Don't Call Me That

I don't think that means what you think it means.

Note: Next Sunday I’ll take a day off for Thanksgiving! Happy Turkey! Gobble Gobble!

THANK YOU

Happy Thanksgiving! It must not go without saying the gratitude I feel when I think of this community. Thank you for being here and reading. Also, thank you for accompanying me on my DNA series. I am sure there is more story to tell but for now I must sit with it.

TODAY’S STORY

Today’s story is about Mom¹ and what she knew about me - that I didn’t - and about how things aren’t always as they appear.

Conversely, this isn’t a story about the insensitivity of my sib. Really! It’s about Gods’ faithfulness and how he transforms what the enemy uses for evil into good. No matter how long it takes.

YOU SAY THAT LIKE IT’S A BAD THING

I was thinking the other day about something that was said to me in the week preceding my mother’s passing away from Alzheimer’s. As you might imagine, it was a whirlwind, and now this coming January it will be six years ago. (I can’t believe it. But that’s always the way, isn’t it? You can’t believe how fast time has passed after your loved one passes away. Has it already been a week, a month, six years, thirty years?)

I don’t recall what the general conversation was in the moment, but a sibling looked at me and relayed casually, too casually, how Mom would admonish them not to tell me whatever the current drama was because I was “fragile”.

“Don’t tell your sister,” my sibling quoted, “she’s fragile”.

I’m curious. How would you respond to that – at your mom’s deathbed?

There are things that shouldn’t be spoken, topics that shouldn’t be covered, words and phrases that shouldn’t be repeated especially at the deathbed. If you’re going to hear that your mother thinks you’re fragile, you’d want to hear it directly from the horse’s mouth. (Well, no you wouldn’t. You probably wouldn’t want to hear it at all.) But you certainly wouldn’t want to hear it from your sibling in the form of insensitive gossip while Mom is dying.

If she’d said “you’re fragile” to me face to face, I have no doubt I would have launched into a defensive stance (on a soap box) fervently telling her, (you know, that woman who doesn’t know me at all), why she was patently wrong.

Protesting too much, methinks?

But hearing this comment as Mom’s dying in a sort of semi-jokingly side comment made me want to spit nails at the accuser, “I AM NOT FRAGILE! I AM NOT FRAGIIIIILLLLLEEE! I’M NOOOOOOOOT!!!!” (No doubt looking like Carol Burnett in Mama’s Family.)

Harumph. I’m not fragile. <pout, pout> (Where’s the nearest corner?)

I put that moment in my play, Home. (About my family dealing with Alzheimer’s.) Clearly the moment had impact on my mind and heart. The pen is mightier than the mouth.

Six years later, I’m driving and the memory floats back up from nowhere in my mind. I always pay attention to memories, what they are and, importantly, when they occur. Something is desiring to be known, to be heard. Same thing when you recall a dream from years ago. It’s not an accident. Pay attention.

Some memories are just the enemy of your soul “tooling” with you, getting under your skin, having a go at you to mess with your day. In this case, as the memory of the comment about my being “fragile” floated to the surface, my soul remained calm and steady, my mind sober, my emotions unmoved. This is how I knew it was time to hear something new about it and that I wasn’t simply being pulled back into the storm of accusation. There was a new messenger with this memory. A light was about to go on.

You see sometimes something is said that you reject because the messenger has twisted the message into a counterfeit of truth. (Remember it’s never really about the person who is delivering the message, it’s about the darkness attempting to use them to get to you. It’s just that so often these messengers don’t ever realize they are partnering with this darkness. They are being used. (Which is why praying for wisdom is so paramount when you are delivering information to anyone about anything.)

When I received that “word” from my sibling I was understandably already in a “fragile” state. Umm, my mom was dying. So. Yeah. The actual moment was mundanely conversational. Clueless. But I was reactionary. (Which is always the aim of the enemy of your soul.)

Interestingly, I recall this today from a much more grounded frame of mind ruminating on this memory from an objective point of view. Of which I can take no credit. God is so kind. He gives us time to catch up to things. To mature. To calm down and grow up. What patience. What love.

