VCU Dad

 

Three years ago we took Chloe to college. After getting her settled in her dorm room, we went to the VCU bookstore to buy some gear to show support for our college girl. I picked out a hoodie with the VCU Arts logo. Gray got a t-shirt in black and gold. And Luke picked out a hat. Not just any hat, though. The hat he picked said, “VCU Dad”. We laughed whole-heartedly at his choice, but we also laughed with a reverence of solidarity. Reverence in knowing that someone important was missing on this momentous day. And in solidarity knowing that no matter what, we were in this together.

There will never be an important event where we don’t notice his absence. And wonder what it would be like if he was still here. The grieving doesn’t end, and it’s in these big moments that it screams in your face: SOMEONE IS MISSING. As a mother of fatherless children, the grief is deep. The pain at knowing and seeing and your children’s suffering is bottomless, wishing for them that their father was around to cheer them on, too. But there is always light to be found in the dark. There is light in seeing them rise up, in spite of, and because of their loss. The pride in seeing them turn a difficult situation into laughter. Not as a deflection, but as a statement: “We are okay.”

So, in a day and a half, we will be dropping Luke off at VCU. It is bittersweet for sure, as any parent knows, to send your child off into the big wide world after nurturing them and holding them close for so long. This boy of mine will be dearly missed. He is a beacon of light to anyone who knows him. I have truly been blessed to be his mother and to watch him shine. And now the hat and the title of “VCU Dad” will be passed on to Gray. We may be small, but we are mighty. We are in this together.

My Shades of Gray

I stopped coloring my hair one year ago. I didn’t stop covering my grays to make a statement of any kind, I just got tired of the effort. I was tired of the cost, and of the chemicals on my scalp, and of having to constantly worry about my roots. So, I stopped. I had many concerns about stopping, but my tiredness overrode the concerns. It has been a long process, a love-hate relationship of sorts. Well, maybe the word hate is a little strong, but I have definitely had my insecurities with it along the way. Society has programmed us to be so afraid of and against aging, encouraging us to thwart all signs of it at any cost. I will be honest, most of all I wondered if I would still feel attractive and lovable. I crave love and affection, after all. But I held on to that deep-seated belief that beauty comes from within and not from the color of our hair.

Well, one day, a month or so back, I was proven right. I got cat-called while walking to my car after a yoga class. I had left that class sweaty and glowing, feeling strong and powerful and beautiful and connected. I could feel it from the tips of my toes all the way up through the crown of my head. And as a car made its way to the stop sign and eased around the corner, the driver called out of the window, “Girl, you are looking good tonight!”, with an emphasis on “night”. It wasn’t the kind of cat call that makes my skin crawl; it wasn’t the kind that makes women wish we were invisible. It was more like a hearty and genuine, “Namaste!” out the window; a, “My beauty sees your beauty!” It was the outward affirmation for what I was feeling inside. And I thanked him for noticing. He didn’t care about my grey hair. Nor should I.

So, I guess what didn’t begin as me trying to make a statement has become me making a statement. Be who you are. Find it and be it well, and allow it to proudly shine out. You are beautiful. And you are looking good toNIGHT!

💕

The Gift

The perfect gift has a way of making you feel loved. But the best gift is the gift that keeps on giving. And sometimes, even unbeknownst to you, it has been giving all along. Without you even realizing it, this gift has been working its magic for years.

I discovered one of these gifts this week. It was given almost seven years ago during a very, very dark time. My memories of this period of time are hazy, to say the least. The mind has a way of softening up the edges of trauma for us. But I remember that my brother came. And I know that my husband was dead. He had only been gone two weeks or so when my brother came to help. And the fact that my brother had come was truly a gift in and of itself. It was a messy place to be with three grieving children, and it felt as though I could barely place one foot in front of the other, let alone walk my children through this tragedy. My brother came with his light and love despite his own trauma. He was a dying man, only 36 years old, with only a few months left on this earth, but still, he came to our rescue. And despite the hazy memories, the power of his love and the depth of his service were not lost on me. There were dishes to wash, and a wild three-year-old to tame, and bills to pay, and a house to clean out, and a dental practice to sell, and decisions to make, and overdue taxes to settle, and school to attend, and a job to go to. Life does not stop for death. It keeps moving, like a freight train, and I think back now and honestly have no idea how we survived. But then, through the hazy memories, I remember the gifts, like that of my brother’s visit, and I know how we survived.

