Almost

We had all these dreams. We always wanted to live in the mountains. Somewhere. Anywhere. Just not the desert. And, for me, at least, for many years, not in the tropics. 

When I was a kid, I wanted to live on a farm. Instead, I lived in a trailer park. But I dreamed of open spaces. Land and horses and cows and chickens. Trees to climb and adventures to dream up. It never happened. When I got to junior high, my grandparents moved to Payson, Arizona, and my family and I began to spend a lot of time in the mountains with them. Suddenly livestock was old news. Juniper and pines, aspen and firs were the new dream.

“I’m going to live up here someday,” I promised myself. Near the smell of juniper, the comfort of fireplaces, far away from city lights that dimmed the view of the stars.

Then I fell in love with a soldier. When we got married, we followed his best job offer, and settled in his hometown in Florida. But after a couple of years, we began to dream of the mountains together and tried to move to the northwest. We wrote to cities like Seattle and Portland, and McLeod, Montana (just because we found it on a map and liked the name.) But there were no jobs for new firefighters in any of those places, so we stayed in the tropics. We had two kids. Made do with vacations in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains every year. I became content. After all, Florida had field fresh strawberries, beautiful tomatoes, and wonderful friends. I let go of the dream.

Then the letter came. Arizona’s Flagstaff Fire Department was hiring. We discovered an anonymous gift of five hundred dollars cash in our daughter’s diaper bag one night when we got home from church and a note telling Rob to fly out and test for that job. Which he did—not get. And suddenly I wasn’t content in Florida anymore. We almost had it. Almost moved to the mountains. It was so close, we could touch it. Almost.

Rob went to paramedic school. Was promoted to lieutenant on his department. We tried for the dream again. After all, he had even more experience now. Maybe we could compromise and just live closer to the mountains. The next year he tested for Chandler Fire Department, and we moved to the desert. At least we could drive to the pines on his days off. And we did. Frequently, and for many years, always dreaming of someday owning a home on the Mogollon Rim or the White Mountains. We raised our Florida babies in the desert Southwest. Eventually Rob retired. Our babies had their own babies. We settled in as grandparents and gave up on the mountains.

Until last August. When, once again, they began to call us and we decided to go.

We had rented a big house in Greer for a month, a tourist village that our daughter described as “a little piece of heaven.” Enjoying the cool breeze on the front deck one afternoon, Rob and I looked at each other and said, practically in unison, “We could live here.”

So, we sold our house in a hot market, shook the desert sand from our shoes, and headed north in time for Thanksgiving. By the end of the month, we closed on a sweet place on the Mogollon Rim, a favorite place to explore. We had an acre and a half in the pines with a view of nothing but woods from our back deck. Rob ordered the sign he’d always wanted for the front of his dream property—a three-foot-wide piece of juniper with the words, “McLeod’s Keep,” carved into the golden face of the wood. Every good Scotsman has his own Keep. We had the deck refinished, replaced outdated appliances, put up a new fence on the back acre, and got estimates for a roof to shade the deck.

And then it snowed. Coyote tracks followed our fence line most mornings, punctuated by random deer prints and droppings, and we looked forward to our first spring when unfamiliar bushes would bloom their true identity and we could look for elk while we drank coffee at that patio table we planned to put outside the French doors leading from our bedroom. We wandered through nurseries in the frigid cold, picking out the firs and aspen and red oaks we’d plant to make the place our own when the weather warmed up.

We kept making plans and living out the dream. For five weeks.

We bought heavy coats. Hiking shoes. Scoped out all the trails we wanted to explore throughout the woods surrounding our land. We decided our next vehicle should be another truck—which made Mama happy. Fuel efficient cars are looked on with suspicion when you’re mountain people. And we were mountain people now. Rob had a warm hat. I had warm gloves. We were clearing out the garage of boxes so we’d have a warm truck on twelve degree mornings.

We didn’t know how to live in the cold, but we were going to figure it out together.

We almost did. We almost saw our dreams come true. Almost belonged to that little piece of heaven. We took the risk for one last adventure. Left the desert behind. Downsized our belongings and upsized our property. Settled in a new town, found new breakfast joints, made two new sets of friends, and looked forward to making many more. Spent every waking moment unpacking a house full of boxes so we could hurry up and enjoy our dream come true.

But we never got to sit on our deck. Or stand out there at night to stare at the Milky Way. Never enjoyed a cup of coffee out there. Never explored the back roads together. Never put up Roby’s juniper sign. Never bought another truck. Never lived there again after we got sick. Because Rob never got out of the hospital.

We took a huge risk together and we lost it all. I lost it all. When I lost my darlin’.

For five short weeks, we owned that little piece of heaven, and then it was gone. It’s hard to watch now while others who took the same risk we did make it work. The mountains are filled with their success stories—just not ours. But we gave it our best shot. Went all in. Never looked back.

And then it backfired. Blew up in our faces. Stole everything from us and more.

“That was a pretty spectacular fail,” I whispered through my tears one morning months afterward. From where I stand alone now, I wish we’d figured out the truth and hadn’t taken the risk. Hadn’t tried for the dream ever again. Finally realized we weren’t meant to be mountain people after all. Maybe then I’d still have Rob.

But we almost made it work. Almost sat on that deck. We almost belonged to the mountains.

“Almost.”

It’s such a sad word.

Return Mail

my dearest eula,

i was there.

i saw you crying.

i felt your pain.

i'm holding you close.

i’ll never let you go.

i'm holding Rob close, too. i’ll never let him go, either.

i can’t explain right now. one day i will. for now, believe me when i tell you that I Am here. and this is temporary.

I Am sitting with you.

I Am weeping with you.

death was never my plan.

i will change that. one day everything that is sad will be made untrue.

I Am fighting for you. and Rob.

he sends his love.

i love you, too.

and I Am very proud of you, my daughter.

all my love forever,

Papa God

 

p.s.  I don’t actually have a circular file.  and you can tell me anything—i didn’t like that whole open up the ground and swallow people thing, either.

