I’m not the first to say that life is simple; you’re born, you breathe, you eat, you die and everything else in between is a gift but I will be the next to say it’s not only a gift but also a blessing. I believe that, as blessings, chance happenings and encounters in our lives don’t usually occur without cause or reason.
Encounter 1: In 2003, while in Hermiston visiting our oldest son and his family, my husband, Leo and I walked into a convenience store to purchase a drink. Standing in line stood a man I hadn’t seen in many years. I walked closer, my heart beating with excitement and with pause in my voice said “David?” The man turned, a look of confusion on his face and said “Yes.” With a smile bursting from my face, I exclaimed, it’s me “Susie.” His confusion deepened; I laughed out loud and said “Your cousin.” Realization dawned on his face, the light bulb clicked on and we connected. We talked, exchanged contact information and went our separate ways. During the months to follow, we emailed back and forth until one fateful day the borrowed computer I’d been using sizzled its way into the place where only dead computers go. Because we’d just moved back to our home town, Leo had just started his business and I’d just started my job at a doctor’s office at half the pay of my previous job, the prospect of buying a new computer was not an option. Needless to say, my communication with my cousin dwindled to nothingness.
Encounter 2: (This encounter happened thanks to my sister Anita.) My sister Anita and my brother Eric were the pioneers of my siblings to venture into the social networking system of Facebook. Finally taking the plunge, I signed up and then said “Now what do I do?” I had no idea how to navigate the sight let alone figure out how to find people to become my friends. So I did what any self-respecting follower would do, I went trolling for friends on their sites and when I recognized someone I knew, I luckily found the tab “Add as Friend.” While doing this, I found one particular person on my sister’s site that piqued my curiosity, Connie K. I immediately wrote her to find out if she was indeed who I thought she was and she replied that she was the same Connie, my cousin, David’s daughter. Catching her at just the right time, still drugged up from her surgery the day before, she graciously accepted my invitation to be my friend.
Encounter 3: Skip forward to 2009, again in Hermiston visiting our son and his family, but this time at Wal-Mart. We were rushing to claim our place at the check-out counter when once again in front of us stood my cousin, David. This time I gave him no chance for confusion and went straight for the smile, the squeal and a big hug. This time we exchanged cell phone numbers as well as email addresses and have successfully managed to stay in touch, thanks to text messaging and Connie’s help in getting her Dad onto Facebook.
Encounter 4: (I only get to claim a partial part of this encounter.) In the fall of last year, my sister Karen and her husband Neal were in town visiting. We made plans to meet for breakfast one morning during their visit. Upon leaving their room, my sister came face to face with a woman that she thought she recognized but hadn’t seen for many years. The woman, in turn, came to the same realization. Tentatively, they spoke each other’s names. “Paula?” “Karen?” Both being correct in their assumptions is how my cousin, Paula, came to join us that morning for breakfast.
Shortly after that encounter, David’s mother exchanged her earthly life for one of peace. I attended the funeral and while there, I got reacquainted with my cousins, Debbi and Michael and met spouses, children and grandchildren. As I sat there, in between the laughter, tears, hugs and story-telling, I felt as though I could almost see the love and energy circulating around the room. Before I left, we all stressed the need to keep in touch ~ perhaps a family reunion.
Still buzzing with joy, I contemplated the idea of a family reunion on the drive home that day. What would it be like to have all the relatives from one side of my family together in one room for the day, I wondered? Knowing deep in my heart that after having chance encounters and occurrences, if you don’t figure out and act upon them, they are lost to you forever; I decided it would be worth the journey to find out.
The “First Annual Keltz Family Reunion” took place, this past weekend, in La Grande, Oregon. Family came from Oregon, Idaho and Washington to attend. Some family couldn’t attend this year, with promises to attend next year if we decided to have another. In all, we had forty seven family members together in one room. What was it like? Everything I’d imagined it would be and more. Children quickly found new friends in cousins they’d never met, adults reunited and bonded, the elders witnessed the gathering of each generation that had sprung from those they created and family members long past gone, were remembered through pictures and stories.
Like the Forrest Gump’s saying, “Life is like a box of chocolates…you never know what you’re gonna get”, the “Keltz” family members found that we are indeed individual and unique people with our own special gifts; music, photography, writing, organization, leadership, patience, kindness, creativity. But we also discovered that we were all more alike than we’d realized; elbows, toes, cheek bones, cackling laughter, bad joints, similar diseases, love of music, love of books, senses of humor, the need of family and the fact that we’re unable to stop tears from flowing when moments touch our hearts.
