Unknown Buddhist

Devon Jackoniski, a physician assistant in orthopedics and daughter of former football player Tommy Nobis, wrote that gladiators fought with spears and swords while American football players use their heads as their principal weapon in combat. In ancient Rome, gladiators ultimately lost their lives in battle. Football players lose their minds and then, eventually, their lives.

My only experience with football was in high school, the military and college. And brief as my career was, I remember suffering only one concussion – that I can remember. Writing that gives me pause. However, any dreams of running the gridiron every Sunday was surrendered decades ago – not from a lack of physical endurance – but from an apparent lack of talent. By age twenty-five, repeated injuries of tendons in both knees relegated had me to spectator status.

On the other hand, my father played all kinds of sports well into his sixties. There was baseball, tag football, skiing, golf, and bowling. The near-daily ritual of sports was followed by alcohol. Sometimes, heavily.

I wonder if all that had an impact. As I care for my father, I watch his ability to remember such escapades has slowly degraded. Instead of sports, medical appointment reminders that blink on his iPad are forgotten within moments. And thanks to my mother’s aid, my father had successfully been able to fool many for years. Eventually, though, even my mother’s assistance was no longer viable.

My brother called to offer birthday wishes the other day. I confided that I wonder if my father lay dormant within me. While I have not lost the ability to remember where I live, what states visited, crimes investigated, or meals eaten, everything hurts – ankles, feet, knees, and back. My heart beats, then skips and once suffered a silent attack.

As such, tracking medications require an hour or more weekly. Since pain’s a significant part of life, I’ve entirely abandoned the five-second rule. Something drops, I query, ‘I wonder if there’s a two-day rule,” and schedule pickup during one of the two times each week I ease down on all fours, crawl throughout the rooms, and capture scattered Statins, Lisinopril, Inderal, pain medications, muscle relaxers, aspirin, and others objects. I’ve also snaggeded stray bottle caps, pens, paperclips, three-day-old broccoli, and other assorted vegetables.

Therefore, buying a Roomba vacuum cleaner may have merit. However, I remember reading of a man whose Roomba ran across a pile of fresh, soft dog doo-doo. The owner referred to it as “The Pooptastrophe, The Poohpocalypse or The Poppppening,” when hs Roomba spread dog poop over every conceivable surface within reach. Ugh, Roomba nixed.

Moving onto dogs, I considered a dog may have a certain sense of appreciation. However, walking said dog in subzero weather does not appear to have any beneficial merit – for me. Sure some whacked out ‘Paul Bunyan‘ type will tear longingly for the great outdoors, the fresh air, and the cold crisp snap of the early morn’.

Last Paul Bunyon I met once said, “Ah, Dog and man. Dog and man.”

He returned a week later with a torn rotator cuff from throughing too many axes into trees.

“Nope. Nada. Not me,” I replied.

Of course, there’s another option. A friend suggested a cat. While a cat seemed like a viable option, I had been there, done that. Back in 96′, I adopted a cat named ‘Cleo,’ short for Cleopatra. Apparently, Cleo’s previous owner was under some illusion that Cleo had somehow inherited Egyptian royalty. While Cleo loved to eat fallen broccoli from the floor, on most days, she was more a sovereign state with a tail than royalty.

The whole cat thing ended when I reflected back to my first heart attack. I was cleaning Cleo’s litter box when the heart event occurred. Being awash in sudden and crushing pain gave way, not to the thought of survival, but to whether some paramedic would find me face-planted in ‘Tidy Cats’ Free and Clean. I rolled to the right reflecting upon the Chicago Tribune headlines, ‘Owner Found Dead, Face-First in Liter Box.”

Circling around, being a Buddhist means enjoying my father and the time remaining. Even now, as I write, one can find my father in his favorite chair, either watching old ‘Gunsmoke‘ episodes or the saguaro cactus adjacent to the living room window. Sometimes, he fiddles endlessly with old broken computers. “Hoping to fix this,” he nods. Sure, it’s mindless activity. And he may be lost, but the action itself makes him feel un-lost.

