I am just a sentimental fool.

August 5, 2004 early a.m. hours

Sometimes I wonder why I think about the things that I think about. Why do I react the way I do? Why do I frequently lay awake at night thinking of parables in ordinary remote things? Am I too morbid? Why do I see such great significance in the most common of things? I recently began tracing back this penchant I have for mourning the oddest of happenings in life after my weekend visit with my sister.

My sister told me a story that triggered several memories of my own reactions. She recently traded in her 1999 Buick for a Lexus 2001. It was definitely a trade up since the Lexus has many luxury features, but most importantly super efficient A.C. Her Buick’s air was barely cooling at all in spite of the hefty repair bill they paid last year to get it going. But the most interesting part of her story for me was when she told me how she felt so bad to leave the Buick behind at the dealership. She said it was like forsaking an old friend even though the car had made her life rather miserable these last few hot months.

This is another sister thing that we share because we are from a family lineage which specializes in sentimental drivel. I say that in a bluntly honest but loving way. My paternal grandfather was the King of Sentimentality. He named his big black beauty of a car, Pocahontas. I think he even named his unstoppable black typewriter he typed on with two fingers for hours every day in his study. My father, a private pilot is also very sentimental and can’t bear to part with large machinery like airplanes and cars, even though he obviously has had to do so over the years. A few years ago, he grieved greatly over the news that one of his former planes, the DC-3 Flagship for the aviation ministry he founded in the 60’s had crashed. Thankfully, no one was hurt in the crash but in my father’s eyes, the plane was a keen loss of a tool that provided many years of faithful service.

Our family also grieves over the departure of pets, which have become like family members. They always receive a proper burial. My Dad goes as far to give each pet its own grave marker.

I too, have moments where unexplainable sentimentality surfaces illogically. I have grieved at odd times. Like over my last menstrual cycle before my hysterectomy. I was genuinely sad to end this part of my womanly being. Who would have thought this is something I would find needed mourning time?

How about the way seeing leftover dishes still sitting at the breakfast table after the departure of a loved ones visit affects me? Who could imagine this sight brings me to tears? Why do I think morosely how just a few moments ago, my loved ones were seated at the table using these dishes? Now I try to clean off the table before company leaves and put the dishes out of sight in the dishwasher. Or why is it I won’t watch a car carrying departing loved ones drive away anymore because I don’t want that to be my last image in my mind? Why do I think like this? Being overly sentimental can be overly consuming at times and overly tiring.

I have shed many tears grieving over animals over the years that weren’t even pets. One of the strangest grief’s I experienced was over a stray cat I ended up returning to the road where I had picked it up. My oldest daughter and I had mercifully rescued the cat from what we thought would surely be its demise if she stayed in the middle of the road we were traveling. We stopped the car and the cat easily came to us. We unsuccessfully tried to find its home at a nearby house and in the process the cat apparently got frightened and sunk its teeth into my daughters arm. Now we had to take the cat home for observation for ten days because of the risk the cat might have rabies.

We kept her shut up in the downstairs bathroom because of the other two cats we had in the house. I ducked in and out for quick feedings and the cleaning of the cat box. Sometimes the cat purred and then suddenly growled in a sinister way. In spite of being a cat lover, I began to dislike and fear this cat. It seemed like we had brought the Cat from Hell to our home. When the ten-day observation was over and hadn’t shown any signs of rabies, it was time to rid our life of this inconvenient problem.

I gingerly shoved the cat into the cat carrier and drove off for the location where we had found her. It was only a few blocks from my work. It wasn’t easy dumping a reluctant cat out of a cat carrier out on the road quickly before someone saw me. I felt like a horrible bad pet owner. When I drove off, I told myself repeatedly not to look back. But I did. There stood the little black cat looking at my car speeding down the road saying, “How could you treat me like this?” It took me hours to get over it. And it wasn’t even a cat that I liked.

