Progression of a disease – death and dying is not for the weak of heart – Part 5

As I've said before, the process of dying is not for the weak of heart. That is not meant to be funny. Dying is a difficult process. Just as we struggle through life, the process of dying is yet another struggle and goes through a number of uncomfortable stages.

As a part time caregiver for my father prior to his death and caregiver to my sister in the years prior to her passing, I've taken note of a number of processes that seem to be the norm for someone who is preparing to pass away.

Sometimes that process can take years.

About seven years ago, one of my sister's close friends, an elderly woman she had befriended after moving here, was in her final years of her life. This friend had no one else in her life but my sister. Her husband had died many years before and never had children. The woman was, quite simply, old and frail and confined to her bed. She had several caregivers who came in to look after her, provide meals and the like. My sister used to visit her fairly regularly as the two of them truly enjoyed their banter.

Suddenly one day, the friend called my sister and told her never to visit her again. The woman pushed Pris away like a piece of old garbage and my sister could not understand the motive behind it all. Despite requests from the caregiver to still come and visit, my sister heeded her friend's request and never saw or spoke to her again.

My sister did something almost the same. She began pushing people away, all that is, except me.

In 2011, my sister suddenly decided she didn't want to celebrate holidays anymore. No more Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter or July 4th holidays for her. She stopped decorating at Christmas, though she did continue sending cards to friends and still gave gifts only to my family and I, along with her annual donations to local charities.

She stopped joining us for Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner, even to the point of refusing a plate of food. She wanted to be by herself, eat what she wanted and not participate in any of the activities.

It broke my heart.

I'm the person that doesn't want anyone to be alone for the holidays, to not have gifts to open, people to be around on such family-oriented holidays. I hate the thought of someone missing the great food on these holidays and all the traditions that mean so much. For years we had kept up our mother's traditions and for my sister to not want them anymore puzzled me to no end.

I still prepared a Christmas stocking for her, and never cut back on my gift-giving. Every year I continued making my mother's Scrabble mix and brought Pris a can. On Christmas morning, since she refused to visit our house, all of us would bundle up and carry bags of gifts over to her and watch her open them.

She may have eschewed Christmas, but she got a huge grin on her face when she saw those bags of gifts come through the door.

Still, the pushing away of family and friends, holidays and traditions seemed to be part of her process.

My sister, left, and I on a rare day out at the Jesse
and Frank James farmhouse in Kearney, MO. My
sister enjoyed the fact that my writing had brought
me into the James family world, so I took her out
to the farm for a tour. This photo was taken just four
months before her death.

Over the next year, she pushed more and more people and things away. It got to the point where I was the only visitor she wanted. Every morning before work, I went over to check on her and visit with her for awhile. I called or emailed her several times a day too.

My sister was fiercely independent, especially where she had never married. She learned to do for herself and was proficient as a "do-it-yourselfer." She loved to garden and was always outside in the summer before 7 a.m. to pull weeds, cut back the flowers that had bloomed and keep her yard in good shape. She washed her windows on the same date each year and had lists of household "to-dos" that she followed religiously.

She managed to live alone until early 2013, though the six months prior to that date she really should not have been alone.

She kept a lot from me.

By pushing everyone away, none of us realized she was significantly dropping weight. Despite strict dietary standards, her triglyceride readings never improved and her diabetes was still out of control. Her diet was bland and boring so she didn't eat much.

A few years ago she began seeing a ghost in the house. It was a woman dressed in 1970s clothing – pants and a vest – who never spoke to her, but just ... hung around.

Pris also had a lot of dreams. She often dreamt about the same things or variation of the same subject. Prophetically, she was coming to terms with the end of her life, issues she had – anger and fear – her soul seemed to be preparing for the end.

It became clear as I watched my sister go through these stages, listened to her dreams, prayed with her, that when someone dies through the normal process – that is – has a disease or simply dies of old age (in other words, the person does not die accidentally or quickly), then their soul prepares for death.

I will never know everything that went through her mind in those last years and days, but I do know she was struggling.

I lived right next door to her, but had a job, friends, activities, and my own family – a husband, son, daughter-in-law, grandson and two cats. I was rarely alone or lonely.

My sister, who was used to being on her own, had to have been lonely and would not admit it nor let anyone "in."

Yet, God gave us free will, which allows us to make choices in our lives.

Some of us choose to eat all the wrong foods, thus resulting in a related disease late in life.  Some of us choose to smoke cigarettes, cigars or chew tobacco, resulting in an illness or disease at some point. Some of us drink, do drugs or live in a perpetual state of stress, all of which, together or apart, causes disease and dysfunction.

The choices we make in life have consequences. Whether the consequences hit us late in life, or early in life, depends on the choices we make.

My sister had to cope with the choices she made, as well as the ones made for her. In an earlier column, I mentioned that my parents pushed her into her career field and she never forgave them. She chose to smoke cigarettes for 35 years and that same career field caused her enough stress as to contribute to her massive stroke 20 years ago. Yet, the same career field proved she was a savvy businesswoman who did an outstanding job handling her own finances.

As 2012 progressed, my sister really slowed down. With her weight at a dangerously low level, she became more unbalanced and unable to walk. Nevertheless, we both made light of it and she learned to adjust. She would walk out to her car and due to equilibrium issues, she would take three steps to the left and three to the right and then maybe walk a straight line. She was terrified of falling and so found ways to cope. Her little left/right dance was almost lyrical as she would move about the house and property.

She spent years and years planning her death and getting her affairs in order. Not only did she tackle all that beforehand, she also began going through her household and re-reading every book she owned.

She would read a book again and either give it to me, donate it or get rid of it. Her reasoning, as she told me one day, was so I wouldn't have to do it.

She managed to dust and vacuum her house almost up until she went into the hospital for the last time and did her best to keep her home and herself clean.

No matter how vigilant she was, however, she couldn't stop the congestive heart failure from finally putting its foot down and saying "enough is enough!"

In the last few months of 2012, my sister began falling out of bed at night. She attributed it to low blood sugar attacks, because her sugar would be low, but she also began injuring herself whilst falling out of bed ... and then not telling me for several days.

She also decided not to tell me about doctor's appointments, explaining that "they" never gave her the blood work anymore and she would not allow me to request them. I found a stack of reports neatly in a folder after she died – they told the whole story.

After years of holding the congestive heart failure at bay, in 2012 my sister's fluid levels began to rise and rise.

The lack of oxygen to the brain, the sugar readings out of control, the fluid collecting all over the body so as not to be acutely visible in one spot, all contributed to her health beginning to fail.

On Dec. 11,  her 71st birthday, we went out to breakfast as was our custom. It was her favorite meal to eat out. It was always just us girls. She never got anything special – keeping to her diet requirements, she would order tea, scrambled eggs and dry toast. Still, she LOVED getting out.

She had another doctor's appointment the next day and failed to tell me, once again, the results. It turned out the blood work showed her fluid levels, already out of control at thousands of points over what is normal, were now in the tens of thousands.

I am convince Pris knew she was at the end. My job was so stressful during that year that she purposely kept her own health from me so as to protect me, especially during the holiday season. She knew I had a boss who would not be supportive if I had to take time off.

Christmas came and went and a few days before Jan. 1, I told my husband, after a lengthy visit with my sister, that I knew she'd just had her last Christmas.

He claimed I said that every year and that my tenacious sister had already well outlived the doctor's predictions from her first diagnosis. But I knew I was right, it was just a matter of when.

My sister's greatest battle lay just ahead and it would prove to be the most difficult, most painful and most heart-rendering of them all.

Progression of a disease – death and dying is not for the weak of heart – Part 4

The frenzy with which my sister had cleaned our Dad's home in the hours after he passed did not abate. After his funeral, she began working on his house, which he had left her in his will, to prepare it for her to move into.

She started in mid-February and kept at it for months.

She assembled items for auction and had them hauled off.  She went through Dad's clothes and gave them to me to deal with. Much to my delight, his black clerical suits (without the collar) went to a homeless shelter in Kansas City because the homeless men had nothing to be buried in.

Dad would have been thrilled that he helped the poor in some small way.

Pris got rid of duplicate household items, painted every room, added wallpaper strips to every room (much to my dismay years later) and made his house her own. By May she had hired movers to help bring the big items from her house to his and she was finally done.

She refused all offers of help from my husband and I, and moved quite a bit of her items herself. However, after all those years of looking after our Dad, especially the last three weeks of his life, she had not really cared for her own health.

Pris still suffered greatly from her 1993 stroke. She had difficulty walking, her equilibrium not quite 100 percent. Her vision left a lot to be desired and her breathing was always labored.

She admitted she wasn't feeling well a few months after Dad passed away and I took her to the hospital where she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. The doctor told her she'd had several small heart attacks in the months after Dad died. All the frenetic activity had not been good for her coming on top of months and months of little sleep and a lot of care for Dad.

I'm sure my sister had anticipated that once Dad passed away, her life would pretty much return to normal. She had plenty of interests that she could still enjoy – driving, shopping, perusing the Internet, puzzles, arts and crafts, gardening and cleaning.

The heart attacks and diagnosis of CHF struck a devastating blow to her psyche. She became more withdrawn and cranky. It slowed her down significantly and contributed to her already shaky equilibrium.

Eighteen months after Dad passed, in the summer of 2003, Pris decided to have the house sided. She always had a habit of using whatever local workers she could find on her own, without ever checking credentials. For someone so savvy in the business world, this would often leave her with problems.

