Healing Wounds

I'm making houses out of old boxes with pretty paper, scraps of wood, old jewelry boxes, and Altoid tins. (I am glad I grew up "poor" - it is easy to find treasures in things bound for the trash.) 

It's raining and thundering, so my dog has desperately situated herself between my feet. 

She's trembling. 

I play my music to increase my pleasure and reassure her, but it doesn't seem to make much difference. She trembles on.

This reminds me of my own trembling at different times, not that long ago, and also of yesterday's lunch. 

A very admirable and faithful friend reminded me of the unfairness that my old wounds should impact an innocent person. (Innocent person=my husband.)

True. True.

But, wait. 

I feel incredibly honored to be my dog's safe place during a rainstorm. And I believe that what is harmed in relationship (or a thunderstorm - will I ever understand this?!) can be healed in relationship. 

My dog has settled in and so have I. What an honor to help one another heal... 

Just sayin'.

Top 5 . Thanks, 2025.

Feeling less reflective than most years, my thoughts land on a very-zoomed-out version of 2025. If you're interested, they are as follows:

• My Mom died in February but I'm not leaving her there. I'm bringing her with me.

• A puzzle can be your best friend when your son is a Marine at the same table, going through bins from his whole life at home, and on the brink of leaving again. The perfect tool when you're trying to be present, but not too, and distracted from all of those feelings, but not too...

Probably the hardest year of marriage, yet. (The competition is tough when it spans over decades.) We were closer to divorcing than ever before. Spending our 23rd wedding anniversary apart when we could have spent it together was a pretty good sign of the times. Probably not ideal, but still best. 

And guess what? I think we're closer than ever before. (I say I think because I'm still a little afraid to ask him, so we're going with it.) Anyway, didn't see that coming!

That's the thing, isn't it? We can't see the good coming around the corner. Even when we're well into the turn. 

Another BIG lesson. Which reminds me - in case I haven't said it, and I know I haven't, Thanks, 2025. 

Top 5 Takeaways from 2025 

1. Don't run away just because you don't know how to stay. 

2. What is best is often a long way away from what is ideal. But that makes a lot of sense when you are way past ideal in the first place.

3. It bears repeating...We can't see the good coming around the corner. Even when we're well into the turn. 

4. Use yourself as an untapped resource. We can feel as if we're actually dying if someone else doesn't meet our needs. We're literally wired this way in infancy! In adulthood, we must learn that we won't actually die, we have what we need (or can get it) and we can always help/comfort ourselves. 

5. Prayer for Generosity: Dear Lord, teach me to be generous. Teach me to serve you as You deserve; to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labor and not ask for reward, save that of knowing I am doing your will. Amen.

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As for new beginnings, I propose thoughtful consideration of "Thus far..." or "This again?" 2025 saw me out with timely inspiration between my morning devotional and a Ricky Gervais comedy special. We run the gamut over here. 

2026 started similarly with mumbled conversation across rooms with our teenage son.

.... ... ... ... _______________10:00.

Did you say it's' only 10:00 or it's already 10:00? He answered "already" when pressed (but only because he didn't want to hear another lecture about wishing time away.)

Reminds me of a line in a book I read recently. Something like... Time - Nothing is more valuable nor regarded more cheaply. Preparation for Death by St. Ignatius, I think. Now that I think of it, I just might put that on my headstone.

Is 2026 going to be a thus far, this again, only, or already year? Probably D. All of the above.

God be with you and yours in 2026. Don't run away. We have what we need and there is endless good ahead...

No Place Like Home

Heading back to Texas in the rain could explain the water running down my face, but it doesn't. More accurately but incompletely, visiting the cemetery and Mom's best friend in her old room 167, does.

I guess I'm surprised at how much feeling at "home" in Kansas has to do with being hugged by and hanging out with my Mom.

We had lots of family, great food, hugs, bracelet-making, and football-watching at my Dad's, so it wasn't that there wasn't a lot of good and a lot of love in another home with a lot of great memories. There certainly was. 

I knew it was going to be hard and there was going to be a big void because I spent a lot more time with Mom than anyone else on my visits home, but I'm still surprised at how this feels like homesickness, for her. 

Many widowers have told me they lost their home when their wife died and just live in a house now. I think I'm closer to understanding.

Maybe I'm surprised because Mom lived in a nursing home for her last few years, our roles have been reversed for so long, and being with her always meant attending to a laundry list of things she wanted or needed, and usually right now. 

