Mary Elizabeth Leach Raines

Mary Elizabeth Leach Raines
The Laughing Cherub

12.24.2011

COME EARLY, STAY LATE: A CHRISTMAS STORY

BY MARY ELIZABETH RAINES

On Christmas Eve, 1998, my father spoke to me the best words that anyone could say.

Let's back up for a moment. Daddy had been a stern man. He was a minister. Even though he took his faith seriously, he did not really know how to express love and tenderness. I perceived him as a harsh, rigid, distant and critical parent. It took me many years to get over my resentments about that, but I did.


Rev. David A. Leach, 1921-1999
Back to Christmas Eve. Daddy and I were on the phone, making plans for the next day, Christmas, when I was going to make a trip to the senior community where he and my mother lived. They had been divorced for many years, but curiously, in their old age, they’d both moved across the country to live in the same retirement community. Each had a separate apartment. I doubt if they were romantic, but they did enjoy one another’s companionship.

“What time would you like me to come?” I asked my father.

And here is where he spoke the Best Words that anyone could say to another human being.

“I want you to come early and stay late,” he said.

I was blown away. Think about how incredible those words are! To me, time is the most precious gift we can offer another. A person has to like you a lot to say that. With my father, I'd never been sure about being liked.

Christmas Day was wonderful. Mother, usually a very dominant and chatty person, faded into the background, and allowed it to be a time of sharing between my father and me. We talked and talked. 

"Unless you're the lead dog on the sled team, the view is pretty much the same," he remarked wryly at one point in our day. For all his sternness, you see, Daddy possessed a wonderful dry humor.

In his apartment was a fabulous and expensive crèche made of paper mache.



Among the elegant figures, however, he had planted a silly-looking, out-of-place plastic lamb. It was supremely ugly.
 

I picked it up. “What’s this?”
“That?" he grinned with a twinkle in his eye. "Oh, that’s the black sheep.”

Later that Christmas afternoon, we took a walk. My father had always been a cynic; for him, the glass was not just half empty, but would doubtless soon be dropped and broken. Thus, on our walk I asked, “Daddy, what’s it been like to be a pessimist all these years?”

“Wonderful,” he replied with a glowing smile. “Everything has always turned out to be much better than I ever expected!”

As night fell during our visit that Christmas, an ambulance pulled up to the health care center next door to his apartment. My father's energy faded visibly at the sound. I thought it might be because of a recent experience of his. He'd needed to go to the emergency room for a bowel obstruction, the after-effect of a minor surgery he’d had a number weeks ago.

Daddy described what that visit had been like, and it wasn't pleasant. 

“They shoved a tube down my throat to look at my stomach,” he said. I noticed that he began clenching his fist so hard that the knuckles lost their color.

He continued.“It was the single most painful thing I have ever felt in my life. I would rather die than have that done to me again,” he said. Vehemently.

These words came from a man who was so stoic that he once ate a whole chicken dinner when he had the stomach flu just to set an example for his children; his belief was that no matter what, you don’t cave in to illness. A nurse later confirmed that the particular procedure he described was possibly the most painful thing that could be done in an emergency room without anesthetic in those days. Certainly that was the case for my father.

I am a hypnotherapist, and know that not only can we alleviate pain easily; in some cases we can even create complete anesthesia.

“Daddy,” I said, “if that situation should ever happen to you again, call me right away before they stick the tube in you. Either I’ll drive out, or I’ll get the best hypnotist in the area to the hospital, and you won't have to undergo that kind of pain…”

But he did not listen to what I said. Even though I have an international reputation as a hypnosis teacher and writer, to him I was just a child who didn’t understand.

He repeated his words: “I would rather die than have that done to me again.” The statement turned out to be prophetic.

That night, when I said goodbye, I spontaneously hugged and kissed my father. While it might not sound like a big deal to most people, it was to me. My relationship with him had always had a cool distance to it, and our family simply did not touch. The hug and the kiss sprang from my heart, though, and not from my mind. 

And as I hugged him, tears began spilling from his eyes. It was a sweet, quiet, and yet monumental moment of love and healing. We both felt it. Daddy's tears melted away the remnants of any of the difficulties we’d ever had.

“I love you,” he said, his voice choking softly.

I left, and still remember how he stood at the top of the stairs and watched until I was out of the door.

And that is the last time I ever saw my father conscious. Less than a week later, I received a phone call. He had been taken by ambulance to a large city hospital where he had been put on machines to keep him alive.

It turned out that once again my father had experienced the symptoms of a bowel obstruction. Rather than go to the emergency room and have that tube shoved down his throat again, however, he told no one. For four days he stayed alone in his apartment, vomiting, as his bowels began to perforate and his organs started to shut down. The medical staff couldn’t understand why he didn't call for help, but I knew. When they finally got him to the emergency room, he was the sickest man in the entire hospital.

And what was the first thing they did? Shove a tube down his throat.

His words echoed in my mind: “I would rather die than have that done to me again.” 

And so he did. 