For example: from the time Dad died until Pris passed away, she insisted on using the same mechanic for her oil changes. He was local to our town and had a very poor reputation for lousy work, overcharging and claiming problems that didn't exist with your vehicle. We had been burned by him at least once as had several people we knew. Despite these testimonials, Pris dug her heels in every time and continued to bring her vehicle back to this guy.

So it was the same with the siding contractor. A small, local business, the owner sent two people over to do the job. While the siding has more or less held up over the years, the problems that presented themselves during the two weeks it took them to side the house nearly drove my sister to her grave.

And cranky? She was off the charts miserable. I couldn't talk to her at all.

Over the subsequent years, I determined that my sister was a very angry woman. Gone was the talented, savvy woman who worked so hard at her job 20 years before. Gone was the incredible sense of humor.  If you didn't do what she asked when she snapped her fingers, she would explode. Often her explosions had no explanation, no merit, and came out of nowhere.

My husband, my son and I learned to tiptoe around her, though I was usually on the receiving end of her tirades.

I eventually got some things out of her that helped me to understand her behavior. Life had dealt her some difficult blows.

Because there was 15 years between us in age, she was raised in the '40s and '50s, while I was raised in the '60s and '70s. Our parents were born in the early years of the 20th century and had an incredibly difficult time adjusting to life as it was in the 1960s and 1970s.

When Pris graduated from high school, she wanted to be a missionary. Looking back at her school years, she was very popular and well-liked. She was on the debating team, yearbook and newspaper staff, played sports and loved the drama club. She was active in Girl Scouts and had a very popular column in the city's newspaper while in school.

This was not the same gal that emerged from college with a teaching degree. Mom and Dad refused to allow her to become a missionary. She was to be a teacher or secretary – that's it.

It would take many, many years for this to come out of Pris in a huge display of anger – and she waited until both parents were gone before letting it out.

She only taught school for one year, souring on it very quickly. Prior to that, while she was a student teacher in Newark, NJ, she had disciplined a student in her class early one day and at day's end, she had her back turned to the door and was writing on the blackboard in the rear of the class. She suddenly heard someone shriek behind her and turned to find the student she had disciplined with his arm raised, a knife clutched in his hand, ready to plunge it into her back when the regular teacher had walked into the room and caught him before the deed was done.

Nevertheless, despite the close call, Pris finished college and got a job at the high school in Vineland, N.J., where we were then living by then. After just one school year she'd had enough.

Mom and Dad quickly pushed her into a banking career, having a parishioner who worked at a local bank; he helped Pris get a teller job.

It turned out that Pris had found her niche. She was really good at handling money and quickly moved up through the ranks into the Trust Department. She was well-respected in her job and managed to withstand every merger for the next 27 years, ending her career as a Vice-President in charge of Trust with J.P. Morgan Chase.

She hated every minute of it, but she was very good at what she did.

She ended her career despising most men, a consequence of having worked in the business-like setting all those years when men were paid more than women, more well-respected than women, and got away with misbehaving much easier, along with sexual harassment being the larger order of the day.

She was laid off in 1992 when her branch closed and, not wanting to transfer to New York, she decided to come out to Missouri where Dad was clearly in need of being looked after.

After one year of searching for work and finding herself overqualified for that which she was trained to do, she had a massive stroke in 1993.

By 2003, she was a bitter, angry woman. She not only had suffered the debilitating stroke in '93, diagnosed with congestive heart failure in 2002, but she had severe diabetes II, macular degeneration and glaucoma, as well as high blood pressure.

No amount of medication or diet lowered her triglycerides. There was no joy in her life. She was limited on walking, which affected being able to take herself to the mall, or visit some of the small towns out here that offer boutiques and interesting antique shops in which to browse.

My sister never married, but did have a bit of a romantic life during her younger working years. Used to living alone, she had a difficult time understanding what it was like to live with someone else, so she spent a great deal of time in the years after our Dad's death, being angry at him for things he did that merely illustrated that he was simply a man. Living with someone else requires anyone to have a measure of compromise in their life. All the years of looking after Dad demanded that Pris would often have to sleep at his house and otherwise spend a great deal of time doing things for him.

His habits annoyed her. Our habits annoyed her.

How do you help someone whose own choices in life created the hell she was living in? She chose to smoke cigarettes for 35 years, not exercise and work in a very stressful atmosphere.

Not only was she angry at our parents for her career path, but she was angry at herself for her own choices.

Looking after my sister was a lesson in compassion and strength.  While she was angry, she could also show the most compassion and caring attitude that I've ever witnessed. She always donated to the needy, anonymously, every year at Christmas. She took care of us, especially me in every hour of need. She was there for me throughout my entire life.

She never gave up and she fought life's battles with ferocity.

In 2005 she suffered another heart attack and had to be hospitalized with severe symptoms of her congestive heart failure. At the same time and for several years after, she suffered from additional problems with her eyes, though by 2009, her eyesight had finally improved.

In 2008 she had another stroke and was hospitalized for that, along with the edema that collected around her heart. Her kidneys were beginning to fail.

Still my sister persevered.

She drove herself to the city to shop, went antiquing and continued doing her own housework. She was rarely idle.

With sleep elusive to her much of the time, she went to bed very early and was up by the crack of dawn if not before. It was a frequent sight to be making coffee at 6 a.m. and see her in her backyard pulling weeds – her head covered in mosquito netting.

She learned to live with her limitations and found ways around everything. She tried new diabetic recipes and began enjoying the art of cooking. She and I traded books, often discussing the plot lines. She reveled in my newspaper work and eagerly read my columns and gave me advice – that English major she once was proving that her education was not for naught.

Every year would bring me to the conclusion that it was her last Christmas, but every new year brought new surprising examples of Prissy's tenacity.

It is amazing at what the human spirit can endure. Years of suffering, years of limited activity, limited mental acuity, limited enjoyment of life – yet a person will remain plugging away at life.

Through it all, I am convinced that Pris knew that God had a purpose for her and she had to remain faithful.

By 2012, however, things began to change.

Progression of a disease – death and dying is not for the weak of heart – Part 3

At 1:18 a.m., on a cold February Tuesday morning, my father drew his last breath. Up until that point in my life, I had never been with anyone when they died, I had been en route to the hospital when my mother passed away 20 years earlier.

Dad's passing was peaceful and handled well by Kansas City Hospice. Back in that day, hospice care meant that the nurse came to the house twice a week, arranged for the meds, advice and medical equipment you needed and nothing else. The nurse was the one we called to report Dad's passing and we waited for her to arrive from where she lived a few hours away.

Dad lay still in his hospital bed, in his beloved office at his house – right where he wanted to die. Priscilla and I were exhausted. I had only had one hour's sleep – she hadn't slept in over 48 hours and went into overdrive.

While I sat back bemused, Pris started cleaning the house while we waited for the nurse to arrive. It was as if she had stored up several days worth of energy for this one moment of frenzied cleaning.

Our brother was already booked to fly in later that afternoon and would be staying at Dad's.

Nearly two hours after Dad passed away, the nurse got to the house and officially declared our father dead, relying on our report of the time of death. She called the funeral home director who happened to be a close friend of Dad's.

Ken got out of bed in the middle of the night and came himself to tend to his old friend. I had spent the previous few hours with my Dad, unwilling to let go of him while my sister frantically cleaned every inch of the house.

When Ken got to the house, it all hit me. My daddy was gone and not coming back. His body was leaving the house he loved on a stretcher, his face covered by a sheet. I went into hysterics.

Poor Ken was in tears himself – he and Dad had, for years, enjoyed early morning breakfasts downtown. He was taking an old friend to the funeral home and that couldn't have been easy.

I obsessed over Dad's face being covered as if that single act would signal the finality that he was truly dead.

My sister pulled me out of the house and into the garage where I couldn't see anything. I was still in hysterics.

My Daddy was gone. Gone was the man who walked me all over Fredericksburg, Virginia as a baby in the stroller – proudly declaring to all that I was his new daughter. Gone was the man who drove me to the library every Wednesday afternoon as a youngster so we could each check out a book to read – he had cultivated my love of books. Gone was the man I loved to walk with every day as a child and as an adult, my hand tucked into his.

Whenever I whined that my feet hurt, he would say, "Yes, dear. Take your foot off and put it in your pocket." Somehow, what sounded insensitive actually did the trick and my feet stopped hurting.

Gone was the man whose constant humming never annoyed me, but delighted my very soul in the absolute joy HE got out of life.

Gone was the man who had a difficult time hugging and saying he loved you, but who sent me a birthday card on my 40th birthday that simply said, "My baby is turning 40."

Gone was the man who, just the summer before, had grinned so broadly at a sweet waitress in a small town in Missouri, that I realized just how charming he was to everyone.

Gone was the man who could "guffaw" like nobody's business over the silliest things. Who got on all fours, even into his 80s and would chase my sister and I all over the living room snorting at us. What "got us" as kids, still "got us" as adults.

Gone was the man who worshipped the ground my little son walked on. He was the grandpa who now proudly introduced "my grandson Cody" to everyone before he introduced Pris and I. All the photos I have of my Dad and my son from Cody's youth are of my son trailing behind his Grandpa ... from the shed, from their morning walks, in the office, on the porch, in the living room – even as 10-month-old who couldn't walk yet, sitting on the kitchen floor watching his grandpa cook.

Gone was the man who once admitted to me that he fell in love with our mother because he loved her whimsical smile.

