To the Adventure!

The last week has been ... interesting to say the least. Hubby started chemotherapy yesterday morning. His schedule was given to us at that time. So his next chemo treatment is on July 29 (Wednesday), and then he gets a 1.5-week-long break from it. In between each treatment, usually during the run of a week, there are blood tests, oncology consultations, home visits from Home Care nursing, physiotherapist, occupational therapist, dietician, and on and on the merry-go-round goes.  Then he goes back on August 10th for the first treatment of his next cycle. 

I'm learning the vocabulary of cancer treatment. At first it was confusing, but I'm catching on.  

The time between the first treatment of one period of time and the first treatment of the next period of time (usually 4 weeks but in this case it's 3 weeks) is called a cycle. The period of time between the first treatment of the first cycle and the last treatment of the last cycle (which is 3 months) is called a round.

Free image from Pixabay

After the first round of treatment cycles, he will have a CT scan to determine if the drugs have had a shrinking effect on the tumors and lumps. If it is working, we go to the beginning of the next (3-month) round. Perhaps at that time, they'll move to a 4-week cycle (3 treatments, 1 per week, followed by a fourth week off). It depends on how well he handles the medications. There are at-home medications for him to take for the day of treatment and for the 2 days after treatment.

So far, after only one treatment, he seems well. He is not bothered by nausea at all, and if he is, then we have medications for him to take as needed for that. The best thing so far is that after we reduced his pain medication so that he wasn't quite so "out of it", he is more alert ... and even with the reduced medication, his pain seems to be less. What a relief!

On July 30, he will see a radio-oncologist to address the oozing / bleeding in the stomach cancer that was observed on July 8th. We'll probably set up some sessions to irradiate that specific area (that is, hit it with radiation) and get the bleeding under control (perhaps) as a result. I have no idea what that will look like or how often he will need to have these radiation treatments. Once I know, I hope I will have the strength to keep my readers informed. 

Caring for someone as close as my husband is to me - he is my best friend, after all - is taxing. Not only do I need to look after his nutrition and medication needs, I need to watch him closely so that he is sure to follow the requirements for looking after his toileting ... specific procedures like sitting to pee, closing the toilet lid, flushing twice, and then washing his hands. These procedures are to help to protect the other people in the house from exposure to his bodily fluids, as they don't know what the long-term effects of that exposure would be for those NOT in treatment. I also have to make sure that if he soils his clothing, it is kept separate from our laundry and double-washed.

And that is heaped up on top of all the things that need to be done to run a household, which, to my shame, has all been handled by my husband - until he was no longer able. Now, my daughter and I have to share the chores: dishes, sweeping, laundry, trash, cat's boxes, feeding the animals, keeping them hydrated, letting the dog out several times a day, groceries ... and also the unexpected duties that crop up. Neighbors have offered and still are blessing us with things we can't handle, like the lawn. Some have dropped off food. It all helps, but the day-to-day can be tiring.

There is much we don't know about all of this. For example, we are not sure if our insurance will cover the cost of the medications they are giving him, or if they do, how much they will cover (and how much they initially cost!!) and even though we have applied for PEI's Catastrophic Drug program, we have not heard whether he will qualify for it. 

At any rate, we are determined to be transparent about his journey and our own parallel journey as we walk this road beside him. His attitude is positive, and so far, so is ours. We surround ourselves with people and music and news that is/are positive, and we speak healing (see previous post) daily into his body. We know so many others are praying for him and sending him healing vibes. And I know that he is loved - so much more than he would ever believe - so very much by so very many. 

In a sense, even though we live on a fixed income, we feel rich, because we have the love and support of family, friends, and neighbors. And we are looked after by our Higher Power. What more could we ask for?  

Love Heals More

The last few weeks has been somewhat of a whirlwind combined with a nightmare. My daughter and I have been concerned about my husband's weight loss and loss of appetite, especially after he stopped trying to lose weight, because his appetite has stayed near zero and his weight loss continued. 

Finally, while consulting for low iron, the doctor ordered a colonoscopy, which revealed no internal bleeding. Yet the numbers were still low. So, he ordered a CT scan of his head and of his torso (shoulders to pelvis). The scan was on a Friday. The following Monday, we were called into the doctor's office and told that there was a 7.2 cm mass on the tail of the pancreas, and some suspicious "spots" on his liver and on his right adrenal gland. The next few minutes were a blur of talking about Oncology and about a biopsy they needed from the liver site, as the pancreas could not be reached by the type of biopsy they were planning to do.

