(Before I really start, here is a little note for my MiL, who is likely really worried due to my last blog about Joel. And anyone else whose still wondering. Joel's arm still appears fine. He was mostly happy today, with one fussy period. So don't worry too much. It's all status quo around here. And now on to the blog.)
Sacrifice: noun voluntary relinquishing of something valued; thing thus relinquished; loss entailed; slaughter of animal, or person, or surrender of possession, as offering to deity; animal, person, or thing thus offered.
verb give up; to devote to; offer or kill as sacrifice.
Yup. Sacrifice. A serious sort of word. A serious sort of concept.
Dare I say this? Joel is a sacrifice I make everyday to God. Don't be offended before you hear what I say.
I don't mean that I'm "slaughtering" Joel as an offering to God, or that I'm "allowing" Him to take Joel as some sort of means to garner His approval. Not at all. I've said it many times, if I could, I'd cure Joel in a flash. But I have no say in this particular matter. And God does not demand my suffering to "pay" for anything. He's already covered all debts and expenses Himself, and at a tremendous personal cost, I'd like to add.
I suppose in a way what I am sacrificing when I say that I sacrifice Joel is really my reactions to it all. I sacrifice my reactions. I already wrote about how it was a surrender. A surrender, and a sacrifice. I'm giving this whole thing over to You, God. All my tears, struggles, the sick feelings in the pit of my stomach, the aching loss and longing for a different future. It's something I'm giving to God, to let HIM use, instead of trying to deal with it on my own, or hold on to it angrily like a very shabby coat.
Let me explain it from a different angle. There is a verse in Hebrews that says "Therefore by Him (Jesus) let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name."
In fact, it has been made into a song, "We bring the sacrifice of praise, into the house of the Lord..." A bright, chipper sort of song. To go with the praise idea, not the sacrifice part.
Not to say that a sacrifice made up of praise shouldn't be joyful. I mean, doesn't the concept of praise go hand in hand with joyful? Well, sometimes. We usually praise God very joyfully through music during a church service. That's one way to do it, and there is nothing wrong with that. Especially if you are thinking in terms of the verb, to devote to.
Even before Joel came along, that song made me think, though. Because sometimes praise is easy and flows out of our happy contented circumstances mixed with uplifting music, driven by the gratitude we naturally feel for all the good things we have. That is one kind of praise. It's really the most basic kind. It sure does have value, I mean, it's the sort of praise that is sort of owed in every way, no? If we don't manage at least this much, then are we not UNgrateful?
But praise is sometimes NOT easy. And it is not always a song. Praise can be SAID. Like when we extol someones virtues. When we go on and on about someone we admire. Bottom line, praise is saying (or singing) the things we admire about something/one, it is listing the good or especially the excellent.
So when I sing this song in church, I invariably think of how praise so often is truly a sacrifice. It costs something. Sometimes life is hard, and praising is hard too. Sometimes, as I know only too well myself, there is pain, anguish, loss, suffering. Praise then takes on a whole new meaning. Then that cheerful little song that we sometimes (dare I say this?) sing a bit glibly, or maybe just a bit comfortably takes on a different tune. It is sad. Almost dirge-like.
I suppose some might feel that praise offered with a heavy heart isn't just quite "there." It might be easy to feel that if your praise is coming from a sad and weary heart, it is merely hypocrisy, and not much of an offering to God.
I think that's a bit off. Here's my explanation. Sometimes Steve really shines as a husband. Sometimes there are extravagant gifts. Praise for my blog (yeah, I like that one). Gentleness when I'm tired or frustrated. At those times I feel overwhelmed with gratitude and love. "I love you" I say to Steve freely and with great emotion.
But sometimes it's a bit different. Sometimes Steve has struck out. (sorry, hon, am I being too candid? You know I know I strike out just as often) Let's just say I am less than pleased with him. And sometimes I say "I love you" through teeth that are slightly clenched, and a bit more like I'm reminding myself of something.
And you know what? That is when it counts most. Right? Real love isn't blowing dandelion fluff in a summer meadow. That's a commercial for fabric softener. Real love is a (sometimes grim) determination, more like the tough steel cables holding up a bridge, to stick by someone even when it's 20 below zero, the heat's off, and SOMEBODY LOST your coat.
And that is when praise really counts too. Even if you have to say it without a lot of enthusiasm ringing in your voice. Even if you are saying, like Job, "though He slay me, I will trust Him." I sincerely doubt Job was singing when he said that.
Sometimes my praise is said, not sung. It's the simple statement that even though I hurt deeply and profoundly, I still think God is good. I can even add "all the time." I still know that He loves me. I still know that life with Him in it is something so precious that I'd never give that up. God is amazing.
Even when I can't sing it, I have hope, maybe even confidence, that God finds my offering of praise beautiful. That it might even be precious and valuable to Him.
There is a story in the Old Testament about King David. I'm not going in to all the details here, but David was about to offer a sacrifice to God. And this guy, Araunah, told him he'd give him the wood and oxen to sacrifice. (Don't tell the PETA!) David insisted on paying him for it. He said he wouldn't offer to God a sacrifice that COST HIM NOTHING.
And sometimes when it is really hard to sacrifice and sometimes when it is really hard to praise because it feels like my heart is so dry and barren, my mouth is glued, and my lips are stuck together, I say to myself, I will NOT offer to God sacrifices that cost me NOTHING. Here is my sacrifice God. It is the best I have, and it cost me something. God is good, all the time.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Rain
Something horrid happened last night. Joel was on his fifth happy day, and I was loving it. In the evening I was holding him and we were "chatting" and playing. He was lying against me and he got really excited. When he does that he sort of waves his arms. And one of those arms was against me. I don't know what happened, but I think I felt a little something "give" and he started screaming.
Don't worry, I don't think anything actually broke. He cried really hard for about 2o minutes, and I cried too. I felt so awful, and he had been so happy just moments before. It was horrible to see that happy little face register the shock and then the pain. And that was the end of the happy playing for the rest of the evening.
It doesn't hurt him to move it now, I don't know what happened, he just got it twisted wrong or something. But it is the sort of thing that I dread happening. The reason I dress him so carefully. When I change him, I don't lift him by the ankles, I lift him under the knees. When I take his temperature under his arm, I lift that thin little limb so carefully. If I need to bend a leg or arm, it is very slowly and very cautiously.
Getting him in and out of the car seat is an endeavor I absolutely dread. I can get him in ok, most of the time, but getting him out, I just can't seem to do it without making him cry. It's like his soft little body just melts to the seat and I'm desperately trying to spatula my fingers under him without pinching him or twisting a bone, or compressing his spine, all the while trying to do it without having his head pitch forward or to the side. If you own a spatula, you know that it is shaped nothing like fingers.
