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My broadest and most fundamental observation of life is that there are continuing streams of circumstances that punctuate it as we live and perceive it - day by day. I wonder how many of us can remember back to when we were first being introduced to the fundamentals of written communication?  I can't, yet I will attempt to use such a metaphor as might come as we try to grasp the most basic elements of grammar and structure of language. It is as though we're scribbling along on that grainy off-white grade school paper with the wide spaced blue lines. We're studiously seated at our desks, with our heads down and tongues hanging out the corners of our mouths. Perhaps we're just beginning to consider some of our first self-expressive notions, framing a single thought, or about to misspell some cliché we've picked up from our parents or from watching TV - when suddenly - it all ends. "Time's up", the teacher says. We all know that a sentence is supposed to be a complete thought. We know that a period, exclamation point or question mark is demanded to complete the assignment. Yet, as we stare at the paper and glance up at the clock, all the words preceding it don't look like much of a sentence at that point. Inspiration flees and the disapproving look on the teacher's face is nothing compared to the disapproval you feel within yourself.
"I needed more time" you say. "More time".

And so it is was on the evening in late May of the year 2000 - I came to write in my journal,

The month of May began in a relative norm for this area I suppose. It was complete with frequent thunder showers and the singing of birds in the suburbs of the Tidewater area - colloquially known as the Hampton Roads. Part and parcel to my own life's circumstances were my continued unemployment - a somewhat perpetual discouragement in contrast to the coming hopes of my daughter's high school graduation - complete with a joint birthday celebration that would come in June, when I turned forty-nine and she turned eighteen. Now - looking back from this - my July vantage point - it was certainly a time of doting on my daughter Cheri, who would be leaving the nest to start college in the fall. So here we have in outline form - basic human conditions and thought patterns. The time consciousness of Western mind sets, where we frame ourselves in calendar time, conjugate our comings and goings, moving easily among various tenses that reckon those events we consider "life".

Usually, life to an American seems to be nothing more than the work we do or the job we don't currently hold. Whether we're doing poorly or doing well, we can always count on being overwhelmed when finality arrives unexpectedly in our work-a-day worlds. Moving back to the metaphor of sentence crafting, we have now matured a bit and have mastered many clichés at this point in life. We have plenty of misspelled words down to satisfy the 1000 word requirements - all of which the spell-checker can rapidly clean up before the assignment is due. Yet, quality of content is glaring at us with disapproving eyes now. Even in those moments deemed as successful by others, we may become despondent when we look within ourselves, read through the material and ask "what now?" I recognize there is nothing either original or intrinsically poignant in these observations. In my own human experience, I can draw from near term contemporaries who have more effectively couched such notions within their music and poetry than ever my own prose might attain to...

As a piece of literature, Pink Floyd's song (poem) Time leaves me with a definite sense of idleness, emptiness and hopelessness. It prods naughtily at the un-accomplishments of a person's life. In contrast, I reach back to first century history and commentary by Jesus Christ, who authoritatively declared - in the context of a parable - the short-sightedness of any individual who might attempt to orchestrate or make presumptions plans for their future, without recognition of a divine will and perspective. This sits sideways in the craw of all the over-achiever's among us. Those who would certainly never ask what their country would do for them, but rather "what can I do next?" in their campaign of self-aggrandizement and just keeping busy.

Taken outside the context of poetry and gospel text, all above literary references can take on the hollow sound of mere words. Yet - where the scriptures are concerned, there is a promise of God that His Word will not return void. As recorded by the prophet Isaiah...

Most any words can cause us to reflect on life. If such reflection can ultimately lead us to active faith and hope in Jesus, I suppose I could be defined as a fan of certain rock lyrics that might heighten awareness and perhaps bring a soul to the crossroads and the Cross. I am certainly a lover of the Rock of my salvation. When "Lisa M. died" last May of injuries suffered in a collision of two motor vehicles, I immediately tried to get beyond the abrupt period that had just been placed on the page where her life was concerned. As my daughter considered Lisa her friend; largely resultant from their mutual love for the sport of volleyball, I initially experienced an overwhelming sorrow. This sadness came as both a sense of empathy for Lisa's stunned parents and sympathy for my daughter's loss. There was little sense of sorrow for Lisa herself, as a victim of a fatal crash. Whatever decisions she had made where eternity was concerned, I had no knowledge of, and there was nothing more I could do to influence such a decision. Now we're getting to where the pain is very personal. How close does a friend of a friend have to be, to help in the recognition and the dealing with eternal matters? The genuine articles in the "what's next" framework of our assignments in the classroom of life. And so - when the news of Lisa's death arrived, within a few hours I was sitting alone, tears streaming down my face, trying to get beyond the period - the explanation point, or more accurately, the question mark concerning Lisa Maholchic. So I sobbed and stared into the content of my pathetic journal.

