A Welcome Balm

Thump, thump, thump.

I could hear the balls hit our basketball hoop and then the ground. I couldn't see them from my kitchen table a few feet away, because I'd taped temporary paper shades on the glass in the door and over all the windows.

One by one, my new friends-- friends who had each had a son die-- turned the handle and came inside. They'd parked in the crowded driveway we shared with our neighbors, dodged the basketballs in our carport, and come to our grief support group.

"I don't know how you do it!" they each said to me.

This was a phrase they'd likely heard themselves many times. How did they make it through multiple rounds of chemo with their precious boys? How did they tell their sons they weren't going back to school? How did one go into her son's bedroom to wake him, but find him dead?

They knew they were not made of stronger stuff than other moms. They'd just been thrust into unwelcome, nearly untenable situations that they couldn't run away from. They knew that grieving moms are just people doing the best we can.

But that night they said it to me, quickly piecing together that the boys playing outside my door were the ones who were with Jack when he had his accident. While I'd never experienced hospitals, blood draws, invasive tests, toxic treatments, and having Jack lose his beautiful hair, I was experiencing something excruciating as I saw Jack's best friend, and his new best friend, bond and live and play right in front of me, day in and day out. The stark contrast between these living children and my dead son was almost too much to take, and these mothers' hearts recognized that in an instant.

I talked about this with my pastor and friend, Glenda. I felt terrible for feeling angry and uncharitable toward children-- so jealous and petty. My magical thinking would have one of them die, while Jack would live. This was so far from how I wanted to be-- Anna The Super Griever who spread her love and warmth like fairy dust-- but it was real, and raw, and exactly where I was.

There would be no warm and fuzzy tv special about how I'd taken the boys in as my own, cultivating a surrogate mom role to make up for losing Jack.  Nope. So, I piled guilt on top of my anger and grief.

But I wanted to feel my pain and anger and not cover it up by pretending like everything was okay--faking kindness and compassion that wasn't yet there. Grieving Jack felt too holy for anything other than truth and light and 100% honesty.

After hearing all of this, Glenda touched my hand and rubbed it gently. She said, "If your hand is raw and in pain, there is nothing wrong with finding a balm to soothe it. To coat and protect it as it heals. That's not weakness. You don't need to feel guilty. That's just taking care of yourself."

I honestly couldn't think of one thing that could be a balm in the colossal missing and longing for Jack. But as those early days turned into months, and then into almost 2 years, a balm came into view.

I was healing, I could tell, but the pain of seeing the two boys multiple times a day continued to be incredibly painful. I made the difficult decision to move our family to a new house, even if it meant dragging Tim and Margaret along with me. It was not a savvy financial decision. It was very hard on Margaret as it represented her leaving her childhood behind. It meant driving over the creek where Jack was found multiple times a day. It meant leaving Jack's room behind.

But it was a balm.

Of course I still felt grief and pain while I healed, but that rawness, that fresh pain anew every single day, was coated by a bit of distance, just as ointment buffers and protects a wound.

This month it will be 5 years since we moved. Our windows are bare and the light streams in.

I was not a bad griever, or a bad person, for recognizing my need and doing something about it. For letting myself off the hook of being the comforter for everyone else, including my neighbors.

If you are hurting right now, feeling the sting of loss and disappointment or dreams unrealized, perhaps you, too, could find a balm. Something unexpected and sweet that doesn't numb you from your experience, but gives you a bit of a buffer of protection.

Is your balm to decline from going to baby showers or weddings? Is it to walk away from a friendship that causes you nothing but pain? Is it to log off social media for a good long while?

I don't know, but I send you love as you consider it.

Three

Jack didn't like the number 2.

At all.

If you have read Rare Bird, you'll know that as a little guy (around 6 years old) grappling with OCD, his compulsion was to "even things up." An inadvertent tap on the left leg meant a tap on the right HAD to follow, sometimes on a loop. OCD is a bossy illness, and who likes to be bossed around?

I'm not loving the number 2 right now either.

In my almost 47 years on earth, I do not remember living in such a divisive time. Me vs. You. Us vs. Them. Insiders vs. Outsiders. There is an attempt to make someone else into "other" in a way that says, "our differences are too great." I will stay right here in my box and not worry about what's happening to you over there in yours. I will close my eyes and cover my ears if necessary, or occupy myself with distractions if need be, but I will not see your pain.

No one wants to be a humble servant, and to be teachable, when power or perceived power is so much more alluring.

We value fame over mercy.

We'd rather be right than be kind, and oh, we're absolutely sure we are right.

We feel that money or status somehow equals value, and that poverty is a moral failing.

We have a hard time looking beyond our own experiences into those of someone of a different color, gender, or from a different culture.

The number 3 had an entirely different effect on Jack than 2 did. It was his favorite number. I was happy that baby Andrew was born on April 3rd, because I think his big brother would get a kick out of that.

