Accept Loss Also With Gratitude
August 21, 2010admin Comments OffHis parents acquired the washer when John Claypool was a small boy. It happened during World War II.
His family owned no washing machine and, since gasoline was rationed, they could ill afford trips to the laundry several miles away. Keeping clothes clean became a problem for young John’s household.
A family friend was drafted into the service, and his wife prepared to go with him. John’s family offered to store their furniture while they were away. To the family’s surprise, the friends suggested they use their Bendix while they were gone. “It would be better for it to be running, ” they said, “than sitting up rusting.” So this is how they acquired the washer.
Young John helped with the washing, and across the years he developed an affection for the old, green Bendix. But eventually the war ended. Their friends returned. In the meantime he had forgotten how the machine came to be in their basement in the first place. When the friends came to take it away, John grew terribly upset — and said so!
His mother, wise as she was, sat him down and said, “Wait a minute, Son. You must remember, that machine never belonged to us in the first place. That we ever got to use it at all was a gift. So, instead of being mad at it being taken away, let’s use this occasion to be grateful that we had it at all.”
The lesson proved invaluable. Years later, John watched his eight-year-old daughter die a slow and painful death of leukemia. Though he struggled for months with her death, John could not begin healing from the loss until he remembered the old Bendix.
“I am here to testify,” he said, “that this is the only way down the mountain of loss…when I remember that Laura Lou was a gift, pure and simple, something I neither earned nor deser