Sit With Me

“How long has it been?” he asked.

“Eight weeks.”

“Two months isn’t long,” he responded.

Yes. And No.

It’s twenty-two blogs long. Nine weeks today. Sixty-three days since I last held Rob’s hand. The one I placed his wedding ring on. And another five weeks prior to that since we last shared a home together, sick as we both were.

That’s a lot of time to be afraid and pray and then grieve. One day rolls into the next and soon it will be ten weeks since he left us. Then eleven. You know the rest. And every day that stubborn sun keeps coming up, trying to tell me to keep going without him because I have no other choice.

Grieving is exhausting. Emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and to my surprise, physically draining, as well. My counselor keeps reminding me that while I’m grieving, my immune system is low. My sleep schedule is, well, unscheduled. Thoughts are scattered. The only things working well are my tear ducts.

“It takes a lot of energy to maintain relationships right now,” she said. “You won’t be able to keep up with all the things you used to manage with the limited energy you have at the moment.” I’m trying, though. I’m hugging my family. Talking to my daughter and son every day. Laughing at the antics of my daredevil grandbabies in Kentucky. Playing cards with my granddaughters. Watching my grandson climb trees. Herding sheep and pigs and chickens and ducks and one bossy turkey when the family is out of town. Livestock are good for my soul. And hilarious.

There are a lot of good moments in my days. But I’ve talked a few times with my mother-in-law who buried her beloved husband nine years ago. “You never get over the grief or the loss,” she told me. “You just learn to live with it.” That’s what I meant in my last post about waking up every morning and knowing this is a life sentence. I’ll never see Rob on this earth again. I had no idea it felt like this until I got to this side of grief. No one knows what this side of grief feels like without being here, and I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.

But there are a few of you who, despite never having been in my shoes before, choose to sit with me in the middle of my sorrow, a witness to the anguish that I often feel, and cry with me. You listen to me without judging me. Put your arms around me and give me the hug that is rarer than it used to be. Pray. But mostly, you sit with me. Quietly.

I have never done that with anyone before. I have never seen anyone go through this before and I’ve never sat with them while they did. I wrote nice notes. I sent flowers. I even quoted Bible verses. But I never sat with them in their suffering. And for that, I am really sorry.

This is a holy place, this seat of suffering. It’s also lonely and sometimes misunderstood. Scary, even, to witness, since we’re all terminal. I hope that in the future I will remember what I’ve learned from this side of grief and show up with arms to hug and lips that are sealed as I take my seat next to another in their suffering.

You who have sat with me have taught me a great deal about love.

Dear God

dear god,

i know you’re busy up there. running the world. and the universe. and stuff. i know i’ve been bugging you a lot lately with all my annoying questions and accusations and outlandish behavior. maybe you’re preoccupied with keeping an eye on covid and poverty and people who aren’t mad at you, so you just don’t have time to sit down and talk to me.

or maybe it’s not your style to pop in and out of people’s homes just because they’re crying and missing their beloved and stuff like that. maybe it would scare the bejesus out of them if you showed up in person. i guess i can see how that would just add to the inventory up there in heaven if you, first, scared people to death down here by making a personal appearance, and then, second, loaded up the front entry of the golden gates with a gaggle of shell-shocked arrivals.

but it’s hard not to take it personally when i sit still and ask you to make me aware of your presence.

and you don’t.

i’m doing my best to sit still. but this whole grieving thing is new to me and my mind wanders and pretty soon i’m opening my eyes in the room which totally defeats the whole "set the scene" thing i was trying to do. and then i see a picture of rob on my dresser and my heart starts cramping again, and pretty soon i’m crying and doing all that outlandish behavior stuff i just mentioned.

remember that sign i hung above the tv? the one with that verse from exodus? "The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still," it reads. i am, you know. being still and waiting. because you said you’d fight for me. are you doing that? because it doesn’t feel like it.

it feels like my family and i are just muddling through this together. hurting all the time. confused all the time. feeling like we’re being punished for something when we don’t know what we did that meant we had to lose rob. i always heard that you’re done punishing your kids now that jesus took it all for us, but if this isn’t punishment, then what is it? a learning tool? it’s a pretty sucky learning tool, if you ask me. i’m starting to wonder if you got your teaching credentials online or something. this is a lousy way to educate the ignorant. i’d rather have remained ignorant of death and loss and widowhood.

i cried it out again last night, or at least i used up the tears i had on hand, and i was so tired and ready to go to bed and i thought it would be nice if i could try to sit still and close my eyes for a few minutes and feel your presence, since you’re so opposed to that whole visibility thing. i’m so tired all the time. tired of waking up knowing it’s just another day without rob. another day of trying to navigate this road without my other half here to help me. which reminds me.

why is it not good for man to be alone but perfectly fine for woman to be alone? i’m pretty ticked off about that today, too.

i sat there for a few . . . okay, a couple . . . maybe it was sixty seconds. but you didn’t show up. i saw a wolf spider run across the rug but that’s about it. if the bug guy hadn’t come last week, i’d have been listening to crickets. is that any way to treat your daughter? ignore her when she gives you an invitation to hang out for a minute? what’s so terrible about making your presence known, anyway?

this is probably a waste of time, writing this letter to you. it’ll probably just land in your circular file. we’re all having a really hard time talking to you right now and when we do, the silence on your end hangs heavy.

what’s so important that you can’t stop by and explain a few things to me? some explanation would go a really long way right now.

are you busy playing golf with rob?

it’s pretty lonely here without him, you know. and it feels pretty lonely without you here, too. i guess you might be mad at my lack of faith. and all the accusations i’ve thrown your way. but i doubt it. if anybody can handle my anger and hurt and outrage and guilt and cold shoulders and sorrow and agony and confusion—it’s You. you never hold grudges. not since you came to live in me.

people are telling me that when i write, i end up answering my own questions. maybe. i’m a writer, you know, so ending a blog or a letter with a nice, big bow is how i roll. i know you live inside me. i’ve heard and read that you’re near to the brokenhearted and to those crushed in spirit. i qualify on both points. i heard you weep with us and bottle our tears and that your Son was called the Man of Sorrows. by the way, i’m really sorry about that.

