Healer Healed

No wonder she was kind to my brother. She runs a ministry for beat-up and left-behind women, kind to everyone in the ragged human crowd, even the way-too proud.

I have a picture of my brother. I gave him a little sourwood sapling because sourwood honey is some of the best honey ever. And I wanted him to have sweetness. I have a picture of him planting this thing. He was so tender, you know, making sure it was exactly right and protected. The tenderness of planting that tree I will never forget… I was standing in the stands of the race car track. Dust, grit and thunder blew all over me from the black track and screaming cars a few feet away. I turned to look up at my brother twenty rows back up in the stands watching, enjoying the race. This delight in his face and eyes was new to me. My brother was listening on borrowed headphones tuned to the radio of driver's cursing complaints, the occasional crash and time waiting for the wrecks to be cleared. He smiled at me as I met his glance. We were checking in on each other, looking out for each other. I smiled and thought quietly. “Things are always more layered than they seem. This story is as much about me as it is about John. I think I am doing him a favor, but what am I really learning here?” The woman who loaned John the headphones noticed me, too. “Where do you work? I think I know you,” she offered. Not a chance, I thought, standing next to John amid the whitest Nascar short-track crowd I could have imagined. “You work at the hospital?” Yes, I admitted backing away. “I’m one of your visiting clergy! And the chaplain here at the track; we pray before the races and amid the injuries and celebrations.” No wonder she was kind to my brother. She runs a ministry for beatup and left-behind women, kind to everyone in the ragged human crowd, even the way-too proud. Sort of like my brother, enjoying me enjoying the track, despite myself. John was my oldest brother, ahead of me in years and turns in the road, literal and psychic. I knew him mostly by family complaints about his drinking and damaging choices. Always needing repair and recovery and forgiveness. But not from me as I was out of the damage zone.

It was my wife who saw him clearly and without blinders. “We don't care if you drink; just don't hurt yourself or others,” she said.

Late in our lives, I moved within an hour and a half to a new job while leaving a long marriage and starting a new one. Burning through his fourth or fifth wife and an unknowable number of treatment programs, John needed a brother. As it turned out, I did too. My brother wanted to finish strong, knowing he was close to finishing. I wanted a brother and felt the invitation to brothering. He, the expert in Grace, me the student helping him remember what he knew. I drove hours one time to take him to dinner, escaping from his exorcism treatment compound, creepy, mean and invasive. He thought it was his last resort, the final bit of floating debris he might cling to in the swirl going down. It was not. He did finish strong, a dad to his kids, a grandfather to theirs, a brother to me, a husband of sorts to his final wife of sorts. It was my wife who saw him clearly and without blinders. “We don't care if you drink; just don't hurt yourself or others,” she said. She, a clinical psychologist, refused to diagnose but noticed what he loved and feared, the shame and anxiousness most of all.” “We love you; you are welcome with us.” We watched lousy baseball together and shared a beer, which he mostly left behind. We drove to see my sister through a hurricane and back. When I tore my leg apart, he sat with me, just sat with me. John taught me enough about Grace that I could do his eulogy. He was a man who lived by Grace. He needed a lot and found it abundant.

John finished too soon, still rising. On every day—surely his last—he formed words into poems and poems into gifts. We still find scraps stuck in books we didn't know he read. Noticing a slant with irony and detail that would slip past one made less tender to the flow of life. Not too proud to accept the Grace and glory of a human life. I'm learning, too.

Amy looked at Joel. “Thanks, Joel. Such a moving story! I was so touched by the non-judgemental and unconditional love that helped them all get through.”