Three reminds me of the trinity. The three persons of God-- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, push me out of my comfort zone. Three says, while it may hurt your brain to try to understand these distinct yet unified, equally important parts, here we are. I don't get to choose which person of God is "the best." The trinity continuously says NO to duality and YES to mystery. NO to "other" and YES to THREE.

The trinity says, "It's complicated, but we're holy, and we're here in it with you."

The difficulty it takes to grasp the Trinity, the three, leaves room for NOT knowing/understanding everything. To not oversimplifying. To being humble, and open, and not shutting down in the face of messiness or having our own weaknesses exposed. To asking for guidance and mercy as we try to grasp the infinite love of God, even when we see hate springing up all around us. Three not two.



"Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.

O, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love; For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; it is in dying that we are born again to eternal life."-- St. Francis of Assisi

Scandal

Today I let myself get sucked into the Ashley Madison hacking scandal. I clicked on a link that led me straight to a list of people in my area who were subscribers of the cheating site for married people. I tried to stop reading, but I couldn't make myself.

I really didn't know how I'd feel if I ran across someone I knew on the list.

It didn't take long to find out, for I saw name after name that was familiar to me.

How did I feel?

• I felt sick that cheating on one's spouse is as simple as signing up on a website. 

• I felt sick about the sheer number of people on the list, and the pain and betrayal represented.

• I felt sick that I was potentially seeing this highly personal information before the spouses and children did.

• And I felt sick that I had let my curiosity lead me down a path where I didn't belong. 

It's easy to say that those on the site literally SIGNED UP FOR this kind of scrutiny and judgment by giving their names, emails, and credit card numbers to a website with the tagline is "Life is Short. Have an Affair," but instead of focusing on their behavior, I felt convicted by mine.

I felt complicit in the pain that unsuspecting spouses are experiencing right now, or will be in the next few days. There is much discussion of karma, and about those who stray getting what they deserve. I understand that. As a straight-laced rule follower, the thought appeals to me. I am a seeker of LIGHT and TRUTH and believe that secrets that remain hidden do nothing but fester and rot. Because of this, I think good will come out of the scandal.

What doesn't appeal to me is the pain of the wronged spouses being compounded by the fact that this has aired in a public forum where friends and neighbors whom you bump into in the produce aisle can peer inside your marriage. Gracious. Life is hard enough as it is.

Here's a blog post that touched me today as I thought of the families who are or will be dealing with fall-out from the Ashley Madison scandal. There is not a one-size-fits-all response to infidelity, and I don't claim to have any advice, but I wanted to say if today has been a particularly, epically, publicly, brutal one for you, I am so sorry.

And as for my need to scour the list for names I knew, THIS is what was playing on a loop in my mind as I did it. I just wish I'd listened more closely:

"And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise."

Wonder-filled Wednesday

Six months after Jack died, my sister Liz ran along her usual trail in southwestern Virginia, trying to make sense of our loss, her loss. She had taken up running at around age 40, and since Jack's death it had become her refuge and her therapy. She would end up logging nearly 2000 miles that first year alone, moving from 10ks and half marathons to full marathons and eventually even a 50k in the grueling August heat.

But most of her runs were like this one, solitary, as she pounded the shit out of the path, crying out to in despair. She was a Christian yoga teacher as well, but she couldn't do yoga right now. She needed something brutal, punishing, and painful, like our new lives. Besides, who was she to be spouting off to her students about the goodness and provision of God when everything she'd ever believed felt cut off and upended now, lost in seconds in a stupid creek?

Sometimes she prayed to see a blue jay on her runs, ever since we'd started associating blue jays with our "rare bird." They rarely came. On this morning's run Liz was angry. Angrier than usual. Why give Jack a huge heart, if he couldn't use it beyond 12 years? Why did her kids have to suffer the loss of someone so beloved--  why did her son lose his best friend in the world? Why do evil and darkness and lies flourish? Why would she have to lose her mother so young, then her nephew, and now most likely her sister, changed forever by the scars of grief? And what did all this mean to her faith?

As Liz approached a familiar line of pine trees, she saw a flicker of color in one. Blue. Finally, a blue jay. Her breath caught and she smiled, then kept on running. The blue jay sailed up and flew to the next tree, further down the path. As Liz ran, so it flew, from tree to tree to tree until it disappeared into the woods.

The bird seemed playful, as if it were teasing her. Liz felt her anger dissipate. A peace washed over her. She told me later that the message she felt in that moment was, "I am okay and joyful and I love you. I know you are suffering. I am here to bring you joy and comfort."

Liz has since moved away from that town, from that trail. But she still looks for blue jays. She doesn't care when people tell her blue jays are ungainly creatures with a mean streak that runs a mile deep. That they aren't all that "rare." To her they are beautiful. And the one that kept her company that day was clever and loving and full of comfort.

Just like someone else she knew.