i’ve sensed you a few times since i lost my darlin’. it was nice for a few minutes. and it was a sensational story to tell to others. but it didn’t last long enough. nothing on this planet that’s good lasts long enough. time is a traitor and no friend of mine.

i just wish that if you actually did show up last night that you’d let me know it. i know that the pretty bow i should end this with today is that you live in all your kids and every time i have a need, you send one of them to hug me or call me or write to me or invite me to come hang out with them—god with skin on. maybe that’s all we get on this side of those heavenly greens where you and rob like to play golf together.

i just wish i’d gone to sleep last night after experiencing a few moments with you. in person.

or maybe. what i really wanted was for rob to show up. 

maybe that's it. sorry for bothering you. tell my husband i said, hi, would you?

sincerely,

eula

p,s. thanks for getting over that whole ‘open up the ground and swallow up all you dirty rotten sinners’ thing. if i can’t be honest with you, who can i talk to?

Band-Aids

How do you offer comfort to a grieving woman? She’s your friend. So was her husband. Your heart is sad. Hers is broken. Life will never be the same again for either of you. You long to help. Somehow. Terrified that anything you say can and will be used against you. What if you say the wrong thing? Or don’t say the right thing? At the right time? 

What does she need? You don’t know—even she doesn’t know. There’s just pain everywhere for her. She’s never been here before. She doesn’t know what to do or say to you either. Can she trust you with the shattered fragments of her soul? Will you try to fix her when there’s no fixing this? Can you sit with her during a flood of anguish and confusion that makes both of you sad and maybe uncomfortable? Or will you panic in the discomfort of it all and try to cheer her up, offering a band-aid while she's bleeding out? 

Maybe you should ask her how it’s going? Dangerous. The old paths of greeting are fraught with landmines now. Or remind her to take one day at a time when it’s all she can do to take one breath after another? Tell her to look on the bright side by saying her husband is in a better place? That God did heal him? Someday she’ll see him again. Will that suture the wound?

Death throws everyone into uncharted waters. Prayer seems to be the only safe offering. Condolences say, “I see you and I’m sorry about what happened to you,” but feel inadequate. Cards and flowers are the same, a consolation to some, yet not others. Stocking up on Kleenex may be a good idea—you never know when or where a kind gesture will trigger tears. Everything triggers them for her. A lonely drive she used to take with her husband. The sight of lovers holding hands while they walk. Elderly couples blessed with twenty more years together than she had.

Maybe if she was reminded to practice gratitude for what she still has left, then she’d start to pull out of this free fall. Then everyone could breathe a sigh of relief and go back to normal. Advice is rarely any help to the listener. No one is expecting her to recover right away. She knows that. But how long is too long to feel sad? A couple of months? Years? It’s a good sign when she’s smiling or makes a joke. Good. She’s hanging in there. Moving on. Getting a grip. Oops. Nope. There it comes again and . . . she’s down. It’s getting a little old, isn’t it?

Living one day at a time in her world means waking up every morning knowing that this is a life sentence. He’s never coming back. He’ll never hold her again. She’ll never caress his face or smell his coffee or ride in the car with him again. His story has ended leaving hers without a plot.

She’s doing the best she can to put one foot in front of the other, force herself to do the normal things that are familiar, at least. Routine is good, she reminds herself. She needs reliable things in a world that doesn’t make sense anymore. Get up, get dressed, get out, connect. You’re doing great, she thinks, straightening her bed, looking at the sunshine through the windows, making unending phone calls that seal her husband in his grave. Surviving every new day, breathing with a knife in her heart.

There’s no guidebook for getting through this one, either as her friend or for her. That ‘stages of grief’ model? It doesn’t exist. Pain is unpredictable. There’s no roadmap. No shortcuts. No one’s experience is identical to anyone else’s. This is a walk in the dark, feeling her way blindly through disorienting circumstances. She was robbed of everything familiar to her, especially her true love. Even his wallet was stolen while he lay unconscious in the ICU. Salt in the wound.

So, what does she need to hear? What comfort exists that could ease her unending pain? Has anyone discovered anything that will break through her suffering fog and reach her weary, shattered heart?

“I love you.” “I’m praying for you.” “Holding you close.” “Keeping you right here.” “Thinking of you.” “You’re always on my mind.” “I’m here if you need someone to cry with.” “You are so loved.” “Tell me about it.” “May I sit with you for a while?” “Do you want to meet for coffee/lunch?” “God puts you on my heart constantly.” “I left something for you at the front door.” “I made this for you, praying for your comfort the entire time.” “I’d like to pick you up and spend some time with you.” “I just wanted you to know I’m thinking of you. There’s no need to respond.” "I so want to give you a hug and just be there." "Thinking of you every day and sending love." "Praying for your night. Always right here." "Prayers stay constant." "You haven't left my heart. Love you." "Carried you thru the night."

And if any of these things are spoken, all the better. She misses the sound of his voice. You can offer yours in the void.

None of these assurances fix anything for her. Instead, they remind her she’s still important to someone, and there are no expectations of her while she tries to find her footing again. No impatience. No advice. No one knows what these shoes feel like except her. There is no judgment about what she’s supposed to learn from this tragedy or what the future may hold for her. She’s doing everything she can to stay here in the moment while avoiding regret over the past and fear of what’s down the road. Though she searches to make sense of this senseless death, offering life lessons is wounding, not helpful.

Acceptance. Tenderness. Offering the relief that you understand this will take as long as it takes. And for as long as that takes, hearing the simple truth that she is loved and prayed for . . . heals.

Anything that heals is a comfort.

Emmanuel

A melody in the night that I can’t recognize. Struggling to remember the words. Finally, several REM cycles later, I remember the lyrics to the single line of melody. “You’re the light unto my path.”

When I wake up, the whole song comes back. “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path . . . You’re the light unto my path.”

