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Disclosure: this may gross you out

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image source:medicinenet

image source:medicinenet

Dear God, I don’t know what else to do to help her?  I’ve cut back Mother’s heart medicine and it seems to help but only until the half-life of the meds wears off and then the sluggish valves in her legs are again overwhelmed and huge with edema.  I researched herbs for heart function and sluggish circulation.  We’ve bought herbs and even got Dr. Costello’s approval.  They help but we can’t get her totally off the Rx drugs that reduce her blood pressure so that the sluggish valves in her legs work easier.

So she suffers from side effects of those meds.  On the day of the worst I’d seen in a long time, I no longer knew what to do. She’d only been on minimal doses of her meds.  But she couldn’t swallow much, was coughing, had chest pain, what felt like a knot in the middle of her chest, spitting up saliva, sore throat, croaky voice, hiccups when she tried to eat.  After an hour of back patting, she was finally able to get some hot tea down, her system seemed to calm and she was able to eat her dinner.

There has to be a cause of this and a solution, God.  What am I missing?  All I knew to do was go back to the computer for more research.  I decided to search a list of her symptoms to see what might come up.  There it was: Gastroesophageal Disease (GERD).

Mother has GERD?  No wonder the look of doubt on Dr. Costello’s face when we would describe some of her symptoms and I’d say they were a side effect of her meds.  They weren’t.  Oh, sure, there are some stomach distress and diarrhea side effects to those meds but that doesn’t explain all the other things going on.  GERD does. image source:haverfordlibrary.org

It occurs as stomach acid backs up into the esophagus.  It can be life threatening if the sufferer aspirates in their sleep.  Causes?  Spicy foods, high fat foods, caffeine, raw onions, tomatoes, citrus juices, French fries, ice cream.  Mother loves all of these things.  And eats them with regularity.

Well, hit me upside the head with an “a-ha” moment.  I know what caused that worst flare-up.  Jessica and Juan, the young couple renting Sarita’s house next door, brought us a thank you gift of Christmas jelly because I went over and to give their old bull-dog, Sugar, water and food and let her in and out in the evenings while they visited family for Christmas.

One of the gifted jars of jelly was Jalapeno jelly.  Mother had never had it before and I was excited because I enjoyed it in the South with cheese and crackers.  We opened it immediately and was it good!  Hot!  Best on cheese, but I’d been off dairy for nearly a year, so eating it with gluten-free crackers seem the next best thing.  So good you can’t just have just one, so believe me we didn’t stop there.  Three days we had some for breakfast, both Mother and I.  And then that night, she tried to eat dinner and the episode was the worst I had seen.

Thank you, God!  At last I knew what’s going on and that there was something we could do about it; not only for Mother’s sake but for mine as well.  Truth be told, I too had started having that chest pain and times when things won’t go down easily.

And all the times we’ve had to leave a restaurant or Mother has had to retreat to the bathroom because she’s spitting up her food.  And then the rest of her meal sits untouched on her plate.  Or, the times when she couldn’t make it to the restroom and there’s a napkin across her plate covering up spit-up food and saliva.  Lots of saliva.  She was embarrassed.  I was grossed out.image source:google images

I printed out all the GERD info and took it to Mother in the dining room to explain what I’d found.  I started talking and she muted the TV so that she could hear.  She was not happy with this information.

“I’m 85 years old and I will eat what I want!”  She declared forcefully.

“Fine.”  I’d anticipated a fight over this and was prepared.  “Do whatever you want.  Just go in the other room and do your spitting and coughing and hiccuping away from me.”

“Humph!”

“In the last year I’ve had that same pain and there are times when I can’t swallow.”  I try to reason with her, but rational thought is not her strong point these days.  “I’m only 62 and I don’t want to have this the rest of my life and get as bad as you are.”

She turns the TV sound back up.

“We at least need to cut the spices WAY back and not make every dish we eat spicy hot.”

“Humph.”  Her attention is purposely glued to the TV.

Over the next few days I casually repeated the list of foods to avoid and I try to be on hand when she’s adding spices to the pot of beans (which turned out very spicy) and with the cheese soup, we used gluten-free four and Almond Milk and I followed the recipe instead of tripling the chili pepper as Mother usually does.  I thought the soup was good.  She didn’t.  She still says she will eat what she wants but I see her softening when it comes to my health.  She’s not hard-hearted, just stubborn.  Good thing I’m affected as well or she’d never moderate what she does!

