Thoughts on Leaving

 I left all of it. 

The clean dishes in the dishwasher, the dirty dishes, the messy table, the unwashed kitchen floors, the two loads of laundry waiting to be folded, the laundry in the basement waiting to be dried, the stencils scattered on my art desk from today’s lesson, all of it. I left it  

And I crawled into bed. 

I write from under my gray blanket, my babies all safe and tucked away, already with heavy eyes from a busy day. The extra window unit hums loudly lulling me to sleep. My hardworking and loving husband also already asleep. 

It is 8:19, and I will follow them to sleep soon. 

There is a time when self care is cleaning the kitchen. Or folding the laundry. Or stepping into a hot shower. Then there is a time when self care is recognizing your limits, telling the to do list to wait a little longer, and snuggling into the rest your body craves. 

Each day I watch myself get bigger and bigger. At least once a week I spend some time sprawled on my bathroom floors, crying while my body loses the nourishment I’ve given it and our baby. Gravity pulls this sweet baby down and my hormones wreck havoc on my mind. 

In the routine of bedtime when I read to my two big kids, she pushes on them and me. A constant reminder that when I am doing nothing I am doing something. 

We are waiting. 

Waiting for a big girl to turn seven. To dive into reading which I know she is at the cusp of it. Watching her develop into a person I wish I could be. Drawing strength from her and worrying I ask too much. 

Waiting for a big boy to hit a learning curve. To see him become more brave than he is even now. Watching each cautious jump and another go down the big slides. Encouraging him to play with kids his age, use his manners and maybe not yell so much. 

Waiting for a little girl who thinks she’s big to turn a whole whopping two years old. Her personality very distinctly hers, never will she be outdone by her siblings. Watching her repeat words, try new things and feeling our hearts quicken when she does something that maybe we aren’t sure she’s ready for. 

All of life going on around me. The demands always there. The work always there. 

And I left it all tonight. 

I feel called to a deep rest. An introspective calm, going inward to a peace that I can’t explain. Oh I know, I know in the morning it will all still be there. The work. The dishes and laundry and cleaning. The grief and the changes. It’s always there. And it will all get done, it will be processed. Deep in my bones I know this. Because it always gets done. It always gets the attention it needs  

It is ok to leave it though. And enjoy this quiet for a moment. To rest in it. To enjoy it. I feel this is a thing not enough people know how to do. 

Walk away friends. From the mess and the constant doing. Snuggle next to your beloved under the covers. Watch the sunset. Make a sand castle. Blow bubbles. Say yes to one more chapter of the book. Sing the extra bedtime song. Know that just as easily as your feet can carry you through jobs and work, they can help you walk towards beauty and rest. 

Make room for both. 

Sometimes, just leave things and crawl into bed. 

Rest. Blessed rest. It is sweet. It is necessary. 

And you have permission to do it. 

When Sunday Feels Far Away

 I had the biggest expectations. 

I have been hyped up for Easter for weeks. Literally all of March I have been looking forward to Easter. We studied and learned and planned. The girls have cute dresses, Dean has a cute polo. I stuffed the baskets full of fun things: coloring books, regular books, play doh, sun glasses, all sorts of goofy fun things. 

We celebrate the empty tomb. We celebrate victory over death. We celebrate redemption. 

And my heart feels none of it. 

Maybe I was trying to pretend it wouldn’t hurt. Maybe I was trying to *do* enough that I’d forget. Maybe if we did enough projects, went enough places, were busy, maybe I’d forget...

There is a body missing. A text. A phone call. A “are you bringing the kids to see me?” A “what are your plans? Are you coming over for dinner?” 

And nothing we do fills that. You cannot busy away grief. You can’t ignore it. It makes me uncomfortable and annoyed that I can’t just celebrate. I can’t “just” be happy. I can’t ignore for one day, this is is the first Easter without my Dad. And it hurts. And I wish it didn’t. 

Christ’s tomb was empty, his body that was so broken risen. 

Today it still doesn’t help me when I look up to the corner of the bookshelf where I keep my Dads ashes. 

Today Death still Stings. 

It doesn’t have any victory, but it still stings. 

It won’t always. The farther out we get from October 29, the better I function. Each “first” stings, and I cry, and sit in the ashes for a moment. But it doesn’t knock me down the way Thanksgiving did. Or the way it did when I found out I was pregnant a week after he died. 

I find myself snappy and cranky  unable to shake a bad attitude towards my husband and my children.  All my expectations for an Easter together ruined by a baby with a cold who is quite miserable and keeps hitting me. I am tired of how consistent I have to be with her, I am tired of how “hard” things are.  