But I disagree at first. “Remember the journal I threw in the trash when all the Bible promises evaporated and the doctor said Rob had one day left to live? Those were promises from Your Word.”

“That’s not My Word.”

I stop. That’s right. Jesus is the Word. “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” Jesus is the light unto my path. “When I feel afraid, think I’ve lost my way, Still, you’re here right beside me, Nothing will I fear as long as you are here, You’ll be with me to the end.”

I had put my hope in the words I read, instead of in Your Word—Your Son.

I see.

Supernatural comfort and communication keep showing up. For me, it usually happens in the night. For my daughter, in the daytime, as hawks circle her home, her neighborhood walk, her drives across this desert. Rob could always spot hawks on the wing. He seemed to love them. She’s been seeing hawks ever since her father went into ICU in January.

“What do you think it means?” I ask her.

“I think it means ‘hope,’” she tells me. I nod. “We need hope, don’t we?” Our eyes both fill with tears. “We need it desperately.”

For my son, comfort arrives late one afternoon as he drops onto the front pew of the church where he is the pastor. Lighting a candle on the wall, he sits with his head in his hands, eyes closed in grief, and bravely voices the question we’ve all been asking silently.

“When are You going to show up???”

It lands on the floor at his feet. No celestial voices reply. There is only light. Burning. Its brightness hurts his eyes though they are closed in the darkened room.

His grieving interrupted by the burning sensation, he squints to see what is causing his pain. From the tiny window above the lit taper on the wall beside him, a late afternoon shaft of sunlight strikes the Gospel candle on the altar in front of him. The rays reflect against the brass ring at its top, sending a ricochet of light directly into Father Lee’s eyes.

A flame appears, unburning, Moses-style, on top of the unlit candle. Not on the Epistle candle on the south end of the table, but on the Gospel candle on the north end. This taper represents Emmanuel—God With Us. At the very moment Lee demands to know when God is going to show up for him, for his sister, for me, his mother, and for the rest of Rob’s family who are suffering from his death, the answer hits my son right between the eyes.

God With Us. He is here. Right now. In our suffering. Weeping with us, one arm around us, one arm around Rob.

Hope flies generously on the wing. Audaciously. Above us, everywhere we go.

In the dark hours of our grief, Jesus is the light for our unfamiliar path.

And in each of these reminders is a common thread of truth. Emmanuel—God With Us—is. He is With Us.

We are not alone.

Popcorn

The popcorn sound of my iPhone’s text alert goes off, reminding me that I don’t even like popcorn.

“How are you?” the message reads.

“Medium bad,” I respond, resorting to the dark-humored joke my family and I share right now. It’s accurate, though. And it’s easier than trying to sum up, one itsy bitsy letter at a time on a miniscule keyboard, how my life has imploded and I will never be the same. It’s also shorter.

I guess that’s hard to absorb. Well, it’s a blog. I’m not trying to win a Pulitzer Prize here or anything. I’m just trying to get this written so I can fall asleep before the sun comes up.

Yesterday was a good day. Today is very different. That’s the way things roll right now. Every day when I wake up I don’t know how many waves of grief I’ll have to surf before I lose my balance and nearly drown. Maybe the waters will be calm. Maybe not. It’s just one day after another, knowing at any moment I could get knocked down again by a memory, a longing, or that now familiar ache in my gut that I have to try to breathe through until it passes.

I read another grief-stricken writer’s blog last night. She said one aspect of this pain is realizing that my loved one has moved on. That’s what it is—Rob moved on. He moved on without me. Without even asking me to come along. While mourning with the broken hearts around me, I'm forced to handle the unfamiliar details and grievous closures. And face the unknown future, without him. He just moved on. It confuses me, standing here, where I've been set aside. Stranded.

We had unfinished business. He died in the middle of our life and I didn’t get to hold him again, kiss his lips, tell him my saved-up news, share my fears with him, tell him I was sorry for the stresses that made me grumpy. He didn’t get to tell me those things either. Traumatic death leaves unfinished business behind in its wake that adds to the shock and grief.

That’s uncomfortable, too, isn’t it? Same here.

My constant companion now is the throbbing awareness that I’ll never see Rob in this life again or hear him talk to me in any way other than the handful of audio files I’ve managed to save. I feel like my heart has been ripped out of me. My happy husband. So delighted by his family. He so enjoyed living. He so put up with me. God, I miss him. I can’t possibly cry this grief away or sleep it off, ignore it or shut it down. Every day, every second that goes by, pushes me another mile away from the last time we lived a normal life together. It’s as though I’ve been set out to sea on an iceberg, floating farther and farther away from the mainland of life with him, never ever to return. This is cruel and unusual punishment for loving someone with my whole heart and soul.

I still have to do the ordinary things, no matter how I feel. Like shopping. But every venture into a grocery store is a risk. Every aisle holds memories of meals I’ll never make for him again. Foods he loved. The smell of his coffee in the morning while he enjoyed watching golf or football on tv. I’m baptizing the aisles inside every Basha’s in the East Valley with my tears.

This morning was hard. A lot of crying. A lot of missing Rob. A lot of scaring the birds in the garden with the sound of me blowing my nose. I went to McD and got breakfast, brought it home and watched a sitcom and got tired of tv. I went to the piano to try to play something. To express my emotions. Get ‘em out there and find a little relief. There was only a hymnal on the piano’s rack.

It’s hard to find a good angry song to play in a hymnal.

I flipped through to find something that might work anyway, landed on Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus, and began to play. Angrily. Agitato forte, I believe it’s called, times ten. Pounding out an enraged version of the song felt good inside but hurt my hands as I thrashed the keys, slamming dischordant notes down like a two-year-old beating up the keyboard. Caught up in my heart’s furious expression, the sound that came from my baby grand was nothing like the writer intended. I completely destroyed the song which happily, sweetly admonished if I'd “turn my eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.”

What idiot wrote that? I wondered, knowing that Jesus wept and still weeps with us. Someone who never watched their beloved husband die, I was betting. I ended with a crushing smash on the keys and stood up. “And that’s how I feel about that,” I said calmly. 