It was a bad end to an otherwise great day. I'm still walking on eggshells, dreading that he might actually have another bone bruise which will make him unhappy for a week again.
Susan, thank you for the song you sent. The lyrics are beautiful. I've had another song in my heart lately and I'm going to end on that note, I think.
Don't worry, I don't think anything actually broke. He cried really hard for about 2o minutes, and I cried too. I felt so awful, and he had been so happy just moments before. It was horrible to see that happy little face register the shock and then the pain. And that was the end of the happy playing for the rest of the evening.
It doesn't hurt him to move it now, I don't know what happened, he just got it twisted wrong or something. But it is the sort of thing that I dread happening. The reason I dress him so carefully. When I change him, I don't lift him by the ankles, I lift him under the knees. When I take his temperature under his arm, I lift that thin little limb so carefully. If I need to bend a leg or arm, it is very slowly and very cautiously.
Getting him in and out of the car seat is an endeavor I absolutely dread. I can get him in ok, most of the time, but getting him out, I just can't seem to do it without making him cry. It's like his soft little body just melts to the seat and I'm desperately trying to spatula my fingers under him without pinching him or twisting a bone, or compressing his spine, all the while trying to do it without having his head pitch forward or to the side. If you own a spatula, you know that it is shaped nothing like fingers.
It was a bad end to an otherwise great day. I'm still walking on eggshells, dreading that he might actually have another bone bruise which will make him unhappy for a week again.
Susan, thank you for the song you sent. The lyrics are beautiful. I've had another song in my heart lately and I'm going to end on that note, I think.
"Our Hope Endures"
Natalie Grant
You would think only so much can go wrong
Calamity only strikes once
And you assume this one has suffered her share
Life will be kinder from here
Oh, but sometimes the sun stays hidden for years
Sometimes the sky rains night after night
When will it clear?
But our Hope endures the worst of conditions
It's more than our optimism
Let the earth quake
Our Hope is unchanged
How do we comprehend peace within pain?
Or joy at a good man's wake?
Walk a mile with the woman whose body is torn
with illness but she marches on
Oh, 'cause sometimes the sun stays hidden for years
Sometimes the sky rains night after night
When will it clear?
But our Hope endures the worst of conditions
It's more than our optimism
Let the earth quake
Our Hope is unchanged
Emmanuel, God is with us
El Shaddai, all sufficient
We never walk alone
And this is our hope
I'm so glad I never walk alone. 'Cause sometimes the sun stays hidden for years...
Friday, September 10, 2010
Rubber Band
I don't like August anymore. It was never my favorite month, and now I really don't like it. It has been a tough, tough month, and the first week of September was no picnic either. Just a total flashback to last year.
So I'm gong to sit here and try to be open and honest, though it's not too easy. Again, about stuff I've mentioned, but I'm going to re-deal with, now that it's all so fresh...
These times with Joel, the ones where he is obviously unhappy, these are the ones I'm specifically talking about. There are lots of other difficult things about life with Joel, but these are the ones that make me feel like a rubber band in my spine has been slowly tightened, a little bit, each day.
It feels like I'm a compound bow, or a ballista, the tension just slowly being ratcheted up notch by notch. Emotionally it is so strong, that I can almost feel it physically, everything is tight, tight, tight. How much farther can it go before it snaps and who knows what is release like a bullet flying out of me? Or maybe I'm a balloon so filled with air that I'm going to pop.
Yesterday and the day before were good days. Joel not only smiled, he even laughed a bit. He once again cooed and burbled and interacted with me. Days like that, the tension so suddenly releases and now I feel like a limp balloon, or an over stretched elastic or spring. I just flop around the house, limp and boneless. Happy, but useless. It's like you spend hours riding horse, or squatting to pull weeds. Suddenly you stand up, or get off the horse, and you feel like you are jello. Your legs are wobbly, and you just need to sit down! I fed my children and kept them clean, dry, and warm. That was it. Period.
So much of this last month is so much like last year. Even to the point where my prayer at night was no longer, "Please God, just give me one more good day," to "Please God, don't let him suffer." Because a part of me started to long for the day when it would just all be over...
It is so hard to write those words. It seems so selfish and so ... cold. To admit that I could actually feel like I just wanted my precious boy to die so it could all be over for us all. But I said I'd be honest.
I suppose it's not unlike when you just want the band aid YANKED off quickly. Hurt me and be done with it! Or if you ever have had those nightmares where you are hiding from something/one terrible and you keep having this urge to just surrender because the running and hiding are so awful themselves. (Yeah, I have pretty vivid dreams) Terrible times are ahead and you just want to "do it and get it over with."
It makes me feel so guilty, to almost "look forward" to Joel dying. I truly start to imagine the day when I can just grab Caeden and head out the door. No more 2 hour feeds, or cleaning a pump, or packing it up if we want to go anywhere as a family. No more meds, the thought of being able to grab the whole shelf full and chuck them all into the garbage!!! To go to bed exactly when I'm tired and not have to wait for Joel's tummy to empty and then hook up a bunch of equipment. Never be awakened at night again to the sound of seizures. No more phone calls with questions to doctors, no more appointments, no more hospital stays. To take a trip whenever we want. Overwhelming relief and freedom.
Does that sound terrible?
The thing is, I never think this way when Joel is happy. Heck, I desperately WANTED the CPAP, even though I was told it would make life so much more work for me. And while Joel was doing well and happy, it felt like nothing much. I was like - Oh PLUH-LEEEESE! Give me a break, this is nothing! That's how I feel about all of it, when Joel is doing well. 99% of that time I really don't complain about it all.
But when Joel is not happy, then everything weighs on me. Everything seems to suck life right out of me. It slowly gets harder and harder, the pressure is ratcheting up, the pain and pressure increasing, and I start to long for it all to end.
Me, longing for a time that just isn't so like living life in an emotional trench while WWI goes on around me. Day and night in a muddy, cold trench. I've got trench-foot and the rations are not too good. A wasteland surrounds me, and the enemy assaults me from a distance in a seemingly constant barrage... I can't wait for this war to end.
Which is a bit of a fallacy. I long for the relief, but Joel's death will release me from one battle and into another. Hardly a true end to the war. Just a different stage of it.