The lists were so long, I used to write them down so I could marvel at them later. I guess later is now. 

Here's one from my last visit with her, a month before she died:

Look for eye drops. Wash glasses with hot water and Dawn dish soap. Apples cut. Peanut butter on them. Window shade down. Water plants. Find necklace. Find earrings. Go through mail. Clean out text messages. 

Considerably shorter than when she lived alone in her apartment:

First 40 minutes:

Sweep up hominy (implied)

Pick up mail off floor (implied)

Empty pee bag

Put lid on toothpaste

Hang up sweaters (request for later)

Get jacket

Get bag

Close heater vent

Clean glasses

Wash inside of van window (request for later)

Open gum

Go to eyedoctor (request for later)

Get gas (request for later)

Another day:

Hi honey. I need you to...

Pull my shirt down on both sides and wash my glasses.

Get my zebra bag

Take vacuum off charger.

Get my phone off charger.

Put money in my wallet.

Pull my butt (x3) *Translation = reposition me in my wheelchair

Get my bangle bracelets

Move medical alert bracelet to other side

Get poncho

Put scarf on

I need my CPap put back on my bed, but I can ask Janet to do it...

Getting her from A to B was time consuming, even if she was on time, and you could bet against that with all of the money in the Publisher's Clearinghouse. 

It took four strong men to get her into any house and her colostomy, George, leaked at the most inconvenient times. Yes, including last Thanksgiving. She was in tears and just wanted to go home, but we made the best of it, and we're glad we did.

She wasn't talking about Heaven just then, but it would only be three more months until she got to go Home-home. 

She's nestled between a beautiful tree and her Mama. I am very happy for her, and closer to wanting the same thing for myself.

I am newly hopeful that I might, one day, have a similar holding in the hearts of my sons. Sizeable and significant, and if anything like me, quite surprising to them. 

No matter how messy, task-oriented, back-breaking, or upside-down it can get, there seems to be something untouchable about a Mom and her sacred role of introducing and orienting us to life. 

Roles might get reversed, but titles don't. She called me a lot of things (mostly good), but Mom was never one of them. That name-calling went one way, and one way only.

Here's to your Mom and my Mom, home, and the women who not only create it, but are it. Happy Thanksgiving. ❤️🌻

Goulash and Abandoned Tables

I'm standing in the kitchen, making my Mom's goulash recipe (in the same old pan she made it in) for the first time since she died, and in years actually. 

My husband doesn't care for it, but he is on his second week out of town, supporting search efforts for flood victims. My job is to keep things going here and to be grateful, which I am. And I am.

I realize how "white" this recipe is and cook the noodles in beef broth for an attempt at flavor. The miracle of this recipe is twofold. I remember it as delicious AND it doesn't have the staple of staples - cream of mushroom soup. 

My teenage son swoops in and out, shirtless, farting, and making animal sounds in a newly-empty-paper-towel-tube. 

Over my music playing, he shout-sings random lyrics that accompany a melody only he can hear in his solo earbud. 

I laugh and chase him off, but know I don't need to because he'll be gone soon enough. If he's anything like his big brothers, he'll have a girlfriend making steak on Saturday night or living another dream states away, in no time at all.

Just a few weeks ago, I took their kindergarten artwork down and hung up my Mom's in its place. Seasons are strange, but similar in brevity.

Last month, this same teen and I went kayaking. While he was fishing, I gravitated to our old stomping grounds. 

Once, there were swim diapers, mud fights, and free boats with plywood floors that had an excellent chance of needing to be towed back to shore. But that didn't discourage anyone enough to stay on the shore in the first place. 

It's closed to the public now and as I sat there alone, I remembered how often I wished I were alone when my kids were little. Being alone certainly comes, and my encouragement to all with littles, is try not to wish it away. The picnic table will not always be noisy and crowded.

First Responder's Wife

I am the wife of a first responder.

Our marriage has been swamped by every flood and hurricane and hit by every tornado, for more than 20 years. It is hanging on by a thread. The time we're going to be together is always just beyond the next crisis. 

We were on a pontoon boat in Oklahoma the morning of the 4th of July. On board: a distant man working on vacation, a teenage boy who speaks little (and with sarcasm when he does), and a woman's heart throbbing with hope and wild expectation that the time had finally come.

But no. 

There are details and conversations that don't change this one-time-too-many, and she broke.

I broke. 