I think I might be a psychopath.

Since I forgot and left the front door open, I wondered what the neighbors thought as they listened in on my cacophony of grief. Maybe they decided it was some new kind of punky metallic pseudo-rock. “Far out,” the aging hippies down the street may have said. “Lord, have mercy,” I pictured the legalists whispering as they prayed for my piano to implode lest the devil get the glory. “She may need medication,” the worried gossip probably muttered as she bolted her door shut.

The truth is I took out some of my confusing, illogical anger on innocent ivories and made my fingers hurt.

We grieve alone. That’s the truth. People can sit with us, cry with us, hold us in their arms, but no one else can feel what I feel in this horrendous loss. No one else is me, no one else was Rob’s beloved, no one loved Rob the way I did as his wife and partner, no one else knows what this injury feels like to me. I have to grieve alone. You will have to grieve alone, too, when loss happens to you. There’s no way around grief. You can only go through it. As my son told me tonight, it’s so real and so raw that the only way through it is to honor that pain. And as horrible as this feels right now, this is the time to deal with it rather than stuffing it and having it come out later in some other way.

And now what I’m reading—which, by the way, is not encouraging—is that I will never get over it. I will never get over Rob’s death. I will never get over losing our life together. I will, instead, carve out a way to co-exist with the grief and loss and missing him, perhaps as an amputee learns how to function with one less arm, though I don’t know for sure. I’ve never been in that position. I’m just guessing the same way people try to imagine what they “can’t imagine” when it comes to what I’m going through right now.

So, yesterday’s blog had a happier ending. Today, the only thing I can say about the day is I survived. I walked through fire again.

Well, it was bound to happen. Every time you throw some dried corn in a pan of hot oil, the moisture inside gets agitated and blows the husk off. That distorts the uniformly shaped kernels into something resembling mutilated styrofoam, and the next thing you know it all gets drowned in butter and consumed absentmindedly during a horror flick.

Popped corn. That's what I feel like right now.

I’ve never liked popcorn.

The original photo seen above can be viewed by following the link below to the artist's page, Ann Larie Valentine. Popcorn! | Ann Larie Valentine | Flickr

In The Garden

I took a walk in the garden this morning. Maybe it was more like I took a stand. Or a lean. Okay, I was propped up outside the garden this morning.

My arms resting on the gate, I gazed through blurry eyes at the peaceful setting Katy and her friend created last month. Katy always says the garden is where she finds peace. Right now, all the beauty growing there is bringing her comfort and healing.

I’m invited to drop in anytime I feel like it. The raised beds are painted with patches of color. Orange mums, bright yellow California poppies, deep purple petunias, glossy green leaves of basil, while twin lettuce plants, left from the fall, threaten to go to seed at any moment. It's a soothing canvas of life.

There were two chairs against a wall on my left, cloaked in shade, inviting me to come sit, but I preferred standing—propping—where I could put my head in my hands and weep. It’s an odd way to water Katy’s garden, especially since I was standing ten feet away but, right now, I’m watering everything in my path like that—my shirt, my laptop, my daughter’s shoulder.

“I don’t know how to do this,” I cried at the garden gate today. “Please help me, God. I miss him so much.” And then, in the hope that it’s true Rob can hear me, I added, “I love you, Rob.”

But there was no reply. The only sound came from the happy animals in Katy’s pasture. I envy them. Life is simple when you’re a pig. Or a sheep. Or duck or chicken. Eat, sleep, act ridiculous and selfish, repeat as needed. No sorrow. No pity parties. No shame. Just be who you are. There’s a lot to be said for you doing you.

I don’t know who I am anymore.

My journey with God for the last thirty years has been the discovery of who He says I am. Identity is everything. It’s different from performance or talent or career. God gives it to us—we don’t earn it. Rob grasped that better than anyone I’ve ever known. He lived it out because it was who he really was. He helped me understand it, too. That’s the reason our Tahoe has OVRCMR personalized on its plate--"Overcomer" in license plate shorthand. Being an overcomer is part of the identity God gives His kids. I drive that word around with me to remind me of the truth.

But this morning, standing at that garden gate, I felt like a poser. My head was down. My courage missing in action. I loved being Rob's wife. That's who I've been for forty-four years. We've been a team. Never one without the other. "RobAndEula." It rolled off the tongue. Or "RobAndI." Now it's just me. Stranded by circumstances I didn't sign up for. Forced to deal with destruction without my teammate at my side. 

Some overcomer I am, I thought. I should rip that license plate right off the truck. All this time, telling people that Jesus is enough when the going gets tough, and look at me now. I’m a mess. It’s seven weeks today since Rob left us and I still can’t believe he’s gone most of the time. Shouldn’t I be getting a grip by now? Crying less. Accepting more? I’ve never felt grief at this magnitude before—I don’t know how it’s supposed to work. Or help.

My eyes swept across the garden while I wiped snot from my nose and soaked up the tears with the back of my hand. Pausing to look at the two empty chairs against the barn, something above them caught my attention. Another license plate, this one nailed to the wall instead of screwed onto a bumper. While I chose the plate for our Tahoe, Rob wanted this one on his Dodge Dakota. HOLDFST, it read. I gave it to Katy when I sold his truck and this is where she decided to hang it.

Facing her garden where her soul goes to be restored.

Rob loved that phrase and the history of it. According to Clan MacLeod, late one night the clan’s third chief was confronted by a wild bull which was notorious for terrorizing the locals. He jumped on its back, struggling with it and nearly losing the fight, when a bunch of his own clansmen heard the commotion and crowded around the strange wrestling match. “Hold fast, MacLeod!” they yelled. “Hold fast!” He did and, in the end, he killed the ornery bull with his dirk. The shout of his own people became the motto of Clan MacLeod and of my McLeod, Roby.

Hold fast. When you’re losing your grip. Hold fast. When hope is fading. Hold fast. When the odds are against you. Hold fast. We’re here, cheering you on. You can do this. Hold fast.

