When Christmas Isn’t the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I thought I’d be better by now. I don’t know why it’s so hard this year. I feel like I’m on a ladder whose bottom has been chopped off and I just can’t get out of this pit…

Christmas seems to be the most horrible time of the year if it isn’t the most wonderful, like the song says. 

As I continue to accompany my grieving friends, it makes sense to me that a Christmas list once fulfilled in a time that has passed, is very heavy indeed. Especially with well wishes, short days and long nights, wistfulness for love and burning hearths, romantic and cheery songs, and Hallmark movies doing their darndest to keep everyone but well-paid actors in miserable shape. 

I took this picture on Christmas Eve. It captured well what I have been pondering. The task at hand.

 Knowing that life has ended (and how) or that it will end one day, will you still choose to celebrate? Can you? 

The painful ending is already known and displayed for all to see in the background. In the foreground, the Christmas tree urges us to celebrate the beginning, the present, and the future. Each seems to be in its rightful place. Background. Foreground. Past. Present and future. Grief and joy seem to insist on co-mingling.

I’ve noticed a temptation to hold on to sorrow. It seems more honoring of the one who has gone or our painful pasts. To leave sorrow behind seems to betray depth of love and pain and grief, especially if it is perceived to be a lessening in any way. But does one emotion honor love or pain better than all others? Perhaps, we can choose. 

This day, I will honor you with my ________________.

Sadness. Joy. Laughter. Tears. Creativity. Memories. Adventure-seeking. Christmas lights.

I took this picture on my walk tonight. I can’t help but wonder about the atmosphere inside this home outlined by Christmas lights-just enough to separate it from the surrounding landscape. What do the lights mean for those who hung them? 

I don’t know and will probably never knock on that door, but I know what they mean to me. And since I am writing this post and nearing the end, I’m going with faith - that when the sun has set and light is waning, we can continue to remember the light of day and lives well-lived and keep them burning until the sun rises again in the morning. With joy and sorrow and whatever the day may bring.

Chick Fil A-nniversary

Today is our 21st wedding anniversary. If our marriage wanted to publicly consume alcohol, it may legally do so now. And I think it may.

But not today. Today our marriage wants to celebrate by staying in and eating this. Pictured together, but eaten separately.

My husband of 21 years is sick with one of those bugs going around. But I dressed up for work just in case he was feeling better and wanted to go to dinner when I got home. He was willing but common sense prevailed. 

I gave him his gift in the plastic bag I brought it home in, changed into my sweats, and thought about what I would make of this anniversary with no flowers, dressing up, or dinner out. After shrugging off disappointment and completing a quick mental review of other disappointments (because we do that, don’t we?), I will tell you my conclusion is different than ever before. 

It’s different because yesterday my grief support group for spouses learned that one of our newest members took her life. She missed her husband so desperately and could not imagine living even one more day without him. She received ongoing and tireless love and support from our members: Phone calls, texts, visits at her house and theirs, lunches, dinners, and walks with people who have been there and are there—and yet we could not take away the one choice she chose.

Today, we grieve together and ask ourselves all of the same questions. What a comfort we receive in one another as we face the limits of our power but never, ever our love.

Marriage is not Hallmark movies and walks on the beach. At least not always or even most of the time.

Sometimes it is being left behind and losing yourself afterward. Sometimes it is weeks (months?) of ships-passing-in-the-night dotted by fleeting moments of profound connection. Sometimes it is caregiving or being disappointed. Sometimes it is splitting up so you can cart kids to different places at different times on different planets. Sometimes it is being grateful for Alzheimer’s disease because it gave you the opportunity to be together 24/7 for 15 years, along with the realization that without it you would still have been working (and apart). Sometimes it is years of living together followed by years of living alone. And sometimes it is eating chicken noodle soup by yourself from a cardboard bowl on your 21st anniversary. 

When you do life with married people who have been left behind by their spouse, you’re grateful for however you can get it. You know how profoundly interwoven two lives can become and you know how separation leaves every thread bare and aching. 

