I Know

 

I basked in you;

I loved you, helplessly, with a boundless tongue-tied love.
And death doesn't prevent me from loving you.
Besides,
in my opinion you aren't dead.
(I know dead people, and you are not dead.)
​
― Franz Wright, Walking to Martha's Vineyard

 

 

I know dead people. And you are not dead.

 

The dead people I know look like the living, but the flame is gone from their hollow, disillusioned eyes.

Even as you lay on your deathbed, gaunt, weak, your hair grown out, face unshaven,

So long was your personal care relegated to a dusty drawer somewhere

That I barely recognized the man I’d kissed goodbye only four weeks earlier,

Still, sunken though they were, your searching eyes found me.

You were still there, and you knew me.

Though dying, your strong spirit lived on.

I know dead people. And you are not dead.

 

I knew your hand.

The one I held for hours while I sat in that hospital room chair, reaching beneath the metal bars that kept you from me until they said I could come say goodbye.

And I took your hand in mine, the way you took mine at that long ago altar.

The one I’d placed a turquoise wedding band on all those years ago.

That one.

I stroked that hand where it lay alongside your broken body, interlaced my fingers with yours for the last time,

Doing what I had to do.

I had to let you go. It’s what you asked for.

It’s not what I asked for.

Now and then the faintest squeeze spoke your love to me in the stillness where your voice went silent.

You were not dead, though your body lay dying.

I know dead people. And you are not dead.

 

Your last breath carried you away from me. From all of us. I wasn’t there, ill as I remained.

They tell me when the dying are ready to leave,

They often wait until a loved one steps away.

Like I did.

Even in your last breath, you were thinking of me.

I was thinking of you.

I still am.

Waiting.

Alert to the feel of your spirit near mine,

The gentle touch of your love on my heart,

Leaving ripples like a breeze on the water.

Only your body died.

You live on.

I know dead people.

And you are not dead.

Megan Devine, author of the book on grief, "It's Okay That You're Not Okay", sends writing prompts to the alumni of her writing courses on dealing with grief. This is the result of my response to one of her prompts.

Taking Back the Land

Uprooted, against its will, without explanation. It used to be a vibrant lawn, nurtured by expansive sunlight, generously watered by irrigation. Until the backhoe came, killing every healthy blade, piling it all in a heap at the edge of the fencing, and leaving it there with the typical sign, “Free Dirt.”

They had no choice. Change was coming. Change had already arrived.

Heavy trucks rolled across the dusty remains, adding insult to injury. Then, like the aftermath of an uncoordinated parade, hundreds of footprints packed down the unruly dirt. Soon, expansive windows in a new house—whose build was the cause for all this demolition—stared out blankly at a wide expanse of brown nothingness.

So much for curb appeal.

It looked as though nothing would ever grow there again. She could relate to the injury suffered by the land, its only crime being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She pondered replacing the yard with a carpet of fake grass to bring color back again, but quickly ditched the idea. It seemed like the equivalent of stretching a giant green Band-Aid over the wound. How about xeriscape? She could just swap out a luxurious lawn for a mass of heavy, unimaginative gravel. Or maybe a fence would hide the annihilation. That wouldn’t change the view from the inside, though. The earth was damaged. There was no getting around this bare fact. She saw it every time she sat at the desk and looked outside at the Desolation of Smaug. 

This was her fault. In an organic way, it felt like her life.

What this injury called for made her let out a long, deep sigh. The inevitable answer to all of life’s dilemmas. As boring as the brown earth outside her window.

Time.

It was going to take some time. And patience. She'd just have to wait. Day after day, week after week. it was like watching . . . grass grow.

“It’ll come back, Mom,” her gifted gardener assured her. “See the edge of the irrigation flow?”  A dark outline from the previous day’s flooding marked the boundaries of a someday front yard. “Just as soon as it starts getting hot, the Bermuda will take over. It always does.”

Just as soon as it gets hot. So weird. When she stood outside in summer, she thought she'd self-combust. When Bermuda feels the heat, it resurrects. Slowly creeping along, the determined seeds hidden in the bulldozed dirt would germinate—die—only to come back to life again. The march of green was unstoppable, a showy display of survival in catastrophe's void.

Six weeks later as she sat at her desk and stared once more through the huge window, she realized with surprise that her daughter had been right. No longer did the front yard resemble the moon’s surface. As summer did what summer does, the Bermuda responded like an army. Outfitted in green fatigues, the troops spread out across two-thirds of the once barren landscape, determined to take back stolen territory. It had already encircled another survivor—an Ash tree once diseased and cut down, its stump exploded now with dozens of healthy shoots, each vying to replace the life that once was.

The life that once was.

An annihilated tree in the throes of rebirth. A devastated lawn reclaiming its identity. A shattered heart watching in fascination from her front row seat at the window, waiting for hope to restore her soul. 

You can’t stop life. The landscape may change, but immortal seeds remain - there beneath the surface, anxious to be revealed and get back to the business of living. You will live again, too, she bravely reminds herself. Let your tears soften the grains of grief. The life within will surface and take over. It always does.  

She knows the rest.  

It’s just going to take some time.

With thanks to SoulRider.222 for permission to use the terrific photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link: green shadow army | 3/13/10. Canon Rebel XTi. Canon EF-S. Ca… | Flickr

Here's To You

Animal Planet has nothing on the episodes I watch daily right outside my back fence. So far this morning I’ve binge watched Sneaky Sheep, Chicken Chatter, and Three More Little Piggies, the Sequel. I’m learning a lot from these episodes.

• ·         Piglets running across an open pasture are the cutest things I’ve ever seen.
• ·         If Bert jumped off the roof, Ernie would,too.
• ·         When the dinner bell rings, manners fly out the window. 
• ·         Now I know why Jesus compared people to sheep.