I don’t know how to do this, I keep crying to God. I don’t know how to start over at sixty-two. I don’t know how to be happy again. I don’t know how to forget the painful parts of Rob’s last days or the shock that he wasn’t going to make it after all. I don’t understand. There’s no road map for this terrible journey. I don’t know how I’ll get through his memorial this summer or our anniversary in the fall or the Christmas season after that.

Or the rest of my life, without him.

Hold fast, the sign insisted. A simple answer to faith in conflict. I stopped crying and switched my focus to the garden where my daughter had appeared, kneeling, plucking small weeds from the damp soil. “You okay, Mama?” she asked, glancing up at my tear-stained face.

I told her about feeling like a broken record and how I thought I should pull the OVRCMR plate off the Tahoe and throw it out. “Every day I’m struggling,” I said. “I miss your dad so much. I miss talking with him. I miss his voice. I don’t know when it will ever get better.” She went back to her weeding, listening while I told her about the two license plates. Then she looked up again.

“I think Dad’s still talking to you,” she said quietly. “He’s telling you to hold fast, Overcomer.”

It sounded just like something her father would say. She’s so much like her dad, it amazes me. The way she listens, summarizes, reminds me of truth. Her brother does the same thing as I talk with him at night. My family. All cut from the same McLeod cloth. All cheering me on, even while their own hearts are hurting. And healing.

Hold fast, Overcomer. You’re still an overcomer whether you feel like it or not. You didn’t earn that identity—it was given to you. Or, in the words of a mentor Rob and I both admired who first taught us about our identity in Christ, Believe that it’s so, even when it’s not so, so that it can be so.

In other words, Hold Fast. Hang on. You’re gonna get through this. We're all rooting for you. Just Hold Fast.

Rob is still talking to me.

Waiting For Me

Lying in bed every morning, trying to talk myself into getting up and showering. It’s not that hard. Throw back the comfy cover, spin around, swing your legs over the edge. The only thing standing between me and a cascade of warm, soothing water is the flash flood of tears heading my way before my feet can hit the ground. And it always comes. It never disappoints.

How long will I grieve? It lasts as long as it lasts, one book says.

I have a friend who, after losing her husband, spent a year feeling numb. And then she started to cry. Everyone grieves differently, I’m told. Yesterday I read that grieving is necessary in order to heal, but it’s a painful route to healing, if you ask me. I can see why some people avoid it like the plague—the two have a lot in common, grief and the plague.

I’m sorry if this is hard to read, all this thinking out loud on your dime. I’d really rather be writing funny stories about my crazy adventures with Rob and our family, but most of those came to a screaming halt two months ago. And the tears . . . they’re always there waiting, just below the surface, in case fatigue or a photo or a sweet memory give them opportunity. Something as simple as re-reading a kind note or trying to find my white Tahoe—which may have been lost today outside Target in a sea of parked cars in ninety degree temps—can make me crumble faster than a bag of Doritos. Rob used to pick me up at the entrance. Park me in the shade. Open my door for me. Hand me the keys so I could turn on the air conditioning while he loaded all my purchases in the back.

There I go again—dripping tears on my laptop.

Katy and Dan have loaned me their master bedroom for the last two and a half months, ever since I got out of the hospital. It’s time to give it back, so now I’m moving into a large guest space they created last fall when they thought Rob and I would be visiting regularly from Heber. It’s really pretty, has lots of room and privacy, and today we brought some of my furniture out of storage to help make it feel more familiar. That’s another thing I read—the familiarity of having my things around me can help with healing

Rob and I used to love watching the movie, The Quiet Man, with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara every St. Patrick’s Day. We missed it this year. . . Moving on. After Wayne’s character relocates to Ireland, he marries an Irish woman, but his culture shock threatens the marriage of the newlyweds. O’Hara’s character is controlled by a hateful older brother who won’t let her have the furniture left to her by their mother. Sobbing, she tries to explain the sense of security her belongings give her, finally making it as simple as possible for her confused new husband: “I want my things about me!”

Okay, that was a lot of explanation for a really short quote. But I used to make fun of that scene. Now I understand. When we rolled up the door to one of my storage units this afternoon to search for a chair and bookshelf and some lamps, the mere sight of my husband’s dresser in the entrance made me break down right there in the middle of Public Storage. It’s a beautiful piece of furniture and it’s the only piece of our bedroom set I kept. Because it makes me think of him.

There’s comfort in having my things, our things, about me. It’s a bittersweet kind of comfort because it’s all I have left of Roby that’s tangible. We’ll grab his dresser another time, but when we brought the other items here and set them in place, a little bit of peace came along for the ride.

Katy put a small dresser in the room for me with a tv set attached to the wall above. There’s a bit of a tangle of electric cords below it that will be hidden in the wall eventually, but for now she propped up a canvas with a pretty scene she painted on it to cover the wires. In her picture, puffy white clouds float against a serene, blue sky, the  remnants of a summer storm. It’s very realistic. All the depth and dimension she added with a clever use of grays makes it look practically 3D. I thought it needed a little something more, though, since I’ll be seeing it everyday when I watch tv in my new room.

“I’m going to cut out a tiny little picture of Rob and paste him up there in the clouds,” I announced. She gave me the look her dad used to give me. I’m still going to do it. It makes me laugh and I think it makes Katy laugh, too. On the inside—the same way her dad used to laugh at my jokes. I do laugh still. It’s a relief when I do.

Still, there are tears every morning. A shower to wash them away. Slow, steady progress making the necessary changes needed to go forward from here. Always, the grief is there, like an unwelcome visitor. Sometimes amusement chases it into the shadows. Maybe the day will come when grief will stay there instead of sneaking back out once the laughter dies down. I don’t know. I’ve never been here before. Katy and I always tell people the same thing when we describe how we’re trying to cope:

“We don’t know what we’re doing.” 

We’re just winging it. Doing the best we can. Trying to find our way back to normal. Knowing it will never be the same again. We're missing Rob. Hanging on. Laughing when we can, crying when we can't. I'm catching on to how this works. Every single morning. While I throw back the covers, spin around, and swing my feet over the edge of the bed, I know the flash flood of tears will cover me again. They always do. They never disappoint.