And because you know this, you can be content on a rainy anniversary—knowing that not grieving the one you love is gift enough. Except when you’re wishing for a little bit more, at which time you can remember he de-bones the chicken every time without being asked and a hundred other things just like it, because he loves you every day and not just on the special ones.

Pushing The Call Button

Our mom has been in the hospital for nearly a week with a severe infection. The antibiotics they thought were treating it weren't touching it. The correct and apparently the only antibiotic that could treat it wasn't started until the fifth day after admission. 

She woke up long enough to answer questions and hopefully take two bites of something. I have never seen her so sick nor been so afraid for her life. I spent four nights with her in the hospital and have a new appreciation for that little red circle with a white cross in the middle. When you push it, someone comes.

The call button.

Some nurses and aides were great, some weren't.  None of them took the time to learn or use my name. But someone always came.

The antibiotic worked within a couple of hours and returned Mom to herself. She is being discharged today. I am filled with awe and gratitude and am thinking about call buttons--how they show up and when they show up in our lives. My premature conclusion is that we should all have one. 

One push. No need to dial 911. That's too many separate actions for someone who is really in trouble. Physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually.

However, based on recent experience with a patient that should be too young to die by today's standard, I know that having a call button doesn't mean that it is easy to push. In this case, I am not talking about muscle weakness but that can be true too. I am talking about pride and expectation.

When you spend 65 years walking to the bathroom and wiping yourself, pushing a button for someone to come and help you is one of the hardest things there is. Unless you count pooping or peeing in a diaper before you push the button. You can call it a brief if it makes you feel better. Hopefully, we can find comfort in language when we can't find it anywhere else.

Pushing a button for someone to come and help you for any reason—unless you are a boss with a secretary or personal assistant-- requires a conscious acknowledgment and willingness to admit that you are no longer independent every.time.you.push.it.

Unfortunately, this is how we define death in our culture. Just not openly. 

As a wise woman in a nursing home once told me, it is a good thing we don't have an on/off button, or we would push it way too soon.

As I was returning to my mom's hospital room after getting some dinner, I saw an elderly man in the lobby. He had a highly bandaged leg whose signs of seepage indicated that it might be time for a dressing change. But he wasn't there for himself. He was trying to get a wheelchair to get himself to his wife's room as she had just had brain surgery. 

The man working the front desk said he could get him one but it would be a minute. The elderly man insisted he could not wait, as he told his wife he would be there at 8:30 and he did not want to be late. He limped off in the direction of her room. 

By the time I signed in and caught up with him in the hall, he was leaning with his head against the wall to rest. I sidled up beside him and offered my arm. He eagerly accepted, thanked me, and leaned into every other step. 

At the long-awaited door on the third floor, I told him he made it. He looked at me and said “we made it.” I said okay, and smiled. He introduced his wife and we shared a little small talk. As I closed the door behind me I heard her say “Who was that?!” I laughed as I recognized myself in her.

I just had to put words to all of these things because that's what happens when my head and heart are full. Plus, I like how it all goes together.

 Sometimes, we have to push the call button and sometimes we get to answer it. That’s how call buttons work.  

Life Goals at 46

I’m 46 now—as of yesterday. I’m still trying to figure out how I was halfway to 90 last year and this year I’m halfway to 92, but only one year has passed. Sometimes I think I’m getting dumber. 

After a sleepless night owed to coffee-too-confidently-consumed-after-8pm like a younger person might do, I am hearing my son’s voice in my head. A new year, a new you. And I’m wondering, is that what I’m going for?

Mostly, my thoughts are filled with wonderment at the lavishness of the love of the people in my life over the last several days. It started with a surprise party given by my grief support group—a feast and gifts for days. I thought it was just another Monday with people I love and admire, a time for them and about them. But they had thoughts of their own. About me.

Isn’t it touching just to know someone thinks about you? 

Receiving 36 thoughts embodied in 36 persons at one time is simply overwhelming. In a good way, of course. When I was telling my sister about it, she said “I need a grief group!” I laughed. I think everyone does, really. 

