Category Archives: Family

We’ll Meet Again on the ‘Larger Way’

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 10

These lines, from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, have always reminded me of my sister, Jody Lynn Ehret Prestine. Not in small part because she often claimed them herself and even had some of it stenciled on a wall in her home, but also because she lived them.

All that is gold does not glitter

Notice the poem does not say “All that glitters is not gold.” That’s the more common way the idea is phrased. But Tolkien’s order changes the meaning significantly. In the first, shiny things aren’t necessarily good. In Tolkien’s version, just because it’s plain doesn’t mean it’s not valuable.

With her husband, the love of her life.

For many of us, the glitter of life is what attracts our eyes. Not Jody. She appreciated the glitter of the sun on the leaves after a rain. She reveled in the glitter of the stars in a deep black sky. But she knew shiny could be deceiving. And she knew some things others would call plain—quietly living with the love of her life, preparing food and sustenance for friends and family, investing time in her grandchildren, the comforting presence of a faithful dog; these things are pure gold.

Not all those who wander are lost

Jody was a lifelong wanderer. That’s a compliment, by the way. Until the end, she never seemed content to stay in one place. As a travelling nurse, she indulged her wanderlust and worked where the muse led her; the Pacific Northwest was a favorite place. But she would also take assignments because they allowed her to be in a place where she was needed, such as Elkhart.

She transformed her life, like the Monarch butterflies she loved.

She also took the line deeper, however. In her life, Jody explored various ways of being spiritual, taking in what worked for her and leaving the rest for others. I love the reference Pat made in her obituary: He wrote that when Jody died, she “began her journey back to the stardust from which we all came.” Some people may call that Heaven; others lean toward words like utopia, paradise, Eden. But when you’re as centered as Jody was, you’re not lost just because you’re on a different path from those around you.

The old that is strong does not wither

In many ways, Jody was blessed. In many ways, like the rest of us, she had more than her share of grief. Many of you could share stories from those years of grief, but let’s not. Instead, today, let’s think about how those experiences revealed a strength in her that was always there.

From what I remember, it’s doubtful she would have become an RN if she’d taken another path. However, not only did that degree keep her working, earning a living, and active in the world, it also led her to Pat and enhanced what we already knew—that she was a person others sought out for advice and care. How many of us, when facing a medical question, asked Jody to help “interpret” a doctor’s words?

Caring for our mother in hospice care.

In 2018, she guided our stepfather through the last weeks of his life in hospice, setting aside her life to add value to the end of his. Five years later, she did the same for our mother as Mom died from ovarian cancer. Jody did this while the same disease was ravaging her own body, even delaying treatment a bit to be there for Mom. Ovarian cancer took Jody less than a year later. Thanks to Pat and Mackinac for carrying her, as she’d carried others, to her too soon end in February of this year.

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

Jody’s roots were planted firmly and deeply in the fertile soil of Family. If you were family, blood or otherwise, you were always welcome and invited into her life. She did what she had to do to keep those connections strong and vibrant. When she was in the bitter winter of her life, however, her soul did not wither. Her roots were strong and they reached down into her soil, storing up energy, preparing for spring and rebirth.

With “Queen Prestine” dahlias, named for her by a friend.

In the last months of her life, we were talking on the phone one day and she shared with me a dream she’d had. In the dream, she said, she was packing up her stuff and getting ready to move. There were a lot of people there to help, but she didn’t tell me any names, except two:

“I looked up and there were Grandpa and Grandma Ehret,” she said to me. She went on. “I said to them, ‘So good to see you, but what are you doing here?’ And they answered, ‘We’ve come to help you move, of course.’” And then the dream ended. “I wonder if that means anything,” she said. “I think it does. I just wanted to tell you that.”

Jody, I think it does too. For me it all circles back to “Not all those who wander are lost.”

In closing, will you indulge me with one more Tolkien poem, this one from The Hobbit?


Roads Go Ever On

Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.

Roads go ever ever on,
Under cloud and under star.
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen,
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green,
And trees and hills they long have known.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, Chapter 19.