I know that, but months like this I can't bear to think that way. Maybe it's a coping mechanism. Maybe it's just how anyone feels when someone they love is sometimes suffering. Maybe it's trying to put a bright face somewhere into it. But when it gets like this, I almost need to be able to say "Soon rest is coming. Soon the tension, stress, struggle, soon it will be over. We'll be free." To say "When this ends, a worse time will come, one where I long to go back to THIS time every single day, I didn't know then how lucky I was" -- to say that is just something I can't face when it is so hard already. Believing that feels like it would just finish me right off.
I was speaking to a friend yesterday, a friend who has lost her child. She told me there would be some sense of relief, even though she admitted to wanting her baby back so very badly. It made me feel a little better. One thing that really makes me angry at times is that the thought of relief is attached to so much guilt. It was good to know that I'd at least get what I paid so dearly for, in a manner of speaking. I don't know if you can understand all this unless you've lost someone to a difficult death, but I hope you can get some sense of what I mean:
First there is suffering, sorrow, pain, longing for relief and guilt for wanting it. Then there is relief, and grief, sorrow, pain, longing for your loved one, and guilt for feeling any relief. So crazy at as it sounds, it's good to hear that at least the relief part of it isn't totally a myth.
I've really laid a heavy on you with this one. I don't even know if I would have been able to write it, if Joel hadn't had a couple of "good days" now. Several good days in a row give me the strength to face the feelings and let them all out. Once the "rubber band" feeling wears off. Of course, they also leave me feeling a bit rough, so yesterday, when I wrote most of this, I felt pretty tired, and, well, a bit rough, for most of the rest of the day. Good thing it was a good day!
Anyway, I feel bad leaving you with all this negative emotion, all this sadness and guilt, and, well, agony really, just there - BLAH. Like I emotionally puked all over your car of life, and I sure hope you've got a good air freshener in there so you don't have to smell it all day long. I don't know if one of those little trees will cut it. You need some FEBREEZE, man! Go out and watch a silly movie or something. That's what I'm going to do! And play some Lego with my 3 year old.
"This is my comfort in my affliction, for Your word has given me life." (Psalm 119:50) I'm still thankful for that.
So I'm gong to sit here and try to be open and honest, though it's not too easy. Again, about stuff I've mentioned, but I'm going to re-deal with, now that it's all so fresh...
These times with Joel, the ones where he is obviously unhappy, these are the ones I'm specifically talking about. There are lots of other difficult things about life with Joel, but these are the ones that make me feel like a rubber band in my spine has been slowly tightened, a little bit, each day.
It feels like I'm a compound bow, or a ballista, the tension just slowly being ratcheted up notch by notch. Emotionally it is so strong, that I can almost feel it physically, everything is tight, tight, tight. How much farther can it go before it snaps and who knows what is release like a bullet flying out of me? Or maybe I'm a balloon so filled with air that I'm going to pop.
Yesterday and the day before were good days. Joel not only smiled, he even laughed a bit. He once again cooed and burbled and interacted with me. Days like that, the tension so suddenly releases and now I feel like a limp balloon, or an over stretched elastic or spring. I just flop around the house, limp and boneless. Happy, but useless. It's like you spend hours riding horse, or squatting to pull weeds. Suddenly you stand up, or get off the horse, and you feel like you are jello. Your legs are wobbly, and you just need to sit down! I fed my children and kept them clean, dry, and warm. That was it. Period.
So much of this last month is so much like last year. Even to the point where my prayer at night was no longer, "Please God, just give me one more good day," to "Please God, don't let him suffer." Because a part of me started to long for the day when it would just all be over...
It is so hard to write those words. It seems so selfish and so ... cold. To admit that I could actually feel like I just wanted my precious boy to die so it could all be over for us all. But I said I'd be honest.
I suppose it's not unlike when you just want the band aid YANKED off quickly. Hurt me and be done with it! Or if you ever have had those nightmares where you are hiding from something/one terrible and you keep having this urge to just surrender because the running and hiding are so awful themselves. (Yeah, I have pretty vivid dreams) Terrible times are ahead and you just want to "do it and get it over with."
It makes me feel so guilty, to almost "look forward" to Joel dying. I truly start to imagine the day when I can just grab Caeden and head out the door. No more 2 hour feeds, or cleaning a pump, or packing it up if we want to go anywhere as a family. No more meds, the thought of being able to grab the whole shelf full and chuck them all into the garbage!!! To go to bed exactly when I'm tired and not have to wait for Joel's tummy to empty and then hook up a bunch of equipment. Never be awakened at night again to the sound of seizures. No more phone calls with questions to doctors, no more appointments, no more hospital stays. To take a trip whenever we want. Overwhelming relief and freedom.
Does that sound terrible?
The thing is, I never think this way when Joel is happy. Heck, I desperately WANTED the CPAP, even though I was told it would make life so much more work for me. And while Joel was doing well and happy, it felt like nothing much. I was like - Oh PLUH-LEEEESE! Give me a break, this is nothing! That's how I feel about all of it, when Joel is doing well. 99% of that time I really don't complain about it all.
But when Joel is not happy, then everything weighs on me. Everything seems to suck life right out of me. It slowly gets harder and harder, the pressure is ratcheting up, the pain and pressure increasing, and I start to long for it all to end.
Me, longing for a time that just isn't so like living life in an emotional trench while WWI goes on around me. Day and night in a muddy, cold trench. I've got trench-foot and the rations are not too good. A wasteland surrounds me, and the enemy assaults me from a distance in a seemingly constant barrage... I can't wait for this war to end.
Which is a bit of a fallacy. I long for the relief, but Joel's death will release me from one battle and into another. Hardly a true end to the war. Just a different stage of it.
I know that, but months like this I can't bear to think that way. Maybe it's a coping mechanism. Maybe it's just how anyone feels when someone they love is sometimes suffering. Maybe it's trying to put a bright face somewhere into it. But when it gets like this, I almost need to be able to say "Soon rest is coming. Soon the tension, stress, struggle, soon it will be over. We'll be free." To say "When this ends, a worse time will come, one where I long to go back to THIS time every single day, I didn't know then how lucky I was" -- to say that is just something I can't face when it is so hard already. Believing that feels like it would just finish me right off.
I was speaking to a friend yesterday, a friend who has lost her child. She told me there would be some sense of relief, even though she admitted to wanting her baby back so very badly. It made me feel a little better. One thing that really makes me angry at times is that the thought of relief is attached to so much guilt. It was good to know that I'd at least get what I paid so dearly for, in a manner of speaking. I don't know if you can understand all this unless you've lost someone to a difficult death, but I hope you can get some sense of what I mean:
First there is suffering, sorrow, pain, longing for relief and guilt for wanting it. Then there is relief, and grief, sorrow, pain, longing for your loved one, and guilt for feeling any relief. So crazy at as it sounds, it's good to hear that at least the relief part of it isn't totally a myth.
