It has been relatively quiet as we come to the tail of this year. We’ve been tied up working, taking care of our families, and getting geared up for the holidays. There was much anxiety around this year’s holidays as one might imagine, but we thankfully got to share it together manning our duties at mom’s place on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Of course, traditions are the same but the flavors are a bit different now with new generations doing the receiving and the older ones doing the Ho, Ho, Ho-ing. To that, the responsibilities of the Keene Family Christmas Letter among other things fall to She Who Hos Alone (keep it in context). Enjoy and Merry Christmas!

–Joel

Christmas 2012

Dear Family and Friends,

This Christmas season will be one of the most difficult to celebrate, as I will be celebrating for the first time without Larry.  I remember worshipping last Christmas Eve at Christ the Servant Lutheran along with most of Larry’s family, who came to spend the weeks surrounding Christmas with us at our home.

I am so grateful for that wish of his (he was forever the planner and dreamer) that brought his parents, siblings, nieces and nephews to Houston to celebrate this most holy of seasons together with us.

As this season is now in full swing, I have spent some time reflecting on the changes in my life.  Aside from the obvious, I retired from full-time teaching and now work when I want as a substitute teacher.

I am not completely sold on this decision to substitute, but it works for now.  I am open to new possibilities.  So, if something interesting should present itself, you just never know…

The kids are all very much busy with their own families and careers.  I am fortunate that they all live within a reasonable drive from my house, so I get to see them fairly often.  They find time to visit and fix things for me here at the house, usually at the cost of a meal with beers.  They are also very generous in including me in their family events, and for this I am thankful.  We did raise good kids.  With much joy,

I am pleased to have a new granddaughter, Gemma Lawrence, who joins her sisters, Ryan and Henley.  Another grandchild will join the family in the early spring.  He/she will join his/her sister, Penelope.

I want to recognize the gift of new, renewed and strengthened friendships that I experienced this year.

I am in a different place than I was a year ago, and I see things from a different perspective, and that has been good.  The presence of these relationships in my life has made things just a bit easier and a little less painful.  Thank you.

Sadly, in June, we experienced the death of my stepfather-in-law, Garvin, from cancer.  In October, my sister-in-law and dearest friend, Kerry, died due to organ failure while waiting for a transplant. Their absence is profoundly felt.

Along with two trips to California to be with family during those times of loss and mourning, I was also able to make a few other trips.  The kids and their families were able to visit me during a week at the lake home of a dear friend.  There was much resting, relaxing and some boating on Lake Palestine.  One of two trips to St. Louis was for attending my 45^th high school class reunion.  The thought of going was a little frightening, but I survived, and even had fun.  Then a few weeks back, I was able to go to Orlando and visit with my brother, Steve, and his wife, Carol.   Attending the Christmas Candlelight Processional and listening to the choirs, while hearing actor, Andy Garcia read the Christmas narrative was a highlight of my visit to Epcot.  Turns out the parks aren’t quite as crowded the first week of December as at other times of the year.

My brother-in-law, Art, and his two boys will be joining us for Christmas this year.  It will be a different kind of Christmas for both of our families.  But, it will be different together.  And that will be good.

Traditionally, our family put out a Christmas letter using comic strips that shared a little something of each family member.  I came across this strip from Calvin and Hobbes (one of our favorites) that I would like to share.   I know Larry would laugh heartily and approve.

Perhaps, he is bouncing to the beat of Brubeck at this very moment.

At the start of every Christmas Eve service, Larry would invite those gathered to share the Christmas greeting in different languages.  Folks would volunteer–

Feliz Navidad (Spanish)

Joyeux Noel (French)

Mele Kalikimaka (Hawaiian)

Frohliche Weihnachten (German)

God Jul (Norwegian)

And lastly, Vesele Vianoce (Slovak)

Then he would follow up with, “No matter how you say it, the message is still the same, ‘Merry Christmas’. “

I will miss that this year.  But, it gives me a sense of joy that I am able to share this message with you.   A blessed Christmas to you and a happy and grace-filled new year!

Peace,

Sue

Keene’s Kwikies – September 2, 2012

Everything will be okay in the end.  If it is not okay, it is not the end.

