Category Archives: Death and dying

Verse – But when…

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tuhmb_refugee

John Dixon/The News-Gazette Steven Shoemaker, a retired pastor who attends the Philo Presbyterian Church, wrote a letter to the editor saying the Philo church leaders would be discussing hosting a syrian refugee family, despite Gov. Bruce Rauner’s stance on the issue. Shoemaker was photographed at his home in south of Urbana on Wednesday Nov. 25, 2014.

But when…

But when will you die? asked my two kids.
In sleep, my Doc said, are the best odds.
But I will not die,
I’ve propped open each eye,
But the toothpicks keep hurting my eyelids!

  • Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, 11:58 p.m., Feb. 11, 2016

Two hours after Steve posted this on his CaringBridge page, one of his old friends with an equal sense of sardonic humor commented:

I think it is sly
to prop open each eye
and frustrate the doctor’s prognosis
What a wonder to see
that the powers that be
can be limited in their diagnosis

Death and dying are NOT fun or funny, but humor is one of God’s greatest gifts.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, Feb. 12, 2016

Verse – When Cancer Patients Cry

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It may mean nothing when you see
The tears, or when you hear the voice
Begin to catch and whisper. The
Strong drugs for pain remove the poise
And self control. Emotions rule.

Or

The patient, for some reason, may
Regret the loss of family
And friends… Feel sorrow not to stay
In this the known world, possibly
The only world. Hope fades, Faith flees.

  • Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Feb. 11, 2016

Note: Views from the Edge followers recall that Steve was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer in November with death expected no later than mid-January. He’s outlived the original prognosis by a month. His home   on the Illinois plains has become a hotel for family and friends from around the world.

Steve posted this verse last night on his CaringBridge page. The sentence that introduced it said:

[Bad day. 2nd in a row. I’ll try to be funny tomorrow…]

 

 

The Three Kings [aka Stooges]

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Wednesday evening three old friends from Texas, Arizona, and northern Illinois descended on the Shoemaker home in Urbana, IL to sing their own semi-humorous re-write of the traditional Epiphany hymn We Three Kings. They concluded by presenting gold, frankincense, and myrrh to our mutual friend Steve Shoemaker. There’s a video of the trio on Steve’s FaceBook page for those want to watch and sing along. Steve, diagnosed with terminal cancer, is feeling remarkably well – even got up to make oatmeal for the guys the next morning!

EPIPHANY 2016

A Tribute to the Rev. Dr. Steve Shoemaker (Harry Lee Strong)
(Tune: Three Kings of Orient; John Henry Hopkins, 1857)

We three friends from north, south, and west
Gather here as your grateful guests.
Pardon our singing – gifts we are bringing,
Just hoping not to be pests.

O … Husband, father, poet, bard:
How we loathe your journey hard!
If we could, you know we would
Make this damn disease retard!

It’s so good to see you again
Here at home on your Illinois plain,
Still with humor, despite tumors,
Teaching to die is to gain.

O … Talk show host and scholar bright:
Few compete with your great height!
On the air and through your care,
Keepin’ Faith both day and night.

Only God can possibly know
How many lives you’ve enabled to grow:
Words and actions, breaking down factions,
Allowing your light to show.

O … Classmate, preacher, prophet bold:
No respect do we withhold!
From our coffers we now offer
Frankincense and myrrh and gold.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, January 8, 2016. Wish I’d been there.

Verse – A Short Walk in the Dark

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I hear the purr from spouse
As I feel the urge to pee
The quilt I push aside
And pivot socks to floor

The Persian carpet edge
I feel and know is worn
As I pad unsteadily
Around the bed

My right hand holds
The maple top
Of bureau that long ago
Lost the marble slabs

I wobble but reach out
For the chrome handle
Of the closet door
And inch to reach

The bathroom door
Always open to the bars
That help the elderly
Stay upright until

The seat is reached
No more do I stand
To urinate but
Lower pull-ups

Ahh release
Pull old body up again
Repeat my steps
Return to bed

  • Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Jan. 1, 2016

Talking about death and dying

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Talking openly about death is a rare thing. We don’t like talking about it. We prefer it go away and stay away, like rain: “Rain, rain, go away. Come again some other day.”

When someone dies, it’s often said they’ve passed, passed away, or passed on, a sentiment dating back to a Greek idea of the immortality of the soul. It was/is assumed the soul at death is set free from its mortal cage to live forevermore.

The likes of Barbara Brown Taylor, of whom I consider myself one, have different idea. “Matter matters,” she says. Flesh and blood matter. Flesh, blood, and matter matter. Christians, following the older view of the Hebrew Bible, do not share the belief in a part of us – a soul – that survives our mortal frame. Instead, we profess a curious hope that affirms the essential goodness of corporal existence. Belief or hope in the resurrection of the body may seem even stranger than the immortality of the soul.