To my utter amazement and delight, I was off on my birthday and my boys were all free and up for a float down the Guadalupe, as was my long-time friend, Sylvia.

Our oldest moved out last week and our middle son will be two months into Marine Corps boot camp this time next year, so having them say yes to a whole day with me on my day was everything. Five hours of driving for an hour-and-a-half on the water is a lot of driving for a little bit of floating, but well worth it to me. And them, at least this time.

We came home to gifts on the front porch, gifts dropped by later, a phone full of messages to be returned, steaks cooked to perfection by my hardworking husband, and chocolate cake made by my mother-in-law. You know, to go with the pistachio cake and key lime pie from Monday. Love is good leftover, especially with a little whipped cream on top.  

This morning’s quiet time found me in the book of Mark. Chapter 8, verse 37. For what can a man give in return for his life?

That question on this day of overwhelming gratitude begs an answer. How can one repay such a gift?! It feels too big even to address. But a blank mind hardly seems right, either.

An image from last Sunday’s worship comes to mind. A little girl, maybe 4 or 5 years old, came in mouth-hanging-open-asleep in her mother’s arms. After some time, she awoke, only to be passed to her older brother. Another brother seemed to be eagerly awaiting his turn when his arms got tired, and Dad got the final turn and finished out the service.

I found myself thinking, her feet never touched the floor! 

I don’t know who enjoyed the holding more, the little girl or each family member as they took their turn. But for me, they answer the giant question Jesus poses in the book of Mark. 

Love and be loved. 

That’s what we give in return for our life. 

I work with so many people who grieve the loss of their independence. To become dependent on others is one of the things we fear most in our ultra-independent culture. And we are poorer because of it. If we all want to give love and serve, but no one wants to receive it, the system breaks down. The flow and power of love is stunted.

Sometimes, our job is simply to receive what others want to give, as humbling as it may be! And it is so very humbling. Feelings of unworthiness ooze out of the cracks in our being with thoughts of if-you-only-knew-who-I-really-am and you’re-such-a-better-person-than-me. . . 

Please excuse my French, but that is crap. None of us are fooling everybody. There might be some truth to the beauty and goodness they see in you. (Sorry, it is easier for me to pretend I am talking to you when I am talking to myself.)

So, I am receiving it! Yes, it is more comfortable to be on the giving end. A little power differential. 

To date, the best compliment I have ever heard was from talking with a son about his recently deceased mother. He said. . . 

“She had an infinite capacity to love.”

I didn’t get to meet his Mom, but I suspect she was able to receive the love he gave her too. However it was, she gave me my own life goal that day. As I consider “A new year, a new you” I resolve to grow my capacity to love and graciously receive what is offered in return. And meet that woman one day.

Thank you all for your love, in all of the ways you share it. May you have days when your feet never touch the floor because there is a line of people waiting to hold you. Amen.

Marines in my Garage on Memorial Day

My former Marine and my future Marine are working out in our garage.  Doing the “Murph” on Memorial Day.  Some Marine chant/song just finished, situated between a lot of other death metal songs, which supplied all of the motivation I needed to relocate from our front porch to my spot in the living room.  

In a string of events related to enlisting our son in the Marines this past month, I am more aware than ever that there is something in these boys and men that I do not possess and will never understand.

I wore a red shirt, nice jeans, heels and pearl earrings so I could channel strength and red, white, and blue while not feeling the least bit patriotic, entering the recruiting office that Monday morning.  I've seen it coming for a dozen years, but this meeting was only scheduled after a 5-minute conversation with the recruiter the previous Thursday (after a 5-minute heads up with a house full of people).  

I thought we were giving permission for our 17-year-old son to train with the Marines a couple of days a week and to undergo medical testing as a safety and liability measure.  I learned the following week that “that” was called “enlisting”.  Even though he is still free to change his mind for the next year.  Even though he “swore in” during his medical exam.  All which I learned after the fact, in casual conversation with my husband and son, in two separate coversations in the span of a week.