It has been awhile since I have thought about that gift. But it is college essay time and I had the extreme pleasure of learning about my son’s journey from his own perspective. I assumed and expected him to write about his father’s death in his college essays. Not to give a sob story, but because he is who he is today because of, and in spite of that trauma. And wouldn’t you know it, but his father’s death was not the focus of his essay. That visit from my brother was. That
eleven-year-old boy has carried that gift with him for all this time. And that, my friends, is the mark of the perfect gift.

The Bottle

I see your bottle and I know you want to put me in it.

Don’t you know that bottle is too small and I will not fit inside?

And if you stuff me in, I will be so ugly and you will be sorry.

You cannot bottle this.

You did this to me.

You put me in the bottle.

You squished me in and wanted me to stay,

Because you were comfortable with that

And you didn’t want me to come out.

But I had to get out.

I suffered deeply inside that bottle; I almost forgot who I was.

And I got out and do you know how badly it hurt?

It hurt so bad 

and then I was all alone outside that bottle 

and I had to find my beauty again.

I remembered it from before

I had been pretty,

And I knew how to sing.

And my heart was so big and full of life.

And do you know how hard it is to come back 

after having been stuffed in a bottle?

Wonder

For when does the tree ever wonder,
Am I beautiful enough?
Did my leaves change brilliantly enough this year?
Am I being the best tree I can be?
Never.
The tree simply is.

And that is enough.

Rewriting the Story

(So, I am writing again. The end goal is a memoir. Here is a little teaser for you: the final chapter.)

This book was originally going to be just a talk. A talk about resilience and how to reframe your thinking. A talk about changing the way you tell your story to make it work for you, instead of against you. Do you want to be the victim, or do you want to be the hero?

For example, the day I decided that it was my right and privilege as a mother to let Jillian go was the first day I actively went against everything I was brought up to believe in. It was my first official step toward freedom.

The day I kicked my husband out was me finally listening to my gut before reason. Now I know that my body is my first responder. It knows when something is wrong even before my heart and mind do. Now I know to listen closely to her wisdom.

It is not about embellishing or diminishing or rewriting the truth; it is simply changing how you tell the story.

My new mantra is, “I create beauty.” When you look at my life, you might see all the ways I fucked up. What I see is all the beauty I created in between.

To Donald Trump, In Response to Ripping the Baby Out of the Womb

I am a mother who had a late term abortion. I thought you may want to know how it really goes, so that the next time you talk about abortion you at least sound like you know what you are talking about…

At 18 weeks gestation I learned that there was something terribly wrong with my sweet baby girl.  At 22 weeks, all alone in a city we had only lived in for two weeks, we learned that she would not live. And that even if she survived the trauma of birth, she would not live for more than a few hours. And not only would she not survive, but that she would die of suffocation and broken bones.

One of the great ironies in all of this is that I was raised as a hard-core pro-lifer. And I still was one at this point in my life. Everything that I had ever known told me it was wrong to take the life of an unborn child. But I learned quickly, almost in the blink of an eye, that a mother’s love is greater than everything. Greater than religious dogma, greater than intellect, greater than fear of judgement, greater than grief, greater than it all. And in a split second I knew that I could and would give her the gift of death. To end her suffering. Even though it completely broke me to do so.

