Fear and Loathing

My Granny, my mom's mom, Bessie Mae Waddle, was a strong woman who lived through a plethora of tough times in her life. She was a large woman, at least during the years that I knew her, with a crop of snow-white hair crowning her head and a pair of little black spectacles perched on her often crinkled-up nose. In my really young years, I remember Granny waving a rolling pin at my Granddad and saying, "Jim, don't you be telling tales on me now," when Granddad would start to recount stories about Granny chasing a fox away from her hens with a broom, churning butter using an old wooden churn or scraping up enough food to feed her family of five when times were lean. I don't ever remember Granny being afraid of anything or anyone ... until my Granddad passed away when I was eight years old.

I remember well the trip to Somerset, Kentucky, for Granddad's funeral, and I remember Granny coming back home to Tennessee to stay with us for a while after the death of her husband of over 60 years. That visit began a routine of Granny coming and spending several months each year with us, most often beginning in the fall and lasting until spring. Granny would spend the days at our house alone while Mom and Dad worked and I attended school. It was one afternoon when I came home from school that I first detected a note of fear in my Granny.

I had a key to the basement door and would enter the house there and then head upstairs to the door that led to the kitchen. Though the kitchen door had a lock and a chain on it, we never locked it because it was inside the house. But on that particular day, the door was locked and I had to pound on it to get Granny to let me in (because she had substantial difficulty hearing). When I finally convinced her that it was me, I heard the lock on the doorknob click ... but then I also heard the security chain slide from the top of the door as well. I asked Granny why the door was locked and if something had frightened her, and true to form for her, she said, "Why, no, I'm not afraid ... I don't know how that door got locked." It didn't take many days of me coming home to find the door locked and chained for me to realize that Granny was just plain old scared of being home alone, and I'm certain that she was angry with herself for being so afraid.

Being divorced for many years has meant that I've spent a lot of time alone, and for the most part, it doesn't bother me to be or go or do alone, and I'm certainly not afraid or frightened during my time alone (unless, of course, you count the times when I'm home alone at night and the tornado sirens are blaring). But over the last few weeks, I've begun to recognize a shift in my feelings about being alone and my level of fear concerning certain things in my life. This week in particular is a tough one in the alone and fear department ... I have to see an orthopedic surgeon on Wednesday about my shoulder, and I'm fearful of going alone, of what he's going to tell me must be done to ease my pain, of taking in all the information and then making the correct decision. And yet, there is also the part of me that won't ask anyone to go with me because it makes me angry that I'm so afraid. Hence the title of this post ... fear and loathing. It's quite odd to me how those two emotions so often seem to go hand-in-hand in my life ... being so afraid and yet at the same time detesting that fear in myself.

A few days ago when a friend suggested to me that God has a lesson for me in my shoulder pain, I sarcastically said, "Oh, yeah? And just what might that be?" Without missing a beat, she replied, "Perhaps He wants you to learn to accept help from others, to admit that you can't do it alone, to trust Him no matter what He brings your way."

Hmmm ... hmmm ... hmmm.