Telling our daughter was hard. Losing one (or both) of us was her worst fear. She kind of knew when she hadn't received a text from me ... but it was still hard to see the sadness in her eyes. We wondered when the biopsy would be. "Sooner rather than later," the doctor said. 

The biopsy occurred within a week. And we waited, hoping that the results would be benign.

They weren't. Another trip to the doctor to discuss findings, this time with our daughter. Metastatic pancreatic carcinoma, with spread to the liver and that adrenal gland, we heard. 

I felt the sudden rush of panic I had felt in the first meeting, but I saw it coming and decided to compartmentalize my own fear for his sake. For their sake.

No amount of preparation or bracing can prepare you for that kind of news. It's like having nightmares of monsters, finally relaxing because someone is there to chase them away, and then realizing that they came for the one who chased them down. There's fear, panic, grief, sadness, anger, and pain all bound up into one entity that I try to push away from me because it's too much all at once. 

I am the ultimate catastrophizer, the quintessential awfulizer. I can imagine scenarios upon scenarios if I let myself. I have a vivid imagination, and sometimes, it turns on me. I can't imagine living without him, and yet, now that imagination leads me to that place where I feel forced to do just that.

And yes, I know it's not healthy. As a counsellor, I can identify all the negative patterns of thought. But I also understand that those feelings are absolutely normal for what the situation is. 

Free image from Pixabay dot com

As a practicing Jesus-Christian, I believe in divine healing, absolutely! And from the moment this first became "a thing," I've been speaking healing, strength and life into my husband's body, telling the cancer to cower, to shrink and to be expelled in Jesus' Name. Dozens, maybe even hundreds are praying for his healing as well. Those who don't believe the way we do are still sending positive thoughts and vibes toward him and toward our little family. 

And some of those who are able ... have offered help in tangible ways. Mowing the lawn, for example. Neither I nor our daughter can do it because of allergies, so others have offered and we have accepted their offers.  The hardest part of that is accepting the help and learning to receive it, because he has always been the one to give to others. So now, we've started telling him that it's HIS turn to benefit from being given to. So when our daughter or I do the dishes or take out the trash or whatever... it is one less thing that HE has to do (see "Every Snowflake Counts", my feature post, visible on your PC.) 

And we are grateful for every single day. All of us. Because love - that is the only thing that heals. And it heals more than all the pills, injections, and treatments can do. It's healing us all on the inside, where it counts. 

And all I can do - all we can do - is be grateful. 

 

 

For a Warbler

While out walking the dog today, we happened upon a small lump in the road that didn't quite look like a rock or clump of dirt. As we approached, it became clear that it was a little bird, barely 3 inches from beak to tip of tail. 

It was dead. The little body was still slightly warm.

To keep the dog from defiling the body, I picked it up. It was mostly the colour of dust, light grayish brown, slightly darker on its back and wings, created to blend into its natural surroundings (shrubs and trees) perfectly. But it had not counted on a sudden encounter with a car windshield.

This is the closest image I could find. Image
provided by "The Other Kev" at Pixabay

It had been an insect-eater: the beak was narrow and pointed. Its crest (top of its head) was yellow with brilliant orange feathers underneath. A little male! The tiny legs with still-clutched feet seemed like pencil leads. I marveled at the intricate design, milliseconds before my eyes stung and tears spilled over. 

"The poor little thing!" I exclaimed. "What a shame!"

Hubby asked if he could see. I laid the tiny body gently in his hand ad stroked the little head where I found the orange underfeathers that would only show through the yellow if it was agitated. 

"Its neck is broken," he said. "Death was instant." 

"...but still...!..."

He gazed at it a few more seconds, and carefully and respectfully slipped the little body into his coat pocket. "I'll bury it at home," he murmured, more to himself than to me.

As we walked along in silence, a little Sunday School song came to my mind: "God sees the little sparrow fall, it meets His tender view. If God so loves the little things, I know He loves me too." And it's like I heard in my quiet core the still, small Voice of that God say to me, "I saw him fall, too." 

And I cried.

The Power and the Price of Love

 "Mom. They took Tux off the shelter site." She was crestfallen.

"Really?" I tried to look surprised and concerned at the same time. 

"I'm really glad I went to meet him in person."

"So am I sweetie. So am I."