Gone was the man who, when I was young, I never thought had a backbone, but proved he did when he stood up for me to an abusive boss I had at 17, and before that, to the neighborhood boys who used to chase me with snakes.

I sobbed and cried that night as they hauled my Dad out of his house, face uncovered at my orders – the stretcher pushed by an old friend, tears running down his own face.

Six days after he passed away, my dad was laid to rest next to my mother – his headstone the same as hers, containing his name, dates, and below them, the simple word – Priest. His utter devotion to God was his final declaration.

Before I knew it, 10 years had passed since I became an orphan. Life did go on. My husband, son and I moved into my sister's home and she moved into Dad's. It was our duty and privilege to look after Priscilla now.

My son handled his grandfather's passing with stoic grace. He weathered years of bullying here in this old Midwestern town. Some of the taunts included heinous accusations made against him and his grandfather because he constantly visited his grandfather's grave. He withstood it all and never wavered in his love and admiration for his grandpa.

My Dad's quiet faith, love and grace changed all of us.

It's now been 11 1/2 years since he left us and in less than two weeks, it will be the 31st anniversary of my mother's passing. It's true that it gets easier to lose a loved one, but thankfully, the memories never go away. They become more rich with time and should never be forgotten.

I can remember my parent's voices. I can hear my mother call my name when she'd get annoyed with me, "Elizabeth Anne!" I can hear my father laughing out loud at something funny, which he often did. He had the best sense of humor in the world.  I can hear his humming and the jingle of the change in his pocket as he waited for us all to finish getting ready to go somewhere – he was always early!

In recent years as Facebook as exploded with the rush of social media, I have run into many people who remember my Dad. These tidbits of remembrance have warmed my heart more than anyone could know. One man told me Dad influenced him into becoming a minister. Several others warmly remembered being acolytes for him. Another told me that my father's sermons helped me become a believer in Christ. Still others simply attended our church and remember his voice, his preaching, his kind personality.

When I wrote for a local newspaper several years ago, I had written an opinion piece about my Dad and was contacted by a woman who said my father married her and her husband many years before. She spoke of how gracious he was, especially when their car broke down and they were late to their own wedding.

We all think no one will remember us. We all believe we've not made a difference in someone's life. We all believe we somehow never quite measure up to an ideal we have in our minds.

My father was no different. On his last Father's Day he said, "I'm so sorry I wasn't a good dad."

I was shocked. Not a good Dad? "No," I told my father. "You weren't a good dad – you were the best there ever was and I'm grateful every single day that God blessed me with you." He rewarded me with that dimpled grin of his.

Not a day goes by that I don't grieve a little for my father. I miss my mother, but my strongest bond was always with dad. I never learned that he spent so much time with me as a young child until my sister told me several years ago. He was in his 40s when I was born and older and wiser than he was when my brother and sister were little. He had been a very busy young minister during their youth and he was determined to not miss a moment.

Lately, I've watched many of my classmates going through similar circumstances. Just today, one mentioned that his father recently died and now he had to sell the family home. That thread of conversation led to many others expressing similar sentiments.

It's never easy to lose one's parents (or any other loved one). Our childhoods are usually something very precious to us. I can easily say that mine was as perfect as it gets, despite being bullied. My parents loved me and took great care of me. They taught me right from wrong, to stand up for what was right and against what is wrong. They provided me with wonderful family vacations every year and a strong sense of family. They brought me to my faith in God and love for Christ.

Countless nights were spent around the old TV, watching Disney, I Love Lucy, Laugh-In, Car 54 Where Are You?, The Honeymooners, Carol Burnett, All in the Family, and my mother's favorite, Masterpiece Theater. Most families don't spend that kind of time together anymore.

As we age, I can only pray my own son will remember me with as much fondness as I remember my parents. That he will hear my voice in his head years after I pass on. That he will some day remind his children of the great times he had with his grandfather and who he was.

Our parents are our legacy and we are our children's legacy.

Progression of a disease – death and dying is not for the weak of heart – Part 2

It was a fairly mild Friday, Jan. 11, 2002, when my Dad was released from the local hospital and sent home to die. My sister and I drove him home from the hospital, just about two miles from his house and while we were driving, he suddenly said, "Hey! It's Mike's birthday today!"

Mike is my husband and was delighted to hear that my Dad remembered his birthday on what, for most people, is a glum day – being sent home to die.

My husband's father was not a nice man and mercifully died in April of 1971. My own father, the best of the best, became a surrogate father to my husband and trusted him implicitly. He asked Mike to shave him while he was in his last weeks, to take him on drives and talked to him constantly about God and Jesus. For someone who was not even baptized until he met me, it was imperative for Michael to learn what he could from someone as deep into his faith as my father.

That bond and spiritual teaching changed my husband forever.

We quickly got Dad set up with a hospital bed and all the "stuff" one needs when sent home with renal failure. Caregivers were hired and thankfully, we truly liked all who cared for our Dad.

My poor sister suffered through all of this. Dad leaned on her heavily because she was the family caregiver – with him 24/7. It's not an easy job no matter who you are caring for as I would later learn.

If there's one thing I've learned through my father and my sister's dying process is that no matter how nice or mean you might be before you start dying, most people go through a lot of personality issues and changes.

Dad relied on Pris and had for many years, while I was still his baby and the one he fully trusted for wisdom. My sister found that frustrating. I have never understood why he decided I was "the one who must be obeyed," versus Pris, who had looked after him for nearly 10 years.  However, I could say the same thing to him that Pris did and he would scorn her advice and take mine!

I could get him to eat when she couldn't. I could calm him when he began having difficulty breathing. In the end, it was I who could get him into that hospital bed he dreaded so much. Meanwhile, he would push her buttons to the max, frustrating and mentally challenging her. That stress probably contributed to the heart attacks she had just after Dad passed on, and had he been fully aware he was doing that to an already sick daughter, he would have been horrified by his own behavior.

However, I truly believe that during the dying process, we become unaware of our own misbehavior at times. Perhaps it's a simple hormonal or chemical change in the brain, where we decide we're dying anyway, so the gloves come off. In a sense, misbehaving becomes the thing we can do without consequences.

Dad remained unfailingly polite to everyone else, he just got more mischievous with Pris. An example follows:

Pris hated cooking, yet in her younger years she was very good at it. But remember that she suffered the debilitating stroke eight years earlier and had been on a severely restrictive diet ever since – so cooking all that comfort food for a dying man who, after requesting something and she would make it, often decided he didn't want it after all.

I could walk into the house, get her into another room and he would happily clean off his entire plate.

Still, we all drew comfort from the three weeks and 2 1/2 days we had with Dad before he passed. The three weekends I spent with him were delightful. One night out of the weekends it was Pris, Dad and I and we had a great time sharing family memories. We visited as best we could, we knew each moment was precious.

Dad drew up into the strength of faith he had. He also benefited from regular visits from the Bishop of Western Missouri, the minister of our church as well as numerous retired clergy with whom he was friends. His beloved parishioners added to a steady stream of visitors over that three weeks. He was brought communion every Sunday, and right up to two days before he died, he was still making sure the other sick and dying in the parish were receiving their communion.

It can't be easy to relinquish your physical care to others. We're all proud, every one of us. Simple acts, such as toilet duties, showering/bathing, brushing your teeth, shaving and caring for your nails is difficult to place on someone else's shoulders.

But we did it.

My sister and I dealt with all those things for Dad and he appreciated it.

It's all about making your loved one comfortable and feeling loved.

Two nights before Dad passed, we knew the time had finally come. We'd had a horrific ice storm the previous Tuesday (Jan. 29, 2002) and many in town were without power by Thursday, including our Dad's house. The caregiver went above and beyond the call of duty and took Dad and Pris to her house 20 miles away where she had electricity for Dad's oxygen and heat to keep him warm.

It couldn't have been easy to get an 87-year-old man on oxygen, out the door, down the two steps and into a car – sounds simple – but everything was covered in several inches of ice at the time.

Nevertheless, that dear woman got them into the car and to her house. She kept them for two days until the power came back on. By Saturday night, they were back at home, but Pris hadn't slept in days and was furious because Dad was insisting she stay. It was her night off and she stomped off to her house, leaving me with a father who was refusing to eat. For her.

I sat down and spoke with him and he announced he was hungry, immediately digging into his food. The overnight caregiver came and we settled in for what would be a long, rather humorous night.

Dad was up and down and up and down from his bed to his recliner and back again for hours. He had refused to get into his hospital bed on the theory that he would die if he lay in it. Despite his faith and excitement to see Jesus at last, his human traits kicked in and he decided he wasn't going to "go."

At one point, he was in his recliner and I on the couch dozing and he asked to get up and go to bed. The caregiver and I each took a side and started walking him down the hallway. I told him, "Dad, you woke me from a dream about you."

"Well, dear," he said, "it must have been a nightmare."

That familiar sense of humor was still intact.

Ten minutes later he wanted out of bed and into the recliner. We went to get him and he turned to me and said, "I want to go downstairs for breakfast,"

I replied, "Dad, this is a ranch house, there IS no downstairs."

To which he quickly retorted, "Then I want to go upstairs!"

It was like this the entire night. He sure kept us entertained. And every single time he got out of bed he would look at me and say, "Elizabeth, I had your mother warming my backside all night you know."

I had no doubt Mom had been there by his side. Even more interesting was Dad's choice of the phrase, "warming my backside." After Dad passed, I read a number of Mom's letters to him in which, in the very early years of their marriage, and he was traveling, she wrote of missing him at home with her, warming her backside.

