The Comfort in Memories

Dear Mom...
It's been three months since your home-going.  At times it still feels like a dream and then it hits me and I absorb it again.

I wondered/worried if your final breath- labored, sufferings days would be what colored my memories of you, but oh, "PTL", as you would say, this is not the case!

I am visiting memories of you as though a dear friend.  It's such a stark contrast to the grief I've known for my mother Violet.  With her I have but one memory and it is faint.

With you, the memories are vivid and a warmth for my spirit.  The oft used phrase "may memories comfort you" is so alive for me.  Perhaps this is because you were such a vivacious woman with an expressive personality.

I can still hear your engaging laughter

I can picture the way you would strike a pose if one of us noticed a new blouse/hair style

 I hear the inflection in your voice as you dramatized a story

I see your dramatic facial expressions corresponding to the moment

I remember the ways in which you expressed annoyance or joy, disgust or delight--fully and with body and soul!

I remember the ways in which you gulped down life.

All of you participated in life which is what made your cancer journey so heart wrenching for you and for me...for all of us.  Watching you fade broke my heart.  When you could no longer be you in all of your glory, I wanted you free to experience the fullness of glory.

And so here I am, missing the fullness that is you but sifting through memories as a beautiful grace of God.  I love you Mom.  Thank you for living such an exuberant life!!

Gifts of Grace

"This is a thing many people outside your grief cannot understand:  that you have not simply lost one person, at one point in time.  You have lost their presence in every aspect of your life.  Your future has changed as well as your now."

Author Unknown

Last evening was hard.  I spent time looking through pictures, reading memories of my mother that others have shared with me and carefully opening envelopes with letters and cards from family and friends.  I noticed information that I had seemingly missed.  I took in heartfelt words that take on new meaning today.  And I felt like a little girl again.  This is one of the most bewildering realities about childhood loss--the grief does not come to me at the age I am--it comes to me as a five year old frightened girl.  It is so disorienting.  

I had set aside today for Solitude.  It had seemed important and needful to reflect in the quiet of the day.  But the smothering way of my sadness last evening was not what I needed for today.  There is a time to make space for my loss.  I know this.  But on this day, Friday April 24,  I woke with a strong sense to simply be present to the gifts of grace I have been given.  

What I do today will come from a place of gratitude. 

transplanting my flourishing violet into a more spacious container, 

baking Pumpkin Spice cookies, 

going for a drive with my husband(and a brief stop at Baskin Robbins), 

supporting a neighbor, 

Skyping with my father-in-law, 

chatting with my girl, 

looking at today's pictures of my precious grandson, 

reading, 

praying 

and participating fully

in the gift of life

which my mother began.

"Gifts of grace come to all of us.

But we must be ready to see

and willing to receive these gifts.

It will require a kind of sacrifice,

that sacrifice of believing that,

however painful our losses,

life can still be good--

good in a different way than before, but nevertheless good.

I have lost the world I loved,

but I gained a deeper awareness of grace.

That grace has enabled me to clarify my purpose in life

and rediscover the wonder

of the present moment."

--Jerry Sittser

"A Grace Disguised"

Pure Grace

 The following are two excerpts from my Spiritual Autobiography--

"On April 23, 1975 Charmaine Janelle came into this world; a gift of pure grace.  Charmaine was born five years less a day after my mother was killed.  For as long as I can remember, the gift of her life has felt like God’s way of tangibly saying, “I am giving you a living breathing expression of beauty and joy and exuberance.  Every year before the calendar reaches the anniversary of your mother’s death, you will step into the day which marks your sister’s birth and you will celebrate My gift of grace to you.”

"I believe Charmaine’s life, over the years, has been like a loosely tied ribbon around our blended family.  She has not held us together per se, but her life has and does weave our familial ties together in ways which I doubt would be there otherwise." 

"I live with gratitude for God's gracious gift of her life.  She is pure grace to me." 

Happy Birthday to my gift of "pure grace".

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HItHAUjI-iNg5cG4WN-1sc7IZOPebXy2/view?ts=5e9f7be3

Together

If
If only we had left a minute earlier
If only a minute later
If only somehow
we could go back
and change what lay ahead

It's the tape I used to play
relentlessly
in my mind
Wanting desparately
to reverse
the nightmare.

It's part of grief's passage

It doesn't matter
that it's impossible to turn back time
One needs to
think
pretend
plan
hope
that somehow
if the timing
and circumstances
had been different
my mother would not have
died

We shared the back seat of the car that night                                       

My sister and I
We shared the trauma of the crash
the sirens screaming into our five and six year old selves

Together
we lost our mother

Together
we lost our innocence
that the world
was a safe place
to live

And then together
we began a
life
long
path
of
healing

Together
we have shared a loss which has
broken us
confused
emptied
plunged us
into
despair
longing
fear

Together
we have shared a quest
for meaning
strength
hope
wisdom
joy
peace

The years have come and gone

Together we share what it means
to be
women

Women
marked
by
loss
but also
women
leaving
a mark
in spite of
or maybe
because of
loss

Words cannot express my gratitude for the gift of my sister 

A Week of Reflection

It's here.  It feels like this day has been looming for such a long time.  The fear has been there yet I have not wanted to run away.  It's been one of those inevitable realities that I have known I would one day need to face.

