Skiing accident

Hard to believe 45-year-old British actress turned New Yorker Natasha Richardson is dead in a NYC hospital from a freak skiing accident on a Canadian beginners' slope. We missed her in "The Handmaid's Tale," saw with husband Liam Neeson in "Nell," and loved her in the 10-year-old "Parent Trap" re-make with Dennis Quaid and a pre-teen Lindsay Lohan and her presumably early CGI-ed double. Pictured above is Richardson and Lohan during the filming.

-- Perry

Prayer requests

Almost a year ago my colleague Jack's mother died after falling and breaking a hip as they tried to start moving Jack's parents out of their South End home. At the time of the visitation and funeral I got a chance to talk with some of Jack's family members, including his father. Jack is one of two of my professional colleagues who grew up in Louisville (but Jack left town for some 20 years before coming back to work at the Presbyterian Center). Jack's parents did live down the street from the shopping center where Stephanie used to teach English to adult Vietnamese immigrants. Jack and his siblings had helped move his father into an indepedent and assisted living facility in an east end suburb afterwords. But last week Jack said his father had leukemia and had taken a turn for the worse. When the assisted living facility lost power, the familiy brought in hospice and shifted him to the Veterans Administration hospital. I thought about stopping there Sunday, but didn't. And Jack's father died Sunday night. We'll be looking for information about the visitation and funeral (back at the same South End funeral home where they did the honors for Jack's mother?). Keep Jack and his siblings and Jack's wife Patti in your prayers.

You might also keep the families of some half a dozen Kentuckiana people who died as a result of the ice storm - mainly from carbon monoxide poisoning from generators and kerosene heaters - and some people in Kentuckiana and especially in outyling rural areas - including in Leitchfield - where I have shopped during church retreats and which we drove through after a visit with long-lost relatives on Mom's side of the family - who still did not have power - and for the many utility workers who have come help us restore power sometimes at risk to their health and lives (a utility worker got shocked and went to the hospital over the weekend).

-- Perry

Funerals

I attended the visitation or memorial service for two people at our church who died this fall. The first was a late-20s graduate of our youth group whom I never met - though I'm acquainted with her parents and stepmother and stepsister. Jen was a chef and recycling activist who had gone to St. Paul during the Republican National Convention to cook for the protestors there (see "Country first night"). Although she had not stayed active in our church, she definitely took some of our principles to heart. If you look for her on the Web, you find her signature - eerily - on a petition pitching for safer roads for cyclists - and she died this fall after she and the bike she was riding down busy Bardstown Road were hit by a car. I talked with her mother (above) briefly and guessed right that the dog there (see above) was Jen's dog, which apparently her mother and boyfriend were taking care of.

As an elder, I pray especially for a dozen of our members, including - this past year - Roger - a recently retired insurance agent who moved from an elder apartment to a nursing care facility on the Masonic campus just blocks from our house. To my discredit, I did not go see Roger until he was very ill (the Masonic home was weirdly decorated for Halloween).

Roger was as sick that day as anyone I've seen - at least since I saw Grandma the night she died. His friend Shirley and her family members were there keeping watch, and I offered a quiet prayer. Sure enough Roger - suffering from Alzheimer's and at that point kidney failure - died a few hours after my visit. Later that week I was there for the service at church. A colorful montage of pictures and Roger's family members were there. I learned that Roger had given money to buy an organ in the Louisville Presbyterian seminary chapel. I also met Barbara, the woman who directs the cafeteria at the Center, to whom I had failed to give directions to the church for the service, who saw one of Roger's insurance clients whom he came to see until even after he retired.

Outside of church Roger's family members posed with our pastor - under the "Be Not Afraid" banner that our church Evangel Committee had put up for the run-up for Halloween (and then left for a while). This was the second picture - this one with Jane and Shirley, in the middle - the first with "just family" - without the two of them. This introduced the sort of issues that showed up when Stephanie's grandmother's beau Floyd died - and Mary had no legal or official connection with him - even though they'd spent a lot of the last few years of their lives together - with especially unmarried older couples who may have a difficult relationship with their kids. Still, it was nice learning more about Jen and Roger and meeting more of their friends and family members. The Jen visitation in particular attracted dozens and dozens of alternative lifestyle 20-somethings, like herself, who don't always grace the doors of our church - but who seemed to feel comfortable in our campus and Fellowship Hall (and maybe even a couple will come back!).

-- Perry

Good-bye; and get well soon

Halloween weekend - from the day the Danes were to leave Louisville - through the Monday Stephanie was to leave for Guatemala - I had originally planned to take the four of us to attend an anime convention we had been to the year before in Covington, KY (see "Cincinnati"), outside of Cincinnati. But Vincent's grades continued to go south, and Stephanie had last-minute preparation - and it turns out we would very soon thereafter have another reason to head north - and so we stayed home. Monday afternoon - after getting Vincent to do some homework (this was a low moment in our relationship) - Vincent and I headed up Interstate 71 through the fall foliage of northern KY.

Passing the site of the anime convention (having just ended the night before), we headed down the hill into Covington, past the Main Strasse clock tower, and across the bridge into Ohio.

