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

 

If Onlys, Accidents, and Dying on Schedule

I just finished reading One Minute After You Die by Erwin Lutzer, pastor of the Moody church.  I didn't agree with everything in it, but I liked his confidence, the questions I came away with, and the things it reminded me of.  In case you're not a reader (it seems like fewer people are these days), but you want to wonder with me, here are the things that have got me thinking...

What we call an accident might be a well-planned event to God.  Just think of the contingencies, the events that had to converge for the accident (or death) to happen...

If only we had called the doctor sooner...
If only there would not have been ice on the highway...
If only we had noticed the lump sooner...
If only they had operated...
If only they had not operated...

Let me encourage you to take those "if onlys" and draw a circle around them.  Then label the circle, "The providence of God."  The Christian believes that God is greater than our "if onlys."  His providential hand encompasses the whole of our lives, not just the good days, but the "bad" days too.  We have the word accident in our vocabulary; He does not.

Accidents, ill health, or even dying at the hand of an enemy - God uses all of these means to bring His children home.  As long as we entrust ourselves to His care, we can be confident that we are dying according to his timetable...The fact is God can send any chariot He wishes to fetch us for Himself.

I eagerly and confidently agree to all of this in my spirit and with the small part of my faith that is perfect.  And fleeting. 

But, the problem of pain enters, which reminds me at this moment that C.S. Lewis wrote a book so entitled, and I should probably read that next.  I think I've attempted it before, but it seemed too heavy for the flimsy framework I had to hang it on. 

Until I can think and write more intelligibly about the subject of pain, it will suffice to say that pain changes everything, including what we believe can be circled up and labeled as God's providence.

So, there's that. 

But, separately (although intimately tied to previous thoughts and subsequent conclusions), I'm entertaining the idea of dying on time, on schedule, or according to a meticulous plan.  Is it impossible to die "before your time"?  Is it?

It was for Jesus.  "His hour had not yet come"...repeatedly.

I've thought about all of this many a time, but the question has been given new life this go round, particularly in light of Christ's words to Peter about his own death.

"'Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you, and bring you where you do not wish to go.'  Now this He said, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God." (John 21:18-19)

To this, the author writes, "Can anyone deny that Christ chose the way in which Peter would die?" 

Umm.  Not so eager here. 

I'm tempted to rush past the question and the implications.  It leaves me with My Shepherd planning a death, even a terrible death, for me or someone I love.  I probably don't need to explain how this makes me feel, because I'm guessing you already know.  You feel it, too.   

As a grieving friend said earlier this week, "I wish I was one of those people who could go around believing and professing that everything is God's will."  I understand this.

I also understand that the desire to believe is a gift of its own.  That feeling the tension and believing anyway, is a gift of its own.  That living with belief in a good God who orchestrates death and allows unimaginable pain is a gift of its own.  A gift then.  From Who?

I'm reminded that I am never more at peace than when I believe that nothing happens outside of God's will.  This has re-centered me on as many days as I have been capable of conscious thought. 

Our life's work is not to never doubt, but to continue the work of believing, to live with unanswered questions, to attempt to live peacefully amidst ideas that are diametrically opposed, and to plead with the Lord to increase our faith, while remembering that so much more is happening than what we see and understand, and that whether we believe in chariots or not might not be the question.