Finally, Sunshine

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, on my last day of being 52 years old, I went to both Kroger and Smallmart– because even before the pandemic supply chain issues, in my small town, neither store ever had everything you needed. (I told shoppers in the dairy section yesterday my new joke: Where is the buttermilk? Not at Kroger!)

In Smallmart (I know–I don’t like the nickname either), there was the usual trouble on the spice aisle.

The spice aisle in the grocery store, particularly near a holiday, is a hullabaloo, a team-building exercise–and, sometimes, a missionary field. People who have never bought sage desperately search for it; those who left their shopping lists at home murmur, “Do I need celery salt or celery seed?” and frantic bakers rifle around for the last vial of McCormick Pure Vanilla.

So, if I encounter someone steering glassy-eyed at the rows of bottles and packets, I always ask, “What are you searching for?” And I stop and help for a minute. (Sometimes, I negotiate: “You find the pink Himalayan salt for me, and I will find the paprika for you.”)

Tuesday, there was a short older woman with a nearly empty shopping cart staring up at the spices. She said she was searching for food coloring, so I joined the quest.

I found it on the top shelf. It wasn’t McCormick–it was disguised in an odd little Great Value box. She said, “I only need one color,” so I grabbed a tall bottle of red, thinking she planned to make red velvet cake for Thanksgiving.

She corrected my assumption: “I need yellow.” I told her there wasn’t a single tall bottle of yellow. She replied, “Well, then, I will need three boxes,” and I handed them to her. (I briefly considered opening them to fill one with just yellow.)

Her shopping companion rounded the corner, and the woman reported that there were no single bottles, so she planned to get three boxes, although she didn’t like the price. “We might have to go to Kroger,” she added.

“Oh, don’t go to Kroger!” I told her.

“Did you just come from there? Is it busy?” she asked.

I told her it was and suggested we look in the cupcake section because sometimes things hide there.

We wandered down the aisle–there was yellow icing but no food coloring. She resigned herself to Kroger.

I opened my wallet and folded a bill the way my grandmother always had. “Here,” I said, explaining, “I had a hard time for a long time.”

She got teary-eyed and started thanking Jesus. And we both stood there in the spice aisle, each of us thanking God.

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The words I spoke echoed in my head as I shopped for cat food and eggs and buttermilk. I heard them as I exchanged pleasantries with former students–and again as I loaded my car.

“Had.”

Our family had a traumatic 21 years. Our marriage had a difficult six. I had lost my granddaughter, my father, and my husband–the three of them dying horrible deaths.

“Had.”

I focused on the word as I drove home. Something about having said it struck me–maybe because it was on the eve of my birthday, just before a chronological break, maybe because there might be hope for 53 to be a peaceful year.

“Had.”

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That afternoon, my elder daughter dropped by so I could see my two-month-old grandson, The Cutest Baby in the World. We decided to take him to see my aunt, who had yet to meet him. At eighty, she reminds me more of my grandmother every time I see her, and in a small way, it was like introducing the baby to Grandma.

They took to one another–I have photographic proof. The baby lay in my aunt’s lap with placid satisfaction, his eyes the calmest I have ever seen them. He was satisfied to be with her, surrounded by portraits of his great-great-great-grandparents and photos of the great-greats.

Then, my uncle came home (he’d been, of course, at Kroger). He put the groceries down and came to meet the baby, who stood on April’s lap. (The baby loves to stand.)

Uncle B— approached the baby from a distance, like you would a strange scared dog. He stood with his hands on his knees, considering baby P—, calling a gentle, “Hey, there!”

And P— stood staring at back. The baby was transfixed.

It was a long moment. A two-month-old and an 84-year-old, considering one another. From across the room, I took pictures–my uncle’s back, the baby’s intense gaze, April’s smiling face.

And I thought for a moment that it should be my dad hunched over his moccasin-clad great-grandson; that Greg should be in the room, in the armchair beside me; that both of these men deserved to meet and hold this little boy, this bright sunshine after two decades of drenching rain.

And I just left it, grateful for the people in the room, all of us quietly delighting in the sunshine.

The Land of Before: The Thirtieth Year of Marriage

December 2, 2018

Last night, I called my younger daughter, who is 1,001 miles away at college.  She said that she was in the common room with her suitemates, and they were bonding, and I was glad because I think, in general, common rooms should be used more than they are.

Somehow, they got to talking about abortion and babies and whether you would keep a baby who you knew was destined to die. Abby had to tell her new friends that, actually, that happened to her family–that we lived that two years ago.

Until Abby wrote about Stephanie Grace’s death for English 120, I didn’t how much it destroyed her. Of course, I knew April was heartbroken, lost, and bereaved, and I knew of my own helplessness, but I did not know how deeply everything–comforting her sister, shoring up her mom, all while still keeping perfect grades–had impacted Abby.

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That’s the thing, the stunning thing: some of us carry tragic loads that seem too heavy to lift even once–and yet we must carry them evermore.

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I am in a group of women, anencephaly mothers and grandmothers, hundreds upon hundreds of them who have lost these precious babies, who are lifting their precious loads, and who are walking on in pain.

Before Christmas, I didn’t think I could walk on any longer.

It all seems so unfair. We should have a two-year-old granddaughter romping through this house. We should be worried about keeping fragile Christmas ornaments out of reach, and instead, there’s no baby–even her mother is gone. There’s just sadness, resignation, and anger.

With losses like those we have accrued, it does not matter if you can pick yourself up–because everyone must emerge from despair. If one person remains in the pit, then the other family members find themselves staying near the edge–there is, after all, an intrinsic moral imperative: you tend to the hurt. You try to carry them out–and, if you can’t, you remain nearby. In a family, there is no TRUE moving on unless everyone is ready to walk.

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I cannot believe how long my little family has lived with rage, for rage is–in some ways–the absence of love. But rage has within it an angry love–a love that says, “None of this should have happened, and it happened while you were with me, and you dared to stand beside me and endure hell and hard things. You stayed there with me, you propped me up, and I am mad that we had to endure this hell–but every single time I see you, I think of the hell.“

That’s what’s no one’s really honest about. That’s what no one says: if your husband holds your hand through two miscarriages, and if he’s there during two failed adoptions, and if you’re there during his three cancer battles, and if you’re both there during your granddaughter’s devastating death, then it will not matter how many roses one of you someday summons the energy to buy. It will not matter how many candlelit dinners you eat together. It will not matter how many times you reach for his hand in the car.