—Anonymous

The Keenes are still here. Most of us anyway. Shortly after dad’s passing, my grandfather was diagnosed with various cancers and is already kicking back cold ones with dad as they await the Great Reunion. The rest of us have been dealing with our grief and trying to keep our health in check. Some of us Keene men are wondering if there isn’t more we can do to appease our women as it seems She may have it out for us in the end. But from what I’ve seen, they have suffered more than we, so I have to conclude that at least God isn’t sexist.

Still, this was not my biological grandfather—he passed when I was 5 or 6 leaving behind very fond but few memories. This was the grandfather that raised us. Garvin Aulepp.  Aulepp by birth and Keene by association (I hope that’s a compliment). He taught me how to drive a manual, engineer a robot for my C64, and even showed me the value of history by dragging me from one museum to another during a trip to Tucson somewhere in my teen years. Of course, I wasn’t appreciative until much later. In all honesty, I did not much participate in his passing—instead watched it from the sidelines dealing with the needles in my own life.

My mother confronted it wholly staying in California for a month throughout diagnosis, passing, grieving and the death business—she being the current professional in this area. She might be much stronger than the rest of us thought. Or perhaps dad’s passing has instilled in her an Obi Wan-style “this one’s for you kid” attitude in battling daily evils.

She retired this year if you haven’t already heard. She didn’t have to…could’ve kept some things “normal” for a while. Maybe waited another year. She opted not to. And she does family things. Goes to church though that particular experience is never going to be the same. She even stood up to a little road rage the other day—but prepared her escape plan to the nearest officer first. She’s coping.

I stared at the headlining quote on my trombone professor’s wall for a couple of year in grad school. Professor Tim Conner—whose title was unfortunately unofficial at the time I was studying because I couldn’t imagine a better definition of a professor. I don’t know if that has changed. But his partner picked up this saying in a piece of art during a visit to Thailand or some other exotic scape of the Orient. Tim had it on his wall pretty much at eye level so it made it unavoidable staring material during warm-up and memorized exercises.

It stuck with me immediately because I liked so many things about it. As many paradoxes usually go, it is a bit pointless. It is only mostly positive or at least has those connotations. It doesn’t guarantee anything. Which lead me to conclude it is mostly about coping. It turns out, that’s one of the primary things dad wanted for his kids (and others) —to be able to cope. As my Teta (and Rev.) Carol wrote “He asked me what I wanted for my kids and I told him: ‘for them to be happy. Why…don’t you want that?’ He replied ‘I just need them to be able to cope. That should be enough.’” Of course, my memory may elude me, so I’ll call that a paraphrase.

Happiness is not at all guaranteed. Even America can only guarantee the right to pursue it. In the end, you are stuck dealing with the consequences of the actions of you and those around you. And every system has an air of pointlessness to it. And how do you define happiness in binary? Things seem mostly positive.

The family post-Larry refers to coping as “putting our big boy/girl panties on,” which is what one has to do after something that triggers a wave of paralyzing grief still leaves a — quite often chaotic—situation to be dealt with.

And that’s fine. We like to think we’re strong…we’ve been expecting to have to deal with this for a long time.

Saul had to return to teaching. He had a full summer break and is already starting a new year. I don’t remember what he did this summer excepting the usual travels and honey-dos. He’s already back in full swing and kicking ass as Uncle Saul.

Deborah is currently laying on her back baking up her third daughter. She took the opportunity to name this one after dad forever removing the options for the rest of us to make naming tributes to our parents. No big surprise there…just Deborah getting what she wants. That is okay because – after all – she has to leave this world a Gordon so she can be allowed this.

I’m going to collect all of the Keene-in-laws in one group. I mean no disrespect here but they share a bond in their roles. Their strength is beyond our comprehension. They have to endure our grief. They have to understand without quite understanding. They have to coordinate and support and do it all without sometimes even receiving thanks because grief can be so preoccupying. They do so gracefully. I can only pray that I am as patient and sympathetic.