Annnd, I found a threshhold.  

I called the recruiter and told them  there is no WAY it should be possible for a mother to go through this process and be able to miss these very important details.  I’m not dumb, I was paying close attention, and THIS IS HARD ENOUGH WITH GOOD INFORMATION!  

He listened, said he saw me reading the papers we signed, so thought I understood, and put me on the phone with his boss.  I unsuccessfully try not to call him names in my head.

Still at the recruiting office, I thought I was holding it together pretty well until the recruiter said to my son, “In the event you pass away, your beneficiary will receive $500,000, who would you like that to be?”  My husband looked at me, with my wet face growing wetter, turned back around and said, “You should probably just make it me.” Or something like that.

That very question is the reason this whole thing can turn my blood to ice and my dry eyes into wet ones.  I can’t seem to separate Marines, war, and death in my mind.  But, I’m trying.  

I am haunted by unopened letters written by my grandmother to her son during the Vietnam war.  My Uncle was drafted and later killed at age 20.  My brother is named after him.  My Dad, also in the war and privy to the situation surrounding his death in real time, escorted his body home.  

Yesterday, my stepmom and I placed our hand on my Dad’s shoulder as we listened to Taps in church.  She and I were tearful.  He was stoic, standing as straight and strong as ever.

And this is what I am talking about.  I don’t get what these men are made of.

While I was still enjoying the front porch, I heard the familiar clank of the extension ladder being placed against our tree.  My husband, hanging a full-sized American flag  in the Oak tree in our front yard, just like he does every year.  Strong. Faithful.  Proud.  Free.    

I remain proud and in awe of the Marine I married.  He knows what is important, does what needs doing before anyone else notices, asks, or does it themselves.  I am proud, yet angsty about the Marine we’ve raised.  I remind myself that my husband is the product of the institution he is entering, which helps.  A little.  He is still the one I’m trying to let go of, while supporting him in his lifelong dream and tickling his back at night, like his little 4-year-old self.  

I am grateful to those who are serving, will serve, have served, and to those who lost their lives in service of our country, as well as people like my Dad who brought them home.  God bless you all who continue to honor their sacrifice by living your best life and never forgetting.

Middle of the Night Fight

I just wanted to share a few thoughts as your marriage and family therapist in training. 

 Because when was the last time you got to hear every word of someone else's fight?!

I had an intense observational session with my hotel neighbors between midnight and 1am this morning. 

No, it wasn’t scheduled.  

But, I showed up anyway because the wall was so thin, they may as well have been sitting on my bed.

I'm not sure who she called, but there was a strong opinion it wasn't her Mom, like she said.

My takeaways:

1.  Don't talk over your significant other, or anyone.  Ever.  This is verbal bullying and very disrespectful.  Let them finish.

2.  You may be able to cut the conversation length in half, if you simply acknowledge what you allowed your person to fully express.

3.  Consider saying, "I think you're lying" rather than "You are a liar!"  

4.  Go old school.  Use the phrase I really, I strongly, or I passionately fill-in-the-blank instead of I f-ing fill-in-the-blank.

5.  Avoid mocking your beloved in the tone or phrases they communicate with.

6.  Always and Never should not be your friends.

7.  If it's late and you feel like you are not making any progress, say "I'm done talking about this, now.  I love you.  Let's revisit this in the morning."  *Your neighbors will REALLY appreciate this one.

That is all.

Thank you and have a great day!

Bridging the Gap

Our Mom was paralyzed in a car accident 29 years ago today.  She didn’t realize that today was the day because she was playing Bingo.  But, her kids did.  

My younger brother and I remember the knock on the door in the wee hours of the morning.  We were the only ones still living at home.  I was 16, he was 14.  My sister was newly married and my older brother was in boot camp at the Naval Training Center in Illinois. 

It was our Uncle and Mom’s best friend at the door.  Mom had been in an accident.  She hurt her back, so she was flown to the nearest city with better doctors, is what I remember.  But, I also remember thinking she just wouldn’t be able to lift anything heavy for awhile.  