The sad anger is always there.

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I understand that God can do a work. What I am even more fully aware of is that God has not yet done a work, unless you consider the marvel that we are both in this house, that he is sitting beside me on the sofa as I write this. There is still a resilience despite the losses stacked like cordwood.

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In this edge-of-despair, often angry world, sometimes I feel far from God. I know I feel far from my indoctrination–I joke with friends that I need reindoctrination, I need to go back to those early days of adulthood, days where anticipation was great, when there was joy in keeping a house and fulfillment in the suppertime smiles of my husband and children.

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What you must never, ever say, the thought you must fight with ferocity–the one that you must always keep captive is this: I can’t believe this is my life.

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When I got married, I intended to be a frugal homeschooling quiverfull mom with six children–everyone on one pew at church.  Instead, it sometimes feels like the only true harvest I have is sorrow–buckets and buckets of sorrow, and it just seems like God has forgotten us.

But I know that, despite everything I feel, God is there because Mr. Chalk told me so. As did Lou Turk. And Mrs. Mullis. I know that at the bottom of the ocean, He is there. On the top of the highest mountain, He is there–and so He has to be in my sad and angry house, but I can’t find Him here.

And so I get tired, And I want to raze the house.

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Rationally, I want to destroy the house. To give up, take a cat and dog and flee–because there’s no way that God could have built this. Rationally, there’s no way the “tapestry” they talk about these Christian memes and movies can actually be something that works for me.

All I see is ugliness.

All I see is destruction.

All I know is the silence of the joyless house that I sit in for eight hours a day.

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It is only natural to think, how can this be God???

I don’t know because I’m not a theologian, but I think it can be God because I think that God, in the hard times, can teach us the meaning of the word sustain.

He can teach us what it means to be held up.

He can teach us what it means to be propped when there’s just no more energy for propping. When there is absolutely nothing left that we can do for ourselves, that is where God shows up–in our weakness, in our frailty, when we can be neither kind nor patient, when we cannot be anything positive at all.

But we hear ourselves at work or the grocery store, saying, “Good morning, Sarah, that’s a pretty shirt.” “Hi, Whitney, how are you today?” starting the day’s cycle of kindness, the process of reaching out, of being God to others–in this gentle patching, we lose a little bit of the pain. A little bit of that rage. We can forget the hurt temporarily and see, instead, God–I see Him in the student giving me  the candy craft he has made–marshmallows on a stick–embarrassed at 15, but still reaching out, being Jesus to a sad, tired teacher.

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Ultimately, no matter the emotional shape of our house, no matter how close we are to the edge of the pit, we are all still together.

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August 10, 2021, our 30th anniversary 

Since that day in May–the day of Greg’s brain bleed, the day of the strokes, the day the woosh of the pit was the only sound I heard, when we were all, once again, engulfed in it–I have told myself, On August 10th, I am going to pull in his driveway and say, “Let’s go be glad you’re alive.”  

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I thought, really, it wouldn’t happen after thirteen months of living apart.

I thought it would be too big, remembering the land of before. That land is a place we no longer know–and it’s a place few people here have ever seen us be. We have spent two decades in a land of burst and wasted balloons with little and faint music; we have only remnants of ribbon.

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Tonight, my younger daughter and I were in her bathroom–she was twirling in a little black sundress and her favorite cardigan, twisting her hair into mini buns, a preparatory post-pandemic collegiate dress-up. We were prepping for one last trip to her favorite Goodwill, forty miles away. “Let’s take Dad,” she proclaimed.

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Abby had collected stories for the car–the eight-year-old she tutors who hates “baby TV” (Paw Patrol), her roommate’s cactus scandal (the cleaning service threw away $250 worth of his plants), vegan adventures (recipe plans involving artificial eggs). She was opinionated and funny, just like we’d raised her, and we were already missing her, although she was right there.

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On the way home, we went to Burger King–I got a real Whopper;  Abby, an Impossible Whopper, and Greg, cheese sticks.

Abby’s vegan Whopper was a little burnt, and I rolled down the windows while Greg made Dad jokes: “It’d be impossible for me to eat that Whopper.” Abby ignored us, munching happily, saying, “It makes me feel included.”

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We whizzed down the highway, the sun setting pink in the distance, the sky cloudless through the pine trees. 

Abby, her mouth full, mumbled something about deer.

“Deer?” I asked.

“Did you see all the deer in that field? There were like a ton of deer. Like twelve. There were mothers and babies. So many deer.”

We hadn’t seen them. Not even one.

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We told her the story together, one of the foundational stories of us, of our family in the land  before the pit:

On the night we got engaged, while driving home, I saw two deer standing in the dark at the roadside. 

April, when she came to us in foster care, had the last name of her legal father: Roe–meaning deer.

And when we found out we were pregnant with you–when I was desperately afraid–we drove the next day to the fertility doctor in Woodstock, in Town Center, and as we left the parking lot, there stood a deer in the parking lot, looking at us, then leaping away.

“Abby, it was near a highway like the one in Jacksonville. Near a mall. Lots of stores. There shouldn’t have been a deer,” Greg said.

And we marveled as we rode in silence, remembering the deer.

 

Dirty Dishes: The Nine-Minute Principle

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Written on Friday

One of the smartest things I did as a teenager was to build relationships with the parents of all of my friends. If I was at your house and you were in the shower, I wasn’t in your room listening to Billy Joel. I was in the kitchen bugging your mom. If the youth group had a pool party at your house, I certainly wasn’t in the center of the horseplay in the pool. I was in the kitchen with your parents talking about couponing and egg salad.

One of my better friend’s mother was a single parent. She was, and is, one of the calmest women I have ever known. I loved her placid demeanor and the matter of fact way that she lived her life. I spent at least an hour of my life simply reading her refrigerator door. It was covered with inspirational sayings and Dear Abby clippings that oozed self-acceptance and positivity, and just standing in that kitchen and reading that you could buy your own flowers encouraged me.