And back to speaking about cars, I have had a couple of those strange moments myself. We had a Chevy Malibu station wagon for many years. I never liked station wagons because of its lack of a sporty style and my mental image of a station wagon usually had about a dozen kids hanging out the windows. This little mid size station wagon however came into our lives during a difficult financial time via my parents help. I was grateful to have wheels and at least it wasn’t one of those monster sized huge wagons. She had a few flaws, like a sagging headliner that we called the Arabian look but she drove well. The girls and I named her Molly Malibu.

Molly ended up being a spiritual object lesson for our girls. Her high mileage eventually brought on a series of mechanical problems we struggled to keep up with. It didn’t impede us from our travels though and we began praying Molly to each destination around town and out of town. Our last trip with her was to Florida to visit my parents. We prayed her down there and she buzzed right along making the trip fine. On our return trip with only two hours left to go, Molly blew something in her engine and we chugged the rest of the way home. My husband jokingly said we forgot to pray her back home. But she did get us back home even though it was slow going.

The time had arrived to let her go. We parked her on the side road next to our house with a For Sale sign in her window. An elderly man a few miles away bought her knowing she was now only a little chugger. But that was all he needed. We felt bad to let her go; after all she had taught us many lessons of faith and appreciation in the simple pleasures in life.

For several months after we sold her, the girls would frequently ask me to drive by the man’s house that bought Molly. We found comfort in seeing her parked in his driveway. It was a drive by visit to see an old faithful friend. Then one day she was no longer there and that was the end of our loop to check on her. To this day, if I am on that street I am reminded of Molly sitting in that driveway and I thankful for the many lessons that were learned through her.

Then there is the time when I finally had persuaded my husband to get rid of the 10-year-old Chevy (Katie) Caprice that I was driving. Yes, I had named her too. She still floated down the road smoothly and was a nice ride but Katie had lost her looks. I was embarrassed to be seen in her. My husband found a buyer who was willing to give a couple of hundred dollars for her. At last I was getting rid of the car and could move up. The day of the sale, I felt like I was betraying an old friend. I astonished my husband by asking him if we should really sell her. He reminded me of all my complaints. So we sold her and a couple of days later I was over it.

So is it any wonder that I am a sentimental fool about the upcoming loss of my hair? I cry over cars for pity sake. Or is it any wonder that I am already grieving over the future state of my right arm, my right-handed arm that I am so dependent upon? This is how I have always been about things. So I am still on track, I am just being normal me. The stakes are a little higher, a little harder this time around but I have had practice in coping with losses in little things. I will cope with these too. They aren’t so big. After all, hair will grow back. My arm isn’t being cut off. Like the story goes, “I complained I had no shoes. Then I saw a man who had no feet.” Things could always be worse.

There are many painful and fearful life events in life that we all dread. Divorce, death of a family member or friend, the disappointment in children who have made wrong choices that bring them a lifetime of consequences, financial struggles, departing from spiritual truth, loneliness, living with potentially life threatening illnesses like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, or debilitating immune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis are some of the struggles of dear people that I know. We are all in battle together, whatever our struggle and we that know the Lord personally can draw upon his strength to make it through.

A friend of mine wrote that she was disappointed in herself for fretting over the invasion of crab grass in her newly seeded yard. As she bent over to pull the invader weed from her lawn, she thought of me. “Would Nancy be worrying over this crab grass?” Meaning, unwanted weeds in a yard pale significantly against the worries of having to deal with cancer. Yes, Nancy probably would. And I have worried over things much less worrisome than crab grass just a few months ago. No problem should be measured and seen as trivial just because it is not as big as other problems. Each individual has problems that are distinctly worrisome to him or her and it requires a daily victory. It is through our daily victories over small things that we practice our skills for the big things that eventually come our way. So pull the crabgrass out of your life today because perhaps tomorrow may be a bumper crop of some unpleasant intruder and you will have built up the knowledge, skill and stamina of how to deal with it.