At the end of the evening, my nephew, Elam, asked if the day was everything I’d hoped it would be. I was tired at the time and didn’t quite know how to explain that yes, it was what I’d hoped for… but more. It was a day filled with joy, with reconciliation, with laughter, with song, with love, with memories and hope. This day was given to us as a blessing, a lesson, a treasured gift for each of us to store in our own special place in our hearts, to pull out when we need a dose of laughter, acceptance, understanding and love…until the “Second Annual Keltz Family Reunion.”
Monday, July 18, 2011
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
A New Lesson
In my life events often arise I feel need to be shared. Of these, some are good, some are bad but all of them contain a lesson of value. I had one last week at the place of my employment, La Grande Cemetery.
Very early Monday morning, I received a call from a young man. He said he was calling to enquire about prices for plots and burials. I recited the information, told him my hours and asked if he would like to come look at our maps sometime to see what we had available. He said that he and his wife would be there within the hour, softly saying “Because our baby died unexpectedly a few days ago and we need to make arrangements.” My heart dropped at those words, as it always does, and with a catch in my voice, I told the young man I’d help him any way I could.
I have phone calls, more often than I care to, from funeral directors setting up burials for deceased children. I seldom meet the parents; a fact, I’m ashamed to admit I’m thankful for, as children’s deaths are the hardest part of my job for me to endure, always remembering the funeral of my eight month old niece, Katrina. So, from the end of the phone call until I watched their car drive up to my office, my inner-spirit sent continual messages to my brain for calming strength.
The young couple, Andrew and Loree, mid-twenties, arrived at my office. Their red-rimmed eyes and haggard faces told the story of their heartbreaking past few days. They sat across from me and we talked of burial plots in our cemetery up on the hill. They had driven to the cemetery to find the perfect place prior to coming to my office, they told me. We looked at the map and as God had intended, the perfect spot for their child was available. We returned to the desk, to start the paperwork and the father began telling me about his son. “Galen, that’s his name. You should have seen him,” he said, “he was the most beautiful little boy…perfect, really.” At his declaration of love for his son, my tears started flowing along with theirs; my inner-strength not quite as solid as I’d hoped. The Kleenex box got moved to the middle of the desk. “I’m really so sorry for your loss,” I said, “but I’ll make sure we’ll take good care of him.” “I know,” the mother said, “that’s why we came here, because we were told you would.” Touched by the thought, all I could do was to nod and whisper “We will.”
Two days later, we had the burial for Galen; Andrew made the casket for his son, family and friends attended, the child was laid to rest.
After the funeral, my employees, Matt and Zeb, came to the office. They said that after the funeral, all the family members came up to them, introduced themselves and shook their hands. That had never happened before, they said, and they asked me if I knew why they did that. I said I did know and while trying to blink back my tears I explained.
“Having children of your own,” I said, “you know that before you have someone new watch your child, you want to meet them to assure yourself that they will take good care of your child. That’s all the family was doing. They were meeting the people who will be watching over their most precious possession.” They both nodded, already knowing the answer to their question, but wanting me to confirm. “Whether we like it or not,” I said, “we are the keepers of the souls.”
After funerals, the funeral directors hand us an envelope with payment, a copy of the death certificate and a burial permit for our records. Wanting to finish and move forward from this sad event, I opened the envelope to process the paperwork to find only a check enclosed. I was a little dismayed at the delay in my process but I didn’t realize, at the time, that my lesson was close at hand. I called the funeral home and discovered that there would be no death certificate or burial permit because Galen died at four months in Loree’s womb and as far as the government was concerned Galen never existed.
I’ve never been one to freely discuss abortion with anyone for several reasons. The most important reason is that it’s painful because when I was seventeen I got pregnant (a fact that I have never told my family) and lost my baby girl, Hilary Anne, at three and a half months. I couldn’t bring myself to hold her, when the doctor asked, because I knew that if I did, my young heart might never recover. I, unlike Andrew and Loree, didn’t bury my child but instead let my well-meaning doctor take her. I think about my lost daughter often and hope like hell that when I die, she will be there so I can tell her how sorry I am that I couldn’t give her my touch, didn’t say out loud how much love I had for her and apologize for not asking for the help needed to bury her properly. My only excuse being I was young, naïve, and a coward; I pray that she is forgiving.