That Sunday night was difficult for Dad. He'd had a number of visitors come by all day to say goodbye. This group included one vestry member who had been a close friend the entire time Dad had lived here. She claimed she hated being around the dying and I had to shame her into visiting him because it wasn't about "her" – it was about him.

I never could understand people who let these things get in the way of doing what is right ... they avoid funerals or hospitals because they fear them or despise them or it makes them uncomfortable. It is NOT about them. It's about the person who is sick or dying.

That goes for people and their pets too. I once knew a woman who had to take her cat, one she professed to love so much, to be put down. I went with her and she turned to leave. The vet asked her if she wanted to stay and comfort her pet? "No," she replied. "I can't handle watching my pet die."

I was horrified that she'd leave the already shaking cat with the vet, no familiar human by the cat's side. I offered to stay and she refused to let me stay. Actually, that whole scenario still haunts me to this day. Some people aren't meant to have animals.

God constantly challenges us to do things that are out of our comfort level. It's never about us – it's about others. We are commanded to take care of animals, just as we are to take care of each other.

Taking care of my dying father was clearly out of my comfort level, but both Pris and I were up for the challenge.

Dad didn't sleep his last full night. But he didi manage to entertain us plenty. Every once in a while he would demand I fan him.

"What?" I asked.

"He wants you to fan him," replied Pris.

"Why?" I asked. "It's the dead of winter with two inches of ice outside."

She shrugged and said, "He's hot!" (this is another not uncommon part of dying – being hot and wanting air flowing)

So, we fanned our father. We helped him go potty, we washed him up, we joked with him, we sometimes prayed with him, but that made him nervous. Nothing like your two daughters praying over you when YOU are the priest.

The next morning the nurse came from hospice (Kansas City Hospice - superb people by the way), and told us he had about a week to live.

Dad then asked me for a big chunk of the fresh lasagna I had made the day before and happily sat down to eat it in his favorite chair.

He was still able to sit up, eat and have a short conversation, though he occasionally was out of it. Renal failure means the fluids are backing up in his body and that affected his lucidity at times.

I knelt by his chair and told him it was time to let go and go home. Hospice was always clear with the family that often a patient needs to be told it's OK to let go.

Dad stopped eating and stared at me with the most intense look I'd ever had from him and nodded.

"I love you Daddy," I told him.

"And I love you ... very much," he replied.

For a man who had a most difficult time hugging and telling someone that he loved them, this was like music to my ears.

I kissed the top of his head and went home.

Later that evening, I had dinner and two glasses of wine. Not having slept in two days, but being keyed up, I felt I needed the boost to get some sleep.

It worked. I went out like a light for all of one hour. At 11 p.m., I was awakened by the phone ringing off the hook. It was my sister.

"Liz," she said. "Daddy is dying now."

"What?" I asked. "I thought the nurse said he had a week to go."

"You told him it was OK to go before you left today," Pris said. "He took you seriously. He's been in a sort of coma since about 5 p.m. His fluids are backed up and he's restless. He won't allow anything to touch his skin."

Dad had what is commonly known as terminal restlessness. It is, to me, the worse part of the dying process and there will be more on this later in this series.

"You need to come," said Pris.

I told her that I'd had two glasses of wine just a few hours earlier. She totally understood, but she also knew me very well.

"You don't have to come Liz. I won't blame you if you don't," she said. "But you will never forgive yourself if you don't come."

She was right.

I got up, brewed some coffee and showered – managing to get the effects of the wine out of my system – and cleared my head for the drive to my father's.

I can still remember turning down the street my Dad lived on. The only lights on in the neighborhood were at his house – and every, single light was on.

I went immediately to his room and found Pris hovering over him and the caregiver at the end of the bed. Pris informed me that Dad had been calling out to two of his late sisters all evening.

We each  took a hand and spoke to him. I told him I was there. Pris said that even though he'd been speaking to his deceased sisters all night, he was otherwise in a coma and unable to speak to us.

Nevertheless, Dad proved her wrong. Within a few minutes, his eyes flew open and settled on my face for a moment and then Priscilla's. He squeezed each of our hands, closed his eyes and let out one last breath.

In one last comic moment, all three of us scrambled to find a pulse. We didn't find one and were puzzled by it, having been so used to it being there. But, after 87 years, 2 months and 28 days, Dad's heart had stopped beating.

My beautiful, wonderful Daddy was gone. I knew he was seeing the face of his beloved Jesus at last. He had told me nearly a year before that I was not to be sad for him, because he had lived his entire life for Jesus and to live with him in eternity.  He couldn't wait to get to heaven.

Well, he was there at last.

One journey was over, but the next long and difficult one lay ahead for my sister.

Progression of a disease – death and dying is not for the weak of heart – Part 1

Twenty years ago my 52-year-old sister suffered a massive stroke. This incident set in motion a number of debilitating afflictions, trials and tribulations for her.

She would prove stronger than her diseases and larger than life in her death.

Priscilla awoke dizzy during the night one day in late March, 1993. She felt nauseous and found herself unstable and wobbly while trying to reach her bathroom. The left side of her face was drooping and she had little feeling on the same side of her body.

She called our dad that morning and told him what was wrong. She had no idea she'd had a stroke. Neither did Dad. He took her to the local emergency room and was told she most likely had Bells Palsy, a disorder in which nerves that are damaged in the face can cause paralysis in the muscles.

The doctor suggested she see a chiropractor. Dad then drove her to his chiropractor, someone he completely trusted and had been seeing for years.

After one adjustment, Priscilla's symptoms not only did not improve, but she no longer could swallow – at all.

The swallowing reflex is something we take for granted 24/7 and to not have that ability is something that is difficult to describe or imagine.

She went back to the hospital and was told she would feel better soon. Dad took her to his doctor, who told her the same. Feeling he'd done everything he could, my Dad, who was the best minister in the world and the best Dad – simply wasn't good at this sort of thing. He took Priscilla home and simply accepted what the doctor had told her.

Days crept by and Priscilla didn't improve. The inability to swallow meant she couldn't eat or drink anything and saliva was collecting in her mouth causing her to drool and have to spit constantly.

During all of this, we were amazed at the doctor's offices and hospital. Usually, full information is taken in an emergency room on a patient ... "do you smoke? do you drink? do you have high blood pressure? do you have diabetes? what is the family history?"

Priscilla was a heavy smoker. She'd left a job of 27 years in 1992 and moved from New Jersey to Missouri to look after our Dad. She bought the property next door to him, settled into her first house with great glee and proceeded to look for a job.

A savvy businesswoman who had worked as a trust officer and then vice president of J.P. Morgan Chase for most of her career, she had, at one time handled Campbell Soup's investments.

Unfortunately for my sister, you can't do the same job in Missouri as in New Jersey unless you are an attorney. So her job search yielded her nothing but, "We're sorry, but you're over-qualified."

She would have taken any job by March of 1993, but the stroke interceded, and was most likely caused by the amount of stress she had endured at her job all those years, the move and the unsuccessful search for work, not to mention 35 years of smoking.

After a week of no food, no water and no swallowing, my Dad knew something was drastically wrong and took her into St. Luke's hospital in Kansas City.

Pris was diagnosed with a massive stroke and kept in the hospital for over a month. Unfortunately, with a week in between the stroke and hospitalization, there was nothing anyone could do except rehabilitate my sister.

She was off the cigarettes for sure – cold turkey. She had to have a peg tube inserted into her stomach to be fed until she was able to swallow again – that took almost a year before she was off of it. She had triple vision in both eyes, so was unable to drive until that cleared up – nearly a year.  The doctors discovered that her triglyceride levels were off the charts, as was her blood sugar – yes she had diabetes too.

Nothing would ever be normal for her again.

The father she'd moved to Missouri to take care of in his last years was now the one taking care of her, driving her to appointments and helping her to get around.

Sadly for my husband and I and our brother, we never knew about all of this until she was out of the hospital – none of us lived near Missouri at the time either. No one asked us for help, which we all would have gladly given.

I made it out here during the summer of 1993 and was shocked to see my sister in the condition she was in and furious that she had been misdiagnosed.

She was loathe to complain about the local hospital's diagnoses and refused to discuss it.

She pulled me aside to complain about our dad's driving habits and he pulled me aside to complain that she was a back seat driver. Between the two of them, they had about one-half of a good eye to use for driving. It's only by God's good grace that they never had a car accident.

She also pulled me aside to complain about dad's lack of a bedside manner. He pulled me aside to say he'd been having nightmares flashing back to when our mother was sick in 1982. We live about 50+ miles from the hospital in Kansas City, so Dad had been required to drive to and from the hospital daily to see our Mom and do the same with Priscilla in 1993.

He was terrified she was going to die. "I'm scared Prissy is going to die Elizabeth," he said. "I'm not supposed to bury my child before I die," he added.

What do you say to that?

And she thought he didn't care. Bad bedside manner or not, Dad was terrified. He wasn't cut out for being a caregiver, especially not for his firstborn daughter. He turned 80 in 1994 and his health had begun to trouble him by then too.

The years passed and Pris improved some, but not much. She finally gained single vision and began driving again. She was now completely unable to work, so social security took over and with that she was able to stop obsessing over finding a job. Eventually the ability to swallow came back and she was able to get rid of the peg tube and eat again, though she never regained the ability to eat what she really wanted. She could barely open her mouth and the simplest of certain foods would get stuck in her throat and she couldn't swallow them.

