A summer sunshower

smiled on me and i returned

the favor with tears.

Very vulnerable means

movement slight as breath and tears 

compete with the rain.

Among demented,

time hangs looped ‘n’ suspended,

close yet a-parted.

While it is still paying

attention is the cheapest

gift i've got to give.

Caritas I

In the society i grew up in – waspy, working class, post-depression era – there were many mixed messages about charity. My parents had spoken phrases such as:

Never a lender nor a borrower be.

Beggars can’t be choosey.

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

We were raised on movies and literature that portrayed charity as a good thing to give, if you had enough to share, and a rotten thing to get because signaled that you were needy, poor, and under-class.

My mind’s eye sees Henry Fonda in the Hollywood version of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. It was a mix of feelings, images, messages about poverty and what charity means, even in times of hardship and as a kid, the movie confused and frightened me. Being poor sure was scary (and it still is.) And it seemed poverty could like the grim-reaper, could over-take me in a heartbeat and for no personal fault.

I am hearing from various other Americana canon, characters saying with anger and/or pride:

“I don’t want your charity!”

Then there is Philanthropy. Philanthropy as a term and action, as far as i could fathom was reserved for those like my friend Steven, who was born to “old money” and spent his life managing the wealth. I remember the first time he referred to himself as a philanthropist – a term i still can’t apply to myself. I’ve been reading about it in the Times a lot but it’s not germane.

When in elementary school, then as now, there were many collections for the others. There was a boy for whom we secretly collected clothes and somehow got to his poor family. We collected Dimes, and food and such and learned something about giving to others but we learned very little about the deep sense and meaning of charity and less about the others. Certainly i learned nothing to erase the Grapes of Wrath lessons.

Caritas II

I went to university. I found a grander sense of others and a broader concern for the world. The war made me rethink the big questions and if i didn’t find the answers, i was at least asking better questions. There was a beginning sense of what is good for the others and how knowing that would/could affect who i am.

During university, i learned from my philosophy classes that there are many loves and many expressions of a higher power and that Charity is one that is both. Somewhere in there was a dash of religious instruction that appeared to echo the western canon regarding love and the divine and connection to caritas and to me.

It seems that i have been learning the many meanings of charity over my life time and from many sources. But i still don’t really get it as i hadn’t really received it.

Caritas III

Tere’s caritas, sense of love and divine, is broad and encompassing and reflected in all of her being. She has had experiences of charity and as a profound sense of its meaning.

The first she often recites is when the ’72 earthquake in Managua took all her possessions, destroyed her house and almost the lives of her family. Sitting in an open field waiting for whatever was to come next and shaken by aftershocks, she was immensely impressed and moved by the generous hand and handouts of a US soldier. Her recitations can still put a tear in her eye.

But that was her experience – not mine. She has others, just as powerful and life-affecting – they too are hers and not mine. Try as i might i have only indirectly sensed it.

Though what i have said above is so, it is just as so that i have learned from Tere. It is difficult to live and love and not learn. Tere’s way of being is caritas – love and divinity expressed through human interaction and relationships. I have seen, felt, and appreciated her caritas. I have even made some effort to mimic it. But it is still more hers than mine.

I have another source of learning of charity from my experiences within A.A. In part it is embodied in the process, and reflected in how we must give it away to keep it. I have seen how there is a caritas within the group conscience; how the hand is held out to the less fortunate. And i have experienced that sort of love too.

I have a sense of the blessing of giving to those with hands out on the street. I was given a lesson by my maternal grandmother. She once and for all blew off those senseless statements – “oh he is probably making more than you begging out there” – with this simple retort to my father who’d made a similar comment.

She said, “If he asks for money and doesn’t need it, the sin is his but if he asks and needs it and I don’t give, the sin is mine.” I’ve never begrudged the occasional beggar since then.

Yet up to very recently, i never had had the deep sense of what it meant to receive charity in the manner and sense that i have gotten this week.

Caritas IV

My mother-in-love came to America under the auspices of our familial sponsorship. Why she had not gotten residency years before is another tale altogether. But when Tere and I began the process it was about 11 years ago with the US Embassy while Carmen was still in Nicaragua.

A year later her life there became untenable for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that an active-alcoholic relative had moved in with her. So, Tere rushed down to Nicaragua and rescued her. In five packed days, Tere closed out her 77 years there. That was about 10 years ago.

What we later discovered was the unanticipated move precipitated a huge burp in the residency process and required the filling out of all whole new and different set of forms with INS, and a restart in the residency process.

Then many months passed before we found out.

We started a third time.

We paid and processed the new forms.

This time we got as far as an appointment.

But then we had to request a change in dates because my mother had had a massive stroke and was dying and we needed to be with her in another town.

The INS cancelled not only Carmen’s INS appointment but also her application.

Go figure.

We re-restarted her application.

Fourth time.

They lost her.

Well not her exactly but the paper her.

We found the paper her with a backdoor call from a lawyer and more money.

By now years had been lost in all of these bumps and holes and her official, state-recognized residency did not begin until November 10, 2005.

What’s this all got to do with caritas you might well be asking by now. Well wait.

Many of us take health care for granted because we have insurance or in the case of my folks state insurance in the form of Medicare; we don’t know what the full meaning of not having health care support can be. We don’t really pay attention to the charges and when we do those that are not out of our pocket don’t feel the same as those expenses that are.

We consider the professionals through our privileged criteria and some of us moan about HMOs limiting selections but few of us have been limited the way those without are.

Carmen has been limited to one clinic, through the only public hospital. She has been subjected to all day waits and screaming babies, and insensitive intake personnel, and cold nurses, poor diagnosis, and impatience all around. Most of us haven’t made the long lines, with junkies using the toilets, at the county hospital pharmacy to get medicine that is required for our health. That has been Carmen’s in the meanwhile.

