Learning to live with Loss

"Motherless Child" and the Birth of a "Care Giver"
While I continued to "work the line", I became involved with a church that my buddy Randy was going to. I remember my first meeting with the pastor...Jack..who I had known from Granny's. The meeting was shall we say...less than inviting...he basically tore me a new..mainly for my involvement with the "One Way In"..guilty by association. I was a walking wounded at this time anyway...still screwed up over the breakup of my last year in high school...what little self esteem I had or self confidence..was fragile at best and Pastor Jack,even though I think meant well...pretty much trashed me..it would be something I would continue to struggle with for years...a feeling in church like I was never quite "good enough"..never made the cut...never "lived up to it all"...in the years that followed I came to this conclusion...I was just plain DIFFERENT and was dealing with a group of people who were didn't"get it" and were never gonna "get it"...I had a different call and path to walk...and this tiny small minded little town couldn't back then wrap it's head around that.I would eventually find out just how different when i would take a "Briggs Meyers" temperment test and find that I occupied less than 1% of the general public.
The question then was"Why did you go to a church that abused you"?..my friends were there. simple...but there was developing in me this"Hang tough" mind set that would later in my life get me thru some really hard times..The "Church" at this time was entering into what I thought then and still feel today..a very harmful period...the whole.."Being Covered"...the mind set that you needed to be...baptized into the body of Christ...and "submitted the Authority...of the "Five Fold"...ministry"...Apostles,Prophets,Teachers, Evangelists and Pastors"...frankly at this time going to church for me felt more like "punching a time clock" than worshipping with the saints...dismal....I seemed to get "picked on and picked at"...more than encouraged in the faith...frankly IT SUCKED!!!!" It was LOVE that brought me to Christ....not LEGALISM"...and as time went by this "Ball and chain " began to get heavier....I started to feel like I couldn't blow my nose..change my mind or wipe my rear end ...without calling the "Elders" and getting their OK...it was frankly...STUPID!!. I remember Randy had asked me to sit in with the church band and help out...I was cool with it at the time..Pastor Jack had taken a 6 month sabbatical ...he had come back and called me up right after he had returned...I'm thinking..".cool my pastor wants to see how I'm doing"...well I go up to where he is building a new house...no "How you doing Steve...I been praying for you..."He fires me from the church band for missing....2 sundays...I tried to explain to him that "I WAS ON VACATION AND THERE BY OUT OF TOWN"...didn't make a dent...and honestly...playing for them guys was beginning to feel like a waste of both my time and the God given talent he had handed me.....as I told Randy...the church is making something very simple....unBELIEVABLY.....COMPLICATED!!!ok it's simple I love God and want to play my guitar for him...why do I have to forever..."pass the audition"? Much of this was in my humble opinion borderline..."cult" activity...built on shame guilt and manipulation and not the Love Of God that is based on freedom..faith and as the bible says..."Accepted in the Beloved"...these experiences alienated me from not God but his Church...Funny though...seeing today where my road led...the life of a "worship musician"...was ultimately...not in God's plan...and it started there. Discouragement came in "buckets" encouragement.....in "drops"...but a very funny and cool thing was beginning to happen to me out in the "real world"...the world someday that would pay me...everytime I walked into a local music store and picked up a guitar...plugged in,dialed up some lush distortion and began to play I would find myself surrounded in short order by fans of the guitar...without me even trying to raise so much as a whisper..kids ....ooooing and aaaaaaaing...."dude how do you do that?...where do you play?....how do you get that tone?.....do you give lessons?...it was a bit schizophrenic....At church where I had once found solace,acceptance and encouragement...and where I continued to offer my gift and was repeatedly rejected...here among the "sinners" I found acceptance and........ "RESPECT"...no questions asked...simple and easy......