When she got married again, I was surprised, but she settled into her wifely role very smoothly. One day, several years ago, I went to visit her, and we talked about marriage. She said something that has stayed with me: “Once you figure out where the lines are drawn, it’s really very easy.“

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I had never thought about that, the fact that we, in our marriages, draw lines. We have them, really, in most of our relationships, even those with coworkers and grocery store clerks. I will be polite to you if you break in front of me at the copier but do not take my food from the refrigerator. I will make small talk with you while you scan my groceries, but please do not lick your fingers while touching my grocery bags.

In my marriage, two of the major lines were fairly clear–for me, no chit-chat in the morning, and certainly, no loud 6:00 AM Fox News. And my husband wanted the right-hand side of the sink empty. Clear always–for the filling of the water pitchers and dog bowls and, of course, for the washing of hands. (When the pandemic began, my younger daughter noted, “Now everybody gets to live like we have lived for 19 years .”) The empty sink was of utmost importance–and loading the dishes was my nightly responsibility.

I like loading them, generally. I like looking out the window, I like the warm water, I like the pets wandering into play with the soap bubbles and sneak licks from the forks in the dishwasher. I like the solitude–the dishwasher door takes up almost a third of our kitchen’s floor space, so if you are loading dishes at our house, you are guaranteed privacy.

And, honestly, I like the time to reflect at the end of the day. To stand there in the kitchen looking out at the Japanese magnolia in the twilight. To be alone after a day with 120 teenagers. To listen to Eric Church and feel the nostalgic hope that music brings.

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But, sometimes, I was exhausted. I didn’t want to do dishes. Three from scratch meals a day meant there were always so many. It was late. I was tired. Sometimes, I just felt like they could wait.

When I felt that way, this is what I would do, this is what I thought: Surely, I love him nine minutes.

And, with that, I would set the stove timer. Always nine. Never more or less. Nine was both the minimum and the maximum.

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Sometimes, as I worked for nine minutes, I thought contented thoughts–this kitchen will look good, he will be pleased, I am grateful that he is still alive to do dishes for. Sometimes, I was sullen and far from Christlike–as pastor Mark Rutland once remarked, “There’s nothing louder than an angry woman doing dishes.” I proved that maxim true. But always, I made it nine minutes.

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Now, my younger daughter and I are living alone, trying to negotiate the switch from mother and child to roommates, a relationship neither of us ever wanted–or expected–to have. She is supposed to be at Yale, and instead, she has been on the sofa in our den for 266 days. She and her laptop have rarely left it–because Yale is still Yale. The insane workload was, no doubt, more bearable in the silent and beautiful Sterling Memorial Library. It was easier to watch a three-hour lecture in Maison Mathis with hot coffee and a fresh croissant. Midnight snacks of raw cookie dough and Nutella quesadillas in her dorm’s buttery (with actual people) were so much better than month eight with Mom.

It was easy to be away, and it is so hard to be here.

But she is here.

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Today, I came home from work tired. Whatever ailment I have–fibromyalgia, hypertonia, just plain bad luck–I am in a horrible flare. For the past few days, I have screamed getting in my car.

Screamed.

I’ve done yoga and cried.

Hot baths with Epsom salts.

And there just hasn’t been any relief to be found. None at all. So, when I make it to Friday at 3:00, I’m so happy. So ready to come home and start the weekend.

But Friday at 3:00 at Yale is so very different from Friday at 3:00 in South Georgia. And she is at Yale.

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She is helping to design experiments for the psychology department at Yale. She is working in the lab there. She is writing papers and doing important work, but it sometimes feels like she is just hanging out in our den.

I want to tell her the minutiae of the day. I want to send her to Walgreen’s, ask her to do extra chores.

Almost daily, I have to remind myself that, right now, there is an Ivy League institution meeting at my kitchen table. (Certainly, some of the lectures I have overheard have been mind-blowing. Brilliant. I’ve listened to class discussions where I have barely comprehended a sentence. She says things to these people, her peers, and I marvel at who she is when she is with them and who they are now, and who they all will be.)

Yes, there are times when I am able to say, “That might be the future President of the United States who is saying hello to my dog on Zoom.”

There are days when I can understand that she has papers due, question sets, and quizzes.

But there are other days, like today, when I don’t want to do anything and so much needs to be done.

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Tonight, I wanted her to take out the trash. I wanted her to sweep. I wanted her to dump the rags, and I certainly wanted her to unload the dishes.

I didn’t want to bend. It hurt. I hurt. But my daughter had work to do on this, the last day of classes. She had lots of it–she would, I knew, see 2:00 AM again.

I thought about the nine-minute principle, about how it applied to her.. And I went into the kitchen, turned on “Holy, Holy, Holy” and began to unload the dishwasher–because, really, you can do almost anything when the music is right.

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Sometimes, the people we love need big things–chunks of money and time and work that are hard to give, that require truly gutting sacrifice. Ironically, these things be easier to give than the small continual tasks that seem so very burdensome.

Letting the dog in; retrieving a forgotten towel; refilling a glass of chocolate milk; fetching a bookbag from the car–these tiny acts of grace are ultimately redemptive signals of grace, reminders of love. They are so much more than simple minutes.

The Grand Mistake; The Minor Miracle (Cancer Number Four: Really???)

Last Saturday, I went to the mall, and as I was leaving, I bumped into a former student and her mother. They are the kindest of people, and I was wild-eyed and sad–it was just sixteen days from my father’s death by suicide and thirty-six hours before my husband’s second heart surgery in eight weeks. It was just too much, and they could tell.

“How can we help you?” the mother asked; I mumbled that I didn’t know, that there was vague talk of a fundraiser and that we had a Boston butt–I’d just eaten some for breakfast, in fact.

“We do food,” the mom said. “I’ll bring you a frozen crockpot meal later–that way, you can just pop it in whenever you want.”

I can’t even be sure I was appropriately grateful–tired and overwhelmed, I was mainly just glad to live in a town where people will feed you if you don’t even know their first names.

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On Monday, Greg had his surgery/procedure–we had been told it had a 50/50 chance of working, so when I saw the cocky strut of the surgeon’s assistant, I was relieved. It took two plugs, but his heart was not going to be a problem anymore.

They moved him to a room overlooking the water, and we prepared to settle in for a quick overnight stay. I was hoping for an overdue lunch and a catnap–I had only slept two hours the night before and, worried, been unable to eat much that morning.

But then the nurse said, “And you have had ————recently?”

We were confused–and then she added something like, “For the ———- cancer?”