I've really laid a heavy on you with this one. I don't even know if I would have been able to write it, if Joel hadn't had a couple of "good days" now. Several good days in a row give me the strength to face the feelings and let them all out. Once the "rubber band" feeling wears off. Of course, they also leave me feeling a bit rough, so yesterday, when I wrote most of this, I felt pretty tired, and, well, a bit rough, for most of the rest of the day. Good thing it was a good day!
Anyway, I feel bad leaving you with all this negative emotion, all this sadness and guilt, and, well, agony really, just there - BLAH. Like I emotionally puked all over your car of life, and I sure hope you've got a good air freshener in there so you don't have to smell it all day long. I don't know if one of those little trees will cut it. You need some FEBREEZE, man! Go out and watch a silly movie or something. That's what I'm going to do! And play some Lego with my 3 year old.
"This is my comfort in my affliction, for Your word has given me life." (Psalm 119:50) I'm still thankful for that.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Bummed out, and citing some lyrics.
I haven't been feeling super duper recently. I'm sort of stressed out. Anxious. Bummed out. And sad. Always sad.
You won't see it so much when I'm with my friends. I'm an extrovert. My happiest moments are usually with other people.
But I'm not feeling that great. It's really hard for me to see Joel not so happy himself. I start to get a little freaked out wondering how bad it's really going to get for him, before he passes away. Do you think it might be a little bit of an understatement to say that I'm dreading those last days?
And whenever Joel stops doing well, these anxieties overtake me. I can keep em behind me as long as he is alert, playful and happy. But when we hit a stretch like this, one where it's pretty much nothing but sleeping or fussing... what can I say? It is hard. Sometimes he doesn't even want to be held. He is HAPPIER when I put him down. That is the worst, I think, for me. I don't know if he just feels more comfortable, or if being in my arms is sometimes too stimulating when he wants to shut down and is having trouble doing it, but its really hard for me when he spends most of the day just lying in his bassinet or crib, because he just isn't happy in my arms...
Then there is the seizures. Still happening. Yup. And now I am getting suspicious that he might also be having "absences seizures." Which have got to be one of the trickiest ones to catch, especially in a child who is blind with a nystigmus. He's just not been himself, in any case.
And I'm dreading the approach of flu season. What else can I say about that?
Today I was taking Caeden to the library (Joel was with his respite worker, thank the good Lord for respite!). And while I was walking down, a song was playing in my head. It's a beautiful song, and it has great lyrics, which I thought I'd share here. I think it's a song that most of us sing...
Naked Heart
by
Julie Miller
Don't want you to see me like this,
Don't want you to know how it really is.
Put on this smile till you go away,
Hope that my eyes don't give me away.
Yeah, I can pretend that everything is alright
Gotten really good, done it all of my life.
Keep you at a distance so that you can't tell,
I'm not doing very well.
chorus:
If you found out who I really am,
If I showed you what I keep in the dark,
Stripped of my defenses could
Your love really clothe my naked heart?
Gotten so used to having this pain,
Can't imagine it could ever change.
If I should look at the truth inside,
Feels like I might not survive.
So I wrap up this part that doesn't look good,
And I make it look lovely like I think it should.
But if you only know who I pretend to be,
How can I know if you could really love me?
The cry of every heart, no? First truth in fiction, now truth in lyrics.
You won't see it so much when I'm with my friends. I'm an extrovert. My happiest moments are usually with other people.
But I'm not feeling that great. It's really hard for me to see Joel not so happy himself. I start to get a little freaked out wondering how bad it's really going to get for him, before he passes away. Do you think it might be a little bit of an understatement to say that I'm dreading those last days?
And whenever Joel stops doing well, these anxieties overtake me. I can keep em behind me as long as he is alert, playful and happy. But when we hit a stretch like this, one where it's pretty much nothing but sleeping or fussing... what can I say? It is hard. Sometimes he doesn't even want to be held. He is HAPPIER when I put him down. That is the worst, I think, for me. I don't know if he just feels more comfortable, or if being in my arms is sometimes too stimulating when he wants to shut down and is having trouble doing it, but its really hard for me when he spends most of the day just lying in his bassinet or crib, because he just isn't happy in my arms...
Then there is the seizures. Still happening. Yup. And now I am getting suspicious that he might also be having "absences seizures." Which have got to be one of the trickiest ones to catch, especially in a child who is blind with a nystigmus. He's just not been himself, in any case.
And I'm dreading the approach of flu season. What else can I say about that?
Today I was taking Caeden to the library (Joel was with his respite worker, thank the good Lord for respite!). And while I was walking down, a song was playing in my head. It's a beautiful song, and it has great lyrics, which I thought I'd share here. I think it's a song that most of us sing...
Naked Heart
by
Julie Miller
Don't want you to see me like this,
Don't want you to know how it really is.
Put on this smile till you go away,
Hope that my eyes don't give me away.
Yeah, I can pretend that everything is alright
Gotten really good, done it all of my life.
Keep you at a distance so that you can't tell,
I'm not doing very well.
chorus:
If you found out who I really am,
If I showed you what I keep in the dark,
Stripped of my defenses could
Your love really clothe my naked heart?
Gotten so used to having this pain,
Can't imagine it could ever change.
If I should look at the truth inside,
Feels like I might not survive.
So I wrap up this part that doesn't look good,
And I make it look lovely like I think it should.
But if you only know who I pretend to be,
How can I know if you could really love me?
The cry of every heart, no? First truth in fiction, now truth in lyrics.
Truth in Fiction: Part Three
Earlier I said I hadn't a clue where to go next in this little series. This one is practically writing itself! Because right after I wrote my last blog, the one about crying, where I mentioned specifically crying in church, and then touched on my musings about how others might reacted?? Well Sunday afternoon I was reading this book and...
Wait a minute! Not so fast! Ha ha ha! Thought I was just gonna get right to it, without any intro, didn'tcha! Before I start, you know I'm going to need to write my usual explanations. So:
The first book I mentioned, The Little Prince, is full of pretty deep thoughts. I don't want you to think that I think that all worthwhile fiction has to be so deep and philosophical. Sometimes the truth you find in fiction is of a very deep and profound nature.
But sometimes it's not so much a DEEP THOUGHT, as it is a reminder of human nature. Or being re-inspired to do something worthwhile. Sometimes when a character is well-written, it is more that the book helps us to love and understand someone else. Like a book I really enjoyed written from the perspective of a teen who was autistic. Which gave me a fuller perspective myself! All this sort of thing is worthwhile, and I think it is also a way of hearing truth.
