Rope Swings and Family Love

"The best two dollars I ever spent..." That's what Chris said about this rope. You can't see from the picture but when you swing a bit farther you go out over the yard a bit. This picture was taken in the late summer of '08, not long after he got back from Ghana. Swinging on it with Eric pushing was Eric's reward for helping with the yard.

Eight weeks ago tonight I was holding my husband knowing that our earthly hours together were very limited and this little boy held his dad's arms around me so he could hold me back...saying "I'll help you hold her dad."

Two dollars of rope, mowing the yard together, swinging on a swing, holding very weak arms up, that's love, that's family and this is a glimpse of the depth of our loss.

Tonight, we reaffirm our belief in a loving God who sees ahead of us and shows the way, who will empower us still to be family and to love. And tonight I am grateful that, despite the depth of our loss, He holds, loves and embraces MY husband and THEIR dad in His heavenly arms.

Grace for your journey,
Leigh

Eric Accepting Membership On Chris' Behalf

• Eric accepting membership in the Alpha Sigma Nu Jesuit Honor Society on Chris' behalf. Presenting it to him is Father Steve Sundborg, President of Seattle University. Onlooking is Father Peter Ely.
  

Summer's Coming

The sun came out today. It was quite welcome. After the downpours earlier this week, I was glad to be outside again. Eric and I were talking about summer and how to make it a good one. Suddenly he said, "It will be good and normal until about 6:00 pm each day." Part of me had hoped I could be so spectacular at parenting, climbing rocks, shoveling the ten cubic yards of topsoil we have ordered, gardening, etc. that it would make it a nice one for them. I mean I throw a mean spiral for a girl and the football is all pumped up and ready for some backyard play. I can throw up a baseball and hit pop flies as well as any guy so I would like to have thought I was set for a good summer for a fourteen year old. Still, I'm not Chris and I can't be Chris and I miss him too...more than there are words to say. So, I said, "Well Eric, I guess we do the best we can and when 6:00 pm comes around each day and Dad doesn't get off the bus in front of our house, we understand that we are just going to be a little sad, huh??" He said, "Yeh, I guess so, and maybe we should move dinner to another time and it won't be so weird."

That's life right now...in a nut shell...WEIRD. You can't live with another person for 23 years and not find their absence anything short of weird and empty and sad. And you can't have a Dad as terrific as Emily and Eric have had and lose him suddenly and not find that weird too.

So, the sun came out today, summer is showing signs of arriving once again and we face this one without Chris. Footballs will undoubtedly be thrown, Folklife Festival will be attended, vacation will be taken, the yard will be mowed, the grill will be fired up, the firepit will be used, on Chris' birthday an old car show will happen and we will go in his memory...life will happen. Yes it's weird, yes it's hard but the God who has held us through so much in the last few months will undoubtedly hold us through this too. God is God and we are not and we don't have to have any answers because He has them all. Life and our first summer...it's a trust fall. Thanks be to God.

Grace for your journey,
Leigh

White Wine Spritzers and Twenty Five Years

I changed clothes at least five times, finally settled on blue capris and a white sleeveless top with matching blue earrings. We went to Corbins. I got a white wine spritzer, they were very IN in 1985. He got a beer. We talked and danced, I spilled my drink on him because I was nervous and then we went for a walk in Old Salem. We went for a drive, he said he had something to tell me, then he kissed me and Leigh, the college freshman and Chris, the new college graduate became Chris and Leigh, the couple. And for twenty four years we acknowledged April 20th with flowers and cards...and would have today, the twenty-fifth anniversary of our first date, as Emily and I talked about just this morning.

A lifetime has been packed in to the last twenty five years, a wedding, three apartments, a move across the country, a house and two wonderful children. I had thought that today I would have a husband with a newly resected liver and on maintenance chemo to stay cancer free and we would celebrate both that and our first date. And yet, life doesn't always go according to OUR plan. Today, Chris IS cancer free, it will never touch him again, and he doesn't need chemo to keep it that way. Today, I DO celebrate the first date I had with him. Today I see through a mirror dimly, but Chris truly SEES. And that's bittersweet but I DO rejoice with him and for him that he is in the Presence of our Lord. I miss him terribly though.

Today, I chased down a metro bus in a bathrobe to get Emily headed to school on time. Today I made french toast and sprinkled it with powdered sugar to lure Eric out of bed and to school himself. Today I have laundry to do, bills to pay, paint to choose and calls to make to re-enter seminary in the fall. And today, I will have a white wine spritzer. Thank you for asking me out Chris.

Grace for your journey,
Leigh

Sickness...Grace

"How's our boy?" He would always call a couple times a day and ask that very question whenever Eric was sick. Working though he was, Chris was a consummate father. For the last three days, Eric has been sick, pretty danged sick actually...high fever, bad tonsils, bad ears, throwing up, etc. And every time the phone would ring in the daytime I would, for a second, think oh the thoughtful Dad is checking in again. And I have faced one more thing I didn't anticipate about life. Yet Eric IS slowly improving, antibiotics are a good thing sometimes, even for natural medicine loving me. And with his improvement, one more first time is accomplished, "first sickness since Chris died" got crammed into first birthday and first Easter week.

