After Thoughts by Chris and Frank

The Honey and the Thorn by Chris Foreman

On my birthday, December 24, I boarded a jet plane and headed off on my tenth mission to Africa. I anticipated this mission with both delight and dread. I looked forward to meeting my old African friends and to proclaiming the Gospel in Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi. However, a few days before my birthday, I learned that my Brother Jack was returning from the hospital in order to die at home. My sister-in-law explained that there was nothing more that doctors could do to treat complications after his bone morrow transplant.

Just before I left home, I emailed my Rwandan friends informing them that I might have to cut short my trip if my older brother passed away while I was in Africa. My days on mission passed by – December 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30. On the last day of the year, our church partners were planning an all night New Year’s celebration. I went to Pastor Paul’s home in an exuberant mood.

I brought with me to Rwanda a pair of 2008 glasses -- the ones where the 00 are the eye pieces. Everyone took turns wearing them. It was a joyous occasion. Then my interpreter, Frank, told me that my son, Zachary, had just phoned him. The satellite signal was weak, but the message was clear. I had previously directed my son to contact me only in the event of my brother’s death. After a few hours of trying to contact people in America, the message was confirmed. Jack was dead.

I excused myself from the festivities and walked the few steps to our mission house. Jack was dead! For some reason I had to repeat those words over and over to myself to make them real. “Jack is dead, Jack is dead”. I spoke the words as sorrow pierced my heart and tears ran down my face: “my big brother Jack is dead”.

The next day, I learned that Jack’s wife was planning a memorial service for him on January 12, two days after my return to California. I did complete my mission as planned, but sorrow accompanied joy during each of my remaining days in Africa.

I once heard that living your life is like licking honey off of a thorn bush. I know that my brother is in a better place, but there is still grief in realizing that I will never again see Jack in this world. But then maybe the next time I do meet Jack, it will be in a place with all honey and no thorns. May God be so merciful.

Chris A. Foreman ~ Senior Pastor

Frank visits Jack

On Christmas, I called my sisters and arranged for all of us to meet the next day. Jeanne, Char, Jim, Eileen, and Terry all came to my house and we talked and prayed and recorded a short video message to Jack from his sisters. I needed the hugs and prayers before I left. The next two days at work it was difficult to focus.

I flew out of Portland early Saturday morning on the 29th and arrived in Dallas in the late afternoon. Patrick and his four year old son, Ethan, picked me up. As we drove to Jack’s house Pat filled me in. The hospital had detached Jack’s IV feeding tube on Christmas Eve. That was hard on both Jack and Barb. It was the point of no return as far as seeking a medical cure was concerned. Both Jack and Barb dearly wanted to be home for Christmas. There really was no emotional support in Houston. Jack loved Christmas and, like the reformed Scrooge at the end of the book, he kept it very well.

Jack was lucid during the ambulance ride from Houston to Dallas. He asked to listen to his old time Rock and Roll music, but his CD’s were packed and too hard to reach. When he arrived home he said Merry Christmas to Alan, but weakened quickly. On Christmas he was still recognizing people and saying their names. By the 26th he was pretty much non-responsive. The hospice nurses were very good. Patrick and I noted that most of them seemed to be very much Christian. Barb said that in the last couple months most of Jack’s nurse attendants at M. D. Anderson were Nigerian immigrants who were very openly Christian. She also said that a Pastor from a Nigerian Church had come in and had a very good discussion with Jack. When you can’t be there, but you pray, God will move in His body provide the ministry. Sometimes His fingers and lips are a different color than yours.

The best news that Pat gave me driving from the airport was that Heidi and Loather were arriving that evening and staying with Barb for five weeks. Barb and Heidi are very close. Heidi is Barb’s younger sister and married Loather about six months after Jack and Barb’s wedding. I was very glad to hear that they would be with Barb through her 41st wedding anniversary on January 20th. I had visited Jack’s last year at about this time for a night on my way to Africa. Then, returning from Africa, I again stopped off for a dental course and stayed for another five days. Heidi and Loather had been visiting during those happier times and we reacquainted ourselves after a couple decade hiatus. It would be good to see them again.

