My saving angel was… a chronically ill little girl.
If you’ve read Unteachable Lessons, you know that the “star” of the title chapter of the book is my stepdaughter Rhiannon. As I wrote the book, I mentioned several friends and memorable moments from Rhiannon’s life and our shared life as dad and daughter.
I thought it might be nice for this blog to collect some of my favorite snapshots of Rhiannon over the years. I hope you enjoy these as much as I enjoyed gathering them for you.
Since many of these are old snapshots, the quality of the image varies. My apologies for that, but I hope you’ll still get a sense of what a special person Rhiannon was.
Fran holding Rhiannon as a baby, 1985. She spent her first few weeks in neonatal intensive care. She was so sick with polycystic kidney disease that at first doctors thought she wouldn’t leave the hospital. But she lived over 29 years.Four generations of strong southern women. Clockwise from left: Mama Frances Ham (Fran’s grandmother and namesake), Gladelle Verzyl (Rhiannon’s Grandmommie), Fran, and Rhiannon.Before her stroke, which Rhiannon had at age 3 in 1988. She would never stand, or walk, unassisted after that.Rhiannon, either shortly before I met her or shortly thereafter. What a cutie. This is the little girl who kept tugging on my beard and announcing, “I’m so happy to meet you!” (page 10)I met Fran and Rhiannon in May 1992; this picture was one of the first ones taken of the three of us.Our first “formal” photo, October 1992. Fran and I weren’t even engaged, but I think we all knew it was coming.Rhiannon’s Baptism, May 1993, just a few weeks before Fran’s and my wedding. Behind Rhiannon, L-R: me, Fran, Gladelle, and Meg Anderson (Godmother and very dear friend).Fran and Rhiannon, June 26, 1993: the day we became a family.Me and Rhiannon, June 26, 1993. All smiles but not quite as close.Christmas morning, mid 1990s. Adorable as usual.Late 1990s: With Rhiannon at one of her homecomings. Such simple joy. I mentioned this picture on pages 26-7 of Unteachable Lessons.Rhiannon, Summer 2003, at Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado.Rhiannon with our feline companion, Clarissa. Of all the cats that lived with us during Rhiannon’s life, Clarissa was the most bonded with Rhiannon, often riding on her wheelchair with her and sleeping with her.Rhiannon was a “Wish Kid” — a recipient of a wish from the Make-a-Wish Foundation. Her wish: not merely to go to Walt Disney World, but to have breakfast with Mickey Mouse. Here her wish was granted, November 2003.2004: Visiting the World War II Memorial in Washington DC. I really like this picture of the two of us — especially Rhiannon’s unabashed elation.December 2004: Rhiannon and I fill in for Prancer and Rudolph. This is Fran’s favorite picture of us. “My reindeer family,” she calls it.Also December 2004: My mother, Sylvia McColman (who would have a stroke six months later, and die 18 months after that), with Fran and Rhiannon. The three most important women in my life.March 2005: Fran and I renew our vows and have our marriage convalidated by the Catholic Church. Fr. Greg was our pastor, and Rhiannon adored him.Circa 2004-2005: Fran, Rhiannon and me at Callaway Gardens, Pine Mountain, GA. I love this picture of Fran.Rhiannon’s 20th Birthday Party, 5/19/05. Her classmates and teachers gave her some moolah, which she joyfully displayed with her “Birthday Girl” pin.Rhiannon’s Senior Prom Picture, 2007. My all-time favorite picture of her.2011. Our last “formal” family portrait. Rhiannon by this point is pale and suffering from chronic anemia.Fran and Rhiannon singing at a L’Arche Atlanta event.Our friend Liz joins Rhiannon and Fran for a “silly hat” tea party. You meet Liz on page 16 of Unteachable Lessons.Spring 2012: on the Emerald Coast of Florida, one of our two favorite vacation spots.Summer 2013: In our other favorite vacation spot: Asheville, NC.Christmas, 2013. Rhiannon gives me a Gonzo plush toy, since our final pet names for each other were “Kermit” and “Gonzo.” Three weeks later, she entered hospice care before passing away at the end of August 2014.Carl and Fran McColman, Summer 2019. Before Rhiannon died she spoke to each of us individually and made us each promise to look after the other. So we are trying to do that. We miss her, but we believe living with joy is a good way to honor her memory.Unteachable Lessons
If you haven’t read Unteachable Lessons — I hope you will. As Brian McLaren says in his foreword to the book, “In Chapter 1… you’ll meet Rhiannon, and she will steal the show. You won’t forget her, I promise.”