My research indicated taking Licorice tablets, Ginger and Silymarin to help the sphincter that has been damaged by all the reflux acid so I added those to her daily pills.  My hope was that she would moderate her diet and with the extra herbs, she would eventually heal.

In the last month since I made the GERD discovery, Mother has (somewhat) graciously moderated how she cooks and I’m doing better.  For herself, however, she is determined to eat the way she likes to eat.  Milk, spices, butter on everything, tomato sauces, citrus – whatever is on the list to avoid – she goes all out to eat.

“I’m eighty-five and I’ll eat the way I want to eat!”  She repeats every so often.

I had bought the over the counter acid reducers with the hope that she wouldn’t rely on them, however, it appears she isn’t changing her diet – although she did admit she had continued for another week to eat the Jalapeño Jelly but was stopping as she was having more trouble getting food down.  I’m concerned she could aspirate at night, so she started taking the acid reducer.  Of course, she thinks that means she can eat whatever she wants without consequence, but even that isn’t a magic cure.

“I don’t want to hear about it anymore!”  She said last night when she was hiccuping too much to get anything down.  But I know at last she is hearing me.  And that is the biggest part of the battle.  Nothing changes for her until she lets go of her believe it’s all just sinus drainage and admits that she has a problem with what she is eating.  It’s like any addiction or habit that any of us has, WE have to be the one who wants to change.  No one can change for us.

However, I’m relying on one of her most basic instincts, she’s a mother.  When she sees her daughter suffer, she wants to do something different.  Oh, she fusses that she doesn’t know how to cook without gluten and dairy and high fat foods, but I see her make the effort for me and I’m grateful and hopeful that one day she’ll make that same effort for herself.

Dreams

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highrise city scape

image source: fineartamerica.com

In the dream, I’m in the middle of towering steel and glass highrises in a large, downtown city, the sky’s blue reflected from building to building.  I’m not aware of any particular sounds or smells but street traffic is heavy and sidewalks are crowded with busy, rushing people.

I’m anxious.  I’m to start a new job in one of these highrises.  Will I be able to deal with the new work environment?  Will I succeed?  Where will I live?  What part of town?  Will I be able to support myself?  How much style will I have to sacrifice to find a place that is affordable?  Will I be able to build a retirement income?

I vacillate in the dream from being energized at the prospect of a new challenge to feeling out-of-place and aware that I no longer belong in this busy, downtown world.

The dream never seems to go beyond that point and when I wake, I’m surprised that I dreamed of a new city and a corporate job.  Is it San Francisco, Downtown Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Nashville, or perhaps, Dallas?  I can’t pinpoint the city.  I’ve worked in highrises in all those places but it’s been thirty-three years since the first day I walked into a job in a highrise and eighteen years since I left the corporate world for self-employment.

Strange that I never had the dream until after I’d retired from selling Real Estate and moved back home to care for my elderly parents.  Perhaps that’s the point.  I left the outside work world of highrises and busy downtown streets and took on a job that is primarily contained within the four walls of this suburban house.

I’d had the dream a time or two before I realized it was a stress dream.  It typically came the night before I had some task to which I had committed myself but about which I was uncertain.  The times of the dream that stand out in my memory are the nights before Daddy’s Memorial Service; before I drove to UCLA the first year I went to the Los Angeles Times Book Fair; the night before singing a solo, also the night before I started my first writing class in West L.A. with the highly regarded writer and teacher, Jack Grapes.

Dream - beach scene

image source: google images

A few nights ago, I had the dream again.  This time, there were people at my new job in the highrise.  They weren’t faceless, but I couldn’t tell you much about them.  Again, the city was unknown, but everything was bright, shiny, modern and exciting.  I asked a thirty-something man where he lived and what the housing options were in town.  He told me about the trendy, beautiful, large and upscale apartment he rented in a building with all the amenities: pool, spa, exercise rooms, doorman, cleaners, restaurant, WiFi, grocery, roof gardens.  He said it was downtown in walking distance to my new job.  Wow.  Sounded wonderful.  And expensive.  Probably far more than I could afford.

“How much do you pay, if you don’t mind me asking?”  I asked.

“Three Hundred and Forty-Eight Dollars.”  He said cheerfully.

