Picked up my taxes today which in the past I have often done without Philip present so no biggie. But today, I had to sign the “surviving spouse” signature line…and that’s all it took to undo me.
I signed Joe up for high school not long ago. There was no way to take Phillip’s name off the emergency contact… That’s one of those things you don’t even anticipate. It caught me by surprise… another undoing.
This life is made for the Living and doesn’t leave a lot of room for those who no longer do. Sneaky, little, unassuming details that pierce my heart in their bewildering abruptness.
Some days it takes so little to topple me.
It doesn’t help that lately, there’s a lull in my step, a pain in my head, nausea to the core of my being and ridiculous fatigue. It captures me daily and throws me down. I am heartbroken and distressed and so easily undone. How long, oh Lord, will you contend with me?
I think of Psalms 35:1,3, 9 (paraphrased).
“Contend O Lord with those who contend with me” …and most especially when it is my very own sad sack self that does the contending… “Say to my soul, ‘I am your salvation’…then my soul will rejoice in You as all my bones shall say, ‘Oh Lord, who is like You, delivering the poor from that which is too strong for her.'”
Paraphrased, it’s almost exactly what Princess Leia once said to Obi-Wan, “Help me, Oh Lord, You are my only hope.”
Yesterday I was watching The Chosen. A series about the Life of Christ. I find it beautifully compelling to be immersed in the Gospels.
Today, as I sit here waiting for baseball to begin, I notice a wife waiting for her husband until they walk in together. My heart cramps a little but a line from The Chosen steadies the ache.
Peter informs Jesus that they do things differently in Capernaum and Jesus says to Peter “Get used to different”.
And then He says to me, through a verse I memorized long ago,
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11.
He and I, we are doing things differently these days and He promises it will be okay.
Carolyn Arends To Cry For You There’s a lump in my throat There’s a knot in my chest I am tired to the bone But I cannot rest Still it’s only right to feel like I do ‘Cause it is my honour to cry for you
All the memories come back Like the tide rolling in And the current is strong I go under again So I hold my breath, what else can I do? It is my honour to cry for you
Blessed are the ones who weep ‘Cause every tear is proof Of ties that bind so strong and deep That death cannot undo So it is my honour to cry for you
I’ve got more than a hunch That you’re somewhere so good It’d be wrong to come back Even if you could I will see you again, but until I do It is my honour to cry for you
There’s a lump in my throat There’s a knot in my chest But the ache in my soul Tells me I am blessed ‘Cause when the sorrow is great, the love is too And it is my honour to cry for you I guess grief is the work that love must do So it is my honour to cry for you
I put on a bright, yellow blouse today, feeling bold and strong and walked out into the exquisite day with the dogs. The sun was just rising, sending a sparkling golden glow across the straw colored field. Birds singing. Cool breeze blowing. I was ready to worship with thanksgiving in this, my cathedral of a field.
But the persistent circling of one song made me wonder at the disconnect between my bold yellow spirit and the true state of my inner being. Did I need to cry instead? What a shame to waste my rare energy on sadness, again, I thought…it is so exhausting but I followed my own lead and listened.
The song in my head, “I Cry For You” by Carolyn Arends, perfectly expresses my grief as it reframes it. Crying is not weakness though it sometimes feels like it is; it is not negative. Quite the opposite, crying honors Philip. It attests to “the ties that bind so strong so deep that death cannot undo.”
Crying to honor Philip removes the fear that the sorrow will be my undoing; the fear that the crying will never stop once started because it comes from love. It adds hope and beauty to the sorrow. I love that and it has been so healing to cry with this song.
The thing is, though, today, I find myself switching the lyrics. Instead of ‘I cry for you’, I keep singing in my head, “it is my honor to die for you.” At first, I thought that would be a cruel play on words if I were clinically depressed. Then I realized, it is not me singing, it is Jesus singing to me.
It was His honor to die for me so that I could have the honor of crying for Philip. His love for me made a way for true love to flourish.
“I guess grief is the work that love must do” and it is my privilege and honor and blessing to have a Saviour Who made the way so I could have something so great to cry for.
As if grieving weren’t confusing enough the constant array of emotions boggles my mind.
Grief is a mighty collection of conflicting, diametrically opposed, craziness of thought.
It is sorrow and joy and gratitude and fear and an endless array of others that defy logic.
