Your Garden is Doing Fine, Jeff

Purple -- Jeff's favorite color!! The purple mums in our garden, and the purple bouquets on the altar Sunday morning joyfully celebrate Jeff's life among all of us. I've just finished reading, "The Garden Is Doing Fine," by Carol Farley, in which a young teen is fighting to let her dying father go. It's late fall and her dad wants to know how his garden is doing. She wants to be honest and tell him there is no garden any more now. When two painfully honest neighbors tell her that her father will be remembered for his caring long after he has died, she realizes that she is his garden, and the seeds he has planted in her will go on season after season. At the end, she can say, "Your garden is doing fine, Dad."~~~Jeff's garden is doing fine. He has planted his love, and the love of God in many hearts along the way. Jeff's life, and his going to be with Jesus in the beautiful month of October, will be celebrated with an awesome, thankful purple hue!!

Camp Joy and Beyond

Sometimes a book will wait for a reader for many months, or, beckon one back. It will wait for it's own time. I'm thinking of the woman at the "Celebrating 30 Years of Camp Joy" Banquet this weekend. After the dinner was over, she came up to me to say she had just finished "Journey With Jeff; Inspiration for Caregivers of People with Special Needs ," and liked it very much. Her husband had brought it back to her from a synod-wide Lutheran meeting a couple of Junes ago. (I thought he looked familiar!)~~~Today a note came from a pastor friend who, a few years ago, had helped me decide the title of Jeff's book. He said, "I have been re-reading 'Journey With Jeff.' I was just thinking that if I was teaching pastoral counseling or clinical pastoral eduction it would be required reading. It's a wonderful book." ~~~Having this book be required reading in a college course would be ideal!!!~~~And, back at the Camp Joy Banquet, a woman read her poem about Camp Joy being a pool and the staff the ripples on the pool. Afterward, I mentioned to her that I was planning on sharing how Jeff's life had a ripple effect on the people in the pools around him. She asked where to find "Journey With Jeff" so she could read it for herself. (see Liftbridge Book Store in Brockport, NY, or Amazon.com.) The photo is Jeff enjoying his tube at Camp Joy.

Advocates for Jeff and Friends

Today I'm wearing a tee-shirt with the words, "Celebrating 30 Years of Camp Joy" emblazoned on the left shoulder. In 1981, Joan Van De Wall and I wrote a grant for a week of Faith-based Camp for people with special needs like Jeff who had aged out of other summer camps. How he loved Camp Joy!! At the Banquet Celebration of these 30 years of growth, and struggles, and blessings, Joan asked the 2011 Camp Joy Staff to share some of their stories of healing and blessings they'd experienced this year. The staff shared story after story of how they'd gained more from the campers than they'd given. Joan ended her thank-yous to all those who had served on the Camp Joy staff over the years by asking me to speak about Jeff's last days with Leukemia at the hospital. Since she had been there, too, she recalled that Jeff had been adamant about going back to his group house, even with a possibility of hospice care. Finally, "Yes, Mom!! Go back to Group Home!!" melded into, "Yes, Mom, I'm ready to go and see Jesus now." ~~~ Jeff has been gone 23 years in Ocotober. I haven't cried in a long time, but I cried at that Banquet. Thank You, Lord, for the people who cared so much for Jeff, and helped him be ready to go to see You!!

Surprise Advocates!

"Please bring a copy of Journey With Jeff to the gathering for me to purchase for my daughter," wrote a far-away friend in an e-mail. Claudia and her daughter, who was visiting from North Carolina, gathered with the state-wide Lutheran Women at the Notre Dame Retreat Center in Canandaigua last weekend. When I handed her a copy of "Journey With Jeff; Inspiration for Caregivers of People with Special Needs," her daughter said a friend of hers also might want a copy. As Claudia purchased a second book she said, "I keep my copy on my coffee table in the living room, where people pick it up and ask about it." Here was another illustration of my friend Lynne's exclamation that "Journey With Jeff" has a life of its very own!" How wonderful to find Surprise Advocates!!

The Power of Words

 
Jeff's Aunt Lois had been matriarch of the Reisch family for many years. Her husband, Jeff's Uncle Dutch, called her the "perfect pastor's wife." They made a good team. Last Easter Aunt Lois went to be with the Lord - and with Jeff - and Uncle Dutch felt utterly lost. He wrote, "I read, 'Journey With Jeff' again - what a blessing!! Those last chapters saved my life....I could have become a hermit! But, I'm involved now in my retirement community, and there's so much going on I can hardly get lonely. I preach almost every Sunday. I sing in the Communtiy Chorus and in the Barbershop Quartet." There's not much Jeff's Uncle Dutch isn't involved in at his retirement community in Zelienople, PA.~~~Dutch's reponse alone is a good reason to have written the book!

Inspiration for Advocates

 
"Hello Sybil, You probably don't remember me, but I felt compelled to reach out to you." Thus began a letter from a gal who identified herself as someone who had worked at the South Avenue group home for Lifetime Assistance while Jeff lived there. "Jeff left an indelible mark on my heart and I have always thought of him with great joy. He could teach the world a lot about loving life! I was trying to find Marge, one of the staff I worked with, so I typed in LAI, and found a Newsletter with an article about Jeff on the front page. I knew instantly who Jeff Reisch was and began to cry with happy memories. I remember how Jeff used to call Marge "Mudge," and how he used to talk about 'Mitch Miller!' and play his air instruments. I loved Jeff and missed him after I moved back home. It was a difficult time in my life. In Hindsight, I realize now that those days at South Ave. were an instrumental part of my growth. Thank you for sharing Jeff with us. He was an inspiration and a treasured gift from God. God bless you and your family."~~~ How I relish these notes filled with memories of Jeff!

Inspiration from Journey With Jeff

 
"This is for you," Alan said one Sunday morning. He handed me a long stem of beautiful blooms of sweet-smelling lillies. "I finished reading 'Journey With Jeff,'" he said, "and thought you ought to have this." He added that he wasn't sure if this was appropriate, but I quickly replied, "How could it be any more appropriate!?" Alan told me a friend of his in Hawaii had a 53 year-old daughter with Down syndrome, and this friend had heard of 'Journey With Jeff.' "YOU HAVE TO READ IT!" Alan told him emphatically. I love receiving endorsements like this!!!
~~ Alan has been with our church family about a year now, finding small ways to be of help and encouragement, from shoveling snow to singing in the choir. He has begun attending our Friday morning 'Seriously Funny Bible Study,' where our discussions are punctuated by stories of God's grace. The short stories in 'Journey With Jeff' often have become illustrations, such as my refusal to accept the doctor's diagnosis of Jeff's retardation when he was a year and a half old. When I stopped demanding, "Why us, Lord?" and began asking, "Where do we go from here?" then we began to see God's grace working in the people God sent to help us. (God's grace also can be found in an extraordinarily beautiful stem of blooming lillies!)