What she didn't know was that I had gone to the site and put in an adoption form for this cat she fell in love with from his picture and his story on the site, right after we went in to see him, "to prove to myself," she had told me, "that there won't be a connection with me in person."

But there was.

He was about 4 months old, and he had been at the shelter for two months. He was so shy and fearful that nobody wanted him. But my cat-whisperer daughter saw something in him. And we had just lost our older cat - perhaps to an eagle, we couldn't be sure.

His back story was heartbreaking. He had gotten stuck in the fan-belt of the engine of a summering snowmobile ... at just eight weeks old. His mom couldn't get him out so she abandoned him there. A neighbor was out walking and heard his cries, so she set about trying to get him out. The rescue process was long and tedious, and many hours later, the woman called the PEI Humane Society. An Animal Protection Officer came and helped free him from the belt. But the damage was already done: with so many hands coming down from above, the pain of being stuck, and the sight of work boots and sound of raised voices, he was traumatized and was a black and white bundle of hissing and spitting. 

They put him in a crate to transport him to the shelter. Then they transferred him into a cage in the receiving area, where they assessed him. After his quarantine, they transferred him to another crate to go to the vet to be neutered. Another crate to get back to the shelter. Then transferred into his cage, then to another cage to be available for adoption. Nope. A foster family took him in (more crates to and from) as well as another kitten about his age. He and his foster brother lived with a couple of large dogs and a couple of cats; he liked another cat that was there. When he was four months old, they took him back to the shelter (yet another crate). No method of transferring him to a crate worked. It just added more things to be afraid of: blankets, towels, clothing, you name it. 

But then my daughter saw his pic and read his story. And she fell head over heels for him. We went to see him (as I mentioned, above) and she had resigned herself to leaving him there. So unknown to her, I got the adoption ball rolling, and the conversation happened, the one I shared at the first of this post.

A few hours later, she got an email. She opened it and started to read. It was from a friend of hers at the shelter, who was thrilled that this cat would go to her and who was congratulating her! When the realization came that he was coming to live with us, and that was the reason they took his profile off the website, she was so happy that she cried.

We picked him up the next day. Poor kitty - still another crate experience.  My daughter took him to her room, where she had set up a litter box and a feeding station, and spent the next few weeks doing nothing else but teaching him that people were okay, that it was safe here, that he would be fine, that he was loved and that it felt good to get petted.

We all changed his name to Callum - which means peace - and it soon got shortened to Cal.

I remember the first time she allowed me into her room to give Cal someone else to interact with, to teach him that it wasn't just ONE human he could trust. She told me how to sit, what to do, and how to talk. Within minutes, his terror ebbed away, and I had a tuxedo-clad kitty rubbing up against me and purring. He drooled, but we figured that he had been rewarded with food for letting people handle him, so he associated being stroked with receiving food. He never got over that habit. After a while, it was one of the endearing things about him, as he got to know us all, including the other cats and eventually, last year, the dog. (Well, okay, he never really enjoyed the dog, but you can't have everything.)

There was a one-sided 'bromance' between him and our black cat Loki, who was about six months older than he was. The first time he saw Loki, he ran right up to him and head-butted him so hard it knocked Loki into the wall!! Loki was taken aback, and gave one short hiss - out of surprise more than anything else! 

He never knew his own strength. The largest of our cats, he was the resident scaredy-cat. So he let Loki rule the roost. And he and Eris (our female cat, around his age) played together. They'd play chase, take turns running after each other, and sometimes Loki would join in. When he finally stood up to Loki (after Loki had been picking on him too much), the fur flew, but Loki respected him more after that. 

And so did the dog - he had to swat at Bullet a few times before the dog got the message.

Cal at about a year old, 2015

Cal was a big fella. He was gangly and big-boned, clumsy and a little lumbering, but his heart was as big as all Texas, as the saying goes. 

His favorite piece of furniture was our bed. He would sprawl out on the bed and lay on his side and his older (adopted) brother Loki would lay within three feet of him. They would stay there all day. And when they weren't there, they were on the cat tree (the ledge of which he is laying down on in the picture provided.) Being up high increased his confidence. He learned that he had a right to take up space, and we saw him slowly heal from his traumatic kittenhood. It was so inspiring to watch! "This," we would mutter, "is what love can do. So powerful. Just love. Pure and simple." 