When we arrived at the house I hugged Barb and went in to pray with Jack. He was in a hospital bed in their bedroom with a hospice nurse present. He was unresponsive and remained so the whole time I was there. I prayed with him and cried. Barb came in and we prayed and cried. The Peltons, their good friends of nearly 30 years, were at the house. They were there most of the time for the next three days and were a great help bringing food and hugs. Pat’s wife, Amy, was also there with baby Vance. Vance was born on the day of Jack’s transplant in August. He is a very happy, smiley baby. Jack had not met his new grandson until Christmas Eve. Amy’s mother had died of cancer when she was fifteen. She understood and was a great support of Barb and Pat.

Pat went and got his aunt and uncle at the airport late that evening. When they arrived there was more hugging and crying. Barb would go from crying to weeping to smiling to questioning to faith in waves. Finally she crawled into the hospital bed and laid with Jack. It was the best thing that she could have done. She smiled, finally rested, and slept. They had not shared a bed since August.

The next morning was Sunday and Alan brought over breakfast tacos. He didn’t stay as long as Pat, but was a great support to his mother behind the scenes. The evening before I had gotten into to habit of checking Jack’s room to see how Barb was doing. When she came out, I would go in and sit with him. I prayed over the passing of his soul and that he would meet Jesus with empty hands and open arms. I read to him from the Psalms. I prayed the 23rd Psalm over him with Barbara. I read them the letter from my daughter Amber. Jack was her favorite uncle. I played them the videos that we made of Jeanne, Char, and Eileen to their brother.

After church the Peltons came over. At about 2 in the afternoon a RN nurse came in to review things with the LPN who had been sitting with Jack. The RN came out to tell us that she could no longer hear Jack’s heart and that it would be soon. We called Alan and Pat and told them to come right over. Heidi sat with Barb while she wept at Jack’s side. I joined them. The others came in to say their good-byes. Pat and his family came in and then Alan. I prayed with Barbara again and we waited. After about a half hour of agony, Alan started talking about his father and the good times. Patrick and I joined in and we reminisced for over an hour. It was the best thing for Barb. The Cowboy’s football game was on and Alan laid a Cowboy tee-shirt on his father. In my bedroom up stairs I saw one of Dad’s crosses that Jack had hung over a framed display of his Boy Scout medals. Above it was a picture of him receiving his Eagle Scout with Dad and Mom. I went and got Dad’s cross and placed it too on Jack’s chest.

Jack kept breathing, but the nurse still couldn’t hear the heart. It was very weak, but strong enough to keep him alive. Mom was the same way when she passed. The Dydek heart is very strong.

After a couple hours of no change I suggested to Barb that we make a toast to Jack’s departure. They got the champaign out and filled the cups. We stood around Jack’s bed and toasted him a bon voyage from a life well lived to a better place. After that Barb could relax a little and leave his side. Later she again crawled into his hospital bed and slept. All stayed late, but the breathing continued. Eventually, all left for home or bed.

Heidi and Barb woke me at 6:45 on Monday the 31st. I’d stayed up late and my clock was still on west coast time, so I thought it was the middle of the night. Through their tears they told me that Jack had passed at 6:30. I went down and held his cold hand and kissed his cold forehead. Barb went through another hour or so of agony. Alan, Pat, and the Peltons came right over. The nurse told us the process. Alan had paid for the funeral arrangements on Christmas Eve. With hospice, no doctor was required to come and certify the death. About noon the men from the funeral home came in to pick up the body; another half-hour of final agony for Barb. A few hours later men came to pick up the hospital bed and all the equipment.