Every time I watch this channel, I am astonished by the way farm creatures treat each other. Take Sara and Esther, for example. I couldn’t keep them straight or even remember their names until this morning when Jules came out to the gate with breakfast for everyone and pointed out the differences between the two. Sara is lean and mean. She and her sister are both breeds without any sheepy fluff. They always look like they’ve recently been sheared, though Esther’s back is covered with a shallow layer of fleece, presumably to protect her fair skin. I think that’s why Sara is so grumpy—too many sunburns.

Once Jules pointed out the differences between the girls, it all made sense. Sara and Esther are Bible names given appropriately to the two sheepish sisters. For example, as soon as Jules sent a scoop full of alfalfa chunks sailing into the air over the double gate, mayhem exploded among the inhabitants on the other side like a Black Friday sale at the mall. It was everyone for themselves, especially Sara, the bossy one, behaving just like Abraham's wife. 

I’m telling you, she was out of control. Acting like she hadn’t eaten in a month, she butted into the front of the line, sending chickens flying and scrambling the little piglets. They weren’t any threat to her hungry belly. The poor little kids don’t even know how to chew alfalfa yet. Jules chided Sara's bad behavior, but after watching for a minute, she told her little flock, “I’ll be right back,” and headed off to do some other nice deed for them. Esther stood back from the free-for-all and waited patiently, looking like the exiled queen she's named for. But Sara? She pushed her nosy nose up to the gate and bellowed after Jules. Now, I don’t speak sheep, and I’ve noticed that Sara’s tone of voice is always one note, but if you ask me, she was pretty snippy there for a minute.

Self-centered. Animals only share as long as their mouths are full.

You know what else I was thinking about? Farm animals don’t have jobs. They don’t clean up after themselves. They don’t plant anything on purpose. If seeded food scraps make it through their digestive systems, you might find a volunteer tomato plant sprouting in the middle of the pasture, but believe me, all the credit goes to the tomato. After a journey like that, they deserve applause just for surviving.

The only job these critters have is one of my personal favorites. Eating. And they’re good at it. Their sole purpose is to eat and grow. That’s it. And sleep in between. I’ve been sitting here for over an hour watching the show and if they’re not sleeping, this cast of characters is eating. Grazing on grass, pecking at bugs, slurping from the watering trough, jumping up to grab leaves from low hanging branches, nursing on their mama. All they do is eat. It’s all they know how to do besides fight each other in order to eat more. And after all the energy they expend finding bugs or just the right blade of grass, they lie down to rest and digest. When they get up, the whole cycle begins again.

They’re not worried about the stock market. They don’t care who’s running the country. They never get annoyed by other drivers. They don't give a thought to what anyone thinks of them. They can’t even read. They never miss out on sleep. They’re not consumed by guilt. Spiritual questions don’t steal their joy. They feel safe in the pasture provided for them and live a life of contentment being themselves.

And eating.

Eating grass is their one and only job, which keeps the pasture looking mowed which saves the family from having to bring in a tractor which saves on gas and oil and sweat. That’s pretty much all they’re contributing to the economy here at the Brady farm. The only thing that will end up on our breakfast plates are donated eggs. No one is going to become a sausage link or a leg of lamb around here. These are beloved pets, at least to Jules, and as long as they do the one thing that comes naturally to them, they can live here without expectations or fear of failure.

So, this morning, as the credits roll on this adventure series and the chickens cozy up to the fence to see if I’m hiding any pellets in my pockets, I lean back in my chair and consider what I’ve learned by watching this scriptless documentary.

• ·         I make my life a lot harder than it should be.
• ·         I am sometimes my own worst enemy. I don’t even need another sheep to headbutt me—I can do it to myself.
• ·         It’s a waste of energy to wonder if people watch my every move or criticize how I live life.
• ·         I don’t have to work at anything to deserve the good things God gives me.
• ·         I only need to be the Eula that He created me to be. Not anyone else’s version, including my own.
• ·         If I eat and digest and absorb the good stuff, I might accidently leave something good behind.
• ·         All I really need to do is eat.

 

Time for a donut.

Re-wired

I’m not an electrician, but I can make the connection between throwing a switch and hearing the blender turn back on. I know there are red wires and yellow wires and white wires and maybe green wires, and if you mix up the colors when you hang up a fan, the house could blow up. I know I shouldn’t use a blow dryer in the bathtub because I read the warning on the label. (I don’t have a bathtub anyway, so I’m safe.) Here’s what I don’t understand. If my blow dryer won’t turn on in the master bathroom, why do I have to run down the hall to the guest bath and push that little reset button thingy? Shouldn’t it be in the same room where I keep my blow dryer?

And why do I have so many light switches in my new house? Why aren’t they labeled? Shouldn’t they be color coded, too, just like their inner wires so I’d know, for example, that the brown switch goes to the brown fan? That would make life easier. As it stands now, every time I think I’m turning on the living room light, the outside floodlights wake up my neighbors. But if I flipped every switch at once just to make sure the pendant lights came on, I’m pretty sure you’d be able to see my house from outer space.

It makes me wonder if my house was wired backwards. I’ve wondered the same thing about me lately.

Grief makes you feel like your brain has a short in it. It turns out that’s normal. I just discovered that the reason it takes so long to recover from the traumatic loss of someone who was your entire world is because we’re wired wrong. Well, not exactly wrong. Just, maybe, old school. Like when you buy a house called mid-century modern, but the entire electrical panel has to be replaced because the circuit breakers aren’t up to code and your house could self-combust. You can’t live in the twenty-first century with twentieth century technology. You need to be re-wired.

Sometimes I feel like a mid-century modern fire about to happen.

I have loved Rob McLeod since I was sixteen years old. This week I will turn sixty-four and I am still in love with him. Every aspect of my life has been wrapped up in “us” and “him.” That’s the way my brain has been wired for forty-eight years. He’s in my DNA. I catch myself saying and doing things that are the best imitation of Roby that you’ll find this side of heaven, and I’m not even trying. In fact, every time it happens it makes me cry. I didn’t know how much he and I were one until I became . . . one.

