The Man Beside My Bed

I spent my kindergarten through second grade years just outside of Dayton, Tennessee, in a town called Spring City. My father had graduated in 1984 from the East Tennessee School of Preaching and Missions in Karns, Tennessee, just outside Knoxville, and his very first preaching position was there at the Spring City church of Christ.

I don’t remember much about our family’s time in Rhea County because I was so young, but I do remember the brick and siding split-level house about five miles outside town. It had a gravel drive that seemed like a mile going to get the paper or the mail on hot summer days, and an air conditioner that was as cool as the other side of the pillow after I had outrun the sweat bees on my way back from getting that paper or the mail.

In 1986, I sat on our brown couch in that house and watched the Challenger shuttle explode before America’s eyes on television. And, it was in the kitchen of that house that I accidentally killed Sea Monkeys by picking up the little plastic container by the lid instead of the base spilling its contents all over the linoleum. I felt like a mass murderer.

I learned to ride a bike without training wheels; I learned that Daddy didn’t like us boys to go out behind the old chicken coop; I found out that you can’t catch rabbits with a homemade trap made out of a Hardee’s cup, a stick and a few stale Doritos; and even though I didn't know it at the time, I learned about my great-great-grandfather, Arthur Jenkins.

If you entered the house through the front door, walked about four steps and turned right, you would be at the foot of the stairs that led to the bathroom, Dad’s office, my parents’ bedroom, and my brother’s and my bedroom. We slept on parallel twin size beds with a bookshelf between us. During the day in that room we would play church by mimicking the Holy Communion sacraments on a coffee saucer, and at night we would read Berenstain Bears books by lamplight and giggle ourselves to sleep.

One night something I could not explain broke me from my sleep. Without moving, I lie awake and listened, but I couldn't hear anything more than my younger brother, Shane, snoring, fast asleep in his bed three feet away, and I didn’t see anything other than what the yellow light from the bathroom down the hall revealed through our open door.

What I did next gave me a memory that has remained with me as clearly as any film or picture I have ever seen in my life.

Since I didn’t see anything while facing my brother, I turned to my other side just to re-position myself and returned to sleep. It was this move that exposed the reason I had stirred.

A man. An older bald man wearing a red, white and blue suit, a white shirt with a string bowtie, and holding on to a smooth hickory cane. He was sitting, smiling and looking at me in the same safe and warm way my granddad did when I walked through the door of his house on Christmas day after a long van ride from east Tennessee to southern Indiana. And, while I certainly wasn’t expecting to see some man next to my bed, I must say that the whole scene never scared or even startled me. In fact, seeing him made me feel good and well-protected.

I noticed he was in a rocking chair rocking back and forth, and after a second of just looking at him, he reached out his long arm to place his large hand on my side, and I immediately returned to sleep.

The next night it happened again.

I was lying on my side, the same as the night before, and awoke in the same fashion. This time I just knew he was there beside me so I barely leaned my body backward and peeked out of the corner of my eye. Sure enough, he was there smiling and attempting to lean forward himself to let me know that he knew I saw him.

It wasn’t until much later, in junior high, when I found out who he was.

I was standing in my great-grandmother’s dining room rummaging around next to her old record player through quite a collection of old canes. There was a long white one that looked like the striped cylinder that hangs outside a barbershop; a bamboo one that surely accompanied a dancer in the 30s; and then there was one that looked just like that old smooth hickory cane that I saw the man holding when I was in Spring City.

I grabbed it and ran into the kitchen to tell my grandmother the story that cane reminded me of.

I told her all about the man: his cane, his clothes, his head, his smile. Her expression looked as if she couldn’t believe her ears and walked away. I didn’t know if I had made her angry or sad until she returned holding an old, gold-framed picture taken in 1978 of her grandfather, “Paw-paw,” Arthur Jenkins.

When I saw the picture, I was speechless. In her very hands was a picture of the man beside my bed. She told me that while he did get to hold me when I was a baby, I’d never really met him because he died not long after my birth. The suit I had described to her was the very one in which they buried him.

We sat at the kitchen table for the next couple of hours talking about Paw-paw. And while the living room could have held us, we all chose to remain packed around the kitchen table glued to the unfolding stories of the family members who filed in one-by-one telling of the time that they too saw Pawpaw.

In Tune With the Storm's Garden (Ponderings About the Neutrality of the Future)

Right now someone is doing something for the very last time. It may even be me. Tying their shoes, cooking lunch, arguing, saying "I love you." It's the calm before the storm. The time when those who will die have no idea and every idea at the same time. They will say and do things that will be remembered on Monday when they are buried.

"How strange that he..."

"She told me..."

"I had no idea that would be the last time I ever heard his voice."

Something will be left undone. Something else will be wrapped up sufficently. Everything will end tonight for someone who did everything right and still died, and for someone who ignored and dies as a result. No one is safe. Nothing is sacred.

Say: I love you. I hate you. I will miss you. I need you. I'll be back.

Fate has you now and you will rest or roam with the answers to all your questions. Even answers you didn't know you would need to questions you never thought you would ask.

And, as much as you will want to tell me, and as badly as I'll want to know -- we can't communicate any longer.

Tonight will be the worst night of someone's life. Tonight will be the best night of someone's life. Tonight will be remembered forever. Tonight will never be thought of again. Tonight.

Forever tonight. Into the oblivion of time either on the line never visited again or on the circle to return one day.

Head to the east. Their sages can save you atop mountains of stone and knowledge where moderation and flow move through the body tuning every discordant note. The music will not fix you. It will not prepare you. It will not guide you. It will only accompany you.

The garden will not soothe you. It will order you. But only if it's in control. The sand, the rocks, the birds, the rake -- but instruments of splendor which by themselves represent only the ability. Combine with capability and acceptance, movement and light, sound and air.

Tonight marks not the beginning or the end, the middle or the prior, the thought nor the afterthought.

It will not be bad. It will not be good.

It will be.

So breathe.

(written while listening to "Mending Your Own Mind" and "Calming Insight of Ourselves" both from Dean Evenson's album Healing Sanctuary while contemplating the coming storms of April 7th, 2006 in the midwest and southeast)