I’ll avoid talking about myself much more because writing is really just my ego in overdrive other than to say I buried myself in my job excelling at a great pace. I’ve allowed it to take much of my time. I’ve relied upon and alienated friends. And I’m kicking around doing something more with my life. Overall, I’m doing “as expected”. Though I always end up exceptionally grateful and hope the same for others. But, usually I just put my big boy panties on and deal with the day.

If my mom had to buy big girl panties for a nickel, she might be broke by now. She retired this year if you haven’t already heard. Here’s a picture taken at her retirement party:

It is one of the best family pictures we’ve ever taken minus Wil and dad. It is interesting that we all remained smiling and some semblance of happy. It will always leave me slightly paralyzed as it reminds me of the new definition of the Keene family. As I am sure it does others. But we are still here…trying to be happy and enjoying the gift of being together. We will continue to cope. Things seem mostly positive, a bit pointless, and nothing seems guaranteed.

And sometimes it is not okay.

But it is not the end.

May God grant you the strength to grant yourself peace.

—Joel

It has been very rough and tumble in the Keene family to say the least. Hear the devastating news: my father Lawrence Scott Keene passed away on March 13, 2012 releasing his last breath at 5:36a. The end was fast and peaceful. He was not alone and was reminded constantly about how much he is loved as he made his transition. He is now with The Boss and watching over us while getting to know what his father and brother have been up to for so many years.

A memorial service is being held at Covenant Lutheran Church on March 19 at 7:30p. People wishing to honor him may do so by making a donation to the ELCA World Hunger Fund in his name (we hope to have something more specific set up for those donations soon).

I have often wondered how his final Kwikies would come about and quietly hoped that he had some final goodbye prepared giving him the opportunity to get the last word in. There may be one out there still and it will certainly be shared if it turns up. Either way, it is our intention to maintain Keene’s Kwikies as we believe he would have wished so that the world may share in his words and teachings.

Nevertheless, I sit in his chair typing at his computer to post on his blog in the hopes that something may be offered in the way of solace. Maybe it is a simple thought: his battle with pancreatic cancer was successful but lead to a liver cancer that he would not survive. He will never know that struggle and instead went of his own accord. Maybe it is knowing that dad wouldn’t want us to live in fear or pain and that he would do anything to take that away from us. Though I am glad that we have those things because it is a testament to how much love we have for him.

It is amazing the amount of laughter and tears that have poured forth over the last 24 hours…all of us gathered at the house going through his pictures, thinking of his last wishes, taking care of the business of death. There are, too, the endless offerings of comfort and condolences in hopes that we might find peace. And we will as we celebrate dad’s life in our own until the day we meet him again.

Our homes are open to those who can offer healing or  an ear or a story. We move continuously away from this moment in the surreal – though faced with the fact of his passing there is still the idea that things may somehow return to normal. We all know that they won’t and there will be an eternal thirst for his counsel and comfort that will never again be quenched.

For that, we turn to the words he’s written and spoken, the friends he had, and the lives he’s touched. Family will be in and out in the coming weeks and months, friends will sit and be present while we grieve, and the world will continue to turn while we put our faith and hope in God.

I used to tease dad about his final one-liners in his Kwikies as they weren’t always effective and sometimes lent themselves to the same appeal as a bad cable sitcom. However, he was almost always successful with his wit and cynicism so – risking some tackiness – I like to think he might remark on this situation as such a truck stop restroom author might:

Here I sit

Broken-hearted

Came to shit

But instead got pancreatic cancer…rarely to poop again.

May Larry’s light continually shine in your lives and may God’s love grant you peace and comfort.

Broken-heartedly,

Joel

1/15/12

It’s very good to be back with you.  I’ve been impatient to get back—and preaching—since I started receiving that flood of cards y’all sent.  Wow!  It seemed like hundreds of them.  I was very much amazed, and lifted up.  After all, I’d only been here—what?—three times?  And here I was being love-bombed like I’d been among you forever.  And I thought, well, these people are going to be okay in spite of their recent painful stuff because they know how to care.

‘Course, I was loaded on morphine and other narcotics at the time, so my perception might be skewed.  But I don’t think so.

I want to think some today about God and cancer.  That’s because I lived in the land of morpheus—death—and I’m not the kind f the guy that can than get in pulpit and pretend it never happened.  And I think everybody has to deal with the disease—either as its prey or knowing a loved one with it.  How many here have had cancer?  Know somebody with cancer?

