Patience to Endure

Tag: loss

  • The Wall

    The Wall

    I have heard grief described as waves in the ocean, elevators, rubberband balls, and roller coasters. It is all those things at once.

    Grief isn’t just an analogy. It is raw. It is ruthless. It is reckless. It is my temporary reality.

    Grief is crying seeing the walls where you made them dirty. I can see the marks where your fingers left streaks. We have never had clean walls. In fact, when I picked paint out for the house it was the kind that was easy to clean. You always wiped whatever was on your hands along the wall. Now it is an artistic masterpiece, and I never want to wash that wall again.

    Grief is crying because Steve brought home bundt cakes and I knew you would have loved this new flavor. They are lemon flavored with blackberry filling. I would have mashed it up and added pudding. You would have squealed with excitement and eaten every last bite. How you loved food. Life is now used to and would have.

    Grief is making your baby brother’s sandwich for lunch and forgetting to put the turkey, so the poor child ate a cheese and mayonnaise sandwich for lunch. It robs me of the ability to perform the simplest of tasks.

    Grief is being exhausted even though I had two cups of coffee and have done nothing exerting yet. It changes the definition of exerting and some days sitting up might as well be a marathon. It is sleeping at night only with the help of medication.

    Grief is searching the home for pieces of you still here, some evidence other than my memory.

    She always comes too soon and leaves much too late. She is rude.

    Grief is good at making me let go too though. Perhaps the carrying of it makes me drop other things I should not have carried so long anyway. Unforgiveness, resentment, petty differences are too burdensome. Grief monopolizes my ability to carry.

    There is an odd kindness to her. She would not be here had the love not existed. The love you created and received is proportional to her weight and as of now, it is too heavy to bear. But “they” promise me as I learn to carry it, the load changes. The indomitable truth is that your love, both given and received, will never lose weight. Even as grief fades, your love will always exist. Love wins.

    It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it. (Lou Holtz)

    Sweet boy, I am hoping to learn to carry it. I will make you proud. But first, I have to remember to put turkey in your brother’s sandwich.

  • In the Land

    In the Land

    In the land of tomorrows

    I cannot find you there

    Until my last one

    when we will finally hug once again.

    In the land of today

    my being cries out as

    I seek a glimpse

    in the elusive breeze,

    desperate to feel

    perhaps you are still somehow here.

    Finding only space and tears

    I seek your face,

    your smile,

    your laugh.

    My soul refuses to let go.

    Connection so intricately intertwined

    cannot easily be undone

    even by death.

    Enveloped by quietness and detested calm

    cohabitating with cacophony and chaos and uncontrollable ache

    as grief rages even after surrender

    In the land of yesterday

    is where I find you

    Memories palpitate…

    Your first heartbeat began in my womb

    Your last ended in my arms

    Oh the blessed moments in between!

    During sunny moments of my soul

    though few and fleeting

    I see you skipping on the other

    side of my last tomorrow.

    I see your face,

    your laugh,

    your smile

    Unencumbered and unrestrained

    Just as you were in our yesterdays.

    All that has changed is which side

    of eternity each resides

    It is a flat line, a last breath, a final heartbeat

    that separates me from you.

    It is a chasm, an inconceivability, an anguished reality

    that separates you from me.

    In the land of today I will hold tightly to our yesterday

    Time dare not steal one single expression or smile or embrace

    And I will see you again

    In the land of my last tomorrow

  • Yet to Be

    Yet to Be

    Waiting for the corner

    just a glimpse

    so I can see where I might turn.

    Where the tears will slow

    and my heart will beat

    without the pain of breakage.

    Unaccustomed to this stasis

    the corner seems but a dream

    So I lean

    I lean into the grief

    I lean away

    I sway in the numbness

    but a momentary relief

    I am not asking for rescue

    nor do I dare expect release

    only hope that it can’t, it won’t, get worse

    yet somehow it does.

    Each morning’s first thought is

    I don’t want to live in a world

    where you are not

    and fear the grief will take

    up residence and abscess my heart,

    the valve will fail and the dominoes fall

    But your brothers have lost a brother

    They cannot, will not, lose a mother

    From the couch I launch my battle cry

    It is a sobbing whimper but a defiant sound

    nonetheless.