Jack was gone. But as I told Barbara, their love would never die. Forty years of better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness and health forged a love that would live beyond their parting at death. I told Alan and Pat that the best of Jack was still living in them. Much of the best of each of them was put there by Jack. Jack was a good husband and father. Life did not just happen to him, he grabbed every day. Pat told me that his father encouraged him to read. His first book was his father’s favorite, “The Catcher on the Rye”. I’d never read it, so Pat fetched it and I read it over next couple days. After reading it, I understand the trajectory of Jack’s life much better. For better or worse, it had a profound effect upon him.

As I prayed with Jack over those days, I felt his soul’s journey would lead him to the foot of the cross. Like in his Eagle Scout picture, he is again standing with his father and mother leaning on the everlasting arms of the Father of Light. One month before, I stood with my daughter as she gave birth. It struck me how the vigil waiting for birth is similar to the vigil waiting for death. The first breath and the last are both in God’s hands. The suspense of waiting for what must be, but is not yet, is tearing to the soul. The cries of travail echo with the same agony. These two greatest transitions test our faith to the utmost. Then the stark contrast between the joy of birth and the sorrow of death struck me in the face. Angels sang at His birth and the sun was blackened at His death. Jesus wept over Lazarus’ tomb. By faith we accept the consolation of heaven and of seeing our Lord and those who went before. But it is a weak smile through the copious tears.

The false labor pains of the day before his death, when the nurse told us the time was short, were indeed a blessing. There was two hours of agony, but all there said the final prayers and final goodbyes to their husband, father, brother, and friend. The vigil for that short time became focused and with the toast there was a closure. Then God could take him in the quiet of the morning. God came and met the man, took his soul back to Himself and left only shell behind. But to us, who knew Jack through his body, it is shattering. The fire dies and only ashes remain. The taste of the ashes remain bitter on the tongue.

Later that morning Pat went home and Alan to work. I waited until it was late enough on the west coast and started calling. I got through to Char, Jeanne, and Eileen. I was very pleased to see that Barb wanted to talk with each of them. She was drafting the email that she sent out to Jack’s support group. Chris, too, got through from Africa. He was really distraught because he could not be there for Barb. By the time he contacted us, it was 9 pm for him and he was just walking into the African church to preach in the New Year. I got through to all my children to let them know. The Peltons returned with supper and to stay up and welcome in the New Year. We toasted again to 2008 and the faith that it would be better than 2007. To which Barbara said “Amen.”

The first day of 2008 started slow. Barbara was slow, but holding up. Pat and the family came over. As we had the two previous days, Loather and I took a walk to the park. This time Pat and Ethan went with us; as did Louey the Dash hunt. Louey had been a prime player in the last few days. He and the nurse were the only ones with Barb when Jack passed. When we were by Jack’s side, Louey was there mourning with us with quiet whines. He encouraged us with snuggles and licks. He felt Jack’s loss and our sorrow as deeply as any of us save Barb. He seemed as lost and stunned at the absence of Jack as we did. Loather speaks less English than he understands. But we were able to communicate on our walks our sorrow at the loss of Jack. He had been Jack’s brother-in-law for 41 years and I his brother for 56. Patrick is a good father. He played for an hour with Ethan. They had a fallen leaves fight on the way back.

That afternoon we had an appointment at the funeral home to discuss arrangements. Barb wanted Pat and me to go and she told me to make sure that she didn’t sign anything stupid. Both Jack and Barb wished to be cremated. For some reason in Texas it can take up to ten days to receive the ashes back. Jack had also wanted a bench put in the park in his memory. Off and on we had discussed what to do with the ashes. Before we left, Barbara decided that she did want to purchase a niche at the cemetery. In Germany, visiting and caring for the graves of the family is very important. Their memorial day is around our Thanksgiving Day. During her visit to help Barbara in November, Heidi was worried because she would not be back in time to care for her parents grave sites. But Loather was a good husband and took care of it. Gratefully, the funeral home didn’t make any hard sales pitches. We visited various niches and Barb chose one overlooking a pond of ducks with a thick stained glass flower behind it. She made a very good choice.