I have no more reason to believe in the resurrection of the body than I do to believe in an immortal soul. Watching the life go out of my dogs, I did not imagine some invulnerable part of them leaving their bodies to pass on to some other state of being. They were dead. I cried. I grieved. I mourned their loss. I never thought I would see them again. If they, or we, had a future, it seems more natural, so to speak, to think of them in their bodies all over again.

But which body would it be? Would Maggie, our West Highland White Terrier-Bichon Frise, be the playful pup or the one with the tumor on her hip? Would I be the 73 year-old me, the new-born me, or the teenager with the raging hormones?

Passing away has always made more sense to me than passing or passing on. “You are dust and to dust you shall return” makes better sense to me. The Earth will go on, as will those I love … for a time … but not forever, so far as any of us really knows. I say the Nicene creed on Sundays and ponder what it means to say “I look for the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come.” The world to come, so far as I can tell, is the Earth where Cecil the lion doesn’t get killed by a dentist, and the lion and the lamb…and the dentist…lie down together in peace and hurt one other no more.

My friend Steve talks openly about death and dying. “I’m dying,” he says, not with a morose or maudlin sensibility but as a fact. It’s not a great surprise to him. Would he and we prefer the rain to go way and come back some later day? You bet. But it won’t, and even it if would, it would be back some other day. There’s great grace in the acceptance of death and the maturity to speak of it aloud, enjoy old friends when one can, laugh and cry and hug and kiss those one loves.

That we would want something more or fear death as the end is part of being human. The time of death is not time to debate philosophy or theology. It’s time for compassion, and for grace and courage to recognize our creatureliness – the distinction between every creature and the Creator, mortal life and the Immortality, the finite and the Eternal.

– Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, Dec. 29, 2015

Verse – The Last Septet

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INTRO: Steve just posted on his CaringBridge site: “Awoke clear-headed, with more energy than in weeks. Just wrote this poem”:

I do not know how to die.
No words left to say good-bye.

The cancer spread everywhere;
Family and friends showed they care.

Will I find a peaceful death?
Or fight for each gasping breath?

Be here now? To future bow…

  • Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Dec. 29, 2015

NOTE:

Biggest and smallest Dogs

Biggest and smallest Dogs

My friend and Views from the Edge colleague, Steve, was diagnosed mid-November with terminal pancreatic cancer. For years death and dying have been a topic of conversation among the seminary friends who keep changing our group’s name. At first we called ourselves The Chicago Seven. After Dale died, we were six. We became The Gathering. More lately we call ourselves The Dogs. Steve at 6’8 is the biggest Dog. He’s always said “Big dogs go first.”

A month ago Steve came to Minnesota for a consultation at the Mayo Clinic. On a Thursday, Kay and I visited Steve and Nadja in their small room at the Kaylor Hotel across the street from the Clinic. While Nadja and Kay began to discuss the procedures Steve would undergo the next day, Steve stuck his fingers in his ears and smiled at me. I’m with Steve, I’d rather just do it when it’s time. I’d rather not know. I wonder if it’s a guy thing.

Steve wrote “The Last Septet” after his second Chemo treatment back in Illinois, a treatment meant to give him more time with no illusions about the outcome. To live forthrightly without illusion is a beautiful thing. Meanwhile, the other five Dogs watch and pray, growl and snarl, curse the cancer, mourn his demise, remember our shared mortality and the line from the Presbyterian Church (USA) A Brief Statement of Faith: “In life and death we belong to God.”

Gordon, a much smaller Dog, December 29, 2015.

 

 

 

Verse – Am I Dying?

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Well, certainly sometime…
but I mean, am I dying soon?
like before my next birthday…
or even before I get to make love again…
(and these days, at my advanced age,
that might well be AFTER my next b- day),
and is that a good sign, or a bad sign?

Energy is low, even after I stopped my statins,
(which one of my five M.D.s says increases
an elderly male’s risk of a heart attack)
–btw, having 5 Docs is certainly a sign
of one’s impending demise.

All of my doctors are younger than I am.
Two of my doctors are younger
than my youngest child.
The ages given of the newly dead
in my local paper’s obits are half
older, half younger than I am, usually.

I am writing more verses than ever,
but fewer sonnets–am I preferring
free verse because it is faster?
Am I desperate to say what I have to say
before I can no longer think or speak?

There are times now I can no longer
see the grid of streets (as if from above)
in my home town. I make more wrong turns.
My dreams are more memorable than
many conversations. Nightmares
are more frequent–nightSTALLIONS
chase me till the dawn.