This journal I speak of is really nothing more than a self kept medical record, a feeble attempt to document certain mundane matters of my physical health where blood sugar levels are concerned. On certain occasions, I have tried to somehow quantify my existence beyond the annotation of numeric blood sugar content (milligrams per deciliter of blood), recording what I have eaten, when I have retired for the evening and when I have risen in the morning. Other digressions from the normal journal entry of dates, times and three digit sugar readings are comments. Somewhat non-expanded words and phrases like "depressed" - "extremely depressed" or "angry" appear from time to time, all of which serve only to suggest some sort of connection between the how I feel and the why I feel where my life is concerned.

In my view, the dilemma as to whether erratic and abnormally high blood sugar has to do with my depression - or - if psychological depression brings on wild metabolic swings in blood sugar is not a question germane to the thought processes of any physicians I've dealt with thus far. In a cynical sense, true importance of my basic medical journal may only be in the faithful recording of data, so that people better qualified than myself might someday make a pronouncement - though woefully inaccurate - as to what it is that I died from. (Yes, I intended for someone to smile about here).

So then - even non-cynically speaking - my medical journal is a rather useless record, and I flatly see it as such. After all, who isn't "depressed" now and then and who isn't "angry" now and then? Get yourself a glucose meter, some test strips and you too can periodically prick your finger, daub your blood and write your own life story on a par with my journal. Pretty boring reading, let me tell you! It's only when an individual is angry to the point of committing murder or depressed to the point of suicide that any significant chronicling or follow-up ever seems to come of it. And so it is likewise with the magnitude of other events in the human experience. By way of a far-flung example, millions of sand sized meteors collide and burn in the earth atmosphere on a daily basis. So it is that the vast minority of celestial events are those larger meteors that steak across the sky and are seen from earthly vantage points covering hundreds of miles. Yet, these are the meteors that get an Associated Press photo or a feature article by a journalist. Of late, the search for and discovery of numerous huge rocks (asteroids) that God has placed in Earth crossing orbits have caught the attention of the media. So likewise, we humans whirl and twirl through space, occasionally colliding in or around cities of our great nation. Outcome of these collisions range in impact from economic annoyance to gut wrenching grief - to even national mourning (the death of Lady Dianne). Some believe that if more exposure were given to chronicling the negative happenstance of traffic tragedy that more care might be taken by the drivers and passengers alike.

As for me, I would likely conclude that the human condition is well able to sublimate and offset even the most well orchestrated flow of aversion therapy from the media. Enraged by gas prices, we still plan trips. Dissatisfied with our image in four-cylinder economy cars, we purchase six or eight cylinder sport utility vehicles. Warned of hell, we make no effort for repentance or steps towards heaven. As we motor off to attend to our so-called lives, simple physics comes into play. Since we somehow take offense when anyone might callously equate the gravity of traffic death in the same analytic context as the inability of two bodies to occupy the same space at the same time - we herein notice that there is a recognizable trite and sardonic side of human expression. It's something we both disdain yet wallow in from day to day. When we are personally involved in calamity, there seems no willingness to consider the weight of what we may have held as the normality of our life in the days that went on before and eventually lead up to the deeper circumstances behind our grief or sorrow. In a picture, we dodge many so-called daily bullets that life shoots toward us - and - in many times and many ways - walk in the sameness of day to day life with our own guns a blazing....

Just recently, an elderly neighbor came to our home to share a piece of apple pie and a bit of conversation. As he observed some recently installed power poles and power company equipment by the roadside, he remarked how a nearby man had just been killed (electrocuted) while trimming tree branches near power lines. Before I could consider the full weight of my words or perhaps show better restraint to not speak at all, I quipped "I bet he won't do that again". If it wasn't a mechanism to whisk away thoughts and conversation that would ultimately lead to the brevity of life and the certainty of death, what was it?

I think I'm spiritually mature and totally willing to deal with and discuss such issues at a moment's notice, but I'm still keenly aware that the simple sentence "Lisa M. died" or "Lisa M is dead" sticks in my throat.  As for my evening with the elderly acquaintance, such life and death discussion would come within the hour. Before the pie was gone, we had spoken about his experiences in North Africa, Sicily and some follow-up battle campaigns in Europe. As he marveled at how he (by God's grace) had come out of all this carnage physically unscathed, I marveled at the post war stamina he seemed to possess. He visited shut-ins in a nearby retirement home, kept a tidy household and a garden of his own, made monthly drives to visit with sisters some hundred or more miles away, and saw to the needs of an invalid daughter.

