A Matter of Perspective

“It’s all a matter of perspective.”  I have heard that expression at times thorough out my life and have previously pondered it.

Today I am flying from San Francisco, California, to Charlotte, North Carolina, and I am thinking about how different one’s perspective of the topography is from a bird’s eye view as from a walking or driving view.  What appears to be an insurmountable barrier from below, looks like nothing more than a slight indentation from 30,000 feet above.  As we drive along a highway passing through cities and towns, we have no concept of the vast wilderness that is on either side of it.  We may stand next to a river watching its flow, but we have no understand of where it comes from or where it goes.  A wind turbine looks like a bit of a toothpick from the air, but having stood at the base of one, I can tell you that they are enormous.

My granddaughter accused me this week of not understanding what it is like to be a child.  She doesn’t just think I have forgotten.  She thinks I never was a child and went straight to being a grandmother!  She is seven, so she can be forgiven for this total lack of logic.  Actually, I do remember what it is like to be a child, and that is why I bother to attempt to correct her behaviors.  I also remember what it was like to be a not-yet-mature adult, which is why I was not offended greatly when a grandson told me that my ideas were out-dated and irrelevant. There is a perspective with age.  One might wish to impart a 70+ year old perspective to a young person, but unfortunately…or maybe fortunately…we each have to live life and experience some pain and sorrow to gain perspective from the passage of time.

Gender also impacts perspective.  I have been better than most females at understanding what goes through the male brain.  I generally get along better with a group of men than with a group of women.  I like women and have women friends with whom I share a deep connection, but trying to function with a group of women sometimes drives me a little crazy.  It’s not that there is anything wrong with the way men and women think…it is wonderful that both exist.  But they come from different perspectives.  Something which gets discussed in mind-numbing detail by women would be quickly decided by a group of men.  I was once part of an all-female committee that spent three meetings discussing what color the napkins should be at an up-coming event.  I didn’t attend the last of those meetings, because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to control the words that came out of my mouth.

Perhaps, the most important perspective comes from one’s worldview.  How did we get here?  Do we have a purpose?  Do our lives have meaning?  If so, what is it?  I have been at social events where the discussion has led me to believe that my worldview is quite different than that of the typical middle-class white person.  I believe there is a God who is creator and sustainer of the universe.  I believe we are here to honor Him with our lives.  I believe He has a grand design for the world and humanity, and that we each are to play a part in fulfilling His plan.  I believe everything we think we own, really belongs to Him.  It comes from His kindness to us, and we are responsible to Him for how we use it.  That includes our time, talents, and material resources.  I believe God sent His only Son in the person of Jesus to pay the penalty for our sin and to restore our broken relationship with Him.  This is the perspective that has impacted my entire life.

If you are reading this, spend some time thinking about your perspective.

My Veterans

Veterans’ Day 2020 is a long way from the end of World War II in 1945.  That was a very significant time in my young life.  I was born just before the war ended.  I was 7 months old before I met my father who had been serving in the Army in France.  Today I am thinking about my family members who served.

My Dad worked in a grocery store as a butcher prior to the war.  After being drafted and going through basic training, he was viewed as having leadership potential and was sent to Officers’ Candidate School. While in the military, he tripped a mine, but other than a ruptured eardrum, he was not hurt.  He told me that the day I was born was the last day anyone actually shot at him.  He came out of the Army as a 1^st Lieutenant, and this gave him a leg-up in job hunting after the war.  He worked for a time at Wurlitzer, a company that made juke boxes, and then began working for American Standard as the foreman in the core room.  He later moved and ended up as the production manager in a small business. He spent his life as a “blue collar” worker but always in management positions within the factory.

My Dad’s brother Roy was a conscientious objector, so he went in the military as a medic.  He was stationed on a hospital ship in the Pacific and saw some pretty awful things.  He had one experience that caused him to realize that he could kill someone if he needed to do so.  Coming out of the Army, he used the GI bill to go to college.  He became an engineer specializing in cooling systems.  I knew he traveled all over the world in the early 1950s, a time when such travel wasn’t typical.  Near the end of his 91 year-long life, he confessed that he had been working on cooling systems for nuclear reactors and couldn’t really admit that or talk about it.  He never married or had children.  I was his only niece and was probably closer to him than the nephews were.  He believed having to be in the military had negatively impacted my Dad’s life and earning potential, so in later years, he would send Dad large sums of money.  Dad would turn around and donate it somewhere.  This annoyed Uncle Roy.

