Every time a bell rings ...

The other day I stated on Facebook that I was having a George Bailey moment. My good friend Mary Beth astutely asked, "Before or after he discovers the bloody lip?" "Right about then," was my reply.

Let me explain.

Ever since I was about 12 years old, I have suffered periodic bouts of depression. It was never diagnosed until I was in my 30s. Toward the end of 2009 it came back with a vengeance, and I've been praying, working and medicating to fight it off ever since. 

They say that significant life events can trigger depressive episodes, and like anyone, I'd had my share of those in recent times: a job change; a big move; a serious health scare; the death of a close friend; the sickness and death of my father-in-law; the death of a pet; a separation from my beloved goddaughter; a difficult relationship with a supervisor; witnessing a series of disasters. Any one or two of these would have been plenty, thank you. 

Many of those things just have to be grieved, and that is simply a function of time and allowing yourself to feel your feelings. (The best thing anyone said to me after my mother died in 1998 came from my close friend Tony, who said, "Just feel what you feel, man. Feel what you feel.")

© Liberty Films

It can be helpful to write a letter to the lost person or thing, sharing everything you feel, good, bad or neutral. Read the letter out loud to another person, someone you trust and who won't comment or judge, but just listen. If you don't have such a person, a pet or a teddy bear will do.

It's a hard life being at once a Christian, an optimist, a liberal and a journalist. You want to see and hope for the best in people and society, but the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. You trust in a loving and benevolent God, but you witness daily a corrupt and hateful world. You feel strongly motivated to reach out and help "the least of these," but the sheer quantity of them is paralyzing.

War, crime, cruelty, hatred, selfishness, greed, wastefulness, irresponsibility -- all of these are failings of humanity and are to be expected because we are a fallen race. That doesn't mean we have to like them, or accept them, or even overcome them. One thing we can do is pray for humanity, pray that the light of God's love will drive out the darkness of the world. It's frustrating to realize that this change has to happen one soul at a time.

The wheel of life

On this, the 90th anniversary of my mother's birth, I present a newspaper guest column I wrote 20 years ago. I believe this was my first published work after college. It ran on the front of the Metro section of the Fort Wayne (Indiana) News-Sentinel, where I was a copy editor.

Wheel of life takes emotions on a wild ride
August 16, 1989

This summer has been a matter of life and death for my family.

The season has always consisted of languorous days spent staying out of the sun and muggy evenings spent sipping iced tea on the front porch. Baseball games on the radio and the smell of ribs on the neighbors’ grill.

Come to think of it, all that stuff has been going on as usual, but other events have marked this summer, and I’m not at all comfortable with the theme.

The cycle started, like summer, on Memorial Day weekend, when my wife and I were driving on U.S. 30 to visit her brother in Chicago. It was fairly early that beautiful Saturday morning, and there was very little traffic. We were sharing cinnamon rolls we had bought at T.J. Cinnamon’s on what was supposed to be its last day in business (it has since been resurrected), getting sticky fingers and having a good time.

We both were looking out the side window at a farm where the cattle were standing near the road. We were searching the herd for calves.

When I looked to the road again, I saw in front of us a wall of steel in the form of a stopped livestock truck. Instinctively, I swerved left onto the median, missing the huge truck by little more than a few inches. After I got my pickup back on the highway, still going about 50 mph, my wife put her hand on my arm. It felt like the hand of God.

Neither of us said a word for five minutes. Later we prayed and she cried.

Apparently even as that brush with death was happening, the pathetic stray cat we had taken in on Mother’s Day was giving birth back home to five kittens.

Kittens are wonderful. They can entertain without trying, delight without cloying. We’ve tried not to get too attached to them, because we know we have to give them all away, but they’re hard to resist.

It has been a joy to watch them grow, explore, learn and play. They make you feel wonderful about life.

Now we learn one of them has a heart murmur, and we have to decide whether to “put it to sleep” (to use the prevalent euphemism for killing something beloved), give it away to someone willing to take a chance, or keep it and hope for the best.

A few weeks ago, our next-door neighbors brought forth a beautiful baby girl. We were – and still are – thrilled for them.

But then another neighbor – four doors down – was stabbed to death, and a curtain of fear and sorrow hangs over the neighborhood.

The wheel of life keeps turning as it always has, but this summer it seems to be spinning so fast that the spokes have become invisible. I’ve been up and down on it so many times already that I don’t know how to take each new scene that flashes past my eyes.

For example, several weeks ago my 10 siblings and I threw a party for my mother on her 70th birthday. It was an event to celebrate this wonderful, funny woman’s long and worthwhile life and her full recovery from a heart attack four years ago.

Nine of her 11 children were there, along with a few other relatives and cherished friends and uncounted grandchildren. It was a beautiful day, full of laughter and love and a kind of closeness with some of my siblings that I cannot remember ever feeling before.

With the kind of summer it’s been, however, I couldn’t help but think about how many more birthdays my parents might have.

The macabre mood of this summer has even managed to take a turn toward the comic.

The aforementioned stray cat has made herself very much at home in our house, turning every inch of it into her personal hunting ground.

We used to have a pet zebra finch named Jenny. She was 6 years old – that’s 120 to you and me. I admired her for her longevity.

Rikki the cat admired her for her white meat.

We came home one day to find the bird cage shattered on the floor, a small pile of feathers in the kitchen and a satisfied look on Rikki’s face.

I guess everybody faces issues of life and death; it’s part of living. But having to do it nearly every day is a bit much. Take me out to the ballgame.