For four days I stayed at his side as he lay there in an induced coma. Finally, it was time to pull the plug on the machines keeping him alive, and it was up to me to make the decision.

I still remember the nightmarish sensation of walking down the hall of that hospital, knowing that I had been handed the power to choose the day and hour when my own father would die. It was the most anguishing experience of my life, no matter how necessary or right. I was pronouncing a death sentence on my own father.

After they turned the machines off, the monitor that beeped in conjunction with his heartbeat gradually began to slow down. Finally, there was silence. His heart had stopped. I fell across his chest and cried, “Oh, Daddy!” As I did that, to my astonishment his heart actually began to beat again: thump thump thump. What a testimony to the power of love! And what a wrenching moment! It couldn't keep on, however; his heart soon stopped beating for good.


Some of those who have had near-death experiences claim that after the body dies, we go through a life review where our soul sees and feels each reverberation and consequence of everything we have ever done to anyone in our life, good or bad. My prayer was that my father not see or know that anything he'd said or done had ever harmed me in the least way. Forgiveness is a grace, and that grace healed all the negativity that had ever occurred between us.

I still keep the ugly little plastic lamb from the Nativity scene at my desk.




And I will always remember the Best Words in the World: 
“I want you to come early, and stay late.

*****
(c) M. E. Raines, all rights reserved. Please do not reproduce in part or in whole in any form. Feel free to share links to this true story.

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You can find novels and other stories by Mary Elizabeth (Leach) Raines on Amazon.

6.25.2010

LUST IN THE LEMON ORCHARD - The Obituary that Should Have Been

LUST IN THE LEMON ORCHARD:
The Obituary that Should Have Been
by Mary Elizabeth (Leach) Raines



On January 15, Aaron B__  passed away at his home in Santa Monica, California following a long battle with cancer. He was 79.

I found this online. It was the obituary of my longtime friend, Aaron. I was sad to see that he had died, and I was appalled that these bleak words wound up being the final summation of his life.

Anyone reading such an obituary would form a picture of someone exceedingly dull and, well, gray: an elderly man, wrinkled, decrepit, seriously ill, declining helplessly into nonbeing, the victim of a malignant disease. As I looked at the words on my computer screen, I wanted to scream, “No! That’s not who he was!”

When I think of Aaron, I don’t see any gray, except for a few scrumptious silvery strands in his thick, dark hair. No, I see vivid splashes of intense color! And exclamation points! The sparkling blue of the Pacific ocean! The cop-magnet red of Aaron’s cushy Mercedes!! The brilliant yellow of ripe lemons hanging from trees with glossy green leaves!!! Even white came alive when Aaron entered the picture. Envision, if you will, the seductive white of rock salt glistening on the rim of a foamy margarita…!!!!

The first time I noticed him, I thought Aaron was the coolest guy I’d ever seen. We met at a writer’s conference in Santa Barbara, California. It was the 70s. I was 28 years old.

I’d published a few short stories, and was excited about becoming a Real Writer. When I saw the conference advertised in the back of a magazine called The Saturday Review, I decided to drive the 3,000 miles to California in my Plymouth Barracuda. I’d never been to the West Coast before. It was my first time driving cross-country all on my own.

Aaron was a smooth talker, aloof, oozing more confidence than anyone I’d ever met. His garb was what cool guys who had money wore in the 1970s: aviator sunglasses, an expensive black leather jacket, and a shirt that opened part-way down his chest. He had a style of sitting and walking—his lean, strong body just a little hunched over as though he were constantly poised for that most intimate of embraces—which broadcast to any woman bothering to take notice that he was a good lover. And the women noticed. At least this one did. To seal the deal, I was sure that a man like him would never look at someone like me, which made him even more desirable.

Aaron was nearly fifty when I met him, and he was good-looking. After we became friends, he admitted nonchalantly that he had paid a lot of money for his good looks. Genes had given him a long hooked nose and no chin. His appearance was simply one more thing in life to master, and he mastered it magnificently by hiring the best plastic surgeon he could find, years before such surgeries became commonplace. That’s just the way he was.

Even without Aaron’s presence, this Writer’s Conference hosted a pretty spectacular group, unequalled before or since. Ray Bradbury, the famous science fiction writer, was there. So were Charles Schultz, (the man who wrote the comic strip Peanuts), Joan Didion, Ross MacDonald, Maya Angelou, Alan Pakula (who was writing All the President’s Men for Robert Redford), Eudora Welty, and Alex Haley (author of Roots). Eva Marie Saint, the famous actress, showed up. I went to a party with academy-award-winning author Budd Schulberg, who had written On the Waterfront (he was married and forlorn, and there was no hanky panky; he simply walked me to the party and we sat mutely next to one another with our drinks on the edge of someone's bed...but hey! It was Budd Schulberg!), and one night I had a wonderful sexy argument over dinner with best-selling author Gay Talese about whether women would ever pay for male hookers the way men pay for female hookers. (I argued that yes, women would. Talese said no, they wouldn’t. He was right. But I was young.)