We had gotten a call on our answering machine in the middle of the week, letting us know that Vincent's great grandmother, Granny Love, with whom we had visited in May (after a year and half or so break) - she having moved from the home of one set of relatives to another after having some strokes - had died that week (the last Danes' week). Granny was one of the people from Vincent's father's side of the familiy that we stayed closest with. She took care of Vincent while Stephanie and Vincent's father's relationship was deteriorating (one of a series of friends and family members who took care of Vincent in Ohio before he went to institutional child care at age three) at her old house near the Ohio State fairgrounds. She essentially sided with Stephanie in our biggest court fight with Vincent's father, as she believed her granddaughters and great granddaughters who said Vincent's father had molested them. She helped me out with my dissertation research, and we stayed in touch with her as much as we could by mail and periodic Central Ohio visits. She was born - like Stephanie's grandmother - in West Virginia, moved up to the Columbus South End during the Depression - and her husband - Grandpa Love - was a pastor. Together, they were on the radio for years - long before I had met her. During the ten years I knew her - with various pets, in various homes - her health had slowly deteriorated. We had trouble tracking her down after she moved from Reynoldsburg to Orient - after she had some strokes. Staying in touch with Granny had helped us stay in touch with some other members of Vincent's father's side of the family - including witnesses and supporters at the trial - sometimes when Vincent's father was in the outs with this side of the family. This helped lead to oddities like Vincent's father and us doing a visitation transfer of Vincent at Granny's - when it wasn't clear he would have been able to see other family members for Christmas otherwise (and Vincent's father giving me a hug to thank me)- and the crowning oddity - us going to Vincent's father's parents' 50th wedding anniversary party - on the South End - which Vincent's father disappeared from half-way through - without - among other things- saying good-bye to Vincent. Granny was a sweet lady who had grown tired of her health problems in her final years, who loved her family and would stand up for them (and treated not only Vincent but also Stephanie and me as family). Thanks in part to our late departure, Vincent and I missed most of the hour before visitation - but arrived soon before the service (it was all on one day - just in two hours). When we arrived, not only was Vincent's father and some other family members not there - but there were a bunch of people I didn't recognize. We did recognize a picture of Granny and Grandpa Love - who died before I came on the scene - and so I never met him.

The memorial services included family members singing (see below) - including some we'd seen - with Granny - in North Carolina - some two or three years ago) and friends and family members leading prayer and preaching. It was an evangelical service - complete - if I remember right - with an altar call (although the first song sang was not particularly religious).

The seats were pretty packed, and so I sat off to one side - near Jennifer (one of our witnesses) and her family - and Vincent sat - perhaps predictably - off to another side - near his father's parents. Pictured below are the folks who sat in the middle - including some of the leaders of the service.

Pictured below are Jenny and one of her children.

Below is another of Jenny's children and the man she was there with (whom I unfortunately did not meet).

Note the box of Kleenex in front of the picture below, which I and others used liberally.

I tried to speak with Granny's two final hosts - Candy and Sue - and did a little - but Candy was beside herself and they had a throng of family members trying to comfort them. (But it was important to pay tribute to the person whose loss we were all grieving: Granny Love.) There was no food, and so Vincent and I ended up in - of all places - McDonald's - on 256. Arriving there, I called my Mother, and she said my aunt, Aunt June - who lives near 256 and near Stephanie's mother - was in a squad car - with head pain and high blood pressure. I hesitated for a moment - because I knew we would get home late - but I ended up dropping Vincent off at Barnes and Noble on 256 - not too far from Stephanie's mother's - and I drove off to Mt. Carmel West Hospital, where I found Aunt June in a curtained off room in the emergency room (although it took me a while to get in ).

Sitting in the room was Aunt June's sister and now housemate (recently moved back from Las Vegas, after getting divorced from Art), Aunt Barb, who has health problems of her own.

Also there was one of Aunt June's two surviving kids, Diana, a former colleague of Stephanie who introduced Stephanie and me to each other. Diana is an insurance company staff person in Columbus and lived at the time with her husband and their adoptive daughter and two foster kids in their new house way SW of Columbus. Her husbsand Jay himself has health problems. At this point we had not seen Diana's brother, Dustin, for quite a while.

June's body has been through quite a lot and doctors say she can't take any more surgery, and her body has rejected past transplants and the lot. This unfortunately was neither the first nor the last time June suffered from these blood pressure spikes (and blinding head pain) - they've continued with various theories - none have really panned out - about what might be the cause. (What has happened to June it turns out may not be that different from what happened to me a month plus later - though it only happened to me - so far - this once). June chatted with us - but - by the time I'd left after an hour or so - the medicine that relieved her pain had also put her to sleep.

Unfortunately, June has been in and out of the hospital several times since then and they still don't know what exactly is causing the blood pressure spikes and head pain (and some other health problems). The drive home didn't help Vincent and my health, stress levels, and sleep patterns. But I thought - since June was in a hospital a couple of miles away - I couldn't blow this opportunity to see her (Stephanie and I had driven up a year plus one day before - while Vincent was wrapping up the anime convention- to visit her while she had her own room at Mt. Carmel West). You might pray or think positive thoughts for peace and healing for June (as well as for Barb, for Dustin, and for Diana - who's had to deal in December with the loss of two foster kids - Eric and Rain - who had been with them for two or three years) (as well as for Candy, Sue, and Jennifer). (Click on play below to see - sideways, I'm afraid - a clip of a song at Granny's funeral.)

-- Perry