My eldest cat, China, is well over 20 years old. She was a rescue kitty — she came to me when I managed the bookstore in Sewanee, and a fraternity boy at the college found her, a stray kitten, and took her to the local vet; the same vet who on the very next day I asked “Do you have any kittens up for adoption?” He brought China out to me, and it was love at first sight. The frat boy, who was a true animal lover, came and talked to me to make sure I would be a good “daddy” for the kitten; I must have passed muster, for he gave his blessing to the vet and China got to come home with me. This was in July 1989. I had an older cat, Julian, whom I loved but with whom I never truly bonded — not like I bonded with China. Whether it was just a matter of disposition, or truly a miracle of human-animal relations, China and I became heart to heart buddies. For years she slept next to my pillow; and whereas Julian was not much of a lap cat, China claimed my lap as her own natural habitat. When Fran and I got married in 1993, I swear China was jealous (she got over it, eventually). Up until the last few years when she has obviously become hard of hearing, she would even come to me when I would call or beckon her (please don’t spread this too widely, for I’m sure most cats would be mortified to learn that one of their own engaged in such dog-like behavior).
China and Carl, October 1990. She’s 17 months; I’m 29; which means that developmentally, we were both brash young adults.
With her naturally outgoing personality, China quickly would win over the hearts of pretty much anyone who came calling. She was a graceful jumper — my house in Tennessee was passive solar, with windows twelve feet high from the floor, and probably a good six feet from the nearest rail; China and Julian both would jump from the rail to the windows to bask in the sun, nearly giving me a coronary every time they did it. Even as a middle-aged cat when we first moved into our current home, China would climb onto the dresser and leap over to the bed, falling square onto my chest with terrifying force.
Like the Grateful Dead song for which she was named, China was a true hippie, with a fondness for catnip and good company. But she was also a scrappy little street cat, and always maintained a contentious relationship with the other cats in our home; the introspective Julian, whom she quickly dominated; the much younger and amazingly good-tempered Clarissa, with whom she competed for years (and who now seems to have forgiven her for that long rivalry), and then our neurotic long-hair Furbie, who adopted us one chilly Halloween. China would hiss at one of the other cats just for walking near her.
China and Carl, February 2010. She’s a few months shy of 21, while I’m 49. My midlife, and her old age. Despite her failing health and loss of weight she still looks great; whereas I am clearly road-worn. But at least I’ve learned how to hold a cat.
When I adopted China, she had an apparent infection in one eye, and it was slightly swollen and bloodshot and she would keep it half closed for the longest time. It healed eventually, although the eyelid remained slightly droopy ever since. But overall, she settled into a life of tremendous good health. She did get sick and lose weight in 2005, and a vet told me she was dying; but a friend suggested I change her diet and she promptly bounced back (I changed vets after that). Although she’s been an indoor-only cat here in Atlanta, in Tennessee she had the run of my two wooded acres, where she would routinely bring me “presents” — usually moles or mice, but one time she proudly brought a bird that she, the great huntress, had felled.
When the younger cats arrived, in 1999 and 2002, China settled into the comforts of the second half of life; feisty and irascible with her feline housemates, but still loving to me and friendly to everyone. When Julian passed away in late 2007, she accepted the role of dowager gracefully. Julian had been troubled by arthritis and had not groomed herself for the last year or so before she died, apparently of a stroke just a few months after turning 20. China’s entry into her 20th year has been marked by different problems: in addition to being hard of hearing and increasingly incapable of jumping (with many heart breaking failures, saddest — and most painful — of all being when she couldn’t even make it to my lap without clawing her way up), she appeared to suffer from a bit of kitty-cat dementia, getting confused and lost in the house at night and crying piteously until one of us would get up, go find her, and bring her to bed with us, which would always immediately calm her down.
China in healthier days; May 2004.
She grew thinner as she aged, as had Julian before her, so we thought nothing of it, especially since up until very recently she has always been the most assertive of the three cats in reminding us when it was mealtime. Furbie whines when she is hungry and Clarissa always seems to just politely wait by the food bowl, but China would complain, loudly and insistently, that it was time to get fed.