Grief waits for me there, just outside the shadows. For as long as it lasts.

Hold Fast

There was so much I wanted to tell you, Baby. When you woke up. How much I missed you. How I recovered. The way Katy and Dan sacrificed to get me off that mountain and down to their house once the hospital let me go, and how your brave daughter took care of me until my strength returned. I’m strong again, honey. I’m doing everything I did before, all these weeks since I told you goodbye in ICU and came off that mountain while you fought to survive. I made it, Babe.

But I never got to talk to you again. Not until the day we were finally allowed back in your room to tell you goodbye. There was too much to try to say that day while we choked up with tears and tried to be as courageous as you and let you go. When it was over, I put your wedding ring on my own hand, and I’ve been wearing it ever since.

Remember how you told me while you were stationed in Germany that you wanted a turquoise wedding band? And how I got a new diamond set for our twenty-fifth anniversary (“I want some bling now,” I told you.) But you wanted to keep wearing the ring I had special-made for you because it told the story of perseverance in hard times and devotion in good with its chipped stones and sparkling silver edges.

I put my bling away the day we let you go. Your turquoise band took its place on my ring finger. I need a reminder that I can persevere. That I can walk this painful path with courage and survive. It comforts me to see it there on my left hand—looking at it reminds me of how it looked when you wore it. Sometimes it even makes me feel like you’re still close by. There’s a triangular stone missing—the empty spot spins around to the front a lot—but I don’t mind. You loved this ring and wore it all the time. You were bound to lose a piece of it eventually. Every time I see that empty place it reminds me you’re the one who lost that stone and I’m the one who lost you. I don't think I’ll ever get it repaired.

I’ve lost so much. It’s so hard to grasp how much in such a short span of time that I can’t even comprehend it all right now. Of course, it bubbles up to the surface and flows down the sides of my face, so I can’t ignore it completely. Grief has a mind of its own.

When I think of that last day, sitting beside you in the hospital, I just did what I had to do. I wept there, but I knew that, as always, the majority of my tears would fall later when the shock gave way to whatever my new reality looked like. Every day since I kissed your forehead for the last time and told you I love you is heartache. I’m bleeding inside, missing you, longing for you. We didn’t know until the morning prior that you were going to die. I never knew what helpless felt like until that moment. The memory of you trying to say that you love me strangles me with grief. You were ripped away from me while I stood by in disbelief, unable to prevent it from happening. Stolen from me while I watched, powerless, unable to do anything to stop it. I’m still numb. This evening when I told our kids good night, I came to the bedroom, longing to tell you about my day. Desperate for a hug. I was sobbing before I crossed the threshold knowing you weren’t waiting for me.

How many ways can I think of to explain how this feels? Half of me is gone. Overnight. There was no closure, not when the conversation was one-sided. I don’t know what happened. There are no answers. And when I ask God to speak up, there’s only silence. Maybe you can see me from the other side. Hear my cries. One author I’m reading even says you and all the other saints are praying for us. For me. I hope so. It’s the silence on this end that is deafening. It makes me feel like my questions fall lifeless to the floor at my feet.

I wasn’t going to write tonight. It makes me cry and I can’t breathe and then I can’t go to sleep and I need sleep. It’s hard to go to bed without you. But there’s something in me that demands I work this out here, especially since I can’t talk to you about it anymore. You always made me laugh at my fears. You let my mascara melt on your shoulder while you held me in your arms. You brushed the hair out of my eyes and kissed the tears away and told me everything was going to be all right. But I can’t hear your voice anymore. It’s the worst kind of starvation. I’m trying to be brave, Baby, I really am. There’s nothing I can do to change the fact that you’re gone for the rest of my life here. But it hurts so much.

So here I am. Wearing your ring. Bearing your name. Holding fast to our daughter and son and their families. Forced to go on without you when I don’t want to. Wishing I could talk with you and writing unread letters to you instead.

Maybe you already know all of this, watching from the heavenly stadium where you sit with your dad and brothers and my Grandpa and all the others in that cloud of witnesses the Bible talks about. and pray for our endurance here, for our hope to stay strong, and that we’ll each ‘hold fast’. I’ll do my best, Baby. With my eyes closed, and these half-breaths, and the grief strangling my soul, I’ll try to remember how much you want me to hang on..

I just wish that I was still holding fast onto you.

Dragonslayer

It happened again. 

Where do I start? Waking up this morning to face another day of pain, I rolled in tight to my pillow and wept. “I can’t do this, God,” I cried. “Please help me.” I’m tired of trying to get through this loss while I stay angry at God. I need Him. Desperately. I had to let go of the questions. I know God is good, so there must be something I don’t understand about the situation. Acceptance seemed my only out.

“I accept it,” I sobbed. “I accept your will.”

It’s not comforting when well-meaning people offer the “it was God’s will” explanation after the most important person in your world just died. Please don’t say that to a wounded heart like mine—when we’re ready, we’ll figure it out on our own. It’s just that I was crying and couldn’t breathe, so the fewer words the better. People keep reminding me it’s only been six weeks since Rob left us and that I’m early into this grief process.

Believe me, that’s not good news.

I got going and went to lunch with a friend. Accomplished a few tasks. Had time with family. And then the twilight snuck in—a time of day that has always been hard for me. My spirits crashed late in the day and I found myself crying again. In the truck. By myself.

Rob always hated it when I did that. Too bad. If he was here, I wouldn’t have been crying.

Grief is complicated. It feels like all the negative emotions I’ve ever experienced thrown together into one messy pile, and I have to sort it all out before I can get on with my life. Did I mention how bad I am at jigsaw puzzles?

Ignoring my feelings, I picked up some supper and headed back to the house. But that song, “Fires,” was running through my mind, demanding my attention, insisting that I listen. I reached over to drown it out with the radio and it was also playing on the airwaves—just like a couple of days ago. There must be something in that song God wants me to know, because every time I’m at the end of endurance and beg Him to show up, that song starts playing.