Alongside all these greats, in my view Aaron was by far the choicest man at the conference. Of course, he was completely out of my league, or so I thought. Aaron revealed to me later that he’d had his eye on me from the beginning.

I guess I was pretty enough at the time, even though I didn’t know it, with reddish-gold hair (the color it really is now I won’t say), fresh full cheeks (still have those damn cheeks), a lusty heart (yup, still there), and the delicious, nubile body of a 28-year-old (nope). That week I wore the low-cut polyester sundresses that were all the fashion rage, and flirted with abandon, and drank far too much liquor, and also chain-smoked, because everybody chain-smoked in those days. It was all a ruse, of course, for in truth, I was dreadfully naïve.


An enthusiastic conference-goer, I always sat dead-center in the front row when the authors spoke. Once while in my usual seat awaiting the entrance of a speaker, feeling ultra-chic as I held a cigarette in one hand and a plastic cup of rosé wine in the other, an older woman came up to me and whispered, “Honey, your boob is out.” I looked at her quizzically. “Your boob’s hanging out,” she repeated in a slightly more vicious tone of voice. “Did you want it like that?”

I looked down, and sure enough, I’d pulled a massive Janet Jackson! My right breast had somehow tumbled out of my dress and lay exposed, a little bare apple, for the whole world to see. I was embarrassed and quickly tucked it back into my sundress. Throughout the rest of the conference, I kept looking down at my chest and rearranging my halter straps compulsively like someone with a weird tic.

Aaron entered the picture one night when some of us attending the conference met in a cottage to read aloud to one another from our work. Aaron read a piece he was working on. It was graphically violent, but well-written. The other women cringed squeamishly. I liked it, and said so. Then I read something of mine. It was kind of sexy. Aaron took notice. But then, he noticed everything. Perhaps, even, my moment of exposure.

A few days later, he casually invited me to go for a ride in his red Mercedes. He drove me to a posh restaurant overlooking the ocean, where he bought me my very first margarita. Being with Aaron made me feel sophisticated. I loved the leather seats of his Mercedes. I loved looking out over the Pacific. I loved sitting next to this handsome, intelligent older man. I loved the taste of the rock salt on the rim of my margarita glass. I loved the taste of my margarita!


Aaron and I did a lot of glancing back and forth, and something was building between us, but we didn’t touch…not yet. Not until he drove me to the lemon orchard.

It was a day of firsts: my first ride in a Mercedes, my first margarita, my first elegant restaurant, and now my first lemon orchard. I’d never even seen a lemon tree before, much less an entire orchard of them! Aaron drove the car over a rutted dirt road and only stopped when we were deep inside the rows of lemon trees.

When we got out of the car, it was whisper silent, more still than just about anyplace I have ever been. Neither Aaron nor I said a word. Instead of speaking, he looked into my eyes and slowly walked to the nearest tree. He reached up and twisted a lemon off a low-hanging branch. Not taking his eyes from mine, moving closer, he plunged both thumbs into the lemon and ripped it in two. I don’t know how someone can rip a lemon in two and make it seductive, but it was the most sensual thing I’ve ever seen anyone do. Aaron handed me half, and then slowly bit into his part of the lemon, sucking the tangy juices, eyes still locked on mine.

Finally, neither of us could stand it a moment longer. I will not write about what happened next, because this is a PG-rated blog….

Our lust for one another was short-lived, but we remained good and dear friends for the rest of our lives.

Aaron, of course, did a lot more than seduce me in a lemon orchard, like: write two books, start his own extremely successful hamburger chain, get rich as a stock broker and financial consultant, act in two movies, produce movies, open an upscale restaurant, and schmooze with famous film stars. He was an outstanding artist, a gourmet cook, and a cultured man. He had a tender gift for working with plants. He was a veteran who’d served in the Korean War. He “pumped iron.”

He did not always succeed. He once laughingly told me how he had been approached by some guys to invest in their film script. Despite his own proclivity for what some would call graphic violence, he turned them away because their script contained massive profanity and violence with almost no plot; it was later produced as a movie called Rambo.

Even with his occasional failures, he grew wealthy. Then he hit rock bottom as an alcoholic and drug addict, spent four years in prison for some complex financial fraud, and, humbled and sober, proceeded to climb his way back up again.

No matter what befell him, Aaron’s manner was polished and gentle...and incessantly cool, of course! He was one of the most accomplished men I’ve ever known, and whatever he touched glowed with color. And exclamation points!
In spite of his many life adventures, Aaron never forgot our orchard escapade. He continuously, joyously loved to remind me of that time. I never forgot, either.

Here is the way his obituary should have read:
Aaron ___, a man who could wordlessly seduce a woman by ripping a lemon in two with his bare hands, died today, and the colors of the world may never be quite as vibrant and bright again.

(c) 2010, Mary Elizabeth Raines


Look for Mary Elizabeth Raines' novels and stories on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Eating.../dp/0972614656