With my first two jobs two jobs up north I bought 2 things a black Gibson Les Paul Custom and a Martin D-28...I've had the Martin ever since and it has been a dear friend thru many an up and down in my life...I continued to work the line while I was abused at church until..The Pipeline was done...it was then that I got a call from my Dad...he needed help with Mom..I had nothing going on and after the "Line" was done ...you were hard pressed to buy a job in town sweeping floors...or flipping burgers...the boom went bust....so I went home to help my Dad with my poor Mom. Let's look back....My mother had "Huntington's" disease...for those unaware..It's an inherited disease that has all the worst parts of Parkinson's schizophrenia,and Alstheimers ...my poor mom would be delusional, for days on end and twitch and jerk constantly.....My Grand father on my mom's side had had the disease..story goes he was a finish carpenter who got to ill to hold a hammer and committed suicide. My mom's two older sisters...got the disease...my aunt Leona would spend most of her adult life in an asylum where in those days the only treatment for this was shock therapy....aunt Dolores would get the disease and far out live even her husband...the disease is rarely fatal...it's usually complications of some sort......so imagine...my mom watching first her Dad,then Leona,then Deloros...come down with the disease...knowing what horrible madness lay ahead...God in heaven...what a dark cloud to live under!!!!! I can still remember the day in Anchorage...coming home from 6th grade to find mommy had been diagnosed with "That which she Feared the Most"...she was inconsolable...still despite that cloud Momma lived life,gave birth to 5 kids and loved my Dad passionately....even though it was a "love/ hate" relationship.
Here is the Mother i remember and cherish...when I was 5 or 6...maybe 7 I was in kindergarden or first grade...at this time we didn't seem to have much money...frankly I think my Dad had "went AWOL" from Mom and the family...any way I was feeling left out because all my school friends were coming to school with lunch boxes like "Batman" "Superman"..."Bugs Bunny"...with matching thermoses...full of chocolate milk...while I sat there with a brown bag and peanut butter. I started crying about that one night cause I felt like a loser before I even knew what that meant...Mom finally asked me "Why the tears?"....so in little boy speak I told her.....looking back Dad was AWOL Mom probably didn't have much in the cupboard but here is what she did...momma took out a tin of biscuits and made me not one but 4 "special" sandwiches....2 peanut butter and jam and 2 ham and cheese with French's mustard(my favorite even today) wrapped them up in wax paper like you get at the deli...then she took 4 Gerber baby food jars...went to the sink and washed off the labels(so I wouldn't look, like I was eating baby food)and made me two glasses of milk and then made me two glasses of fresh home made chocolate milk made from Hershey's chocolate powder and sugar!!!!!then she rummaged around in the pantry and found a can of peaches(My favorite)this being the days long before "Tupperware"..she poured what peaches she could in yet another trio of Gerber baby food jars...all this she placed in a shoe box that she tied closed with some Christmas ribbon and placed in the fridge.....the next day I went to school...head held high...with my shoe box of "custom made" "Gourmet" lunch tucked under my arm....eons before I would even know what gourmet meant...that day at noon I ate like the "King of England" feasting on peanut and butter jam, ham and cheese biscuits.....chocolate milk...peaches...out of my "shoes box"...Mom had put a napkin in there and a note...."Stevie I love you!...have a wonderful lunch"...Batman...Superman..and Bugs had nothing on me that day!!!...the power of LOVE and food......

So it was with this in mind I went home to help Dad with Momma...I had watched my dear sweet mother go from the vivasious woman full of life and love to a fragile shadow of her former self. After my Mom's commitment to Christ she completely embraced the bible based concept of healing.My mom accepted the concept that "If you ask anything in my name and believe that you have it you shall recieve it" mom was holding out for a "manisfestation" of God's provision until some well meaning albeit misinformed staffer from her church told her different, he all but handed my mom a death wish.After that Mom wanted to "Go Home".This was So So hard for us as a family,facing our Mothers demise.I remember Ellen called a family meeting, we sat at her dinner counter in her home,Me, Ellen,Daphne and Cindy,I was all of 22 my sisters were 14 and 15,Ellen finally approached the subject."If God decides not to heal Mom ....maybe it would be better if he took Her home,we sat there as this idea sunk in.....then.....Cindy......broke down...and...cried..."I don't want Momma to DIE!!!!!...then all of us began to weep! the reality of losing Mom..to death...was more than we could handle..Cindy crying..we all broke down!!!...we reached out and held each other and wept....wept such sad sad tears....I thought.....God why?why?.....I would so miss Momma...Cindy's tears......so so sad. Yet another road of sorrow I was to walk down....

Meantime Dad and I continued to care for Mom. Finally Mom got to ill for Dad and I handle. At one time Mom had gotten up at night...figuring in her delusional mind that "Jesus was coming to take her to heavan"she decided to open the back door to"let him in" I'm asleep....at about 3 am I wake up to seeing my breath and open my door....it's absolutly.....freezing....it's December....I get up and shut the door...meantime Dad comes out the bedroom and goes,,,,,"what the hell?""""so he looks at Mom and she tells him "Jesus is coming for me....I needed to leave the door open".....ok folks.....how do you deal with that? Dad goes..."Jesus can walk thru walls...he doesn't need you leave the back door open for him in the MIDDLE OF WINTER!!!

