The Day John Wayne Came To Breakfast

Last Friday I dressed with special care: black long-sleeved shirt, knee-length tasseled vest, green silk wild rag tied around my throat just like the Good Rancher does each morning, scuffed riding boots, and my white George Strait stetson.

And black jeans.

I never, EVER, thought I would wear jeans to a funeral.

But when one is going to John Wayne's funeral, how else would one dress?

The first time I met Fred was at our Hanna church's Remembrance Day service in 2018. He came with my friends Debby and Gaylene. He was Debby's cousin; of course I had heard of him because Debby had picked up several of Dad's items of clothing for her cousin when he was preparing to move to Three Hills. She and Gaylene had gone to BC to meet him and had taken him on holiday several times. And now he had moved to Three Hills.

I was at the front of the church helping with the service when I spotted them; at the end I hurried back to the foyer to greet them. Hugs all around, and a comment about a new white hat, which had been Fred's seventieth birthday present a couple of months earlier.

The three of them had to leave soon after, but not until I had extracted a promise from them that they would come visit us at the ranch very soon.

With real horses.

That Fred could pet.

And wear his white hat.

And have pancakes for breakfast.

Just like John Wayne.

We shook on it, because a man's handshake is his bond. 

And so, a week later, our VIP guests arrived.

Who are you? Fred asked the Good Rancher. My name is Fred. But you can call me John Wayne. Are you a real rancher? Why aren't you wearing a cowboy hat? 

The GR tipped his baseball cap to Fred. "Glad to meet you, Mr. Wayne."  And he stuck out his hand. 

Debby, Gaylene and I froze: Fred had no reason to trust men, on the whole, and he usually responded badly to the slightest sign of anything that might smack of forcefulness or threat to him. 

John Wayne looked way up into the Good Rancher's face for a moment and then grasped that extended hand. He smiled. Where are you going? Can I go with you? 

"I have to go back to work. But first I am going to go get Ed for you to meet."

As the GR set off briskly for the corral, the rest of us more leisurely donned coats and went outside toward the barn. 

There, in all her beauty, stood Ed. Fred took a deep breath and one of the biggest smiles I have ever seen bisected his face. 

 

The Good Rancher made the introductions: "Fred, this is Ed. Ed's a girl. Ed, this is John Wayne."

Can I pet Ed? 

"OK with you, Ed? I think she says it's OK."

Just at the time the GR had to leave for more chores, Glen, a retired Mountie who was working with him at that time and is one of the great treasures associated with the ranch's story, showed up in the yard.

"Glen, this is Fred."

"Hello, Fred."

You're not going to hurt me, are you?

"Fred," I said quickly, "Glen is an RCMP officer. He will protect you."

Will you look after me?

"Yes sir," responded dear Glen, extending his hand. "Shall we go in the barn and get some treats for Ed?" And, just like that, Glen had a new friend for life. Fred took his hand and the two men, much the same age, walked over with Ed to explore the barn.

Debby and Gaylene went to check out the other horses while I got breakfast ready. Pancakes and sausages and bacon, fried eggs, hash browns, strawberries, butter, syrup, whipped cream, juice, and coffee. "Real cowboy plates" from the bunkhouse.

Everyone gathered at the table. The Good Rancher asked God's blessing on the food.

Fred ate and ate. Then he did a little visiting. And then he ate some more. 

So comfortable was Fred that when the Good Rancher went to the kitchen window to yell at the dogs who were annoying the horses, Fred walked over to him, reached up and propped his elbow on the GR's much-taller shoulder, and proclaimed, Arny, you are a flippin' idiot! He brought down the house. Pleased with himself, he let the GR try on his most precious cowboy hat and told him he looked like John Wayne in it.

Fred was moving into his own little apartment in Three Hills and so we gave him a few household things for his housewarming. He prized the "cowboy" items, like the ceramic boot with a verse on it.

I never really got to talk with Fred after that until the awful day of Debby's funeral, about one year ago. He was devastated. After the funeral he came to me in tears and said, I told her, 'Don't die, Debby, don't die!' But she died.

Loss was the theme running through Fred's whole life story. 

He was born with some challenges, too great for his parents to be able to cope. The doctor finally told them when Fred was 4 years old that the best thing would be to institutionalise their little son. He arranged for admittance to a government institution named Woodlands School.