I am tired of grieving. 

I picture the empty tomb in my minds eye, the women walking up to it, their complete and utter shock to see it empty. What a thing to witness. What a story to be told. What conflicting emotions after two days of loss and pain and grief.  

I have found more comfort in the grief of Good Friday, more than I have in the Joy of Resurrection Sunday. Because it is still hard to feel the joy when the grief is fresh and raw. 

I don’t think though, that Jesus would mind, that He does mind, that I’m still a little sad today  That the joy doesn’t reach my heart. 

I think He recognizes and understands the deep grief, the kind He felt in the garden. 

Sunday comes. 

And I know, eventually, I’ll feel that in my heart  

When Life Slows

 I wish I had learned to make soft pretzels a long time ago. 

I wish I had made you real mashed potatoes every chance I got. 

I wish I could call you to ask about how to fix the running toilet or send you pictures of the drywall repair I did on my own. 

I wish I recorded you talking more. 

I wish you could make fun of me for letting my kids get a cat. 

I wish you were here to laugh about me having another baby girl. 

I wish you were camping with Mommy for the weekend, asking me to go look after Mommys cats. 

I wish you could FaceTime with Dean, so he could tell you he’s five and all about his lego game. 

I wish you were here to let Deano crawl into your lap at the computer to watch old Looney Tunes. 

I wish you were here so you could find me after church and insist we come over for dinner. 

I want to sit with you while you watch absolutely anything on the TV, including football. 

I want to hear you rant about the current anything...I don’t even care, anything. 

I want to ask to borrow the truck for something and hear you tell Blair you can help him or that you want his help. 

I just want to hear your voice. To hear you call me Madalynn again. 

Some days, I don’t think about any of this. And some days it’s all I can think about. 

When life slows down, when Ana goes for a nap, when Dean and Ellie are still and quiet and cuddly...my mind wanders Daddy. 

And I just miss you. 

Ashes, Bye 2020

 It’s the New Year.

So many people taking time to reflect and talk about the blessings of this year, despite everyone acknowledging the Dumpster Fire that is 2020. 

Every time I start to maybe even possibly consider reflecting, I get this sick feeling in my stomach. Every time some one says “We know this year was hard, tell us one blessing/good thing that happened” I pause and realize:

No one wants to hear me reflect on this year. 

Truly I don’t think you want to. 

See a year ago I was at Chuckie Cheese with my kids while my mom was at the hospital with my Dad. While sitting there eating my cardboard pizza and listening to my kids play, I got the text that Daddy had Stage Four Brain Cancer. 

And it all just kind of went up in flames from there. 

Honestly, call me callous, but I didn’t care about the Pandemic and the virus and the Quarantine. I didn’t care about Ellie having to quit her first year of school or Dean leaving his preschool. I didn’t care that I had to wear a mask, we’d already been wearing them. I sent Ellie away when she had the flu. The virus was just another thing and I just didn’t have the space or the energy to care. 

I still don’t. 

When I think about this year I think about making food for my Dad. Planning dinners and breakfasts and lunches and reminding him to take smaller bites. I think about the way he snapped at me, the kids, and my mom. The way the cancer in his brain spread and changed his personality. 

I’m not ready, yet, to count the blessings. I know they’re there. I know we were blessed. I know we have so many who love us. I know so many loved and respected my Dad. I know everyone hurt watching him die. 

But I had a front row seat. As did all of my family. 

And all I see right now when I reflect on this year is the hurt and the pain and I just feel...angry. 

My soul is still sharp and ragged. The corners of those pieces tear holes into others. My inner monologue wants to tell people “Shut it. It wasn’t so bad. Knock it off. If I can watch someone die slowly I think you can handle wearing a stupid mask.” 

Grief has been all consuming. I can’t see past it to the blessings. 

This begs the question: why do I feel the need to soften the edges of my grief to accommodate the world?  

Actually, why does it feel like there is some unspoken rule that we have to see the bright side? 

I don’t see the good is my Dads dying and his death. I don’t see the good in the way he suffered. 

And right now, I don’t have to. I don’t have to focus on the blessings, I don’t have to see the good. 

I am allowed to hurt. 

I. Am. Allowed. To. Hurt. 

So I brought in the New Year in a quiet house, snuggled up next to my husband. Glad to see the end of 2020, refusing to count my blessings and sitting in the ashes for a moment. Because it feels like my life has gone up in flames...and all I am left with are cool ashes, that is where I am  the ashes  

Maybe tomorrow I will be able to count my blessings. Maybe it will take a week, a month, another four years before I can admit to the Good that was in 2020. 

But not yet. 