At this point mom was having to have everything she ate pureed. She was losing weight. Finally wound up in the hospital. Dad came to conclusion that she was beyond our abilities and had made arrangements with a full time rest home to move her there.....something none of us wanted..especially Mom..I remember the day Dad and I went to the hospital to take her there. As Dad was trying to get Mom to go she stood by the bed and hung on to the bed rails...my Father had to quietly but firmly pry Mom's fingers loose as he said..."Come on Daphne....we have to go"..I could see the pain and conflict written all over my Dad's face..that was one of the hardest things he ever had to do..it was so hard on all of us...
We would come and get Mom for home visits often. I would ask her how they were treating her there and Mom's reply was always..."I love coming home the best"...now that I'm of her age I can fully understand..I would want to come home too.
Dad decided to move back to Monterey afterwards and made me an offer to go with him. So I did. By now Dad was drinking a lot. I can't say that i blame him. I spent the next 8 months working construction with him and enjoying the scene. One of first things I did was go see a concert by one of my biggest influences. Carlos Santana. Eddy Money opened for him and "Two Tickets to Paradice " was everywhere. I would years and years later open a show with him and for years play the pants off that tune. I came very very close to staying in Monterey for good. But I felt God had a plan for me back in Alaska. Still the place was so beutiful...and inspiring. I even started to draw again. By now my influences on the guitar were numerous. Along with Santana, George Benson,Herb Ellis, Joe Pass, BB King, ZZ Top, Hendrix I was soaking it all up. As well as any Christian Music I could find..One guy who would continue to rev me up would be an amazing Chritian Guitar player..Phil Keaggy. He would play a major roll in my music for years.
After 8 months I decided to return to Alaska.
I moved back to Fairbanks and stayed with Randy and Eddy. They had moved to a duplex in town and rented me a room...a few months past, when Ellen called and said Mom had taken a turn for the worst. Life for my sister at this time was not to easy either. She had gone thru a painful divorce but was on the up swing having met a great guy..who would become my brother-In Law..Gary. He would be a tower of strength and strong shoulder for all of us to lean on thru this time. I was stupid broke then. Fairbanks having a down turn after the Pipeline days. But I took off to Anchorage and drove non-stop strait to the hospital. Mom had gotten down to 80 lbs and had pnumonia. I stayed around town and close to Mom for a week. She was just totally out of it. I was in her hospital room when Dad came in. He had flown back from Monterey. I'll never forget how she "came to" as soon as he walked in the door.Dispite all the turmoil in their lives, all the years of strife of pain and betrayal I sat there and witnessed how much they still loved each other as he bent over to hug his now frail wife who was sitting at the edge of eternity. Many years latter I would learn the mystry of love...how love has it's own set of rules and those rules run different for everyone I sat there as I watched them an from deep in my soul I cried and cried. I stayed around for the next week untill I had to go back to work. I kissed Momma good bye and drove back to Fairbanks...little did I know that would be the last time I'd ever see her alive. The night I got back home I'm lying in bed when the phone rings......I Just KNEW KNEW ...Momma was gone...Randy hands the phone to me and it's my ex-brother-in law. I knew....I sat there with Randy and Eddy and wept and wept....I had become a motherless child......motherless child....motherless child.....
For the next 2 years every time I heard a sad song I would brake down and cry. At the time I had a couple of friends who worked as orderlies at the Pioneers Home in Fairbanks. It was a gnarly job. Wiping up after old men and weman. Feeding them,changing soiled beds and giving showers. It did not appeal to me at all. But a very strange happened one day on the bus that would alter my life once again. These were the days before public transportation was set up for the infirmed. I sat there one sunny afternoon and this poor native girl of maybe 21 was trying to get on the bus. 3 small steps. It took her 10 minutes. No one offered to help,not the bus driver, and none of the riders. I could tell by the look on her face how humiliated she felt. Something deep in my spirit broke and I became overwhelmed with compassion. I began to silently weep. That day once again God had replace my heart of stone with a tender heart of flesh. The next day I went to the Pioneers Home and spoke with the head nurse Erma. I was honest and told her I had never done that kind of work before but I had spent years caring for a sick mother. Two weeks later I became a Nurses Aide and have remained in some aspect or another a care giver. From Nursing to 15 years in Mental Health. It has been the most enriching life I ever lived. Each day I remember the Scripture Jesus said "If you do this to the least of my brothern you do this to me" everytime I serve one of them,bath them,clean them,feed them,..I see Jesus. God has blessed me twice I work a day job that makes a daily difference in someones life. And I when I play music it brings joy to those who have little or none. Not a bad life. maybe not a rich one but a truely ENRICHED one.