One of the greatest joys in life is enjoying food. That was now gone from her life. The state of her diabetes and triglycerides demanded that she eat a strict diabetic, low fat diet.

Eventually, my sister controlled the food she ate instead of it controlling her. She got rid of the cravings most of us have for chocolate, sugar and salt because she stopped eating all that. But she admitted her diet was so boring, she didn't care whether she ate or not, and eventually that showed by her drastic weight loss.

Indeed, my sister was depressed.

And cranky. We all learned to tip toe around her.

Meanwhile, our father's health began to decline. His kidneys were giving him trouble as did his heart.  In September of 1999 he went into St. Luke's for a quintuple bypass, but had to have stents put in his kidneys first, then the bypass.

He wasn't out of the hospital three months before he fell and broke a hip getting out of bed in the middle of the night, requiring surgery and time in rehabilitation.

God bless him, Dad never let anything get him down. As soon as his hip was better he was back at the chiropractor's and walking about one-half to a mile a day. His faith in God was his compass and he never lost his sense of humor.

In 2000 our Dad was 86 and Pris was 58. She looked older than Dad did and was frequently mistaken for our son's grandmother. She would stomp her foot and say, "I am NOT his grandmother!" Then she'd throw her head back and say, "I'm his AUNT, her sister," pointing to me. And I, quite chagrined would say, "she's my older sister."

No wonder she got cranky with me.

She still had some weight on her bones, however, and was taking care of her house and Dad's – mowing the lawns up until 2000 when we moved out here and my husband took over.

Dad's frequent health issues required her to either sleep at his house or be there very early in the morning, thus interrupting her sleep. Doctor's appointments in the city were often day-long trips and she was plagued with a minor, very terrifying car accident the winter of 2000 while driving home from visiting Dad in the hospital. It was actually a blizzard, the same one that killed a Kansas City Chief ballplayer.

She was exhausted from being a caregiver and being sick herself.

In May of 2001, Dad was told he was in renal failure and he had about three- to six-months to live unless he wanted dialysis. He was 87 and chose not to have the dialysis.

Instead, Dad spent the summer and fall enjoying life. He sat on his porch and read, listened to the birds singing, and enjoying his grandson's visits. He got us to drive him to his favorite spots – where he grew up in Eldon, all the graveyards containing relatives, and he visited a number of relatives who were still alive. Our brother came out in November for a "last" visit with Dad. We laughed, we cried, we enjoyed our memories.

Unfortunately, we wouldn't have a last Christmas at home with him, as he developed pneumonia in December and spent the holiday in the hospital. He did manage to maintain his sense of humor and told the admitting nurse that he practiced safe sex when she asked him if he was pregnant or lactating before taking an Xray.

He received Christmas communion while in the hospital and all his family and former parishioners visited him. There were lots of presents and he swore it was the best Christmas ever even though he wasn't at home.

A few days later he ended up in the ICU with C Diff virus - a contagious virus often gotten through contamination with feces. Yes, he got that virus FROM the same hospital that misdiagnosed Priscilla's stroke nine years earlier. That bit of news was confirmed by a tip from a hospital worker. The hospital never told us he had it until three days into his ICU confinement, which put us at serious risk for contracting it ourselves.

Finally, on Jan. 11, 2002, Dad was sent home to die – and hospice care ordered.

I was still working, so Priscilla had to hire full time caregivers to assist her, with just the two of us doing duty on the weekends.

She was exhausted and yet tireless. Dad was so hard on her.

The dying process is hard on those who are dying and those who are caregivers.

Tomorrow ... Dad proves you can die with dignity and a whole lot of humor.

Remember to love your parents

There's always an excuse.

"Sorry, but we've/I've been busy." "I just need some time by myself to call you, and there hasn't been any." "I forgot my phone in my gym bag and haven't been to the gym in a few days." "I have a lot on my plate right now, no time to chat or return text messages."

If you are a parent who has a child or children who are grown, admit it that you've heard one or more of the above excuses from one of your children.

We have three children. One is our biological child and two are my husband's children. This blog is not to purposely slam my husband's children, because sure enough, our son has used one of those excuses before, too. Often, he gets the message and is too busy to reply or act on a request – or he acts on it and doesn't acknowledge that he got the message and we think he's ignoring us.

In fact, some of those excuses used as examples can often apply to a friend, a sibling, a co-worker, even a business associate.

We all seem to be too busy to be our parent's children, a cousin, a sibling, a friend, a co-worker. The world today is full of excuses and most of them, frankly, stink.

My mother, who died in 1982 – long before cell phones, Internet, tablets, iPads, iPhone, and all the multi-media accoutrements that make up our lives in 2013 – would have surely called the perpetrator simply ... rude.

In the past, we have had arguments with our children and they take a stance of, "they're always right and the parent is wrong." They think that because they are 26 or 28 or 30 or 40 that they can live without their parent(s), their lives are full enough with children, jobs, each other, hobbies, football, golf, girls or boys night out, extracurricular activities ... whatever.

We are born and our parents raise us. Pretty early on we begin straining at the apron strings. We balk at our parent's authority because we know better – we're younger, more hip, more well-informed and our parents are, of course, dumber than dirt, older than dirt, and just plain clueless.

It's no longer "Father Knows Best," it's "Kids Know Best."

And don't we know that we did that to our parents not so many years ago?

Our relationship with my husbands kids has been rough from time to time. Their childhood wasn't easy. Their parents were divorced and our son had both his parents. I met my husband long after his first divorce, but still there is resentment.

But you can only reach out so much. Even when we've been on wonderful, friendly terms, they don't answer their phones, don't reply to texts, don't even reply to Facebook messages, until it suits them to do so. But then, so does our own son.

It's the same old excuse. "I've been really busy." "Our child exhausts us and we have no time to return calls."

This one gets to me. I see and hear this all the time, even if its not my own kids. Your child exhausts you? Are you the first person on the planet to have a kid?

'Sorry Dad, Mom, we didn't answer the door when we invited you over because we fell asleep. We are so very tired. You see, we are parents now and we've had our child for the last five days without a babysitter, so we went to bed and didn't answer the door when you came over.'

I get that being a parent is exhausting. I WAS and AM a parent. I'm not so old as to have forgotten how tiring it is to be a young parent.

My husband and I raised our son with no family nearby. We both worked long hours and both were generally in jobs nowhere near where we lived. We, like most others, commuted. We took our son everywhere with us and he learned early on how to behave, how to speak properly to his elders, how to be polite to others, how to respect the property of others and especially how to hold a door for anyone in need (or a lady if need be). One of the constant compliments I get on my son is that he's so very polite and respectful.

We didn't get respites from raising our child. If we had to get an oil change on the car, we got an oil change on the car – and took our son with us. If we had a doctor's appointment, he came with us. It wasn't an entire production, it was simply living our lives without excuses and dealing with everything head on.

For our children and their children of today's world, they are all technologically advanced. My husband's son and his wife co-own a business with a partner. They always have their phones in their hands as does my own son – his business depends on it.

So what is the true excuse for not returning texts or phone calls unless it's truly you who instigated it?

Frankly, I don't think it's past regrets, childhood arguments, or even current arguments that are the hold up. We can profess to adore each other and the next day a text or phone call will go unanswered.

How many of you have sent an email to someone for business, personal or even a query for something and not received a reply? OR you get a reply, but the recipient who is replying can't manage to answer more than 2-3 questions at one time. OR, you get the excuse – you wrote too much, I can't read that much.

What? Do I need to email you phonetically? Is that what it takes to be able to read a full email? I could tell you it all in an actual conversation, but you don't answer my phone calls either.

As a society we are rude to each other – anyone who has been on Twitter or Facebook can attest to that. In the last six months, I can't believe how many Facebook threads have turned ugly in a manner of a few replies here and there on assorted pages. Someone pipes in with a sarcastic comment and a conversation turns to something that has nothing to do with the original beginning thread.

Someone replies to the change in topic – again sarcastically or rude, and bam! Bullying has reached Facebook.

Not returning phone calls, emails, text messages or even Facebook messages to someone, especially a loved one is a form of bullying and control.

It's not just us – the meek and lowly. The morning news is constantly filled with the rich and famous doing this to each other. Just this morning the ongoing feud between Madonna and Lady Gaga was reported in the first 15 minutes of a national news report.

I have even managed to go slightly off topic here. And before I continue, I want to remind you to think of a normal, everyday conversation with anyone. It rarely stays on topic, we always stray to something else, so why isn't it logical to do it when on Facebook, Twitter, email or instant messaging?

I digress. Today's topic was to be about honoring our parents. God taught us how to deal with our parents quite simply.

The fifth commandment is, "Honor thy father and thy mother."

How many times a day is this broken?

Yes, some of us have bad parents. Parents who hurt us, who abuse us. But most of us have good, decent hardworking parents. Raising children was a struggle for them, their parents and their parent's parents, just as it is today.

I too have lost my parents. My mother died when I was 26 and she was 65. My dad died 11 years ago at 87. At the tender age of 57, I am only eight years from the age in which my mother died, and I am an orphan.

I miss my mommy and my daddy. Every. Single. Day.

When my mother was dying, I was a young, self-absorbed 26-year-old. I paid no attention to her for several years before she got sick and still didn't, in my opinion, understand the seriousness of her illness, her dying and the impact it would have on my life.

She died Nov. 6, 1982. Even worse, on July 16 of that same year, my 18-year-old nephew was hit by a car and died, just six days after his birthday.