You’ve walked me through fires, pulled me from flames, if You’re in this with me I won’t be afraid.

“I am afraid,” I cried out, clutching the steering wheel with one hand and wiping my eyes with the other.

When the smoke billows higher, oh and higher, 

and it feels like I can barely breathe . . .

“I can’t breathe,” I wept. “I can’t breathe!” I kept telling Him how I felt, while the song finished playing all around me in the cab of my truck.

I’ll walk through these fires ‘cause You’re walking with me.

“It doesn’t feel like you’re walking with me. How does that help anyway?” I wanted to know.

I parked in the driveway, beat up by the experience, and brought my supper inside the house. Then I sat down to watch “Last Man Standing” on tv while I ate chicken strips and a lemon bar. The story line revolved around the death of someone’s mother. Great. Her son felt guilty for putting her in the hospital when she begged him not to. When she died there, he blamed himself for her death.

I stopped eating my lemon bar. I couldn’t see it very well anyway.

Tim Allen’s character, friend of the guilt-ridden man, told him the truth. “You did the very best you could for your mom. You gave her the finest care you could think of. It’s not your fault she died. You have no control over life and death. The reason is hurts so much is because you loved her so much.”

It was as if he was talking to me.

I’ve struggled with that same guilt ever since we lost Rob. Besides all the “what if’s” and “if only’s” after we both got sick, when emergency measures were needed to save Rob’s life, his doctors called me because I held his medical power of attorney. He was unconscious and I had to make life and death decisions for him about possibilities he and I had never discussed ahead of time. It’s a terrible place to stand, that gap. And when it was over, none of the life saving techniques they tried saved his life.

Somehow, all of that translated into, “This was my fault.” It’s a self-imposed prison of guilt. And it’s not true. I’m not the One in control.

I miss Rob so much, at times my stomach knots up and I hold my breath until the grief spasm passes. My life has changed permanently. Nothing right now feels familiar, and the future is blurry. I’m living less than one day at a time, only pulling it off one breath at a time. This healing is going to take a long, long time and I’ve barely begun walking through this fire.

It reminds me of a night-time training demo put on for the families of rookies when Rob and I were newlyweds, and he was in Fire School in Florida. At the training facility, there was a long, shallow, concrete pit of water. While the audience watched, captivated, the training captains added diesel fuel to the rectangular pit and set it on fire. The flames blew up twenty feet or more into the dark sky, illuminating the grassy area all around it with dragon-like breath. Even from where we all stood together a safe distance away, we could feel the heat generated by the watery inferno.

Rob’s team took their positions on the hose line, Rob in the middle, and as they turned the pressure up, the nozzle was adjusted into a fog pattern aimed at the determined flame burning paradoxically on the water’s surface. Rob had not told me what was about to happen. I wished he had.

As steam from the fire hose competed with the thirsty flames for domination, the men worked as one to push the fire off the surface of the shallow concrete pool. Then, as I looked on in disbelief, all of them stepped into the pit of fire-breathing water, the fog pattern of their super-charged nozzle combatting the threatening flames. That and their training were the only weapons they held as they battled their way through the blaze to the other side of the firepit.

Step by step, while their families watched on the sidelines, the men walked slowly through the wet flames, pushing the fire back as they moved in sync with one another. The point of the exercise was to simulate what they would need to do in the case of a fuel leak. Walking through the fire, their mission would be to reach the source of the rupture and shut it down. It was the only way the fire could be extinguished.

But I didn’t know that. All I could see were monstrous flames. A moment earlier they’d been  pushed ahead by the team of men. But now, in a surprising move, those same flames suddenly wrapped back around the sides of the burning pit. A gasp went up from the crowd as the three men disappeared into the jaws of the dragon. From where we stood, we couldn’t see the crew at all. The only thing visible was a two-story tower of orange and red flames raging against the dark night.

My eyes grew huge, scanning the enormous, vivid firebreather for signs of human life, or more mist, anything to relieve the fear building in my heart. One hand at my throat, I stood on tiptoes, trying to see if Rob’s superiors were panicking. Or calling for backup. Grabbing more hoses to rescue the endangered men. But there was nothing. Just the roar of flames. And silence from the captains.

And then—a slow cheer. From the far end of the crowd, applause began to build as the heroes inside the fire emerged, safe and sound, on the other side of the flaming pit. Mission accomplished, unsinged and unharmed, I watched as each of them stepped out of the water. A few minutes later, the fire, having lapped up all the vapors, slowly died down and disappeared. All that remained was the acrid aroma of burnt diesel fuel.

The entire time, the crew held that line together and were kept safe behind the water curtain they’d created. Standing still would have been deadly, so they kept moving forward in unison. Their progress was slow and gut wrenching for all of us who watched, but when they emerged on the other side, the sound of our relief echoed in the night.

I never went to watch another training exercise. The heart can only stand so much.

I know it’s hard to read these blog posts. They’re hard to write. Sometimes I can’t see through my tears as I put my feelings down like this. I need to do it, though. Because the flames are tall and the smoke is thick and I won’t be able to breathe if I don’t find a way to extinguish my grief.

You’re on the sidelines, watching in agony while I slowly move forward, rookie that I am at this kind of battle. Rob told me later he was scared to death during that exercise. And that every time he went into a burning building throughout his career, he was afraid. He knew what could happen. He knew it had happened to other men. He went in anyway. He had no choice.

I have no choice now, either. I wish my Captain would shut down the flames. Make this nightmare go away. Give me a trapdoor. Anything to get me out of the way of this fire-breathing dragon. But instead, He has given me Himself. I’ve been scared that He is not enough. I’m not proud of that—I’m just being honest again.

He’s the lead man on this fire line. He walks before me, the One Who loves me deeply. He has promised I will not be burned even though I am terrified, surrounded by this tragedy’s flames, barely able to hear His voice in the roar of the inferno, blinded by its choking smoke.

I will come out on the other side. Someday. Healed and whole. Just like Rob is right now.

Fires don’t last forever.

Love does.