I rocked her all night our last night together, in the chair I would rock all of my babies in. I rocked her and cried knowing that I would never be able to rock there with her in my arms. I went to the doctor’s office early the next morning. Grief had wreaked havoc on my body. I was no longer sick from morning sickness. That had long since passed. But I was so sick with grief and I vomited several times before I left my home. On the way to the hospital I gave her a name, because we hadn’t had time to do that yet. And again when we arrived at the doctor I vomited some more. I couldn’t control my sobbing as they led me to the room where they would stop my baby’s heart. I undressed through my tears and put the gown on, open to the front so they could access my belly. The doctor and the nurse came in and reviewed with us what would be. Then it was time and the kind and knowing doctor helped me onto the table and as the nurse held my hand she told me I would have to stop crying now so I could be still. The doctor would need me to be still so he could inject the needle through my abdomen and into my baby’s heart. So I stopped sobbing and tears flowed silently.  I was as brave as I could be while my belly contracted around the needle so foreign to it. We cried silent tears as the sound of her heartbeat slowed and then stopped completely. The needle was removed and then I could sob again.

Next we were guided to the maternity floor of the hospital where I was given Pitocin to induce labor. The sounds of a busy maternity ward, full of excitement for new life, continued on around us, and I labored like all mothers do. I gave birth to my tiny baby girl with the same love and grace and dignity that I birthed my living children.  I held my tiny still baby in my arms, dressed in the tiny smocked dress the nurse had lovingly put her in. I held her, and loved her, and I marveled at how much she looked like me. My mother came and held her and loved her too.

It was time for goodbyes and the nurse took her away as I sobbed into my empty arms. We went home broken-hearted, and my milk came in a few days later. Because a mother’s body makes milk for her baby even if the baby is not there to drink it. My body cried milk for weeks, and I grieved for the baby I would never know. She would be thirteen now. And still I grieve for her. She taught me about how big and deep and powerful love really is.

So no, my baby was not ripped from my womb. And I speak for all women out there, regardless of what circumstance led them to having to make one of the most difficult decisions a person could ever have to make. You have no right to speak for us or to make any decisions for our bodies or for our babies.

Let me offer you one piece of advice, Donald: do not speak of that which you do not know. Women are born to love their babies. It is our nature. We love them even before they are a tiny seed fertilized within us. We love them when they are a whisper in the wind. We love them so much that we will break our own hearts for their peace and comfort and well-being. We love them even if we are unable to keep them. Our power to love is greater than anything you have the potential to ever know or possess. So do not speak of that which you do not know.

Fear Less

As a mother, there are two gifts you wish to bestow upon your children: to live fearlessly and to love with hearts wide open.  But saying this you know that life will crush them at times, many times possibly, as it already has.  But if you can teach them only two things, that the only way to truly live is to not let the fear of the crushing stop them from living.  And to not let the pain of loving and losing stop them from opening their hearts.

As their mother you instinctively want to protect.  But life has bluntly and repeatedly taught you that you can’t protect them from everything, or really from anything, and that trying to shield them from pain and heartache only keeps them from truly living in the end.  Rather you strive to teach them to push through the pain and suffering that comes, and that is sure to come again, and to show through the light of living what they can become in spite of the obstacles.

So, you plan big trips that scare you which include hikes that take you high places, even though you are yourself tremendously afraid of heights. You plan these adventures knowing full well that there will be parts that are scary for you, but you don’t want to hold your children back because of your own fears.  And at one point during a hike when your fear response takes over your body, you ask your daughter to take your small son’s hand and lead him to safety.  And your teenage son takes your hand until you find your steadiness again and your breath has returned to normal. And you feel proud that they were not afraid.

And you rejoice in their loving, even when it scares you, and you encourage them to open their hearts even knowing how hard those hearts can break. With Father’s Day approaching again, you wonder what you can do to distract them.  But instead of planning something to get them off the radar this year, you just let it come.  And your daughter spends her morning taking care of homeless kittens and delivering a note to a friend in need.  And your teenage son makes lunch with his girlfriend and you can’t help but notice how joyful they are, even today.  And you hear him ask her casually what her dad was doing to celebrate Father’s Day, as if it were no big deal, and because he genuinely cares.