Met by silence and sputtering, she showed me the record. She pointed to his name and birthdate, she pointed to the name of the cancer–he had cancer in a vital organ. It had not metastasized–I remember being grateful for that. My brain jackhammered simultaneous thoughts, over and over saying, above all the others:

Cancer #4 has been here for weeks? And we hadn’t been told at all?

We have wasted so much time.

Cancer #4 is here.

Shaking, I immediately called his oral oncologist and left a message–I thought that the OSCC would have gone to his brain, not traveled south–that was my only stopping point, the only hinge holding me: I’d never read that it could go where it evidently was. I called the hospital’s patient advocate, got no answer; texted my cousin, a malpractice attorney, and even called the hospital’s attorneys–because someone needed to get in Greg’s room and answer questions.

Because it was there in print. He had cancer.

We asked for the charge nurse, and a cluster of people gathered–all appropriately concerned. My lawyer cousin called, and he made me laugh in the way that cousins do, offering colorful language and good advice, suggesting an X-ray.

Greg, still required to be immobile, lay on his bed. “I had an X-ray in October,” he said, “Can you look at that X-ray, too?”

They did. And, in it, his vital organs were intact.

There was still so much confusion–but there was enough relief that as the X-ray tech arrived, I said, “I’m going to dash down and get something to eat.”

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I stepped off the elevator, my mind flying–we still had ninety minutes in the business day–a lot of time to pursue answers. Greg had told the nurses that he would have answers before he left the hospital Tuesday–we were not waiting until Wednesday and then driving back to talk to so-and-so–we were not going to be patient or polite. Cancer #4 left no time for that. I was strategizing–who would best help us? Who could sort this out?

Then, halfway to the cafeteria, I spied them–in resplendent businesswear, tags bearing credentials I liked: there was The Powerful Person (TPP), involved in conversation.

And it wasn’t rest that hit me, but there was an immediate sense that now, the puzzle would be sorted.

I took a second to calm myself, tried to remember my cotillion skills, stuck out my hand, introduced myself and said, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I can assure you that the most important thing going on in this hospital is happening in my husband’s room right now. Can you please come there with me?”

And The Powerful Person did.

On the elevator, I gave them the litany of medical tragedies, the testimonies of Greg’s stoicism, the story of my father’s death–and I said, “We have to know if this is cancer #4.”

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TPP stopped at the nurse’s desk, then went in and met Greg.

Even now, I just remember how much better I felt: there was an authority present, someone who could help. TPP said the right things, shook Greg’s hand, distributed business cards. Cared–and took control.

So, I left to go eat.

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The end of the story is simply this: he didn’t have cancer. A machine or a human had erred. (We still aren’t clear which.)

As people do, our friends and family tried to figure out the why behind this happening: what were we supposed to learn? Was it so we could pray for the person who did have cancer? Why allow us to be shaken so?

I know, of course, that there does not have to be a reason, that things sometimes just happen. That this will one day be just a bad memory, a cosmic joke.

Then, I will testify that in a short 55 days in the fall of 2019, Greg had open heart surgery and complications; he had a second, chancy procedure; my father died by suicide–and, to top it all off, we were told that cancer number four had said hello.

I will remember how awful that felt–that the fear and the powerlessness were overwhelming.

And I will also remember how it felt to hand things over–to let go, to walk away, to say to someone else, “You fix it,” and feel absolutely certain they would.

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Tuesday, as we left the hospital–after adding more business cards to our collection–I got a text. It was the mother, checking in–she would being dinner the next day,

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I stayed home from work on Wednesday. I was still too shaken and exhausted by our near-miss,  and Greg was back on restrictions–couldn’t lift, couldn’t drive. I lay in bed until 11:00 AM then forced myself to do chores. Our normally tidy house was no longer so–I couldn’t do it all: work, grade, tutor, exercise, cook, and clean. I vacuumed, noting that somehow the antique marble coffee table was in the middle of the rug. I washed sheets and the duvet cover, going outside midway through the drying cycle to ensure that the duvet was not eating the sheets, not wanting to deal with that.

I tried hard–to rest and to clean. To keep a balance. I needed balance.

So, later, when I opened the dryer to find that the denim duvet had, in fact, eaten the sheets, I just brought the ball of linens in and set it on the kitchen table. I tried to unknot it, but I was getting nowhere. Greg came over to offer suggestions since he could not help pull. The knot only grew tighter–and, since all I wanted to do was crawl back into bed, and I had to have sheets to do that–I felt the frustrated tears threatening: this was all so stupid and unfair.

On top of everything else, I couldn’t even make my bed.

That instant, the doorbell rang.

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The student’s parents stood on the stoop, bearing a frozen pork loin, some cranberries and green beans. Their car was running in the driveway. They smiled up at me, offering the food.

“I’m going to need you to come in here and move a table and help me with some sheets,” I said bluntly. (I hope, now, writing this, that I thanked them for the food, Please, Lord, let me have thanked them for the food.)

“A table??? Sheets???” they smiled gamely, confused. The husband went to shut off the car, and then we filed in the house, where, right after we made polite introductions, her husband helped me move the coffee table.

The sheets were still on the kitchen table. My voice quavered as I talked about them–I was still so upset–and then the wife said her husband was great with knots, and he was. Four grown adults stood there looking at sheets with such satisfaction.

As they left, I stood outside with them in the drizzle and tried to convey my thanks, the marvel of the timing–it overwhelmed me that the doorbell had rung just when it did. I ended up crying in her arms, as she murmured that it was all “too much, too much for anyone.”

I would have been embarrassed, had I not been so tired, had I not been so humbled at God’s grace and power.

He had shown me–in less than 48 hours–that he was in the Big–but he was also in the Small.

In that is my rest. In that is my strength.

 

 

 

 

Please: Don’t Ask How I Am (When You Know)

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(Note: This is not to step on toes. This is to help me survive the grocery store. And any tragedy survivor’s inner circle should always ask–multiple times a day.)

Five weeks ago, after Greg’s open-heart surgery, when he was housebound and didn’t really feel well, I would pick him up after work and we would go sit at Ruby Tuesday’s and share an appetizer. It worked to fight cabin fever, and sometimes, sitting across the table from each other, I could feel the trauma start to slip away, could glimpse the people we once were.