    A yawp yet to be

  • Cola

    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.

  • Empty

    Empty

    It is another beautiful day, sweet boy. I feel a little steadier today. Still so very sad and lost but steady in this place.

    Steve took me to the Overlook Produce to look at plants. I was afraid of how I might react when I saw Buc-ees across the street. How you loved that place! You would sign “mouse” and “cheese” to let me know when you wanted to go there which was more often than we could. You were so clever and thought Buc-ee was a mouse and knew it sounded like “cheese”. You had your own language and I was privileged to understand.

    We would get your favorite banana pudding and drive to the Harrisonburg Mall. I would intentionally park at the Old Navy entrance so you would have to use your walker the full length of the mall to the food court. You were always very food motivated. You would sit there and enthusiastically eat every bite while waving to people around us. I will forever remember the staccato movements you would use to scoop the pudding to get as much as possible in one spoonful.

    As we drove today I felt an emptiness. It is always present but this was different. From the years of helping with Grief Share I often heard people speak of the relief that came when they didn’t have to intensely care for someone any longer. They weren’t happy their loved one was gone but they felt a sense of alleviation to not have the responsibility.

    I looked out the window at the mountains in the distance. I didn’t have that feeling I held for twenty-four years. Even when you were in school or we were apart I never settled. At night I slept lightly always with the ringer on because I knew at any moment you might need me. You were ever present in all I did. I was always at the ready and now that I find no relief to no longer be.

    I find it empty in this place. The awful emptiness where something valuable and important was and now nothing remains.

    I got home and the basement door was open. You are gone and now we don’t need to be sure you can’t access the stairs. Scissors lay gently on the coffee table where they could never be for fear of you finding them and getting hurt. I no longer scan the floor a thousand times a day seeking small objects you could ingest. Almost a quarter of a century of diligence all for you are no more.

    There is no relief. Only a vast emptiness where the hypervigilance once sat and never slept. See, in that space was where I loved you best, where I protected you from anything that could harm you. The two things, however, my sweet boy, I could not protect you from was your own body and God’s timing.

    To me, they were both beautiful and awful and merciful and cruel. I miss you endlessly

  • From the Loss of You

    From the Loss of You

    I have never been

    so far from who I am.

    An imperceivable smile

    stifles the little laughter

    barely there

    that never escapes.

    Tears are abundant…

    forceful…

    unceasingly present

    and beyond my control.

    We are both gone yet I remain

    The world cruelly goes on

    Bills need to be paid

    The dryer broke

    Friends inquire how I am

    when I know not who I am

    From the loss of you.

    A shell of a mother after the final heartbeat

    Yet somehow mine continues.

    I long for the day I remember

    who I was before this pain.

    I await hope to discover

    who I may yet be.

    A distant dream

    of a far away place and time

    when the loss of you might

    subside long enough

    to allow more than just breath.

    When you were ripped

    from me the best parts

    of who I was vanished.

    They did not go with you

    to fields of Grace

    yet do not remain with me.

    Perhaps on fairer days

    I will find them tucked and hidden

    beneath this suffocating grief.

    Perhaps they are only forgotten

    for a little while

    from the loss of you

    When the morning sun stays

    longer than a glimpse

    and with strength renewed

    I will pull them out.

    I will dust them off.

    Gently, gracefully, finally

    adorning not as an old woman wears a shawl

    but as the victor, triumphant in purple and gold

    from the hard fought battle.

    She who was before the loss of you

    may never return.

    With a little luck and a lot of God

    I will meet a new she somewhere in the maps

    and be proud of her becoming

    from the loss of you

  • Church

    Church

    Steve and I went to church today with the “baby.” When I brought Nathan home from the hospital thirteen years ago I taught you the sign for “baby”. It didn’t occur to me then that someday you would still be calling the six-foot one teen age brother “baby”. You loved it when he came with us on our outings, especially Target. He loved playing with you and giving you hugs. He hurts deeply now that you are gone.

