All It Takes Is A Little Love

I have enjoyed good health for most of my life. I had the childhood illnesses that were not yet controlled by vaccinations like measles and chickenpox. Once in a great while I would catch a bad cold or come down with a virus but in general I was rarely sick which worked out well for my mother who struggled to afford medical care for me and my brothers. 

Even as an adult I have managed to evade most really frightening health issues. My heart remains strong and other than a cold now and then I mostly feel fantastic from day to day. It would not be an understatement for me to note that I really have little understanding of how it feels to be stricken with a dire illness. The closest I came to that kind of situation was a three month bout with hepatitis that drained my energy and frightened me into wondering if I had somehow developed a chronic disease that would ultimately kill me. I was relieved when I finally lost the yellow tinge to my skin and once more was ready to tackle the world. I left that illness in the rearview mirror and rarely looked back.

I have watched friends and family members deal with frightening illnesses like cancer, heart disease, and even strange infectious diseases. I witnessed their suffering but never really understood the extent of how debilitating their struggles must have been. I remember chiding my mother to get up out of bed and push herself to be part of life in the last weeks of her battle with lung cancer. Little did I know how much pain she must have been enduring and how difficult it was for her to even breathe. 

I watched friends have strokes that left them unable to talk or live the incredible lives that had been theirs before a blood clot changed their worlds. I witnessed people who ended up in wheelchairs because of brittle bones and listened to people with congestive heart failure attempting to be brave when they actually just wanted to cry. All the time I was clueless to how they were feeling even as I attempted to show some compassion for them. 

It is all too easy to watch a person dealing with a painful or chronic illness without ever truly comprehending how painful their situation actually is, especially when someone has led a mostly illness free life. We can attempt to have empathy but we never really know how difficult the battles with illness can be unless we have some level of experience with pain and chronic illnesses ourselves. 

My total knee replacement is rather commonplace. It is a surgery that I was able to choose to have or not have. I decided my own fate unlike my brother who has Parkinson’s disease. As such I have been in control of my own destiny but I have also learned that even procedures that eventually lead to happy outcomes do not come without pain, sleepless nights, and a feeling of isolation during the recuperative days and weeks. What I imagined as a piece of cake has been more difficult than I would have thought even as everyone tells me that I am regaining my strength much faster than expected. 

This surgery has been life changing for me because it has taught me to be far more understanding of anyone dealing with a grave illness. I have had a tiny taste of what it is like to be unable to move around freely and without the throb of chronic pain following me day and night. Over the weeks I have slowly but surely returned to my old self but I am hoping that I will not forget how daunting it is to be in a state that robs me of the freedom that good health has always given me. 

I think back now to situations with other people and I feel guilty that I had little or no idea of what they were enduring. My mother-in-law lived with heart diseases from the time that she was a teenager, She was told that she would not live beyond the age of thirty. Through miracles of medicine she managed to reach her early seventies before her body gave in to the disease that had dominated her life. I only understood her situation in a very distanced way. It never dawned on me how incredibly brave she had been for all of her days. 

Not long ago one of my husband’s uncles died. He had been a renowned cardiologist who treated famous people from across the globe. Like me he was an energetic man for most of his life until he reached his eighties and became the victim of congestive heart failure. He had treated hundreds of people with this affliction and yet he admitted that he had never truly understood how frightening and painful it was for them. Only when he had to personally deal with such an illness did he finally admit that he would have been ever more compassionate with his patients had he known the depths to which they were falling as they became ever more unable to even breathe. 

Like that uncle I find myself wanting to go back in time to apologize to anyone that I knew who dealt with chronic and devastating illnesses. But for my own good fortune I had little or no idea what it was like to wake up in the middle of the night in pain or to wonder if I would ever overcome the restrictions on my life. 

Now I have a whole new outlook on how I must behave int the future. I understand how precious every phone call or message inquiring how I was feeling has been. I brightened up when my son-in-law and a friend brought meals to my home. I celebrated the loving care from my husband who has been with me all the way and my daughter who devoted a week to making sure that I would be comfortable. I found myself reaching out to those that I know are battling much bigger challenges than mine. I finally understand how frustrating it is to be sidelined from life for any amount of time. 