So, a brief rundown of what happened:  on Nov. 2 I went to the emergency room for a three-month old bellyache which left me increasingly unable to eat.  In the evening the doc said, “I have bad news.  I think you have pancreatic cancer.’  This left me pretty breathless because from my pastoral experience I knew pancreatic cancer to be especially vicious.   A medical team was put together and the next day was a whirlwind of consultations, including the decision to go  through a particularly brutal surgery called ‘the Whipple procedure’.

The day after that they did surgery to drain  my abdomen of the several liters of sludge there.  Five days later—a  week after I went to er—they did the six-hour Whipple surgery, cutting and sewing and redoing  the whole thing down there.  After the surgery I was on a respirator for a week, keeping my family and friends very much on edge; and not having much of a good time myself, either.

I had a couple of what I call psycho moments.  The first came about three weeks in, when I determined I was going home while everybody including my family tried to stop me.  It got very nasty, with security being called.  I stayed there that night, but they let me go home the next day.  Within just a few hours I stared vomiting and begged to go back to the hospital.  Somewhere in there I had a slight heart attack and caught pneumonia.  (One of the docs:   you thought this was like other surgeries, where you get stitched up and go home.  That’s not the way it is.’)

My second psycho moment came when I managed to corner about three of my doctors at one time and demanded ‘straight answers’.  I kept at them about this for awhile, until it sunk into my morphine-soaked brain that with cancer everything depends on the individual.  One of the docs who is a friend said, ‘Larry are you angry?’  ‘You’re doggone right,’ I shouted, though not with pulpit language.  ‘Good,’ he said,  ‘Then you’ll have a chance to survive.’

I spent 43 days in two different hospitals, and came home on Saturday, December 18th.  Since then I’m thoroughly ensconced in what I call ‘the cancer lifestyle’ of daily radiation treatments, and chemo, and wearing a nutrition bag and seeing doctors two and three times a week.  Oh, and vomiting.

Okay.  That’s enough to move us along to the ‘whys?’ of cancer.  I’m thinking particularly of the questions ‘why is there cancer?’ and ‘why did this happen to me?’

I have to say that I do not recall wrestling with those questions this time around.  I might have.  But I was so blitzed on narcotics that I have no memory of things.  My wife Sue has had to tell me what went on.  (And by the way, everybody’s name whom I’d learned here got wiped out in that blitz, too.)  I also think it’s because about ten years back I went through a very traumatic experience that took me into the ‘why’ questions—why this?  Why me?–for about two years.  And here’s how it got resolved for me:  stuff happens; and I won’t know why.  It is hidden in God.

That’s why when my pastor came to see me I asked him to read from the divine speeches in the OT story of Job.  Job, who is an innocent and righteous man suddenly loses everything and undergoes terrible suffering.  His friends keep telling him it’s because of some terrible sin.  Job insists he has not deserved this.  The argument intensifies over 37 chapters until Job demands a face-off with God:

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? “Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?— when I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped’?

And he goes on like this for the next two chapters, setting Job in his place in the universe.  He never does give Job a reason for his suffering.  Here’s what he does instead:  he draws near to Job.  He blesses Job  with his presence, justifies Job’s claim to innocence, and shows him his love.  Job doesn’t know why he suffers but he experiences the presence of a caring God, and that’s what made the difference.  We don’t need to know why so much as we need someone to walk with us.

But I didn’t have a cozy time with God in the hospital; in fact, pretty much the opposite:  what I experienced of him was profoundly frightening.

As I mentioned I was on a ventilator for a week.  They keep you unconscious with morphine and other narcotics.  Morphine—the name is related to the Latin word for death—is a land of darkness.  Most of the time you don’t know you’re there.  But sometimes you come up to a kind of self-awareness.  That happened, and I had the terrifying experience of knowing myself as nothing against this mighty and all-powerful darkness.  I call it the cosmic indifference, because this power—some thing like a god—just didn’t care about me.  History would move on; I was already forgotten.

