Words on the Wall

Words on the Wall                   

By John W. Vander Velden

 

I took a moment to look at a needlepoint my mother had done years ago.  I didn’t study the delicate tiny x’s that, linked together, formed the image she had created.  I looked at the words on the wall. 

By Het Consert Deslevens,

Krygt Niemans EEn Program 

The words are in mom’s first language, Dutch.  I will confess I cannot read “Hollanse”.  I should, but I can’t.  I can pick out a word now and again…but it’s Greek to me.  But no worries, mom included the translation on this small work of her art. 

From Life’s Concert,

No One Gets A Program. 

Some might think the translation is clumsy…maybe.  But the meaning is clear enough. 

I think we are cheated.  The books we have read, the movies we see have seen, seem to indicate that there is a set sequence of events that make up life.  A program.  And we, as we stumble along, feel embittered when our life deviates from paths we are taught as normal.  We build our lives around imaginary scenarios of what should happen and when.  We stress when goals go uncompleted on schedule.  I had a whole list of things that I would achieve by twenty-five.  You how that went.  But since that time I felt I was always running “catchup”…you know get with the “program”. 

Mom was with dad when he passed in the living room of their home.  My younger brother was there.  I was there as well.  He was alive one moment…and then he was not.  At least not in the way it takes a pulse to measure.  You see faith tells me different.  But it was a very dramatic moment…the moving on.  A cold hard…harsh…unbelievable moment, we had witnessed.

Many times for the remainder of my mother’s life she would say, “He didn’t say good bye.”  The way he departed really bothered her.  She had been “hoodwinked”.  She had been led to believe that opportunity must have existed and was ignored.  She needed to remember the words on the wall…and what they mean.  Life doesn’t follow a program, and all those touching stories are nothing more than STORIES…not impossible but not necessarily real.

My father did not know the moment would arrive that morning…but he understood mortality very well.  The years he had trudged with his illness reminded him daily of the lessons that a lifetime of livestock farming had taught him.  The years we shared with him during that struggle should have told us.  Told us with words not formed out of letters or syllables. Told us that the end of that battle had but one outcome.  Dad tried to tell us good bye, maybe we weren’t listening.  Maybe we did not want to see it, tried to keep it beyond our thoughts, lock it away for someday.  But someday came, and we were not prepared.  It did not fit the “program”.  The event should have…well it should.  But it didn’t and we should never have believed it would.  Because like that needle point states…life doesn’t give us a program.  It is a difficult lesson to learn…I can’t say I have passed that test. 

I read the words and look back and see the truth.  And if the patterns in my wake show the disarray of hopes and accomplishments, then should I be surprised by future’s life “swerves”.  No!  Plan…yes.  Expect…maybe. Surprise…no doubt!!!  It is the very adventure to life.  There is no going to the last page to see how the story plays out.  Tomorrow and all the tomorrows we will be allotted are blank pages of possibilities.  They contain disappointments as well.  But that day ends with the promise of…no…there is no promise…no program…is there.  So use the day…wring out all that it offers…do the good thing you need to do…today…now.  Make your own pattern.  Don’t expect thing to follow even your expectations…let alone anyone else’s.  Times, life is just a dirty mess.  Times, we feel certain the whole world is unraveling.  Believe in yourself…believe in the day…believe in love…and believe GOD is still in charge, no matter what!  These are the thing that needle point makes me consider.  This is a truth I often overlook. 

So, I find that though my parents have moved from this dimension to the next, they still speak to me.  I see their faces and hear their voices, and sometimes see their words on the wall!

(771 Words)    2-13-2016