Cola

I am not at all steady today, sweet boy. The tears won’t stop. My eyes are swollen. The world does not spin as it should. The fog descended again and everything seems slow motion. It has been twenty-two days.

Today I am simply hoping to hope.

Years ago I wrote a blog about Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. The pieces are put back together with gold leaving familiarity but a new creation reinforced and more valuable than before the breaking.

I wrote it after your dad died. I tried so hard this morning while watching the morning sun come to hope perhaps I would be put back together once again . This time, sweet boy, my soul is not broken. It is pulverized.

I began looking for some sort of hopeful imagery about pulverized material being created into something new.

Glass Blowing

It begins with molten glass. The process requires purified sand (the structure), ash (lowers the melting temperature), limestone (stabilizes and strengthens), and recycled glass (makes the mixture melt faster and conserves energy). The mixture is heated to about 3100 degrees Fahrenheit for melting, chemical reactions, and impurities rise out. The molten glass is kept hot for the refining process. The heat forces trapped bubbles to escape, the mixture becomes uniform, and impurities separate.

The artist will then blow air through a special instrument to form the shape. The new creation is shaped by the artist’s hands, gravity, and breath of life.

Perhaps glass blowing will be another writing for another day. A day when I can see the forming shape that has been created by God’s hand and the breath of His Spirit.

Today is not that day. Today I have not been able to stop crying. Today your baby brother held me on the couch as I sobbed and told me it was normal to be sad, that I should cry it out so it doesn’t come out in a bad way. I don’t know when he got so wise. The coin flipped and instead of me telling him it was going to be all right and kissing away the sadness, he did that for me.

I told him about a sermon I watched today about Nathaneal, his name sake. In the Book of John, Philip tells Nathaneal about Jesus.

Can anything good come out of Nazareth? John 1:46

Before Nathaneal knew Jesus he couldn’t imagine what good may come. Immediately upon being found by Him he said “Rabbi, you are the son of God; you are the King of Israel.” (John 1:49)

It didn’t take long for Nathaneal to realize what good could come from unexpected places. I told Nathan for us, it may take a little longer not because we don’t believe but because our grief is so deep. But we do believe. And it is coming.

Your sweet brother got me the last coke in the house with a bunch of ice. He even made it fancy to try to make me smile. And it worked.