Fred endured 17 years of horror there. Atrocities is not too strong a word for the evil this particularly vulnerable child was subjected to. (Of course, he was not alone in this systemic abuse; the institution was finally shut down in 1996.)

He was then moved through various group homes - at least 10; he stayed at the last one for 26 years.

And this is where Debby, his cousin, heard about Fred seven years ago. For the next five years she and Gaylene took Fred on vacation on Vancouver Island. 
He was eventually brought for a visit to Three Hills, where for the first time he met other cousins who lived in the area. After that he desperately wanted to move to Three Hills - having finally been able to claim family, he wanted to be near them. Oh, he remembered his great losses: his mom and dad, his grandma and grandpa, Aunt Delores, cousin Joy ... he knew he had had two elder siblings, but he had no idea where they were, what had become of them after he was taken away.

Debby arranged for Fred to be taken into the Rehoboth Christian Ministries community, where he was lovingly cared for. In addition, he was welcomed with open arms at the Trochu Baptist Church. The last two years of his life were for the most part happy. He finally felt a sense of belonging, of home.

Fred was very quick witted, and managed to sustain a dry sense of humour. As he was being interviewed for Rehoboth, the director said to Fred, "I like your hat. Where's your horse?"

Immediately Fred fired back at the man, Where's your head?! 

His basement apartment was named the Whitford Ranch, complete with sign in the entry way ... 

After Debby passed away, Gaylene and Debby's sister became Fred's guardians. Due to a complete botch-up in some government office, Fred's stipend was cut off: when they received notice that Debby had died the agent marked down that it was Fred who had died. The next few months were spent trying to prove to the satisfaction of the agency that Fred was indeed still alive - a comedy of errors, except that this was for real and Fred's funding was cut off until they were reluctantly persuaded just who was alive and who was dead ...

When the diagnosis of leukemia came shortly before Christmas, Gaylene reported that Fred got angry. He didn't want to die now, now that he was just getting settled and happy. I am not going to die, he proclaimed. When she suggested that he would be able to see Debby again, he retorted, I don't want to see her YET! 

This time the loss would be himself and his new-found, hard-won contentment. The greatest loss of all.

But his Pastor Alan from Trochu, his dear Gaylene, his new friends and caregivers rallied around. They told him about Jesus, who would never leave him or forsake him. Jesus, who loved him through everything. Jesus, who is the greatest helper of all, as Pastor Al spoke of at Fred's service.

Pastor Al told us all that, like Fred, we all have limitations. We all have struggles. He made these two points:

- Jesus, our greatest of all helpers, sets us free from sin, which is anything I say, think or do that falls short of God's holiness, goodness and love.
- Fred opened himself up to the love of God, which made him equal in God's sight to everyone else.

And when Fred trusted in Jesus for his very life, Jesus did not let him down. Going through treatment and care for leukemia would have been extremely difficult for Fred. And so, in the providence of God, he developed double pneumonia, which took him in a matter of days.

God knew that His cowboy had had enough suffering. And now that Fred wanted to see Jesus, Jesus called him home to his permanent ranch in Heaven.

"He didn't go into the dark," Gaylene said, delivering the eulogy. "He had no questions; he had no more fears - he told his Pastor Al so when they went for lunch the Saturday before he died." 

Pastor Alan said that the last words Fred said to him were I love you. "We should all leave people we care about with those words," he said softly. 

A verse out of one of the songs sung at his funeral says this:

Who brings our chaos back into order
Who makes the orphan a son and daughter
The King of glory ...

As Fred put it to Pastor Al that last Saturday they were together and the pastor was making sure Fred was at peace, Here today, gone tomorrow! 

Sounds like something John Wayne would say.

On Fred's coffee mug:

"Beneath the grumpy exterior beats the heart

of a dashing hero"

Time in a Bottle

Early in the morning, this day, three years ago, my Dad shuffled off this mortal coil, to borrow from Shakespeare.

Everything was in order, just as he would have liked it. His friend and ours, Char, had come over the previous afternoon. Char had taken over the teaching of Dad's Wednesday Bible study when it got to be too much for him, and she would come over every Thursday and go over the lesson with him and they would have an often lively discussion. This particular Thursday, Dad had had a good lunch and their conversation was interspersed with gentle laughter and the flipping of pages to certain passages of the Bible.