One day, on the way back to the house, when I thought he had also briefly remembered, “Oh, I used to like her,” I said, “I think it would take more than a month on an island together to recover. More than a month. I’d need two weeks of just pure silence.”

And he agreed.

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Of course, we did not get that. My father died by suicide days later, leaving us–once again–completely unmoored.

(If you have joined this blog for the suicide segment, but have missed the preceding anencephaly and cancer segments, you need to know this: the members of my little family are all too fatigued/wounded/calloused to comfort one another.)

Beyond encouraging one another to eat and suggesting, “Perhaps a hot shower would help?” we have little to offer in the way of assistance.

We can offer you little as well.

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My father’s death has me exhausted by the simplest of questions: “How are you?“ I am asked this a hundred times a day by the kindest of people. It is, after all, the all-purpose American greeting.

It seems rude, then, to suggest this, but I believe that perhaps after tragedies that question should remain unasked for a while. These days, I can feel “fine” and five minutes later be weeping in my car. Everything is confusing; my emotions are ajumble–do I want to go eat with a friend, or do I want to lie in bed with my cat? Right now, I can’t decide between Mr. Pibb and Coke without crying–so I certainly can’t tell you how I am.

Saying “fine” after a tragedy is easy, but it’s a lie. Not only have I lost my father, but I’m watching my daughters and brothers struggle from hours (upon hours) away.

Saying “awful,” while more honest, necessitates a conversation that neither of us may really want to have–and it’s not entirely true because there are still bits of joy in each day.

Saying “sad” might make you pat me on the shoulder, and then, depending on the depth of affection we share, I might collapse crying in your arms at school or at Walmart.

And you know all this: you know I’m not fine. You know I am awful. You know I am sad. So, maybe just take a break from asking for a while.

Just say, “I’m glad to see you.” Then–maybe–smile.

In the days right after a tragedy, just be glad that the survivors are coming through the door at work or are seated next to you at church. Acknowledge their presence, but don’t question it. It’s one less answer they’ll have to search for, and they will be grateful.

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Time and Tiaras: On the Death of my Best Friend

This blog was originally a Facebook note on September 19, 2009. (Today I found myself writing part two, so I thought I would post this, part one, tonight.)

This has been a hard weekend. A teacher from Center Elementary, Delilah Thornton, passed away suddenly—and although I did not know her, I do know Suzanne Bokor, who now has lost her best friend. Who writes on her Facebook page, “I can’t sleep or stop crying . . . I don’t know what I’m gonna do without her . . . Delilah, you will ALWAYS be with me . . . My heart is broken. I love you, Delilah.” And I know the land that Suzanne is walking into, because it is one that I have been walking for almost two years, since the death of my dearest adult friend, Stephanie Saussy. 

When you are a kid, friendships are almost prescribed: your seatmate on the bus, your softball teammates, your mother’s best friend’s kid. It doesn’t matter whether you like these people or not, because you are stuck: they are going to be on that bus, at that game, on that porch, playing Monopoly under duress while your reprieved, happy mothers giggle in the next room. Make friends; make do, take what you’ve got.

Adult friendships are different; they are based more on a choice: I like this person. A lot is at stake in the buy-in—as an adult, you’ve made mistakes bigger than dropping your lunch tray, you’ve got more water under more bridges, and you think really carefully about who you are going to show those long-buried skeletons to. Then there’s the time investment—something laundry and carpooling leave too little of. For mothers, especially, I think friendships carry an added cost: you know that your daughters are going to idolize your friends, just as you did Mrs. Campbell and Mrs. Fesperman in your childhood world. So, you hope to pick someone worthy of the time and the tiaras—and in Steph, largely, I had both. 

I didn’t move back to Waycross happily—we were broke, Greg was sick–I didn’t know or care who my neighbors were. Sure, I knew that behind us was the Saussy’s house, but I didn’t know a Saussy was living there. It took about three months for Abby and C——- to discover one another through the backyard bushes, and, truly, I spent the first sixth months of our friendship apologizing for my family’s intrusion. I was a teenager again—the uncool kid, the fat chick on the periphery, star-struck by the cheerleader with the great husband, the easy pregnancy, the monogram-wearing kid, and the perfect smile. She was and had everything I would never be or have, and why on earth was I now in her kitchen? 

I know now that God put me in that kitchen, that He lined up our lives—that my time in Cancer Land, complete with a 7 month-old infant, uncannily paralleled hers. Greg and I had lived it: we had counted the minutes until the next Kytril pill; we had shaved his head, worrying about what our children would think; we had struggled through the stupid marriage stuff (“Why can’t you put the milk up?”), while simultaneously struggling through the deep stuff (“All Mommy can tell you is, I really don’t think Daddy is going to die.”) 

And so, Steph and I had common ground on which we based an uncommon friendship: the teetotaler and the gal who enjoyed the glass of good merlot, the mother whose kids were bedraggled and barefoot and the mom whose kids wore matching Crocs with their every outfit. I exasperated her with my total cluelessness about the feminine world of makeup and hair: “You send that child over HERE before that dance recital. Don’t you TOUCH her hair.” Steph was my girls’ biggest fan, and the stars in their eyes were certainly those that I expected. 

Now, I am left, holding that friendship—she is gone. One of the ways in which the loss of an adult friend differs from the loss of a childhood buddy is you know so much more. You can count the cost. You know the tradition of coming over “just before lunch on Christmas” is over. That there won’t be anyone else that you can lie in bed with on a rainy afternoon and watch “The Waltons.” That it will be years before another friend, a replacement, looks you in the eye and says, “I haven’t ever told anyone this.” You know your daughters will hold onto the bracelet that’s broken, the T-shirt that’s stained, and you will not be able to fight their insistent “Miss Stephanie gave this to me.”
There’s no more giving—you’ve gotten all you will get. And the instant you realize that, your heart is broken.

The heartbreak that follows the death of your friend is totally misunderstood. You have not lost a relative. You have not lost a child. You have not gotten a divorce. You have just lost a friend. You will go to work, not missing a day. You will be kind to the busybodies who stop you at Kroger, prattling about “her tragic death,” oblivious to the fact that part of you is now, forever, gone. You will cry at night alone, after your understanding husband gives up on understanding. You will wear her earrings her family gave you, touching them just to get through the day.

