A while back, I saw a TV show about Lucille Ball, and, at one point, there was a clip of another actress, who said that she did not think that Lucy had “a happy ending”.
I was saddened, and I began thinking about what a happy ending is.
My grandfather died when I was 13. Did he have a happy ending? I think so… I had a visitation from him. This was before his funeral, and I was bunked in my grandmother’s sewing room, and I was wide awake, reading something, and he walked into the room, and sat down beside me on the bed and told me that I would see him again. (I kept secret my last conversation with my grandfather for 35 years – when I told my mother she did not believe me, or thought it was a childish fantasy, so it is just as well that I never told anyone. I know that my grandfather had a happy ending.)
My father is a Baptist minister. Right now, I think, he is retired (I say I think year.) because every time I think he is retired, I find out that he is preaching somewhere again. This has been going on for some 15 years. I expect it will keep on for a while. Daddy turned 82 last year.
My parents do not think much of me. They think I am one of the “Lost”. They have told me this so many times that I have lost count. That is okay with me because, thank the Lord, they taught me, as I was growing up, that I must have a personal relationship with my God. That is the most valuable thing that my parent have ever given me. I do have that personal relationship with the Lord. What anyone else thinks is their business. I also learned that the person who has never sinned should be the first person to throw a stone (my paraphrasing of the Biblical verse). That is one of the teachings, ground into my consciousness, that has allowed me to become the whole person that I am, finally, now. and has allowed me to deal with the issues that dogged me throughout my childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood.
A while back, my dad told me that, if you have a good relationship with God, you will not be afraid of death. That was an interesting concept, at the time, but, not too far after that, September 11th happened. I live in New York City, and I had the dubious honor of seeing the first plane fly into the World Trade Center. I also had the opportunity, at that moment, to try to calm people who did not know what to do, or where to go, or even how to get home. When it was my turn to go home (2 hours after the towers fell), I thanked the Lord that I had already thought about how to get home if I had to walk (and I had heard Simon & Garfunkel’s “59th Street Bridge” song when I was a teenager — so I knew that there was some sort of bridge at or around 59th Street that would take me to Queens), and I started walking home, and I did not think about anything except dying with my stuff (okay, that might sound stupid, but I am not married, and my family was far away.) I just figured if I could get home, I could die comfortable (as an English teacher to foreigners, it seems to me that many people translate “happy” as “comfortable”– I understood, at that time, that I would be comfortable “with my stuff”, although I knew, of course, that I would never be happy, like I had been, again, because my neighbors, and my landmarks, and my things that I had loved were gone) At the same time, I figured that, if I could get home, to my stuff, I could die happy (okay, I am one of those people who find it easy to be happy…. if I have my stuff; if I have my family; if I am where I know where I am.)