I can’t believe she’s gone. To this day, I find it hard to accept and often want to call her, or send her a quick text, to share an amazing thing that just happened. I’m holding on to finding you, one day, in that “larger way where many paths meet.”

If someone who knew her sees this blog, please share your memories here.

Want to help fight Ovarian Cancer? Please visit the Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance.

Michael Ehret loves to play with words and as the author of “Big Love,” he is enjoying his current playground. Previous playgrounds include being the Managing Editor of the magazine ACFW Journal and the ezine Afictionado for seven years. He also plays with words as a freelance editor and has edited several nonfiction books, proofedited for Abingdon Press, worked in corporate communications, and reported for The Indianapolis Star.

Lighting the Corners of the Mind

Pappy_Bosse

Memories are strange things. Malleable by time and easily lost, but among our most cherished possessions.

That first time driving on our own. The moment we look at the one we’re dating and know with certainty that she is the one. The birth of a child.

The death of a close friend. The embarrassment of double-flunking a college term paper. Bitter words and arguments. Rejections. These are the snapshots our minds take and file away for later comfort, self-beratement, or reflection.

As we age, we naturally lose bits and pieces of ourselves as if our brains are a large computer and we’ve about maxed out our storage. This is an expected process.

Memories stripped

But then there are the evil—there is no other word—diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s that strip away, image by image, the memories that make us who we are leaving those who suffer from those ailments reduced and often isolated and their family members bereft.

My father-in-law has Alzheimer’s. And now his wife and his children, including my wife, are walking through a process of slowly losing each other. But more than that. He is also losing himself.

Daddy, as my wife calls him, has always had a sharp mind and muscular intellect. We have spent many family dinners, holidays, and euchre games engaged in debates—my family would call them arguments, but we were raised differently—about issues of the day.

Pappy_Bench

Enjoying the gift his class gave to Bosse High School.

Those days are now reduced, though not gone entirely. But recently my wife and I enjoyed the opportunity of accompanying Daddy and his wife to his 65th high school reunion in Evansville. Throughout his life, he has talked about his days as a Bosse High School Bulldog and we knew this trip would be important.

We did not attend the actual reunion with him, though by all accounts it went well. However, we arrived in Evansville early enough to drive by his childhood home on Iowa Street. Not only is the home his parents built when he was five still there, but it is in great shape having been well maintained.

A rare opportunity

Pappy_House

Outside the front door of his childhood home in Evansville.

The plan was to drive by the house and see it. But as we sat reminiscing in front of the home, a woman drove up, got out of her car, and headed to the back of the house. In this day and age, seeing four strangers appear on your doorstep can be concerning and we didn’t want to alarm the woman, but the opportunity was too great.

At first hesitant and guarded, as we talked in the driveway she began to engage. It turns out the home belongs to her daughter and she was there to visit. After checking with her daughter, she invited us in.

Entering that front door with Daddy was emotional. It was clear what the trip meant to him. Changes had been made to the interior, of course, though looking at his eyes it was clear he was seeing the memories of his childhood, rather than current day.

“Oh look,” he said, pointing to the right. “That was my bedroom and Mother and Dad were in that room.”

He told the story about how he once broke a basement window with a baseball. He shared about how he’d had his picture taken on a pony in the front yard—where now a new front porch exists. But I’m pretty sure he saw the pony and the little boy, not the porch.

Letting us in their home was an unbelievably gracious gesture by the young woman and her mother, but it is one that will never be intentionally forgotten. Combined with the reunion and a visit after the reunion to Benjamin Bosse High School (pictured above), the trip lit several dark corners of my father-in-law’s mind where he still has those “misty, water-colored memories” of the way he was.

But it also created memories—snapshots—of our own for my wife and I. Images and impressions we will treasure long after Alzheimer’s takes him from us and long after, even, his departure from this world.

Mike-9Michael Ehret loves to play with words and as the author of “Big Love,” a novella within Coming Home: A Tiny House Collection, he is enjoying his playground. Previous playgrounds include being the Managing Editor of the magazine ACFW Journal and the ezine Afictionado for seven years. He also plays with words as a freelance editor and has edited several nonfiction books, proofedited for Abingdon Press, worked in corporate communications, and reported for The Indianapolis Star.