“What?”  Surely, I’d heard wrong.  “Three thousand, Three Hundred and Forty-Eight?”

“No.  Three Hundred Forty-Eight.”

I was ecstatic.  I was starting a great new job and I’d have a wonderful place to live.  This was thrilling!

When I woke later, I was amazed at the change of my stress dream to a dream of possibility and excitement of great things to come, things of challenge as well as enjoyment and ease and comfort; things bright and shiny and new, surrounded by blue sky.  But why had it changed?

I’d gone to bed in the wee hours of the night, tired but happy after posting to my blog and getting positive feedback from family and friends and even strangers with blogs of their own.  The dream hadn’t changed because I had learned all I needed to know about writing well; nor because I’d crossed the goal line of maximum impact with my writing footprint on the big, wide, world.

Rather, I had begun.  I had pushed against the fears of not being good enough, of having nothing to say, the fear of saying something offensive or politically incorrect that would end any chance of being considered a successful writer.

Jeremiah 29:11

image source: Photobucket

As I thought about the dream, positive as it was, the unknowns lurking there were clear.  Will there be enough income to take me through retirement?  Enough for some of life’s finer things, like travel or a lovely place to live?  Was there significance to the age of the man who told me about the apartment?  I was successful in the corporate world in my thirties and forties.  Am I now too old to accomplish anything of worth or value?  By the time Mother’s days on earth are finished, will it be too late for me to travel and to embrace once again, the outside world?

Yet, when you boil it all down, is there anything new here?  Don’t we all have the same needs for significance, safety and security?  None of us can see the future and a dream of stress or a dream of promise won’t change what happens, but my dream reminds me that I’m to push forward against the fears, all the while resting firm in what I know to be true:

“I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.  Plans to prosper you and not to harm you.  Plans to give you a hope and a future.”  Jeremiah 29:11.

God will be there to walk with me into that waiting future.  What else could I need?

To value or not to value….

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image source:google images

     image source:google images

Monday night TV at our house is PBS and Antiques Roadshow.  First, the      original show that is recorded in Great Britain, which is especially fun because those antiques are really old.  Next is the American version with relatively newer antiques, followed by a new show this season, Market Warriors, which is about four buyers who hit flea markets and sale houses to find treasures that are then auctioned off, hopefully for a greater price than what the buyers spent to purchase the items.

The fun in watching these shows is to see if that stuff around the house that you thought was junk is just junk, or if that loved item that some ancestor was sure was valuable, really is valuable.  I like to test my knowledge and see if I can recognize the item before the expert tells us what it is.  I know what I like, but I also know that most of the ‘tells’ that indicate value or worthlessness are mostly Greek to me.  If I can learn by watching and guess the designer or manufacturer then maybe I can move beyond my ignorance. That isn’t the real reason though, because ignorance isn’t that big a deal; everyone is ignorant about something.  To change that, you just have to learn.

But can I move beyond an upbringing that was filled with cast-offs, cheap, mass-produced functionally adequate furniture, clothing, housewares – all devoid of any real beauty or value?  Can I move out of the cookie-cutter suburbs and into something that actually has some class?  We had no money, no class and no fine culture.  Can I cover up that basic beginning with a coat of sophistication like you’d cover over a cheap, pressed cardboard backed dresser with a new finish?  Will I then feel valuable?  Will I then BE valuable?

And what is real value?  Mother grew up with even less that we had when I was a child and she loves these shows as well.  Is that because she sees the beauty in things, whether of value or not?  Like the three-quarters finished paint by number canvases we found when going through stored boxes looking for the oil paintings she did years ago.  We hung her oil paintings in the house and I sat the paint by number canvases in the box for Goodwill.  Mother took them out of the box and keeps saying she is going to get some double stick tape and put them, unframed, up on the walls of her bedroom; walls that already have hanging on them the original oil paintings that she did as well as oils done by friends; walls that also have outdated calendars with pretty pictures but which can’t be thrown away because they’re pretty.

Why would she even care about the old paint by number paintings?  Is she able to see some beauty that I can’t?  Doesn’t she know how tacky they will look on the walls?  Actually, I can see the beauty of the scene, if you stand far enough back that you don’t key in on the paint by number aspect, but there’s no monetary or resell value to it.  So, why keep it?  Why clutter up the full walls with one more thing that is cheap and mass-produced?