He had certainly seen a lot during World War II, but it was not until 1976, as he considered a local preacher's text from Exodus and acknowledged the ability of a real and living God to rescue an oppressed people from a pursuing army - that he thus bowed his head at the message of the Red Sea incident, asking the same God to come into his heart and mind. As he politely poked at his pie, it occurred to me that Hitler and Mussolini had essentially presented portions of that same gospel message to him already.

Yet, it seemed evident that a combination of events had lead up to his profession of faith. Certainly - in the broadest sense - the composite perspective of several milleniums were involved. Consideration of an Egyptian tyrant and likely his own personal experiences in the Mediterranean surf had brought him to that place of decision. It was that so-called "right place at the right time" where a sovereign God divided the merging seas of turmoil and indifference, placing them in two neat heaps, and allowing for what ultimately was a brief moment of opportunity, wherein he decided to walk through on the dry ground.

So then came thoughts and discussions of daughters. He spoke first hand of a GI who had been shot and killed by an Italian father, as the unfortunate soldier had sought sexual gratification from the man's young daughter during an otherwise ordinary evening in war torn Italy. Combat weary Americans just out for some drinks and a good time. The imagery of things we sometimes hold as lesser evils, juxtaposed to greater evils like the Nazi/Axis occupation of the entire world. Such incidents are all rolled up in the total cost, the price mere mortals were forced to pay in the defeat and overthrow of an evil empire. Then came talk of my own daughter. Cheri was in Kentucky to participate in a national volleyball tournament. She would be going off to college on a scholarship. I poked proudly and politely at my own slice of pie and wondered how our discussion of current events and our personal lives was playing in the mind of my senior guest. Here sat a war veteran who came home, found a wife, started a family and experienced the heartache of fathering a handicapped daughter. In previous conversations we had discussed but a very few personal matters. A looking at our respective lives over coffee so to speak. I had shared my search for a job and attempts to locate a former Marine friend via the Internet. He spoke of how he had visited a friend from the war years - a former comrade in arms, and how they had celebrated their reunion by simply cutting up potatoes and frying them on an open fire - as they had done on the field of battle decades earlier. A simple celebration to be sure, but a celebration of life without a question mark at the end.

As the apple pie disappeared and I considered the fact that in a few weeks, my family would be moving away and that I'd likely not have many more opportunities to learn more of his views on life or he of mine, a certain sadness came over me. As he spoke of malaria and the burning and freezing sensations he had endured in the war. I considered my diabetes and the constant burning and tingling of my feet. Because he had come by his malaria on the battlefields of Northern Africa, my own disease and discomfort seemed - for the moment - a much lighter and lesser thing for me to bear. A chance event of hereditary genetics perhaps, as was possibly the situation with his daughter and her affliction. As he spoke of his time aboard a hospital ship, of movies that featured Hollywood Westerns - of his delight with a Coke and a Hershey bar on his pillow when he returned to his bunk after a night with John Wayne - my thoughts fast forwarded from the past to the present, and I was soon back in my own era - dealing with thoughts of daughters and death. Had things played out differently, perhaps decades from now Cheri and Lisa could have laughed over unruly middle aged physiques and perhaps shared their own equivalent of a fried potato experience. As it was, the pain I felt for Lisa's death had lightened not at all, as I considered what Lisa's parents might be doing right now, and also who was caring for my guest's daughter as we enjoyed our dessert and an hour of conversation. There is, I concluded, an overall ineptness in me where expressing simple love to my fellow man is concerned, not to mention the challenge of ministering the love of God to him.

Later that evening, I asked my wife of any news concerning the Maholchic family. I confess now that certain thoughts towards irony and sardonic humor seized me about then. As Debbie spoke of "wanting to send them a card" but not having done so because she "didn't know what to say", I concluded that the certain ineptness I mentioned earlier transcends matters of sex and age, and even extends outside the limits of my own family. As I tried to keep my thoughts on the seemingly unattainable middle ground between hopeless morbidity and raving lunacy, I tried to lighten up - as some therapists might suggest to a depressed patient. So, I clutched further at this small protrusion of humor in the situation - the matter of the unsent sympathy card. It was the simple observation that my wife held a part-time job with a nationally recognized greeting card company. She works in local stores, stocking and arranging greeting card displays of all types. She (thought I) of all people would know well the range of pre-fabricated quellings we humans would try to mail to each other in a time of tragedy and loss. Trying to arrive at any sort of a punch line to express this humor was futile. I knew I'd never find the right words to share this thought with my wife in a way that would not offend her. That I'd take the time to try to deal with it now is simply an attempt to explain how bound up I feel at times. These are some of the things I cried in the silence of a sleepless rage, that God might cut the strings on my tongue and free me to be more compassionate - to be less mute in a muted and distant - overly suspicious and fearful world. A world where the serious and debilitating trials of real life are most often either minimized, overstated or simply perpetuated by pursuit of excess.

