LOOKING FORWARD TO POSSUM REHAB [M, 7-27-20]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith and Life for the Days of Winter

LOOKING FORWARD TO POSSUM REHAB          [M, 7-27-20]

We know a woman… well, actually we know her husband…who is an opossum rehabilitator.

Not drugs or gambling or booze rehab. Opossums are fairly careful when it comes to that sort of stuff. Physical rehab, because they get into accidents with cars and into tussles with predators.

Ever since the man told us of his wife’s work, I’ve wondered why. I mean, I don’t doubt that opossums are cherished by their friends and families, but they are not very cuddly as pets. It would be like having a perpetual teenager, sleeping all day and running around getting into scrapes all night. And their life spans are so short, usually no more than two years. I mean, if your main defense against predators is playing possum, you can expect a fairly short life span. If they are in captivity, meaning they are protected from Chryslers and coyotes, still, their maximum life span is only four years. Why bother with rehab?

But, she has something to look forward to. I mean, opossums get into rehab situations all the time. If you’re not an opossum rehabilitater, these days, there isn’t much to look forward to.

Oh, if we mean, is there stuff that’s going to happen, sure… more of the same old same old. By “looking forward to,” I mean, looking forward to going out to eat, or to a Willie Nelson concert [Is he still alive, or did he get run over because he was playing on the road again?], or a Halloween party, or seeing the Reds beat the Cubs at The Great American Ball Park, or watching the Hoosiers beat The Little Sisters of The Poor at Memorial Stadium, or Thanksgiving at Aunt Bertha’s, or Christmas at The Grandma House.

I was meeting with the Crumble Bums at Glenn’s garage this week. There are five of us, but it’s a really big and clean and neat garage. The rest of us are a little uneasy with clean and neat, but we do require big in this pandemic age, and Glenn’s garage is large enough that we can sit more than six feet apart from one another. We wear masks until we get settled. Then we talk quietly, without spewing. We each bring our own coffee. It’s a really decrepit-looking bunch, and I look forward so much to seeing them.

This week, Ron asked if we had noticed a different atmosphere in the social air recently. Yes, we had. A sense of unhappy complacency. No more “we’ll get through this together.” [Have you noticed how nobody says that anymore?] Right, it’s a sense of “this is the new abnormal.” There’s nothing to look forward to.

Makes us understand better why heaven’s been such an intriguing idea for so long, doesn’t it? It’s not much fun to have nothing to look forward to.

However, in the short run, short of heaven, you might consider being an opossum rehabilitatur.

John Robert McFarland

I tried spelling the name for the person who rehabilitates 3 different ways, and sphelczhek claims they are all wrong.