My lesson is this ~ In my heart and mind I believe that when you can hold, love, have pride and mourn over a child, regardless of it’s age, from time of conception to the time of it’s death, that child is a human being, deserving the right to be recognized, counted and loved. This event, that child and his parents gave me a gift ~ strength of conviction. Just a warning, don’t talk to me about the moral issue of a fetus not being a human being, unless you're willing to “hear” not just listen to my answer.
Very early Monday morning, I received a call from a young man. He said he was calling to enquire about prices for plots and burials. I recited the information, told him my hours and asked if he would like to come look at our maps sometime to see what we had available. He said that he and his wife would be there within the hour, softly saying “Because our baby died unexpectedly a few days ago and we need to make arrangements.” My heart dropped at those words, as it always does, and with a catch in my voice, I told the young man I’d help him any way I could.
I have phone calls, more often than I care to, from funeral directors setting up burials for deceased children. I seldom meet the parents; a fact, I’m ashamed to admit I’m thankful for, as children’s deaths are the hardest part of my job for me to endure, always remembering the funeral of my eight month old niece, Katrina. So, from the end of the phone call until I watched their car drive up to my office, my inner-spirit sent continual messages to my brain for calming strength.
The young couple, Andrew and Loree, mid-twenties, arrived at my office. Their red-rimmed eyes and haggard faces told the story of their heartbreaking past few days. They sat across from me and we talked of burial plots in our cemetery up on the hill. They had driven to the cemetery to find the perfect place prior to coming to my office, they told me. We looked at the map and as God had intended, the perfect spot for their child was available. We returned to the desk, to start the paperwork and the father began telling me about his son. “Galen, that’s his name. You should have seen him,” he said, “he was the most beautiful little boy…perfect, really.” At his declaration of love for his son, my tears started flowing along with theirs; my inner-strength not quite as solid as I’d hoped. The Kleenex box got moved to the middle of the desk. “I’m really so sorry for your loss,” I said, “but I’ll make sure we’ll take good care of him.” “I know,” the mother said, “that’s why we came here, because we were told you would.” Touched by the thought, all I could do was to nod and whisper “We will.”
Two days later, we had the burial for Galen; Andrew made the casket for his son, family and friends attended, the child was laid to rest.
After the funeral, my employees, Matt and Zeb, came to the office. They said that after the funeral, all the family members came up to them, introduced themselves and shook their hands. That had never happened before, they said, and they asked me if I knew why they did that. I said I did know and while trying to blink back my tears I explained.
“Having children of your own,” I said, “you know that before you have someone new watch your child, you want to meet them to assure yourself that they will take good care of your child. That’s all the family was doing. They were meeting the people who will be watching over their most precious possession.” They both nodded, already knowing the answer to their question, but wanting me to confirm. “Whether we like it or not,” I said, “we are the keepers of the souls.”
After funerals, the funeral directors hand us an envelope with payment, a copy of the death certificate and a burial permit for our records. Wanting to finish and move forward from this sad event, I opened the envelope to process the paperwork to find only a check enclosed. I was a little dismayed at the delay in my process but I didn’t realize, at the time, that my lesson was close at hand. I called the funeral home and discovered that there would be no death certificate or burial permit because Galen died at four months in Loree’s womb and as far as the government was concerned Galen never existed.
I’ve never been one to freely discuss abortion with anyone for several reasons. The most important reason is that it’s painful because when I was seventeen I got pregnant (a fact that I have never told my family) and lost my baby girl, Hilary Anne, at three and a half months. I couldn’t bring myself to hold her, when the doctor asked, because I knew that if I did, my young heart might never recover. I, unlike Andrew and Loree, didn’t bury my child but instead let my well-meaning doctor take her. I think about my lost daughter often and hope like hell that when I die, she will be there so I can tell her how sorry I am that I couldn’t give her my touch, didn’t say out loud how much love I had for her and apologize for not asking for the help needed to bury her properly. My only excuse being I was young, naïve, and a coward; I pray that she is forgiving.
My lesson is this ~ In my heart and mind I believe that when you can hold, love, have pride and mourn over a child, regardless of it’s age, from time of conception to the time of it’s death, that child is a human being, deserving the right to be recognized, counted and loved. This event, that child and his parents gave me a gift ~ strength of conviction. Just a warning, don’t talk to me about the moral issue of a fetus not being a human being, unless you're willing to “hear” not just listen to my answer.
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