Now, I’m living a life I don’t recognize. Every detail of my life, with few exceptions, has changed. This isn’t always the case with loss, but it’s how it happened with me. The adjustments over the last fourteen months have been unbearable at times. They are constant reminders that the life I chose, the passion I pursued, the meaning life had for decades is all gone and will never be mine again. Every day, as I’m repeatedly startled by habits that don’t align with my circumstances, my brain screams out in self-defense, “I’m doing the best I can! I can’t adjust all at once!"

This is harder than it looks. My brain is working overtime, trying so hard to re-wire itself to how things are now that it’s sending up smoke signals. Grief sorts out the old from the new so you don’t get lost in your own driveway wondering what happened to the asphalt version you owned in the mountains and why you just saw a chicken cross the road here in the desert. Literally. It takes time. A lot of time. Which, to my relief, explains a lot.

Like the car wash.

It happened last month on a day so full of crazy that I was too embarrassed to talk about it right away. I’d worked on taxes by myself all weekend and, since I had a few minutes to spare before I dropped them off, decided I’d make a quick run through the car wash. I needed a minute to relax and wash away all the frustration of doing one more thing on my own that Rob and I always did together. Since there was no time to pamper myself after a stressful couple of days—getting a facial would have been nice—the next best thing was a car wash. The list of things I can’t control is so long now, it was empowering to focus on the one thing I could.

I could make my filthy truck sparkle again. So, I headed for the sit-in, drive through, take-a-nap-for-thirty-seconds car wash.

I like riding through the car wash. Settled comfortably in my captain’s chair with the a/c set to icicles, I close my eyes and pretend I’m in the middle of a massive thunderstorm. Desert rats are a little fixated on rain since it happens so rarely. I’m such a pluviophile they know me there by sight and just wave me through now. Well, also, I have that little membership sticker I bought.

It’s noisy going through a car wash. The roar of all that falling water is crazy loud, so when it amps up, I lean back against the headrest and, for the next half a minute, I’m transported. Slowly headed into the middle of a terrifying downpour, the pounding vibrations against my vehicle punctuate one sobering truth—there’s no turning back now. It’s better than a Disney ride. A cascade of soapy water coats the windows while a deluge of chaos swirls around me in a rain tunnel so epic it feels like I’m caught in the eye of a storm.

Only, I’m not actually supposed to get wet.

I don’t know why I didn’t figure it out sooner, what with all the gallons of water and soap they dump on you while you’re trapped inside that machine-filled cave. It’s just that the drip drip drips didn’t start until I reached the wind tunnel where all the water is supposed to blow off and away. Suddenly, all of it was blowing in—on me. Not a good feeling. Impossible, I told myself, as a splash on my face woke me up. Panicked, I grabbed at the sunroof's cover in a last ditch effort to save myself. The irony of my predicament was alarming. I was seated in a state-of-the-art vehicle equipped with so many safety features I don't even know what half of them are. But in a twist of fate, like a sailor in a submarine holding on for dear life to a screen door, the only thing lying between me and a flood of Noahic proportions was twelve inches of felt-covered plastic. This couldn’t be happening. But it was.

I drove through a car wash with the sunroof cracked open.

To let out the hot air.

Not to let in the car wash.

I could have sworn I closed that thing before I pulled out of my driveway but swearing to it didn’t change anything. As I hung on for dear life, the thought went through my head that if I opened the cover to look at the slider window above me, maybe I’d discover it was closed after all. I might have checked, too, except for the wave of water that poured onto my head and shirt at that moment, drenching me while the manic blowers tried to suck the cover out of my hands. Fine. Clearly, the sunroof was open. Clearly, I was an idiot. Clearly, my nearly new vehicle was about to be destroyed from the inside out. What do they call that in really good literature? Poetic justice? “Rebellious desert rat drowns inside her vehicle while pretending she’s in a rare rainstorm.”

I felt like that dad in “Twister”, trying to keep his grip on the handle of the storm cellar door, his family watching in horror as he’s lifted off his feet. With his body waving wildly in the air, he frantically cries out, “I.   Can’t.   Hold.   On!” just before the tornado sucks him out of the room. I had déjà vu just thinking about it. I knew I was in trouble. I figured it out just as my soggy bangs flattened and glued my eyelids shut. His nightmare was about to become my nightmare, right here in the Lucky Ducky Car Wash.

While the sunroof’s cover vibrated and jerked in my hands, I kept holding on, arms over my head in the claustrophobic space I shared with a steering wheel. I was determined not to give up the fight. Like radar lock, my only goal was to make it to the flashing “Exit” sign at the end of the conveyor belt without having the cover ripped from my hands. Maybe then I wouldn’t be sucked out of my Tahoe and washed down the drain into the sewer system. They never found that dad, you know. I was pretty sure if I went into the sewer system, nobody would even come looking for me. Gross.

There are a million thoughts that race through your mind when you think you’re about to die. Like, I can’t believe that stupid car wash attendant didn’t tell me I left the sunroof open. Or, one more thing to add to the list of Embarrassing Ways to Die. And, if I make it through this alive, will my insurance company replace my truck or is there an exclusion for Acts of Stupidity?

I did not die. I did not drown. The only casualties of the wind tunnel were my hair and shirt and possibly a very soggy angel taking the brunt of the ordeal. It’s the only explanation I have as to why even the dashboard remained dusty while every ounce of water was attracted to my body like it was a sponge. When I came home to change clothes, my daughter, Katy, took a load of towels out to try to soak up the floodwaters. There weren’t any. She looked as shocked as I was that even my truck had survived an ordeal like that.

I drove through a car wash with the sunroof open and the only fatality was my hairdo. The rest of me, as promised by Lucky Ducky, came out looking clean and shiny.

I dropped off my damp, smeared tax documents without explanation, comforted myself with a Peppermint Mocha from Starbucks, and drove around for a while until the sunroof cover dried out. There weren’t even any water spots in the headliner. It’s as though nothing ever happened.