My sons, Dad and stepmom, brothers and sister, in-laws, nieces and nephews, and their boyfriends and girlfriends all saw it. 

I sobbed off and on for hours and was unapproachable in between.

What is wrong with her?!?!

They suspect grief from losing my mom and mother-in-law in the past year, my son being away in the Marine Corps when he was supposed to be home on leave, hormones, or maybe an undiagnosed medical problem??????

They cannot see that hope deferred makes a heart sick, the way the conversation goes round-and-round, and where a woman's feelings find no place to go or land.

Logic stands opposed to any such display of feelings. It spreads its arms wide to keep us apart. Like a referee in a boxing ring. 

Not to keep us from killing each other. Just to make sure we don't get tangled up in any form of understanding or intimacy that lasts too long.

My husband and others are tempted to believe if I just had less feelings, more love, and more logic, my marriage would be thriving, instead of on the rocks.

Sensibility could politely excuse unnecessary (and embarrassing) spiraling and command every situation with great composure, dignity, and self-respect. 

Of course "he can't help it." Look at all of the good they're doing. This can't possibly be the time to think about yourself. 

And of course it can't. How barbaric and selfish can a woman be? 

I wish my overwheming pride around their exhaustive training, courage, and honorable work, and in the people who are doing it, and horror and grief at the suffering and mind-numbing loss of life would displace the newness and the oldness of 20 years of going it alone. 

I wish it did. 

It reminds me of a hospice patient we had once. She felt so bad and ashamed she couldn't stop wondering if those ugly bumps on her hands were cancer after the war in the Ukraine broke out.

So we move forward, in silence. Separately bewildered, bemoaning, and grieving what has happened to the innocent, and grateful he has to go to work as soon as we get home.

The time apart seems to be the only way we can stay together. 

And so I pray. For me. My husband. All first responders, their spouses and families, and all whom they are serving - where the real problems are. 

(Pic taken after spontaneous visit to church to pray for all of the above)

Beach Surprises

My home state, land-locked Kansas, probably helps the ocean affect me the way it does. 

It reminds me how much I love quiet because it is never quiet, and it makes my body feel small but not my mind. I find things where I don't expect them and the other way around.

How does a mighty ocean require no container and stay within its bounds? Pools, ponds, and lakes seem to require far more. 

How can a ship seem big - in the ocean? And how can you still almost not see it/them?  (Zoom in!) Begs the question of what else I am missing, albeit a little closer to home.

None of my business, except I happened to be hanging out on our rented porch. A man followed a woman around with a camera in one hand and a baby carrier in the crook of his arm. She walked away and back again, along the shore, into the water, looked back over her shoulder, sat down, stood up, bent her knee, put her hands on her hip, and on and on for what seemed like a really.long.time. My arm was getting tired for that guy. 

Probably a fleeting and unbidden moment of solidarity, but I never want to ask someone to take my picture again. 

Okay, last thing - Christmas trees! So much joy for the many who celebrate - with all of the wonder lights, presents, and tucked-away cats can bring... 

But that's not all. Another noble task awaits.

Thank you, Christmas trees. I want to take a page out of your book. (Sorry, very insensitive to reference paper. But thank you for that, too.) 

May being useful in death lessen the sting for us when it is our turn. Certainly, we'll be more generous.

 

Emotionally Hungry

Sometimes, it's like you're starving. But you don't know you're starving because you've never really been hungry for more than a few hours at a time. And yet, emotional hunger is hunger too. 

It would hardly be worth mentioning if it only lasted for days, much less hours. But it can persist for years and quite insidiously, unrecognized!

All you know is that others are feasting, and you are not okay. But, not to worry. The ones you love most are there and will think of you when the feast is over. Rest assured, they will phone before they turn in and call it a night. 

You learn that waiting for calls to come after the feasting is especially bad for you, because you imagine the feasting the whole time you are waiting for the phone to ring, while you are so hungry yourself. So you give instructions that calling earlier is better, so sleep can come sooner - if one is lucky enough to sleep.

On a good day, you can answer. But you're quieter and more withdrawn than usual. You don't need to look at your knuckles to know. White-knuckling has been the best description of the whole damn thing for as long as you can remember, even though it doesn't actually describe anything at all. 

You muster some willpower, hoping it will be enough to pass for normal, as you recount honorable mentions from the day and press on your stomach to muffle the hunger pangs. Whatever it takes to patch through to the next day and the next, so it can be "over with," and you can recover. 

