Marriage Counseling on Mondays

Today is our 19th wedding anniversary.  It would be easy just to post a pretty picture and congratulate ourselves on a marriage that keeps getting better and better, because it does.  But, it could not convey the gratitude I have for Monday meetings that hold my feet to the marriage fire (however uncomfortable that may be) nor let my marriage counselors know their message is out, and you’ve been invited in.

Today is our 19th wedding anniversary, and there is something you should know.  I meet regularly with 20 or so marriage counselors.  Every Monday.  All at the same time.  

I agree.  It’s a little unconventional.  

But, it works.  

My marriage counselors understand the blessing and the work required in marriage.  They understand keeping your vows in sickness and in health until “death do us part.”  They believe in a love stronger than death because they lived it, and they continue to live it.  Their spouses of 7, 38, 56, 60 years and all the years in between, left this earthly life without them.

They show up on Mondays to learn from each other, and I am there to learn from them.  They don’t talk at the same time, but they say the same thing.  

They share their undying love for their spouse and their horror as they observe husbands and wives taking each other for granted, being cool, dismissive, and unkind.  They want to shake us, or avoid us altogether because our ignorance hurts them so.  

Oh, what they would give for what we blindly throw away. 

Everyone in the room has lost their spouse, but me.  Yet, they let me sit at the table and ask questions, and pray, and learn. 

I pry.  No, they don’t ever remember being lonely in their marriage before their spouse died.  

Really?  

Yes, really.  Because their spouse was still there, they tell me.  Any loneliness they felt in marriage while their spouse was living was so pale in comparison to the loneliness of widowhood, it slips into non-existence.  All of the loneliness, little annoyances and irritations, hurts and disagreements slip into…

I wish we had room for silent observers, I tell them.  I wish other married people could sit where I sit, and see what I see, and hear what I hear.  Especially those who are coasting along, those who are troubled, and those who are ready to quit…The tired, fed-up, and unhappy.  

I also wish scarcity of time and abiding love weren’t so-darn-easy to doubt.  But, I’m a married woman staying up late to write while my husband sleeps in our bed, and I know that they are.  Only I have years of Mondays to remind me of the truth, and when I forget, Monday is never more than seven days away.

So, Happy 19th Anniversary to us!  It just keeps getting better and better.  Mondays (and all of the days) remind me of the treasure I have in my husband, the time we have, the life we share, the memories we’ve made and the pictures we’re lucky enough to keep taking.  Thank you to my husband whose love continues to mold me and to all who make sure I never forget.  

Lingering Dragonflies

Once upon a time, a beautiful girl sat on her driveway and talked to a dragonfly, as she cupped him in her hands, and cried.  

I know this because that beautiful girl is my niece, my sister is her Mom, and once upon a time was this morning.  

I love my niece and I like dragonflies, and I think it is cool that she got to hold one, but there is more.

One of her best friends died from brain cancer in July.  He was only 22.  He promised his Mom he would come back and visit as a dragonfly.  And this isn’t the first time he’s visited.

I want to believe this, but I also want to reject the idea that would allow a human to visit his loved ones as a dragonfly, but not as a…human.  

But, then I remember a Scripture I recently read about freedom…

What would a soul do, if it were free?  

If a human dies, it is because the body has stopped living.  The soul remains unharmed and is freed from the confines of its weighty clothes, which previously bound it to the earth when walking, or the bed when walking became no more.

So, a body has died and a soul has returned to its Creator.  By some heavenly agreement, souls are allowed to visit those they love.  Maybe to keep their word.  Maybe to offer consolation and hope.  But, what to wear?

One woman described re-entering her body after a near-death experience as donning an old, heavy, wet pair of coveralls.  Blech.

If souls are truly free, can they choose to wear anything they want (except for their old body, which they wouldn’t want, anyway)?  It seems as though they should.  Today, a dragonfly visited a friend. Cardinals and butterflies are visiting others, elsewhere.  Who can blame them? 

Those who have visited heaven describe traveling at the speed of thought.  Barriers do not impede and effort is not required.  If I were to visit the earth after living in such a way, I would certainly choose to visit as something that could fly.  

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom…

One Room Away

I’m outlining a pink bunny in red embroidery thread.  It’s part of a quilt top I started making for my niece when she was born.  A year ago.  I hope it doesn’t become her wedding present.  

One room away, Predator vs. Alien is on the TV, and the rest of my household is discussing saliva made out of acid.