Nothing, that is, except for a little more cerebral re-wiring. And a longed-for facial I thought I’d have to wait on. You know what they say about things like that, though.

Be careful what you wish for.

With thanks to Alvaro Tapie for the electrifying photo seen above. The original can be viewed at this link:

Tesla | society6.com/alvarotapia/Tesla_Print | Alvaro Tapia | Flickr

Three Little Pigs

 

Three little piggies inside the pen
And three on the outside where they look in,
Adventure awaits, but danger does, too,
What’s a mother to do with her curious zoo? 

I moved in last week. Finally. Despite an overzealous inspector who’s never used a hammer in his life, we finally jumped through enough hoops to satisfy even him and now I have a home of my own. It’s been a long year for all of us here on the mini-farm.

This house feels like home. It felt like home months ago as I stood in the center of what would become the great room, staring through open rafters at the blue sky above and breathing in the comforting space of a room outlined by bare studs. The “casita” was designed by us and built with me in mind, and even without drywall up yet, it fit me like a glove. Amazing. Rob and I built the first place we ever owned when we lived in Florida and the feeling was similar. This time, though, I was the one making all the decisions. So it means even more to me that I feel at home here when I’ve never lived alone before.

There are so many great things about my new location. Every huge window has a relaxing view of grazing animals, pastures guarded by mature shade trees, and clear skies punctuated by the graceful patterns of birds in flight. Sometimes, too, the not-so-graceful. There’s a downside to having sparkly clean windows—picture feathered face plants and bird concussions.

My daughter and her family have loaned me this location where I built my home. Technically, that makes it the Brady Guesthouse. Complicated, I know. Basically, it means I don’t have a separate address. Talk about living off the grid. I’m simply the house with the blue door. But it gives me the added benefit of enjoying a lot of gorgeous, established landscaping with none of the maintenance. Since Rob was always the gardener, too, nothing has changed there. In defense of my lazy self, though, I am learning to use a hose to water the flowers Katy planted for me. I can be taught.

Plus, there’s the extra joy of squeezy hugs from half of the grandbabies God has also loaned to me whenever our lives spill over onto one another here. Having family close by where I live on the east side of Dan and Katy’s expansive pasture makes all the difference as I learn to fly solo. The only thing that could make it better is if my son and his family were neighbors, too.

And also, there is always this longing—the impossible wish that there had never been a cause for all this change. The “why’s” persist, but we’re discovering how to live with those, too. You can’t ask much more from grief than learning how to carry it and keep going.

There’s a lot of serenity here, and I crave it, spending hours staring off into the distance as I regain my focus on life. Pastoral settings offer tranquility in spades. Up to a point. Two weeks ago, Maggie, my granddaughter Jules’ pig, gave birth to her first litter of piglets. Of the seven, six survived and quickly became the delight of the neighborhood. Word travels fast when babies show up, even the kind with curly tails. These six had names before they ever tasted breakfast. Keith, Bilbo, Scott, and Pepper. Bert and Ernie (who are identical twins, I’m told) complete the roll call. Maggie, exhausted yet instantly on 24/7 duty, had her hands full. Because, as Jules explained, “Ernie is naughty.”

Ten days into infancy and the black-haired little guy already has a reputation as a troublemaker.

There are sliders in the great room that lead to my back patio which is bordered by new fencing. They offer an expansive view of the Brady farm’s menagerie. Sitting on my sofa eating dinner a couple of nights ago, I watched Katy’s two sister-sheep graze in the emerald-green grass on the other side of the “no climb” fence. I love these crazy girls. They’re not fluffy, white cotton balls like their mothers were. They have a sleek profile and look a lot more comfortable sans the heavy sweaters most sheep wear.

Now that their bossy mothers have been sent away to greener pastures, Sarah and Esther are really letting down their hair. They head butt, chase each other across their finite meadow, send the chickens scurrying, climb the no-climb fence to pull down leafy tree branches, and pause mid-chew when something needs to be pondered. Or investigated.

Like three little piglets. On the outside of the pigpen. Free range ham in wooly sheep territory with no idea how to get back inside the pen like their frantic mother was telling them to. I watched with curiosity as Sarah and Esther suddenly sprinted across the pasture toward the runaways. I assumed it was the tantalizing smell of pork chops beckoning.

“This can’t be good,” I muttered, setting my dinner aside and grabbing my phone to call Katy.

My amazing Katy. She’s living the life I always wanted to live but I now realize is too exhausting for just about anyone to deal with. At this particular moment, she and the fam were away from home enjoying a well-deserved evening with good friends, not expecting a phone call from me telling them that three pounds of pork had escaped from the compound and were in danger of becoming mutton mush.

Katy sounded concerned on the other end of the phone. “I’ll grab Jules,” she said. “We’ll be right there.” Which was a good idea since, until recently, I’ve only ever dreamt of living on a mini-farm and don’t have any actual experience with stray critters other than wrangling a few ducks last year, arguing with a stubborn turkey, and praying a herd of chickens into their coop so I wouldn’t have to touch any of them. By the time we hung up, two of the escapees had found their way back to their mama, leaving one dark-haired fugitive to fend for himself on the outside. Isn’t that the way it always is? No loyalty among thieves.

Racing back and forth along the fence line, the youngster’s squeals did nothing except annoy the nosy sheep who turned tail to summit their nearby dirt hill. Maggie stomped her feet in the dusty pen, bellowing grunts at her terrified offspring, while I stood clear of the chaos and made sure the midget piggy didn’t disappear before Katy and Jules got there. As the little guy crashed for the tenth time into a trash barrel that blocked his way, I told him with all the sincerity I could muster, “Sorry, kid. I don’t hold pigs.” Meaning, I wasn’t going to rescue him. Honestly, I was sympathetic about his predicament, but this city girl picked up a chicken once and was shocked to learn it felt nothing like Col. Sanders’ version. I’m not doing that again.

