Happy Birthday Delbert Leroy Bartholomew!

On your left is Jake, on the right is Josephine and there in the middle is little old me.  I must have been almost a year old there.  See the loaded hayrack in the back?  That means it was harvest and the year was 1942 in the fall, right before my birthday.  Jake and I were born 4 years and 4 days apart.

I do not know how he came to be known as "Jake", but I do not ever remember calling him Delbert.  He was kicked in the face by a horse named "Star" when he was 9 or 10.  I recall when my father brought that horse home one night.  It was late.  It was dark and he was drunk.  And mother was pissed.  In all fairness, Star was not a horse, but a Shetland Pony and Shetland Ponies were mean by nature.  Star nearly kicked the side out of the trailer before he even got unloaded.  

It was just wonderful having a pony!  I say that with the utmost sarcasm, because to the best of my knowledge no one ever rode that pony.  No one ever petted that pony.  We fed him.  We fed him a lot!  I lived in mortal terror of being bit by those big yellow teeth.  I think in the back of my mind I know that Dad was a gambling man as well as a drinking man and he won that horse in a poker game.  Not real sure who the winner was in that deal, but it is what it is and we had a horse from hell for a pet.

I was trying to tell you about my brother and I see I got side tracked.  Life does that to me a LOT.  So, I only had the one brother growing up and it was Jake.  He snuck off to join the Army when he was 16.  He crossed off the date of his birth which was 1937 and wrote in 1935.  Of course, since the recruiting officer was neither blind nor stupid, he took one look at Jake, whose face was covered with peach fuzz since he was not old enough to shave, and called mother.  He did join the Army 2 years later.  He served in Germany.  He came home, fell in love and got married.  Got divorced and got married again.  Got separated and searched for happiness where ever he could find it.

Some where out in this cold cruel world are 2 sons of his.  Mother kept in touch with the oldest and we never heard anything  of the youngest.  That lady moved to Missouri.  I will probably go to my grave not knowing what became of them, but so it goes.  On the day Jake died, my middle daughter, Dona Marie turned 1 year old.  Sam was 26 days old.  That was a dark time in my life and we know how those times affect us later down the road.

On October 29, he and a friend were coming home from work on country roads.  They ran a stop sign and hit the side of a loaded gravel truck on the highway.  I do not know who was driving.  I do not want to know.  I saw him that night in McPherson Hospital.  He was unconscious. He died the next morning.

I like to think I have put my dark times behind me, but I haven't.  Hopefully I am dealing with this better then I used to.  There was a time when October 5th entailed a bottle of whiskey and a beer chaser, but I have not done that for years.  And since I am dealing with my new reality, I am going to look back on his birthday as a cause for celebration.  So here goes:

He was born and he held my hand while I learned to walk.  He taught me to ride a bike.  He hit me in the head with a turnip when I was very small.  He went to the Army and wrote me every week.  He sent me a Brownie Camera from Germany.  We listened to the Grand Ole Opry on a car radio on Saturday nights.  He introduced me to my first husband, the father of my children.  He died, but he never left my thoughts.  

I had a brother.  My life would not have been complete without him and today I celebrate that God gave me the most wonderful brother in the world, Delbert Leroy Bartholomew, known to the rest of the world as "Shakey Jake!"  Some day I will see him again and he will be in that same pair of overalls and hopefully Hank Williams will be picking on his guitar.

If he had lived, what would his life have been?  I know he joined the church just 2 weeks before he died.  I know his friend who was in the truck with him, Johnny Rogers passed away the day after we buried Jake.

Rest in Peace in the arms of Jesus, my beloved!

Rest in Peace always.

Delbert Leroy Bartholomew

(Jake)

October 5, 1937-October 31, 1965

Frozen forever in time.

He taught me to love conutry music.

He taught me to fish.

He taught me patience.

He was my brother.

Brothers never die.

And now I have seen first hand...It was indeed a miracle!

Hopped in the little Ford Focus and headed east into the sun yesterday.  My purpose was to see my grandson, and a few of the great grand kids.  As most of you recall, Joe Seeger-Guebara, my grandson, rolled his car on May 9 of this year.  That was the evening before he was to graduate high school the day before Mother's Day.  He spent May 10-June 2 in a coma in Wichita, Kansas at the Via Christi Hospital and Trauma Unit.  Prayer requests were flying every where and no one gave up.  I confess, I was skeptical.
June 2, he was moved to Linclon, Nebraska, to the Madonna Rehab Center.  He was still in a coma.  After tests the doctor was explaining to Dona Seeger, his mother, that his discharge date would be August 22 and that he would still, no doubt be comatose.  Joe was propped up in a wheel chair at the time that diagnoses was given.  It apparently triggered something in his brain and he began struggling to stand up!   So they helped him stand.  It was clear in that picture that while he was standing between his mom and a therapist that he was still out to lunch!
I am here to tell you that prayer and perseverance will bring results!  3 months of diligence, prayer and sacrifice by his family and a lot of hard work by him brings us to his return home on August 22.  But I had to see for myself and that was the reason for the trip yesterday.  I give you Joe Seeger-Guebara and his grandma.