The Peltons invited us over that evening for Texas chili. It was a good time. January 2nd I packed to go. Patrick had written the obituary. He came over and Barb and I reviewed it. Jack’s pastor came over and we discussed the memorial service. He and Jack had gotten fairly close over the past year and had many good discussions. He was very good at drawing out from us the best of Jack to use in his eulogy. The last several days were spent mostly reminiscing about his life, so it was not difficult.

Jack’s memorial service will be on Saturday, January the 12th. I mentioned to Barb early on about the possibility of a later celebration service on Jack’s birthday, March 15th. The more she thought about it the more she liked the idea. By the 1st and 2nd, she was very excited about the idea. It would give the family time to arrange their schedules and get their tickets. It would give her time to go through Jack’s stuff and see who in the family might want some of his keepsakes. He truly loved his family and kept and displayed many reminders of that love. March 15th turned out to be a Saturday, so that should make scheduling easier. Any who could not make the January 12th memorial service would be welcome. But its primary purpose is for the family to prepare and celebrate their brother’s life. It was a very full life.

~ Frank

PIED PIPER IN THE RYE by Frank Foreman

Throughout my adult life I remember Jack repeatedly recommending that I read Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. Upon Jack’s recommendation, Lelia did read it back when we were first married. She hated it, gave me the crux of it, and I never got around to reading it. Jack also recommended it to Chris and apparently to many others. So when Patrick mentioned that his father encouraged him to read by having him read Catcher as his first book, I decided that I too should read it. I had been pondering Jack’s life since our time together in July for the transplant. In July I had learned much about the decisions that he had made when I was too young to remember or too distant to know. Jack always was a mystery to me. Some of the pieces of this puzzle began to fit together from our discussions in July. Pat found his father’s copy of Catcher next to his Bible on his bedstead. So I finally read it and I understood a lot more. After I read the book, I got online and read about its author and its profound cultural impact.

Jeanne told me a few years ago that Don had been assigned Catcher for a college class. He liked it and gave it to Jack to read. If Don was assigned the book in his freshman English class, than that would have been in 1954 or 55 when Jack was 11 or 12. Charlotte remembers that it was about at that time that Jack started sneaking to Edgar’s Grove to smoke and drink. The life-long conflict between him and Dad started at about that time. I’m pretty sure that Catcher was the culprit. I believe that the attitudes and opinions in that book had a profound effect upon Jack’s life.

If Catcher in the Rye had been published in the last twenty years it would have had very little impact. But it was published in 1951, the year I was born. From a literary standpoint, its symbolism and characterization make it a pretty good novel, but, in my opinion, not great. What made it an extraordinarily influential book were its style and its envelope stretching content. The style is a stream of consciousness narrative by a 16 year old boy recounting to a psychologist his exploits after a nervous breakdown. It is very course, using cuss words not used in good literature or movies of the time. It is as sex obsessed as a locker room full of 16 year old boys. By today’s standards it is not very sexually graphic. But it’s very dirty without the details. Under-aged drinking and smoking is the constant theme throughout the book.

The plot is almost non-existent. A 16 year old boy, Holden Caulfield, flunks out of an elite prep school in New York City. It is the third prep school that he has flunked out of and he’s afraid to go home to tell his parents. His little brother died a couple years before of leukemia. The effect of the death on Holden was to cause him to stop trying. This is the only discernable sympathetic thing about the character. Otherwise he’s a complete jerk. He can no longer stand to stay at the school for the long weekend prior to the Christmas break. So he leaves the Saturday before Christmas and wanders the city for four days; experiencing life and spending a lot of money. The narrative ends with him meeting up with his little sister at a park and deciding to go home and face the music. Apparently, he’s sent to live with his older brother in California and is put a mental institution to recover from his nervous breakdown. He then, assumedly, returns to the prep schools and the life of the wealthy New York City elite of the fifties.

