Polar Bear Angels
Keith A. Rasey
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Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Keith A. Rasey
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
It is considered a cliché to reiterate that truth is stranger than fiction. This book is not a cliché.
In the pages that follow you will discover the poignant happenings, the unusual people and the just plain weird things that happened to a real flesh and blood person. I wasn’t looking to live on the edge - the “edgy” and novel and outrageous found me.
Perhaps your reaction will be like the young woman who, at a church singles group I spoke with, noted that I had too much experience for her to imagine me as a minister. If you like your understanding of the spiritual life to be black and white, cut and dried, this book may either leave you shaking your head or wondering where I am “coming from.”
If you have, however, an understanding that the spiritual life is a narrow way that is high and lifted up, like a tightrope, you might hold your breath as I try to keep my balance and find my way guided only by the Spirit, my conscience and intuition.
My goal is to leave you laughing, crying, smiling, chuckling and nodding your head in the realization that you have met some of the same kind of people as I have in my years in the ministry. The church power broker, the suffering addict, the innocent struggling to understand the hard realities of life, the broken and misplaced, the “party girls,” the manipulators of a kid’s game into life and death and those who have had the spark of life beaten out of them.
This book represents the journey of a lifetime of serving others. The true events described are widely separated in time. Names and details have been changed to protect the innocent and the guilty. I hope you enjoy the trip.
Keith A. Rasey
Medina, Ohio
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Chapter One
POLAR BEAR ANGELS
Elinda’s mother was not a member of the church I served as pastor. She did live in the neighborhood of the church in a section of New Haven known as Fairborn. A couple I was working with on premarital counseling had told her about my ability to listen well and draw together disparate thoughts into sensible insights.
I had no idea why she was coming to see me because all she had shared on the phone was a desire to talk with me about a problem their family was having. The day of the appointment we introduced ourselves and she asked me to call her by her first name, Paula. She was dark haired, about thirty-five years of age, I guessed, but with the worry lines of an older woman. There were no laugh lines or even smile creases on her face From the smell of stale smoke, it was painfully obvious Paula was a chain smoker so I scanned the office to be sure the ashtray was handy for her.
The introductory class on pastoral counseling I was taking had taught me enough to realize it was important to practice graciousness and hospitality to put her at ease, especially, as in this instance, when she was coming to talk with a stranger about something troubling. This was years before there was any concern about second hand smoke.
“So,” I said in my best nondirective, Rogerian counseling voice, “you are hoping to talk with me to bring greater insight into a family member’s underlying motivations?” It sure sounded good at the moment.
“Not exactly, “she responded. There was a long silence. I was being taught to let the silence hang around like an old friend.
“My daughter, Elinda is worrying me. She has started to really resist going to school in the morning. She is more moody than she has ever been and breaks out in tears if we mildly punish her.”
“It’s your daughter who is your concern, “ I responded in my gentlest, nondirective voice. I waited for her response but there was none. Silence was failing me. “You’re worried about her recent change in behavior - the school resistance and the moodiness.”
That did bring a verbal response from her. We went through the family history covering such things as how long they had been married, how many children they had and their ages, job and location stability, birth order, etc. Nothing brought up any obvious precipitating event that might have triggered five-year old Elinda’s behavior.
Elinda was the youngest of three children, her two older siblings being a boy of nine and a sister of fourteen. They were the third generation of their family to be born in America. Their family had lived in the same house for the past twelve years. The father had had the same blue collar job with the city for all of his adult life. Paula did not work outside the home.
Five-year old Elinda attended the same kindergarten in the same neighborhood elementary school that her siblings did or had. She had her own room and it had been her room for all of her life. Elinda had no more or less privileges than the other children of the family when they were the same age. None of her playmates had moved nor were there any new ones that had recently come over to play.
The hour was coming to a close. I gave Paula my card and shared that I would reflect and pray about what we had discussed. Perhaps that would make some connecting thread available to help us understand Elinda’s behavior. We agreed to meet the next week.
In my naiveté I hoped that Elinda’s mother and whole family would show up for worship the next Sunday. After all, it was the church that made it possible for me to be available to people in the neighborhood. It wasn’t cheap maintaining a large, Italianate church building over one hundred years old. Nor was it inexpensive to have even a part-time, student minister around.