So I'm going to talk about a book series I love which is more along these lines. I'm sort of picky about my book series. I really like fantasy books, but I have a serious pet peeve that just about everybody and their dog thinks that they have to AT LEAST write a trilogy (as if they were Tolkien himself!) and sometimes they can't seem to find an end to the story after 10 books!! Sheeeeeeesh! One reason that bugs me (aside from the fact that the "to be continued" is usually a YEAR later, unlike TV where you just wait a week. Come on people, unless your writing really does rival Tolkien, I'm really NOT going to remember what I read a YEAR AGO!!) is that usually the writing and plot just gets sloppier and sloppier as the books go along. KNOW WHEN TO FINISH! (Ha ha! Some of you are saying "Look whose talking, Honey!")
Ok, that was all an aside. AHEM. As I was saying, I'm picky about series. I don't mind them as long as each book is complete in itself. If you can't wrap up the story in one book, I will grudgingly let you go as far as three books, but you better be just as good in the third as you were in the first!
This series is NOT fantasy and it IS complete, each book, in itself. There is a sort of progressive story line, but not the sort that if you miss a book, or start in the middle, you will be lost and confused. The series is the "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" by Alexander McCall Smith. Sounds like it might be a mystery series, and it is, SORT OF. Only one murder in the 12 books I have read, the mysteries involved are more about human nature than anything else. I love the books in the series because after you finish reading one, you feel GOOD. You feel like human beings are worth knowing and understanding. You feel like you want to go out and meet your next door neighbour. You know that the next time on the bus, you are going to stand up and give your seat to someone else. That sort of thing.
But it is all FUN to read, and it very gently pokes fun at human nature. I see myself in the pages, and I feel both amused, and sometimes humbled. I think that if I only ever read this sort of fiction, my mind would be a better place to live in. Ya know? All that while just enjoying yourself and being amused.
So, on Sunday I was reading the latest book in this series. Guess what the title of the first chapter was? "You Do Not Change People by Shouting At Them." (It contained an incident of really bad driving) How's that for truth in fiction!!
But that wasn't the really funny/strange thing. Hear is a direct quote from the book which I read on Sunday, the day after I wrote my last blog, and right after church:
"...this woman, moved by some private sorrow as much as by the words being spoken, cried almost silently, unobserved by others, apart from Mma Ramotswe, who stretched out her hand and laid it on her shoulder. Do not cry, Mma, she began to whisper, but changed her words even as she uttered them, and said quietly, Yes, you can cry, Mma. We should not tell people not to weep--we do it because of our sympathy for them--but we should really tell them that their tears are justified and entirely right."
Now what do you think of that? Precious Ramotswe is one of the main characters in the book (the story takes place in Africa, and Mma means sister and is the traditional way of addressing people, like "Ms.", only more friendly!) and she is sitting in church listening to the sermon when she sees this other lady crying. Isn't that a funny co-incidence, considering what I wrote the day before??
So, anyway, I confidently recommend this series to you. If you like stories about human nature, the sublime moments, the failures, and the humorous quirks, you gotta try these stories. If you like stories that warm your heart, make you smile, and maybe even inspire you, you'll like these books. They'll cheer you up. But more than that. You might also find some truth in there, in the form of simple, down to earth wisdom.
Wait a minute! Not so fast! Ha ha ha! Thought I was just gonna get right to it, without any intro, didn'tcha! Before I start, you know I'm going to need to write my usual explanations. So:
The first book I mentioned, The Little Prince, is full of pretty deep thoughts. I don't want you to think that I think that all worthwhile fiction has to be so deep and philosophical. Sometimes the truth you find in fiction is of a very deep and profound nature.
But sometimes it's not so much a DEEP THOUGHT, as it is a reminder of human nature. Or being re-inspired to do something worthwhile. Sometimes when a character is well-written, it is more that the book helps us to love and understand someone else. Like a book I really enjoyed written from the perspective of a teen who was autistic. Which gave me a fuller perspective myself! All this sort of thing is worthwhile, and I think it is also a way of hearing truth.
So I'm going to talk about a book series I love which is more along these lines. I'm sort of picky about my book series. I really like fantasy books, but I have a serious pet peeve that just about everybody and their dog thinks that they have to AT LEAST write a trilogy (as if they were Tolkien himself!) and sometimes they can't seem to find an end to the story after 10 books!! Sheeeeeeesh! One reason that bugs me (aside from the fact that the "to be continued" is usually a YEAR later, unlike TV where you just wait a week. Come on people, unless your writing really does rival Tolkien, I'm really NOT going to remember what I read a YEAR AGO!!) is that usually the writing and plot just gets sloppier and sloppier as the books go along. KNOW WHEN TO FINISH! (Ha ha! Some of you are saying "Look whose talking, Honey!")
Ok, that was all an aside. AHEM. As I was saying, I'm picky about series. I don't mind them as long as each book is complete in itself. If you can't wrap up the story in one book, I will grudgingly let you go as far as three books, but you better be just as good in the third as you were in the first!
This series is NOT fantasy and it IS complete, each book, in itself. There is a sort of progressive story line, but not the sort that if you miss a book, or start in the middle, you will be lost and confused. The series is the "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" by Alexander McCall Smith. Sounds like it might be a mystery series, and it is, SORT OF. Only one murder in the 12 books I have read, the mysteries involved are more about human nature than anything else. I love the books in the series because after you finish reading one, you feel GOOD. You feel like human beings are worth knowing and understanding. You feel like you want to go out and meet your next door neighbour. You know that the next time on the bus, you are going to stand up and give your seat to someone else. That sort of thing.
But it is all FUN to read, and it very gently pokes fun at human nature. I see myself in the pages, and I feel both amused, and sometimes humbled. I think that if I only ever read this sort of fiction, my mind would be a better place to live in. Ya know? All that while just enjoying yourself and being amused.
So, on Sunday I was reading the latest book in this series. Guess what the title of the first chapter was? "You Do Not Change People by Shouting At Them." (It contained an incident of really bad driving) How's that for truth in fiction!!
But that wasn't the really funny/strange thing. Hear is a direct quote from the book which I read on Sunday, the day after I wrote my last blog, and right after church:
"...this woman, moved by some private sorrow as much as by the words being spoken, cried almost silently, unobserved by others, apart from Mma Ramotswe, who stretched out her hand and laid it on her shoulder. Do not cry, Mma, she began to whisper, but changed her words even as she uttered them, and said quietly, Yes, you can cry, Mma. We should not tell people not to weep--we do it because of our sympathy for them--but we should really tell them that their tears are justified and entirely right."