    I have been reading about “care giver crash” lately. It isn’t a medical diagnosis but is a psychological and physical collapse that occurs when prolonged caregiving suddenly stops. I guess my body was in chronic survival mode. It helped me to stay alert, sleep lightly, and wake quickly so I could care for you. The adrenaline, hyper-alertness, cortisol, and purpose I had for twenty-four years are cruelly and abruptly no more. Apparently it is my nervous system’s way of finally saying “It’s safe to stop now” and years of exhaustion surface all at once. I detest it.

    Then the collapse… exhaustion, bodily heaviness, trouble concentrating, waves of grief, headaches, muscle aches, sleep disruption, feelings of disorientation. Unbeknownst to me, my nervous system was carrying a huge load for a very long time. It didn’t feel like it because it was all in the care of you and it was my honor.

    Add grief over losing you and gravity is much more than 9.8 meters per second squared. Even the weight of my body in the world is different. Steps are heavier. Sitting up feels like exercise. Everything is a challenge.

    When your big brother Emerson was little I remember watching an anime with him where the hero went to another planet to train. The gravity was much heavier so when he went back to his original planet he was stronger, faster and could jump higher. The extra gravity worked to his advantage. Perhaps that will be my case. I hold on to hope still yet.

    But I went to church today. Gravity made it hard to stand. The music started. I lifted my chin and sang the words. As if enveloped in thick mud it took all my strength but I did it, sweet boy. I raised my hands in worship. Worship isn’t an emotion. It is not a feeling. It is a necessity and I felt better for it knowing God is worthy and realizing you are on the other side of eternity singing praise. For a moment, once again but altogether different, together we sang.

    We were going to go out to eat with Grandma and Aunt Dolly later but I just couldn’t. We never did that before because the few times I did go to church I always had to go straight home to catheterize you. Today wasn’t the day to start that tradition. It just didn’t feel right yet. It may never feel right but, I hope, it will eventually feel less wrong.

    On the way home Aunt Dolly started coughing. I still said out loud “Aunt Dolly coughing. Better do something!” even though you weren’t in the car to laugh. Do you remember how I started that game because you would get scared sometimes when you started coughing? Whenever you were scared we would make a game of it and suddenly the fear was replaced with laughter. The unintended consequence was every time you heard someone cough you would laugh.

    I came home and collapsed to the couch. The doorbell rang and it was a friend who has traveled this road. She gave me a book and told me it helped her on her journey. There is something profoundly beautiful when someone who has walked through hell comes back, holds out her hand, and shows you the way.

    find me there.

    where sunsets glow

    but it never gets dark.

    where pain doesn’t exist

    and comfort is always felt.

    where everything you’ve ever loved

    finds its way back to you in the end.

    the place you went to when

    your heart fell asleep.

    my time will come

    to see you again

    and you can

    find me

    there.

    sara rian

    I am so lost without you, my sweet boy. It is an agonizing pain worse than anything imaginable. I find solace that you don’t feel this pain and you are where it is never dark and all you know is comfort. And someday, my child, you can find me there.

  • Home Depot

    Home Depot

    Two weeks ago this day your heart beat for the last time. It feels like two decades at times and two minutes at others. Time is cruel.

    I went to Home Depot today. You hated Home Depot. It was your least favorite store but we also had fun there, especially during Christmas. We would push all the buttons and watch Disney characters sing songs just for you. You would give me enough time to look at plants and then would let me, and the entire store, know it was time to leave.

    I pushed a cart today. It was abhorrent. When you were here I always pulled it because I would maneuver you in your chair in front of me. When I finished looking at the plants, there by myself I said, “Now we have to go find Grandma,” and my heart broke all over again. You were not there to hear me.

    I managed to check out and get back to the car in time to cry. You hated it when I cried. You always would cry with me even if you didn’t know what it was about. You laughed when I laughed and you cried when I cried. You never cared why only that we shared every emotion. You were the best companion.

    There were children everywhere at Home Depot today proudly displaying their craft. I cried more wondering why I didn’t get to keep you, my child. Then I remembered. I did. For twenty-four years I got to keep you closer than most mothers get the privilege of experiencing. And for that I am grateful.