And you suddenly realize that sometimes, a lot of the time, it is so much less of teaching them something and more of just letting things be.  You realize that they were born fearless.  And that simply allowing that to be so is all they need.  And you see that they are loving with abandon as children do so naturally and are so grateful that they still can. You realize that just because you are afraid of heights doesn’t mean that they need to be.  And that just because you are afraid of Father’s Day doesn’t mean that they are.

Holes

There is a lot of courage necessary to have your family pictures taken when someone is missing.  Making that step is such a scary thing it takes you years to find the courage.  It is not the lack of time or the effort it will take in finding the perfect outfits that is holding you back.  And it’s not the difficulty of choosing the place or finding a photographer.  And it’s definitely not lack of desire.  In fact, you really, really, really want family pictures.  You so very badly want to preserve the memories of what you have together.  You want to preserve your daughter’s uniqueness and beautiful transformation to becoming her true self.  And your middle son is quickly turning into a young man and you want to capture on film the bright sunshine he spreads everywhere he goes.  And then there’s the little guy who changes every day and in many ways looks so much like his father yet is still so much his own little self.  So, no, it’s not for lack of desire…

It is the big gaping hole that you are afraid of.  You know it will be there.  How could it not be?  It will be there staring right back at you.  How do you hide the hole? How can you cover what is so blatantly missing?  So years go by and your babies grow and change and it hurts to know you are not capturing every single moment.

But finally, after years and years, the desire to preserve time overcomes the fear of what is missing and you gather all of the courage you can muster and call the photographer.  You choose a barn, old and sturdy, that has withstood the winds of time.  It has a few holes of its own.  You gather your children around you, and it is unspoken, but they are afraid of the hole, too.  You take the big leap together and squeeze in close and smile for the camera.  And you are so pleasantly surprised to find that the hole has been filled with the bond of strength and love that comes from overcoming tragedy together.  In fact, the hole is barely noticeable at all because it is patched up with love that is pure and smiles that are hard-earned but genuine, and laughter that comes freely.  And you are supported by the quiet strength of winter’s beauty that surrounds you and the old weathered barn stands in graceful silence in the background.

The Softening

It has been two years since the start of The Year That Tried to Break You.  The year of loss and cruelty and heartbreak and grief and pain and change and more loss and more change.  And the irony is not lost on you that it was also The Year of Light.  The year of meeting sisters you never knew you had and of the two souls who connected unexpectedly, and the year of witnessing your children rise up and be beautiful and amazing against the odds.  And the year of the gifts of kindness and love from so many.  And the year of learning to stand up on your own.

It has been almost two years since that year began.  And even still you find it a daily struggle to be soft.  When it would be so much easier to just harden up.  It is a daily struggle to not just harden up and protect your fragile heart.  Many days, most days, it seems it would be much easier to stay shut and be cold and hard.  It has become a daily choice to remain soft.  

You make that choice daily because you have to.  You have to soften so you don’t crack.  You have to bend so you don’t break.  You have to be vulnerable and open your heart.  You have to live and in order to fully live you have to let love in and let the light out.  And letting the light out, that is the scariest thing of all.

So you resist the urge to close up and hide away and you soften and remain grateful for the Light that the Darkness has brought to you.

Don't Tell Me

Don’t tell me that I’m beautiful, not yet.

I may show you that I am, but I would like to take my time…

Don't call me baby, not yet.
I want to look into your eyes and see it there first...

Don’t tell me that you know me, not yet.

Not unless you have walked with me awhile…

Don’t tell me that you understand, not yet.

Not until you have sat with me a night and watched my dreams erupt…

Don’t tell me that you want me, not yet.