Settle back into some semblance of normalcy when all becomes familiar again. A normal work week is proof that no real harm was incurred. When the pit in your stomach subsides, you know all is well. Normal operations can resume. Crisis averted.

Recovery becomes a series of unsatisfactory conversations about better timing of phone calls, what information to give, how it never seems to be just right, trying to explain why you want to know about every-little-thing they ate, and what time would be better for a starving person to talk about a feast they aren't invited to? 

All of this, instead of penetrating the mystery of how one got so hungry in the first place or what one might need to feel less hungry and desperate as an uninvited guest...

But you take all of the responsibility for your brokenness and being disagreeable, and vow to work harder to sound normal on the phone and solve the problem of your hunger and reactivity, all while being completely unable to convey how much starving compounds this problem for you. 

Ironically, in your complicity, you feed the very idea that starves you: This is all your fault, and it shouldn't be this hard. 

You agree that it shouldn't. The solution seems simple enough, but not simple enough to be solved. Just simple enough to be repeated. For decades.

By some miracle, you and I found another person who had experienced and studied emotional hunger so thoroughly and knew it so intimately, that she forged a pathway through it to the other side. While she said many, many things, albeit few of the words here, this is what I heard:

Emotional hunger doesn't take an inordinate amount of food to be satiated. A consistent, dependable source, with even a modest amount of nourishment, is plenty to meet the need. Don't give up. Discover what you need, go to the source, and here is how...step-by-step. 

May God be with us as we hunger, learn, adapt, and persevere. Amen.

**This post is a reflection and dramatization of my lived experience relating to a profound need for emotional connection and struggle when that need is unmet, as well as the importance of communication, relational dynamics, attachment styles/wounds/core beliefs, and personal responsibility.

There is another side, and I am traveling to it. I am waiting on the little piece of paper (Licensed Professional Counselor - Associate) that makes me an official travel guide. It won't be long now. I hope and plan to take as many people as I am able to the other side - where needs are explored, known, met, and understood. If I can be of help to you, please let me know.

If you are interested in learning more about the "person who experienced and studied emotional hunger so thoroughly," it is my privilege to introduce you to Thais Gibson and her Personal Development School...an easy-to-approach (as well as digest) treatment on attachment styles, fears, needs and a pathway to healing, all borne out of her own suffering.

Personal Development | Attachment Styles | The Personal Development School

Different at Night

She's different at night. 

The daytime people don't know her. When there is no one to smile at or sing to, she goes far away, stands on top of the world and looks down to feel the largeness of space and brevity of time. Her face tells the story even when words are far from her mouth.

When they do come, she confirms what you thought you heard her say... It's almost over. My heart is giving way. Jesus will take care of me and he will take great care of you too.

In an hour or so, she wants to brush her teeth, shave her whiskers, and yes to wiping her face. Her friends are coming in a few hours. 

She sinks back to sleep, right up until her friends walk through the door. 

She pinks up and smiles. 

Kisses and hugs and stories fill the room followed by more and more people with their own kisses and hugs and stories. Like a movie of her whole life where the characters from different chapters bump into each other for once and for all.

She performs her favorite song surrounded by an audience of a lifetime. Her head nods and she sports a knowing smile. Her hand taps and the words stumble out or go quiet when they get confused or don't match what that guy is singing so well.

In the middle of the night, I go walking in my sleep...

Chips and dip and margaritas, and they left as they came. Slumber returned before they made it to the end of the hall.

When she goes, she said we'll know she made it to heaven when we hear a big crack of thunder.

Her room is dark, except for the light escaping from the bathroom so we can see her face. She sleeps in her wheelchair, determined not to get back into bed. 

The rumble of a storm approaches with an occasional flash of light. She is laid back and covered and her breathing is slight.

She parties by day but she is different at night.

Don

Mom decided to turn around halfway to the restaurant. She wanted to sit in the shade and wait for me to bring her dinner. 

A good idea, really...

I placed my order at the bar and sat next to a disinterested guy wearing overalls - Just my type. 

I made my move.

Just waiting on his dinner, he said. 

Taking it home to someone or eating alone and just don't want to do it here?

His wife was in the car.

They were just on their way home from the emergency room. She fell between the toilet and the tub a few days ago and the pain continued to worsen.

Find out what's wrong? 

Found out what wasn't wrong...

Yeah, that's definitely how it goes sometimes.