I would not want anyone to have to endure pain in order to be able to understand those who suffer from chronic health problems. Nonetheless I feel fortunate to have walked a bit in the shoes of those who have to meet challenges that endure day after day. I have always understood what loss feels like but for the first time I also understand the difficulties of being immobilized by a body that is not working right. I wish that it had not taken so long for me to learn how daunting it is to fight to heal. I am certain that I will be a much better friend and person moving forward now that I know. 

I never miss watching the Oscars. I have been taken by the annual ceremony from the time that Bob Hope was the perennial host. I love movies of all kinds and I enjoy the yearly celebration of the films. This year’s program spoke to me on many emotional levels even as it was mostly lowkey with a kind of positivity that is not always present. It did not really matter to me who or what won the awards because I had no outstanding favorite in the game. Nonetheless several of the features really burrowed a place in my heart. 

I suppose that being a mother and an English major who has read most of Shakespeare’s plays and poems drew me to Hamnet. The story was quite emotional for me particularly in the way it wove a heartfelt tale of the love that mothers have for their children with the tragedy of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The presentation of the Elizabethan world of the time was stunning and the acting was superb, especially that of Jessie Buckley. Somehow the movie knit together so many aspects of my own life from the time that I first read the works of the great bard, through my own time as a young mother, to the present when I still worry about my grown children and the tragedies that they sometimes have to endure. I left that movie sobbing in a kind of emotional release that I needed in these difficult times. 

I also found Frankenstein to be a magnificent rendition of the tale as originally written by Mary Shelley. It demands us to consider what it means to be human while also demonstrating that sometimes it is actually humankind that is the monster. While the film mostly won awards for costuming and sets, there was so much more depth to the presentation than its reputation as a horror story. It is a philosophical questioning of how we view each other and the terrors that we humans sometimes spawn. 

One movie that flew under the radar that I truly enjoyed was Train Dreams. It was a cinematic poem about ordinary life and the questionable things that we must sometimes do to survive. Every scene and nuance in this tale is indeed like a dream that switches from nightmare to joy and back again. It is an exquisite film at its best. 

One Battle After Another won best picture and I would not totally argue with that. The story was interesting if sometimes a bit too manic for my taste. The acting was superb in every possible way and the whole premise of the script forced me to think  about our society and how it changes from one era to the next, demanding us to adjust to one challenge after another. 

Nonetheless what I loved most about the Oscars this year were the surprises such as reuniting the cast of Bridesmaids after fifteen years. I recall all too well going to see that film on the day that I officially retired. My mother was staying in our home at that time while battling many illnesses. I got home much earlier than usual because school was officially over and I had nothing to do to plan for the following year. because I was retiring so that I might help her battle the cancer that she most surely had. I packed my belongings in my car and left the campus without fanfare. It was an emotional letdown after all of my years as an educator.

I was feeling a bit down and wondering if I was really ready to end my life in education and so I planned to spend the afternoon with my mom rejoicing instead of feeling so insecure about what I had done. When I found her snoozing away in a deep sleep I decided to go see Bridesmaids at my local cinema. I laughed my way through the flick and somehow felt more resolved about the change in my life. 

Sadly upon returning home I saw that my mother was in a medically distressing state. My brother and I rushed her to the Emergency Room where the whole world turned upside down. She would live only one more day and life as I had always known it would have to move forward without her. 

I suppose seeing the cast of Bridesmaids along with he beautiful remembrance of actors and actresses and other movie giants who died this past year took me down memory lane in a kind of teary realization of how much movies have meant to me over the years. Seeing the stars of Rob Reiner movies moved me in a way of combining my sorrows and joys in a single moment. Listening to Barbra Streisand sing The Way We Were brought me to tears. I realized the gift that movies of the past and present have given me.