Finally, the dark one bounced off the plastic barrel for the last time, saw his way back to the enclosure, and scurried inside to his mama who’d been holding dinner for him. She fell over onto her side like a fainting goat and was instantly attacked by all six of her hungry offspring. Tragedy averted.

Katy and Jules arrived with a couple of reinforcements, located the secret escape route of the little porkers, and sealed off the portals. That’s when Jules explained what happened. That the loose cannon was Ernie. And Ernie is naughty.

I listened, but now I wonder. It seems a little too simple, right?

I’d had a lot of time to think about it while I stood there avoiding piggy poo. Doesn’t Ernie have an identical twin brother? And weren’t there three piglets running around free until two of them ‘magically’ found their way back inside? It looks suspicious to me. If I can’t tell the little porksters apart and Jules wasn’t there to see how it all went down, then how do we know it was Ernie who caused all this mayhem? I’ve heard about the pranks twins pull. This one had all the ear markings of oinker shenanigans.

Maybe Ernie was the fall guy and Bert was the wise guy setting his twin brother up to look like the black sheep of the family. Stay with me here. He coaxes Ernie out of the enclosure and leaves him alone in the arena while he and his accomplice run home to watch the fun from the cheap seats. They come off looking like a couple of mama’s boys and suddenly everyone thinks Ernie is the brains of the outfit, when the whole thing was just a case of mistaken identity. It could happen. Poor, trusting little Ernie got thrown under the bus by a couple of greasy gangsters masquerading as his brothers.

The swine.

I never did like that Bert character. He’s too slick. If you ask me, he’s the naughty one.

With the pig pen reinforced, it looks like all the barnyard theatrics are over for now. But something keeps bothering me about the whole affair. Even if I’m right and Bert and his buddy took advantage of witless Ernie, all of them still found their way back to the dinner table without any help. So, what was the point of all that drama? I’ve been watching a lot of Hallmark Mystery movies lately, so I’ve got hours of experience noticing details that most people miss.

Let me pose this question to you. Who pulled the fire alarm that night, and why?

Right. It was those sister-sheep, Sarah and Esther. They knew I was watching them climb the no-climb fence when they weren’t supposed to. I had the goods on them. It was a diversion tactic, the way they raced across the pasture, fingering the little hams who were just having some laughs. And right when I called for backup, what do they do? Up and leave the scene of the crime. Know what finally clued me in as to who was really the mastermind? It was the pigs. Sheep don’t like pork chops. They like leaves.

And people say television isn’t educational. Tell that to Bert and Ernie. Sesame Street probably saved their bacon.

Batting Practice

Alone at the concrete picnic table, she drains the cup of iced coffee she brought with her to the park. A gust of wind ruffles the pages of her Bible while, pen in hand, she fights back against the unruly breeze and writes in her journal.

She came to figure it out, she explains to the intrusive black grackles who fly past. They couldn’t care less. Instead, their curious squawks alert the others that she’s eaten all the donut herself—they’d have to find scraps somewhere else.

“Figure it out.” Good luck, she thought. How would she ever understand anything, she wondered? All the safe places where she’d found refuge from prior heartaches had disappeared. Now what was she going to do? Across the park, a steady “Crack!” interrupts her already fragmented concentration as a small group of men gather for batting practice. Hand on her chin, she gazes off at the steady line of fluorescent yellow softballs sailing past her peripheral vision where each of them lands with a thud, the soft ground cushioning their fall.

And she remembers.

What a painful word that one had become. “Remember.” Remember how your heart skipped a beat the first time you watched him come alive on a softball field, she muses? God, what an arm he had. If he threw it, it had no choice but to reach the goal he had in mind. Crack of his bat, speed to first base, round to home plate. Her teenage heart had melted watching his strong, young, athletic body compete at the sport they both loved. That’s when she fell in love with him. Watching the quiet man on the field of her dreams play ball.

Another “Crack!” brings her back to the present as one man ends his turn and changes places with another. Their arrival surprised her until she remembered she’d seen them here before. It was on those other breezy mornings, she recalled, as the foggy memory of Sunday donuts eaten at this same picnic table emerges in her mind’s eye. Side by side, they’d sat together watching this same group of men practice their batting skills. She can’t help it anymore. The tears come when they want to.

Weeping quietly, the pages of her two books flapping in the obstinate breeze, she reaches for a Kleenex, her gaze falling to some verses in the open Bible. “. . . you will be filled with sorrow, but know this. Your sadness will turn into joy when you see me again!” And it’s echo—“You will pass through a time of intense sorrow when I am taken from you, but you will see me again!”

Sure, it was Jesus speaking, but God’s Spirit knows how to speak all truth to wounded hearts. Hadn’t she heard it from his lips in a dream just last week? “We’ll be together again.” Truth is truth.

A gust of wind blows her little pack of Kleenex to the ground, and she stands to retrieve it, the shape of her turquoise blue shirt moving beneath the covered shelter beside the makeshift ballfield. “Time to go,” she tells herself, gathering books and phone and purse. 

Dropping her empty coffee cup into the trash, her sigh is lost in that of the spirited wind, and she walks across the asphalt to her truck. Lonely yearnings left behind, she steps up into the driver’s seat as the ball practice continues, unphased. Everything ends, she reminds herself, sooner or later. Beautiful love stories, and even softball practice. Non-plussed, two more grackles fly past her Tahoe, instincts focused on a distant snack. The sound of leather against hardwood punctuates the closing of her own door and she rolls up her window to shut out the wind as another softball soars across the wide expanse of green. Soon she’s out of earshot of the low voices emanating from the chatty friends playing ball.

“That was close,” the pitcher hollers. “Good thing they left before that one ricocheted across their picnic table.”

“Yeah, good thing,” the catcher says.

“I’ve seen them here before, but it’s been a while.”

“Who?” the batter asks, his softball piling up with dozens of others in the distance.

“The guy with the ballcap and the lady in the turquoise shirt. They were sitting at that table a minute ago.”