Seven months prior to his death, my nephew had called me, right before New Year's Eve and wanted to come to Portland, Maine, where I was living and stay with me so he could attend a New Year's Eve concert. I remember being short with him and telling him an emphatic no.

We were just seven years apart in age, so we sort of grew up together. He was a good kid. I have always regretted how I treated him.

I never spoke to him again. I forgot his birthday and his high school graduation, which was shortly before he died. And suddenly he was gone. I have had to live with the way I treated him before his death for 31 years. Not a day goes by that I don't think of him. Praise the Lord for him being in my life. God has forgiven me, now if I could do the same.

My mother and my nephew are two examples of just how short life is. We should never take anyone for granted.

I spent the next 20 years making up for lost time with my Dad. I spent most of my vacations with him and made sure my son had a strong relationship with his grandpa. We loved each other tremendously and telling each other so was our last words to each other.

That's how you love your parents.

For someday, we will all be in that place – sick and dying – or maybe taken quickly, you just never know. Life is far too short to take anyone for granted, to not mend a fence, to not reconcile. No amount of "I have to be right" is, well, right.

Answer that text, reply to that Facebook message, make that phone call. Let your parent (or loved one) know you love them. Let the crap flow under the bridge. Nothing is so important as to let someone go.

God doesn't. Why should we?

Rick Warren, author of "The Purpose Driven Life" says it best, "Focus on Reconciliation, not Resolution."

Forgiveness lifts the weight off your chest – whether forgiving your parents or forgiving yourself.

Lift that weight and breathe in the love.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” ~ Matthew 11:28-30

Bullying shows no prejudice to age, race, gender, size or geographical location

Bullying is a subject on the minds of many these days. It knows no social boundaries. At the forefront of many news reports are sad stories of children who have been bullied and taken their own lives, acted out a fantasy of revenge and killed others, or are simply suffering my long-term health effects brought on by years of bullying.

Bullying has been around since the beginning of time. It hurts, it tears families apart, it trashes friendships, it can end a life.

It's a sad, sad world when not a week goes by that we don't hear of a young boy or girl killing themselves over acts of repeated bullying. Lately, it has come to light that bullying can include those whom you thought were your friends.

Add to the escalation of bullying as we knew it before the 21st century – namely – cyber-bullying, and you have some serious stuff going down. And it is hurtful.

A local town has been in the spotlight for bullying going awry with the committing of heinous sexual acts toward at least one, if not two, youth in the locker room. It has been discovered that some who knew of the bullying, shrugged it off as a "boys will be boys" mentality. One has to question where our thoughts are coming from?

The abuse scandal at Penn State is another example.  Beloved coach Joe Paterno's reputation was mowed down by the revelation that he was aware of sexual abuse committed on boys  by his assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky. Paterno did nothing to stop the abuse and therefore, was just as guilty as Sandusky – at least in my opinion. What justification does someone have to look the other way when something hurtful is being done to another human being?

Didn't Jesus teach us to "love one another, as I have loved you?"

Yet there were plenty of people singing the praises of the wonderful person they believed Paterno was. Was he? Just how beloved is a person who can justify in his or her mind that something that is clearly wrong – is OK?

My son was horrifically bullied as a child – from kindergarten until about the 10th grade, when he found a small group of kids to hang with that accepted him.

There is such agony in receiving a phone call from your sobbing 13-year-old child while you are at work miles away, revealing that a mob of 20 kids had just attacked him when he walked home from school.

The agony for me was nothing compared to the agony he felt each and every day. And it went worse for him if it was reported.

And the teachers did nothing - in every, single school he attended from New Hampshire to various cities here in Missouri.

What a difference the last few years has made. Now schools have programs to combat bullying. Coalitions have been formed, and national, as well as local news outlets have brought bullying and it's consequences to the forefront.

Bullying wasn't just something my son endured. I did too. So did my son's father.

I am the daughter of a preacher, so that makes me a "PK" - short for "preacher's kid." Because my parents taught me right from wrong, the worship of God and belief in Jesus Christ, the principles of the Bible and to do unto others as you would have them done unto you, I endeavored to behave as a child.

I was raised properly by parents who were raised, well, to respect others. My folks, who would be close to 100 years old by now, were brought up in a time where kids respected their parents and their elders, even their peers. Kids were polite and while bullying did take place, it wasn't as criminal and hurtful as it is today.  It was a time where people were respectful and were courteous more often than not.

Nevertheless, I was bullied as a child. I can remember a local boy, who was at least 12, who bullied me when we lived in Elizabeth, NJ.  I was about 5 years old and he despised me – for what reason I have no idea, but he simply hated me. I admit, I was a goody-two-shoes. After all, misbehaving outside the house (or inside) was not worth it when it came time for my mother to punish me.

This boy came after me more than once and caused me injury.

One time I was riding my tricycle on the sidewalk in front of my house and my mother had just come onto the porch to call me in, when, much to her horror, she saw the boy riding his bicycle at full speed on the sidewalk, headed right for me – from the rear. I was blissfully unaware until he ran into me, sending me up into the air and landing me headfirst onto a rock.

My mother screamed, I screamed, and the boy took off. I have no idea if he got into trouble. Back in the day, parents didn't even complain to other parents, the cops weren't called, teachers weren't expected to get involved.

Not too long after this, the boy cornered me again. We had a tree that was right at the end of a chain link fence and he caught me by that spot and chased me round and round the tree until he got me right at the perfect time and tripped me – sending me headfirst into the end of the fence – my forehead bouncing down the side of the wire-wrapped pole from top to bottom, ripping it open.

That resulted in a trip to the doctor and a number of stitches.

Another time he caught me with my little friend from next door and cut my hand open with a rusty coffee can and drenching me in mud.

Yep - that kid didn't like me much.

Sometimes the bully can be someone you know, a close friend, and then the betrayal is heart-wrenching.

After we moved to south Jersey, I met the daughter of a couple who sang in the church choir, with whom my parents were friends. This girl was my age and we quickly became best pals.

We did everything together – we lived through the hero-worship of the Beatles and the Monkees together. We slept over each other's houses. We played, we dreamed of growing up and marrying Paul McCartney or Davy Jones and we were inseparable at church. We did, however, attend separate grammar schools.

When we were about 13, we were both chosen to attend girls church camp in Asbury Park.  We were so excited – an entire week without our parents – the two of us sharing a room, staying up all night and oh, the fun we would have.

But it all went downhill very quickly early on that week.

We met several girls that befriended us and wanted the two of us to go off with them and violate the camp rules. It was things like sneaking out at night, not going to all the classes, etc. We were staying at a 100-year-old, flea-bitten, run-down old beach hotel right near the boardwalk where Bruce Springsteen was most likely a young musician.

I knew that if I went out and misbehaved, I would get caught – I always did. My father was a well-respected Episcopal minister, and he knew every single minister that was on the staff at the camp. There was no way I was going to risk getting into trouble for having a little fun with the girls. So I begged off.

My girlfriend shunned me immediately. She decided these girls, that she would most likely never see again, were worth tossing away a friendship of the last six years.

So, I was left on my own in that old hotel during the down time. A few days later, I did what I shouldn't have done, and snuck a look at my "former" friend's notebook and saw where she'd written a note to another girl that she'd "never really liked Liz anyway."

I was crushed, and the feeling of betrayal made my head spin.

We never recovered from that. Through high school, we would nod at each other in the halls, but we were never friends again.

Sadly, the girl graduated high school and found it difficult to hold down a job. She continued to hang out with the wrong people and ended up dying in a horrific car crash before she was 30.

I was bullied in my neighborhood too. The boys in the 'hood' learned I had a terrible fear of snakes and spent a number of years tormenting me with dead and live snakes whenever they could. That stopped when I suggested to one of them that my father actually liked snakes and he should "show" my father the snake he had.

When the boy came to the door, he found my father in full "priestly" garb – white collar, black suit, and his black hat perched on his head – an intimidating site to a 12-year-old. My father gave the kid a tongue lashing that he didn't quickly forget and that ended the taunting of Liz with snakes.

My husband was bullied as well. He is biracial and grew up in the 1960s around people who were prejudice.

Small for his age, he was constantly taunted and beat up by larger kids, and verbally abused by prejudice teachers until his father stepped in and it stopped.  It forced my husband to learn how to defend himself.

We were no strangers to bullying and were horrified and sickened when our son became the victim of bullies as a child.

Most frustrating is trying to get someone to pay attention and stop the bullying. It's like standing in a room full of people and screaming your brains out and no one is hearing you.

Bullying doesn't stop when you become an adult, it simply takes another form.

Perhaps you have a spouse who is verbally (or physically - or both) abusive. Perhaps you have a boss or co-worker who is abusive, a neighbor, a so-called friend, a fellow church-goer.

You may be older, but it doesn't hurt any less.

Two of the last three jobs I had included abusive bosses. One was a passive-aggressive control-freak who couldn't make a decision if his life depended on it. He manipulated the employees and pretended you were his friend while he worked behind the scenes to play games with the staff. None of it made sense, because he frankly was cutting off his nose to spite his face. He lost four employees the first six months of this year, myself included and still has no clue what he's done wrong or why his business is not doing well.

The other boss was a thief and loved to yell. He constantly accused me of stealing "time" from him, when in fact – I was probably the most reliable and honest employee he had. Not a day went by that he didn't literally scream at me for some offense that I had not committed. Meanwhile, he had embezzled money and payroll from the owner of the business and managed, quite artfully, never to pay any of the employees taxes and social security to the government.