And true to his dream and the dedication of the fire department, his shirt.

In case you can not read that, it says "Firemen never die.  They just burn forever in the hearts of the people whose lives they saved."  Joey was a volunteer at the fire department and when he came home, they met him with the fire engines on main street.

This is his brother and Aunt.  Oh, and cinnamon rolls grandma made him!

Yep!  Aunts, neice (who is also my great grandaughter), cousin and  mother at his side, where she has been since May 9.  She is returning to her beauty shop in town on Tuesday.  

So the men folk went on the quest of prairie dog distruction, them being all good red necks in that area and the women folk went into town where Dona cut out hair and we finished up at "Flashback" which is in the old Dairy Queen building.  I had a cherry limeade.

And then my little car was pointed West and I hit the road back to Colorful Colorado!  But I did manage a few shots on the side.

But try as I might I can not capture the panorama of the Kansas sky with the low hanging clouds that look like I can reach out and touch them!  I do try.

So, welcome home Joey!  I understand you are going to the community college in Garden.  Never forget the people who spent the summer in prayer and more importantly, do not forget the man who answered those prayers.

If you have the faith of a mustard seed, you can move mountains!

                                                             Love, Grandma

We also serve who only sit and wait. A tribute to my children.

Anyone remember this picture?  I sure do.  That was 40+ years ago when I was a single mother raising 5 kids.  No problem.  A piece of cake.  Go to work, come home, take care of the kids, cook clean, homework, fishing on the weekends and maybe church on Sunday.  I was young and the world was before me.  I never dreamed for one moment that 40 years later I would be second guessing the job I did shaping these little minds and preparing them for the world ahead.  If I had thought of that angle I would have ran down the road screaming.  But I did not.  I simply went about the every day tedium of life and that was that.

I do not have a picture of my ex-husband, the father of this brood, but suffice it to say he was a drop dead gorgeous Adonis, smart, witty, generous to a fault, but alas, we both had our faults and so a divorce was inevitable.  While I was tending to life in Hutchinson, Kansas, he set up his empire in Western Kansas.  We shared the kids as we chose to without benefit of the courts system.  Sometimes they were with me, sometimes with him.   The point being, they reached adulthood and began making their own decisions.  Far be it from me to say I approved of some of those decisions or even that I understood where they were coming from when they announced them to me, but nonetheless, they were in charge of their lives.  The older girls were living with their father when I moved to Colorado, but I do drone on, don't I.  That is all water under the bridge.

 Earl Seeger passed  at 52 years of age.  That was very young.  The girls were all married by that time and had kids of their own.  Sam was off in the world slaying dragons.  And so our lives drifted until very recently.  Last May 10, Dona Maries's  son Joe was scheduled to graduate the next day, Mother's Day.  He went to see a friend, rolled his car and has been in a coma since. 

And now I have occasion to know exactly what my kids have become from their life lessons.  Dona has been at his side since the accident.  She has never wavered as she set by his bedside waiting for him to wake up.  Patty and her girls are with her most of the time.  Debbie and her husband visit regularly.  There are no negative thoughts.  God will take care of us through this, whatever this may be.  Sam, ever my rock, has explained that this will be a very long process and has made a budget and is on top what must happen through the process.  Sue and I set home and wait for updates.  We all know what we are capable of doing and we do it the best we can.

But the most amazing part is the love that binds this family together has never been more clear or stronger.  Life tends to let us drift apart, but upsets pull us back together.  Is that how it should be?  I do not know.  I always dreamed of a touchy feely relationship, but this seems much better.  We are all there for each other and we each know it.  I strongly suspect that it has always been that way.  Mother always said "You can choose your friends, but you are stuck with your family."  I sometimes wonder if she was being sarcastic when she said that!   

So here is Dona Marie with Joey and the therapist.  Joey had been sitting in the chair for several hours and decided he wanted to stand up.  The therapist told him he could not do that, but Joey with the Seeger/Bartholomew blood in his veins was clear about what would happen.  And it did.  Not once, not twice, but several times.  Then they put him into bed and he went fast asleep.  Dona, the middle child, who neither leads nor follows, is a bulwark for her son.  After 3 1/2 weeks in a coma, he is now making rapid strides forward.  I just got off the phone with Patty and Joey is very agitated and wants out of the bed.  The best news is that he is angry.  If he is angry, that is an honest emotion.  That is good news. 

And here is the family you saw at the beginning of this blog. I have added one more child since the first  picture was taken.  Bret is  22 years old and he seems to have the same good heart that the other 5 have.  So, to make a long story short, I am thinking that when I am old and grasping at that slender little silver thread called life, that is a pretty good bunch to have on my side and I am very happy to call them my children.  And I mean each and every one of them in their own unique way. I love each one with my whole heart and I love each one in a special way.  And I think they love me.  Or at least I hope so!

Wrong day yesterday, today is October 29.