I suppose that I am an appreciator of the artists who can write and act and direct to bring literature and everyday situations to life. Movies are more than just entertainment.They address the nature and foibles of humans in so many different ways. They connect us with each other and show us how alike we actually are. The Oscars celebrate the talent and artistry of people that we all need to balance and enrich our lives. I look forward to seeing the films of 2026 and then celebrating them next spring

My Grandpa Little was a storyteller with a dash of humor. He had a way of describing real life tales of his childhood that always delightfully delivered a life lesson along with a twinkle in his eyes. I am not completely certain that he did not embellish his memories just a bit but he had a way of retelling them over and over again in exactly the same way. He really enjoyed discussing life in rural Virginia where he lived with his grandmother who took on the task of raising him when his mother died in childbirth. One item of lore that he especially liked was a cautionary tale with a moral that needed little explaining. 

He was a young lad with more than a bit of curiosity. He had done inventive things like cutting off the upper toes of his shoes when they became too small but his grandmother insisted that he needed to wear them just a bit longer. He admired his grandmother for being a kind of leader in the area where they lived. He noted that many men and women came to her for advice. She had a wisdom and knowledge that was homegrown but more than often right on target. She became known as “Doc Reynolds” to those who knew her. 

He recalled how one day she invited the ladies of the area to come over for coffee and conversation. He was well old enough to entertain himself while they chatted. His grandmother reminded him to be on his best behavior and stay outside while the ladies were present. He gladly left for the great outdoors because he had no interest in hearing them talk about topics that meant nothing to him. He was glad to be free to be himself for a time and he liked that his grandmother trusted him to stay out of trouble. 

He did a bit of this and bit of that and then began to explore. He found an old log with a mound of some kind in its midsection. Curiosity got the best of him as he wondered what that profusion was and why it was there. It did not look like an ant bed but it indeed looked as though someone or something had chewed the wood of the tree into sawdust and then turned it into an interesting dome. 

He found a nearby stick and poked the mass just enough to get a feel for its texture. When nothing happened he became a bit more aggressive hoping to get to the heart of this strange accumulation unlike anything else he had ever seen. As he moved the stick around in a stirring motion he got his answer as a swarm of angry hornets attacked him. 

They went for every part of his body even being bold enough to burrow under his clothes. The pain of their stings was overwhelming. The only thing he could think to do was to strip down until he was naked and jump into a nearby pond. All the while he did not realize the ruckus that he was making with his screams of pain. Before long his grandmother and her lady friends were all outside looking shocked by his naked body and hearing words that he probably should not have uttered. He knew by their faces that he was in big trouble but at least he had been able to rid himself of the offending hornets.

His grandmother’s party was over as each woman sensed that it was time to go home. When everyone was gone his grandmother gave him a dressing down while she put some kind of salve that she had made on his wounds. Somehow the sting of her words was worse that what the hornets had inflicted on him. He ended his story by commenting that the whole incident taught him to be very careful about taking actions without knowing what the consequences might be. He would urge us to always think things through before racing into trouble. 

I have found myself thinking more and more about my grandfather as we are embarked on a war that seems to be without any kind of plan. We have indeed stirred the hornets nest and the question is whether or not we will be able to quell the horror that has ensued. Somehow I do not have confidence that there was a rationale for all of this other than that Trump had a feeling. Obviously there are many unintended consequences that are the result of this action. We bombed a school where innocent girls were killed. The new leader of the nation is no better than the one we killed. In fact, he lost much of his family in the attack and will no doubt want revenge. The strait through which much of the oil and commerce from the middle east comes is now blocked. The unilateral decision to stir things up in Iran has not been explained in a coherent way and it seems as though those leading this effort each have conflicting ideas as to why we did it. Furthermore there is no real plan to stop what we have started and probably should have left alone.

War should always be a last resort and any decision to go in that direction should be part of a well thought out reason with a plan for how to navigate out of the situation. So far we have none of these and while I worry on a Sunday afternoon Trump is out playing golf as though it is just another weekend. Meanwhile the Secretary of Defense seems like a little boy playing soldier. I wonder when the adults are going to come along to make the ridiculousness stop. Sadly there is nothing humorous about it all as innocents keep dying for an undefined cause but the message is the same as my grandfather delivered long ago…always be very careful before racing into the unknown. 