That turned out to be true.  But, how true, I had no way of knowing.  

My brother remembers a yellow envelope with her belongings, cut rings, and money covered in blood. I remember seeing her in the ICU, how bad the room smelled, metal coming out of her head and arm, asking her how she got some random abrasion, and hearing her robot voice say she would walk again. 

I left the next day for Disney World for my planned Spring Break trip with my high school choir.  I didn’t want to go, but staying wasn’t helpful to anyone.  She came home from the rehabilitation hospital three months later.  My brother and I became caregivers, and adults who looked like children.

Today, 29 years later, I’ve been very unlike me.  Fighting tears most of the day, actually.

I heard River of Dreams on Saturday while I was making dinner.  I heard it because I put it on my Spotify playlist awhile ago, because it reminds me of my Mom.  She used to play it on the piano and the piano itself would come to life.  But, Saturday, while standing in my kitchen, it brought my walking, piano-playing Mom and my little girl self into Room 167 at the nursing home, and I wept for all of us.  

So many losses over such a long period of time.  If you’re 29 years of age, you’re still young.  But, if you’ve been in a wheelchair for 29 years, or caring for and loving someone who has, it seems like a different kind of 29.  Maybe like dog years, where 1 year is really 7 years.  Or something like that. 

But, I need to write today, because I’m still surprised by my emotions, which tells me I’m not as smart as I think I am.  Especially after sooo long, and after Saturday.  I thought I got “it” out of my system.  Whatever “it” is, exactly.  

After talking to Mom today, and realizing that today is just another day for her, I think I am figuring it out.  

Today, I am sad for me and my brother, and for losing the last few years of our childhood.  I am sad for my older siblings, too, but in a different way.  We all bear and have borne different kinds, levels, and layers of suffering because of our Mom’s accident and the upside-downness that follows.  Where we went to college, or not.  Where we lived, or not.  How far we dared to dream, or not…

Even now, she is often at the center of our thoughts.  Our emotions vary widely, depending on what is happening with her, what she needs, or what we wish were different.  

But, because her suffering is and has been so great, her children’s suffering, as it relates to her own, remains unseen.  She is like a ship making her way through the ocean.  We are tied off in little inner tubes bumping along behind her, riding the waves as they come.  

It’s not that she doesn’t care, she just can’t see us back there. 

I was recently trying to convey some uneasiness I had about some changes in her health.  She said, “Well, how do you think I feel?”  

She’s right, of course.  

But, that didn’t keep me from feeling my feelings, just like it hasn’t for 29 years.  But, there’s often no place for them because her suffering is so giant and unending, it hogs all the room.  So, I stuff them, and cry for her instead because there’s plenty to cry about.  

And now I know something else.  I am familiar with pain created by a gap in understanding.  

I am writing a story about what life is like after losing a spouse.  I am an interesting author for such a story, because I have not lived that life.  I hope I never will, but am not naive enough to think I won’t.  But, I meet weekly with people who are.  I hear their stories and recognize their great suffering because their spouse died, but also that their suffering is unnecessarily greater because it is not seen nor understood.  

After today, I understand my motivation and my ability to write about someone else’s suffering a little better.  I see them and I see a gap.  

I don’t like gaps.  They’re unnecessary.  Love and compassion and listening and trying to understand can close them, or at least come close.

Dear Mom, Josh, Mike, and Michelle, spouses missing their spouses and all who live with a gap in understanding,

I see you.  I hear you.  I love you. And I want to understand…

P.S. Heidi, same goes for you…

Love, 

Me

 

Givers and Takers

A friend recently pointed out that we are givers or takers.  Overall, I think I am a giver.  Except when I go home to my parents' house where I become a taker, like the child I really am.

It is so nice to go there.  Meals are provided, my bed and pots of coffee are made, and towels are set out.  With chocolates.  Like VIP treatment at a fancy hotel, I imagine...

We often hear it said that "it is better to give than to receive."  But, if we don't learn how to receive, we remain poorer than we ought.  Not only that, but we increase the poverty of the giver.  For they are deprived of the joy of giving and the satisfaction of a gift well-received.

