Lessons my parents taught me

Yesterday was my mom, Harriet's birthday.  She was eighty-nine years old.  As my regular readers know, Mom suffers from brain damage from a stroke, Alzheimer's type dementia, and ordinary dementia.  We don't know from one visit to the next how much cognizance she will have, and often, it is little to none.

But inside that body, is a heart that loved.  And loved.  And loved.

My dad died on January 14, 2000.  My cousin Chris gave the eulogy.  He talked about how Dad mentored him to be involved in his community.  To give time and energy to causes he believed in and supported.  To spend time making the world a better place.  And Chris also talked about how my mom and dad were living examples of my Dad's life philosophy to make a better world.

My parents believed in being the good they wanted to see in the world.  They volunteered.  Our home was a sanctuary for any of our friends who needed to be in a place where they were accepted.  My parents tried hard to see the good in everyone.  They donated blood.  They worked at countless spaghetti dinners and pancake breakfasts to raise money for someone or some group in need.

Every time something tragic happens, the Fred Rogers quote surfaces again, that his mother told him when bad things happen, look for the helpers, that there are always more helpers.  My mom and dad were always the helpers.

I want to live up to their legacy.  I want to be the good I want to see in the world.  I'm sure at times they got discouraged too.  After all, they were parents of young children when John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  And they were on the cusp of turning forty when Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated.  They lived through the heartache of World War II, and the divided nation that existed over the Vietnam conflict.  The tremendous civil rights struggles of the 1950's and 1960's.  Yet they carried on.  Seeing the good and being the good.

It can be easy to look at the problems of today, the divisions in our country over race, and religion, and gender assignment, and sexual preference, and gun ownership; and think it is hopeless.

I remember the lessons my parents taught me.  That the only way to make it better is to keep on keeping on to make it better.  And there were many dark times in their lives when it would have been easy to fall prey to hopelessness, to stop trying to make it better, to stop trying to find common ground, to stop trying to create an oasis of kindness and goodness in their home.  They never stopped making it better.

I owe my parents to live up to the lessons they taught me, and to keep trying to make the world better.  To steadily pursue a course that accepts each of God's children exactly the way He made them, that provides sanctuary for the hurting and unwanted, to work on behalf of those needing my help, to be a voice for peace and love and decency.

My parents taught me to never give up on making the world the best it can be.  I learned that lesson, and I will never give up.