If death is like sleep, will I ever
really rest in peace?

  • Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, written May, 2014, Published on Views from the Edge Dec. 15, 2015.

NOTE TO READERS: Steve has been diagnosed with a painful terminal cancer. They say people die the way they’ve lived. Steve is typically forthright about his condition. “I’m dying,” he says, as a simple matter of fact. As readers saw in his post about making sure the chair was there before you sit and the window open before your spit, his sense of humor is strong as ever. The size and length of his spirit exceeds his height of 6’8″ and his sleeve length. Would that we might all learn to die with dignity, grace, and humor.

 

Verse – Bending Down, Looking Up

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As readers of Views from the Edge (VFTE) may know, Steve Shoemaker, my poet colleague on VFTE has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. His sense of humor remains strong. This verse recalls a moment with Steve and four other seminary classmates following a rare Cubs’ win at Wrigley Field in Wrigleyville, Chicago.

wrigley-field-2014

BENDING DOWN, LOOKING UP

A towering 69 year-old figure standing
six-feet-eight, Steve saunters slowly
through the post-game crowd outside
“the Friendly Confines” of Wrigleyville
like a watchtower on skates, looking
far and near for who knows what.

A very happy young woman as high
as he is tall pulls on his sleeve, asking
a question only he, bending far down,
can hear. He smiles but shakes his head
to whatever offer threatened to bring
him down to a lower happiness high.

Two years later at 72, he might be
looking again for the Wrigleyville fan
for something to ease the pain, settle
his stomach, give some relief from
the newly diagnosed cancer, a pill
or toke or two to raise him back up
to the watchtower, now six-feet-seven.

We who couldn’t hear the question
now smile, bend down low, and look up
beyond Steve’s lofty height with prayers
for courage, strength, whatever will keep
him tall in the game where everyone wins
and loses, and quite unexpectedly,
feels a gentle tug on an old shirtsleeve.

– Gordon C. Stewart, Dec. 8, 2015

You are not entirely alone. Ever.

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With votive candles lit in remembrance of loved ones, we entered the softly lit church at dusk. We sat in silence until the piano and violin soothed the gatherers with Fantasia on Greensleeves, arranged by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Imagine yourself there with a candle.

After readings from Frederick Buechner, Mary Oliver, Romans 8 and a brief homily, Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel provided the music for worshipers to come forward to place our candles on the altar.

As the teenage daughter and her 9 year-old brother returned to their pew in front of us, it was apparent they’d experienced a devastating loss. Perhaps a grandparent? A cousin? A pet? The brother, half her size, threw his arms around his sister with great tenderness, sharing a vulnerable moment of deep grief. The father’s hand stretched across the pew to hold them both.

I learned later the reason for their grief – the death of a close friend two months before in a murder suicide that killed her friend, classmate, and teammate, two other children, and their parents. They’d had a normal dinner together the night before the tragedy no one had anticipated or imagined.

votive-candlesTonight the friend was there to deal with her grief. There was something profoundly sacred about the church tonight – a community of the grieving like no other community. Real. Unvarnished. Reverent. Open. Prayerful. Tender. A healthy vulnerable community of mutual need and faith lighting candles, bearing witness to an inexplicable grace greater than the darkness that had fallen upon us.

Members of the Trinity Mental Health Initiative (MHI) Board of Trinity Episcopal Church, founded two years ago, hosted the service. The note in the bulletin read:

“MHI was birthed in the sorrow of personal loss, and with the intent that no one should have to be alone in the terrible helplessness and sadness that comes with some deaths. … We invite you to open yourselves today to both sadness and possibility, and to know that you are not entirely alone. Ever.”

I wish the sorrowing world could have been there.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, Dec. 6, 2015.

 

 

 

 

Verse – Septet Cursing Illness

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Waking up to the smell of bacon

Waking up to the smell of bacon

I’ve never really liked the bathroom–
Smelly, necessary pathroom.

Kitchens! Can you smell the bacon?
Kneading, rolling, roastin’, bakin’

Frying, broiling, Bar-B-Queing
Even chickens, we are stewing–

Well? In pot, but sick, on pot…

  • Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Dec. 4, 2015. Photo of Spanky added by Spanky’s partner in crime on Views from the Edge.

NOTE: Steve has been writing this week from the Mayo Clinic where he’s being treated for pancreatic cancer.  Hour by hour is a roller coaster ride from yesterday’s “Celebrating Illness” to today’s “Cursing Illness.” He can still smell the bacon, but he can’t eat it. But  his good humor is in tact. Steve’s friends and family are celebrating him and cursing the illness while following updates on CaringBridge and cheering on his spirit.