Journal of a Living Lady #61

Nancy White Kelly

 

Our son, Charlie, is finishing up his junior year at Toccoa Falls College. He is pushing himself hard to finish early, in three years rather than four. His dad and I  are recommending that he remove himself from such grueling pressure. It is showing on him. Other than the additional cost, adding one more semester will not make that much difference. His goal was for me to see him graduate in May. Now it will be December. If it is God’s will, I’ll make it to the end of 2001.  If not,  I will be at his college graduation in spirit. There is no doubt in my mind that he will sense that I am cheering him on as I always have, happy that he has completed one stage of his life and is moving on to another.

 

Seems like yesterday I was cradling this late-in-life,  miracle baby in my arms. Every night he was tucked into bed with nursery rhymes, songs, and bedtime stories. Now he is twenty, confident of much, yet youthfully unaware of what is ahead. Sometimes it seems that we have life backwards. If only we could start out with maturity and wisdom, work our forty years, and then finish life carefree, blissfully building castles in the sand.

 

Children born in 1980 have missed a lot. . They don’t know that remote controls weren’t always in the box with the television. They don’t have a clue who J.R. was or care who shot him. Euphemisms such as, “you sound like a broken record,” means nothing to them. Postage has always been thirty-something cents. They were pre-puberty when the Persian Gulf War was headline news. To the young, even the Vietnam War is ancient history.

 

Charlie has experienced burdens that I wish he could have waited until later to carry. I was first sick with cancer when he was five. For the last three years, he has seen and heard more about illness and death than is typical. His beloved grandmother died last year. His great-aunt is dying of liver cancer. And, all through his college journey, Charlie has come home on week-ends to a perpetually sick mother. It doesn’t seem fair. I was in my forties before being confronted with such serious illness and death.

 

When I first learned of the cancer recurrence, Charlie was finishing his senior year in high school. He sat down in the recliner beside me and told me about an allegorical book he had recently read. Probably he embellished the story a little bit to make a point.

 

Charlie told me that in the book there was a character named “Fear” who came to a river and stopped. Fear was afraid to cross the river and stood hesitantly at the shore. Finally “Courage” persuaded him to cross the murky waters, assuring Fear that it was safe on the other side. After crossing, Fear was so happy because he knew that he would never have to face crossing a river again. All was well.

 

That was such an encouragement. Here, the son I had given birth to, the little boy I had read to at night and sung to, was telling me a story, cheering me on. Every Sunday, as he heads back to the campus, he gives me a hug and tells me that he loves me. Frequently  he calls or e-mails with a reminder that he is praying for me.

 

Perhaps Charlie is wiser than I give him credit for. While he knows little about soap operas, As the World Turns, he has been to the Edge of Night. We both take comfort in knowing the real Guiding Light.

 

 

 

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e-mail: nancyk@alltel.net            http://www.anglefire.com/bc/nancykelly