    I don’t know how I am going to do this, my sweet boy. You were the voice in my head and the song in my heart. You were my purpose and every day I thanked God for giving me a child who would ensure my role as mother would always be profound because you needed me and that would never change. At least not until February 21, 2026. Your brothers will always need me as a mother but not like you did.

    I count it progress I was able to get back to the car before I cried this time. Baby steps. A friend once told me

    One step at a time. And when you can’t, just lean forward.

    I am leaning forward. Sometimes I just sit and cry. This grief is different. It has shaken my very knowledge of where I am in the world. It is physical. It is emotional. It is mental. It is overwhelmingly, seemingly impossible. But God…

    All the time I miss your beautiful love. Your smile. Your request for hugs which I honored every single time because I knew each one could be the last.

    That last one came two weeks ago today. Steve held your hand and I hugged you whispering “Mommy is here…mommy is here,” over and over until you were not.

    Someday I will be able to go to a store and not cry. Some day the clock will not remind me it is time to catheterize or give medication or have coffee together in my office. Someday I will make it through a day without crying. But there will never be a day I don’t miss you with my whole, shattered, broken heart. I hold to the promise it won’t always be so shattered or broken but do know there will always be a piece missing until I see you again, sweet boy.

    A friend sent me this poem. Your absence, the quietness of the house, the emptiness of my days tell my truth of this poem:

    Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful Grace of God (Aeschylus, translated by Edieth Hamilton in 1930)

  • Then Hope Emerges

    Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Romans 5:3-5

    locked-in-the-ether-frozen-flowers-kenji-shibata-thumb640

    I love the above verse but at times it seems to befuddle me. I do not know anyone who rejoices in sufferings while they are suffering. This may just be semantics but I do know it is possible to rejoice WHILE suffering but not IN suffering.

    When I add Romans 8:28 to the above verse it makes a little more sense.

    “For we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him and have been called according to His purpose.”

    Almost seven years ago my husband died and I was the one to find him. The following is an excerpt from my journal:

    I lay on a stretcher wrapped in a blanket. I do not know how long I had been outside barefoot and no coat. I was shaking from cold and fear and death and uncertainty. I was shaking to the very core of me.

    I could physically feel and spiritually sense the presence of all that was to come: as if grief, anger, despair, anxiety, loneliness, and regret, all at levels I had never encountered, were floating above but had not yet pounced. They were swirling, circling, waiting to attack viciously. Indeed, they were eager to devour me. I felt strangely peaceful that they would wait. Instead, I looked at the young woman who was part of the response team.

    “Do you read the Bible?” I asked.

    “Yes, I am a woman of faith,” she answered.

    I whispered with my eyes closed, “How is God possibly going to bring good out of this? My husband is dead. The father of my children is dead.” When I finished my question I looked up at her as if saying “my husband is dead” was safer if said with my eyes closed.
    Tears began to roll down her eyes.

    “It is all right to be angry with God and tell Him you are angry,” she responded.

    “I am not angry with Him,” I said, “I cannot face this without Him.”

    My spirit made a decision when my mind could not. My brain and heart had suffered an injury of cataclysmic proportion yet my spirit knew that I would not survive except by clinging to my Father’s robe. I was the woman in the crowd. I was not pushing through people but I would push through anger, fear, doubt, loneliness, excruciating pain, to reach the hem of my Savior. I would stop at nothing to touch Him. I knew my faith would heal me.

    Looking back on that moment, at times as if it was yesterday, and re-reading Romans 5, I can offer this: while there was absolutely no part of my being that rejoiced in that suffering I do understand how suffering can and will produce endurance. It is even written into the very definition of endurance given by Merriam Webster: 1. the ability to withstand hardship or adversity; especially : the ability to sustain a prolonged stressful effort or activity 2: the act or an instance of enduring or suffering

    Suffering produces endurance because the only way to be released from it’s powerful grasp is to endure it. When we try to run from it we prolong the inevitable – that it will catch up with us and more than likely with gained momentum. When we try to divert from it, usually in unhealthy ways, we merely inflict a new layer of suffering.