You will get through an amazing number of days, you and your broken heart. You will see a sunset, hear a song, smell her perfume—even, sometimes, hear her laugh like she’s in the room. You’ll even see her in your dreams: That is the best of all. 

And you’ll realize that an adult friendship is the best of all—it’s the hard stuff: marriage, kids, sickness, bills; the fun stuff—first birthdays, drinks in the backyard on a perfect summer night; the forever stuff: listening to music in the dark on a drive, looking at the stars, knowing all is right in the world, at least at that exact instant. You appreciate that someone with one true friend is rich indeed, even if that friend leaves for Heaven early.
You know this, because you’ve grown up.

Your Broken Pots: His Glory

Today, I spent silent hours in the car with Greg–we were going, again, to the doctor. We don’t even pretend anymore; this morning, we didn’t want to be in the car, didn’t want to be spending our day in waiting rooms. We did not buy Chick-fil-a biscuits on the way out of town, didn’t discuss going to the arboretum after the appointments–there was no attempt to make this into a fun trip.

He got into the backseat of the car–he can’t ride in the front seat near A/C with his dry eyes. He played Dig It for ninety minutes while I listened to Jason Aldean on Pandora.

We were alone, together, absolutely silent, so weary of it all.

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The drive home was slightly better–he’d gotten bad news about his heart, but good news about his eyes, and, besides, the Braves were on WTBS.

Distraction is good in a crisis, and October medical setbacks are splendid, really–there’s always baseball to watch, to pretend to care about. (Faking interest in every round of Wimbledon is much more difficult, but we managed to in 2001.)

When we got home, we continued watching, and I idly scrolled through Instagram–cats and triplets cheer me up when nothing else will.  And, there, mixed in with the jumble of cheerful pics, there was a wedding picture of  Juli Wilson, pastor Jarrid Wilson’s young widow. Her husband died by suicide a month ago–it was national news.

As I looked at the sweet, hopeful wedding picture, with its 37,000 likes–pictures taken just twelve weeks ago had only 527–and I thought, “This woman didn’t want this ministry.”

Just weeks ago, she was posting pics of her young sons on the ball field, silly shots with her husband at a barbeque, the whole family piled in the pool. Thirty days later, not only has her whole world changed, but she also has 161,000 followers.

She didn’t want them. That. 

She wanted something else entirely.

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That’s the whole problem, really: what we wanted is so far from what we got.

That sounds so simple that it’s almost moronic, but think about how far what you have right now is from what you wanted.

I wanted to be a stay at home wife, a homeschool mom, to have scads of children who had my eyes; I wanted to quilt and create. I cannot even confess all of the things that I wanted that I do not have because doing so gets me lost in a world of sorrow and lack.

Balancing the loss of what we wanted and the reality of what we have–and finding a bearable place to put all that pain–seems, at times, to be the bulk of adulthood’s mental work. There’s still a part of each of us that stands and screams, “This is not what I wanted!” and we have to try to silence the shouting, have to try to convince ourselves that this–though unwanted–is good.

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Three weeks ago, when Greg was having his mitral valve replacement, we were told multiple times that he could die on the table, that–due to the calcification on his annulus– his heart could break in half.

My father, my brother, and friends in our inner circle offered to sit with me in the waiting room. I told them all no.

I wanted no one near.

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I can’t help but think of my own desire for solitude and space when I consider Juli Wilson.

I cannot imagine my husband’s death making national news, my reeling family in the media spotlight, TV commentators dissecting his final hours, YouTube pastors and laypeople pontificating on his ultimate destiny–heaven or hell? And lost is the fact that Jarrid Wilson was a person, that there are people whom he is known to whose hearts are breaking.

And faced with this–the reality that she knew her husband, his heart, and their mission, Juli has decided to publicly walk forward on a path she did not choose.  To accept the mantle she did not want, could not have dreamed of.

And that’s what we as Christians do–it’s what we must do to make sense out of this messy and chaotic earthly life.

We must hold up our broken pots, show them to each other, say, “This is what I have over here, and this is what I have learned so far.” 

The beauty of our brokenness is that we don’t even have to create one perfect clay pot. We don’t have to have one single part of our lives together–not one single part–because we are covered by God’s grace, and people can see that light inside of us.

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On Facebook this morning, after our long post about Greg’s rapid AFib and expensive eye medicine and weariness, there was a comment from an old friend: “It’s very brave for you to share your lives with us. At the risk of sounding trite and cliche “your tests are testimonies” to everyone.”

Greg and I are surprised by messages like these. We know we are deeper in the mire than we have ever been Despite this, God is using our walk.

Isn’t that amazing?

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Greg and I cannot fathom how this will all end, or if it will end, ever. We are honest when we say this to each other.

Today, I told him, “What I miss most is having hope.”

And he reminded me that there is still, deep within me, light. “Aren’t you the one who says it will all work out, that it will be okay?”

“Oh, that?” I replied, “That’s faith. I have plenty of faith.”

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Faith is my one clay pot, over in the corner, a little chipped but still unbroken.

I suppose Juli Wilson has a pot like mine–one she can’t put down, won’t give up, even if too many people are watching her carry it right now, even if she wants to rest.

Because once almost all of your pots are broken–once you have given up forever on finances and family and ease–you see the beauty in the few pots you still possess, and you want to show them, to share them, to say, “I can count the things I still care about, the things I am still sure of, on three fingers. But let me show you this beautiful pot that God gave me.”

Your remaining faith: His eternal glory.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Things God Allows

There is something that God does for me before a crisis–when I can see the giant, dark waves coming and feel the sand beginning to wash out beneath me. He allows me, always, a brief time with friends. The quickest of rejuvenations–not weeks on a beach, not even lingering dinners–just quick reminders: You also have this.

You have someone who smiles the second they see you. Who rearranges their schedule, welcomes you with snacks, wakes their slumbering kids, sits everyone in comfy chairs and lets you, for a moment, forget that offshore the waves are rising, and soon enough, they will be crashing.

I did that in August–sat in my favorite chair in my friend Lynn’s house, some 260 miles from mine. I petted her dog, joked with her kids, ate a donut.

Then it was time to go home.