After all, while Jesus was dying a painful death on the cross, I don’t think anyone would have asked him to see the blessing. Didn’t He ask His Father why He had been forsaken? 

Jesus was allowed His pain. 

Just as I am allowed mine. 

A Lament

 How do I tell you how guilty I feel moving on with my life? How I want to keep writing you letters...about everything and nothing. About how I swept and mopped today. About how I see pictures of you from this time last year and all I can think is...were you already fighting it? 

I see the sinister trendils of cancer weaving themselves into my memories. Because for a year, that was all any of us could think about. 

Will you be here next year? How long will you make it? 

And you’re not. You didn’t make it. 

I read stories of people who survived Glioblastoma for years and years. And the sharp edges of my soul wonder why God didn’t hear our prayers. 

See I can say that and still have Faith. Still believe. Still know in my heart that Gods will is His and His ways are above my own. And His Will...was that pain and sickness and cancer and loss were never supposed to be part of our lives. The farther we get from what He wanted the more our souls know, truly know, we don’t belong here. 

People quote “O Death, where is thy sting” without stopping to allow themselves the chance to hurt. Grief is not bad. Pouring my soul out to God, asking Him why the hell He chose *my* Dad is not wrong. Crying over pictures is not wrong. Laughing about the gawd awful songs my Dad used to make up is not wrong. 

I can love God. And know where my Dads soul is. 

And still hate every single day I’ve spent without Him. 

It is a Lament. A keening of the soul. A longing for the past when I could call up my Dad or send him a trillion texts or hear him ask me to bring the kids over on a Sunday afternoon. 

Nothing about my life is the same as it was last year. We have bounced around and lived out of suitcases and struggled and cried. I have wept, bitterly, asking God, please, please...just let Daddy be the miracle. 

Not everyone gets a miracle. 

And I miss my Dad. 

And I am mad. 

I find myself yelling more than I mean to. Day dreaming. Getting lost in thought. I never feel like I’m on top of things. I always feel a step behind. And I want life to slow down. 

I am annoyed with people talking about ICU Christmas. I HAD an ICU Christmas. The hallways were bare expect for the people who had to be there. I walked those hallways with my six month old who had ear infections waiting to hear if my Dad was going to come out of surgery. I held his hand. We all did. We ate subway and prayed and cried and paced. 

And I didn’t go back when he got out of surgery. And maybe one day I’ll be able to let that go. Or maybe it will never leave me, maybe it will haunt me, like watching Dean be life flighted haunts me. 

I just want to call him. 

And all of my soul feels like a lament. 

I know Gods goodness. I know His heart for us. I know He rescued us. 

And I know, that right now, it’s not about those things and it doesn’t have to be. It can be about the pain and the hurt. For a season it can be about the mourning. 

It’s a season of Lament and Mourning. 

And it is beautiful in its rawness. 

It is mine. 

Ok? Ok.

 “It will be ok.” 

No. It won’t be. 

This is a lie I am tired of hearing. I am tired of people offering it up to me like leftovers they don’t want. 

Nothing about a slow death is ok. It is agonizing for the person going through it and the people watching. 

All the things that make my Dad, my Dad, are gone. His body is an empty shell, betrayed by sin and decay and time. 

I am not ok. This is not ok. 

And it’s ok to say....it’s not ok. 

When Dean was younger and going through procedures nurses and doctors and well meaning people would say “You’re ok buddy. It’s ok. It doesn’t hurt that bad.” I hated it. I didn’t tell him that. I told him “It hurts for just a minute son. I know you don’t like it. I know it’s not ok.” 

Today grief hit me hard. I am once again left depleted and tired and weary and lonely. Sure sure I know I have a whole tribe and my mom and my siblings...it doesn’t matter. Grief is an island. I’m thankful for the visitors but in the end...people go on with their own lives. So many people asked me if I was ok today. Asked how I was doing...

What do you want me to say? “Just dandy yall, going about my life like my dad isn’t dying slowly nine hours away...” 

it’s not ok. That was my standard answer. 

I’m not ok. 

This is not ok. 

And it never will be. 

One Foot Here, One Foot There

 I have always been a transparent person. All of my emotions, thoughts, feelings...I’m very free with them. What you see is what you get, and as I get older and older I care less and less about what people think about that. 

I am always either too much or not enough. The truth is I am just Me. I like Just Me. 

Just me grieves loudly. I have to talk about it. I just have to. I have to write about it and I can’t ignore it. I walk it and breathe it in. I cry at my desk and in the van and sometimes at three AM. It loud and invasive. It soaks into my art and my mothering. My children talk about Death and Heaven. Ellie asks me, every time I start crying again, if Grumpy is dead. 