    I wonder if sometimes it takes the patience to endure and waiting in order for hope to appear apparent enough for us to recognize it. I know that during my time in the ambulance on that day and for a long time after, hope was only a momentary, fleeting notion. There was never enough of it to which I could hold. Grief and suffering can be so overwhelming that initially all one can do is attempt to survive.

    Then hope emerges.

    It may have been dormant and it may seem like it took an agonizingly long time to emerge but it comes. Because of my belief in a good God despite what was happening to me I could hold tightly to the promise that He would bring good out of the impossibly horrific. I could cling to the assurance that if I endured then hope would come. I also knew I would have to wait and during the waiting it was imperative for me to work harder than I ever have. I would fight for the patience to endure. I would battle anger, grief, abandonment, loneliness, and even doubt. I would wrestle with unanswered questions and the relentless “what ifs”. I would have to clear enough space in my heart so that hope and love and new dreams could grow. He faithfully gave me the tools I needed in order to be victorious. It was not easy yet I had hope. And it did not put me to shame.

    He has and He will.

     

     

     

     

  • Shine Mightily

    Our culture does not discuss grief. In fact, we do just about everything we can to avoid it. We don’t know what to say to someone experiencing it and few of us know what to do once we find ourselves in its powerful grasp. Grief is one of the great equalizers. We all must endure it.

    I found out yesterday that a friend of mine passed away very suddenly. All grief is so very difficult but those unexpected loses do not give loved ones a chance to brace for impact. It blindsides you. It leaves you disoriented and reeling from the pain.

    I met my friend last fall when she came to the Grief Share program at my church. She was drowning in grief but accompanied by her even keeled, ever doting husband. She was raw and honest about what she had endured. I instantly liked her and simultaneously felt great compassion for her situation. Even in the midst of her grief she was a person who filled the room. When she laughed you couldn’t help but light up inside. When she cried you couldn’t help but cry with her. She just drew you in. Her death comes as a great shock and my heart breaks for her husband and sons.

    During the 13 weeks I had the privilege of getting to know her we shared very intimate details about our lives and our emotions. Our losses were different but the essence of our grief was the same. For a brief time we walked the same path on our journey. Her family now begins the walk all over after having already endured one other tragic, sudden, and unexpected loss. The grief they carry is too much to fathom.

    One night during a Grief Share meeting I was able to share this with her and the group. It seems appropriate to share it again today. At the time of sharing it I wanted to lend hope to a room filled with people who had lost so much. Truly, when we lose that which matters the most often hope is the only thing keeping us afloat. It is all we have left but it is all we need to begin.

    22289837_10155870327959656_2607341831479701028_o.jpg

    This morning when I left Charlottesville it was cloudy, windy, and raining but I was driving over the mountain to run some errands. I know that often when I get to the other side the weather is quite different. So, in spite of what it looked like where I was standing, I grabbed my sunglasses expectant to find something else entirely when I arrived. True to hope, as I reached the apex and started to descend the sun forced its way out and was shining mightily as if to show off its victory. If my life means anything, if I can impart anything to my children, if I can change my little corner may this picture be my deceleration.

    There will be times in life when it is dark and cold where you stand. The mountain looms in the distance and you can’t be sure of what is on the other side. For a while you might pace at the bottom. You will stop and glance up overwhelmed by the task at hand. You may even lay down and wait for the strength for one more step. But you will stand back up. You scale the mountain and eventually joyful anticipation settles in with you. The journey will be challenging but there are streams and deer. There are flowers and birds. The sun will rise and the sun will set, sometimes with a glorious displays of hues and sometimes hidden. There will always be something for which to be grateful, even if it is that you draw breath. On the other side of the mountain is more than you could have ever imagined. Colors are more vibrant. Love is deeper. Your faith assured. You, like the sun, will shine magnificently in your glory.

    Dearest Friend,

    When I shared this with you I thought your mountain was like mine once was, grief. Re-reading this today I know you are on the other side and it is more than you ever imagined. Your smile and laughter will always accompany me. Shine on, dear friend. Shine on magnificently in His Glory.