Not before our hearts have met…

Don’t tell me I’m the One, not yet

For I don’t believe there is an Only…

Tell me that you love me,

And with all my heart I’ll love you back…

But don’t tell me that I’m beautiful. 

Until you really know.

Raindrops and Tiny Dresses

Loss will uncover things for you that you never knew were happening in the world.  For example, did you know there are people in the world, complete strangers, who sew tiny dresses for babies who die?  Well, there are those people.  They sew tiny white dresses with yellow smocking and leave them at the hospital for babies whose parents never had time to think that they might need a tiny white dress to put their tiny baby in while they hold her for the first and last time.  And then there are the people who crochet tiny blankets to wrap your tiny baby in.  Because you may have never thought about it, but a receiving blanket is much too large to wrap your tiny baby girl in.  I remember lying in my hospital bed holding my baby girl in her tiny white dress wrapped in her tiny crocheted blanket, astounded by the fact that a complete stranger would take the time to sew that tiny dress and crochet that tiny blanket.  Who was this stranger?  Was she old? Was she young?  Was she a mother?  Had she lost a baby too?  Surely she knew what it was to love a child.

And then there was the kindness of the man from the burial park whose job it was to call and tell you that she had been buried.  He could have just said that it was done.  But you could tell that he had chosen his words carefully and thoughtfully.  He said, “I wanted you to know that we have buried your daughter Jillian.  We buried her just as the rain began.”  I’m pretty sure that he also knew what it was to love a child.  And you are so grateful to this man who added in those few extra words, to give you a memory of your baby’s burial even though you weren’t brave enough to be there yourself.

The Little Girl at 1207

You took a trip home to 1207, to where you lived before.  To where you lived before the ups and downs of life unearthed you.  You see the home where you laughed and played and cried and lived as a little girl.  Where you were always surrounded by many yet more often than not felt all alone.  You see the window you peered through.  You remember the giant closet you hid away in for hours at a time, safely enclosed within the four walls and the dark.  You see the tree that was struck in the storm.  You see the field where streams would form if it rained hard enough.  And remember watching stick boats float away, out of sight.  You remember the giant stump in the back and the stone wall and the kittens.  So many kittens, and the walks and the Sno-cones, and the horses and the long bus rides on bumpy roads.  The pool is still there, where you learned how to swim, and the fence where the raspberries grew and the place where the garden was.  You drive past the corner where you sold cantaloupe with your brother.  And there is the sledding hill.  And you wonder which neighbors are still around, after all these years…?  You feel the November air and marvel at how the sunshine feels the same way it felt back then and the air feels like the same air.  

 And for so long, the memories of this place in your mind had you convinced that you were just a scared and lost and lonely little girl struggling to be noticed and find her way.  But then you go back now, knowing what you know, having started the uncovering of the covered up part of your heart.  And you realize that that little girl at 1207 was You all along.

Rise Up

This is for the ones who struggle,

but they still rise up.

This is for the ones who don’t have pretty new school clothes to wear,

but they wear the biggest smiles.

This is for the ones who come with nothing to eat,

but they show up eager to learn.

This is for the ones who never got put to bed,

but still they come and try their best.

This is for the little babies who get put on a bus without a hug or a kind word to send them off,

And still they come, and so happy to see us.

This is for the ones who may never learn the way they are “supposed to”,

and still they work and work and work, because they want to make us proud.

This is for all of those who struggle,

but somehow they find the strength and courage to rise up anyway.

This is from the teachers who cannot even begin to understand

or know where and what you are coming from,

But even so we know you and we watch you and we stand in awe of you

and we thank you for rising up. 

Each and every day you make us proud. 

You make us who we are.  

All you little ones who get off of that bus and you rise up anyway.