Now for those who don’t know Medicare is better than most PPO plans and while it had been reviled by AMA, and denounced as socialistic before its institution, it has become the favored form of payment in the health field. Accepted by all. And if you have a small supplemental insurance you are the golden calf.

Well, it takes five years from granting of state-recognized residency to qualify for Medicare.

Why five years?

What’s the magic in that number?

It’s beyond me.

But the result is that Carmen could not qualify for Medicare until she had been a state-recognized resident for exactly that number of years – to the day.

That magic date is about four months from now, if she lives until then.

So, Carmencita is the tortugita that fell into a rabbit hole.

I am sure she is not alone in there but she is surely the one we know best.

Caritas V

Currently Carmen qualifies medically for hospice care.

Now you may or may not know there is not one big free Hospice out there.

Nope.

There are very many hospice care organizations. Some are non-profit and others are for-profit.

The first we spoke with was recommended by the family doctor at our clinic – a religion-affiliated hospice – non-profit. The on-phone in-take person at Catholic Hospice quizzed Teresa on our income, as if it were Carmen’s.

Later she called back and told us that we didn’t qualify for their help.

Odd.

Not much caritas there.

Odd feeling of fear and deep sense of rejection.

Fear that we wouldn’t be able to help Carmen through this transition in a simple and humane manner

or that we might burn up in the process trying to do all of the care-taking ourselves – Tere, Uli, and I.

And rejection in that Carmen didn’t qualify for help because of our income.

I recalled that a friend had used a hospice that might not have been the same one. Sure enough; our dear friend Joyce told us that her family had used for-profit Vitas on the basis of the recommendation of her brother-in-love, Scott. I was given his contact information and encouraged to call him.

Scott told us to ask about charity from the Vitas folks as they often provided the services through charity.

We called Vitas who sent someone out to us without asking about our finances first. Hum…

Jeniffer [sic] arrived and talked sympathetically and clearly about the services and processes. When I asked about finances, we talked about charity. She immediately called her office and put us in contact with a woman there. When she began to ask the same questions that Catholic Hospice asked, I became anxious.

Tere passed the phone to me.

“If Carmen is the ill person, and she only has 89 dollars a month in pension, why are we being quizzed?”

The woman said that they had to know for their decision making process.

“Oh well, Tere we don’t have any choice.” But in my mind I was preparing for another rejection.

Jeniffer, however, was telling me on the side that it is not either charity or we pay it all but that there might be a compromise arrangement.

At any rate, I was preparing for the rejection.

Fifteen minutes later, Jeniffer called back to the office, and then matter-of-factly told me Carmen was approved. “Approved for what?” I asked. “Approved for charity. We will cover everything.”

I am still processing the immensity of that decision and the impact on us. Relief is surely part of the feeling. Relief that we do not have to do it all alone. Relief that the process won’t bankrupt us financially, emotionally, spiritually. There is an odd reserved feeling of joy. And there is a feeling of the deeply moving impact of Charity.

As sensitive as we are emotionally right now, the smallest acts of kindness can move us to tears and the smallest rudeness can irritate me to anger. Seeming small acts beginning with a friend sharing, her relative informing, a totally unknown person “just doing her job,” and a company feeling that it had enough profit that it could/should share brought Charity into our lives.

Tere has been reminded of that help after the ’72 earthquake in Managua. For my part, at this level, it is truly a first.

As i chew on the enormous impact on my family and me, i am still learning what it all means.

The help has been arriving since two hours after Jeniffer finished the forms:

An oxygen machine that afternoon.

Prescriptions FedExed overnight.

A wheelchair the next day delivered to the house.

A nurse and a doctor sitting in the room in our house with her.

A DOCTOR SITTING IN THE ROOM IN OUR HOUSE WITH HER!

Talking to her about how she feels….

Caritas VI

This will be a long digestion for me. Yet, it has already shifted my perspective on charity. It is already begun working into my capacity for caritas. Charity is being redefined for me and one part I am sure of is that many of phrases that so permeate and reflect our ambivalent use of Charity in our culture – many of those phrases/ideas are just plain wrong.

For one example right now, I will never ever again say: “I don’t want charity.”

Can we chose between

her dying, his dementia -- 

both break the being.

First try, oh my god!
What's the reason in winter
season, discontent?

Humanitos

Today I sat among Friends in meditation and silence while my head filled with noise of itself.
I sounded questions i’d not wrestled with since sophomore years:
What’s the point? What is the meaning of life? What is the purpose of our existence? Is there a god and how would god be expressed? What happens after death?
I have been asking these questions because two very important relationships in my existence are transitioning from this life form of corporeal being into whatever follows.
Sitting among these Friends and among these questions and my internal noise, i hear the entrance of small new human lives and the inadvertent noises that accompany them.
No need to peek to know the forms of the sources of these sounds; i keep my eyes shut and listen.
I am drawn to the presence of these small species-relatives.
My silent focus turns to their delightful wonder-music.
Then I return to my existential meandering meditation.
Breaking into my mind is a gentle “shush” from an adult and one small voice asks, “Why?”
I smile again as i am harmoniously focusing on the very same question.
Moments later i hear from the newest life a short babbling- gurgle and with it, I am given a meaning.
Within seconds, the slightly older by maybe two and a half years voice asks: “What’s that?”
I am grinnier.
My existential questions are being asked by another beginning entity – Why? What’s that?
Ah! Then i hear a quiet squeal: “There’s daddy!”
A god incarnate has appeared!
Now the smile is growing from my face into my heart.
Here it all is.
The same questions at the beginning of life as at the end.
Simple and direct.
Sometimes i find companionship in the smallest beings.