But recently, that stopped. Fran and I were trying to remember just when China stopped begging for food — two weeks ago? A month? Between the hurly-burly of the Christmas season and my efforts to finish my book, we’re not sure exactly when China gave up on eating. But give up she has. Oh, she’ll still lick at food, especially if it’s rich with gravy; and Fran has bought her some baby-food that, again, she’ll lick at. But it’s clear that, as of this winter, our old lion has crossed a new, and final threshold.
On Saturday China crawled up into my lap while I was reading, and stayed for almost an hour, purring. So many times over the last year or so, when I was writing, I would push China away when she would clumsily, claws extended, try to get into my lap where my MacBook was perched. Now I could kill myself for having done so. But at least on Saturday I had enough presence of mind to let the computer be, and just sit there, petting her as she purred raspily, until she decided she had had enough and let herself down.
Yesterday morning I took her to the vet, fearing what I would learn. Weighing in at a mere four and a half pounds, her body temperature was a seriously low 96 degrees. The vet said that we could do bloodwork and figure out what is wrong, but at her age, even with aggressive treatment, the likelihood of recovery is pretty slim. Fran asked me not to put her to sleep yesterday, and I didn’t, even though the vet suggested that it would be a kindness to do so. I stammered that I needed time to say goodbye. So the vet gave her some liquids and kindly offered to keep doing so, every day until we were ready.
So I can’t decide what to do. Part of me thinks there’s no point in extending her suffering, and that the kind, humane, caring thing to do would be to set up an appointment and give her back to God tomorrow. But another, smaller, part of me thinks that I won’t do that, just yet. Like Bilbo with his ring, I say it’s time to give it up, but then when I think no one’s looking I try to slip it back into my pocket. Worst of all, the grieving part of me is afraid I’ll never forgive myself for willfully and knowingly taking her to her death. How could I take her, the little warrior who always hated vets so magnificently, to that stark flourescent-lit chamber where two final needles will do their irreversible work? After such a long friendship, it feels like the most horrible of betrayals. And telling myself that it would be a far graver cruelty to let her starve to death makes sense only in terms of my Spock-like capacity to think logically, and does nothing to assuage my breaking heart.
I knew this day would come, and I knew it would come soon. But I tried to push it away with fond hopes that China, always such a wonderful, amazing, beautiful cat, would prove to be as remarkable in her old age as she was as a kitten, and would make it to 22 or so. Or so I wished. But now cruel fate has dashed those hopes to shards, and I know that if, like Frodo at the last of it, I grasp her instead of letting her go, the Gollum of her suffering will just come and snatch her away regardless, and I’ll still be left only with my grief.
Last night when I got home from work, Fran was sitting on the loveseat with China, petting her. Her eyes are still bright and aside from how thin she has become, and how unsteady on her feet, she still seems to have plenty of life left in her. I sat on the floor next to her, and began petting her along with Fran. Immediately, she started purring, her raspy old lady purr. Fran smiled. “She wasn’t purring for me,” she observed, matter-of-factly. “But then again, she always was your cat.”
True enough. But underneath the signs of life is a body that is failing. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. So when I take a deep breath, and think about it, and manage to think clearly, I think that I’ll give her (I mean, myself) just a few more days. I want to buy her some fresh catnip and give her one last romp to the tunes of the band that gave her her name. Fran has already given her blessing to opening several cans of cat food every day in the hopes that something will taste good to her geriatric tongue. I’ll take her to the vet and get some fluids over the next few days and maybe on the final day it will feel routine to her. I’ll cry with her and I’ll pet her and I’ll hang on desperately to these last raspy purrs. I’ll tell her over and over again how much I love her and how spending twenty years with her has been such an unspeakably beautiful gift. And then, we’ll say goodbye.
Hamming it up, May 2008
N.B. This is the first of four posts on the illness and death of China, and my grief over her passing. The next entry is The Die is Cast.
Early this morning (August 15, 2009) I had a dream in which I was standing outside a building, like an officer’s club on a small military base. It felt like I was in Florida or somewhere else where the winters are mild. There may have been palm trees, but I’m not sure. What I do remember is that I stood outside the building, with tables and chairs all around me, as if this were a place where people can gather and share a meal. Perhaps there were a few others milling about; again, I don’t recall for sure, because what I was about to see took all of my attention. I saw, walking out of the building and toward me, a couple, holding each other arm in arm. They looked to be in their early seventies. He was in full officer’s dress, and looked quite smart, even for his age. She, however, was head to toe in white.