One can only pray that some day, some how, bullies will stop the madness. I pray that another child does not have to die before it happens again – but sadly, the odds are against it.

There are anti-bullying campaigns and coalitions all around the country. Look for one close to you and do not allow yourself to be another victim.

What if we could go back in time ... what would we change?

Last year, during a particularly difficult time in my life, I escaped into a series of romance/time-travel books by Tracey Jane Jackson. Jackson's books involve an assortment of 21st century characters who, one at a time, travel back to the time of the Civil War and must learn to adapt to the times.

The series is time-travel romance after all, so the characters understandably all fall in love once they get here and consequently, choose not to return to their own time. All of the characters are somehow connected to each other and thus create a large crux of family/friends that is inviting and entertaining.

Jackson's books are fairly clean and infused with humor – imagine landing back in 1863 Harrisburg, Penn., with your glasses, iPhone, iPod, backpack, some aspirin and a plastic water bottle – what would a 19th century person think upon meeting you?

Jackson's characters are written the way she wants them to act – in other words – the 19th century men and women accept these 21st century people almost immediately and there's an almost instantaneous "draw" between a man and a woman who has traveled and who is a "native" of the times, so that they fall in love. They're Jackson's characters, her books, who am I to question the whys and wherefores that make no sense to me.

Questions I've had about the characters are typical for me – an historian and researcher and someone whose mind is always turning. How can the characters give up life in the 21st century, their day-to-day living, family, friends? Jackson makes it easy – they all fall in love and do not want to return.

To read time travel, you can't get wrapped up in the whole scenario of the fact a person was alive in 2008 one minute and then alive in 1863 the other minute, thus actually "dead" in 2008 in reality.

It boggles the mind, especially when one character returned to modern times, followed by the Indian tracker who was native to the 19th century and in the space of a few hours, they left friends and loved ones alive in the past, only to travel forward in time and know that their friends have, in truth, been dead for about 75 years.

Try wrapping your head around it.

Time travel books have always fascinated me because of the idea of going back in time and the possibility of meeting an ancestor or even changing events.

The characters in Jackson's books are slapped right down in the middle of the Civil War, and the first character happens to be an expert on the war, specializing in Abraham Lincoln.

So what do you do when you arrive back in 1863 and know that Lincoln is going to be assassinated? Do you stop it or not? Do you alter history or not? What if you did? What would be the consequences?

I won't spoil the ending for Jackson's series, but suffice it to say, they had me hook, line and sinker. They involved recurring characters and a storyline that held me captivated, thus keeping my mind off of my troubles.

What if I traveled back in time? Would I be able to change my own family's history?

My maternal grandmother, Edna, died when my mother was just 18 months old – during the summer of 1918 – of unsanitary childbirth conditions. The baby boy she was delivering was stillborn.

Author's grandmother, circa 1917.

My grandfather had courted Edna for a very long time. I have found sweetheart correspondence going back to 1908 between the two when they were 15. They were married in 1916 when both were 23 and Edna died at 25.  My mother was born in early 1917 and left without a mother. Her father was devastated and found himself a widower at 25 with a young daughter during war time.  He immediately packed up and left for the war, leaving my mother in the care of his family and her maternal grandmother.

Grandpa returned from war and in 1920 he remarried. He and his new wife had six children – three daughters and three sons – one daughter only lived a few years before dying. Four of their children went on to marry and have children – my oldest aunt had eight children, who all married and had children of their own.

If Edna had lived, none of my mother's half-siblings would have been born or married and had their children, who have had their own children and so on.

Yes, it cramps the mind just thinking about it.

The few photos of Edna show her to be a rather ethereal woman – delicate looking, beautiful and graceful. The photos of her holding my mother tear at my heart. My mother never remembered her, yet Edna clearly loved my mother and was torn from her at a young age.

Over the years, I've found myself absorbed in the few photos of Edna – torn from her life far too young.

I've heard from my two aunts that my grandfather truly never recovered from the loss of his first love, despite remarrying and having more children. He became an angry, bitter man.

And Edna's mother never forgave him for whatever occurred in those days after Edna birthed the stillborn child, became sick and died. We've heard that Grandpa was late in calling the doctor back and did not tell the doctor's wife why he was calling. It was a judgment call that ended my grandmother's life, and Grandpa had to live with the consequences.

Many women died like Edna did – at home, bleeding to death from a doctor or midwife using dirty hands to deliver a child. It was a fairly common occurrence then.

My grandfather holding my mother as
a newborn in 1917.

If Edna had lived, would I exist ... my brother, my sister?

My step-grandmother's mother was mean to my mother – treating her pretty much like Cinderella's stepmother treated her. My mother was beaten frequently and forced to work hard while the adult women did nothing. My mother was not permitted to eat until after everyone else, thus she hoarded food as an adult and had known what it was like to "want."

My mother was given doses of kerosene (or turpentine - not sure which) when she was a child so she wouldn't wet the bed. Eventually, she lost her sense of smell – we always wondered if it was a side effect of taking the bed wetting remedy.

When Mom was around 13, she'd had enough and told her father that the beatings had to stop or she'd throw herself under the train that ran through their neighborhood.

Grandpa allegedly made the beatings stop, but turned around and refused to allow my mother to go to school past the eighth grade. No amount of cajoling would get him to change his mind despite one of my mother's great-aunt's offering to pay her way.

So, my mother packed up and left home – moving in with her best friend's family, who were much more well-off and who hired her as a live-in helper.

It was through this family that my mother began attending church – and where she eventually met my father in 1938 when he came to the same church as a young preacher.

The shy, young, evangelical preacher fell in love with the shy, young motherless girl and they married in 1939.

As a result of their union – my brother, my late sister and I were born.

If Edna had lived back in 1918, would my mother have ever met my dad? Edna was raised in a different church in a different part of town.

Some would say it was God's will for my parents to meet and so He would have found a way for it to happen, even if Edna had lived.

So, the question remains of time travel.

If I were to travel back in time to before my grandmother's death in 1918, would I, or could I change that history? Could I walk in their front door and introduce myself as Edna's future granddaughter and implore her and my grandfather to change how the birth process would go? Could I convince them that their baby would be stillborn and that I would, 71 years later experience very nearly the same thing – the stillborn birth being a genetic defect. (lucky for me that my son had the benefit of late 20th century medicine and was born healthy)

If I changed my own family history, would I cease to exist? And, thus doing so, my dear, sweet aunts, their children and grandchildren would also cease to exist.

While God has given us free will to make decisions in our lives, we make those choices, often suffering dire consequences.

It could be that God would have found a way for my parents to meet had Edna lived.

But the idea that my beloved aunts might not have existed, my dear cousins not have been born and all the lives affected by something as simple as my grandfather choosing not to call the doctor early on when his wife was dying, can truly be a life-altering decision.

What would you do?

Politics today not much different than 400 years ago when the first settlers arrived

I have been reading an interesting book on the beginning of American History, "The Shipwreck that Saved Jamestown," by Lorri Glover and Daniel Blake Smith. This book, one that would only interest historians, recounts how America's first colony was established – along with all the political infighting, fundraisers, lies, deceit, deaths, and stumbling blocks that occurred in making the colony of Jamestown, Virginia actually come to fruition.

While I've been reading this book, we've been going through the GOP versus Democrats, House versus Senate and debates over Obamacare, the government shutting down and everything else wrapped up in the current crisis.

Through all of this has been the pundits ... yes, everyone's a pundit, from the news stations to Twitter to Facebook, to the coffee shops, to anywhere U.S.A. Most of what has gone on in the debates between citizens is Democrat versus Republican, with few siding for what is right or what is wrong, because frankly, no one truly knows which is right or which is wrong. They just support their party and thus think their party is right and the opposing party is wrong.

Nevertheless, this blog isn't about who is right or wrong here, it's more about the comparisons between the early 1600s establishment of the first colony in America and today's political society.

It truly is no different.

Oh yes, today we have cellphones, iPads, video recorders, cameras, and television that can broadcast from end of the world to another in seconds.

In 1607 all they had were these tiny little ships that had to carry news from England to America and back again – taking several months to accomplish the task.

So often the consequences were more dire, such as people dying from lack of food, attacks from Indians, attacks on Indians, people dying from an assortment of diseases from plague to yellow fever to dysentery to consumption, to infighting, shipwrecks, fires and more.

Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in America, located in what is now known as Virginia – a small peninsula that was basically uninhabitable due to marshy areas and land virtually unfriendly to agriculture. It was established by the Virginia Company of London on May 24, 1607, following a few failed attempts and the lost Colony of Roanoke (a sad story for another day).

Despite a rocky start, Jamestown was the nation's capitol for 83 years, after which it was switched to Williamsburg, Va.

The parts of America that had been in possession of other countries prior to this time belonged mostly to Portugal and Spain. The colonization of Jamestown was a rush by England to prevent Spain from making claim on Virginia and was done originally and laughably while Spain's king wasn't looking.

Again, the glorious days of zero media tools had its benefits 400 years ago.

Over the course of a number of years, beginning in 1607, enterprising entrepreneurs attempted to raise money and investments for the Virginia Company in an effort to get everyone to sign up from the aristocracy, genteel class and laborers to those seeking to simply leave England for a better life.