Devon Jackoniski lost her father to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), caused by a career doing the thing he loved. My father doesn’t have CTE. He lost to age. The sad truth is that CTE, dementia and Alzhimers are not treated exceptionally well by current medical technology. Thus, people like Ms. Jackoniski, my mother, my brother and I are unknownly bonded in the same fight – the fight for quality care. It’s a battle mercilessly  fought, but never won.

I know my father’s genes swirl within me. I will ride such genetic markers to the ground. I don’t think about it, the good or bad. Yet some days, the similarities are astonishing, with humor being one.

One day, not long ago, I made a statement about not remembering where I put something. My father looked up and asked if I needed one of his pills.

“Pass the pill, Dad. Pass the pill.“

Dang. Dropped it.

“Hey, Dad. Is there a two-day rule?“

So many different sins. Whether we admit it or not, most of us are in a very broken state. Each of us has issues; some surrounding relationships, some with drugs, and some with this or that.

We see many celebrities on television living horrid lives. What would possibly be going on, that any one of us would openly choose such a destructive lifestyle? And how embarrassing is it that one must live out these very private and personal failures on a public stage, to be discovered and shamed by many of the world. It’s hard enough to be familiar with our own self, let alone to be personally honest about our worst and most destructive choices, but to have others find out our worst, let alone the whole world seems impossible.

Maybe … just maybe … to have this stuff come forth from the bottom of our soul is the beginning of freedom. Maybe … just maybe … having that sin uncovered begins a journey away from individual slavery. Maybe … just maybe … having that sin exposed frees us from the shackles of darkness, the bonds of hell. Maybe that sin … just maybe … uncovering that sin is what we need to have happen.

Most of us know at least one thing in our life that remains hidden. Slowly these issues feast upon the core of our soul, if not our body. Simply put, it’s just a code for sin, a destructive behavior that seemingly never dies. But what if any one of us went to work, like any other day, only to realize your sin will be uncovered? What if you went home, stood face-to-face with your spouse, and found this hidden secret exposed? What if all our secrets were exposed, for the entire world to see?

Better yet, what if you exposed these sins, but the very person you stood face-to-face did not run? Maybe that spouse, coworker, friend or love lover flinches, but at the end of the day stood firm? What if you weren’t shamed for your choices? What if your darkest secret was exposed simply so you can be free? What if someone simply acted Godly, in love, and exposed the secret so one could be free?

What if God looked at you today and said, “I know you. I know the worst things about you and I’m not leaving you? I will stay right here … to love you … and support you. I am here with you as you are. You don’t have to polish yourself, create another image or hide the pain in the back alley of the soul. What’s more, I know there’s freedom for you. I now there is a greater life for you.”

This is a love most of us have never ever known before. It’s a love that enables each us to lay bare our wounded souls and ask for freedom.

Too often we are loved for this or for that. Most of us go from one thing to another – desperately trying to end the loneliness, to end the insecurity. And much of the time, that very loneliness is often reinforced, galvanized. The pleasure we sought becomes an endless journey of one vice for another, one relationship to the next and one bad habit for another.

When each of us reaches for the hurting and accept them in this form of agape love, we accept them for who they are, blemishes and all. This allows each and every one of us to look at our own ugliness and accept it as part of who we were. It’s the kind of love that comes to everyone as they are, not some idolized person someone thinks you need to be. This type of does not wait for us to cleanse our life, to make things all better. This form of agape love needs to come to all, as we stand, bare-ass and naked.

And if we receive that love, we can hold up our sin, our darkness and trust that this person, who stands before us, ensured we would not be abandoned. To those damaged during life’s journey, when we love in empowerment we give them the ability to begin freeing the chains, to cut the chains, to heal the shame. Only when we know who we are, can begin to order our lives in honor of those who gave us the most empowering love ever know.

This empowerment is the greatest form of love we’ve ever, ever, known.