The salary, in 1977, was only $3000 per year, but the parsonage was a beautiful Queen Anne Victorian manse with ten foot ceilings and marble mirrors built into the walls. Although the house was past its prime, its granite fireplace and pure wool carpet - supposedly from the bar of a paddleboat steamer (this in a parsonage of a denomination historically part of the temperance movement) - gave it a dilapidated charm. But it was poorly insulated and almost required someone skilled in architectural restoration to maintain it.
That following Sunday morning, before the processional, I scanned the congregation hoping to see Paula and meet her daughter, Elinda. Knowing something about her from personal observation would have been helpful. But they were not in attendance, nor would they be in the future, as it turned out.
There was, however, a new woman, well-dressed, in the second to last pew on the lectern side of the sanctuary. It was my custom to walk down the center aisle of the church, ten or fifteen minutes before the service, to say hello to people and just be visible. This lady must have slipped in after I had gone back to warm up with the choir. No one claimed to know who she was so I went over and introduced myself to welcome her.
“You’re just like all the rest!” she immediately cried out. “All you want to do is take my daughter away from me and take advantage of her.”
“Ma’am,” I stammered,” I have never met you before today and know nothing of your daughter….” She interrupted me with an even louder voice.
“Yes, well you’re just like all the other do-gooders who say they want to help but only want to take away things!!” She slammed her hymnal down on the floor, wrapped her expensive, fur lined coat around her shoulders and stormed out in righteous indignation.
I must have looked pretty shaken by this. Harold Barker, the Lay Leader, came over to reassure me. “She walks around the neighborhood talking to telephone poles and trees. Don’t let it get to you.”
The rest of the worship service went fine. Still, the naïve part of me that expected people to be grateful to God and to the church for helping them was bewildered by the responses of the stranger before worship and disappointed by the nonattendance of Elinda’s family. Perhaps the Buddhists are on to something when they say that one, who expects nothing, has all things.
Paula did show up promptly for our next counseling appointment. We made small talk and I tried to put her at ease by offering coffee. I confided, sheepishly, since I was supposedly the “expert” (what hubris!), that nothing had come to me about her daughter’s behavior. I was careful to avoid the concern that occurred to me about her behavior being a response to some kind of violation of boundaries, as in molestation, for example.
As usual, it was the “client” herself who had the cause for the troubles besetting Elinda and affecting her family. Paula shared that the only thing that had come to her was the recent death of Elinda’s eponymous paternal grandmother. I mentally kicked myself for not asking for more information on the extended family.
It wasn’t just the death itself that was the issue. More pertinent was the fact that little Elinda was not allowed to attend the calling hours or the funeral service for the grandmother for whom she was named. She had put up quite a fuss about having to stay home with a babysitter while all of the other family members went. Elinda had thrown her favorite doll down the steps the day of the service and refused to eat any of the food sent over by the neighbors or friends of the family.
Paula explained that she had been encouraged by her family not to send Elinda to even the calling hours. Their feeling was that she was too young and that seeing her grandmother, Elinda in the coffin, would be too much for her to handle.
“I did the right thing as far as I knew, but now it looks like it wasn’t the best for Elinda.” Paula had started to cry.
“You acted on the best information you had and it hurts to feel it might not have been the best for Elinda?”
She nodded her head. There was a long silence before she continued, “I just don’t know what to do to help her.”
Thirty years afterwards, my experience tells me I was in over my head. What was probably the most helpful thing to do was to refer her to a child psychologist or a certified pastoral counselor for help in assisting her daughter through the maze of unexpressed grief, anger, resentment and depression. But I didn’t know any better so I began to listen to my own emotions and my own “inner voice.”
“I wonder how Elinda would feel about coming to see me to talk about how she feels now that Grandma is gone?” I waited for some response. Paula just picked up her head and looked me straight in the eye as if she were waiting for me to continue my thought. So, I did.
“Elinda could bring over some of her favorite things that Grandma gave her and tell me about them. Perhaps we could even play with them together or she could draw me a picture of Grandma in her new place.”
At that last phrase, Paula looked a little unsure of the meaning.