The clutter that covers every space in the house drowns out all beauty for me.  It’s too much.  It threatens to close in on me, so my mind’s eye tries to shut it out and it becomes some dark, busy background that drives out the air and leaves me feeling stifled and I find myself breathing shallowly, barely existing.

And then, some person on Antiques Roadshow brings out their treasured tchotchke and the appraiser tells them it’s worth hundreds or maybe thousands and as I look at it my childhood memory is jogged.  Mother turns me and says that the one she has, that is just like the one on TV is in the cedar chest, and “don’t forget to keep it, don’t send it to Goodwill.”

image source: google images

image source: google images

My breathing expands, I take in more air.  There is value, right here in all the clutter.  Right here in my classless childhood.  Not really because there’s something here that’s worth some monetary amount, but because Mother, whose family survived the Dust Bowl, the depression and years as itinerant workers, recognized value and held on to it.  And I see that she has a classiness that I had missed before.  A classiness that has nothing to do with things and everything to do with the intrinsic value we each have.  We’re God’s creation.  We are the thing of value.  All the stuff that fills up life, whether it’s sophisticated and expensive or classless and cheap is just that, stuff.  Once again I see that I do have value, and with that reminder, I have hope that I can look beyond the things and recognize the true beauty around me and the real value within.

Superhero

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My dad: Superhero.  Many little kids think their dad is a superhero.  They want to be like him and they copy what he does and what hesource: DeanFamilyPhotos says.  Then the kid grows up and often the flaws they see in their dad outweigh that early superhero status.

Not my dad.  Oh, he wasn’t perfect, but he loved me unconditionally, he was smart and funny and happy and caring and committed to his personal values and to telling other people that God was real and Jesus loves us all.  He was competent at so many things: he’d been a master plumber, airplane mechanic and tested rocket fuels.  I’d seen him repair cars, build church buildings, build a brick fence, fix plumbing problems, handle electrical breakdowns, repair the roof, transplant trees, maintain tomato plants and harvest fruit from all the fruit trees in the yard of the Pomona house and help Mother do the canning.  He was the one who got everything stored in the freezer.  In the garage there are four different type ladders and he used them all for various tasks.  There’s an entire network of shelving in the rafters of the garage and he knew what each box held and what was stored up there in the boxes we could and couldn’t see.  His handiwork is all over this old house.

This house ran so smoothly under his care that it seemed a simple thing to me to tell him that I would be here to see that Mother was ok and could stay in her home after he was gone.  In about three months’ time he’d gone from busy and capable, a sharp thinking and productive 88 year old, to thin and weak and desperately tired from the ravages of liver cancer.  He sat in his recliner watching me one day as I struggled to flip the queen size mattress on his and Mother’s bed and then put on fresh sheets.  I probably wouldn’t have even thought of flipping the mattress but Daddy had done that twice a month and kept it marked on the schedule of his Daytimer for at least the last twenty years.  That must explain why that mattress is still uniformly even.  I left the bedroom and walked across the living room to where he sat.

“How are you doing, Daddy?”  I laid my hand on his shoulder.

“I’m tired.”  He said.  “I want to go home to God.”

My eyes full of unshed tears, I said, “Then maybe you should go, Daddy.”

“Your Mother’s not ready.”  He spoke softly, his eyes closed, his head back on the headrest.

“I’ll be here Daddy.”  I said.  “She won’t be alone.”

He nodded, almost imperceptibly.

Easy promises made out of my need to reassure him.  He was the rock of our family and of my life but it was clear he wasn’t going to beat this.  He was going, and soon, to the place without pain, without suffering.  I wouldn’t let him down.  I’d pick up the load he’d carried here and he could go without concern.

In the nearly four years since that day, Mother and I have continued on.  This old house has needed a new breaker in the electrical box, new fuses (with regularity), the dishwasher died, the freezer died, the garage door got so bent out of shape it no longer worked, the garage was burgled and all Daddy’s tools were stolen, the shower stall and the toilet in Daddy’s bathroom both leaked and were starting to destroy the floor, the rain came in through the old roof, the lawn and gardens and trees needed care, much of which I wasn’t strong enough to provide, Daddy’s car had to be sold and mine was so old more money for repairs made no sense, the nearly thirty year old forced heat/air unit kept breaking down, the cooking range took a sabbatical then miraculously worked again, the ceiling heater in the back bathroom died, the kitchen desperately needed painting, the bedroom-cum-storage room where I sleep needed an overhaul and the thirty-plus-year old red carpeting in the main rooms had to go and the underlying hardwoods needed work.