Several voyages brought disastrous results to each group. Voyages were long, hot and presented cramped quarters.  Often, by the time the ships were halfway to America, a good portion of the passengers were sick with disease, starved after eating maggot-filled/spoiled food, on a ship invested with rats, sometimes the plague, and a host of other maladies too disgusting to ponder.

By the time they arrived in Virginia, passengers could barely get off the ship and would prevail on the survivors of the last passage to feed, clothe and provide them shelter. They were exhausted and instead of providing respite to those who were in Jamestown and starving themselves, the newcomers only added to the existing troubles.

Often this was too large of a burden on the residents of Jamestown and the "want/need" spilled over to the Indians as colonists raiding their camps, stole their food and land, consequently causing fighting, capture, torture and executions of colonists.

The amount of subterfuge in England that went toward fundraising for the assorted voyages to America is astounding. In one account, King James is apprised of the dire situation in Jamestown and his answer was for one of the ship's captains to bring him back a flying squirrel. He sure had his priorities straight.

At one point, colonists dug up what they thought was gold and brought it back to England, only to discover that the gold was actually rock and dirt – worth nothing.

Settlers refused to work – they simply weren't used to having to be farmers and working their fingers to the bone. Remember, there weren't any houses, businesses or buildings anywhere in the Americas in 1607. Everything had to be built from scratch. They even had to bring over livestock as best they could. This brings another image to mind of the voyage from England to Virginia on a tiny ship – passengers, horses and other livestock.

Preachers were schmoozed into preaching to their congregations in England that it was God's will to travel to the new land and establish a new order – to bring Christianity to the heathen Indians. Catholics, still persecuted in England at this time, were barred from traveling to the new world.

If touting the beauty, bounty and abundance that was Virginia wasn't enough, the enterprising members of the Virginia Company used God as a way to persuade people to make the journey.

As we watch the events of today's world unfold, even reflecting on the past 100 years in politics, it is easy to realize that things aren't really so different from that time.

People lie to get what they want. They lie to persuade others to "sign up" or "join" or "vote" for a specific cause. They argue until nothing is agreed upon, thus nothing gets accomplished and another year floats by with nothing resolved. Many simply choose to turn their head aside and look the other way. The idea being, "if I don't acknowledge it, it doesn't exist and it will go away."

Images of an ostrich with its head buried in the sand comes to mind.

Sixteen hundred and seven was much the same.

The infamous John Smith (of Pocahontas fame) had his own story to tell. Brash and gregarious, he wasn't well liked by his contemporaries, nor the colonists for that matter. He was captured by the Powhatan Indians and held for sometime. It was when they allegedly placed his head on a rock as they prepared to smash his brains to smithereens, that a young Pocahontas (about 10-13 years of age) placed her head upon Smith's and entreated her father to spare his life.

Pocahontas and John Smith never married. She married another man and died around age 21-22 from consumption in England.

Smith fancied himself the savior of Virginia's colonies. He wasn't well-liked, mostly because he pushed the settlers to work, telling them that if they didn't work, they didn't eat. He recognized the vulnerability of their position in the new world and sought to improve it. He actually was a visionary, he just didn't have enough support and was constantly under fire by men who wanted to be in charge.

However, when the 1609 expedition arrived, sans the lead boat, which had shipwrecked at Bermuda, Smith was pushed out of the colony.

There was always something going on behind the scenes during Smith's time in Jamestown. Despite the poverty, harsh weather conditions, Indians and hunger plaguing the colonists, there was strife and unrest in bountiful measures. Plots against Smith were rampant.

Realizing he was most likely going to have to return to England, Smith was in a canoe with a bag of gunpowder near his person when it exploded, injuring him severely. It was never proven how the gunpowder exploded and some have speculated over these last 400 years that it was done deliberately.

Smith returned to England, recovered, and then sailed back to America in 1614, this time to the north – the coasts of Maine and Massachusetts. He named the area "New England," a moniker that persists to this day.

Returning to England, Smith tried for the New England shores once again, the first time he had ship troubles and the second time, his bad luck continued and he was accosted by pirates in the Azores. He managed to escape and returned to England where he dutifully remained until he died in June of 1631 at the age of 51.

His name is the one most remembered from the earliest days of our country and monuments to him persist. It is he who has the biggest statue at Jamestown, Virginia despite being chased out of there by opportunistic rivals.

After several fires, the capitol of the new world was moved to Williamsburg in 1699 and Jamestown gradually began to disappear.

To this day, it is mostly an archaeological site, but it does have living history exhibits, historical interpreters, and even a replica of the ship the Susan Constant, one of the first ships to make landfall at the new colony in 1607.

Today, historic Jamestown is closed. Just as the fighting, pulls for power, struggles to survive of 400 years ago, October 2013 has brought this national park – a monument to the first days of America – to a close, while politicians bicker and dig in their heels in Washington, just as they did centuries ago.

My little piece of the earth will be my final legacy

Well, I've finally done it. I've gone and bought my final resting spot – my cemetery plot.

Before I've ever bought and owned a house, I've purchased my little spot where my body will lie for eternity.

Making the purchase was, frankly, as easy and comfortable as one would hope. The cemetery, Machpelah, in historic Lexington, Missouri, is quite beautiful and holds plenty of history itself.

I met the association's director up near my parents and sister's graves on a beautiful, sunny fall afternoon. The cemetery sits on a small hill, so there is always a breeze up there and plenty of beautiful tall trees.

It's a favorite spot for walkers and genealogists alike. Among those buried in Machpelah include the founder of the Pony Express, the Mormon victims of the Saluda steamboat explosion in 1852, the founder of Wentworth Military Academy, a number of Confederate soldiers (a great battle was fought in Lexington in September of 1861), the first white settler in Lexington, and many, many historic names from Lexington's past.

After parking my car, I approached the man I was to meet. He was standing at my parent's graves holding the cemetery's plot list – still on fragile, much-taped paper, names hand-written and difficult to read.

There was nowhere for me at the inn, so to speak. That's what I get for waiting too long. However, I ended up choosing a spot from where one could stand and see my parents and sister's graves and read their names – essential for some genealogist a hundred years from now who just might be a great-great-great descendant of mine. Yes indeed, I chose my spot with a future genealogist in mind and the view ... not that I'll get to enjoy it after I'm gone.

Purchasing a cemetery plot was not on my list of to-do's when I got up this morning – well OK – actually it was. It's been on that list for about seven years, sitting on a post-it note on my old iMac – now not even working anymore. But like most people, I've put it off. Who wants to spend the money on a plot? Besides the money being spent, it's a pretty strong reminder that I am going to die someday.

My mother in-law recently told me that "we live to die," as she, suffering from Parkinson's Disease, had to go purchase her own plot.

Well, like my parents and sister before me, I'm nothing if not well-prepared. They all bought their plots ahead of time and my sister – ever efficient and knowing she had little time left – chose her headstone and had part of it engraved about five years ago.

I won't go quite that far, but I have to say I'm glad it's done and over with.

When 2013 dawned on January 1st of this year the last thing I thought I'd be doing on October 1 is buying my cemetery plot. No, I'm not anticipating dying anytime soon.

But the year has going in many different directions. My sister took a turn for the worse and passed away, leaving me with her estate to handle – one she, of course – had prepared well ahead of time.

I had to quit my job, more due to an abusive boss than any other reason, but I simply couldn't continue that stress with that of grieving the loss of my sister, moving, dealing with an estate and all the things that go with losing a major member of your family.

My son had a car accident this year and so did I. His injuries were less than mine, but they were both traumatic all the same.

My sister's care with hospice was an epic of nightmarish proportions and it has taken me the better part of these past seven months to recover from them. I don't think I'll ever lose the visual of her writhing on her bed for days on end all because the head nurse didn't think she needed a catheter, only to find out her bladder had been full for four days.

Life goes on, however.

Next step was for us to get our affairs in order while the process was fresh in my mind. It's done and I can rest assured that even my beloved felines will be taken care of, should I pass before they do.

We have begun the process of helping my mother in-law get her affairs in order as well, not such a fun process to do from so far away, but a learning experience nonetheless.

Through it all, we've met some marvelous, helpful people, some of whom will remain in our lives a long time.

My estate attorney and I discovered we both have a love of local history and eagerly share this book or that book, this research or that. If you think a bunch of Nascar enthusiasts can wear you out, try hanging out with a bunch of historians.

As I made my purchase today, I looked around me, spying a few people taking walks through the tree-lined, slightly hilly paths around the cemetery – it's a citywide favorite for walkers. I love walking there. Someday there will be walkers striding past my grave, viewing my dates – the beginning and the end – and perhaps wondering about my life here.

Will they enjoy the view from there? Will they pause a moment to think about me? Sometimes I do that about people I didn't even know.

In the blink of an eye life can be over. I certainly have learned that the hard way with the loss of a nephew 31 years ago after being hit by a car. I myself saw how quickly my own car accident occurred this year with no opportunity to prevent it.  An old friend experienced the same thing yesterday when a vehicle came around a curve while straddling the line, hitting her head on. She had no time to react and is, thankfully, still with us.

Time is precious and life is way too short.

How we live our lives is important. How good are we to each other? Showing courtesy to strangers, love to family and friends and support to those who stumble on the path of life. How do we minister to one another?

How do we spend that time between the dates on our gravestones is our legacy to ourselves, our descendants and each other.

And now, on lovely sunny days, I can walk through Machpelah, enjoy the breeze, the solitude, the peacefulness, stopping at my own spot for a moment and enjoy the view from my own little piece of the earth.