I didn’t want to, really. Major medical crisis #4 was at home. I wanted to stay away, to wander around Atlanta, to go to Lenox Square–just as I had in college–and look idly at every single purse in Macy’s. To stand there and  feel their leather, to peer inside, looking for those with quality liners–because a cheerful purse lining is one of life’s unnoticed and unmentioned little pleasures. I wanted to eat a pretzel and people watch. To distract myself with the whorls of people and the chortling children.

I was still deciding–home or the mall?–as Lynn walked me to my car. “Go home and go to the Y–walking at the Y will be better for you than looking at purses,” she said, patting the roof of the car.

And I obeyed.

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I tell Greg that I wish I knew how many times I have ridden home from Atlanta, taken I-75 to US-82. I want a count because I love that drive–a few times, I have even taken it as a 500-mile day trip, running up to visit museums. For me, those miles are full of good memories with family and friends–now, almost a half a century’s worth. There are places between Cordele and Tifton where there is big sky. There are cows on low hills. There is my favorite pond near Alapaha–at sunset, with the wading birds and cypress trees, there’s almost nowhere prettier.

Sometimes I just pull over and let myself look.

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That Sunday, traffic was light. As I sang along with Jason Aldean on Pandora and drank my Dr. Pepper, I suddenly thought, “I am driving 70 MPH toward a place that I do not want to go.“

But the reprieve, I knew, was over.

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I teach school–I spend seven hours a day with teens who have not yet found their paths. They are still young enough to say things like, “I will never have a boss,” to think that eight dollars an hour is a lot of money, to believe that a fast car will bring them happiness.

But adulthood–especially when combined with tragedy, as most adulthoods are–will blow those illusions away. Even those we need,  the things we want to believe.

That’s amazing, isn’t it? We adults routinely do things we do not want to do, things that are so difficult. We go back to school at night; we relocate to help sick parents; we put our own dreams on hold for others; we face horrors–from bankruptcies to the deaths of children, things that are so terrible that we cannot even put them into words. 

We face things that we know are going to break and destroy us–but we keep our faces forward and we keep walking.

That is what it’s so insane to me about the Christian faith: we can continue to walk.

There’s no need to run away when we know that God is with us–when we have been assured that He is in the bottom of the ocean, on the rocky cliffs, in the low valleys–when we know to the very core of our souls that we are never alone, well, then we can walk.

(Note: I hate that some in the modern church make it seem like there is an epiphany-level of Christianity where everyone automatically feels perfect/better. Because I have never felt whole or complete, like my “God-shaped hole” (the one that the song says is “in all of us”) has been entirely filled. And the fact that I didn’t feel like holding my head high and shoulders back used to bother me–but I now see God also values the walking itself.)

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There was so much blue sky that day. I love a blue sky, white cloud day, and on that drive home, I felt fed by it. Like God was saying, “Remember, I do this,” like He was painting pictures for me to remember on the long days in the hospital, letting me store up comfort for the walk I didn’t want to take.

There is, after all, nothing in us that wants to spend days 39-45 in a hospital. Greg doesn’t want to have his sternum “sawed in half” now–or again in twelve years. We don’t want to miss work. We don’t want the bills or the stress or the sorrow or the pain.

But in three days, we will be in our third hospital. The surgery will go better than expected. In ICU, he will do so well that the doctors and nurses will marvel, as they always do.  We will watch Fox News and I will make sure the nurses wash their hands and give him good pain medication and the CNAs bring him ice, and I will ask the custodians about their grandchildren and the cafeteria workers about their kids and thank the orderlies when they bring me blankets. 

When I am sad, when it is all just too much, I will go to the lobby where the exultant new mothers sit in wheelchairs cradling their sweet babies, waiting to go home. I will watch their husbands strap the tiny babies’ carseats in, then turn and carefully help their wives into the cars.

Again and again, I will watch as new families leave the hospital, and I will be so happy–because my God in his mercy allows that, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carrying Your Big Wet Dog (Thoughts on Cancer Survivorship)

 

 

June 2018

I am in a day-long staff development, never a good place for me. I have a hard time sitting still, being quiet, being professionally “appropriate.” I interject, grow restless, stand in the corner and stretch. I admire the way other teachers can sit and listen and contain their restless minds–how the elementary teachers listen patiently while the speaker discusses high school standards.

I can’t sit like that. I organize my Google drive, catch up on Poem-a-Day reading, and still hear every word. I try to self-regulate. I watch the clock, limiting my comments to one per half hour.

(Years ago, after attending a monthly series of regional staff meetings together, a teacher from another county stopped me as we were leaving. “You know,” she said, her hand on  my shoulder, “I have never in my life seen someone who looked like they weren’t paying attention at all who heard every word.“)

I do hear every word. I just can’t idly sit with my wandering mind. It might go to yesterday afternoon, when, in the back of a desk drawer, I found the inky footprint of my stillborn granddaughter. It might go to the recent death of my co-worker. The death of my best friend. The tests my husband Greg is about to have–since, fresh off of cancer #3, he couldn’t see the other day. My brain may scream, “HE COULDN’T FOCUS HIS EYES.”

I think it is better for everyone if I quietly read a poem 

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During the meeting, I messaged a co-worker who was sitting in a waiting room in St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital where his young daughter, an ATRT survivor, was having her quarterly brain scans. He texted that she was in recovery. I replied, “I’m sorry. Every time. I’m so sorry.”

What I wanted to say, what suddenly sprang from my heart, was, “I’m so sorry you have to carry this wet dog around.”

I didn’t say that, of course. Too odd, even for me. Carrying a wet dog? 

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September 2018

I’ve sat with that analogy all summer–long enough that he is today, again, at St. Jude’s awaiting his daughter’s scans. No one I’ve run it by gets it. They don’t understand when I look at them and say, “Surviving cancer is like carrying around a big wet dog.”

But . . . picture your dog lost in the woods. He has been there overnight, and you have been searching desperately, wandering down spider-webbed trails, your good shoes getting ruined by the muddy muck near the river. And, finally, there he is–you see him on the shore’s edge–he is soaked, the water running off his matted fur in rivulets. His paw is badly hurt, but you are so happy to see him that you don’t care. You elatedly scoop him up and begin to carry him home. He smells. He is sticky and panting and soaked. Your arms ache. The walk is long–through dry creek beds and briars; you dodge broken vines and stumble over tree roots. Your dog is whining–he’s tired and hungry and hurting–but you happily carry him. You whisper into the warmth of his ear: I will take you home, and all will be well.