Last Friday, he started to have a hard time breathing. We thought he was trying to cough up a hairball, but he was doing it more and more often. By yesterday morning, we knew we had to call the emergency room vet. They took us right away. Apparently (we had no idea) breathing problems are equivalent to an animal being hit by a car when it comes to deciding which cases are most urgent.

They calmed him with medications, did an X-ray, and then showed us what the problem was. His chest cavity was filled with fluid, which was compressing his lungs and making it really hard for him to breathe. We saw two little black blobs on the X-ray ... the size and appearance of prunes. The vet explained. "Those are his lungs. All this white stuff in the rest of the chest cavity is fluid. It's pressing in on his lungs and there's not enough room for him to get a full breath." So she recommended taking a good bit of that fluid out to make his breathing easier, and testing the fluid to see what the cause of his problem might be. Not all of it, she said, because the risk of a collapsed lung was more if they took it all out. So we consented. They gave him some intravenous liquids and put in some anti-nausea medication. We brought him back home around 4 pm. Dr. Marlene is AMAZING. Just saying.

That night, after he had found a hiding spot under my side of the bed, Cal managed to eat some tuna (his favorite), and drink a little water. He stayed there all night. The family gathered in the living room and talked. We all knew it was just a matter of time. If he got worse, we couldn't keep subjecting him to that crate and to the interventions of strangers.

There were many tears. Nobody got much sleep that night.

I checked on him in the morning. He had stopped panting, so I thought he was doing better. I petted him; he purred. His breathing was still too fast, but I went forward with my plans for the day, which included meeting a friend for an early-afternoon coffee nearby. I took my phone with me "just in case you guys need to go back to the vet with him." I made it clear that I wanted to be there too. All they had to do was call.

I got that call around 2:30, while I was finishing up coffee with my friend. "I'll meet you there," I told my daughter. 

When we got inside, I checked on him inside the crate (again with the crate!!)  He was in clear distress, panting open-mouthed and slavering. Strings of drool hung from the sides of his mouth. I saw panic in his eyes. The vet met us shortly and immediately took him back into ICU. They started an IV and put him on oxygen. 

That's when we had the "quality of life" conversation with the vet. 

The next hour or so was a blur. Lots of waiting for medications to kick in so he would be more calm. Long minutes of petting him and saying our goodbyes. Tears. Hugs. More pets. Then the vet came in with the needles - 3 of them (sedation, an agent to stop the heart, and saline solution to go into the vein after the deed was done to avoid blood leaking out when they took out the IV.) Everything was designed for maximum comfort, minimum stress for both us and him. The vet was great: respectful, compassionate, and knowledgeable.

While we were waiting for them to do the paw-print, the vet from the previous day, who had dropped by because she had 'forgotten' her notes, came in to see us and express her sadness at how things turned out. What a blessing! We had the unique opportunity to thank her for everything she did to ease his discomfort and make him as calm as possible. She had been his vet when he was younger, and that made it easier to talk to her about him, and to share memories ... the scene reminded me of a funeral home in a way. 

Yes. Yes, she cried. It meant a lot to her for us to thank her. I'm so glad we got a chance to do that. Vets don't get a lot of thanks. They should.

Existence versus Life

As I write this, my mind and heart is a jumble of myriad tangled feelings, thoughts, memories, and pain – each competing with the other and yet co-existing and draining my strength as they fight their constant battle. This battle? This war? This is grief. This is love when arms can no longer hold the loved one.

Less than 48 hours ago, my brother Ben passed away from septic shock combined with pneumonia that he developed from an infection in a tube-site for his gall bladder. The tube was initially inserted in February 2017 and his surgeon hesitated to remove both it and the gall bladder for fear of him experiencing a coronary on the table. He had atherosclerosis (with a total of 3 stents in various heart arteries, for which he was taking a blood-thinner since the last heart attack on February 14, 2019.)  He also had insulin-dependent diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, nephrolithiasis, and chronic renal failure, and he was on dialysis three times a week.

In fact, that’s how I found out that he was in trouble. His dialysis nurse called me and said he didn’t show up for his Monday morning appointment. After trying to reach him, thinking he had overslept, I called a relative and asked them to go check to see if he was at home. His car was, but he didn’t answer. After that, I called 911 who patched me through to the RCMP. They went to his house, saw him awake on his bed through his (main floor) bedroom window, and he was unable to get up. They broke the door down and called the EMT people. That would have been around 3 pm or so. The EMTs came and got an IV started. They took him to the local hospital who assessed him and intubated him as he was having difficulty breathing. Then they ambulanced him to the hospital where he normally did his dialysis. They got him there around 7 p.m.  Three hours after he got there, he took a turn for the worse, and went into septic shock. The nurse called me and asked me or someone to come to the hospital right now. They tried to revive him three times but to no avail. At 10:15 pm, he was pronounced dead.

