Lucas

A mother is prone to lavish praise on her son and see him as a stout-hearted man capable of leaping tall buildings, doing whatever else it is Superman does and brokering peace in the Mideast.
But in my case these are not the love-blind blubberings of a devoted mother. I simply speak the truth.
Lucas stepped in the door Thursday night in the final hours of his father's two-month detox and for the first time in many days he enabled us to breathe.
We had been awaiting my pending lay-off (that didn't come last week, thankfully). There's always the concern about our mothers in Indiana care centers. We'd also had to replace a broken toilet, fight an infestation of ants in the kitchen and treat a urinary tract infection that threatened to postpone Ken's surgery.
I had long lost my sense of humor. Ken was trying to make it on two pain pops a day.
We sat down to dinner and Lucas took us from UTIs, lay-offs, pain pops and toilets to a story of Salty, a 77-year-old man who several years ago started chaplaincies at horse tracks. A former drug abusing jockey, Salty had found God, or vice versa , and spent the rest of his life talking to others about his faith, the Bible and Christ. Lucas had talked to Salty (a whole other story), told him about his dad and informed us that we would be talking to Salty over the weekend if we wanted to so he could pray with Ken and me before the surgery.
Ok, then. This was good. This was going to be good.
It continued. He cooked us lunches (Baja burger he named it: grilled hamburger, his special guacamole (recipe upon request), swiss cheese, sauted mushrooms on grilled whole wheat bread). The night before he made us the aforementioned guacamole with this incredible grilled Tiger shrimp and this smokey, picquant sauce I dream about. (recipe upon request but he makes it pretty much by taste.) Grilled marinated flank steak, steamed fresh green beans in a lemon-butter sauce and fresh sweet corn (not as good as corn sold road side at Powers Lake in Wisconsin.)
Our son is compassionate, drop dead funny (he does a Saturday Night Live-worthy assortment of characters from a Pakastani taxi driver, to a Puerto Rican flaming hair dresser to this hard-to-place slightly retarded orderly fellow) wise, smart and capable of making folding laundry an adventure.
Everyone who knows him, and certainly his family knows this about him, understands Lucas' presence lights up a room. Allows everyone to breathe deeper. (In the hospital waiting room, he sat next to this 60-plus, overweight man who within minutes was telling Lucas' about his wife who had recurring cancer and the day before had told her husband she was ready to die. The man choked up. Lucas patted him on the back and said, " That's hard man. My prayers are with you and your wife." Simple. Straightforward. Sincere. I watched exchanges like this all weekend with me, his father, strangers. (And this was at a time when Lucas was told his job would end July 31 , another casualty of a company buy-out.)
Marriage to Melissa and the growth, adjustments, self-reflection and perspective-changing insights that union can inspire have polished his soul.
We told him he had made all the difference. We didn't know what we would have done without him.
I've heard those words spoken by me and to me many times.
They have never been truer than spoken yesterday when we bid him farewell and thanked him from the bottom of our now very full hearts.