With a quick glance at the empty shelter, the batter nails another ball, sending it far into right field. “Good thing they left,” he agrees with a grunt, his energy focused on the connection between his bat and the ball. His grounder lands hard, chasing away a hungry sparrow in the grass.

Waiting in her Tahoe at a stoplight, her phone whistles suddenly. A text from their son in Kentucky.

“Today’s his first game,” it says in a joint message to his mother and sister. A photo of a slender, blonde five-year-old fills her screen. At that very moment, Iain McLeod, dressed in blue from his ballcap to the tip of his tennis shoes, stands grinning at the camera in his miniature uniform, ready to take on t-ball and make his grandfather proud. Staring at the photo, she remembers again. Another photo of another slender, towheaded boy, grinning at a long-ago camera from a ballfield.

What timing, she thinks, as the first tear rolls down her face. Another sign from Rob. Maybe she’ll never figure anything out. But he lives on. She’ll see him again. When the time is right. For now, she sees him in the face of her little grandson playing his first game on the ballfield, as another McLeod steps up to bat. Crack!

Timing. It’s everything.

Sweet Dreams

I dream a lot. I always have, but I’m suspicious that all the melatonin I take every night is really working overtime right now. Its effects on the day's events and whatever tv show I watched before bedtime result in a kaleidoscope of crazy that makes slumber feel more like a roller coaster ride. I may need to adjust my dose.

I dreamed Rob died again. Again. For the second time this week. The first time I woke up sobbing and was wrecked for another hour. The circumstances were different, but the outcome was the same. Let me just tell you here and now – ain’t nobody needs to experience something like that even once, let alone three times. Praying to God there won’t be a fourth, but who knows. The mind does whatever it needs to do to process things.

This time the dream involved a car full of family, with me at the wheel and Dan’s sister seated behind me, backseat driving. Literally. She’s the one who drove us off the cliff. I’m not laying blame or pointing fingers. I’m just mentioning that it wasn’t my fault. And since she couldn’t see all that well, it probably wasn’t her fault either.

The good news was most of us survived the impact. I didn’t see where my husband was. I was simply told after I got up and dusted myself off that he wasn’t as lucky as the rest of us. And I lost it once more, in my dream, stomping my feet and yelling through my tears, “Not again!” I looked for him in the hospital as I ran up and down the halls, but I couldn’t find him.

Suddenly, I knew he was right behind me. I felt his arms pull me close, his voice in my ear. And this is the part that made the difference between my waking up this morning destroyed for the next hour or waking up with some peace and a smile.

“We’ll be together again,” he assured me. I knew I was sensing him in spirit, but if it weren’t for the lack of a visual, I’d have sworn he was truly standing next to me.

I know Rob can see me. He can communicate with me. That the veil is thin between heaven and this 3D existence. This shadowy world is only a dim reflection of the real one where Rob and Jesus walk and talk now. Whatever the crazy circumstances in this morning’s dream, this part, where he put his arms around me and reassured me, this part was as real as if my eyes had been open. 

Maybe they were.

“We’re going to be together again,” he promised, like he knew something I didn’t. Which he does. “And I’ll bring you a cupcake,” he added.

“Chocolate with white icing,” I answered, wiping away a tear.

“I know,” he smiled.

That’s how I know he really spoke to me in that dream. I’d rather have Rob here than my favorite dessert any minute of any day, but nobody else could make a promise like that and guarantee it with chocolate.

It was the icing on the cake.

With thanks to Stephen Luke for making me hungry for cupcakes. The original of his yummy photo can be viewed by following this link: Cupcake | Chocolate cupcake with cream frosting | Stephen Luke | Flickr

Spare Change

Finally. They’re going to let me move into the house. I’m going to have a home again, Baby. Queen Creek approved the electric blueprints and in a couple of weeks I’ll move into the home you made sure I’d have.

You were my home. You were always my home. You knew that, didn’t you? God, I hope you knew that. I know you’re close by. You keep sending me signs so I’ll know you see me. And hear me. But I can’t see you. I keep breathing by faith, believing that I’m really hearing you, seeing your real-time love notes, and knowing you’re near.

Like the dimes. I found the first one lying on the ground beside my truck when I stopped at a gas station on the way to your memorial service last summer. It seemed odd because normally I only see pennies, so I picked it up and dropped it in the tray in the truck. The next day it happened again. Then I learned that dimes are often an encouragement that our love is close, so I kept keeping them, however they appeared, as long as it was simply . . . dimes.

That’s how I know the one I found in my pocket last week was from you. A shiny new 2022 dime. At the very moment my heart cried out in that desperate prayer I’ve been reduced to since you left—“Help”—a dime suddenly showed up. I’d washed and vacuumed the truck that morning, cleaning out that little console tray and putting the treasured collection of dimes in my pocket. I returned them all when I was finished. But one of them was a stowaway, I guess. I was sure I’d put them all back. And maybe I did. There’s always a logical explanation for the signs, it seems. But there’s no explanation for the timing.

I tell people I have an investment in heaven now that you’re there, but it feels like more than that. I walk around in this dimension only half listening while my ear is pressed up hard against the one where you are. Half in and half out, this is my new existence. Listening with my spirit feels like talking with someone underwater. Or learning a new language. It’s not as easy as some people make it sound which leads me to think they’re just repeating things they’ve heard other people say. I’m learning to tell the difference between fresh baked bread and the reheated stuff.

I’m also learning to depend on God the way I once depended on you. I’ve always struggled with that. Guilt is crippling and confusing. I think church teaching has messed up the simplicity of two imperfect hearts becoming one. I still hear people say that if you love someone too much or focus on them too hard, you’re making them into an idol. Where did that kind of lie come from? Like I need to ask. When your body died—because I know you’re very much alive—and we were wrenched away from each other, half of me was gone. Katy told people we were bleeding out. Absolutely accurate. There’s no way to prepare for that.