She's 90 and he's 91. Been married 71 years.

Do you give marriage advice?

He laughed. You made a commitment - keep it. Life happens, and you adjust.

Person of faith? 

Not really. 

But his wife saw their 16-year-old son walk into and out of a room through a wall to let her know he was alright, some time after he was killed in a motorcycle accident.

And Don just sold his motor cycle last year. At age 90. Wife only minded it some.

We're made of trillions of parts, the universe goes beyond the stars, and their two other kids are sicker than they are.

Apparently, William Shatner has a show worth watching called Unexplained. And make sure it's the one with William Shatner. Either there is life after death or there isn't, and worrying about it isn't how he chooses to spend his time.

I thanked him for the visit and hoped I helped him pass the time, and said hello to his wife on the way out. 

It's taking too long, she said. 

I couldn't disagree as she waited-in-the-car-on-the-way-home-from-the-emergency- room. But, it kind of seemed like perfect timing to me.

The Haircut

The haircut. 

It came up again tonight at the dinner table. 

Nothing can make my eyes sting and shut down my ability to speak like the thought of it.

Ironic, because I wanted it to be cut so many times before now. 

But not now.

When that hair is cut, I will see the man we are sending off to bootcamp. Our Marine. Off he will go after he graduates high school. Less than two months from now.

The long-haired boy that lives in our home will leave with short hair. He will be a visitor in our home from then on.

I could feign surprise, but I've known it was coming. 

He handed me something when he was 12-years-old. "Here, you're going to need this." 

A Proud-parent-of-a-Marine sticker. I tried to explain all of the other options and he just looked at me with pity. 

He was only 12, but it was already years in the making. If there was an opportunity to dress up, he already knew what he would be wearing. I think he is 9 here...

As his mother, I can only support his decision, and try to soak up the early mornings and late nights -  when he is still of a mind to eat breakfast with his Mom, lay on my lap, and be tickled like the little boy he once was. I have countless pictures of these times, lest I forget...

When he was two-years-old, I came home from work to a little boy who had a haircut by his well-meaning Daddy. Little blond curls off and short hair on. 

I cried. It was a terrible surprise. I still have those locks in a ziplock baggie somewhere. Not sure if that is sentimental or just gross at this point. Probably both.

But I learned something. Surprise haircuts are bad (for me). 

Another haircut is coming and I have to face it head on. Probably need to watch it happen. And cry. 

But whenever it is, I hope not to be surprised. 

It occurs to me that I have never dreaded something for so long. I'm pretty sure that makes me one of the lucky ones. There are a lot worse things than haircuts, of course. 

God bless all who serve, their mothers, their fathers, their barbers, and all who love them. 

Dying Alone With a Tiny Rainbow in the Sky

My eyes are welling again and I was wondering if I could just tell you something? I don’t feel like I can get anything else done unless I get it out and separate it from the rest of life which will eventually blur together. 

I think I said goodbye to two friends yesterday. They came and went during the conversation, in and out of sleep or consciousness-it’s not always easy to tell. But they were there long enough to tell me I was a beautiful person and that I’ve been a wonderful friend, and I told them the same thing. 

For me, it’s a little easier to be with the dying when they are closer to death. When they can no longer look into your face and tell you that your eyes are beautiful and they love you. When they express their love and deep appreciation for knowing you, you can’t pretend it is one-sided or that it’s all just part of the job. But the hardest parts are also the best parts.

It was easier earlier in the week when I got to be alone with a dying woman I’d never met before. Her spirit felt far away and her body was trailing close behind. I sat at her bedside for a couple of hours—praying and singing and feeling as observant and objective about death as I’ve ever been. There was no conversation nor grief to distract me from bearing witness to the sacred act of dying—the rise and fall of peaceful breaths with space growing gently between them…

But there was a rainbow. 

And that little rainbow reminded me that sometimes I don’t believe dying alone is necessarily a bad thing. Because how alone are we? 

There is wonder and stillness which becomes the thin place where heaven and earth meet. Death is personal and private, no matter how many people are in the room.  When my time comes, I think it will be hard for me to let go if someone is holding my hand. I feel certain I will try to stay for them, even if I’m past ready and feeling impatient. I might have to wait until they go to Whataburger or the bathroom.

But it’s not my time to die. It’s my time to write and to let you know that it’s not your time either. But when the time comes, you should know that there might be a tiny rainbow in the sky, even if no one else is around to see it. 

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.