And that is what the doctor told me ten minutes later, over the phone, as I was getting my coat on to make the two-and-a-half-hour trip to see him. Such pain I had not felt in over six years since my youngest daughter died at the age of 21.

My night-time trip was cancelled, of course. I made plans to pack up the next day, and go to the homestead to assess the damage and the mess. I might have slept four hours that night. The next night, with the help of some Melatonin, I slept for six hours, although there was one interruption at five a.m. when Ben’s alarms went off to remind him to get up for dialysis. Hopefully, tonight will be better.

During my waking hours, I have been doing a lot of thinking about the difference between existing and living. For most of his life, Ben just existed. He grew up thinking that he was a nuisance to his parents. He bore the inner scars of physical and psychological abuse by his mom and abandonment by his dad who never stopped her, and the bruises of an older brother who criticized everything he did and regularly pounded on him. He bore other scars too: a marriage that lasted only 14 years before it ended in divorce, alienation from his sons, rejection from an endless string of women, as well as being used by women who befriended him only for his bank account. His was a lonely life. He battled the loneliness with his art: he could draw landscapes, animals, and people just by looking at pictures of things. He composed so many songs and sang them with me and with that older brother when we were all so young (I was 16 at the time, so he was 22 and the other brother was 26) – gospel songs that were so beautiful you could hear a pin drop when we were done.

Yet he suffered. I remember him coming home from senior high school and sobbing as he begged me never EVER to judge a man just on his appearance. I never EVER forgot his words. 

Yes, most of his life he was a melancholy man. He existed; he created beautiful things and appreciated beauty in nature and in people, but his existence was spent waiting for the next good thing to happen, and being disappointed time after time after time. 

After his divorce in the early 1990s, he moved in with Mom and Dad. He was there for Mom after Dad passed away, and he made sure he was there to look after things for her. Others would come in and see him lazing around, as they called it. He rested because he couldn’t breathe if he got up and moved around. He had so many ailments: his lungs, his kidneys, his heart, his gall bladder, his pancreas,… people didn’t understand and he felt a lot of condemnation come from them. Nobody understood him, he told me, except me. And sometimes even that wasn’t enough to tame the monsters of hatred and bullying that he experienced – whether real or imagined – from others.

Once, he even tried to commit suicide. He had finally learned how to love unconditionally, and his girlfriend stole from him and used the money to get high. 

A few months later that girl died … and it took him months to make peace with that.

Photo "Eye" by graur codrin at www.freedigitalphotos.net

But by that time, he had learned to live. To REALLY LIVE.

You see, in October 2016, Ben had been diagnosed with stage one colon cancer. And in January 2017, he underwent a six-hour procedure to remove the cancer along with a 5-inch section of bowel. And when he woke from that surgery, while he was still recovering in the hospital, he was listening to the radio and a singer Skip Ewing was singing, “How can he be a king? He’s just a kid.” And God spoke to him in his heart, and said, “Are you listening, son?”  And he responded, tears streaming down his face, “Yes, Father. I’m here. I hear You.”

From that moment on, Ben started to really LIVE. He had some setbacks and some heartaches (like the death of that girlfriend). And he was living on a very limited income, never knowing if he would need to starve in order to be warm, or to freeze in order to eat. It was hard. It was REALLY hard. But he was finally LIVING. We would talk on the phone – and I would let him listen to music that he liked – and he would cry tears of beauty and joy. He never forgot how God rescued him, miraculously let him live, and would look after his every need. Even if he misplaced his car keys. Or his needles. Or his wallet.

Last year, on Valentine’s Day 2019, he suffered a major heart attack. The paramedics found him and the emergency team had to put an intravenous shunt through his shin bone to give him liquids. He screamed in pain and then his heart went into atrial fibrillation. They had to use the paddles to get him back – and he was “gone” for a few seconds there.