Along the way I found myself going back to Weight Watchers this week, a healthy baby step for me, after a year long sabbatical from it. I chose a new day and a new group but it feels right, like a good thing. Finding little steps towards a new life is hard, but no less right. A very good best kind of best friend read to me out of the Gospel of Matthew this morning, where Jesus talks about being the God of Abraham, the God of the living and once again, through scripture and friendship I was reminded that life continues past this world and these bodies we inhabit and that all really IS well. YES, the missing him continues...INTENSELY SO, yes, the shock of it still sinks in at times...SURPRISINGLY SO, yes, the love never ends...ETERNALLY SO but life DOES go on, because God is God and we are not. And for THAT truth, I am very grateful.

Our Lord did the most gracious thing this week when Easter fell on the one month anniversary, and I was again comforted by the real constant in this world...that God does go ahead of us, showing us the way, preparing the path, keeping us safe. How can we really ever be genuinely afraid of the unknown when it is KNOWN to God?? Doesn't reduce the anxiety and stress of human life but it eases it a bit and certainly takes away the fear.

And so our boy is sick this week, but Chris knows that already. He also knows that God is caring for Eric and each of us. It would be so wonderful to pick up the phone and hear him ask how he's doing and it hurts that that isn't going to happen. But I am choosing to count blessings today and when I started my mental list I realized the list was infinite. I also realized that it's our calling to continue the good work started in Chris and think more globally about micro-lending and poverty in the world. I realized that loving and honoring my husband means picking up the tasks at hand that mattered not only to him but to God.

OUR boy is sick, but he's been to the doctor, he's got an antibiotic for his ears and throat, he has clean water to drink, a warm bed to sleep in, and the various creature comforts of being a middle class kid in America. We really have a lot to give back and that realization is yet another blessing from God. Because the reality is that God has good work to do in each of us.

Grace for your journey,
Leigh

Happy Birthday Emily!!

April 5, 1991
6 lbs. 6 oz.
Durham, North Carolina
Emily Jane Weber

Nineteen years have passed, but I still remember...we got in the room, just the three of us. Chris unwrapped the blankets around our new baby and counted every finger and every toe. "She's perfect." Those were his exact words. We quickly took on our new names, Mom and Dad. And then oh how she grew, yet still my baby. She has her father's eyes, she has his love of knowledge, she has his sense of humor...and I love being her mom.

So, on behalf of your Dad and me, Happy Birthday Emily!

Love,
Mom

He Is Risen!

Jesus

And can it be that I should gain
an interest in the Savior’s blood!
Died he for me? who caused his pain!
For me? who him to death pursued?
Amazing love! How can it be
that thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
Amazing love! How can it be
that thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

Remembering the Gift today...

Grace for your journey,
Leigh

Four Weeks of Grief

Four weeks today...it's like our spirits just KNOW and we don't even have to look at a calendar. Sometimes I wonder when Thursdays will be normal again...then I realize that we are going to have to find a new "normal" because Chris was part of our normal. I'm lucky in a lot of ways, my kids talk and they talk a LOT. And they articulate grief in really remarkably direct and mature ways. "I was sitting in class and for a minute I had to remind myself oh yeh it's real, Dad really died." "When are we ever going to stop being SO tired?" "Who are we now because one of us is gone and we were part of each other and now one part is gone?"

Grief is HARD, it's like a lurking sea dragon in some ways...it sneaks up and drags us under the water and we gasp for air. Then we go for a few days and the waters are calm and we flip on the radio and we find ourselves laughing even...but the sea dragon is under those seemingly calm seas and we each know it.

I think I quite likely have the most remarkable young adults on the planet to share this journey with me. As close as chemo and surgery drew the FOUR of us, the THREE of us seem to be drawing ever closer in the pain of our shared loss and they amaze me in their ability both to feel their own stuff, share it with me and then turn around and be there for me as well. And while it hurts, and believe me, it HURTS badly, we do it together. That helps...and I KNOW it would make Chris really proud of us.

Sunday will be Chris' first Easter in heaven and our first Easter without him. It will also be a month to the day since he died. There is a lot of comfort in it actually. Proclaiming that Easter promise has never been more real to me than this year. I've always trusted in it, now I have SEEN it. And our Lord is shoring us up each day for the pains and hurts of the grief we feel and giving us blessings amidst it all. Each day the daily bread really comes. God meets us in the hurt, God meets us in the tears, God meets us in the tremendous amount of homework backlog and the paperwork of the legal side of it all. We fall, God picks us up, we cry, God blesses us. Whatever we face, God has already been there and knows the way and guides us lovingly and gently through.

And I would be terribly remiss if I didn't state for the whole world to see that part of my daily bread each day has a name, two actually, Emily Jane and Eric Christian. I thank God for them over and over, my babies are emerging in to wonderful vibrant people of faith and I cherish them as my companions with God in our journey of grief.

Grace for your journey,
Leigh