cousins who reminds me a lot of my mother. Cousin Kate is way up in her 80s now, though she has retained a youthful countenance. She said she loved the freedom of growing up in such a place where there were no locked doors and people were so much at one with the natural world. As a youngster, she said, she knew all the old folks of the community just as well as the young and that, even then, she grieved the passing of them all.
Her husband Bill, who is now 94, sat on the porch the whole time because it’s hard for him to get around these days. He was a bomber pilot in World War II who made it home when so many didn’t and went back to school after the war. Eventually he became a general practitioner in a small South Carolina town.
Kate and Bill were married in my parents’ home in 1950, and Bill recalled with a twinkle in his eye seeing “the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen” walk down the stairs in her wedding dress.
At the end of our time there, I told Bill that he was the highlight of my visit, and he replied that he’d gotten more attention that day than he had all year.
Then he said that, even though his mind was slipping, he still appreciated life and seeing old friends. And with glassy eyes he added, “I’m just so sad to see everybody leave.” I do hope Bill and Kate are there next year.
From there we went over to Appalachian State University where our son goes to school. He had just moved into another dumpy college apartment, and I was so glad it’s him living there and not me. But he makes the grades, so what can we say? I just pray that a secular education doesn’t ruin his thinking. I know his heart is in the right place; I just don’t trust academic circles. There are a lot of godless people in highly influential places, especially in our universities.
We took our son to dinner and, though he’s as skinny as a rail, he can still pack in a pretty good meal. It’s always bittersweet leaving him, but we’re awfully proud.
Then we headed up to a small community outside of Greensboro where a friend of ours lives in a group home. David “Blue Jean” McAllister, our dear old friend, celebrated his 48th birthday and we gave him one to remember, though he doesn’t ask for much.
My wife pampered him and, after a grand trip to Wal-Mart for boots and a shirt and all kinds of hygiene products, we went to eat fish (“shrimps” are his favorite) at a local seafood house. The waitresses even sang to him with a candle glowing in a piece of pecan pie. “Blue” has a pretty low I.Q. and is schizophrenic but he’s doing better here than he has in years. No wasting away in a prison cell. No sleeping in the weeds.
Still, when we took him back to his home, a long hallway with dormitory-style rooms, it was dark inside. I suppose they keep all the lights off during the day to conserve energy and keep the electric bill down. I wanted to tell the caretaker on duty that we all do better in the light. But I let it go.
I am constantly amazed at how the good and the beautiful exist side by side with the not-so-good and the not-so-beautiful.
I think of the loveliness of my elderly cousin and her husband of 66 years, plopped down next to the fact that they live in their memories now, in the faces of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and with the inevitable infirmities of age, looking back at life and forward in the lonesome anticipation of their own demise.
I’m amazed that such a good and decent young man as my son, who cares so much for others and makes all A’s and grew up with a set of values anchored in his Roman Catholic faith, is surrounded by philosophies that contradict what we taught him. How much will he absorb? Being one of the good guys may not be enough. I choose my battles carefully but I make sure that every single contact with this kid I love so much and whose soul I treasure is from the heart. And I keep in mind the adage, “God ain’t got no grandchildren!”
I’m also amazed that a dark building full of poor, demented souls disconnected from their families can raise my spirits like little else. There I seek to find points of connection, humor and affection – even in the midst of an environment in which I would never want to live myself and in the person of one so limited but one who, nevertheless, makes me feel like his is the closest to the face of Christ I may see in this life.
I’m amazed at how such goodness and beauty exist right alongside the harsher realities of our world.
Perhaps we do good and cultivate beauty because there is, indeed, such a great need to do so. Perhaps what goodness and beauty we encounter and offer to the world exist to confound the ugliness, loneliness and godlessness, the undeniable evil floating around our world. Perhaps somewhere in the deepest crevices of faith itself is a revelry in the good and the beautiful that lights the dark hallways of our hearts and our minds. Perhaps that’s how we are able to see. And perhaps, just perhaps, that’s why we are here.
Fred Gallagher is an author, book editor and former addictions counselor. He and his wife Kim are members of St. Patrick Cathedral in Charlotte.