Follow-through

So you make all off the difficult decisions, but unfortunately now you have to see them through.  It is time for the open house where people want to express their condolences.  And of course you have to be there because it is you and your children they are coming to see.  You know your children want to be there but you also know they are not necessarily equipped to deal with what will be coming through those doors at any moment.  Because who would be?  So you strategically place them on a couch behind you, flanked by their cousins who act as very good distractors throughout the two-hour window.  They have their pretty mourning clothes on now, and so do you.  Ready to receive condolences.

And then the doors open and they start coming and it seems that they will never stop.  The line stretches down the hallway and around the corner, and you never do see the end of it.  Your children are sitting behind you and your dear friends stand behind you, like body guards, waiting for the onslaught of condolences.  You don’t have your shit together, not even in the slightest.  You are a blubbering mess and you are grateful for those friends and acquaintance who blubber with you.  And you are grateful for their kind words, for them telling you how sorry they are, and for the heartfelt hugs, because you have learned that it is much better to cry with somebody than to cry alone.  But every time you look up after one hug, you again see the line that extends into nowhere. 

Mixed up in the line of people you know and love are the people, the many, many people who were his patients.  And you don’t know any of them from Adam.  And they want to hug you and shake your hand and tell you what a good person he was.  And you smile and nod your head, but all you can think about is how much you hate him.  And for every person that tells you what a great person he was, you think to yourself, “Really?  Is this what great people do?”  You think you might suffocate on their words.  They are heavy and hurtful and cut you to the core.  You are so extremely grateful to your friends who smuggled in a water bottle full of vodka.  You take a swig and you think to yourself that if you have to nod and smile while one more stranger tells you what a great man your dead husband was you really might toss your cookies all over them.  And the line never ends.  They just keep coming.

As if this isn’t enough, on top of all the people you don’t even know, and the line that stretches out the door, there is the photo-video set to music that your mother-in-law put together that plays loudly on the TV at the other end of the room.  It plays pictures of you and him and your children and all of those moments in life that in a normal situation you would want to memorialize.  And it plays over and over again, so many times that it makes you dizzy.  And you try not to watch it because it is making you dizzy, but you happen to be facing it and cannot turn away.

Your friends keep trying to get you to sit down.  And even though they don’t come right out and say it, you are pretty sure that you must look like shit.  They bring a chair over and tell you to sit.  But you do not want to sit.  You want to get through this line, so this moment of your life can be over.  And then there is the woman who approaches, in tears.  You do not know her, but she is in tears and she gives you a hug.  She tells you, amidst her blubbering, that your husband saved her life.  That he caught her oral cancer before it was too late, and that because of him she went to the doctor and got the appropriate treatment and she is alive.  And she is very broken up about your husband’s death.  You feel sorry for her, that her hero is dead. 

Finally the two hours are up.  And your friend notices that you must go.  Now.  So she links her arm in yours and she pulls you through the crowds, without a word, past all of the people and into the parking lot.  Her husband pulls up the car.  But you don’t get in.  Not yet.  You finally break down and the blubbering turns into full-fledged sorrow.  And she holds you and lets you tell her how much you hate him.  She just holds you.  Without a word.  And after some time has passed you look up and notice a staff member from the mortuary watching you out of a side window.  You regard this with passing interest and wonder to yourself if someone in her line of work ever gets used to seeing people so very, very sad.

Decisions

There may come a time in your life when you are faced with some really tough decisions.  Decisions that you never really thought you would have to think about.  You are suddenly faced with decisions like what to do with your husband’s remains.  And you have to make phone calls to find out if you are even authorized to make this decision because you have been separated for a year and were nearly divorced.  And you are really, really sad and traumatized and angry right now and don’t quite have your wits about you, but nonetheless you have to make this decision.

Making this unthinkable decision becomes even more difficult when you have your in-laws trying to take this decision away from you and they are making phone calls to authorities behind your back because they want to take his body and do religious things to it and bury him the way their religion says you should.  And you understand that they are grieving and in shock too, but you know he hated their religion and that he would not want this.  And even though you hate him at this point, and the last thing you want to be doing right now is thinking about what he would want, still, you must.  And you have your children to think about as well, and of course you want what is best for them in this very, very horrible situation.  So you stand up to your in-laws and you do what needs to be done and make arrangements to have him cremated and his ashes buried in the cemetery next to where you buried your babies.

