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

 

 

 

 

Thanksgiving Ramblings

A friend asked last week about why I hadn’t written lately, and was hoping everything was okay.  Everything is okay.  I do a weekly video for my work, now, so all of my thoughts and creative energy have been funneled into that.  I showed her the link on our Facebook page, in case she was interested.  

This friend is also Native American and a caregiver for one of our patients.  I asked if she celebrated Thanksgiving, as I asked our patient about their Thanksgiving traditions.  She said she cooks the food, but doesn’t participate.  For her, and her ancestors, our Thanksgiving is a day of mourning.  There were no pilgrims and no Squanto.  Just death and injustice.  

I was not surprised that she didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, but have never had the opportunity to hear this perspective firsthand.  Have you?

I’m pretty sure I wore a pilgrim hat made out of construction paper when I was in elementary school and I am also pretty sure I have pictures of my children wearing the same.  

I wanted to say I’m sorry, but it seemed too little and too hollow.

It is a little disorienting to lay an idea held for a lifetime on a kitchen table, out of which are borne many, many wonderful gatherings and memories, next to another idea to which it is diametrically opposed and feels instinctively “truer” than the one you’ve been espousing.

I continued to think on this the rest of the day and brought it to my own dinner table that night for discussion.  My husband replied without hesitation.  “History is written by the victors.”  

Ugh.  I really am sorry.

It is mind boggling how these things co-exist.  Or not.  If you are a Native American, “Thanksgiving” is built on a lie.  If you are like me, Thanksgiving just is, and you are grateful for it, just like the name implies, and it is not (or has not been until now) mixed with a tincture of sadness for another version of how it came to be.   

And yet, things that don’t go together at all, occupy the same space at the same time, all of the time.  Like singing a prayer of Thanksgiving to a host of friends missing their spouses, listening to old voice recordings of boys learning to speak while they tower over you and watch you cry at the memory of it, and hearing your husband’s deceased grandmother's voice, wish her daughter a Happy Thanksgiving “wherever you are”.  And that was just yesterday. 

But time just keeps moving forward, and mornings come and little boys lay on your lap and you want to freeze time, but you know you can’t.  So, you just admire the complexity of veins running through his growing body and look at your new Christmas cactus blooming days before Thanksgiving, and realize that life is simple and complicated and time can be a friend if you make good use of it.