My mother had three brothers, all of whom served during WWII.  The oldest brother Frank was already married and had a child when he left for Europe.  He was wounded by a German sniper, had a metal plate placed in his elbow, and recovered in England, before being sent back to the states.  In his absence, his wife had an affair with her boss.  She left Uncle Frank, divorced him, and took their son with her.  He tried to keep up with his son initially, although they were living in another state, but eventually he gave up.  He remarried, but never had another child. I don’t remember his exact career path, but he ended up as a Family Court Clerk.

Mom’s brother Chuck was my Dad’s best friend when they were young men.  That is how my parents met.  Chuck also served in Europe.  When he came home, he had a fairly short career as a fireman, but then went back into the military in the Air Force.  He made a life-time career of this, so he was around the least of my uncles as I grew up.  He sometimes sent letters and photos of places he was stationed.  He was in Alaska in the 50s and was once stationed at the Pentagon.  He was married but had no children.  He died unexpectedly at the age of 50 as a Lieutenant Colonel and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.  I have visited his grave there.

Mom’s youngest brother Art was in north Africa during the war and contracted malaria.  He had some bouts with this after the war.  He used the GI bill to attend college and law school.  He married and was into a promising career as a lawyer when his young daughter died of cancer.  He went through several disastrous years of grief and not working.  His wife supported them for a time.  Eventually, he pulled himself out of this time of despair and became a college professor.  He structured one of the first paralegal programs for a junior college.  He had always been a heavy smoker and died of lung cancer at about the age of 60.

In retrospect, I can see ways in which military service benefited some family members and had a negative impact on the lives of others.  No one talked about PTSD back then, but I suspect they all had it.  My parents said that after the war, they went to a movie together.  There was a scene at a party, that abruptly went into a war scene with guns blazing.  My Dad flattened himself on the floor of the theater and was shaking so badly that they left the movie.

None of these wonderful men are living now.  I have fond memories of all of them.  My uncles were very kind and encouraging to me.  Immediately after the war, all of the men I have mentioned except Uncle Roy were living with my maternal grandparents.  I was the little princess in the house, and my wish was their command.  I was spoiled rotten.  My mother thought she would never straighten me out.  Some of my first words were also their “colorful” language, but there was a great deal of mutual affection with all of these guys.  Uncle Chuck gave me anything I asked for, Uncle Art taught me to tell my mother I was “standing on my constitutional rights” if she scolded me, Uncle Frank was tallest and would bump my head on the ceiling….I called him Uncle Bink, and Uncle Roy and I developed a life-long secret word with which we greeted and admonished each other.  My Dad was a sometimes harsh and difficult man, but I loved him.  We butted heads right to the end, but we appreciated each other.

I am grateful they all made it home in 1945!

Tell-tale Pain

Now and then, an event in my past life comes to mind, and I have no idea why.  This morning, I thought about a patient I took care of long ago.  I think he was in his 50s or 60s.  I don’t remember his name, but I think he was Scottish as he had a plaid robe that seemed to have significance for him.

I must have taken care of him for several days, because I remember being with him on both the day and evening shifts.  Typically, as students, we would work 2 weeks of days, followed by 2 weeks of evenings and then 2 weeks of nights, on each unit to which we were assigned.

I know I took care of him on the day shift, because I have a distinct memory of discussing him with the Team Leader.  She was a middle-aged lady with a European accent, flaming red hair, and too much blue eye shadow.  She had no sympathy for him.  She was convinced he was just fond of narcotics and didn’t need pain medication.  She paid no attention to my protests that I was sure he was genuinely in pain.

I spent enough time with him to assess his pain…both intensity and type.  He described his upper abdominal pain as “pulsating.”  I dutifully reported and charted this believing it was significant.

I don’t remember what tests were done or why it was that days later, it was suddenly decided on the evening shift that he had to go to surgery right then.  I guess someone finally figured out that the pulsating pain was a large aortic aneurysm threatening to rupture.  I helped to put him on the gurney to go to the Operating Room.

He was clearly frightened.  As others bustled around him, I touched his shoulder, bent down, and said quietly, “We will be waiting for you when you come back.”  There was no family present, and I wanted him to know someone would be there to greet him on his return.

With a trembling voice, he said, “I’m not coming back.”

He was right.  When they attempted to repair the bulge in his aorta, the tissue disintegrated, and he bled to death right there on the OR table.

Would it have made a difference if someone had believed his pain and my description sooner?  I don’t know.  I do know diagnosis would be much easier and faster now with MRIs.  Vascular surgery techniques have improved too.

 I also know that he is one of those patients embedded in my memory.