A Chasing after the Wind

"To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind." Ecclesiastes 2:26

King Soloman was such a wise man. I enjoy reading the book of Ecclesiastes more than any other book in the Bible. One reason I enjoy it so is because Old King Sol is blunt. He gets right to the point, and leaves no room for romanticism or optimism. The first time I read this book of the Bible I thought, "This is one seriously depressed old king who needs a Zoloft, stat!" I imagine King Solomon, old, and fat, with a long white flowing beard, dressed in his fancy tunic, lounging on a chase with a cup of wine in one jeweled hand and a pen in the other as he writes this book. By the end you feel as though he's looking to find the closest cliff to jump from or to get his hands on a poison readily available to drink and end the nonsensical life he lives.
However, once you get past the brute force of his words, you realize how these words transcend over thousands of years to reach back to us today. I read Ecclesiastes in the months that Brad and I were trying to decide if I could quit working full time to be at home with the boys. It was a hard decision, one that we were even lucky to have gotten to consider. We worked over our budget spreadsheet hundreds of times, had late night discussions of our goals and dreams and what we thought was the right life for our kids. First and foremost we wanted to know what would be right for our family in the eyes of God. To get this answer we turned to the all encompassing James Dobson. About as blunt as King Soloman but with a grasp on what the small man faces. We decided to make the jump and two and half years later we are still standing. Poor, but standing.

In each family there is usually a saver and a spender, sometimes you have a family where both parents are spenders, or savers. Brad is a saver, I am a spender. My mom was a saver like no one I have ever known. My dad was a spender. I'm sure that Brad wishes that I had inherited this saving trait of hers. She could turn one dollar into a hundred in two weeks, one hundred dollers into a thousand in a month, etc. She never over spent, she never bought anything that wasn't for a practical need.

Last Sunday Brother Ron, our minister, who Brad and I admire and adore, preached on giving. Brother Ron, much like King Solomon gives it to you straight. The money in our hands does really not belong to us, it all belongs to God. He only requires 10% but He expects much more from us, not just in monetary means. Brad and I were touched as we always are by Bro Ron's sermons and are going to cut a few things out of the budget to give more offerings.
The other question that was raised in one of the sermons is what are you saving for? If you hoard all of this money, which really isn't yours to begin with, when are you ever going to make use of it? My mother did this. She hoarded her money and was stingy with it until toward the end. I never wanted her money, I just wanted her time. Money was everything to her though, and it means very little to me. I don't care if a person has one dollar to thier name, if I love them and want to spend time with them I will make it a point to do so.
Mother also hoarded paperwork, reciepts, doctors reciepts, notepads with notes written on them, I even found a check that my granny had written my mom back in 1989 in a stack of paper on a desk in her house. Brad and I had gone to start cleaning out Mom's house last Sunday. We are trying to get it ready for the market and will hopefully have it listed soon.
My precious stepmom and my dad had already cleaned out the refridgerator and pantry for me so when Brad and I go there with a huge box of industrialized trash bags we got to work. Every drawer was jam packed paper, from years back, bills, reciepts, doctor's notes, you name it, it was in these drawers. It took us 4 hours and eighteen industrial size garbage bags to get the house to a point where it can be cleaned.
On one hand I was glad to have Brad with me, he helped me stay the coarse, kept me moving so that I wouldn't get mired down in the memories that were strewn all around me.
Since the day that I had gone to pick mom up from her house to move her into the Point at Goldenrod, I had not touched her bed. The sheets were still laying as she had left them. Her brush was on the table along with tissues, her glasses and various books. When I had woken her up that morning her 02 was low, and I could tell this as soon as she woke up. I was trying to rush her hoping that if I could just get her to the assisted living they would know what to do. I didn't want to call an ambulance and have her wind up back in the hospital from where she had just returned the night before. She sat up on the side of the bed and said she felt sick. I got her a towel and gave it to her as Connor came running in. I had to shoo him back outside to the yard where my dad was respectfully waiting on me to bring her out to the car. Once she threw up I got her a glass of water. Her hands were unstead and she dropped it on the floor. I refilled it and gave it to her, helping her bring it to her lips. She drank the whole glass and sat it on the table. The glass is still sitting there. I wouldn't let Brad touch that table or the towel, or the brush. We had to undo the bed and throw out the matress and box springs. I threw the new sheets that I had just bought her, that she had been sleeping on, out with it as well because we now know that she had a staff infection.
Throwing that bed out of the house was ceremonious in a way. That bed was basically her death bed. She had laid dying in it for the past six months. There was a part of me that could have layed in her spot, and wrapped my arms around the covers and never moved. But the rational part of me knew that it needed to go. Rationalization and grief do not mix well. In fact those to emotional factors are on opposite sides of the caring spectrum. How can one be rational in thier greif? How can greif come across as rational to an ungreived person? There is no meeting of these two, they stay on the opposite sides of the valley of death.
As I continued to go through all of her crappy cooking supplies and tupperware I kept thinking about all of the nice things that she could have had, but never had bought in order to save money. Save money for what?? She's gone now, and the money is left but she can't spend it on anything. While she lived, she squandered her cash, and saved to go boxes as tupperwear. She bought most of her groceried from the dollar store because it was so much cheaper than walmart. We always went dutch when we met for dinner, she had a set amount to spend on the kids at holidays, which was well and good. Why didn't she take some of that squandered money and take the kids on a vacation with. Why didn't she spend the extra two dollars to drive to our house instead of meeting us for dinner fifteen minutes closer to her? I guess she was always afraid that the money would run out before she did. She was wrong.
I look back at her house and her lifetime of saving and hoarding things that were of really no purpose in this life. Then I look at the time she missed with her grandchildren, the soccer games she never made, the basketball games she never saw, the flag football games she never attended and I realize that she had already missed out on some of the best days of her life. Why? Because we lived too far away, a whole hour, and because most of the games were played in the morning, before her normal wake up time of noon.
I wonder if she is looking back at her life while in the present heaven and seeing all of these missed opportunities. My children remember Nana, and Connor especially has a fondnest for her. But what they remember most about her is the things that she did buy them because they were so precious and far between.
I don't want to be remembered by an inatimate object that will eventually be placed in a box because someone is no longer playing with it. I want to be remembered for being there. For being tangible, attached to the wants and desires of my children and one day my grandchildren. I want to be remembered for not chasing after the wind, but by being blown along through life by a zephyr wind picking up memories as I go.