We read books about life...and death. We talk about being sad and how to remember. I quietly put pictures up all over my house of my Dad with the kids, my Dad with my mom, my Dad with me on my wedding day, our awkward slow shuffle while he pretended to dance with me. I find shows that teach kids about Death. Daniel Tigers blue fish dies. 

When something or someone dies, they don’t come back. 

My vibrant, opinionated, goofball Dad has one foot here and one foot in Eternity. My family waits with baited breathe. 

How do you grieve and move on when the body of the person you love is still here, but their soul is gone? My Dad was loud and big. He filled a room. He had a fierce scowl when he was mad. The man loved History and we took a lot of day trips to have picnics at various abandoned places. He loved old houses. He told me once he wanted to start a website where you posted pictures of an abandoned houses to see if anyone recognized them. He said “I wonder who was born there...who lived there or died there. I wonder about the history of that house.” 

I think of him when I see houses that are abandoned. I think of him when I use the color blue and when I use gold. I think of him when Ellie tells me she has a noodle arm and when Dean prays about Chuckie Cheese. I think about him when I take back roads instead of the highway. When Ellie comes out of Sunday School after an Answers in Genesis study...

Life feels surreal. Day to day life just keeps plodding along. We pay our bills, Blair works hard, I paint, change the diapers, teach my kids, order groceries, do the dishes over and over and over. Every day bleeds into the next. I wake up thinking two things, “Is today the day” and “Please Lord let him make until I can say goodbye...”

Yesterday I was talking with Deano about counting his blessings. Last night as I laid in bed around two AM, awake, again, I had a hard time counting mine. Good things *have* happened this year. I know that. They are pushed so far back in the fog of grief I have a hard time cutting through to see them. 

Truth be told, some days I don’t want to. I don’t want to fight or feel or think. I want to completely zone out and forget for one small second that this hurts. I want to pretend my heart isn’t constantly aching. I want to pretend I can pick up the phone and call my Daddy. I want him to send me thirty billion texts until I respond. I want to hear him ask me when I’m bringing his grandkids to see him. I want to hear him tell me that all he needs is to see them to make him all better and I wish to God that was true. I want him to call up Blair and say “I need your help. I miss my boys. Your my boy here.” 

Being a mother and grieving is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. 

I can’t zone out, more importantly, my Dad would HATE me zoning out. He loved seeing me as a Mama. He loved seeing me as an Artist. He loved seeing Blair and I work and struggle and thrive together. He wouldn’t want me to be so bogged down in grief that I couldn’t function. 

So. I carry on. I wake up and Mother and Love and Encourage. I have conversations about Heaven and WHY Grumpy is going there and how Ellie can make sure she goes too. I make breakfast and do school and sometimes I yell because I’m tired and kids are intense. We go to the Library (which makes me think of my Dad...my mom hates the Library). We go to our co-op. The kids take turns going to Mimi’s house...I love the time they spend with her. I love the way Grandpa J has started to really play with Ellie and Dean. I love seeing them know...soon, he will be their only Grandpa...

And I wait. Impatiently. Anxiously. Sometimes angerly. Sometimes quietly. Sometimes loudly. Some nights I put the kids to bed and make my way down to my art space and I just sit there. 

Sometimes I hate making art I know my Dad will never see...

I worry about my baby sisters. I want to carry the grief for them. I know their grief is their own and so so so much different than mine. I worry my brothers will be annoyed with my openness and the way I speak about my grief, constantly, openly, loudly. I worry about my mom being far away from me. I hate not being able to see her face or cry with her. Or take her shopping at the mall because while we all know Retail Therapy isn’t healthy GOSH DARN SOMETIMES YOU JUST NEED A NEW DRESS. I worry about my sisters in law who are more like sisters. Who each hold a special place in my heart and who are walking with my brothers through this hell...I worry what Thanksgiving and Christmas will be like. 

I wonder if I will ever feel less snappy at people. If my compassion will ever return. If I will ever feel like a good friend again. I don’t feel like I can have a compassionate conversation about much of anything right now. Everything is marred by this awful terminal cancer that has slowly taken my Daddy from me. 

My oldest brother said earlier this year, “It’s hard to remember Heaven, when you’re going through Hell.” 

Right now my Dad has one foot here and one foot in Eternity. 

And it is hell waiting for him to take the next step. Because I know when he does, I’m here. On this side. Waiting. 

Right now our lives are put into a weird limbo of waiting. Where we move forward every day knowing soon we will be stopped in our tracks. 

And quite frankly, it’s exhausting. 

Grief is really just exhausting.