Dear Bubba,
I remember when you were 57 years old. I was six and had probably as much energy then as my son Thomas Christopher has now at seven. One day, to help me burn off some of that energy (and to give my mother a break), you led me on a hike through the woods somewhere near Dayton, Ohio. Winter hung in the air, though I don’t recall whether the season was spring or fall. You wore a light-heather-gray sweatshirt, blue jeans, and tennis shoes.
For some reason those shoes led us off whatever trail we had started on — or maybe the trail we had started on simply came to a dead end at a creek. Either way, you selected the left edge of that creek as our path home. As with all creeks in my childhood memory, the flow varied between stretches of steady streams and stagnation. In some places the water appeared almost to have dried up. But this was an illusion of the most recent autumn, as layers of dead leaves lay browning in the brine trickling around and beneath them.
We came to a place where a damp, barren tree branch jutted out over the creek. The tree’s decrepit root system allowed the leafy water to reclaim the portion of our “trail” leading past it. A lazy, shallow pool lay there, mixing with the mud, forming a stretch of neither earth nor water. Being shorter than you, I had no need to duck when I hopped the two or three feet across the muck, passing blithely under the branch. Then I turned around to watch you, curious how my 57-year-old Bubba would navigate the most interesting land feature of our little hike.
I watched you sidle up to the sickly branch. You sized it up. “Michael!” you said (as only you say it, snapping me to attention), “I can’t believe your Bubba is about to do this.” You reached out, gripping the near side of the branch with your left palm and the far side of the branch with your right. So far so good. This commitment gave you the momentum to push off the earth with your left foot, slide yourself under the branch you still gripped, and plant your right foot on my side of the brown leafy sludge. Almost there.
Though you had shrewdly negotiated the obstacle up to the present, you did not dismount. Instead, you half hung, half stood there, straddling the muck, staring up at the branch, wrapping your hands around its neck like a lover, intent on pulling him out of the air and into your heart, lest the wind wrench you from his rugged arms and leave you — well, not alone, but alone in the woods with me.
All at once the lover got more than she wished for. CRACK: The branch snapped. Down went my Bubba into the drink. Down went the light gray sweatshirt. Down went the blue jeans. Up came the tennis shoes. Up with them came my Bubba’s voice, howling and laughing and probably swearing (although I do not remember hearing you swear, as I myself did not learn to swear until I was seven, and not from you). Playing at a reverse limbo, scrunching yourself up into a kind of squat, you pushed yourself up past my height with all the alacrity and grace of a fawn taking its first steps, shocked into action by nature’s harsh greeting to life outside the womb.
Finally you stood, as wide-eyed as me, hollering into the forest about how cold and wet and dirty you were — and how dumb — and how gross and wet your hair was, as you held one hand to the back of your head. You had smacked it on something hard in the muck, and, though you were not seriously injured, that may be why you do not remember this story as I do, if you do at all.
Now you are 90 years old. Like the trail we walked when you were 57, the trails you have wandered with your family this year — in and out of consciousness and coherence, in and out of states and hospitals and rehab facilities and homes and nearly into hospice—represent a combination of strange and complicated choices you have made, as well as strange and complicated realities that were chosen for you, chiefly by Almighty God.
You have also this year spent considerable time in the muck, but not alone, and this time with more than your grandson as a spectator. I will not say you have pulled yourself up from the muck as you so capably managed to do at 57, so much as you have been pulled out of it by God and those who love you. But you’ve heard this story before: Christ himself, not content to let you wallow in the muck of your sin, traded places with you, became for you the branch that does not break. You have clung to him, and his forgiveness has rescued you and carried you these intervening decades. He is the lover of your soul. Your daughters and sons and grandchildren have attempted to follow his example, because of his love for us, because of our love for him, and because of our love for you. This is not to say you have not also worked hard to help your family help you. You have worked hard: principally by summoning the will to remain, to keep living, and to keep loving, through the muck.
As a result, you are here today, at 90, for us to celebrate your life and your irreplaceable presence in our lives. That is what I am thankful for, and joyful about, on this birthday of yours. And that is why I told you this story. My thanks and joy today are of a specific quality and degree that remind me of the thanks and joy I experienced 33 years ago as your curious grandson, walking with my wet grandmother, my Bubba, who managed to pull her good humor and loving kindness and incredulous laughter with her out of the muck, and to make the most of her time with me.
I look forward — we all look forward — to continuing the hike with you, wet leaves, wet hair, and all, under the next branch, over the next pool, through the woods, all the way home.
Love,
MTH
12/13/24
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