My wish for you is that you continue to be who you are and how you are to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.   Maya Angelou

Each human life is special and sacred. If we truly believe that it is more likely that we will not insist on imprinting our own beliefs and dreams on any person. Instead we will learn to honor our differences and strive to insure that every person who walks on this earth has the opportunity to be whomever he/she seeks to be. 

Sadly we humans have a tendency to judge people by our own personal beliefs rather than attempting to understand theirs. I suppose that I am more open to the multiplicity of human thought because of the influence of my mother. She was a devout Catholic who read her Bible every single day. She died holding a statue of the Virgin Mary, in whom she had placed great trust during her lifetime. That being said, she was incredibly open to the idea that religious beliefs are very individual. She did not think it was important to force her thoughts with regard to God on others. In fact, she encouraged me and my brothers to decide for ourselves how we thought of a divine spirit. She believed that the variety of religions in the world corresponded to our cultural differences and that God was God in many different forms. She was even open to a continuum of religious belief that ran from atheism to agnosticism and the many religious sects that humans accept. In the end, she made her choice to remain faithful to the Catholicism of her youth but she did not believe that it was her task to force others to agree with her. 

My mother taught me the importance of seeing that it is kindness that is a true indicator of a person’s character. She saw that many highly religious people were ugly when it came to their treatment of other people while those with no beliefs at all were often intensely loving souls. She encouraged me and my brothers to follow our hearts as long as we treasured each person as an important figure in this world. 

People like Mother Teresa and Gandhi were Mama’s icons even as each of them represented different faiths. What made them great in her mind was their love of fellow humans regardless of status or religious and political beliefs. She was never impressed with titles or wealth or power. She wanted us to be helpers in the world who were blind to differences that she believed did not matter. 

There is little wonder that my brothers and I are quite individual. We grew up knowing that we were free to follow our own instincts about how to live. I have continued with my Catholic faith just as my mother did. One of my brothers joined a Protestant church and is a faithful parishioner. The other brother believes in God but not in organized religious groups. He worships in his own way as an agnostic.

The same is true of the roles that we chose to follow. I became a teacher and eventually a school administrator in spite of efforts from outside forces urging me to consider medicine or law. One brother became an electrical engineer and spent his entire career working as a NASA contractor. The youngest brother earned a degree in marketing and then proceeded to the Houston Fire Department Academy where he had a long and fulfilling career as a firefighter and eventually a District Chief. Our mother was over the moon with pride for each of us and happy that we had found the niche by which we were able to bring our talents and our kindness to others. 

I suppose that my mother taught me to never be a busybody spouting indignation over people who chose to be very different from the cultural norms. She always insisted that our true goal in life was to find the goodness in everyone. Of course she understood that we might also encounter evil but she reminded us to be careful about judging too harshly or too quickly. She did not want us to live by prejudices that precluded the possibility that even personal choices that we do not understand more often that not are simply the result of our human variety. The yardstick that she gave us for interacting with our fellow humans was to look for each person’s willingness to love and embrace others. 

My mother was a first generation citizen of the United States. She suffered the slings and arrows of prejudice against herself and her family. They were judged simply because they appeared to be different. Her answer to the taunts was to ignore them and to prove her own worth with a giving heart. She did that for all of her life and so that is how I try to be even when meanness seems to be on the rise. I do my best to follow her example and love people for who and how they are. If more of us followed that ideal the world would be a most remarkable place. 

I’ve always enjoyed St. Patrick’s Day. I felt drawn to Ireland even though I never knew why until I learned that my great grandmother Marion O’Rourke was probably from Ireland or descended from Irish parents or grandparents. There is little or no information about Marion who died three days after my grandfather was born. Even though Grandpa never met her when he became a father to a girl he wanted to name her after the mother he had never known. 