It was Mom and Dad.
For those who are reading this and do not know, my Mom died at 83 following a stroke and a battle with vascular dementia. It’s been two and a half years since she passed, and my Dad, now 86, is in a nursing home, ravaged with Parkinson’s disease and Parkinson’s-related dementia, which has left him confused and his frail body confined to a wheelchair. Thankfully, he always seems to be in a good mood when I visit him, and everyone who knows him marvels at his serenity in the midst of such a debilitating illness.
Back to my dream, where Mom and Dad seemed to be as they were some 15 or so years before Mom’s death, retirees but strong and vigorous. Mom had padding on one knee, perhaps a playful twist from my subconscious, as the last Christmas I saw her before her stroke she had an injured knee and was walking with a cane. But other than that, they both looked great.
They came up to me, and swept me into a three-way hug. I was filled with joy not only at how good they looked, but at their obvious love for each other and for me.
Mom kissed me and said something like, “Oh, Carl, it’s so good to see you!”
I pulled a little back so I could cherish the delicious joy of seeing her. I said, “Well, Mom, it’s good to see you.” And then, acknowledging that this was a lucid dream, I said, “You’ve shown up in my dream!”
Dad was silent, but smiling. We continued to hold each other, the three of us. I jerked my head in his direction, still looking at my mother, and I said, “Mom, when are you going to talk Dad into coming to be with you?”
She answered me with a confident and serene voice, so unlike her rather childish singsong that became her trademark as dementia had taken its toll on her. “I know, honey. He’ll come when he’s ready.”
Dad interjected, “Son, I’m fine, I’m fine.”
I turned to look at him, and yes, he did look fine, dashing almost in his officer’s uniform.
“But Dad, I don’t like watching you suffer.” No point in being anything but honest here.
“It’s okay, really.” He looked me square in the eye as he said this, and his eyes were dancing with light.
“But, Dad —”
“Look,” he said, cutting me off. “I’m never going to go his way.”
That’s when the dream faded.
After Waking Up
I woke up, feeling happy about seeing Mom and seeing Dad look so well. His confident, almost brash way of speaking struck me as the voice of a young guy in the military, so even though he looked like he was in his seventies, I wondered if I wasn’t seeing a glimpse of how he talked when he was in his twenties, when he first met Mom at the end of World War II.
One thing puzzled me. What did he mean by his final statement to me? Who was Dad referring to when he talked about “his way”? Did this pronoun refer to Christ? The Devil? Some other figure? Alas, the dream was too far gone, and I could only rely on my intuition — which suggested to me that no matter who “he” is, “his way” is the way of an unnatural death. It was as if Dad were saying, “Yes, I know it’s hard to see me decline, but hang in there, son. This isn’t a problem that needs to be ‘solved.’ Let nature take her course.”
I know that the months to come will be quite difficult, as Dad does nothing but continue to waste away. However, I think this dream may have given me a new perspective on how to be present with Dad as he takes the final steps of his life’s journey. Let me make a confession: I have been praying for God to take him, if only to alleviate his suffering. I know Dad’s health or mental clarity are not going to get any better, and it seemed to me a kindness to let God know that I am ready to let Dad go, so he could go be with Mom and be free of his failing, Parkinson’s-deformed body.
But if there is any kind of deep, transpersonal truth to my dream, then perhaps I should consider that Dad is far more content with his situation than I am — and that, spiritually speaking, everything is pretty much right where it needs to be, which means I really don’t have to fret over it.
John & Sylvia McColman, on their wedding day, 14 December 1945.
As a student of both the Catholic tradition in general and the teaching of Richard Rohr in particular, I believe that our human suffering doesn’t have to be absurd; it can be redemptive — if embraced within a larger vision of faith, hope and love. When accepted in this way, suffering can even facilitate transformation into higher levels of consciousness. This, frankly, is what keeps me and Fran going as we continue to love and serve Rhiannon, in her profound suffering (and in our suffering as her parents, powerless to take away her illness or her pain). For those who don’t know Rhiannon’s story: she has congenital kidney and liver disease, and is herself the survivor of a stroke she suffered when only three years old. Now 24, she is partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. Along with her complex physical disabilities, she is moderately intellectually disabled, functioning with the cognitive skills of a child. Her organs are slowly failing her, and it seems likely that her mother and I will be whispering “Bon voyage” to her some day in the not-too-distant future as she goes to join the grandmothers she loves — ahead of her parents.