He remembered those few seconds. He felt completely at peace. He couldn’t see anything, but he knew that he was loved, cared for, and safe. And from that time onward, he lost his fear of death. He lost his fear of living, too. And the living he had been doing up until then just intensified. He could not keep silent about God’s love for him. Anyone who knew him heard him talk about higher things, spiritual things, wonderful things like love and joy and peace and goodness. He touched so many people that way: people in dialysis, people in drug stores, people at church, in grocery store lineups, everywhere.

That’s not to say that he didn’t have questions. We would talk for hours at a time as he tried to understand some spiritual concept or other. We talked almost every day, for up to two or three hours at a time. (It’s a good thing I have such a good cell phone plan that includes free long distance!) But every time we talked, he would not hesitate to tell me what he had been learning, what God showed him or how He helped him find something he needed. Or met a need in his finances. Or let him talk to someone about his experiences in the Lord.

And now this week, I have been living in his house without him here. Memories galore. Yet it feels so surreal: not quite right, like he should be here laughing and joking with us, listening to YouTube videos, or talking about how wonderful Heaven is.

And yes, he could not let a conversation go by before he mentioned how deeply he longed to see his Master’s face, to walk the shores of Glory with Him, to hug Dad, and to jam with friends and family gone ahead.

And now he is there. And he is LIVING beyond his wildest imaginings – and he could imagine a LOT!!

Good night Ben. See you in the Morning. Keep a chair for me by the hearth, and say hi to Dad for me. I love you beyond measure. 

And … I will miss you. I’ll never forget what you taught me about how to live life in a positive way and not just exist expecting the worst.

Thank you. Thank you SO MUCH.

The Long Dark

Ever since I was a child, I have been afraid of the dark. It held unknown things, monsters, the bogey-man, and shapes that in the daylight would never have bothered me. In the dark, though, those familiar shapes transmuted into my deepest fears: being eaten, being buried, being hurt or killed. My dreams haunted me, and when I awoke there was nothing in the dark but those fears. My heart thumped in my chest like a caged animal trying to get out. 

The band-aid solution when I was a child was to leave one of the lights on outside my room (usually the bathroom light), with the door ajar to let everyone else sleep. Yet the fear of the dark followed me into adulthood. 

As I have been "growing up on the inside" the last year or so, one of the things that has been coming to the fore is this fear. I'm finding that somehow, unbidden, it is less than it was. I awaken in the middle of the night and listen - not for monsters anymore, but for the gentle sound of people sleeping, for the furnace coming on to warm up the water in the pipes, and other 'normal' noises in the house. 

Free Image "Northern Lights Aurora"
by Hans Braxmeier at Pixabay

Plus, I am beginning to notice the things that can only be seen in the dark. The stars, the moon, the Northern Lights, these are all invisible at noon in full sun. Slowly I am arriving - I know not how - at the notion that instead of running from or railing at the darkness, I can appreciate the gifts that are available to me at night: the heavenly lights, the odd meteor shower, even the space station if it is overhead. 

I can remind myself that the morning comes. It always comes - whether gray and misty or bright and sunny - the day follows the night.  Being in an atmosphere of acceptance and love, as I have been lately, has a way of bringing with it clarity, purpose, and confidence. And the dark ... doesn't seem so bad now, even if (in the winter) it lasts longer than I would like. I just settle myself down and focus on some small thing - the ticking of the clock, the sound of my husband's breathing as he sleeps, or even my own breath - and before I know it, I'm waking up again, morning has come and the sun is not far from rising. 

Such an attitude helps me when I am waiting for some much-anticipated thing, or when I am undergoing some difficult experience, or when I am sick or lonely. The morning always comes. There is hope. There is something positive even IN the experience, even if I don't know what that is at the time. And I focus on my breath, and I am grateful for the things and the people that are in my life, and the darkness passes. It just does. 

Funny how that happens.

Joy - Hope - Peace

Several years ago, a friend at work gave me three little brass-toned Christmas ornaments; each is a single word.  One says "Joy"; one says "Hope" and the third says "Peace."  I hang them up every year on my cubicle wall, among other decorations I have accumulated over the years.  

Two Christmases ago, scarcely two months after our youngest daughter passed away, it was hard to put up those decorations.  It was hard to do much of anything.  Another friend at work decided to honour our Arielle (after first checking it with me) by giving out snowflake ornaments to everyone who came to our unit Christmas luncheon.  Although I don't normally attend such functions, I did agree to go - and it was so meaningful.  Since that time, several people have told me that they put up their snowflake every Christmas and think of me and of Arielle's story.  That touches my heart.  Her story needs to be told, and remembered.