Now what do you think of that? Precious Ramotswe is one of the main characters in the book (the story takes place in Africa, and Mma means sister and is the traditional way of addressing people, like "Ms.", only more friendly!) and she is sitting in church listening to the sermon when she sees this other lady crying. Isn't that a funny co-incidence, considering what I wrote the day before??
So, anyway, I confidently recommend this series to you. If you like stories about human nature, the sublime moments, the failures, and the humorous quirks, you gotta try these stories. If you like stories that warm your heart, make you smile, and maybe even inspire you, you'll like these books. They'll cheer you up. But more than that. You might also find some truth in there, in the form of simple, down to earth wisdom.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Sanctuary
Here is an annoying thing about grief. Like feelings of "romance," it comes and goes when it pleases, with no warning and no consideration for place or timing. You know what I mean? You might be out in public somewhere with your love, and suddenly you are over flowing with passion for your beloved, but the time and the place is all wrong. Later on, you are home alone together, cast a look over, and - mheh - the feeling has passed. Now you just want to laze on the couch with a book, by yourself.
Grief is so much the same, but not in the good and fun way that passion has.
I'll be at church, or I'll be in bed at 11pm with a just about sleeping husband, and BAM. There it is. The sadness, the sorrow, the tears welling up ready to sob. A place and time where it is not comfortable, not considerate or not private enough for me to feel I can let go and cry. So I stifle it, choke it all back and try not to think about "things."
Later on, when I am alone in the shower, or having a heart to heart with a friend - I got nothing. I can't muster up the feelings for a good cry-fest. I want to unburden myself. It's all in there somewhere, a dull throbbing like a heart-headache. A general feeling of malaise that won't pass. A heaviness that I carry around somewhere at the back of my emotional refrigerator as it slowly goes bad.
I long to weep. I step into the shower and think hard about all the things bothering me or making me sad. I even squeeze out a few tears. But it just won't be forced. I locked em in somehow, and now it has rusted shut. Merely turning a key will no longer release it.
I don't know what to do about the late night times I want to cry. Steve notices if I get out of bed, and he notices if I cry, either way it means HE ends up sad and sleepless as well. I can't see a way to do it without robbing him of rest.
A friend said I should just go ahead and cry in church. That's really hard for me. Everyone there (it's a VERY small church) has only ever been caring and supportive and understanding. Still, the thought of openly weeping Sunday after Sunday, well... it's hard for me to get past myself. I'm worried I'll be distracting (did I say it's VERY SMALL?) to everyone else. I'm worried I'll be rushed by concerned people who think something really awful has just happened to Joel, when in reality something awful HAS happened to Joel, it just happened at the moment of his conception, not in the last week. Horror of horrors, in my mind, I see myself losing control and sobbing until my pastor has to stop the sermon and ask if I need prayer! I don't feel comfortable with that much attention on me all at once.
Some of it is my own silly fear of being so "needy." I shouldn't care, but I worry that people will talk. Say I'm not "taking it well."
And it is hard to be so raw in front of people. So raw that I am unable to handle any well meant attempts at comfort. I'm afraid instead of crying with me, people will try and comfort my tears away. Really, my tears ARE my comfort. They are my release of the sad, the painful, the negative. It is my "brave face" that I desperately wish people would comfort away, until all the tears spill out in a torrent and wash my emotions clean. Yes, sometimes I long to be peeled down to the core, but I lack the ability to ask this, or to give the key, while others seem oblivious that there even is a key, or a core to whittle out.
Part of it, though, is just sort of the nature of grief itself. It is hard to grieve in a crowd. Sorrow, by it's very nature, is a somewhat private affair. As the poet says "Smile and the world smiles with you..." but "one by one we must all file on through the narrow aisles of pain." Sometimes there is room enough for two or three, but most real grieving isn't done in a large group. There is just something intimate about it all. So very personal. All this peeling, and whittling and comforting is best done in a quiet place... a place of "closeness."
So I bottle it up from time to time. A sour and bitter vintage, if it ages too long. Would anyone like to share a cup of sorrow? It's a bad year, and if you try and wrest out the cork, you'll find it disintegrates right into the wine itself. I've lost the corkscrew as well, another problem...
I suppose I could/should share at prayer meeting some time. The whole thing about how I might be seeing crying in church from time to time, and everyone should pay it no mind. I'm really ok, and there has been no new tragedy. I'm just grieving.
And the house of the Lord is one place where I often feel the layers of clothes slipping off until I am naked before God. I'm not really talking about the building, but being with the group of people who are the church. Oh, church buildings are nice. I'm not knocking them. They really are just a building, but it does seem to me that all the praising and the prayer done inside seems to change the very air of the place. Until even the wood and plaster and paint and carpeting seem to be imbued with something special.
But what I am really talking about is the group of people that change the building, by worshiping God there. It is being with this group of people, engaged in singing and praying that really do something hard to explain if you've never experienced it. It's like the material world around has become "thin." And what is invisible can be seen glowing through. So that when I'm there, in the building with these people singing about God, His presence, which is with me always, takes on a hue. A depth. A sound. People say they "felt His presence." Because He's always there, but there is a special thing being together with others worshiping and all I can say is that the reality of the material world going on around you grows a little more faint, and the reality underneath it all, the immaterial and spiritual world, seems to get more vivid, more alive to you.
What I am trying to say is that being in church like that often just opens up the lock. God is not kept out by emotional Tupperware, or rusty lock boxes of self-control. He always knows just how to whittle away my brave face until everything inside is burning brightly and threatening to overflow while I struggle to hold it in. It's a good thing, this peeling. It's a powerful thing, being exposed to the core. And sometimes it is a difficult thing. I'm working on letting go more, not being so afraid to let it out.
Sanctuary. noun holy place; place of refuge.
You can find a sanctuary in the church. Sometimes you can find it just with a couple of friends who believe in Jesus. Where ever you come across it, it is the perfect place to grieve. A holy and safe place.
Grief is so much the same, but not in the good and fun way that passion has.
I'll be at church, or I'll be in bed at 11pm with a just about sleeping husband, and BAM. There it is. The sadness, the sorrow, the tears welling up ready to sob. A place and time where it is not comfortable, not considerate or not private enough for me to feel I can let go and cry. So I stifle it, choke it all back and try not to think about "things."
Later on, when I am alone in the shower, or having a heart to heart with a friend - I got nothing. I can't muster up the feelings for a good cry-fest. I want to unburden myself. It's all in there somewhere, a dull throbbing like a heart-headache. A general feeling of malaise that won't pass. A heaviness that I carry around somewhere at the back of my emotional refrigerator as it slowly goes bad.