As she prepared to leave Char got up, walked over to Dad and said, "May I pray for you, Allan?"

At the end of her prayer she rested her hand on his shoulder and murmured the old words:

The Lord bless you and keep you, 

The Lord make His face to shine upon you

and be gracious unto you, 

The Lord lift up His countenance upon you

and give you peace. 

.

Then she bent over and placed a kiss on his forehead - "... see you when I get back from my trip..." and she was gone. 

BA returned from work and we had tea and a "rose cookie toast" - a highly prized treat from Deb's Christmas kitchen.

I was getting ready to leave when suddenly a car drove up - Deb herself, who had decided to come down one night early instead of the Friday morning as originally planned.

The sun started to slip away and I had to go; the drive back to the ranch terrified me, more so when it was icy and dark.

On the way was a beautiful sunset. I stopped to take a picture, as I often did, to show Dad the next day.

Of course, that didn't happen. Instead, I received the phone call from Deb.

On the desolate drive to Dad's house, I had rarely felt so alone. As I approached the Tolman River I sort of asked God if they were together, if they had found each other. A few moments later, on a precipitous part of the highway I looked up, and there was this sight:

Startled, I stopped in the middle of the lane, turned off the engine and watched them for approximately ten minutes. No cars came for that entire time. 

They moved only to look at each other a couple of times; the rest of the time, they stared straight at me.

Then finally, when I could breathe again, they turned in unison and, looking at each other, slowly disappeared over the hill.

When I got to Dad's home the girls told me that his body was lying on his bed, just as they had found him.

When I walked up to his hospital bed, he looked completely at peace. He had removed the nasal prongs that delivered his oxygen, kicked off his blanket, and appeared to be stepping joyfully out of this life into the next.

Dad had used his time on earth wisely and to the best of his ability, and so he could leave without regret and without second-guessing.

"Nothing to prove; nothing to lose," as he used to say.

He was free.

Untrammeled.

The thought of using time wisely, of time slipping away at a seemingly accelerated rate each year I add to my life, has been weighing heavy on my mind for the last couple of months. One of my literary heroes asks the question:

The first Sunday of January this year, The Church at Endiang had a special New Year's service where - following in Dad's footsteps - we each chose a promise for our year. 

It had come to me at around Christmas time while I was pondering our group that meets on the first and third Sunday evenings of the month how different we are from each other, what a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences we bring to our gathering. What do we really have in common? 

What all of us have in common is time. All things being equal, we will all have the same amount of weeks in the upcoming year, the same amount of days. 

Of course, the inevitable caveat: the scripture reminds us that "our times are in [God's] hands," that there are cases where lives run their course before we are ready to say goodbye. 

The nightly news gives credence ... 

Beloved friends are diagnosed, with the addendum "inoperable" ...

Other treasured friends miraculously complete their "18 months to two years countdown" and shakily emerge on the other side with no timeline, no expectations, just gratitude for 17 bonus days and counting ...

One mother mentioned to me that her tiny daughter had commented no one would shoot her because she was pretty. Even in her innocence she is aware on some level that time can be upended.

Madison Rose, 12 minutes.

Baby L, born too early to be able to sustain life. Baby A, fighting for more time, for a chance.

Virgil. George. Maynard. Three brothers, each in their prime.

Pulmonary fibrosis, 84 years old.

Multiple myeloma, 70 years old.

Multiple myeloma, 48 years old.

We can all add our heartbreaks to the list.

Time is so fragile, so precious. 

So as I was contemplating our new year's service I thought that maybe we could mark the progress of 2020 with a simple exercise: I gathered glass bottles and jars in a variety of shapes and sizes and placed 52 little sparkling pebbles in every jar, the containers representing us and each pebble representing a week in the year ahead of us. I suggested that when we went home, we find an empty container and each week we transfer one pebble from the original container to our second container. We can keep an informal track of the passage of time.

I just moved my third pebble over. 

It's sobering and it's also a challenge. It's causing me to reflect on life, on values, on expectations. It's causing me to slow down and also to speed up. I've had a couple of awful days where I've wondered what is the point. And then a couple more days of clearly seeing what the point is.