I could be filled with gratitude one moment and down on my knees crying in pain the next and sometimes at the same time.
This grief journey is like a tornado. How the air goes still with a green tint of dread before the tornado arrives. And when it comes it is a whirling ferocious beast that leaves destruction and chaos as it strips away even the most anchored. Ripping any preconceived notions of love and life clean away in a moment, leaving you ravaged and spent; leaving devastation and numbness in its wake. The numbness of wading through the scattered debris to pick up the shattered tokens of memories. The monumental effort to put a life, torn to shreds, back together.
I’ve heard tell that in the center of the whirling chaos is a soft, quiet, eye of the storm place. A place of unparalleled stillness despite the merciless bombardment all around. A place where time seems to stand still.
It is this place that I seek as I brave the powerful winds of change. Somehow, if I could only find my way into the center of the storm where it is quiet and calm. There, I would find Mighty Arms waiting for me, holding all the answers to my questions.
But the truth is my Jesus is not a destination to get to. He is my place to begin and my Champion on the way. He and His Mighty arms are here around me already. The Eye in my storm walks with me. He makes me brave.
I have spent my days readying our lives for a future without Philip. My brain is on board but my heart is not buying any of it. It is sequestered away. Fifty times a day I ponder the inconceivability of Philip’s gone-ness. I purposefully go back to our last hours to convince myself. I picture our last embrace but there is no convincing. It is all too impossible. The truth is hard to swallow. The pit of my stomach churns in an effort to spit it out.
So, I thought, perhaps, if I write down our last hour together, maybe I will convince my heart to move on…
That last hour begins in June of 2020 when Philip received a diagnosis of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. He treated it like it was no big deal but I was an explosion of fear so we gathered our boys. We would face it together.
Fast forward to December 31, 2020. Philip had continued to work and bike the whole chemo time. He was a fit fighter with excellent tumor reduction and we were looking forward to the scans that would prove he was cancer free. We greeted the New Year with celebration!
Two days later, after a hunt with friends, he came home sick…He was admitted and then intubated 2 weeks later.
My sister, Sally, so sensitive to the Holy Spirit, came out to hold me up on February 4. The next day, the boys and I had plans for our first in person visit with Philip since he had been hospitalized a month before. Sally and I had just finished dinner when the ICU called. We needed to come. It wasn’t good.
Joe and I went in first. Sweet Joe wore his Prime baseball hat and brought another for his dad. We turned it inside out to make it a Rally cap; something the baseball team did when they were behind but determined to win.
Dave and Pete came next. We were only allowed two visitors but our lovely RN “S” made an exception for us. Heidi and the grandkids were there by phone. After a time, the boys made plans to return in the morning. I stayed.
“S” in her beautiful compassion encouraged me to stay as long as I wanted, (also not the rules.)
As Philip’s oxygen levels dropped, I rubbed his back, head and arms. I hugged him. I read him letters written by David and me. I read him the incredible texts from his family and friends throughout the month of struggle.The playlist I had created to sing myself through cancer, I now sang to him and then, I sang him into the arms of Jesus as I let him go.
He was gone shortly after midnight on February 5.
I did not want him to go but it was the right thing to do even if it was going to happen with or without my consent. Of course, I cried so hard, my abdominal muscles spasmed in my core until I could physically cry no more.
I remained silent for a time, holding his hand, grateful his suffering was over. Living in a kind of bereft nothingness while, at the very same time, feeling the immensity of the gift I had been given. The gift of saying goodbye; of being present at such a lovely, sweet, gentle passing.
After awhile, I wasn’t sure what to do next. How long do I stay? Will I regret it if I leave?
When I looked up it was 1:11am. It’s what I have always called my party minute or triple Pillars two dots. In college, we would take that one minute to party before going back to work. It was just like him to go in time for his ultimate party minute.
I picture him tossing a penny into the hand of Jesus and with his brilliant smile and a wink telling Jesus “Well done, Good and Faithful Servant. Thank You, Jesus, for Your service.”
It’s a cloudy day in the neighborhood. The sun is playing hide and seek, birds are singing with vigor and Philips’s Mountain is shining in the distance. The wind kicks up and the dogs run wild with glee, chasing bunnies that are really just tumbleweed bags blowing across the field. It is a promising beginning.