Arielle's favorite holiday was Christmas.  She loved the lights and the colours, she loved the tinsel and the carols, she loved the crowds of people, and she loved all the feasting and family traditions we had.  And yes, it doesn't get any easier to go through our family traditions without her.

Image "Festive Snowflakes" by
Victor Habbick at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

I will say, though, that during the holidays, the presence of friends as dear as family does make a difference. It gives us a reason to carry on those traditions and still honour Arielle's memory without becoming too despondent.  She would never want that anyway.  She hated for people to be sad around her.

This year, for some reason (and I have my theories as to why), there was some of that old spark that I used to feel around this time of year - not an excitement, but more like a little inner pleasure as I prepared Christmas gifts and cards for those who are dear.  I find myself looking forward to baking my deep-dish pumpkin pie the night before, and cooking that Christmas supper meal I have planned ... sharing food, friendship, and fellowship with friends and family ... is that joy?  

I also find myself feeling somewhat rejuvenated, since simplifying my life and reducing the amount of stress I was experiencing, de-stressing over a period of the last seven months on a couple of different fronts - and with the reduction in stress and hectic-ness, comes the perspective of hope ... that quiet confidence that all is happening as it needs to happen ... and that the future will be better.  Part of me is amazed that this would be the case; after years of striving to experience hope, it should light upon me like a butterfly once I stopped striving.

What is surprising most of all is the sense of calm that surrounds me at such times; I have noticed it occasionally as I have looked after myself and refused to entertain any kind of performance anxiety.  I noticed it again tonight as I put the final decorating touches on the tree, and then leisurely tuned the television to the fireplace channel and listened to soft Christmas music playing - everything from the Nutcracker to Silent Night.  Yes ... yes, it is peace.

Pervading all of it is an underlying current - one that is growing stronger as time goes on - that growing knowledge that I am loved unconditionally.  It is that love which saturates down into the core of me, where all those insecurities mill around and wreak havoc.  As I am less and less exposed to people, places and things that feed those insecurities, I sense and accept more of that love, and it (in turn) produces joy ... and hope ... and peace.

Happy Holy Days

The holidays have always been a mixed bag for our family. As with most people, the stresses of Christmas shopping, combined with the extra expense, the social and family obligations of visiting and extra cooking all combine to increase the background noise that can make everyday stressors seem more ... stressful. 

But those are normal. Every family feels those to one degree or another, depending on how much fun it is to do the social thing, and on how accomplished a baker one is. 

Last Christmas, we went through a lot of the motions as a family because - well, because the youngest member of our family was spending her first Christmas in Heaven. But at the same time, we didn't want our own personal tragedy rob us of experiences that we'd later regret not having. So - with minor adjustments - we still cooked, still baked, still put up a tree, still had presents and carols, and still attended the Christmas Eve service. We still had friends over for a Christmas meal. It was hard, and we had to make some adjustments because our grief was so very fresh - her accident was only about two months before Christmas - but we did it and we survived. 

The name of the game was survival. And because of the love of friends - and each other - we did survive. 

It's been a whole year of firsts. Wednesdays - the day of the week it was when the police came to our house - hurt for months. Easter: no egg hunt for the first time since she was two. Her first birthday after the accident - July 16. Wow, that was hard: she would have been 22. Thanksgiving was so overwhelming, just a couple of weeks before the first-year anniversary of her death. All I could hear in my head was what she'd said to me the previous Thanksgiving: "Don't give up on your Thanksgiving spirit, Mom. Look at me. I'm homeless, I'm living in my car, and I'm thankful for you, for Dad, for God, for my friends." 

But we survived. We even celebrated BOTH Thanksgivings - the first with a dear friend sharing our 'unexpected' turkey meal, and the second with just the three of us and a ham dinner with sweet and sour mustard sauce.

And now it's Christmas-time once more. And we wonder if we'll ever have "happy holidays" again. We have discussions about what traditions will make the cut this year - and which ones are just too stressful to keep doing. Some things we are keeping. Others we are letting go. 

