A Cautionary Tale

Some years ago, after her husband passed away, my mother-in-law booked a cruise through the funeral home that handled his arrangements. It's a service many funeral homes provide -- vacation packages for the recently bereaved. The idea is simple and well-intended: people who suddenly are alone can meet others who also are alone. Friendships might evolve and all those people might find themselves a little bit less lonely. It didn't hurt that Mom was a diamond-level priority member with Royal Caribbean.

The thing you might not know about these bereavement vacation packages is that unfilled spots are sometimes sold to the general public. Such was the case with the cruise my mother-in-law booked. Some people on the cruise were clients of the funeral home while others were not. When she returned from her trip, we heard all about two new non-client friends she had made while away. Let's call them D and J.

Suspicions were immediately aroused in our household when we heard how they met on the bus to the airport. Mom had raised her hand in response to a question asked by the group leader.

J, a short man of roughly 60 years, noticed the rings on her fingers and later said he simply had to meet a woman with such exquisite taste in jewelry. I've never been emotionally stirred by another person's bling, but I realize some people are that superficial. Mom, of course, took it as a compliment and was flattered by the attention she received from J and his lady friend D, a strange woman I initially and incorrectly assumed was J's wife.

Very quickly, D and J were socializing with Mom at every opportunity. They met for lunch several times a week. They became regular fixtures at family dinners and poolside lounge sessions on hot summer days. They ferried her to and from medical appointments. The fawning and praise they showered upon Mom were excessive, and they seemed to be at her beck and call, available at a moment's notice should she be in need of anything.

Their helpfulness wasn't limited to my mother-in-law, either. They repeatedly offered to help us on busy days should we need someone to pick up the kids from school. The day we moved into our new house, J offered to take our sons over to see his collection of military medals while D helped unpack boxes. Every time I recall his offer, and the fact those two ever crossed our threshhold, I cringe.

The friendship between my mother-in-law and this odd couple ended abruptly on Easter weekend of 2007. While at our house for Easter dinner, Mom called D and J to wish them a happy holiday and ask if they could, as they had done many times, pick her up from dialysis the following day. That was all it took. Mom later received a harsh email from them stating how offened they were at not being good enough to invite to dinner, yet they were good enough to shuttle her home from a medical appointment. If I recall correctly, Mom had no further communication from the couple and passed away later that year still as confused as the rest of us.

Several theories have since crossed my mind regarding D and J. The one I believe most likely is that they were opportunists hoping to worm their way into a lonely woman's life and, through legal maneuverings or other chicanery, take what they wanted from her estate. It wouldn't be the first time something like that happened to an elderly, emotionally vulnerable person. I suspect they cut their losses and moved on after realizing Mom's bonds with her family were too tight break. Call me paranoid, but that's what I believe.

The worst part of it all is we learned, several months after Mom died, that J was a registered sex offender who had spent 12 years in prison for aggravated felonious sexual assault involving forced penetration of a child under 13 years of age. He was on the registry by the time we learned this, but not for very long. It seems he spent at least a year secretly living with his girlfriend in North Carolina while maintaining registration on another state's sex offender list. When I called our county Sheriff's office to tell them he had been in the state for a much longer period of time than his registration date would suggest, my concern was dismissed and I was told to be content that he was now registered.

The man had been in my home. This potential sexual predator repeatedly offered to pick up our children from school, take them off our hands when we were busy, even entertain them at his house. Exactly how was I supposed to feel content about that, other than from knowing he never was alone with our children?

The takeaway lesson from our brush with D and J is to guard your elders just as you do your toddlers. Give them room enough to lead their own lives and be their own people, but bear in mind their weaknesses and help them steer clear of those who might do them harm.

I hate to seem like the kind of person who casts a suspicious eye at every new aquaintance, but in the words of Stephen King: "The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool."



© 2016 Mark Feggeler

Progeny Perfected

You might think your children are special, but mine really are.

I know all parents believe their kids are beautiful, handsome, smart, talented, witty, mature and precocious. Problem is, only one pair of parents can believe that and actually be correct. My intent here isn't to tramp muddy footprints all over your dreams of being the perfect parent. You've tried exceptionally hard to raise perfect children and your kids genuinely appreciate your efforts. I'm here to point out the simple fact that our kids make yours look like they came from the reject bin at Big Lots. No offense.

Take the Italian, for example. The Italian has read more books this year than I have in my entire life, which really isn’t much of a comparison, because my reading skills loosely match those of an underdeveloped Gibbon monkey.