In the morning afterglow of my dream, I realize now that I have made a pretty big assumption about suffering and the spiritual role it can play in our lives. I’ve assumed that suffering is redemptive/transformative only if embraced in a fully conscious way. In other words, I’ve had this hidden notion that you’ve got to understand what’s going on when you suffer, in order for your suffering to be “offered up” to God. Because of this hidden bias, I haven’t seen my Dad’s suffering as potentially transformational, because his understanding has been compromised by the dark cloud of Parkinson’s-related dementia. If he’s no longer even sure of who I am, how can his suffering be anything but meaningless?
But thanks to my dream, now I’m beginning to think that there was a flaw in my reasoning. After all, don’t the great mystics teach us that we all labor under the cloud of unknowing? In other words, even when we are at our peak of cognitive ability, we don’t really know what’s going on. My Dad’s dementia-confounded mind is really, from God’s point of view, not that much more handicapped than the mind of a fully alert, fully functioning, highly educated human being (like me).
If Dad, even in his profoundly compromised health, might still be undergoing (at a very deep level, to be sure) some sort of transformation in his soul, thanks to his final suffering, then who the hell am I to waste time believing it’s such a horrible thing, or to ask God to short-circuit it? Please understand, I am NOT suggesting that we go about making a fetish out of suffering. I don’t believe that every minute we suffer on earth is one less minute in purgatory, or that suffering magically burns away bad karma, or any other such horrible idea that reduces pain to some sort of heavenly bargaining chip. Likewise, I continue to believe that we are always called to humanely and lovingly work to alleviate suffering — whether our own pain or the suffering of others, including the elderly and anyone who is chronically ill, like Rhiannon. The mystery of suffering is never about glorifying suffering for its own sake, but acknowledging that, in the Divine Economy, even the most apparently meaningless suffering might be a means by which we can experience redemptive love and transforming grace. And my dream suggests that this holds true even for Dad in his dementia.
And even for Rhiannon, in her end-stage kidney and liver disease.
As I write these words, I feel at peace. It will still break my heart when I next see Dad, hunched over in his wheelchair and mumbling incoherently, in all probability smiling vacantly at me because he doesn’t really know who I am. But maybe I’ll see behind the smile the promise of that future when he will walk again, with the lady in white at his side.
Likewise, I don’t relish the continued pain and suffering that Rhiannon is certain to encounter in the months and years to come. But maybe my dream about my parents is really a dream about how I can be a better parent to Rhiannon, following the example of my dream-encounter with parents who are peaceful and accepting of life’s mystery, both joyous and difficult. Perhaps this dream can help me to be loving without getting lost in my own agendas for Rhiannon. If I can keep in mind that, even in her intellectual disability and inability to understand the finer points of mystical theology, she nevertheless could be experiencing miracles of transformation deep within her, then I just might be able to walk alongside her without fear or undue pain of my own. Perhaps I can see that even she, way deep down inside, would assure me that “It’s okay, really.”
Postscript, January 2013: Dad finally left to be with Mom on January 15, 2013: forty-one months to the day after this dream. In those long months, his cognitive skills continued to decline, and visits with him became increasingly shaped by the fog of dementia, by his inability to answer even the simplest questions. But he never lost his smile — whether a smile of recognition, or simply delight at having visitors, even if he couldn’t quite place who we were. And even to the end, his caregivers found him to be a delightful, charming resident in the nursing home where he lived. His final suffering, mercifully, lasted only a few days. He passed away five months to the day before his 90th birthday, and quite close to the sixth anniversary of my Mom’s passing. Now, at long last, he truly does walk arm in arm with the lady in white.
Photo Credits: Top photo: John & Sylvia McColman, Christmas Day 2003, photo by Fran McColman. This was just 18 months before Sylvia’s stroke, and about 3 years before her passing. Black & White photo: John & Sylvia on their wedding day, December 14, 1945. photographer unknown.
Pretty much every Sunday Fran, Rhiannon and I drive to Athens, GA, where my father lives. We take him out to lunch and sometimes do other fun stuff — like today, we visited the Georgia Botanical Gardens, to enjoy the fall foliage, which is just now peaking down here in the south.
Here’s a snapshot I took of Dad, Fran, and Rhiannon…
… while Fran took this photo of me, in one of my more “mystical” moments.