And this is not the only difficult decision you must make.  You must also decide what kind of service to have but you don’t think there is even an inkling of a chance that you could possibly survive sitting through a service listening to people talk about him.  And you know that Family would want to turn a service into a religious event, but he hated their religion, remember?  So you decide there will be no service but instead an open house at the funeral home where you and his family will receive people who want to express their condolences.

And then you must decide what his obituary will say.  And this is very, very hard indeed.  Because right now you cannot think of one single god-damned good thing to say about the man who made the choice to leave your three children fatherless.  So you keep it short and simple and luckily you can take up space by including his middle name and the date of his death.  And that will just have to do because you don’t have much more to say.

And you must also decide what you want him dressed in when your children will see him for the last time.  And it is terribly heartbreaking to even fathom the thought of taking them to do this.  But they want to see him again, one last time.  So you pick out his favorite flannel shirt and some jeans, because even though it is not what the mortician recommends, you know it would not seem right to your children for him to be wearing a suit.  And you let your children wear whatever the hell they want because you want them to be as comfortable as they can be when they say goodbye to their father.  And when you see that they have come downstairs ready to go in their T-shirts and sweat pants, you go put on your sweatpants, too.  Because you know that his family and your family will be dressed in their Sunday’s Finest, and you don’t want them to feel out of place in their sT-shirts and sweatpants, because all you really want is for them to be as comfortable as they can when they say goodbye to their father.

Be Still

I hurt my knee three weeks ago.  I was playing soccer and the goalie dove into my leg while it was fully extended.  The physical therapist says it will need at least six weeks to heal.  So once again I have been forced to reinvent myself.  To say I have been freaking out a little bit would be putting it mildly.  When your sanity up to this point relied wholly upon moving your body, and when you know you cannot live without your sanity because you have three young beings for whom you are Everything, you start to freak out a little.  Okay, maybe a lot.  

Up until this point, over the last several years, moving your body has been what has saved you time and time again from losing it completely:  your peace and strength and flexibility came from what you did on your yoga mat.  Your angst and competitiveness and anxiety you worked out with your sisters on the soccer field, and your solitude and clear-mindedness you found when you ran. 

So, what was supposed to be the summer of yoga and hiking and camping and running on the beautiful trails that surround your home, and the summer of yard work and learning how to plant a garden, in an instant turned into the summer of not even being able to walk around the block.  But after three weeks of pain and misery and crying and loneliness and self-pity, you finally start to see the light in your situation.  Because finally you are not just coerced, but forced to be still.  You are forced to be still and sit with the reality of your current situation.  You finally must stop running and doing as you have been since your life turned into Crazy Town, and simply be still.  And you see that it is much easier to keep on running so you don’t have to look the truth of it in the eye.  It is much easier to be busy.  But now you see that you must be still, and accept, and ponder and learn from the stillness.  And rest and accept and be still.  And you understand that finally taking the time to do these things will heal your heart in ways that running and moving could not.

And you sleep.  Finally sleep has come to you when it has eluded you for so long.  Real sleep.  Un-medicated sleep.  The kind of sleep you wake up from and marvel that you are finally able to sleep like that again.  And even your dreams seem to know you are sleeping real sleep again.  For they have become less frantic, less haunted, less anxious.  Steady, peaceful dreams of processing and figuring things out.

So instead of sitting around being angry at the goalie who dove into you, you find yourself seeing the light and embracing this time for what it is.  And even though not a day goes by where you don’t wish you could unroll your yoga mat or put on your running shoes, or take your kids out for a hike, or go out and pull the weeds that are taking over your garden, you fully appreciate the fact that after you clean up the breakfast dishes, you must go upstairs for your morning nap.