He's also a blossoming computer whiz. The Italian's idea of light entertainment is to prepare point-by-point comparisons of this year’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference to last year’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. He’s thirteen. When I was thirteen, I was more concerned with which episode of Gilligan’s Island would be on after school than I was in getting the inside scoop on the latest advancements in world technology. When I was thirteen my brothers and I were content with playing Dig Dug off five-inch floppy discs on our Commodore 64. The Italian has been breaking out the laptop each morning to teach himself HTML coding over breakfast. And, well, why wouldn't he?

Then there’s the German. The German is sweet natured to a fault, he's an ace hockey goalie, and he plays saxophone as soulfully as a sixty-year-old in a smoke-filled night club. And he enjoys practicing. When I was his age, I recorded myself playing the trumpet for ten minutes and hit play twice to fill out the rest of the half hour I was supposed to be practicing.

The German also is our Lego master. I’m not talking about the 30-piece police car Lego set we got for Christmas forty years ago that I'm still trying to figure out how to put together. I’m talking about 2,000-piece movie prop replicas that are half assembled before the wrapping hits the floor. I’m talking about sitting at a laptop to program code for a WiFi Lego robot that recognizes different colors, utilizes touch sensors, and performs complex tasks.

Between the two of them, the twins have the necessary knowledge and access to technology to hack our online banking and transfer our assets to offshore accounts, all while holding us captive in our own basement with a robotic Lego army.

The ring leader of our perfected progeny is Our Daughter. If I even attempted to maintain half the busy schedule Our Daughter keeps on a daily basis, I would have been dead three-and-a-half years ago. I can count on one hand the number of clubs I joined during my K-12 years, yet this girl's resume reads like an alphabetical listing of every possible extra-curricular activity available.

She's also taken more AP classes than I have clean pairs of underwear. I'm lucky I know how spell AP. She wants to graduate with honors, get a bachelor's degree in biology, a master's degree in dentistry, and ultimately become an orthodontist. At her age, my only goal was to pass the next test and avoid anyone at school who might be interested in giving me a wedgie. Our Daughter has the next ten years of her life planned out whereas my long-term goals include gassing up the car and making sure I leave enough time after getting out of bed each morning to reach the toilet before I wet myself.

I'm certain many of you reading this are making all kinds of mental notes in preparation of a rebuttal of my assertion that my children are better than yours. You're wasting your time listing out your childrens' grade point averages, academic accomplishments, personal triumphs, and tallying the number of times they've been Snapchatted or re-Tweeted. Please, if it makes you feel better, go ahead and launch a well-prepared defense of your children. So long as you're prepared to eventually acknowledge the unquestionable superiority of my kids, we won't have any trouble.



© 2014 Mark Feggeler

A Disturbing Letter

"Your mother took another person's life when she was young."

That's how a letter our daughter received a couple months ago began. She opened the letter on a pleasant evening as she was sifting through slips of paper her friends had placed in the "prayer jar" she had made as part of a week-long youth program at church. It arrived in the form of a greeting card we suspected might be a thank you note or an invitation to a party. Her expression quickly changed as she read the card. Glancing over her shoulder, words like "murderer" grabbed my wife's attention.

The fact is my wife was in a car accident twenty-five years ago this past August, almost exactly five years before she and I met. She was seventeen years old at the time, driving along a bend in a road in Southern Pines, NC, when a fellow high school student of hers approached from the other direction. His car was in her lane coming straight at her, fast. She hit her breaks. He didn't. Their cars locked, spun together like a top, and released. My wife ended up with many broken bones and needed multiple surgeries. The young man in the other car did not survive.

Maybe he was distracted by the radio, or an animal in the road, or simply wasn't paying attention. Perhaps there was a medical reason why his car veered off course and he didn't attempt to regain control . Maybe he had a seizure and was unaware of his surroundings. We will never know.

My heart always goes out first to the parents when I hear of such accidents. I can not imagine the pain of losing a child. Just last week, a sixteen-year-old bandmate of our daughter died when her car spun out of control and struck a tree. Words do not exist to express the sympathy one feels at these times. "I'm so sorry for your loss" is woefully inadequate when attempting to console the family at the funeral home. From someone like me, who has never experienced a loss of that magnitude, it is the best that can be mustered.