The plot parallels Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Only instead of rafting down the Mississippi River, Holden wanders the underbelly of New York City. All of the sexual perversions and depravity that has flooded into the American mainstream over the past fifty years have always existed since Sodom in the back streets of big cities. There it was ghettoized for centuries in civilized countries. To find it, one had to be motivated to seek it out. The 1920’s song goes: “How do you keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen Pariee?” The farmers mobilized in World War I started a trend in America that continuously accelerated as the world shrank. The trend has culminated in 21st century, where the very worst perversions of mankind’s imaginations can be indulged over the internet in the comfort of your own living room. Catcher was one of the sparks that began this fire. Its filth was an impetus to that trend that mocked and defiled the idealization of Norman Rockwell’s America.

As I said Catcher is stream of consciousness recounting of the thoughts of a depressed, obsessed 16 year old boy. So it is both weird and disgusting. In his adventures, Holden first ponders the pimple squeezing of one of his ostracized schoolmates and the sexual success of his jock roommate. He visits a very well-meaning elderly teacher, who gives him very good advice. But he doesn’t hear it because he’s distracted by his nose hairs and boney chest. As he runs away from the school on the bus, he meets a mother of a classmate and lusts after her. He checks into a hotel and sees a businessman in the hotel room window opposite him take off his business suit and put on a florid dress. He doesn’t like flits (the slang for homosexual before queer or gay). Near the end of the book, he’s taken in by one of his favorite teachers and wakes on his couch when he finds the teacher caressing his cheek. He runs out the door, thinking about the twenty or so “flitty” advances he’s experienced in his life. That may have happened in elite schools in Manhattan in the 40’s, but I think that it was very rare in fly over country.

He chain smokes and cusses throughout. Neither vices are thought of too poorly for a tall 16 year old in New York. But his 10 year old sister keeps telling him to stop cussing. He goes to visit four or five bars and is very angry and frustrated when about half the time they want to know how old he is. Underage drinking was illegal, but not consistently enforced. He propositions several girls, hires a prostitute, chickens out, and gets beat up by the pimp. To get out of the cold he visits the museum and looks again at the bare-breasted manikin of a squaw and remembers how all the kids would gawk at it in his elementary school days. God and religion are mentioned in passing a couple times. But they weren’t very interesting and couldn’t help him address his situation. Altruism and sympathy are felt occasionally for Nuns helping the poor and for the innocence of children in general. All in all it’s a wonderful enlightening tour of the uninhibited mind of a 16 year old boy. I needed a shower after reading it.

The novel is probably semi-autobiographical. J. D. Salinger grew up among the wealthy elite in New York City and went to the prep schools. His father was a Jewish immigrant and owned a meat importing business. After college Salinger joined the business and was sent to Austria just before the Nazis took over. He returned quickly, fought on D-Day, and was a journalist in the Army when they first entered into the death camps. He was a sensitive soul and was deeply scared his war experiences. After the war he published short stories in the New Yorker magazine and had several collections of short stories published. One was made into a movie and altered so that he hated Hollywood and the movies thereafter. This is reflected in the book by Holden, who hated the movies and was very disappointed that his idealistic poet older brother sold himself as a Hollywood writer. Catcher was the only significant novel that Salinger ever published. When it became a cultural phenomenon in the fifties, he was constantly asked how autobiographical it was. He soon stopped giving interviews, stopped writing, and became a recluse until his death. Even under great pressure and extravagant offers, he never allowed Hollywood to make it into a movie. This was probably because he knew Hollywood would have to emasculate it by removing all the cussing and sex. We should all be grateful for this. Otherwise Catcher might have ended up on the list of regularly shown Christmas movies.