I long to weep. I step into the shower and think hard about all the things bothering me or making me sad. I even squeeze out a few tears. But it just won't be forced. I locked em in somehow, and now it has rusted shut. Merely turning a key will no longer release it.
I don't know what to do about the late night times I want to cry. Steve notices if I get out of bed, and he notices if I cry, either way it means HE ends up sad and sleepless as well. I can't see a way to do it without robbing him of rest.
A friend said I should just go ahead and cry in church. That's really hard for me. Everyone there (it's a VERY small church) has only ever been caring and supportive and understanding. Still, the thought of openly weeping Sunday after Sunday, well... it's hard for me to get past myself. I'm worried I'll be distracting (did I say it's VERY SMALL?) to everyone else. I'm worried I'll be rushed by concerned people who think something really awful has just happened to Joel, when in reality something awful HAS happened to Joel, it just happened at the moment of his conception, not in the last week. Horror of horrors, in my mind, I see myself losing control and sobbing until my pastor has to stop the sermon and ask if I need prayer! I don't feel comfortable with that much attention on me all at once.
Some of it is my own silly fear of being so "needy." I shouldn't care, but I worry that people will talk. Say I'm not "taking it well."
And it is hard to be so raw in front of people. So raw that I am unable to handle any well meant attempts at comfort. I'm afraid instead of crying with me, people will try and comfort my tears away. Really, my tears ARE my comfort. They are my release of the sad, the painful, the negative. It is my "brave face" that I desperately wish people would comfort away, until all the tears spill out in a torrent and wash my emotions clean. Yes, sometimes I long to be peeled down to the core, but I lack the ability to ask this, or to give the key, while others seem oblivious that there even is a key, or a core to whittle out.
Part of it, though, is just sort of the nature of grief itself. It is hard to grieve in a crowd. Sorrow, by it's very nature, is a somewhat private affair. As the poet says "Smile and the world smiles with you..." but "one by one we must all file on through the narrow aisles of pain." Sometimes there is room enough for two or three, but most real grieving isn't done in a large group. There is just something intimate about it all. So very personal. All this peeling, and whittling and comforting is best done in a quiet place... a place of "closeness."
So I bottle it up from time to time. A sour and bitter vintage, if it ages too long. Would anyone like to share a cup of sorrow? It's a bad year, and if you try and wrest out the cork, you'll find it disintegrates right into the wine itself. I've lost the corkscrew as well, another problem...
I suppose I could/should share at prayer meeting some time. The whole thing about how I might be seeing crying in church from time to time, and everyone should pay it no mind. I'm really ok, and there has been no new tragedy. I'm just grieving.
And the house of the Lord is one place where I often feel the layers of clothes slipping off until I am naked before God. I'm not really talking about the building, but being with the group of people who are the church. Oh, church buildings are nice. I'm not knocking them. They really are just a building, but it does seem to me that all the praising and the prayer done inside seems to change the very air of the place. Until even the wood and plaster and paint and carpeting seem to be imbued with something special.
But what I am really talking about is the group of people that change the building, by worshiping God there. It is being with this group of people, engaged in singing and praying that really do something hard to explain if you've never experienced it. It's like the material world around has become "thin." And what is invisible can be seen glowing through. So that when I'm there, in the building with these people singing about God, His presence, which is with me always, takes on a hue. A depth. A sound. People say they "felt His presence." Because He's always there, but there is a special thing being together with others worshiping and all I can say is that the reality of the material world going on around you grows a little more faint, and the reality underneath it all, the immaterial and spiritual world, seems to get more vivid, more alive to you.
What I am trying to say is that being in church like that often just opens up the lock. God is not kept out by emotional Tupperware, or rusty lock boxes of self-control. He always knows just how to whittle away my brave face until everything inside is burning brightly and threatening to overflow while I struggle to hold it in. It's a good thing, this peeling. It's a powerful thing, being exposed to the core. And sometimes it is a difficult thing. I'm working on letting go more, not being so afraid to let it out.
Sanctuary. noun holy place; place of refuge.
You can find a sanctuary in the church. Sometimes you can find it just with a couple of friends who believe in Jesus. Where ever you come across it, it is the perfect place to grieve. A holy and safe place.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Circular Staircase
I was going to continue on with the truth in fiction, but I'm having trouble deciding what to share next... I'm not ready to tackle my favorite book yet, I'm saving that up. There is so much personal stuff in what I'd be sharing...
Plus, I was toying for awhile with starting another blog. Lots of bloggers out there do this, and it would have been a way to separate things for those who are more interest in the details of life with Joel, and those who actually enjoy reading my more general "musings" about things like the truths I've found in fiction, for example. I toyed with the idea of sorting them, or classifying them somehow... but I just couldn't.
They are just all too connected. I can't separate any of it out from the rest. It might seem like writing about a favorite book, or sharing a memory, or talking about how I know God exists, it might seem on the surface to be different from when I talk about Joel, about loss, about living suspended between life and death and all that stuff. But it just isn't. This blog is about life in general, and my life in specific. And all those things are all part of it. Everything I think about when I "muse" touches how I act or react in the areas directly connected to Joel. And absolutely everything I think about has been touched by my experiences with him. So, for better or for worse, you will find it all here "jumbled" together. My favorite books, thoughts about "issues," doctor's appointments, memories, practical advice, and philosophical musings all mushed together. It's a blog "potluck!"
Today's potluck dish is something true about grief, in the form of a poem. But don't worry: it is NOT my poem! :) There is a quote from the book A Grief Observed, by C.S. Lewis, that I'd like to share. It links in an almost uncanny way to this poem I love, for both are speaking of grief, and the way it seems to keep falling in on itself. The way it seems like a terrain you can't seem to get out of, though you come upon pockets of forest, or meadow, or hills, somehow there is the marshland opening up before you again. I'm afraid I'm not explaining it very well, which is why I shall share the quote and the poem with you.
Lewis says "For in grief nothing 'stays put.' One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?"
The poem is by Linda Pastan. "The Five Stages of Grief."
The night I lost you
someone pointed me towards
the Five Stages of Grief
Go that way, they said,
it's easy, like learning to climb
stairs after the amputation.
And so I climbed.
Denial was first.
I sat down at breakfast
carefully setting the table
for two. I passed you the toast ---
you sat there. I passed
you the paper---you hid
behind it.
Anger seemed more familiar.
I burned the toast, snatched
the paper and read the headlines myself.
But they mentioned your departure,
and so I moved on to
Bargaining. What could I exchange
for you? The silence
after storms? My typing fingers?
