Thanksgiving

Pumpkin pies are cooling, the tree is up.  Pajama clad kids are still nestled in their beds, 19 and 14 but looking especially innocent and sweet to me this year.  It's early Thanksgiving morning and I'm very present with the thoughts of all the many Thanksgivings in my past. 

Chris was a perfect southern gentleman when it came to appreciating good food and he made over my dinners each year like we were dining at the nicest of restaurants, telling me he couldn't take in another bite but always finding room for a bit more.  Then he would doze in his chair with one eye on a football game and one on the kids and I miss that.

Life changes.  We're facing a day without him, our first significant holiday and everything is tempered with that awareness.  When we finished cleaning up last night, Eric said I can see Dad sitting right here, looking at this Disneyland picture of Emily and me and getting that smile and slight laugh that he would get.  Then a couple of tears streamed.  I said I missed him too and Emily was right on my heels, yelling from her room that she did too.  So we stopped everything we were doing and met grief right there, where it once again screamed for instant attention, this time speaking first to Eric but engaging us all.  We all knew it but we hadn't said it out loud just yet. 

I love that we can be real.  Grief is real and saying it hurts is real.  Being able to pick up a picture and cry that your Dad can't see it too is real.  Being real and honest and allowing the waves of grief to wax and wane and to be felt is how we live now.  And God meets us in it, right where we are.

So today is Thanksgiving and we ARE thankful because the blessings are bountiful in our lives.  Yes we miss him, yes we face hard moments but Chris' life now is this very real testimony to the Sacred Promise.  And the smell of pumpkin pie hangs heavy in our home, a reminder that we are a family taking a little more time for gratitude today.  Once again, God draws us close and the Mysterious Divine says it's all okay, we are a part of an eternal story...and for that we give thanks.

Grace for your journey,
Leigh

Ornaments

I found the ornaments.  They were packed away in the back of the closet under the stairs.  I knew they would be in there, that's where they have always been stored, for the last seventeen years in fact.  Thanksgiving has just kind of snuck up on us this year and that's the day we put up and decorate our tree. 

In December of 1985, Chris and I were dating and approaching our first Christmas.  He didn't have a lot of money, I didn't have any more than he did so we went for a walk through the woods behind his Grandmother's house to cut down a cedar tree to bring back inside and decorate.  We bought some lights and one pack of ornaments but the little tree still looked pretty empty so I went through some things at home until I found a few things to make some homemade ornaments for his/our tree.  Chris was so sweetly grateful and gave those little creations of mine far more praise than they deserved.

A year later in December of 1986, just days after our wedding we put up our Christmas tree and Chris brought out the ornaments he had saved from the year before...the ones I had made.  And every year those ornaments are lovingly placed on our tree, a reminder of that first Christmas, merely 19 and 22 years old and with lots more Christmas spirit than earthly money.

Amidst the smell of turkey and pumpkin pie, warmly tucked inside of our home amidst the cold drizzle (and possibly snow this year) of a Seattle Thanksgiving, those same ornaments will once again find their place on our tree.  They will be joined once again by little teddy bears, ten in all, marking the first five Christmases of both Emily and Eric.  They will be joined by lots of other ornaments representing the life of a family including a golden key from 1993, our first house.  This year we will also hang a lovely angel, carved in wood by a woman at my childhood church in North Carolina, with Chris' name and 1963-2010 written upon it.  I think we will hang that one last...completing this year's tree.

I found the ornaments...packed under the stairs...a box full of the history of this family.

Grace for your journey,
Leigh

Eight Months

Still missing.
Still celebrating the blessing he received.
Still changing.
Still a family.

The Power of a Name

Grief is a really funny thing.  It slips up at moments demanding attention like a stubborn toddler.  And like that toddler, it rearranges things a bit, yes you may be cooking dinner but I want your attention NOW and I'm going to demand it to the point that you have to pause and at least take notice.  A dear friend grieving the loss of his mother related a story of being instantly teary when the clock struck 12:34 at his house one day, a reminder of his mom's dying breaths.  A woman at church shared with me the teary moment when her finger rubbed past a chip on a plate that was made by her late husband dropping it.  We ALL do this kind of thing, it's the nature of grief.  To mourn is to do the work that grief stands there demanding, even though you had other plans for that moment.

I wonder why it's not the bigger things that present such moments, but the seemingly innocuous.  A yard filled with leaves to be raked (Chris' job) doesn't seem to phase us, after all that's also a source of exercise and we just rake them.  Trash cans and recycling bins put out and gathered in each week, again formerly Chris' job, just get handled because that's what we do.  His wedding ring on my hand, another on Emily's, a watch on Eric's wrist, all of these things have been incorporated into who we are now and feel like normal life.  So what is this thing about grief standing there with something as innocent as an article on the OP/ED page of the paper that I just KNOW he would love as I am half reading and half making dinner.  The toddler screams!  "Pay attention to me and do it NOW."  Tears drip, a son notices, a hug is given, a daughter comes in, now a group hug and then memories come pouring out.  "Yes Dad would like that article but he would have so liked this show on the History Channel last night, let me tell you about it..."  "I was on campus today and I ran across a colleague of Dad's and I thought about how the last time I talked to her I was with him..." 

Where did our intense, almost explosive grief outpourings of late March and April go?  We spent Friday night after Friday night either crying or at Dairy Queen.  We didn't finish making dinner and move straight into homework back then, I think we were living off ice cream on some of the worst nights.  So what happened?

I've always been fascinated by mythic writing and how the quest is always to learn the name.  Learning the name of something or someone ends up giving you the power in those kinds of stories.  It invites an intimacy of discovery in which the thing or person that once held all the cards no longer has total power over you.  That's the walk of grief.  The kids and I have been on a quest of sorts, on a journey...to learn the name.  And in learning to name grief, it's power lessens.  Do I still miss Chris horribly?  YES.  Do I daily see what the kids and I have lost?  YES.  But I know grief's name now and I am actually surprisingly grateful for what it has taught me and how it has transformed me. 

It is the power of story.  It is the power of the name.  And throughout, it is the power of God and engaging in an ever deepening intimacy with our Mysterious Author.

Grace for your journey,
Leigh

For All the Saints

For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
Who Thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blest.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Thou was their Rock, their Fortress, and their Might;
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well-fought fight;
Thou in the darkness drear, their one true Light.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast,
Though gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
Singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
Alleluia, Alleluia!