I would never presume to tell the loved one or close friend of a person who has died how to mourn, how to cope with the loss, how to fill the vaccuum that has been left behind. But there does come a time when the reality of the situation must be faced and life must go on. When, exactly? That's different for everyone. It might take days, weeks, months, or years, but it must come evenutally so the life of the person mourning does not stall and remain mired in suffering.

Unfortunately, some people cling to their grief and hold it closely to them like a security blanket. To let go of the pain and move on with life is incomprehensible. They see their loved ones' deaths as wrongs that have been committed and they seek to lay blame on the most convenient targets. To their way of thinking their loved ones didn't die, they were killed, and facts-of-the-case-be-damned someone must be held accountable. Whomever wrote that letter to our daughter is one of those people.

It would have been bad enough for this person to have mailed the letter to my wife and directly called her a murderer. But to target our daughter -- telling her to "Look your mother in the eyes and you will see the eyes of a murderer" -- is an indication that this person is not content with simply assigning blame. After twenty-five years of allowing resentment to fester, this person has found it necessary and appropriate to lash out at a fifteen-year-old girl in the hopes of driving a wedge between her and her mother. Needless to say, it didn't work.

We might never find out who wrote the letter, or why he or she chose to place such vitriolic language in a religious-themed greeting card with rainbows and flowers covering the front of it. That it was sent anonymously and with no return address tells me this person knows sending it was too shameful an act for which to take credit. It's easy to feel anger toward this person, but as more time passes I can't help feeling pity is the more appropriate response.

I doubt the young man who died in that accident all those years ago would have wanted him or her to waste a quarter of a century nurturing bitterness and hatred in his name. There surely must be more fitting ways to pay tribute to the memory a loved one.

© 2012 Mark Feggeler

Drop 'Em and Move Along

You know when you're dropping your kids off to school in the morning?

Particularly when dropping off younger children to kindergarten, there's that special moment when you share high fives and words of encouragement. Maybe they need you to open the door for them and you steal one last hug before sending them on their way into the building for the day. It's one of those occasions when you realize you are standing in the middle of a precious memory. You want it to last forever. You wave them off as they scamper away, only to have the moment tainted by some impatient clock-watcher honking his horn and gesticulating wildly at you from inside his Honda minivan.

That clock-watcher is me.

I have three kids, the youngest of which will complete their elementary-level education experience at the end of the current school year. I understand what you people with younger kids are going through, but you really must find a way to understand that I don't care.

While you're standing outside your car trying desparately to cope with the fact your children have graduated from bouncy seats and diapers to backpacks and packed lunches, there's a line of cars three miles long choking the public streets for six blocks in every direction thanks to the fifteen-minute unloading ritual you've chosen to perform.

Take it from me, your kids will be fine. Stop the small talk, kick them out of your Explorer, and keep the line moving. There are things the rest of us would rather be doing.

Like showering. I'm a big fan of showering, especially on mornings when I'm sweaty from the 5:30am cycling class and smell like a combination of dirty socks, vinegar and garlic (or, as Our Daughter calls it, "old man funk"). I also enjoy eating breakfast, brushing my teeth, wearing clean clothes, going to the bathroom, and starting my workday, each of which now has to wait because your peripheral vision is so impaired you couldn't see the angry glares of every driver in line behind you.
And here's a helpful tip. Get your kid's stuff packed up before you leave for school.

School happens almost every weekday between September and June. The local school system hands out calendars -- free ones! -- so you can find out in advance on what days there will be school. You had days, weeks, possibly even months to prepare for this morning's drop off. So why, then, is your kid juggling loose school supplies and papers like his backpack just vomited?

Please, we don't want to hate you. You seem like a nice lady, and you clearly love your children, as evidenced by the fifth pat on the head you've given your son and the twelfth hug you've given your daughter. But for the love of all that's holy, drop 'em off and move along. I promise, they won't look any different when you pick them up seven hours from now.


© 2012 Mark Feggeler

Memory Lane

Certain experiences call up distinct memories, transporting you instantly to a time and place long forgotten. Oddly enough, the doxology did that to me the other day.

For those of you unfamiliar with the doxology -- in this case the Gloria Patri, or lesser doxology -- it is a brief expression of praise to the Holy Trinity used in many traditional Protestant and Catholic services. Let loose with a hearty doxology around any random group of worshipping Christians and chances are they'll be able to hum the tune and possibly catch some of the words before you finish. You could even call it a drinking song if communion is being served.