Martin Luther made the comment that God and the devil would look a lot alike were it not for Jesus Christ.  Unlike a lot of people’s spiritual experiences, Jesus didn’t show up in the middle of this for me.  Instead I spent my ‘aware’ time in the fearful presence of this omnipotent cosmic indifference.  Of course, physically I was very much hovering between life and death, so that might have something to do with it.

In a book called The Idea of the Holy, the theologian Rudolph Otto calls this the experience of mysterium tremendum.  It’s that encounter with the overpowering omnipotence and, again, indifference  of an unknowable power and my own insignificance that leads to a sense of dread.  It was within this dread that I lived those days.

Jesus didn’t show up.  But I began to open my eyes and come to the light, and my darling Sue was sitting there.  And this guy who’d rather have a heart attack than cry broke into sobs as grand as a baby.  And another time I woke to my daughter, and then each of my sons, who were all taking turns to be with me and all I could do was sob.  I was back among the living; no longer floating in that terrifying darkness.  I was back among those who cared and for whom I cared, no longer a nothing of cosmic indifference.

Then your cards were coming and I received wonderful emails from friends and acquaintances, a few visits from friends, and phone calls from folks around the country offering to come and help.  One sister spent 6 weeks with us, and her husband came for several and did all sorts f house repair.  I sent out work to my other two sister and other families and my mom and step dad, ‘Let’s all gather in Houston for Christmas’ and they came from CA, OR, AZ, and TN.

And Christ showed up.  And my soul was healed. I was no longer lost in the darkness.  Christ showed up in you and them.  That what it means that God chose to come to us as a man:  the heart of God will always be revealed through the human.  As Martin Luther put it, we become ‘little Christs’ to one another.

So good job and thanks to all you little  Christs out there.  And as you look toward your future as a congregation, let me leave this question with you:  how can you be Christ to the people around you to whom the world is indifferent?  How can you find the ones who are lost in the darkness?

There are moments when some word or words silence the universe; nothing exists but what is being spoken.  One of these took place in 1969 when  the CO called me into his office to announce ‘Here are your orders for Vietnam,’ setting off days and weeks of a numb and breathless terror, a wish screaming from the shades of the spirit that this would not be so:  ‘Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, Lord, hear my voice. Let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication.’   I lived through Vietnam.

Most recently word that silences my eternity was spoken in the emergency room:  ‘you have pancreatic cancer.’

I’ve walked as pastor with some folks through their life–and death–by it.  It’s an extremely nasty fucking disease.  Nobody survives it very long.  I can hear eliot’s eternal footman snicker ‘and you always thought it would be your heart taking you out, even relatively painlessly and peacefully.  Well, here’s a surprise.’  Shit like that seems to happen in my life.

As with all things medical, the treatment for pancreatic cancer has improved since I walked that journey with those others–or at least so I am told.  Now my own pilgrimage has begun, first with the ‘Whipple Surgery’ slicing and dicing and reattaching all those digestive organs in a major way.  I like to call it ‘the Benihana’s Procedure’, after the popular Japanese restaurant where they do that fancy knife and stir-fry work right in front of you (today’s special:  Sushi Larry).  I spent a week on the respirator and another week or two zoned out on drugs in ICU (more morphine! I say.  More morphine!)  The most exciting thing then was my determination to go home, I don’t give a shit what anybody says, and the nurse calling for security, a real Dylan Thomas moment, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night. . .rage, rage against the dying of the light.’  I got the raging part down, just ask the darling, who so often and so unfairly gets the brunt of it that I expect I’ll be spending much of eternity apologizing to her.  (That heavenly cloud of witnesses witnesses it all, chanting in a four part fugue, ‘what an asshole.’)

I’ve been in the hospital since November 2nd, save for a five-hour trip home related to the security guard incident mentioned above and ending with voracious vomiting and a new hospital room. I’m told I’ll be able to go home tomorrow utilizing ‘home health  care’ after we learn how to use the IV chemical feeding tube (I’ve not had real food since October).  Guess we’ll see what happens then.

And to the taunt, ‘you have pancreatic cancer’ I’ll reply with Leonard Cohen:

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for

If it be your will
If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring

If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well

And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will

If it be your will.

Sushi Larry