Ugly

Although this may not be pleasant writing, I feel that it is necessary writing.  Necessary for me to write, certainly, and maybe even crucial for you to read?  We tend too often to bottle up the ugly things for fear of looking weak, or fear of feeling ashamed, or fear of offending, or even for fear of simply feeling.  When so often what goes unsaid, or unwritten, or even unpainted, may just be the salve we need…

I do not pretend to be passively unaltered and untainted by my past.  I will be the first to admit that I am scarred.  And broken.  And I have to be okay with that.  Because it is what is.  So once again I bare a little part of my heart and soul to you, my reader, in this piece which I have titled, “Ugly”.

                                 Ugly 

If I could paint a picture of you it would be ugly.  

So very ugly.  

But I can only paint pretty things, and with not very much detail.  

I am not a highly trained artist who can paint small ugly details that come together as one giant mass of ugly, to which anyone could plainly see was you.  

I can only use hues that dance together and catch the light and please the eye.  

I can only paint things like trees and flowers and old proud barns, that notwithstanding the difficulties they encounter along the way turn into things of great beauty and light.  

My hand and eye are not gifted enough to paint the gnarly, twisted branches of a thorny tree that died an early death because it could never reach the light.  

Nor can I use colors that clash and hurt the eyes of the innocent, unsuspecting viewer, colors that were never meant to share a canvas.  

So, I think I will not even try to paint a picture of you.  

Because who wants to paint a picture that can only turn out ugly?

Just to Walk

Grief is heavy

and not in a figurative way;

It is literally heavy, heavy,

heavy.

So heavy, that in the first days and weeks

after your tragedy

it is even hard to walk.

Your body feels so heavy

you have to will your feet to walk.

You have to think hard to

even get them to move,

and when they do it is all they can do

to merely shuffle.

You can still remember that day,

that cold winter afternoon

When your friend took you out

for a walk

In the early days of your grief,

After your children lost their father…

When you couldn’t even notice

the crisp February air

Or the feel of sunshine on your face

Or see the bare tree branches

Because all you could think about was

how hard it was to walk.

When did the idea of lifting one foot

 and putting it in front of the other

over and over again

 become so foreign? 

Mesmerized by how something

you had been able to do

for almost your entire life

had become so very difficult..

So, very slowly, you put

one foot in front of the other

and you walk.

You carry that heavy, heavy weight

 that is your body

While you wonder how your body,

which only weeks before

 had been running and jumping

and laughing and playing…

How had it become

so very heavy?

Tragedy will do this to you.

Grief is heavy.

So very heavy.

Thirty-seven

I lost my husband and my brother in 2013.  An unlucky number.  An unlucky year.  They were both 37.  One took his own life.  The other tried so hard to get to stay.  One left three children fatherless.  The other left a legacy.  My children lost the two most influential male figures in their lives within 8 months of each other, seemingly in one fell swoop.  And even still, as their mother, I am reeling from it.

It is hard not to be angry.  At Life.  At the Universe.  At the one who made the choice to go, at the cancer who took the one who wanted to stay.  It is hard to understand any of it.  I won’t pretend that I do.  And I don’t believe that anybody really does.  And anbody that says that they do is probably selling something.  But that is okay.  I am okay with not understanding.  I really am okay not having the answers.  I am okay with feeling it and going with it and learning from it and leaning into it, at trying to find the peace in the pause, and going with that.  Because, really, what more can I do?

But what I do know is that you live, and you love, and you play and you laugh and you cry. You breathe and you soak it all in.  And you take risks and you love and you marvel at it all.  And you feel and you live and you love and you laugh and you cry some more.  Because you must.  That is how you carry on.  That is your purpose.  To live while you can.

Is there meaning in it?  I don’t know.  What I do know is that they were both 37.  And they are both gone, but never forgotten…