Seasons are changing.  In this one, I can no longer count on everyone being at the dinner table and day trips are catch as catch can.  We have work and workouts, band and birthday parties, and school is just around the corner.  Graduation dates are creeping onto real-life calendars and you can’t help but wish you could freeze time.  

But, the time you do have is, well…interesting.  

You eat together, watch highlights of the latest kickboxing video, and get fruit stickers on your arm from the boy eating an apple next to you.  You tickle their backs when they lay on your lap, but they don’t want to sew and you sure don’t want to watch what’s on TV.  

So, you enjoy their presence from a room away, and you think about…

Yesterday’s conversations, the passage of time, and daily tragedies that we survive, but cannot fix - all while trying to make sure your tears don’t fall on your sewing project because water makes the pattern disappear.  

Sometimes, you just plain stumble on a metaphor.

My mind became a gathering place for the people on my heart.  They didn’t seem to mind that they’d never met and the furniture was old.    

A friend suffered another stroke.  Mom is too young for a nursing home.  An aging child cares for an aging parent, both wondering if they can survive the arrangement.  An elderly widower has plenty of money, but no companion nor ability to drive.  No, he’s never heard of Uber.  Who is he?

I feel the weight of each one more than I care to.  Maybe.  But, especially because discomfort always gives way to hunting solutions, and I can’t find any.  It seems I am close enough to feel their pain, but too far away to offer any real comfort.  

Maybe it would be different if you weren’t just one person in one place.  Maybe there is no such thing as lasting comfort.  Maybe comfort only exists when it is fresh and given again and again and again.  And maybe it just feels better to write it all out, and hope that what you’ve written can comfort someone other than yourself. 

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” 2 Cor:3-4

Sorting Day

It might be too soon to write, but this is the place I come when my heart and mind are full.  It feels too raw and too one-sided, just yet.  The main character in this story is my Mom, but she won’t be writing it and may or may not read it.  Even now, her iPhone is disabled.  Passwords can be problematic and customer service, worse still. 

I’m sitting in our hotel lobby, a 1/2 mile from her new home - The Healthcare Resort.  It has been her temporary home for the last 3 weeks, but the decision to stay was made two days ago.  Finding the care she needs at home has proven an impossibility.  Good care days apart is just not good at all.  

Yesterday was the 4th of July.  Independence Day.  We sat outside on the patio with the most perfect of breezes and ate take out from her favorite restaurant.  We played cards and had a private concert.  My son played the Star Spangled Banner and Sweet Home Alabama, unplugged on his electric guitar.  Pretty sweet, because he had to sit all the closer, so she could hear.  

We talked and colored and watched 50 fireworks shows all at once, stretched across the Topeka skyline.  We watched the deer who made their peace with the fireworks, but not with us, and knew again we were in a good spot when others came to watch the show from where we already were.

It was the best visit we’ve had in years.

But, today is Sorting Day.  She will go back to her apartment for the first time in a month and will be looking for a particular set of things…The essential ones.  

When you’re disabled and live alone, the essential things have to do with survival.  When you’re moving to a place where survival requires less of you, you can remember that you have art supplies and imagine having the energy to use them.  You can imagine spending an evening on your patio with your family instead of in the kitchen, because you did that just last night.

If you’re a daughter along for the ride, you keep telling yourself these things and take a lot of pictures of the good, because you need them to get through the part of this day that you’re dreading.  You naively believed that it wouldn’t come to this and you can’t stop wishing that it still won’t, somehow.  But, you will show up at the agreed upon time, and it will unfold like everything else.  And it will be okay.

The good will keep coming along with the impossibly hard, and we will keep trying to remember that Independence Day can include freedom to do life in a new way.  Maybe even a better way.  Last night reminded us that this isn’t all about loss and losing ground in the game of life.  

After all, we haven’t played cards or watched fireworks…in years.  We’ve been too busy doing the things we’ve always done, and learned we can survive without deviled eggs in the process.

I snapped this last night for her brother and sister-in-law after we hung up the phone, so they could see where we were.  This morning, it looks different and feels weightier.  I’m tempted to let it stand alone with all of its significance, and break my heart.  And all of ours.  

But, I remind myself that she’s not alone in that parking lot, or in that place.  I’m on the other side of the camera, and my siblings will be here when I am not, and her friends will be here when they are not, and her favorite priest will be here when they are not, and the staff will be here when they are not…

And with all of that, my husband said he sees hope.  So, I am going to go with that…  

Rolling Hills and Plains Girl

I've always thought I could live anywhere and breathe easy and feel at home.   Anywhere.  But, I have been to the mountains and the beach in the last couple of weeks, and being back on the road to the Heartland gently ushers my suspicion into conclusion.

