Standing Tall by Stooping

Illustration by Ryan Miller.

ESSAY

My brother Dean has a pretty thankless job. He’s the director of the Minnesota Sex Offender Program. Even saying that makes most people feel a little squeamish. It would be nicer to think that in the land of placid lakes, loons, and Norwegians, there wouldn’t also be sex offenders. Don’t we all hate certain realities? Dean spends his week away from home, dividing his time between a facility in Moose Lake and another in St. Peter. It’s grim work, but he gets his kudos from knowing he’s encouraging the ranks of staffers who work day in and day out with individuals who will never be rehabilitated but who are kept away from our children, our friends, and our neighbors.

You’d think after spending the week in such bleak environs, Sunday mornings would find Dean on a golf course relaxing and enjoying his favorite pastime. Instead, he goes to Haven Homes in Maple Plain where our mother is a resident.

Mom turned ninety this May. Like Nancy Reagan, my brothers and I know all about “the long good-bye.” We’ve watched the cruelty of Alzheimer’s take our mother from us, like a slow but implacable leak empties a tub of water. Each time I see her, less of her remains. When Alzheimer’s first becomes evident, there are small hints or flashes of alarm on occasion. As it is now with Mom, there are only very occasional flashes of who she once was. It is as though the library has burned, and only a few partial lines on a charred page are left in the smoldering rubble. But we cling to those lines on the charred page that come in the form of a rare smile, a couple of words, and momentary recognition.

Haven Homes has a chapel. There are no pews; chairs line the back wall for the ambulatory residents, and the rest of the room is open to accommodate wheelchairs. Dean and his dear wife Dawn help the staff wheel in the residents who want to attend the Sunday service. There’s Josephine, once a college instructor of Biblical studies, now terribly hunched over. She wears a stocking cap pulled down almost to her hearing aids. There’s Adrian Lauretzen, Dean’s former music professor at the University of Minnesota. Dean is about to lead the singing and do a duet with Mary Helen Bruhn, herself now using a walker…I wonder if Adrian feels like he’s left a legacy in Dean, (He has!) or if time has robbed him of the gratification he deserves to feel. Sylvia Dillman is wheeled in and parked next to Mom. We went to school and were in 4-H with the Dillman kids. In another time, Mom would have smiled and chatted with Sylvia. She sits mute and vacant by her side, no recognition of a lifetime of shared experience.

Large print songbooks with words to old familiar hymns are distributed to the unlikely congregation. Must they not be more beautiful in God’s eyes than the well coiffed, manicured, suited ones sitting in the polished pews of pretty churches elsewhere at this hour? Dawn scurries back and forth, making sure everyone has found the right page. The singing begins. And Mom, who had just asked me who I was, who looks at me without any sign she recognizes her precious only daughter, begins to sing:

“Love lifted me!

Love lifted me!

When nothing else could help

Love lifted me!”

She doesn’t miss a word, and a light of some lost cognition comes to her eyes, to her face while the music lasts.

Her eyes lock on her son as his beautiful tenor voice blends with Mary Helen’s mellow soprano. They sing:

“He touched me,

Oh, He touched me!

And oh, the joy that floods my soul!

Something happened

And now I know

He touched me and made me whole!”

I fight the swell of emotion as I absorb the irony that Mom will only be “touched and made whole” when she is released from this life. My throat aches and I stupidly worry about my mascara smearing as my eyes well up.

A woman minister comes to deliver a short homily on holiness. Mom’s head slumps to her chest and she sleeps.

The benediction is given. The faithful receive their blessing and three young nurse’s aides appear to wheel the congregation, a few at a time, back to the lobby where they will watch the birds in the huge enclosure and await lunch.

I watch Dean work the room…like a politician, only with nothing to gain. He puts his hand on Lennie’s shoulder and tells him to try to stay out of trouble and then laughs heartily at his own wit while Lennie’s eyes crinkle at the corners and his face cracks into an enormous smile.

He leans down next to Josephine’s slumping head and blesses her for all those years she taught young Bible students, tells her she should be proud of how she gave of herself to others.

He finds Adrian and asks him if he turned off his hearing aids when he saw that Dean was about to sing. They both laugh. Dean pats Adrian on the back.

He squats down in front of Sylvia Dilllman and tells her he hopes to see her son Jim at their Orono High School 40th reunion later this month. She smiles as Dean tells her what fine people her kids are.

The image of him squatting on his haunches in front of Sylvia Dillman’s wheelchair remains with me. I remember the quote: “A man never stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.” I see my brother stooping to help these antique children, and yes, he stands very, very tall.

He didn’t need to go to the golf course to try for that ever elusive hole-in-one. Sunday after Sunday he hits holes-in-one at Haven Homes.

Jane Mooney Olson is a Minnesota native who taught language arts to Illinois and Colorado middle school students for forty-one years. She and her husband Arne have enjoyed vacationing in Door County for many years. They currently make their home in Boulder, Colorado, where they enjoy skiing and watercolor painting. The writing submitted is totally factual and was written to honor her brother, Dean Mooney, for his dedicated care of their mother, Carol Mooney, who passed away at age 96.