The Prayer Rug

                                                      

You’ve heard the stories for years about my friend Marjorie suffering from breast cancer: a disease that metastasized from breast to bone to lungs to liver to spinal column. But I’ve really never told you about her husband.

Keith stood by Marjorie for the seven long years of the stage 4 cancer diagnosis, a cancer that had actually surfaced 14 years ago, and then reared its ugly head seven years later.  When I visited Marjorie in the intensive care unit, Keith was there. When I came to the gamma knife procedure, he was there, too. When I went to the hospice, he was standing beside her bed. I saw what a toll this illness had taken on him as well as her. I told him to leave. He walked the halls. He ran out to Bob Evans to get a salad, a salad he then tried to feed Marjorie upon his return. I believe it was her last taste of food.

The final wish Marjorie had before losing consciousness on that late October Sunday was that she return home so she could die in her own bed. She said this in between morphine- driven naps. It was the last wish Keith could fulfill for his bride of 25 years. And no, it wasn’t her very own bed she died in, rather a hospital bed in the family room that she decorated herself, with yellow walls and blue and yellow overstuffed furniture and floral curtains sewn by Marjorie’s hands. She died in that room three days later.

It’s been three months now since Marjorie’s passing. Since then, I have taken on the task of helping Keith survive. I call him every few days or he calls me. Sometimes we cry together. Sometimes we remember. Although Marjorie has a sister, he says that I was much more of one. Helping Keith is the last favor I can do for my friend.

The other day when we were talking, he mentioned the Persian rug in their living room, a room which he describes now as a shrine to Marjorie’s family with all the assorted family furniture, photos and trinkets assembled there. 

“You know her aunt’s old Persian rug is worn on one side,” he said. 

Why is it worn, I asked?

“It’s where Marjorie knelt to pray,” he said. 

I could picture her there in my mind’s eye, with her Princess Diana beauty and her tall, waifish figure, and her eyes closed and head bent in solemn communion with God. I had no words.

A Persian carpet worn to bare thread from kneeling in prayer. Now that’s something beautiful, don’t you think? That’s what I call faith.  And isn’t it wonderful that her husband noticed? 

                                                                The Tattoo

I remember telling my Smithville High School colleagues after I’d gotten pregnant with my first child, “If caring for one baby is tougher than teaching 120 students a day, I will eat my hat.” Well, my friends, I have metaphorically eaten that hat more times than I can count over the past quarter century.  The latest challenge one of my children posed occurred just a few days ago.

 

My second child, Laura, just started her Master’s program in counseling at John Carroll University. She posed a question to me recently that had to do with tattoos. I have never had a tattoo. Moreover, I have never wanted one. I envisioned myself in the nursing home, tattoos swinging in the wind on flesh that had not withstood the test of time.  However, she asked me rather bluntly: what if we, in solidarity of our faith, had a small cross or symbol of God inked on our skin? This invitation from her hit me hard. Isn’t this step a physical manifestation of what I’ve been asking of my kids for the past 20 odd years of their lives?

 

A few days later, I drove up to her new apartment in University Heights. On the way to dinner, we ended up at a tattoo parlor in downtown Cleveland. Then the question presented itself again: are you getting a tattoo to mark our solidarity with Jesus? Wow, talk about being hit between the eyes with my own teachings? 

 

I nodded yes, etched out a scrolled “Jesus” and waited my turn. My daughter chose a  small cross, both to be inked on the inside of our wrists, no bigger than an inch or so in width. It didn’t hurt much, and my daughter was inspired by my example. In fact, I don’t think I have ever pleased her more. 

 

As an educator, I always thought my job was to teach. But one of the best things I’ve learned from my own children (and from my students) is that sometimes I must learn from their example, even if it means breaking the rules I feel so strongly about. They respect me more, and we both grow from the experience. 

 

After the ink session was over, my girl and I put our wrists side by side and took photos.  I thought to myself, I never told my kids to wear their faith on their sleeves, but perhaps that’s what it’s all about. 

 

Besides, some day when I am dead and gone and can no longer speak for myself, perhaps someone will see that sacred name and know that’s whom I followed. Sounds like a pretty good reason to break my own rules. Now I have to go work on my boy.