“A drawing of how she sees Grandma now in her new home with God,” I added. “Then we could ask Elinda, indirectly through play, what kind of ways she would like help with her grief.” I didn’t have a clue if a five year old would have such information but it was at least understandable to an adult.
Paula agreed. We set an appointment for me to meet alone with little Elinda the next Tuesday at 4 p.m. Today, with pastoral malpractice insurance and litigation paranoia - justified - about being alone behind a closed door with a member of the opposite sex or a child, I wonder if I would take the same kind of risk. Even with videotaping the entire interaction - with written parental permission - one must be careful to protect all concerned.
In the days before the appointment with little Elinda I was too busy to do much research on how to counsel children. Schoolwork was very time consuming and I had to keep the parish going at least enough to justify the congregation’s expenditures on my salary and heating and maintaining a decaying manse. Every night my head hit the pillow with my energies too depleted to do anything but pray for little Elinda and ask for help in interacting with her in a way that was healing.
Crayons, at least, would not be hard to find as my own daughter, Michelle, was only four years of age and her mother, Marilyn, was running a home based childcare business from the parsonage. I rounded up several pieces of blank white paper and checked the supply of Hi-C to be sure I had something hospitable to offer Elinda.
Promptly on the appointed day, the doorbell rang and I met Elinda at last. The little five year old was a slender girl dressed in a Winnie-the-Pooh shift. She was carrying a small patent leather black purse exactly the right size for a little lady of her stature. Her hair was brown, medium length and her eyes green. Elinda had the look of a person more curious than scared and was trying hard to act older than her five years.
“Your mother has told me that you have had a hard time with your feelings since your Grandmother, Elinda, died. “ She nodded. “Would you like to tell me about your Grandmother?”
Elinda was, at that very moment, taking a sip from her drinking glass. With most of her face swallowed up by the glass, she looked into my eyes as if she were trying to divine for herself if I really was going to listen to her feelings and cared about them. It was a little unnerving to be so frankly assessed by such a young child but I willed myself to keep the same kind, relaxed expression on my face as she read my soul with her eyes.
Without saying a word, she put the glass down and held up her purse. She looked at herself in the reflection provided by the highly polished leather and made sure her hair was in place.
“Grandma gave me this shiny purse because she said I could see how beautiful I was.”
I wanted to laugh at the preciousness of her statement but managed to squelch it to a broad smile and respond, “The purse is Grandma’s way of helping you see your own beauty.”
Elinda smiled and nodded.
“It must really be precious to you.”
She nodded again.
“What’s in your purse?”
“Oh, just some Kleenex that Mom said I might need and some barrettes and some pennies and some crayons and a picture.”
It was the picture that I intuitively felt was important to see but I asked about the crayons first in order to make looking at the picture a more casual event. “What colors of crayons do you have in there?”
One by one she took them out. “I’ve got red - cause that was Grandma’s favorite color - and blue, for the sky - and yellow, for the suns around angels’ heads - and green for the pretty grass.”
“Wow, you have your own little color supply store in there, don’t you?” She nodded soaking up being the center of attention of an adult who wanted to fully see her and was intent on being completely present with her.
“Whose picture do you have?”
She took the picture out of her purse. “It’s a picture of me and Grandma at my last birthday party. Grandma’s the one in the red dress with the black belt.” Her clarification was precious because, while she and Grandma were both wearing red dresses, no explanation of the other figure was really needed.
“I wonder if it would be helpful for you to draw a picture of Grandma in her new home. I have some blank pieces of drawing paper here and you can explain what you are coloring as you go along.”
It was amazing to me how readily Elinda took to this task and the mixture of profundity and childish understandings that she brought to it.
The first thing she drew was a great big wonderful sun right in the middle of the top edge of the paper with rays emanating from it. At the bottom of the paper, she used kelly green to draw a grassy pasture. The main figure, Grandma, was, of course, dressed in red. She was, according to little Elinda, standing at a table making homemade pasta for the big supper she was having with the “polar bear angels.”
That puzzled me but I figured I would wait for her to begin to draw the “polar bear angels” to see if that would help me better understand what she meant. As it turned out, the “polar bear angels” did look like polar bears except that they had yellow wings and little yellow circles above their heads. All of the ursine angels were depicted, in childlike fashion, as sitting around the table at which Grandma was making the pasta.