Having grown up in a family of Methodists (we drank grape juice instead of wine), I sang the doxology every Sunday when I was a kid. So, it came as no surprise I didn't need to read the lyrics from the program the other morning when the doxology popped up in the Presbyterian service we were attending. Twenty-plus years of Methodist training took over and I bellowed the Gloria Patri to the best of my ability. Unlike the Lord's Prayer that changes slightly from church to church -- seriously, why can't everyone just use the word "trespasses?" -- the doxology was played exactly as I remembered it.

Instantly, I was taken back to the church of my youth. I could have been sitting next to my Mother, fighting for pew space with my brothers, our Dad leading the ushers in their weekly collection duties. Even the familiar aromas of the old church seemed to surround me.

The United Methodist Church of Hempstead, located on the corners of Washington Street and Front Street on Long Island, is a modestly majestic structure built in the 1800s and expanded over time. It has that old-timey feel to it that keeps you mindful of why you're there. My brothers and I whiled away many hours at the church as our parents attended meetings and served in various leadership roles. Once we were old enough we got involved, too, helping run flea markets, painting Sunday school rooms, and serving as waitstaff for fundraisers. We knew every nook and cranny of the old and new buildings and the various passages between them by the time we left for college.

It was easy to get lost in the beauty of the historic sanctuary. With seating for several hundred people in classic wood pews, it opens tall and wide when you enter through the swinging doors from the narthex. Towering stainglass windows line each of the side walls, my favorite of which depicts an angel speaking to the two Mary's outside Jesus' tomb. The muddled darkness of a grainy cellphone snapshot does no justice to the artistic rendering best viewed at sunrise service on Easter morning as the light pours through and illuminates every last detail of the story. The other seven windows also are lovely to behold, but they pale in comparison.

We typically sat near the back of the church, preferrably the back row, center section, on the left. From that vantage point you could watch the entire ceremony unfold and people-watch all of the other parishioners. You could easily spot which of the old ladies had a new hat, which couple had the prettiest daughter, and which family was kind enough to bring a baby at which to make faces during the service.

The front wall of the sanctuary held two massive banks of pipes our organist would employ to rumble the foundations of the building with the thundering voice of God, or maybe just Bach. Whichever you prefer, the effect was impressive. He literally would pull out all the stops, his hands and feet flying from key to key and pedal to pedal during the postlude. Many times I would remain in my pew and wait for the end of the mini concert. I suppose that organ is one of the reasons I prefer a traditional service to this day. Church simply doesn't feel like church without the dynamic range of a pipe organ rattling my dry bones.

I had the pleasure of revisiting the old church a couple months back when I traveled to New York on business. Rather than waste the lunch hour sitting in some fast food chain, I drove to Hempstead and wandered in through the main doors of the newer building near the small office. Immediately, I was eleven years old, fully expecting to see my Grandfather rounding the corner from the old social hall, his full head of hair slicked back and a broad smile stretching under his bulbous nose.

I'd like to say the old place hasn't changed, and in many ways it hasn't, but as I moved through the familiar spaces I could feel the age of the structure weighing it down. Cracking paint, water-damaged ceilings, worn out carpets, and a general lack of capital improvement could be spotted at almost every turn. And the building stands now like a box in the open, all of the beautiful shrubs and bushes that lined the outside walls long since torn out. I wouldn't say the building was being neglected, but it was easy to see the money wasn't there to sustain its former glory.

Even so, the nitpicker in me fell away the moment I entered the sanctuary. Yes, the carpet inside the main door is threadbare and paint is cracking off the walls, but you simply cannot deny the grand effect of the design of the worship hall. Just entering the room causes you to speak more quietly, tread more lightly, and approach with respect.

I found it difficult to keep a dry eye as I meandered up and down the aisles, recalling who regularly sat where, envisioning my Father putting up the hymn numbers for the next service, watching the little kids leave for Sunday school after having their moment with the minister before the sermon, standing near the altar railing for my brother's wedding, kneeling at the railing for countless communions, sitting at the front of the church with my Grandfather's casket on display in front of the altar as the minister's voice faltered during the funeral service... If not for work, I could have lingered for hours.

Perhaps some day the old church will be properly restored. Maybe an anonymous donation will fund improvements, or it will be declared an historical treasure and restored for future generations to enjoy as a living museum of religious art and architecture. Who knows? I'm just happy to see it's still there and know I can return to wander down memory lane if I'm ever feeling so inclined.

In the meantime, there's always the doxology.

© 2011 Mark Feggeler