I am a Rolling Hills and Plains girl. I like all of the other places a lot. I just don't want to live there.

I have to admit my surprise. I spent all of my childhood driving through the Flint Hills of Kansas wondering why the people who lived there didn't move to some prettier place. Like the beach or the mountains. Or at least by a lake where they could cool off on a hot summer day.

 I've always thought that Kansas was the best place to be from because everywhere else was interesting and astonishingly beautiful by comparison.

And yet, after some time in the mountains, I find my neck stretching and my eyes straining for the view on the other side.  After some time at the beach, I crave the quiet that the crashing waves cannot give.

 I have come to know that I love a wide horizon.  I love that long line where the Big Sky meets the sprawling Earth and the trees that grow on it.   

Until this last weekend, I did not know that the mountain dwellers of Colorado have never seen a thunderstorm that lights up the entire sky until they found their way to the plains.

 As I drive, I think about what endears a person to a place.  It probably boils down to beauty and love and the memorable or forgettable things that happened there.  I guess that is why the Flint Hills of Kansas and the open spaces of Texas are the dearest to me.  

 Time has revealed their beauty and increased my ability to wonder at them. God willing, I will go to more beautiful places still, but not to stay.

The Intersection of 16 and 43

It’s Sunday.  This morning over eggs and bacon, I informed the family I’d be going on a long walk, as I often do.  Did anyone want to go?  They normally don’t.  No. No. No. My husband would out of kindness or duty, but honesty would keep him home, too.  I do appreciate the gesture, though.

I haven’t left the table, but an acute awareness of the difference between my children’s childhoods and my own has joined us there.  I have a poor memory, but can’t remember receiving or declining any invitation, ever - to hang out with my parents, go to the lake, or anything that would have gotten a quality timer out of the house to spend quality time with a parent or anyone, really.  

I mention my observation, and they mention theirs.  Like I’m a girl, and of course I didn’t walk with my Mom, because my Mom can’t walk.  

It’s a fair attempt at humor because they know that wasn’t always the case.  But, it is true.  They have never known my Mom as a person who could walk.

I can’t help but realize, again, that my oldest son is 16-years-old.  The same age I was when my Mom had a car accident that left her paralyzed from the chest down.  The same age I became a nurse, caregiver, grocery shopper, meal preparer/food-picker-upper, and a grown-up.  My brother was between the ages my other sons are now, and he could say the same.

But now, I actually am a grown-up.  I am 43-years-old.  The same age my mother was when she had the accident that claimed her mobility.

Sitting across the table from one another at these ages feels significant.  A little like a bell ringing from the outside in.  Like being at an intersection with the same street names in a different city.  Like a breathing time machine, as I heard in a song while making breakfast.

I left for my walk in a new and unexpected headspace.  I paused at my normal turn around spot to jot a few things down, and didn’t turn around there at all.   

I kept walking, thinking about all of the Prom pictures flooding my Facebook feed and remembering my own.  I marvel at the beauty of the girls, their dresses, the backdrops, and Moms with cameras.

I wore a handmade dress, lovingly made by my stepmom with red shoes to match.  I took pictures at the end of a hallway and in a living room, before and after the one hour drive to visit my Mom who was still in the Rehabilitation Hospital, so she could see us in all of our glory.  No one had cameras there.

It would be another month before she would come home in her wheelchair and enter our house using the ramp the Knights of Columbus built while she was away.  

Twenty-seven years have passed.  My Mom still battles with her body to stay well and a 16-year-old still wants to make sure his brothers did their share of the dishes, to make sure that everything is fair.  Ha.

The 16-year-old daughter of that 43-year-old mother is now a 43-year-old mother with a 16-year-old son.  She is grateful for and amazed by it all, but most especially by breakfast conversation that can create a time warp and at how you can walk six miles and never leave an intersection. 

Road Trip

We are on the road to Kansas to visit family.  We haven’t made his trip in a year.  Not together, anyway.  Normally, we would have been twice since the last time - Fourth of July and Thanksgiving.  But, COVID... and fear that gathering could kill our most vulnerable.  So, please don’t come home in July.  Or September.  Or November.

Vaccinations have been had and a year is well, way too long.  

So, here we are. On I-35.  Party of five.  A party of five, which now consists of four legal drivers (with parents in the car) and a baby who turns twelve tomorrow.  A new permit and an old permit-almost-license, as soon as the driving test is knocked out, because why would you be able to do it the same day as the written portion?