I’ve kept the promise I made to him.  Through all the minutia of maintaining a house, through all the times Mother has driven me crazy and in the times of fun and laughter we’ve had together as I learn to accept that she will never have his optimism or his joy for life.  They say opposites attract and they were truly opposites.  Daddy loved her and I try to do the same.  She dreams of Daddy every night she says.  I look around me and see him in every detail of this old house and in the legacy of God’s love he passed on to his family.  He lived by God’s grace and by God’s grace I’ll be the best I can be, my heart looking forward to the day I’ll see my Daddy again.

Pomona Life

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Daddy’s fingerprints are all over this Pomona life I’m living.  Just the mention of the town of Pomona conjures up years of vignettes of Daddy and Mother’s life after all their kids were grown.  Until they moved to Pomona, it was just a town on the map, about halfway between downtown L.A. and the Riverside/San Bernardino area where I went to college and spent ten or so years living, working and trying to figure out who I was as a young adult out on my own, away from the family nest.  It became a destination of travel once they moved here when Daddy retired from the pastorate and went to work for the California Southern Baptist Convention.  It was a fairly easy destination close to the Ontario airport when I lived in Texas, then a convenient and inexpensive haven to store my things and a place to live for a few weeks while finding a job in L.A. and was a fairly easy drive (forty minutes or so) from to West Side of L.A. for overnight Friday night visits several times a year while I worked in Beverly Hills and later in Downtown L.A.

It was suburbia and I was the urban city dweller.  It was hotter in the summer and colder in the winter than the milder L.A. West Side temperatures.  It was a quieter, slower paced life and I was a busy, single, professional who had no time for unsophisticated suburbia.  A convenient place to visit because it was where Daddy and Mother were, but I wouldn’t want to live there.  And if I ever moved back to Southern California, was my thought as I used it once again as a way-station between leaving my urban L.A. life and heading cross- country to Nashville, I certainly wouldn’t chose Pomona as a place to live.

I couldn’t have foreseen that my thirteen years in the Nashville area, a sprawling suburbia with small urban pockets and clusters of suburbia interspersed with rural areas would find my health and me changed.  Nor could I have foreseen that the decision to live in Pomona would be made for me by the march of time across Daddy and Mother’s lives.

I knew I had to fly out to check on them after Daddy was diagnosed with liver cancer.  I told them it was a vacation and it wasn’t unusual for me to fly in for a week or so, but subconsciously I felt the mental and emotional shift from a trip that normally meant some down time from the stress of my own life to this trip as an adult on a mission to see if my aging parents were ok.

They weren’t ok.  Of course, Daddy insisted they were fine.  He would start chemo and life would go on and the chemo would remedy the situation.  He was more concerned for Mother who had been dealing with diarrhea for nearly two years and was struggling with trying to do all the things she had once done easily.

On this trip I didn’t pay much attention to the town of Pomona or all those reasons why I wouldn’t choose it for a home.  What I saw was two valiant people, Daddy, at 87 and Mother at 80, slowed by waning strength and stamina, but like a very slow energizer bunny, they just kept going, trying to cope with the tasks necessary to keep up a house, a yard, gardens, an imperfect car, a garage with a difficult, heavy, wooden door, and Daddy’s responsibilities as pastor of their rapidly fading church.

It was Daddy’s bathroom that clinched it for me.  Daddy had picked me up at the airport and I’d only been at the house a little while.  When I left the bathroom and returned to the dining room Mother was at her normal spot on the back side of the table, the table cluttered by piles of mail, books, crossword puzzles and papers.  She looked up at me through her weariness and said,

“How’s the bathroom?  I just haven’t felt like even thinking about cleaning it.”

“Oh,” Daddy sat tiredly at his end of the table, “it’s ok.”

I was speechless.  I’d never seen layers of dust on the toilet, a dirty sink, a toilet bowl that needed cleaning and mold in the shower.  It told me two things, Mother was beyond keeping the house clean and Daddy’s eyes had deteriorated to the point he couldn’t see how bad it was getting.  In the past, he had always picked up the slack of what Mother couldn’t get done.  It was probably that more than anything else that convinced me as I flew back across the country to Nashville, I was needed in Pomona and in Daddy and Mother’s house.