“Can you tell me more about the “polar bear angels?”
“You know, the polar bear angels - the ones that carry Grandma to God.”
Now it was clear to me! There was confusion between the pallbearers and the angels she must have been told accompanied Grandma to her new place. To a small child, who has never heard the term “pallbearer” before, it could, if said quickly, sound like something exotic with which she was more familiar: “polar bears.”
“Oh, yes the ones that make sure she is safe in her new home.” I decided not to try and explain since that was not the primary issue. “Grandma looks very happy in her new home but I don’t see you in the picture?”
A dark shadow fell across her face. “That’s because I wasn’t invited ‘cause I was too little.” She began to cry silently and big tears welled up in her eyes and fell in her lap. I felt like hugging her and rocking her to give her reassurance as I would my own daughter. But I resisted that intervention and gave her a Kleenex as I said, “Oh, Elinda, I feel so sad with you. It must really hurt to feel you couldn’t be part of Grandma Elinda’s good-bye.”
She nodded and began to sob audibly. At that point I reached out to her and touched her upper arm and rubbed it gently and slowly. I had a daughter about her age - transference anyone? - and it was very painful for me to see someone my daughter’s age, like Elinda, cry so hard.
Following my own intuition, I waited a little while before softly saying, “Would it help if we had another good-bye celebration for Grandma just for you?”
Elinda looked up at me and again searched my eyes to see if I really meant it. Then she nodded.
“Well then, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll gather all of your family and Grandma’s friends and we will go out to where Grandma’s buried. I will wear my robe - because I am the priest - and we will have another good-bye service for Grandma. Afterwards, we can sit around the table just like the “polar bear angels” and remember Grandma while we eat. Do you feel that would help you feel better and sleep better and be able to grow to be the same beautiful person Grandma loves so much?”
Elinda nodded, wiped her eyes, dabbed at her nose and then asked for more Hi-C. As she drank her Hi-C I asked her what her favorite things were about Grandma Elinda. All of the memories she then shared with me would be helpful in making a rite of passage ceremony specifically for Elinda at the gravesite.
When Elinda’s mother came to pick her up, I invited her to sit down with us so we could share together what we had planned. I told Paula, while Elinda agreed, what we felt would be helpful and mentioned many of the things that were significant memories of Grandma. I asked Paula if she could call around among her family and friends and gather as many as she could at an agreeable time at the gravesite for another short funeral service. Afterwards, I continued, it would be helpful to Elinda if there was another funeral dinner complete with the kind of pasta that Grandma used to make.
“Maybe Elinda could even help make the pasta,” I suggested. Elinda’s face lit up with that idea. Paula agreed to call me as soon as she could poll the family members.
I shut the door behind them as they left saying to myself that I didn’t have a clue if this idea would work. This was twenty years before I came across Murray-Bowen’s family systems theory and its concept of the almost unique ability of clergy to intervene in helpful ways in such important moments as marriages and births and funerals. I do not recall being aware, at that time, of the notion that a family is a living, organic “being” which is as profoundly affected by the addition or loss of a member as one would be if he or she were to lose an arm or grow another ear.
The concept that all of life is connected and that the famous statement, “A sparrow does not fall to the earth without your Father in heaven knowing” might be more of an indication of our organic social wholeness rather than a protection from suffering, was not even a glimmer to me at that point in my life.
At any rate, it felt like the helpful thing to do. Yet it was so outlandish I was afraid to ask the psychiatrist who taught the pastoral counseling class about it or even mention it to any of my fellow students. Going to a graveyard to have another funeral service in order to rid a suffering family member of the feeling of being disconnected from the living as well as the dead, seemed less than respectable in a rational world.
When I told my wife, in vague terms to protect privacy, with her usual forbearance of my crazy ideas, she listened carefully and said, “That’s nice dear.” Her response reminded me of what she said the day we went fishing for bluefish our in Long Island Sound. She had shown me up by catching the largest blue that day and winning the joint pool of funds collected from each passenger to go to the one who caught the biggest blue of the day. I expounded, in great detail, upon the bigger blue fish I had hooked but was unable to land. She had said then, too, “That’s nice dear.”