The book initially had rave reviews from the literary elite and sold well. As normally happens, sales then declined for a few years. Then the colleges started teaching it in their American Literature classes and its popularity snowballed. Its sales remained very strong though the 80’s and reprints continue until today. It has sold over 65 million copies and continues to sell about a quarter of a million copies per year. Within a decade of its publication it began being taught in high schools among great controversy. Many libraries and schools banned it due to its profanity, obscenity, and sexual obsession. This of course made it a great martyr to the Left and gave the book celebrity status among the elite. This was at the same time as the McCarthy communist conspiracy trials and wove into the Spirit of that Age. Catcher’s fame preceded the Kinsey Reports with their pseudo-scientific justification of perversion as normal. It also preceded the main-streaming of porn by Playboy and the glorification of teen rebellion in the movies and popular music. I doubt not that the power of the cultural phenomenon that was Catcher in the Rye added wind to sails of the cultural transformation that started in the fifties and grew into the sexual revolution and cultural hurricane of the sixties.

So what made this book so popular and how could a story about a rich elite kid in New York so affect a poor boy in Whiting, Indiana? The power of Catcher in the Rye is in its attitude. Holden was a rebel against growing up and conforming to adulthood. He was a Rebel without a Cause that begat James Dean, Elvis, and the rebellious youth culture of the sixties and seventies. Holden’s attitude reflects the revolutionary force of the Left, but directed against nothing specifically nor aimed toward anything concretely. Rousseau’s yearning for the Noble Savage is reflected in Holden’s attitude toward adults, education, work, politeness, civilization, and even empathy. They’re all phony. The only thing that isn’t phony is the thought that’s bouncing around in his brain at the moment. It really is! That last phase is repeated hundreds of times in the book. It reflects Holden’s need to be authentic and to be true to himself. It really does! This need causes him to be cruel, rude, stupid, conceited, self-destructive, and totally self-absorbed. But that’s the price that must be paid in order to be true to yourself. He is completely cynical and skeptical of all the civilizing restraints inhibiting his impulses.

Salinger said that he meant for the book to be read by adults looking back at their own adolescent struggles. As such it might have remained an OK psychological study of an adolescent mind falling into a nervous breakdown. Unfortunately it was pushed onto young college men in the midst of these struggles and then onto even younger high school boys, just entering their own struggles. Its effect upon these searching hearts and minds was overwhelming negative. The liberal establishment had certified the book as “great literature” to be read and pondered. For the immature forming souls of adolescent boys this certification was tremendously liberating. They were just becoming aware of the vices, peccadilloes, and sins of adulthood. As boys they naturally resisted their parents’, teachers’, and communities’ attempts to inculcate good manners, education, moderation, and empathy into them. For their first decade boys are told to sit down and pay attention, when they’d rather get up and run. With the surge of testosterone at puberty the boys’ minds fill with many things that must be suppressed in order for them to be civilized. You cannot lay with every woman that you lust after. For those who believe in original sin and the Sermon of the Mount the wanderings of our minds into unholy places is a constant, embarrassing reminder that our dark, depraved hearts need redemption and of our wild natures require civilizing.

But this is an adult understanding of our natures. To tell adolescent boys that Catcher is a profound understanding of human nature is to place a stamp of approval of “getting up and running”. What they take from the book is that wild sexual fantasies are normal and unhealthy to repress. Holden speaks freely about the garbage that races through most boys minds. It is affirmation to the young readers that such obsessions are not only normal, but healthy. It’s arbitrary and hypocritical for grown-ups to demand that boys delay partaking in adult vices, like cussing and smoking and drinking. There is no reason to just whisper about these things in locker rooms, friend’s bedrooms, and Boy Scout tents. Go out and grab them. The urges are strong and the tacit approval to stop resisting is a relief. It is justified because it is authentic and normal. We are indeed Noble Savages. We are naturally good. It is civilization that inhibits and frustrates and causes all our problems and leads to nervous breakdowns. It really is! So stand up to your parents and teachers and authorities and tell them that they’re all phonies. They really are! Be honest about what you’re feeling and thinking. If it hurts other people, it’s their problem.