The grief is always under the surface - potentially just as searingly painful as the first day. Most days it's completely submerged; other days - or should I say at other moments, usually when we least expect it - it leaps out at us from behind a door or in the face of someone walking down the street who looks like her or dresses like she did. Today there was a moment when I was listening to a children's choir perform and they started to sing, "Somewhere in my Memory" (we hear it every year when they air "Home Alone") and the lyrics that talk about happy faces, happy people and family being all together ... reminded me that we weren't all together, and I had to get out of there, tears streaming from my eyes. 

The thing that has made this holiday season a bit more bearable is concentrating on the "holi" part of "holiday". Concentrating on the real spirit behind the Christmas season (the Holy Days, Christmas being Christ-mass or celebration of Christ) has helped to ground us and make the decisions about what to do and not to do a little easier. It'll never be the same, that's sure, but it can still be good. 

And yes, there can still be happiness and joy in the season. It's tinged with sadness because the circle is broken, but that is a given. It's okay to be sad; it's okay to acknowledge how much we love her and miss her. But it's also okay to laugh, to enjoy life, to enjoy each other, and to share what we have. 

And that's how we have decided to spend the next couple of weeks or so.

Big Deal

The sound of the vacuum cleaner greeted me as I walked through the doors and into the church foyer. It was 1998 and I was volunteering a few hours a week as a secretary. The man holding the hose - the custodian of the building - saw me. A half-smile flickered across his lips and he leaned over. He flicked a switch, and the vacuum's engine wheezed to a stand-still, rumbling its last bit of protest as he approached me. He had his "I got something to tell ya" look on his face, all serious. I wondered what in the world was next.

"You heard that Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, did ya?" he asked me.

I nodded. "Yeah, I heard that somewhere or other." 

He leaned in closer and his voice became a hoarse whisper. "Well - he didn't get this far north!" Then he rocked back on his heels as I laughed ... and grinned as he turned back toward the vacuum. 

He was like that. 

He loved a good laugh. He loved food (cooking it and eating it!) He loved his dear wife. And he loved his Savior. Everything he did, he did with his whole heart. There were never any half-measures. It was whole hog - or in his case, whole "Jiggs dinner" (corned beef and cabbage) - or nothing.

He took particular delight in making people laugh. With him, not AT him. Though he and his wife were never able to have children, kids loved this guy. They flocked around him, calling him by his first name with the title "Mister" before it. "Mister Merrill" was a fixture at the preschool that was housed in the basement of the church for many a year. 

He was a living example of joy and of how the flame of romance never had to go out. He never lost the wonder that his little slip of a wife, whom he considered to be the most beautiful lady on the planet, was in love with him. And my, how he loved her. He always referred to her as "the bride." His bride. Wow.

This photo, "Wedding Day Thoughts"
courtesy of Timeless Photography at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

One friend tells me that he'd say her name over and over to himself as he worked. Out loud - so her name would echo in the halls and come back to him. He did all the cooking, all the housework. He drove her to Costco nearly every weekend and filled up the van with whatever she wanted. And speaking of the van ... since she was small of stature, he would outfit any new van he got with running boards, so that she could step up into it with no trouble. He'd hold the door open for her. He doted on her every whim. 

On the days I'd come in a little late to the church office, the vacuum would be silent. I knew he was catching a little snooze in one of the back pews - a habit he started in his youth and never saw any reason to stop - and that he would be awake in a half hour or less, full of energy to face the rest of the day. 

He shared his philosophy of daily living with anyone who would hear. "We're here for a good time," he'd tell me. "Not for a long time." As a matter of fact, he shared his opinions on a bunch of things with anyone who would take the time to listen. I remember him telling me about what he thought the problem with the modern church was. "Unbelief." He'd shake his head. "Unbelief, pure and simple." Religious people, he shared with me, were more concerned with the right way to do things (and whether everyone else was doing it right) than they were about enjoying the life they had and the relationship with God that they had. 

Over the last six months, he had not been coming to church because he was physically unable to get out. And this morning, as we were worshiping, his wife, mother-in-law, niece and nephew gathered around his bedside in the hospital as he quietly slipped into the presence of the Master. 

He truly found out, as former Imperials singer Jake Hess sang, "Death ain't no big deal." The "big deal" awaited him as he made his entrance this morning.

I'm sure they had a great big rotisserie bar-b-que (with all the utensils) waiting for him when he got through the gates of Heaven, and a big ol' apron with "Kiss the Cook" written all over it. I can't imagine anything he'd like more to keep him busy until his bride arrives.

Life will never be the same.
For him  ...  or for those left behind - those who love him.