So often this happens to me while driving. There’s got to be some science to this. Something is activated or deactivated in the brain. For whatever reason, I tend to get insights while driving. Does that happen to you?

So I’m thinking and remembering the moment. “Mom says you’re fragile.” “Don’t tell your sister. She’s fragile.”

You know how you can suddenly “get” something without words or even deep thought? You finally understand something -  you come ‘round to something and you really had nothing to do with it other than being the person you are today, and in a space, (whether mental, spiritual or physical), to receive the insight. This was that moment.

I don’t think Mom wasn’t accusing me of being weak. I had received the “fragile” comment as weakness; the inability to handle gravity. In essence the literal meaning of the word. She’s fragile. This truth will break her.

My mother was a lot of things. She was a deep thinker, contradictory, possessive, intuitive, wise and shrewd. She was a lot of things light and dark, but she was not shallow. She had her issues, but she knew her children (as most mothers do.) Sometimes I didn’t know which Mom I was getting. The one who seemed essentially to be telling me I could not handle the weight of a situation or the one who told me I could achieve anything.

She knew I was sensitive. She knew of my capability and tendency to feel (or feeeeeel) with all the extra “e’s”. I was a lot like her.

When someone repeats something there is so much opportunity for evil to abscond with pertinent data. To encourage the messenger to leave out essential information. (i.e. What was the context? How and why was this comment said? Was it actually said? What was the intent?) Without wisdom we are left with a storm. And if you, on the receiving end do not have a strong foundation in Truth, or it’s simply a really bad day, you’ll be swept up and tossed to and fro in the winds.

Suddenly for no reason on this side of heaven I came to a new understanding. A point of view from love – which is always where truth is based.

Mom was expressing: YOU, Messenger, do not take this information to my daughter. Not now. (Timeliness) She is the one who will be deeply moved by this in such a way that will not benefit her or the situation. She is sensitive. She feels this deeply. In this fragility, I wish for her to remain whole and preserved, protected. Depending on her state of mind and commitment to drama – perhaps it was a Wednesday – she thought, in essence, I could break.

You see I have come to realize that it wasn’t about what my mother felt I could or couldn’t handle. But she wanted me handled gently. Oh and I know I know… you can’t control other people’s feelings, and everyone deserves the truth, and you need to allow them the option to deal with the cookie and how it crumbles.

Here’s the deal. What Mom was really saying was “Don’t tell your sister because I’m fragile. I cannot handle the possibility of hurting her, of taking her into the deep emotional reservoir that has been given her. I’m too fragile for that today. It will hurt too much to hurt her. It will break me. I’m too fragile.

Oh that we had more people in the world equipped with the capability of sensitivity and even more people equipped with the care of the package.

Why must the fragile thing be protected? It must hold something of value. Is its perceived gift a thing to guard for fear that once gone cannot be replaced?

Is “fragile” a bad thing?

It think the whole point of this latter car communique was a course correction. An opportunity for the not so long gone loved one to make plain the meaning behind the madness of the moment that spiraled into a lie.

I meant to say, Daughter… that I love you so much. I wanted to protect what I saw as something pure. You could’ve handled it all, but I didn’t want to have to handle the tidal wave that would rise in me watching you in pain.

Why this wasn’t an issue for her with her other children is a tale to tell another time.

But this is how I know this moment in the car was from God: I felt loved. That’s all. I felt at peace. I felt in a strange way, vindicated without proof and without ever having the opportunity to have proof. Just because someone dies doesn’t mean you stop having a relationship with them. After all, love never dies.

If I had to do it over again, I’d respond differently, “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” and move on.

Some words will always carry a derogatory vibe that will cause fury to forever rise up within. But this one’s personal.

I find myself owning it now. “Yep. #fragile.”

Because I know what was inside. And so did Mom.

Also. Don’t you dare call me fragile.

I’ll cut you.²

1. My grandmother

2. Joke. Also, to prove I’m not fragile. Also, because you’re not my mom. Also, don’t call me fragile.