The title, Catcher in the Rye, is very odd. It’s explained in the book but seems very out of place. Holden hears a young boy on the street singing the old Scottish poem by Burns (a pioneering hero of Romanticism and the Left) “When a body meets a body going through the rye.” But the boy sings it “When a body catch a body going through the rye.” The half-drunken Holden doesn’t notice the mistake. His prize possession is his dead little brother’s baseball mitt on which he had written bits of poetry. Somehow Holden convolutes the two and fantasizes himself as a Catcher in the Rye. He explains his vision to his little sister. He’s in a big field of rye and there’s a steep cliff next to it. Hundreds of little kids are running through the field and he’s trying to catch them before they fall off the cliff. He feels a great urgency to catch them before they fall.

To me the vision is very odd because Holden is one of the most narcissistic, self-absorbed, non-empathetic characters in fiction. A couple times he shows a soft heart for childhood and altruism. But they are rare and superficial; swallowed up by his flood of cynicism, narcissism, and bitterness. But it fits his Rousseauian romanticism. The innocence of supposedly inherently good children must be saved from the horror of civilization and adulthood. Given the Left’s set of entirely false assumptions about the nature of man, the actual result of Salinger’s book was not to save the children from falling off the cliff, but to lead them to edge like a pied piper and give them a shove.

I would be remiss however in not noting that there was some substance in Salinger’s critique of the sexual mores of America in forties. Freud was dominant at the time and undoubtedly affected Salinger’s attitude. Freud’s taught that the Victorian sexual inhibitions were absurd and highly destructive. Freud psychoanalysis is now passé, but his overall philosophy of sexuality won out and still dominates Western culture in many ways. Although the cultural consequences of Freud’s ideas are overwhelmingly negative, his critique of Victorian sexual attitudes is not without merit. The secretiveness of sexuality in that era was counterproductive in some ways. The pendulum was definitely still skewed to the right in the forties. The fact the pendulum then swung radically and dangerously to left in the following generations does not change that reality. There is something unhealthy in making even the mention of healthy sexuality taboo.

My and Jack’s generation entered adolescence with an almost total ignorance of the very basics of sex. It was not talked about in polite society. It has always been uncomfortable to talk about sex with adolescents. But if our generation dared to bring it up, we were usually shushed. To an adolescent boy this made the whole topic seem dirty and impolite. But when the hormones flowed it ignited an overwhelming curiosity. It isn’t ideal to learn about sex by the rumors and guesses of equally ignorant adolescent boys while looking at hidden Playboys under the bed of a friend’s father or pooling sexual data and sharing fantasies in Boy Scout tents or using half-understood slang terms and dirty signs in locker rooms.

Of course forcing too much information too early on the new generations is even more destructive. The overexposure of adolescents to our over-sexualized media compounds the problems. But I believe that a balanced and more relaxed attitude toward healthy sex, while warning about the dangers of unhealthy sex, is being practiced today by many good Christian parents. And I believe that this balance is better than the secretive atmosphere of more Victorian times.

Another aspect of Holden’s attitude is a tension that is very palpable. I believe that most baby-boomer adolescents picked up on it. It was a certain resignation and sadness in a tacit understanding that in the end you will have to keep the rules. Holden fantasizes several times about running away and living in a cabin in the woods for the rest of his life. But he knows that it’s silly and simply will not work. Unfortunately, you’ve got to eventually grow up and achieve something if you want to live comfortably. It was only a decade or so later, when that seed grew into a tree. Some of radical Left actually abandoned “the establishment” for communes to seek reality through drugs and free sex. Most had not that boldness or that degree of insanity or both.