And there’s no good reason to feel guilty about it. With all our failures and faults and frailties, you and I became one, the way sugar and tea, dissolved into a new creation, become sweet tea. Or this— “A cord of three strands is not easily broken.” Losing you was a shock to my system that has taken over a year just to wake up from. Shock does that to you. But I’ve stayed active. Reached out to friends. Paid my bills. Put on makeup every day. All the things. But now it feels as though the anesthesia is wearing off and throbbing pain is what I live with daily as I go forward. Slowly forward, but forward without you nonetheless.

I had another fight with you last night. I guess you know that. I can hear you laughing at the absurdity of it the way you always did, even as I type this. That makes me smile. God, you were so adorable. I could never stay mad at you. I was describing the way you kept things to yourself. Things I wished you’d shared with me. It would have made me feel like I was a partner in all you faced if, for example, you’d let me help you study during fire school the way other wives helped their husbands. Or if I’d learned about your hair-raising shifts from you instead of learning about the close calls while you described them to our friends. You didn’t want to worry me, you said. I recognize that you were trying to protect me. But protecting me kept me in the dark.  I told you everything I ever thought about, described ad nauseum every event I experienced. Don’t deny it—I saw your eyes glaze over. I needed to be included by you in a way you weren’t able to do. Maybe that’s a guy thing. You don’t give details, you summarize. But friendship is a two-way street. This is probably something we should have handled while you were here in the flesh, but we weren’t good at that either. You hate conflict and I hate fighting alone.

So, I guess it wasn’t all that weird that I fought alone with you last night, telling you all of this, wishing we’d handled it while we had the chance, and recognizing that we did the best we could between our differing personalities, upbringings, and points of view. We were imperfect in every way, and perfectly suited for one another. Maybe that’s why you loved that song so much . . “Cause all of me loves all of you . . . all your perfect imperfections. . . ”

One of the miserable things I’ve dealt with this last year is all the rehashing and second guessing that’s so easy to drown in as I look back on our life together. The memories were stunted for a while, you know. Letting them resurface was too much for me for a long time. But now I can handle more of them and the pain that often accompanies them. Still, this Book of Rob and Eula is closed. All that’s left is the epilogue where I cross over to the other side and join you. So, I keep re-reading the novel we “wrote” together because there are no more pages to be added, wishing some chapters had turned out differently. If I’d changed that response or sacrificed that desire or trusted you better, what would that have looked like and why didn’t I do it? And why didn’t we communicate better before we lost that gift permanently?

The Cliff Notes of our novel could be reduced to one word if I allowed it—“Why?” But I won't. I think all the "why's" suggest that perfection is attainable, when it's not. And that’s the way our fight ended last night, with the recognition that you and I were human. We came into marriage as imperfect humans who simply loved one another and were willing to give marriage our best shot, warts and all. Expecting you to be perfect, expecting perfection from myself, these unrealistic expectations steal forgiveness and acceptance. Worse, they’re a setup for being fake. Inauthentic. Maybe now more than ever, I need to recognize that and let myself off the hook. You never pretended that I was perfect. You accepted me fully and loved me to your core. I did the same for you, although I’ll admit I sometimes called you Roby Poppins (because you were “practically perfect in every way.”)

So, maybe those dimes show up not only to remind me to pay attention in the moment and trust my instincts, but also as an invitation to talk with you still, even in spirit, about what it takes to survive the loss of you, my love. Maybe this is one way you’re able to help me get through this. “A penny for your thoughts,” the saying goes. Mine must be worth more than that or you wouldn’t keep paying me for them.

A dime for your thoughts, I hear you say. Keep dropping that spare change, Baby. I’ll keep talking. 

Avoidance

I don’t think this is going to help. Writing. Draining off all the ache with tears welling up in my eyes, dripping off my cheeks and splattering on my shirt. Thirteen months. Two days. Barely into the second year of living without Rob and today I’m down.

There’s no reason to call anyone. There’s nothing they can do. Or say. I’m just terribly sad. I don’t want questions about how I got here because I don’t know the answers. The questions make me feel like I could have avoided this if I’d been paying more attention—the way you could have avoided dog doo if you’d been watching where you walk.

I’ve been walking in memories. But I don’t take myself down that path. I just find myself there with no warning. Like a few minutes ago while I scrolled through etsy looking for floating shelves. Suddenly the screen was filled with football team logos instead of barnwood creations and I was transported to the Gators Man Cave wall hanging I ordered for Rob’s birthday five years ago. I haven’t seen it since we moved to the mountains a year and a half ago. But I will. Just as soon as my new house is completed and I finally have to face all the boxed up, bubble wrapped photos and wall art and décor that represent all the happy times when I created a refuge for Rob and I that looked like us.

Now I’m creating a respite for myself devoid of my husband. There’s no man cave. There’s no us. There are three storage units filled with memories I haven’t seen in over a year, and I fear them all. Friends are already offering to help me move everything out of those air-conditioned units and bring them to my new home, but I don’t know if that’s what I will need.

Some people think when you’re thrown into a pit of grief as I’ve been, that the best thing to do is get your mind off your sorrows. You can’t change anything by staring at it. It’s done. Rob’s gone. He’s not coming back. Get on with life. Deal with it. Unpack those boxes and set up your house. Get back to the business of living. Keep the noise going in your mind and all around and those sneaky little memories won’t be able to compete with the commotion. Eventually, they’ll all fade away into what once was while you stay busy creating the new what is. There’s just one problem.

It doesn’t work.

Some people love me so much they suffer watching me do the same. Some people love me so much they want desperately to help me find joy again. Some people love me so much they’d do just about anything to rescue me. But it’s impossible. They can’t rescue me. I can’t even rescue me. The only way through grief is straight through. “There are no shortcuts,” my counselor reminds me from time to time. Grief is a voice of honesty that won’t let me off the hook. It won’t let me ignore its presence forever. Grief is another kind of wisdom that demands to be heard; actually, it deserves to be heard. Grief tells the truth, holds wide its arms, and beckons the heartbroken into its safe embrace where validation of the pain allows its full expression. Grief isn’t trying to destroy me. It’s not trying to imprison me. It’s trying to heal my broken heart so I can find my way back to the living we all want for me.