They were pleased when I came back six weeks later for a Christmas visit.  I wasn’t sure what my long range plans were at that point, I just knew I had to be there.  Five days later, Mother collapsed with congestive heart failure.  That settled it.  Once Mother was stable and recovering,  I returned to Nashville and began the process of closing down my business and deciding what to do about my home and my things.  Pomona, here I come.  All those details like suburbia and less than ideal weather no longer mattered.  How could they?  Daddy needed me.

Robocalls

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I remember when everyone had a phone in their home.  A phone connected by phone lines to telephone poles.  When the phone rang it was because someone you actually knew or did business with wanted to talk with you.  You had to be pretty well off to have a mobile phone and they were rare and big cumbersome things.  It hasn’t been all that long ago, either.  All of my nieces and nephews were born, although only one of them was old enough at that point to have their own child, but now all of my great nieces and nephews have their own cell phone and live in homes without landlines as that old phone system is now called.  I wouldn’t be surprised if my great-great nieces and nephews have cell phones – well, perhaps they’re still a little young.

I’d never even heard of robocalls until I returned to California five years ago.  That could be because the last three or four years that I lived in Nashville, I’d only used my landline for my business fax machine and no longer had an answering machine on it.  I like to think salespeople were calling and got the high pitched squeal of a fax machine. As a salesperson myself, you’d think I’d have some mercy for them, but I didn’t.  Seventeen years ago I’d started selling Real Estate using a pager and the shared computer in the office but it wasn’t long before Realtors had cell phones and their own desk computer and/or laptop.

Back in California, in Daddy and Mother’s house, however, there is still a landline and an answering machine and we get from three to six or seven robocalls a day.  Some of them are recorded messages and some are real people on the other end who want to sell something or collect money for some “good” cause.

“May I speak to Cri-ley Dean?”

“Crile.” I correct them.  Like Lyle but with a C and an R.  “Mr. Dean died recently.”  They express some sympathy and then start in on their reason for their call.

Other times the caller asks for Zelda or Mrs. Dean and I answer in the affirmative.  This is just so much easier than taking the phone to Mother, watching her fumble with the remote to mute the sound of the TV and then listening to her try to hear what they’re saying, get a word in edgewise and attempt to get off the phone without caving in and promising to send money.  Then after she finally hangs up she’s irritated at all the nonsense calls and fusses about how no one she knows ever calls her anymore.

It’s just easier to take the call myself and get rid of them but how long can I use the excuse that Mr. Dean died recently and our income has been drastically reduced?  It will be four years this April since Daddy died.  The reduced income bit is still true but the bizarreness of the half-truths swirls around me like the fog of a make-believe land where you can say anything and have it be true.

The easiest thing is to not answer so we’ve taken to looking at the caller ID and if it’s an 800 number or a number we don’t recognize, we let them talk to the answering machine.  And Mother fusses again about all the nonsense calls and how no one she knows ever calls her anymore.

If it were up to me, I’d just cancel the landline and handle everything by cell phone but it’s too soon to do that.  For one, thing, whenever I’m away from the house for several hours, I call to check on Mother and she needs to be able to call for help if need be.  She isn’t interested in a cell phone and would have difficulty working one, but most of all, the landline is a tether for her that ties her into the familiar past, when she and Daddy made calls to their children and friends called and Daddy handled the business of the house and life in general on the phone.  This summer it will be thirty years that they’ve had the same number.

Time continues and that make-believe land where anything can be said and be true isn’t all that different from the dreams of yesterday that have become our reality for the world is a different place than it was when Mother and Daddy, about my age now, moved into this house with excitement and hopes for the future.  A future that they could never have foreseen would be littered with robocalls.

As for me, while Mother is tethered to the past so am I.  My days move in a half-life of hope for a future of experiences beyond these walls and a half-life of caring for Mother and her house.  One day that tether will sever, Mother will be gone and what will be left will be just my life.  Will it be in time to be out in the wide world or just in time for my own waning years, pestered by robocalls?  Only God knows and there I must leave the unknown.  In His hands.  Because He who loves me best will be here with me.  With or without robocalls.