Time is picking up speed.  Even literally.  Today is the first day of Daylight Savings Time.  “Spring Forward’.  Yep, that’s what we’re doin’.  The clocks still say the old time, but we know the truth.  

These trips are going to be harder to come by.  We’re in the “sweet spot”, as a dear friend with a bigger and older family than mine likes to remind me.  Drivers and employees have more responsibilities and no paid time off.  Boys become men (like they should), and their Mom trades in her minivan for a truck because she was never the minivan type, anyway.  

I don’t know where they are going or what they will be, but I do know they won’t be home or all sprawled out in this minivan, like they are Right Now.  

Say cheese.

The Cedar Waxwing

Our cat brought a bird in this morning, like cats do from time to time.  Only it was beautiful and looked completely unharmed, except for how still it lay.  We picked it up in a towel and took it outside, hoping it would die quickly or recover enough to fly away.

I googled “bird with red on its wings and yellow on its tail”.  It was a Cedar Waxwing.  Beautiful.  When I went back outside to check on it, wondering if there was more I could do, it was sitting up.  

I unsuccessfully tried to give it some water with a syringe and decided that holding it to give it warmth might be the kindest thing I could do.  And it died in my hand.

Yesterday was a full day of new death and fresh grief, as working in hospice can be.  But this morning,  I am reminded of the weight of it.  The literal and figurative weight of it.  I feel the weight of a single Cedar Waxwing, sadness for this bird, for myself, and the world full of people who are accosted by death, both seen and unseen in its approach.  

At the same time, I marvel at how our final flight looks like lying still, even when you are a bird. 

And I wonder if  “Not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it”, if the same is true for Cedar Waxwings and for me, and for you.  Ones who are not to be afraid because we are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows.  Matt 10:30-31

We are the ones who are not to worry about our lives, what we will eat or drink, about our bodies, or what we will wear because life is more important than food, and the body more important than clothes.  “Look at the birds of the air, they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?  Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”  

Matt 6:25-27  

Yes, we are more valuable.  No, we cannot add a single hour to our lives by worrying.  But, we can be sad when a bird dies and when people die, and remember that God can send hands to hold us as we make our final flight or watch someone else take their's. 

Love Is...

Love is…

Everything.  Never ends.  Forever.  Taking care of him when he can’t take care of himself.  Strength to do what you need to do.  A need.  Learning to love in a different way.  God-given…We love because He first loved us. 

These are good descriptions of love.  But, they gain a shocking amount of power when you meet the ones who spoke them.   Ones who continue to learn daily about a “love stronger than death.”  Widows and widowers.

 They have suffered the deep and unrelenting pain of losing a spouse.  And they would do it again.  100% of them would do it again.  They understand grief as the price of love and they are willing to pay it. 

“Ask any young man in love if the suffering that he has known is worth the hour that it has brought him to, or if he would now forego his love to be exempt from future sorrow.  It is not necessary for me to tell you his answer.  Suppose that God gave every man the choice between a world in which there was no suffering, but also no capacity for love, or a world in which suffering remains, but everyone has the power to love.  Which do you think mankind would choose?  Which would you choose?  Quite certainly the power to love, even at the cost of suffering.” – Caryll Houselander

These men and women inspire and embolden as they live out their answers with their unanimous and resounding YES.

 They show up weekly to profess their love for their spouse and the depth of their grief, which is its only equal.  They take chances on sharing these most-sacred-of-things with strangers who quickly become friends.  Safe friends.  Because they know. 

Through the eyes of the only person in the room who has not experienced the devastating and life-altering loss of a spouse, I marvel at them.  I do not know.  And they let me come, anyway.  They welcome me and love me, even. 

 I tell them they are my personal superheroes, and I mean it.  They have lived through one of my worst fears and continue to find and take their next steps, all while not knowing how.  They are the embodiment of courage, resilience, and incredible faith.

 They teach me how to keep going when you don’t feel like it.  They show me how to offer and receive lunch invitations.  They model how to start, build, celebrate, and sustain friendships.  They take chances on people, and they remind me it is the little things that represent the greatest of loves.  A dirty cup lid, because your husband used to wash it, an empty passenger’s seat where your road-trip partner used to be, and a red shop rag in the back pocket of a pair of overalls tell the tale. 

 Happy Valentine’s Day to all who continue to celebrate a love stronger than death.  Your love continues to make the world a better place.  Thank you for sharing it so generously.  May you continue to love well and be loved well, in return.  God be with you. 

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” – C.S. Lewis