Before I could decide, Depression
came puffing up, a poor relation
its suitcase tied together
with string. In the suitcase
were bandages for the eyes
and bottles for sleep. I slid
all the way down the stairs
feeling nothing.
And all the time Hope
flashed on and off
in defective neon.
Hope was a signpost pointing
straight in the air.
Hope was my uncle's middle name,
he died of it.
After a year I am still climbing, though my feet slip
on your stone face.
The treeline
has long since disappeared;
green is a color
I have forgotten.
But now I see what I am climbing
towards: Acceptance
written in capital letters,
a special headline:
Acceptance
its name is in lights.
I struggle on,
waving and shouting.
Below, my whole life spreads its surf,
all the landscapes I've ever known
or dreamed of. Below
a fish jumps: the pulse
in your neck.
Acceptance. I finally
reach it.
But something is wrong.
Grief is a circular staircase.
I have lost you.
I love that poem. I confess that I don't understand every word of it, but some of it seems like a mirror image of my heart. Yeah. Grief, it's easy, like climbing a staircase after an amputation. I'm glad to share the poem with you because it is beautiful and even if you don't understand every line, I think the feelings of it all come through.
But what I really wanted to share, with the poem and with the quote, is the circular, spiraling nature of the grief experience that seems common to us all. The "I felt all this before and now I have to feel it all again!" sort of experience. The "Why can't I ever seem to really leave this pain behind me??" sort of feelings. The hashing and rehashing, the working and reworking. Sorrowing and re-sorrowing. If you have experienced it, this is likely plucking a chord, a vibration deep in your heart that is humming in empathy. If not, then the poem and Lewis's words are the only explanation I can give you for why those who are grieve must go over things again and again.
For every time you manage to grasp the reality of what you have lost, you are struck anew with the reality of what you have lost. Oh the irony that every time you can accept for a moment the truth of what has happened, you are starting the grief process all over again!
And so, recently I have been mourning (again) the way I couldn't nurse Joel. The way that his really "wee" months were a hazy blur that had a nightmarish quality. That there were almost no happy moments of milestones. That almost the instant he stopped crying, I realized he could not see. I have nothing happy to take out of those first 4 months. I want my baby back.
Grief is a circular staircase.
I have lost you.
Plus, I was toying for awhile with starting another blog. Lots of bloggers out there do this, and it would have been a way to separate things for those who are more interest in the details of life with Joel, and those who actually enjoy reading my more general "musings" about things like the truths I've found in fiction, for example. I toyed with the idea of sorting them, or classifying them somehow... but I just couldn't.
They are just all too connected. I can't separate any of it out from the rest. It might seem like writing about a favorite book, or sharing a memory, or talking about how I know God exists, it might seem on the surface to be different from when I talk about Joel, about loss, about living suspended between life and death and all that stuff. But it just isn't. This blog is about life in general, and my life in specific. And all those things are all part of it. Everything I think about when I "muse" touches how I act or react in the areas directly connected to Joel. And absolutely everything I think about has been touched by my experiences with him. So, for better or for worse, you will find it all here "jumbled" together. My favorite books, thoughts about "issues," doctor's appointments, memories, practical advice, and philosophical musings all mushed together. It's a blog "potluck!"
Today's potluck dish is something true about grief, in the form of a poem. But don't worry: it is NOT my poem! :) There is a quote from the book A Grief Observed, by C.S. Lewis, that I'd like to share. It links in an almost uncanny way to this poem I love, for both are speaking of grief, and the way it seems to keep falling in on itself. The way it seems like a terrain you can't seem to get out of, though you come upon pockets of forest, or meadow, or hills, somehow there is the marshland opening up before you again. I'm afraid I'm not explaining it very well, which is why I shall share the quote and the poem with you.
Lewis says "For in grief nothing 'stays put.' One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?"
The poem is by Linda Pastan. "The Five Stages of Grief."
The night I lost you
someone pointed me towards
the Five Stages of Grief
Go that way, they said,
it's easy, like learning to climb
stairs after the amputation.
And so I climbed.
Denial was first.
I sat down at breakfast
carefully setting the table
for two. I passed you the toast ---
you sat there. I passed
you the paper---you hid
behind it.
Anger seemed more familiar.
I burned the toast, snatched
the paper and read the headlines myself.
But they mentioned your departure,
and so I moved on to
Bargaining. What could I exchange
for you? The silence
after storms? My typing fingers?
Before I could decide, Depression
came puffing up, a poor relation
its suitcase tied together
with string. In the suitcase
were bandages for the eyes
and bottles for sleep. I slid
all the way down the stairs
feeling nothing.
And all the time Hope
flashed on and off
in defective neon.
Hope was a signpost pointing
straight in the air.
Hope was my uncle's middle name,
he died of it.
After a year I am still climbing, though my feet slip
on your stone face.
The treeline
has long since disappeared;
green is a color
I have forgotten.
But now I see what I am climbing
towards: Acceptance
written in capital letters,
a special headline:
Acceptance
its name is in lights.
I struggle on,
waving and shouting.
Below, my whole life spreads its surf,
all the landscapes I've ever known
or dreamed of. Below
a fish jumps: the pulse
in your neck.
Acceptance. I finally
reach it.
But something is wrong.
Grief is a circular staircase.
I have lost you.
I love that poem. I confess that I don't understand every word of it, but some of it seems like a mirror image of my heart. Yeah. Grief, it's easy, like climbing a staircase after an amputation. I'm glad to share the poem with you because it is beautiful and even if you don't understand every line, I think the feelings of it all come through.
But what I really wanted to share, with the poem and with the quote, is the circular, spiraling nature of the grief experience that seems common to us all. The "I felt all this before and now I have to feel it all again!" sort of experience. The "Why can't I ever seem to really leave this pain behind me??" sort of feelings. The hashing and rehashing, the working and reworking. Sorrowing and re-sorrowing. If you have experienced it, this is likely plucking a chord, a vibration deep in your heart that is humming in empathy. If not, then the poem and Lewis's words are the only explanation I can give you for why those who are grieve must go over things again and again.
For every time you manage to grasp the reality of what you have lost, you are struck anew with the reality of what you have lost. Oh the irony that every time you can accept for a moment the truth of what has happened, you are starting the grief process all over again!
And so, recently I have been mourning (again) the way I couldn't nurse Joel. The way that his really "wee" months were a hazy blur that had a nightmarish quality. That there were almost no happy moments of milestones. That almost the instant he stopped crying, I realized he could not see. I have nothing happy to take out of those first 4 months. I want my baby back.
Grief is a circular staircase.
I have lost you.
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