You will rest together. He will be in his bed. You will be in yours.

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That’s the goal in Cancer Land. While well-meaning nurses may talk about survival in terms of children’s high school graduations and wedding days, the real goal is only this: everyone back in their proper place. Children in their beds, parents in theirs, under one roof.

When cancer causes you to miss that, even briefly, you realize that life’s treasure is simple: it is presence.

The ordered dinner table with every chair full–Dad, Mom, and offspring. Quiet chatter about boring days. Bickering about the last piece of chicken or who has to bathe first.

During a thirty-one day hospitalization, it’s all anyone craves: presence.

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In understanding the treasure of presence, you truly comprehend the cost of loss.

The same hospital stay that teaches you to treasure a family dinner, a carpool ride, or a Monopoly game also allows you to survey the spectacle of death and sorrow. You are there when a grade-schooler gives a eulogy for his newly-dead father. When a groom diagnosed weeks after the wedding dies days before anniversary #1. When Val, who is young and beautiful and kind, dies anyway, and the nurses leave her name tag up by her empty room for days–until, when you can’t look at it anymore, you take it down.

(You still carry it in your wallet seventeen years later. You couldn’t throw it away in 2001. You are no closer to being able to now.)

If you are in the hospital long enough, you watch dozens of people die, sometimes two or three a day.

One weekend, five people die. Children die.

You still remember the wails.

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It is a miracle that anyone escapes–that anyone walks away from their front row seats of sorrow and horror–and so much more of a miracle when it is you.

Miraculous to stand, to find some footing, to gather yourself and make your way past the travailing parents, their only daughter dead. To walk past the orphaned children, the people wailing, “All is lost!” To look at them, recognizing that, for them, all is truly, truly lost–yet you yourself are able to continue to walk.

To exit that place, to walk away from the helpless and leave them unhelped–it is, in some ways, the greatest sorrow of your life.

But you don’t care what it is you have to carry–how damaged or mangled or heavy your load–because you are walking flint-faced past scores of the barren and empty-armed.

Your arms are laden, and soon, you will rest.

 

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It’s as Awful as You Think: Cancer the Third Time

I am just mad. Any blog about this cancer is going to have to start out with a lot of anger and wrath and ranting. As an English teacher, I would like to give some explication, set the background up, tell you little things about the past battles Greg has had with cancer, and kind of give you a general lay of the land. But I can’t, because I am MAD.

My husband should not have to have skin from his arms sewn in his mouth. He should not have to have his neck dissected and stapled like Frankenstein. He should not have to miss work without pay. Surviving a bone marrow transplant should not entail horror after horror. In a fair world, once you sat on that lonely bicycle seat behind that four foot steel door and let your body be “killed” by total body irradiation so that you could be brought back to life by a bone marrow transplant–well, in a fair world, after that, you shouldn’t have to have any body parts sawed off or cut out.

You should get to keep all your body parts.

My younger daughter, who worked so hard for so long, winning state and national academic recognition, should not have the last thirteen weeks of her senior year be consumed by her parents’ sorrow. I can see her at a cocktail party in the future, “My senior year? Oh, that’s when my mother was crying on the floor while  my dad was holding the cat and playing video games to try to distract himself from the fact that he was about to have a neck dissection.”

And I shouldn’t have to sit in a hospital room for a week watching my husband suffer. The 31 consecutive days in 2001 should have been the lifetime limit. We weren’t raw then–we were too ignorant to be angry. We didn’t know that financial destruction was coming, that we would spend thousands of dollars–enough to buy a car–on eyedrops (just eyedrops!)–after his tear ducts were destroyed. We didn’t know that, exhausted, he would go to the bedroom around 7:30 almost every night for the rest of his life–no late night movies or card games for him. No walks on the beach or screaming “Happy New Year’s.” We knew nothing of deductibles and co-pays and a life that is ruled by them.

We knew nothing.

And now we do. Now we know so much.

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I didn’t even go with him to Jacksonville on the day he got this third diagnosis. I didn’t have many sick days, and he didn’t want me to. He texted me during my last class: “It’s the same kind of cancer as last time” and my world didn’t even crumble–after so many consecutive tragedies, it’s nowhere near rebuilt.

I stepped out on the back porch, talked to him briefly, hearing the same earnest tones I so love. This is what it is, this is what we will do. I heard the sorrow in his voice.

I summoned another teacher to my classroom, directing him to make me laugh–and make my students laugh–in the final minutes until the bell rang. He did, and then he stood there after the bell, waiting for my daughter, who had to be told.

She came in with her best friend, and they started raiding the mini-fridge. She called a cheerful hello to my co-worker. I said mildly from the hall, “You are interpreting him being here wrong.” And her face fell.

But she didn’t cry.

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I went and told my boss, who was about to start a faculty meeting, “Greg says tell the staff. Go ahead and announce it.”

I left, and he did.

My happiest friend said later, “When he announced that, it was like I couldn’t hear any more.”

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We are some resilient folk. We bounce back, push on, forge ahead. But there’s no real forging this time. We don’t want to walk. None of us. Not this path.

We abandoned the rules we’d used to cope with Stephanie Grace’s death: be nice and give each other space. They were now moot: no one could be nice when everything was angry–and the anger made it initially impossible for any of us to be in the same room.

We set two new ground rules: no talking about cancer among ourselves–and no company. The plan; get the drawbridge up, lick our wounds, eat comfort food, pet our cats.

And cry.

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That Sunday night, as we readied ourselves for a week at work, I listed our co-workers with cancer, all of whom have markedly better attitudes.

I was hanging up shirts when I asked Greg, “Why can’t we be like that? Chipper and driven? Why are we like this?”

Greg looked away from the television, met my eyes, and replied slowly, as if explaining a basic concept to a small child, “We don’t wear the same clothes as they do. We don’t watch the same TV shows. We don’t like the same foods. So we don’t have to have the same attitude about cancer. I don’t have to be all whoo-hoo . . . I can be this is going to stink for a while.”

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On Tuesday, a swagger-filled fifteen-year-old boy stopped by my classroom with a friend, a fellow I didn’t know. They stood with their hands in their back pockets. “I am praying for Mr. Grimes,” my student said. “He is in my prayers,” added the other boy, reverently.

They turned and headed out the door.

I breathed the air.

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