Ah yes, excess. It was earlier that same evening - the evening of the pie fellowship - that I shook hands with our guest at the front door and then hastened to the kitchen and in an uninhibited, non-polite manner, devoured a remaining piece of apple pie. It was a piece my six-year had tasted but left pretty much intact. My thoughts fled to the anticipation of coming weeks when my little Joey will come to see my eighty-four year old father in the closing and wintry days of his life. I thus considered the cycle of life. In a certain - stereotypical sense - all children represent a burden to their parents - whether in long healthy life, a physical or mental handicap or even in a premature death. As life plays out, many times the tables turn, and parents become somewhat of a burden to their children, but not so to those souls who leave us in the so-called flower of their own youth.  Those that never have the opportunity to become parents themselves.  I'm old enough now to see this in many practical ways, but otherwise no more prepared or experienced in dealing with it than any contemporary I might choose to compare myself with. I hear the voices of departed relatives saying - "well - at least you're healthy".  If I listen close enough, somewhere in the ringing of my ears (tinitus) and my bouts with insomnia, I can also hear myself making the same trite remarks in days gone by. Had I the ability to turn back the hands of time, I might better have wept and prayed silently in a private room rather than try to wax philosophical and eloquent from the shallow pond of my pre-Christian, pre-Biblical existence. Even now - with several years of bible college and dozens of years of weeping over the pages of Holy Writ, I often feel utterly empty - totally unqualified when it comes to offering the quieting comfort that Jesus might offer, were He presented the same situations I face today.

As for my involvement with Lisa Maholchic and her family, the situation is certainly not unique. It is common to what many may likely find themselves in at one time or another. I saw Lisa come and go from our home on a couple occasions, having little more to do than smile and say "hi" as her and my daughter went off to play some tennis. I couldn't pick her parents out of a crowd, though my wife could probably help me out, were we thrown together in a room full of volleyball parents. My wife and daughter went to Lisa's funeral. I did not. I suspect my rational for not going was well positioned. It was needful that someone stay at home with our six-year old. In this convenient comfort of circumstance came the disquieting voice of a loving God. He suggested to me that it had been a better decision to go to the funeral and take young Joey along. Perhaps to just sit and weep openly in the face of the tragedy at hand. A mixture of thoughts thus ensued. I recalled a time in my daughter's younger life when we attended the funeral of a deceased neighbor. The social cliché as to the paying of respects was one of the farthest things from my mind in that era. The funeral situation was more an opportunity to introduce the certainty and inevitability of death to my young children than it was to present or offer hope and life to friends and family of the late Mr. Anderson. At the time, Cheri was perhaps six years old or thereabouts, and her older brother David about seven. Both near the age that Joey is now.

While it seems I've lost the particulars as to the date of his death, I've since tried to keep a small photograph of that long-ago neighbor in view - that we all might remember a couple of things in the process. There is the matter of his sacrifice as a World War II veteran. He served in Europe with a tank crew, and was captured and held prisoner in Germany. Probably deeper than my admiration for his military exploits was and is my appreciation of the praise and admiration he often directed toward our children. Such love and showing of affection did not come easily to Mr. Anderson. There was a superficial gruffness and roughness about him, but the kids (and myself) all eventually came to see through him.  My kids took to playing cards with his widow and I'm certain - had we the opportunity to do it all over again - we would have striven to become closer, sooner.

I also have a photo of Lisa Maholchic. It's among press clippings that featured some of the best players from the Tidewater Virginia area in 1999. These are the circles Lisa and my own daughter competed and traveled in. As to Lisa's appearance, there was certainly no superficial gruffness she had to emerge from behind. Lisa's smile - as I recall - seemed ever-present and full of fun. As for other memories and observations, I really have little to draw upon. Perhaps my daughter may choose to share some of her own Lisa stories at a future date. I'm sure she will think of her often.