I think my Dad might have liked this exercise.

A song from a CD my sister gave me has been playing in my head a lot for the past two days: Andrae Crouch's song from the 70s, "It won't be long". In two minutes he sums up what I'm feeling:

As I drove on the Snake Trail from Hanna to Endiang yesterday evening, the sunset was gorgeous. I was wishing I could show the picture to Dad the next day.

Of course, that didn't happen.

But somehow, I feel he knows ...

"How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You" 🎵🎶

The Good Rancher needed a hand - his helper was sick, and bales had to get out to the fields. I fearfully acquiesced to drive a regular cab truck pulling a short flat deck trailer upon which the bales would be loaded. My dog Carly Simon broke out of the house and jumped in too. Then I remembered the tee shirt I had layered into my fetching ensemble ... James Taylor and Carly Simon together in a tiny truck - what could possibly go wrong?!

As the GR was piling bales onto the flat deck I caught a glimpse of the stackyard cat taking what shelter he could, and I was grateful for a warm vehicle — and amazed at how resilient animals are.

From there it was a simple matter of getting the laden truck up a short driveway, turning left onto the 855 and waiting for the tractor to be loaded and lead the way.

Except that the GR had said, "Don't stop at the top of the driveway whatever you do — it's slippery and you'll get stuck."

And I asked, "What if a car's coming?"

To which he replied, "Hopefully they'll see you and stop ..."

The Good Rancher has told me several times that I overthink things. At the bottom of the slope, where I was supposed to be picking up speed, I was already to the point in my inevitable car crash where the police were locking me up with 100% culpabity and STARS was airlifting my hapless victim to Calgary.

I stalled at the crucial spot. Not even 4 wheel drive could help my spinning tires.

I tried to call the GR, but there was no cell service. Carly Simon was being Carly Simon, one moment trying to comfort me as I opened the window and gulped panic and fresh air down my constricting throat, the next looking down her patrician nose and sneering, "You prob'ly think this song is about you..."

"I know it's not — it's about the frozen, hungry cows," I wailed.

"What?" The Good Rancher was at the window.

"Just talking to Carly," I muttered shamefacedly.

"Move over," he replied, and shifted into reverse.

I will never know if he did this to make me feel like not such a failure, but bless the man, he stalled on his first attempt up the hill. "Everyone does it," he remarked. "Even Lonnie, one of the best, has done it."

"But he was driving a loaded semitruck," I protested.

"Same thing," the GR responded as he hopped out and walked back down the hill to the tractor.

We arrived at the first field, delayed thanks to my incompetence. The cows were waiting for him. He immediately went to work, grinding two bales and then grabbing two more from the trailer. Long lines of feed spit out, and the cows immediately started noshing, a veritable Ponderosa steakhouse buffet.

As we left that field for the next, one chill cow looked up as if to say thanks ...

Creeping along the icy lane to the next field I spotted a horned owl puffed up against the cold.

How do these creatures cope? I wondered to Carly, shivering as I rolled up the window again.

All the bales chopped and strewn, we headed back to the stack yard and little Gabe, who had to be put on his mother.

(He knows exactly where to go: along the length of the squeeze and through the little palpation cage gate, down the alley and into the makeshift pen where his mother waits irritably ...)

This day Gabe's mother deigned to glare at me for the first moments; then she pointedly turned her head, giving me the coldest shoulder of the week.

After his nursing session was over, Gabe appeared at the top of the palpation cage gate like he was ready to get back into the warmth of the shop.

I called to him: "Gabriel, Gabriel!"

And just like that he took off around the yard, over and over, the same triangle pattern, a barrel calf in the making...

The Good Rancher stepped into the fray, with no better results:

 

Eventually he pinned the little miscreant and firmly marched him back to the shop. 

Drama over, the GR loaded sidekick and dog into the truck to take us back to the house, only to turn around and begin the task of bedding all the animals in his charge. His day would be finally over at 7:30 that night - except, of course, for Gabe's bedtime bottle at 10 o'clock.

And as the truck started up the driveway Carly Simon slipped back into her favourite travelling spot, back into the arms of the man who will always love her...