Grandpa never spoke about Marion until I finally asked about her. I suspect the he did not know much about who she was. None of my efforts to find her in records have been fruitful. While I don’t know for certain it seems as though she gave birth to her baby boy without any kind of medical assistance. The event was no doubt difficult for her and resulted in her death that does not even seem to be duly noted anywhere. 

I had some problems with the births of my daughters. The first time I was in labor for over eighteen hours and the baby kept turning to come out breach because of an extra bone that I have. The doctor thankfully knew how to turn her around and all went well until the day after she was born when I began bleeding profusely. It ended up that I had not eliminated the placenta so the doctor had to give me a medication that started the labor pains once again until the placenta was out of my system. A similar situation occurred with my second daughter but because the doctor had seen what happened the first time around he carefully planned to make sure that my labor was faster, that the baby would not come out breach and that the placenta would successfully be eliminated. 

When I first heard about my great grandmother dying so soon after having her first baby I began to wonder if she may have had the same problems that I had. It was sad to think that there was not a medical doctor available to help her like my doctor did with me. I have always wondered how different my grandfather’s life would have been if his mother had lived to raise him into a man. 

As it happened Grandpa’s grandmother took care of him until he was about thirteen. Then she too died and he was an orphan in need of a guardian. Suddenly his father arrived ready to finally take on the responsibility of his care. Grandpa was suspicious of his father’s motives in finally stepping forward when he had been gone for thirteen years. Grandpa had a small inheritance from his grandmother and he wondered if his father was more interested in getting his hands on the money than on taking care of his son. 

Grandpa ultimately chose an uncle as his guardian, a man who was a graduate of the Military Academy at West Point. He boasted that his uncle was a fine and honest man who guided him to a time when he was able to go off on his own to see the world as an adult. Once again sadness entered Grandpa’s life as his uncle died from typhus that he contracted after a hurricane in Puerto Rico in 1900. Death and abandonment seemed to be two features of Grandpa’s life and yet he found the gumption to carry on all alone. 

My grandfather was born near the end of the nineteenth century. He had already witnessed a great deal of history when he set out on his own. When World War I arrived he was already too old to be drafted. Instead he traveled around the United States finding work as a lather. Along the way he visited many states and built edifices that still stand including the San Jacinto Monument and the State Capitol building of Arkansas. 

He was an adventurous but lonely soul who does not show up in census records until after he married my grandmother. By then he was already in his forties. a seemingly seasoned bachelor who fell for my grandmother the first time he ate her cooking in a boarding house in Oklahoma. She was a widow with a grown daughter from her first marriage. Somehow the two souls fell for each other and tied the knot. Eventually they had two children in their middle ages, Marion and my father, Jack. 

I always thought of my grandparents as being old people because they were already in their seventies when I was born. They were a happy couple who seemed to be on a perennial honeymoon. Grandpa’s eye would twinkle at the mere sight of his wife and even after her death he would speak of her with reverence, as though she had somehow perfected his world. 

My grandmother was eighty eight years old when she died but Grandpa would always lament that she had “died young.” He would live eighteen more years after her death but never failed to bring up her name and call her his buddy until the day he died at the age of one hundred eight. 

Just before Grandpa died I visited him in a nursing home. He had begun to suffer from dementia for the first time in his life. He told me that I had just missed seeing my grandmother. Rather than arguing with him I said that I was sorry that I did not get to see her. 

A few nights later I was awakened from a deep sleep and to my amazement I felt the presence of my grandmother. She sweetly explained that Grandpa was tired and that God was ready to take him home and give him some rest. It was a dream that felt so real, especially when Grandpa died the very next day. 

Grandpa had lived a long and lovely life. By the time he died he had lost his son along with his wife and most of his friends. He had even watched some of his grandchildren leave this earth. Through it all he remained steadfastly dedicated to his family and he kept a positive outlook on life in spite of all of the misfortunes he had known. He was my hero and always will be. He showed me how to survive even the toughest experiences with courage and  dignity. I think of him often.