There was one occasion when a boy Lisa was dating came to my front door to offer sincere apologies for having allowed a party he was responsible for to get out of control. I remember his forthright manner had left me with a favorable impression that carried back to similar and forgiving thoughts for girlfriend Lisa as well. Such situations and connective reasonings are not uncommon among all parents I suppose.  As for other particulars of the party incident itself, it was the age-old cat's away - mice play scenario. With parents away, un-welcomed guests had evidently crashed the young man's party, police were summoned and I had the parental displeasure of having to drive across town to pick-up Cheri - when - to the best of my knowledge - she was supposed to have been spending the night at Lisa's home in another part of town. What I recall most in that entire event was the tightness in my chest when the phone rang. The police officer identified himself and asked if I was the father of Cheri White.  Try as I may, I can't put aside the relief that came when I found Cheri, Lisa, and a couple other familiar faces - all alive and quite well, though in a rather unsavory situation, largely due to a few obnoxious party crashers and the impetuous nature of youth in general. So why would I ever try to set aside the feeling of relief you might ask? I suppose it brings me back to trying to finish the sentence, "Lisa M. died".  It's a futile thing to try and fully comprehend Mr Maholchic's grief.
As he (Bob Maholchic himself) told the press - "it's a tragedy beyond comprehension".

In closing, any writer is always hopeful that something good can come from the words they prepare.  As I look over this prose I've titled, "The Death Of Lisa Maholchic", I note that at the very onset of this effort, I jotted down a simple journal type thought - that I "felt compelled to write about the tragic death of Lisa Maholchic". In retrospect, I've touched on that and several peripheral issues. Since I've often attempted to deal with my emotions through the mechanism of poetry (which I frequently cause to rhyme) I considered the word "prose" and how I somehow perceive it as rather antithetic to poetry as I know it. Looking up "prose" in a dictionary, it was defined as "ordinary writing as distinguished from verse". It had a secondary meaning of being "matter of fact, commonplace, or dull expression".  While my own words may come across as lacking, stilted or any number of other disappointing descriptors, I'm prayerful that you won't consider my subject as dull. It is - after all - a matter of life and death.

Bob White
July 1st, 2000

TIME - from Pink Floyd's - Dark Side Of The Moon album

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Luke Chapter 12 - Verses 15 thru 28 from the King James version of the Bible

Luke 12:15 And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.

Luke 12:16 And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully:

Luke 12:17 And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits?

Luke 12:18 And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods.

Luke 12:19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, [and] be merry.

Luke 12:20 But God said unto him, [Thou] fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?

Luke 12:21 So [is] he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.

Luke 12:22 And he said unto his disciples, Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on.

Luke 12:23 The life is more than meat, and the body [is more] than raiment.

Luke 12:24 Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?

Luke 12:25 And which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?

Luke 12:26 If ye then be not able to do that thing which is least, why take ye thought for the rest?

Luke 12:27 Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

Luke 12:28 If then God so clothe the grass, which is to day in the field, and to morrow is cast into the oven; how much more [will he clothe] you, O ye of little faith?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Confronts God with an eye

Still puzzled by the standard label

All flesh bears: Made to die—

And questions Him if He is able

To reassure her why.

"For Amy Lowell" was first published in Poetry magazine in 1925. It is protected by copyright and as such should not be printed out or stored in any permanent form without permission of the copyright holder. It appears here in accordance with fair use. It can be found, for example, in:

*Cullen, Countee. Copper Sun. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1927.
*Hine, Daryl, and Joseph Parisi, eds. The Poetry
Anthology, 1912-1977. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1978
Lowell died in 1925 and was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926.

Comments on above poem:

As a person fond of poetry, I had occasion to request a "poem a week" from an on-line source willing to provide such a service via email. This was the poem that arrived during the week in May 2000 in which the car Lisa Maholchic was riding in, was struck by an individual running a red light. She remained in a comma for a week and ultimately died as a result of severe brain trauma.

Sample from my journal during the week of Lisa Maholchic's injury and eventual death. Sugar levels in this time frame represent a tremendous success to the extent that my non-medicated readings have ascended into the mid 200's and even mid 300's. Normality is supposed to be in the 80 to 120 mgdl range (i.e. milliliters of sugar content per deciliter of blood volume). What the somewhat ludicrous posting of my journal within the expanded content of my observations is intended to illustrate, is that there is no way to measure - no way to show or express - the far reaching range of emotions at play, where the loss of one human life is concerned. Here then is an effort to account for just a few minute facets of my own life, that being my health.   And where then is the data for Lisa's friends and loved ones? The feeling of having been struck in the stomach. The tears, the anger, the apprehensions for what our own futures hold?  Yet, we live in a society where an ungodly number of ungodly souls want us to believe that what we do in or don't do in private, doesn't affect others. That such things are and should remain of no concern, but to the bloody individual.