So. Those boxes. I have to face them soon. I have to open them in front of other people because there are too many of them for me to move or sort through alone. I have to allow the emotion to surface because I don’t have the space in my soul to shove all of that down. This feels so scary. It makes me feel vulnerable. It lays open my pain again to the observation and possible scrutiny of others, even though they love me. There’s no way around it. The only path to recovery is the one that goes through the suffering.

So, I’ll go through it. I’ll admit my humanity. I’ll probably weep at the opening of all those Pandora’s Boxes overflowing from a lifetime of love with a man I desperately miss. And perhaps, maybe, hopefully, after I baptize all of those precious possessions with these honest tears, I’ll find peace.

It’s worth trying. And honestly, I have no other choice.

Paradox

Hope is hard, she said. And I agreed. Just like love, hope costs us something. Perhaps it costs us control. Or puts us at risk of looking foolish. Or being disappointed. Who can say for sure why we hesitate sometimes to hope.

Unless we’ve hoped before and had our hopes crushed.

A distant melody ran across my mind as I thought about all of this today. It was from an old album Rob and I used to love when we were newly married. “Faith is the confidence of things we hope for, being certain of . . .” I couldn’t remember the rest of the words.

Google to the rescue.

Of course, the lyricists took liberties with the phrasing, but since translators frequently do the same thing, it didn’t matter. Find your favorite translation and take your pick.

·         “Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance of what we do not see.”   Or . . .

·         “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things not seen.” Or . . .

·         “Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.”

And so on. Hope, then, is a paradox. And my weary brain is too tired to rely on a paradox to help me see in the dark.

You see, I’m in the dark again. I loved and lost . . . again. My beloved dog, Brody, not yet six years old, had to be put down tonight because he was overcome by an illness so mysterious it left four vets shaking their heads. “We’re stumped,” they each said as I wrote out enormous checks in exchange for their confusion. Though I was encouraged to seek out specialists, Brody was fading fast and I couldn’t do it. I knew in my gut he was never going to get better. He knew it, too, and did all he could to make it clear to us that this was his time.

I found my heart crying out the same words I cried out almost one year ago to the day when I lost Rob. “It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way!” But heaven was silent again. The circle of life spins whether we like it or not, I’m told, and we lost when we desperately wanted to win.

The vet came tonight to our home and one by one we each loved on my broken pup and said goodbye. I looked for a sign that Rob was close all afternoon and through the evening until darkness fell and the vet’s truck drove off with Brody’s body. But while I sensed Rob was near, there was no sign. Throughout the whole ordeal, I whispered to him where he lives somewhere on the other side of a thin veil, “Please come get Brody.” And to our Creator who knows every hair that surrenders to a tile floor and every sparrow which falls from the sky, “When Brody passes, please let Rob come get him.”

The grands and I had spent the day talking about how Brody would be with Rob and would be able to jump and run with the joy he always had until he got sick. Jules said, “He’ll probably run right between Chief and Jesus’ legs!” And we laughed at the image, holding it close in the next hours when faith was eclipsed by sorrow and pain once more. “Please come get him, Rob,” I whispered into the wind again.

Alone in my room tonight, I began going through the photos and videos I’ve kept of Brody for the last six years. It was so hard to see his tail down this week. To watch him stumble into walls and get stuck behind table legs. To know he wasn’t eating or drinking and to note the absence of a spark in his half-closed eyes. Even though it was late, I needed to see him healthy again before I turn out the lights on this awful day. I gathered over a hundred photos into a new album I made on my phone. And even though my exhausted phone kept insisting it was about to run out of juice, I kept scrolling and saving. Suddenly, I stopped short. “Oh, my God,” I said out loud, as the tears welled up in my eyes.

There’s a photo of Rob and Brody in the snow that I took in 2019. It’s one of my favorites of the two of them and it’s been my screensaver ever since I took it. I’m always worrying that I’ll accidently replace it with a different picture, so a couple of years ago I decided to find the original and make another copy of it.

But I couldn’t find it.

It was nowhere on my phone. I found the photo taken right before the one I was searching for, but the original of my screen saver was gone. Vanished. I’ve looked over and over again, but it was nowhere to be found. I finally took a screenshot of my screensaver, complete with an intrusive app that I couldn’t remove, just so I’d have some kind of backup.

Tonight, as I scrolled and saved photos of our wonderful, loving pup, the missing photo suddenly was back in place. It’s not the poser/substitute shot with the unwelcome app that I created a couple of years ago. It’s the pristine original photo of Rob smiling in the snow, his hands firmly holding onto the lead of a healthy, happy Brody.

And I knew.

Rob knew the significance of that long-missing photo. And when I saw it reappear on my phone, tonight, after I’d spent the day asking Rob to come for our dog, I knew that’s exactly what he did. I knew exactly what he was trying to tell me. They're together again and Brody is fine once more. I’ve learned by now, after over a year missing my husband, that from heaven our loved ones know what we’re going through. They pray for us. They send us signs that they’re alive and aware. And they’re the first ones to welcome emancipated souls when they arrive.

Including beloved pets like our Brody.

I sent an immediate email to a friend who had assured me Rob would send me a sign today. Then I glanced at the other two windows still open on my laptop from my earlier google search. “Faith is the confidence that what we hope for . . .” one of them read, while the other echoed its words.

“And this hope will not lead to disappointment,” the New Living Translation reads in Romans 5:5. “For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.”

He cares. He even cares about happy white dogs and broken hearts left behind. He cares enough to send a photo of my two beloveds together again, an answer to my prayers, so I can sleep in peace tonight.

Maybe faith isn’t just a paradox. And maybe hope is worth another try.