Whenever I hear birds like this, I think of the garden of Eden. How glorious the bird song must have been. It was a promising beginning as well, and we know how that turned out.
I’ve been reading C. S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed. In the forward, his stepson, Douglas Gresham says “all human relationships end in pain-it is the price that our imperfection has allowed Satan to exact from us for the privilege of love.”
I’ve been pondering this and today in my own Eden of sorts, I think I see.
When humans love, it is a glimpse, however imperfect, of God’s love. But our tendency to sin, to do things our own way instead of God’s way, has a price tag; that price tag is separation from God or death. And we live this out in our love relationships when death comes. The painful tearing of the sacred was not part of God’s original design but because of our imperfection, it is our reality.
But wait there is more, God says! It is, also, a peek into what belief, what our amazing God offers us: a completeness of love that is never torn away.
In a way, the pain of loss points me directly to what, to Whom, I long for most: the neverending love of God. To grieve is to touch the very heart of God.
My grief is inexorably connected to my deepest longings: to love and be loved; to belong and offer belonging.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”‘ Jeremiah 29:11
Baseball, once an island of competence, now an outlet for grief it seems. I’ve always thought that we pick comfortable, trustworthy spaces to vent our angst because they are safe. The eternal hope is that we will be loved even if we are unhappy.
I can only pray this is so for Joe. I suspect baseball is a way to work out his feelings of what is fair in the world. His dad’s death could easily be translated into the injustice of life. Some see baseball as a metaphor for life; books have been written on such, here we are living it.
This grief thing is not for the faint hearted though it sure has a way of making me want to faint away. But You, Lord, You offer me hope and a way through. I am confident You will defy all my expectations with Your mind-boggling beauty as You work in my family through this incredible time of dread.
I am scattered and unfocused. Can anyone tell? I feel like I am wide open for all the world to see, laid bare, vulnerability leaking from every pore. My heart is somehow more raw than usual. I feel frail and shaky. Magnified sadness relentlessly building up all day. My sensitivity quotient off the chart.
All conversations pierce me. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just regular conversation.
“Talking about someone who divorced her husband after 25 years; so much time training him only to trade him in? You must be out of your mind to give up after 25 years”
…unless you are forced to…
“But how lovely it was to spend a bday by themselves; in a bed all to themselves”… lovely because they choose it; only because they can go home to their love
I am so raw, a quivering mess. Some days, I just wonder how this could be my life; missing Philip more than ever.
“In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom also He made the universe.”. Hebrew 1:1
And sometimes His Son then speaks through unexpected gifts like the show Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist. My friend told me about it. How Zoe hears people’s inner thoughts expressed in Broadway show-like song and dance numbers.
I, myself, think in song especially now during Phillip’s passing. I created a playlist after his cancer diagnosis full of songs that reminded me of him. And now since his death, I find myself processing most everything through those songs.
The show, when described, seemed a lovely, even perfect, lighthearted, positive escape from my own reality. How was I to know that instead, it would be a stepping stone through grief and not around it.
Zoe, her family and friend, Simon, wrestle with the loss her dad and his. At first I was baffled. Why would anyone suggest to me a show about the untimely death of a dad? But I soon realized I needed this. Zoe and company, address the harsh realties of life with poignancy, candor and tenderness as they mirror some of my own journey.
This has been a perfectly timed balm for the harshness of my own reality.
It has been a brutal day of erasing Philip from my life, at least that’s what it felt like. I really just began the process of erasing him from our accounts. It’s a hard reality but this farfeneugen paperwork has got to be done whether I feel like it or not.
It went pretty smoothly. Most people sent their condolences and made it easier. The timeshare in Philips’s name, however, pushed me to my dangerous edge. They require court appointed executorship paperwork, next of kin/in the will stuff doesn’t count.
The impenetrability of it was almost more than I could bear as my powerlessness came crashing in on me. “My mantle of Widowhood ought to count for something!” I screamed in my head. “How can you dismiss me so easily?” I wanted to rant. I wanted to vomit all over the poor doing-her-job gal on the phone but I had enough leftover control to also know it wasn’t her fault even if I wanted it to be.
I wanted someone to blame as if somehow it would make me feel better, less powerless. In the end and in the nick of time, I recognized that old trick and hung up before any uncertain inflammatory explicitives escaped.
Tripping with God: Stories of Faith and Inspiration 