I believe that Catcher hit Jack at just the right time in his development to change his world. I believe that he deeply identified with Holden and adopted the attitude of the Rebel without a Cause. When I look over Jack’s life I see this dynamic. It’s almost as if Holden is pulling on his left arm to the cliff and Dad is pulling the right to safety. The attitude that “I need to do what I’m feeling and thinking in order to not be a phony” was a deep gut-level reaction in Jack. But then, when that response just doesn’t work, he’d swing back and do what needs to be done; double time and at the last minute. He quit scouts just short of completion. Then a few months before he turns eighteen, he goes back and races through the last few merit badges and becomes an Eagle. He starts college, doesn’t see the point to some of classes, flunks them, and quits. Eleven years later, he finally graduates with his degree; doing it the long, hard way. In basic training, he’s almost kicked out due to his attitude. Then he tests super-high in electronics and is sent to a highly sensitive career field. In all cases, when I talked with him about taking the long way around, he had no regrets about the attitude that caused the failures and delays. But then he always took great pride in his returning and finishing the course. His house is decorated with shrines to these accomplishments. It was what made Jack such a mystery to me. I think now I understand his struggle a little better.

Another oddity was that from his earliest adulthood Jack was such a staunch believer and defender of the Right and such a bitter critic of the Left. Yet Catcher’s overall premises and dreams are very Leftist. Jack’s head and most of his heart were on the Right. But there was a deep undercurrent of his heart that remained almost to the end. He glorified and was comfortable in the Left’s romanticism about the Rebel without a Cause. However, in his later years, I believe that it became more of a style preference than an actual belief set.

However, I believe that it did still influence his attitudes toward the early authorities in his life; God and Dad. He was still struggling with their inability to accept the authenticity of his early rebellion. It seems ancient history. But then Rosebud sleds seemed an unimportant footnote in the overwhelmingly accomplished life of Citizen Kane. My finals prayer for Jack was that he would finally shake completely free of Catcher’s grip and fully embrace his heavenly Father.

As I held Jack’s unresponsive hand by his hospital bed, I mostly prayed that whatever he was still clutching in his spiritual hand, that kept him from loving the Lord his God with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength, he would release. God counts all our days and dispenses all our breaths and heartbeats at His own pleasure. I agree with Charlotte that Jack’s hard course through this long valley of the shadow of death was what Jack’s loving heavenly Father determined was best for him. It was a severe mercy; but a great mercy. The valley was deep, rough, and long enough to strip away all the superficial distractions of this world and give Jack the opportunity to contemplate his naked soul.

I believe that in his final week, hovering between life and death, Jack wrestled with his loving Father. Jacob at Bethel wrestled with God. He limped through the rest of his life with material blessings and continuous family heartbreaks. This “Jacob” (as Grandpa used to call him) would not limp out of this wrestling match. His Father wanted all of his heart. The early, rebellious chains that divided his heart had to be severed. So did I pray. In that unseen spiritual reality (so much more real than what we see) the pride and cynicism of the Catcher had to be fully broken. Like the original Rebel without a Cause, the Prodigal Son, Jack needed to lay down the last pieces of the swine’s husks. He needed to return to his Father naked; knowing that he was unworthy to be called His son and fully willing to be a servant. In the very end, if we are to embrace our Father, we must all do the same.

I trust that it was discernment and not imagination that comforted my heart at Jack’s side at the end. I have faith that he now stands with Dad and Mom in Jesus’ embrace. I accept Sandy’s dream as confirmation. Char told me that before Jack became terminal one of Jack’s oldest friends had a dream about Jack. I’ve had many dreams with a similar theme. In such dreams there are powerful feelings of confusion and frustration as I sought to find my way to the place that I needed to go. But time after time the way was blocked, the familiar was strange, the turns were wrong, and the distractions were constant. Usually in those dreams I awake just before I reach my urgently desired destination. Shortly before they disconnected Jack’s IV, Sandy had such a dream. Jack was driving in a car through Whiting looking for home. Jack’s frustration and confusion were palpable. Finally they found Lake Avenue and turned to drive to our old house. Jack was overjoyed. Then the dream ends. I believe that in that time when Jack’s mind could not respond, but his heart and lungs continued to function, he finally found his way home. The light at the end of his tunnel was not the trivial glow of more years in the earthly sun. It was the living source of all light; the Father of Lights.

Frank 1/19/08