Yesterday I started to do this blog and my little mind wandered and I think I wound up chasing the cow down the ditch bank.  This is my older brother.  He is about in about the eighth grade in this picture.  I think that because back in those days, it had to be a special occasion to have our picture taken.  Those were few and far between and usually marked a very big event in our life.  See that scar on his cheek?  Today I will tell you how he got that.
Like I told you yesterday, we were living on the Stroh place right outside of town.  One day Dad went to the sale and came home with a Shetland Pony.  Oh, we were in seventh heaven.  We had our own horse.  Now why we needed a horse is more than Mother could fathom.  Years later as I put the pieces together I came to the conclusion that Dad was probably drunk and meant to buy a milk cow since ours had died.  In his befuddled mind he decided that we would get more use out of a pony then a cow any way.  The mere facts were that my father did not know he had children most of the time and while he did provide for us, the pipe and slippers and kiddies on his knee were not pictures I recall of my childhood. Back in those days, men were not "soft" like they are today and I was not the first nor the last kid in those days to only feel my fathers hand in anger, never love.  More about my father in a different blog, when I can deal with it fully.
But all that aside, a horse it was.  I remember seeing it unloaded in the moonlight.  It was the most beautiful horse I had ever seen and coming down the ramp from the trailer it looked very tall.  Daylight would bring many surprises.  I could barely sleep that night as Jake and I talked into the night about the wonderful horse our wonderful father had brought us.  From sounds drifting into our sleeping area we gathered that Mother was not near as happy as we were.
Morning found us gazing into pen where the horse was.  He was spotted and not very tall.  He had a long mane and it was spotted too.  There was a sort of star looking spot on his forehead so we named him "Star."  He came with his own saddle and blanket, but we were not allowed to saddle him or ride him until Dad was there to show us how.  We had never been this close to a horseso the chances we could saddle it up and ride away were very slim.  Unfortuneately Dad was not feeling well that day, so we only got to stare at the horse through the fence.  I think that we thought if we looked at Star long enough he would grow taller.  Ever see a Shetland pony?  They are by nature much smaller than the big ones we watched Dad work with.  See, my Dad was one of the last men in the area to give up the "team of horses" and go to a tractor, but more about that later.  This is about Jake and his scar.
Mom and Dad played cards once a week with friends and that evening the friends came and brought there kids and we were left to our own devices.  Of course we wanted to show off our new horse, so we gathered at the corral.  I do not remember the exact chain of events, but I do recall the chaos that followed.  Jake was always curious and tonight and the showing off for the kids was no exception.  I remember the kids all screaming and Jake holding his face as blood squirted every where from his right cheek.  Very quickly Mother and Jake were loaded in the back seat of the car and the couple visiting whisk them off the 11 miles to Hutchinson and the nearest medical attention. 
I do remember being so afraid that Jake would die.  We were sent to our beds and the visiting children were made pallets in the front room.  I surely drifted off, because some time in the night Jake woke me up to show me his bandaged face.  I cried.  He had been such a handsome boy and now he had this horrible injury and he would carry the scar the rest of his life.
Over the next few weeks the story of what really occured that night in the moonlight came out in bits and pieces.  Dad was going to shoot the horse and Jake confessed that maybe it was not all the horse's fault.  Seems one of the boys visiting "dared" Jake to creep up with a stick and "goose" the horse.  The horse reacted just like one would expect a horse to react and kicked backwards at the offending stick.  Jake just happened to be on his hands and knees right behind the horse.  And no one could see that coming?
Over the days and weeks ahead Jake slowly healed.  Star remained in the corral because we were all afraid of him.  Sometimes I would try to pet him and he would let me.  Dad did finally saddle him and ride, but the horse was way to short for Dad.  Josephine finally ended up riding him most.  She would put us on his back and give us a ride around the yard, but we were always terrified that Star would kick us so that was really not much fun.  I do not know if you know about Shetland Ponies, but they are mean by nature and I think they were looking right at Star when they wrote that definition.
So, my dear brother carried a very ugly scar on his right cheek until the day he died, but no one seemed to notice.  He was such a charamatic kid that the scar never mattered.  Nothing could have detracted from the personality that was my brother.  And why am I telling you about him today?
Today is October 29, 2012.  On October 29, 1965 I lived in Garden City, Kansas.  I had two daughter's ages 2 & 3 years old. I had a daughter who would turn 1 year old tomorrow.  I had a son who was 25 days old.  Tomorrow  would be my 5th wedding anniversary.  And today, October 29, 1965,  my brother, Jake, was returning home from a day at work and the driver of the pick up he was riding in went through a stop sign near McPherson, Kansas and ran into the side of a loaded gravel truck. 
Tomorrow I would not have parties; tomorrow I would travel to McPherson, Kansas to visit my brother as he lay comatose in a hospital bed with his right leg kicking as if to apply the brake.  He would not know I was there.  He would not know my mother sat by his bed from the moment he was brought there.  Or would he?  I like to think that on some level he knew.
He died early the next morning....Halloween. 

My dear brother, Jake 

 

Delbert Leroy Bartholomew

10/ 4/ 1937-10/31/1965