The day of the second funeral service at Grandma Elinda’s gravesite was sunny and just a little brisk. Five year old Elinda and her siblings had helped her mother make the pasta for the dinner following the service. They used the same kitchen tools that Grandma had used and followed her recipe. Paula and Elinda both shared with me how proud Grandma would have been to see the results and how close they felt to Grandma when they were making the pasta.
I wore a black robe to the graveside service because it was the only robe I had. The service was a shortened combination of a regular funeral service and committal service. Paula had managed to gather about 40 relatives at the gravesite for this re-creation. It must have taken some powerful persuasion on her part to convince the people of the efficacy of what they were going to take part in. Then, again, it might just have been the promise of Grandma Elinda’s pasta that was the draw. Whatever it was, I was grateful so many came.
In the short homily, I touched upon all the things that Elinda had mentioned to me as being special about her relationship with Grandma. Grandma loved to read stories to Elinda and hold her on her lap as she did so. Grandma loved to have Elinda help her in the kitchen and always asked Elinda’s opinion about how things tasted when they came out of the oven.
Grandma would let her dust the expensive crystal and polish the silver candleholders. Grandma would have Elinda spend the night; they would watch old movies together and eat popcorn until little Elinda fell asleep. Grandma would brush Elinda’s hair and tell her how pretty she looked especially after Elinda had discovered how to dress up with Grandma’s old dresses, shoes and hats from the 1920’s in the attic.
I closed the homily with this prayer:
Dear God
We thank you for Grandma Elinda Montario;
We know she is as special to you as she was to us;
Our faith is that she is now enjoying herself in her forever home with you;
We are going to miss her terribly - the hugs and secrets and cooking and laughs.
Remind us that Grandma is not completely gone from us
But is present when we make her food recipes,
When we treasure the gifts she gave us,
When we share her laughter,
When we recall her wonderful smell as we crawled up in her lap
And she read to us.
Thanks for connecting her to us with our memories and our family
Who helps us keep the memories alive as valuable gifts.
Thanks for the tears we shed for Grandma
And for the smiles we share about her.
Remind us, now and always, of the wonderful things that come from
Beginnings as small as a seed or a memory
As tiny as a smile
And as warm as the food we share as a family.
This we ask in the name of Jesus
Who lives to keep us connected with Grandma
And each other,
By the power of Spirit,
Through the will of You who made us. Amen
The meal we had afterwards was wonderful. There were Grandma’s stuffed shells and homemade spinach bread. There was Italian wedding soup and a bounty of goods I cannot now fully recall. They are, however, probably still part of me.
Little Elinda was in her element with her patent leather purse and red dress serving up stuffed shells as the guests filed down the buffet table. Grandma Elinda may not have been there in body but she was surely there in spirit, thanks to those polar bear angels.
Elinda stopped wetting the bed. Her temper tantrums subsided. Her moodiness dissipated. The last time I contacted Paula, three years afterwards, Elinda was doing fine. It’s less of a mystery now than it was then in as much as I at least have a theory about why it worked. Still, there is mystery in it. Maybe that’s the point.
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Chapter Two
Right Field Ronny
Ronny was on the verge of being a lost boy. His mother had died two years before I met him. Her absence, in small town, traditional gender role America could be seen in his wrinkled clothes and often dirty face. The degradation of want had not pierced his soul for his angelic expression and quiet forbearance drew me to him.
His father, in a battered old pick-up truck, would come to his son’s little league games and watch while sitting in the truck in the nearby parking lot. After awhile, I figured that Ronny’s Dad never came to sit in the bleachers with the other parents because it restricted his choice of beverages. Having a brew while watching a ball game is a time honored, American tradition: “apple pie, hot dogs, cracker jacks, never get back.” Ronny’s Dad took it to the point where he could benefit from a stay in an institution for “drying out.” That did not prevent him from loving his son the best he knew how.
Because Ronny was a big kid, he wasn’t quite as coordinated as some of the other players. Nor was he blessed with the gifts of a natural athlete. His attention span was short. His nerves hadn’t grown quite yet to reach and communicate with his muscles. Picking flowers and chasing butterflies while playing right field came as naturally to Ronny as the blessing of the sun to the verdant fields on a spring day.