This Friday April 24 will mark 50 years since my first mother's tragic death.

A part of me wonders how, after all these years, can this day still feel so monumental.  Another part of me recognizes the obvious--I am inextricably connected to my mother; her imprint is on my life.  And still another place in my being speaks of what I learned years ago--early childhood loss is life altering.  Forever.

Marking my mother's loss looks vastly different today that it did six weeks ago.  Then, my sister Chris was planning to fly home to remember and mark this day with myself and others in my family.  She and I would have spent cherished time together reflecting, grieving, reminding each other of the women we've become because of our mother and our loss.  We had plans to visit Mom's grave with my Dad and other siblings.  We would have spent much welcomed time together as a family--the first since Mom Dorothy passed away.  I expect that Chris and I would, and still will, feel the weaving together of the deaths of both our mothers, noticing the ways these losses at times, blend and blur.

But with current restrictions in place, I will find myself marking April 24 primarily alone.  Though it pales, this too is a reminder of how life circumstances can forever change the trajectory of one's life.  The narrative of my life was irrevocably change 50 years ago.  My  mother's death has marked me, even as I seek to find a meaningful way to mark her loss. 

It used to be that I felt embarrassed in what seemed like my inability to "get over it". I remember reading Hope Edelman's words one day in her book, "Motherless Daughters--The Legacy of Loss" and realizing that I owned her words.  "Losing my mother wasn't just a fact about me.  It was the core of my identity, my very state of being."  I am free of any shame today.  There is something incredibly beautiful about being able to receive moments of sadness and just let them be.  There's something life-giving about acknowledging that this is not how it was supposed to be.  There is no bright pink bow that can tie this all up perfectly. 

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross expresses that which I have come to know.

"The reality is that you will grieve forever. 

You will not 'get over' the loss of a loved one;

you will learn to live with it.

You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered.

You will be whole again

but you will never be the same.

Nor should you be the same

not would you want to."

Life has beauty and pain intertwined.  I will reflect on both this week.

Purple Pansies without hugs

Mom would have bought pansies this spring
purple and mauve
definitely NOT yellow

I thought I bought them for my Dad
but maybe it's me who needed them

I met him in the lobby of his condo
me 6 feet away
from the man
I want
to hug

It's
awkward
wrong
hard

I should have left them on the floor
Let him pick them up
but that felt beyond what either of us could handle

So I handed them to him
now we are only 2 feet away
and it is all I can do not to throw my arms around him
and kiss him
and cry

I want so desperately to ride the elevator with him
to his empty home
so that it isn't so empty
like I envision it
my Dad
alone

I wanted to "see" Mom again
in that place
because she decorates
its entirety
with who she is
was


I miss
her

But I stay where I stand

My Dad "signs" a hug
I leave
and later read his text about
how awkward that was

Because it was

But it's how we love each other
today

Eventually we will add more
to our love
especially
with
hugs

A Holy Summons

"A crisis is a holy summons to cross a threshold.

It involves both a leaving behind and a stepping forward,

a separation and an opportunity."

"When The Heart Waits"

Sue Monk Kidd

Covid-19 comes to us during Lent.  Did we realize this?  With all the panic of a pandemic closing in on our world, it's understandable that we would lose sight of the season we were in the midst of.  It makes sense.  Very few of us, if any have not felt the normalcy of life uprooted from us.  We still find this "new normal" surreal.  

It is in recent days where I am beginning to notice a clarity of desire emerging. I'm not one to "waste" life's moments.  I am always looking for purpose and meaning in the midst of whatever is unfolding around me.  Our current world reality is no different.  I'm aware of how life-giving the quiet slowness is for me.  How restful my spirit is in this time of isolation; how freeing it is to be free of expectations.  I'm also aware how quickly I can jeopardize the calm by too much time on my phone or computer.  Continually adding "just one more person to check in on" soon creates a sense of overload.  And so I scale back...way back.  Not because I want to but because I need to. 

The knowledge that one day we will all return to some level of normalcy has me asking very important and challenging questions.  How do I want to re-enter that world?  Who do I want to be when the barriers begin to be lifted?  What do I need to begin to change now so that I may re-enter with wisdom?

Because I don't want to be everything that I was. 

Parts of me are quick to do what I think others expect of me.  Other parts are pulled to "doing" in ways which deplete me, while knowing...deeply know,  that for me, simply "being" is what fills me.  To my great dismay, I spend far too much time looking over my shoulder to see if what I am doing meets approval.  This is not who I want to be or how I want to live. 

Right now I have this amazing gift of experiencing life without its normal pressures.  But within this gift is another gift-- this gift of time in which God and I have the opportunity to do the hard work of "leaving behind and stepping forward" as Sue Monk Kidd expresses.  For me, this is a crisis of my soul and I hear this "holy summons to cross the threshold."  It's clearer every day that which I need to separate from and the fresh opportunity which lies ahead.  It's all a gift.

Lent is to challenge us the same way.  After 40 days many of us hope to have changed in some way, to have seen our bankruptcy of soul in the light of Christ's blood shed love for us.  That Covid and Lent are colliding is powerful. 

Such a holy summons!