I think one of the whole points of living, beyond knowing, loving, and serving God, is to grow the other side of yourself.  Takers must learn how to give and givers must learn how to receive.

I realize that some of the greatest tension in my life comes when I am unable to love people the way I want to.  Because they are unable to receive it.  Walls are built for self-protection and fortified through the years.  Efforts to become invisible are rewarded with invisibility, and intimacy keeps paying the bill that never shrinks.  

 As I make my way from Kansas to Texas, from the family I was born into to the family that gives life to me daily, I look for silver linings. (I wonder if this is also something I have learned or if I have always been this way.)  As I see it, the silver lining is that aging brains and bodies, disability, and decline help us shift the eternal balance between giving, taking, and receiving.  The side we keep in the shade is forced into the sunlight and given one option only.  

Grow.

These hard things disguised as ugliness and decay are more like old friends coming unbidden - to help you move your old upright piano, because you can't move it by yourself.   And they're glad to do it.

Don’t Let an Aisle Be an Ocean

Posting a little late due to travel, but I captured a few thoughts on New Year’s Eve for myself and anyone else who cares to read them…

It’s the last day of 2022.  I’m with the fam, heading to Steamboat Springs for our first family ski trip – Senior graduation/20^th anniversary/Because we’ve-been-talking-about-it-for-years ski trip.  We’re on the second flight of the day and I have fresh inspiration for 2023.  

We’re flying Southwest, so seats are catch as catch can.  I sat between my youngest, who called dibs on the window seat, and a man who was sitting across the aisle from his entire family.  

 

But, the aisle may as well have been an ocean.  His wife, across the aisle/ocean had a kindergartner on her left (by the window), an autistic son who kept hitting her on her right, and a newly-walking, very antsy toddler on her lap.  And this man literally got his book out (Letters from the Stoics) and put his headphones on.  

 

I learned the husband’s name fairly early on, but heard it more often than he did.  I even got to help her get his attention once…After he didn’t hear her saying his name or see her waving her arms.  But, he did put the book down after awhile.  To watch a movie on his phone.  

A couple of us offered to hold the little one, and she took the lady behind me up on it, when things just got to be too much. 

 

The edge in the woman’s voice would have made my ears bleed, but my heart was already bleeding from imagining the rest of her life – when she’s not vacationing (Ha!) She was doing it by herself, just like she said (when he seemed annoyed that things weren’t being handled better over there).  I was afraid the only departure from normal was us going on a ski trip.  

 

I read and I colored, wondering what I could do without a hot poker and a good dose of courage.  I did nothing, but smile at the Mom whenever I could catch her eye, and silently loathe her beloved. 

 

I thought about writing her a little note, too.  But, LEAVE HIM! isn’t exactly in line with my beliefs about marriage.  And HANG IN THERE didn’t seem very helpful.  And ENJOY IT, IT GOES QUICKLY downright ridiculous, and unbelievably insensitive.  Perhaps the most validating, but still unwritten… I SEE YOU.  YOU ARE JUSTIFIED IN YOUR FEELINGS. P.S. I’m going to be a marriage and family therapist in two years.  Call me if you can’t find anyone between now and then.

Well over halfway into the 2-hour flight, he came around, and offered to cross the aisle to help.  She eagerly accepted.  

Hallelujah.  Lord, have mercy.  Maybe I should have given him the benefit of the doubt.  He certainly provided a lot of timely inspiration for 2023…

 

Take your headphones off.  Hold a kid.  Make eye contact.  Be a partner and a friend.  Anticipate the needs of people you love.  Don’t make them beg or plead.  Look at your spouse and your kids- Many are wishing they could do that very thing.  If you can’t do your share, be appreciative of the one(s) who are.  Express your gratitude, and don’t let an aisle be an ocean.   

In the words of Thich Nhat Hanh, Don’t “miss your appointment with life.” Happy New Year!  Thank you for flying with Southwest.