LIFE AS KINDA KIND

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about God as kind even though unkind things happen in a lifetime.

When I was fourteen years old, my sister ran away from home. She was twelve. She was gone for three days before we learned what happened to her.

Somehow she and my cousin snuck out of their houses. Another person drove them to the bus station in Chattanooga. They took a bus to Knoxville.

When they arrived, she and my cousin decided to come back to Chattanooga. They called a friend to pick them up and take them back. He did, but an hour and a half away from his home or two hours away from her home, the driver fell asleep and slammed into a telephone pole.

My sister did not wear her seat belt. She crashed through the windshield and died. My cousin broke her hip. The driver broke his ankle. Another passenger was unhurt.

That is the official version of my sister’s death.

What did they plan to do in Knoxville?  Were they just being silly and bold?  Did they go there just so they could say they traveled all that way?  Was there someone there who had offered to let them stay for a party, or for a longer time, and then they would go home?  How much money did they have?  Was it enough for a hotel room?

Another thing to consider is when they ran away. They weren’t just running away from home. They were also running away from school. The last week in March was the last week I saw my sister alive.

I never found out the details of what happened. I never heard talk about a plan. I loved my sister dearly, but I was angry with her for disrupting our lives the way she did.

Some might say my sister was being punished for running away. My grandfather, the fundamentalist Baptist preacher, certainly thought that way.

I was fourteen when my sister died. I never believed she was punished. It did not make sense. My cousin wasn’t killed. I never found out what happened to the driver or the other passenger.

Now, my grandmother, as saintly a woman as any one might know, did not die suddenly nor did she die within surrounding circumstances that suggested her death may have resulted from wrong choices.

My grandmother died slowly, horribly from Alzheimer’s disease. For the last three years of her life she knew nobody. She literally wasted away. Her suffering ended either the moment consciousness eluded her forever, although her body continued to live, or the moment she drew her last breath.

All the prayers in the world cannot turn back Alzheimer’s disease. It is a dreadful malignancy. It changes the soul before it steals it away.

I believe the more we understand the brain, the sooner Uncle Al can be dispatched. When that happens, we can pray for God to cure someone with greater confidence that it will happen.

Once that mind eater is muzzled, we will have entered a whole new realm of experiencing kindness during our lives.

Blessings…