Category: widow’s tale

November 20, 2012 twelve days, widow's tale

The Hardest Day

12 Days of Thanksgiving: DAY TEN

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Mike.

I’m thankful for Mike.

I never imagined how painful it would be to write that. How much it seems to tear my mind apart. He hurt me so deeply on the day he died. In taking his own life. Abandoning life.
The lives of the children God gave us. He hurt me so deeply for years before that when I began losing him little by little each day. In many ways I felt like I lost myself in trying to be what was needed to help us all survive this situation. In the end, Mike didn’t survive.

It’s hard to push my thinking past that fact. You would think being thankful for my husband would be an easy one. I am and I have been. I AM thankful for Mike. His life. His character. His presence. But, I’m robbed of the joy of appreciating that blessing. At least for now. I’m robbed in the way depression and emotional struggles seemed to rob us of so many things. It blinds me sometimes with disappointment. Still, Mike was a blessing. To me. To our children. To so many people.

I’ve wanted to show the world some picture of the man I knew. The man I loved for so many years. Beyond his choice on this day two months ago. The day in September that makes THIS day the hardest in my 12-day journey toward Thanksgiving. I’ve wanted to see the man I knew as more of what he was. Beyond that defining moment. Before all this. Before the deep emotional issues plaguing him robbed me. Before I lost so much of him. A picture of the man I think he wanted to be. It’s a view of him that has been so obscured at times through our darkest days of dealing with mental illness and it’s warping of personalities.

Today, this is so hard to write, but necessary. One of my greatest prayers is that, in time, I will be able to think of Mike and speak of him with greater joy. That the flood of sorrow and disappointment brought by his death will be eclipsed by the joy that he lived.

Mike WAS a survivor.
The path of his childhood was a difficult one. He faced more struggles than I can imagine. Through the early evidences of depression — even as a young child, I believe — he developed his own personal ways of coping that amazed me. The resolve of his character allowed him to persevere and to emerge a gentle man.

Mike was kind.
It’s the attribute I think most describes him. He rarely raised his voice. He often had the ability to put himself in another’s shoes, showing empathy and sharing a compassionate word. I recognized through the years the great struggle it was for him to reign in his own thoughts and lay them aside to consider someone else. And yet, he set his mind to do it.

Mike was a seeker.
He challenged the popular phrases of religion. Simply because he had never heard them. But, he wanted to know. He wasn’t ashamed to say “what does this mean?” He committed himself over the years to be willing to ask questions.

Mike was disciplined.
I don’t know that there was ever anything for Mike that really came free and easy. Rather, he was so deliberate. About everything. This brought about a tremendous consistency. When he set his mind to form habits, he did.

Mike loved to play.
It’s one reason I think children loved him. He just enjoyed playing, and his playground was usually outdoors. He was a fisherman. And he rarely required tall tales to adequately describe his fishing trips. But, for Mike, he really didn’t need activity to enjoy Creation. He could sit and see and derive the peace he needed from it.

Mike could make you laugh.
He wasn’t gregarious by any means, and most people considered him to be quite shy. That’s probably what made him funny. His humor would sneak up on you. Dead-pan sincerity. Most people were shocked to learn he had great Elvis and John Wayne impersonations. They were funnier because they came from someone so quiet.

Mike was a helper.
He had a desire to serve. To lend a helping hand. We developed great memories in the early years of our marriage as he helped renovate our farm house. His help was always humble and filled with a willingness to do whatever was necessary.

Mike believed in Jesus.
His desire was to be the man God wanted him to be. It eclipsed every other pursuit in his life. And although he didn’t always succeed (none of us do), Mike worked hard to apply whatever admonishment came across his thinking. Mike’s faith was a simple one. A sincere one. He devoted himself to trusting God. I’ve said that he put all the faith he could muster into all he could understand about God. His was a true childlike faith, as God’s word describes.

Mike was a Daddy.
This in itself is remarkable because Mike never really had a father. His heart belonged to our three children, and he showed it through games and hugs and instruction and prayers and giving his time and attention. For as long as he could.

There are some things that must be said about Mike’s choice on September 20, 2012. Important, but hard truths that I won’t allow to become glossy in this tragedy of a life ended so young leaving a wife with three small children. But, those things are better left for another post. For this one, it is enough to say that Mike lived. And this is some of who he was. In these things, I have been blessed to share some of that life. And to have loved him at his best.

November 11, 2012 twelve days, widow's tale

In Everything

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12 Days of Thanksgiving: DAY ONE

“In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.” — 1 Thesalonians 5:18

On the second Sunday before Thanksgiving for the past four years, I’ve begun an essay series I’ve called the 12 Days of Thanksgiving. It started as an effort in my own spirit to give Thanksgiving its due in this season of goblins and harvests speeding toward Christmas cheer. So much of my writing and thinking through the years has been an endeavor to embrace more deeply elements of the Truth I try to hold to — elements held with whiter knuckles at some times than others. If there ever was a white knuckle time in my life, this is certainly it.

Its been hard for me to decide whether to write the 12 Days of Thanksgiving series this year. More difficult, still, than in other years when it also seemed hard. I conceived the first series in 2008 as posting each day for the 12 days leading up to Thanksgiving Day. Even in the most normal of circumstances, that consistency is tough for me. And, of course, I wouldn’t characterize this year as “normal.” The last thing I need is more pressure. More deadlines. More demands. More thoughts. Please, no more thoughts. So, I had almost talked myself out of it.

Still we are here on Day One.

To be honest, the idea of contemplating thanksgiving intimidated me. It made me tired. It still does. It is so much of a challenge to think of being thankful in the midst of so many other daunting emotions and tasks. And yet, every time I considered the impending holiday season — Thanksgiving — the little thought of “in everything” penetrated my thinking. Maybe I saw it on cards or paper napkins. Maybe it showed up in some holiday promotion or some such passing mention. Or, maybe I just heard it in my own spirit from words hidden in my heart years ago. The challenge was becoming insistent.

In everything.

My first reaction started with a “huh?” and moved quickly to a sigh. Another hard truth. Another confusing task. Another seemingly impossible hill to climb in the process of just breathing and moving and living these days. “In everything give thanks.” As in most truths I’ve found, the most challenging parts are what God doesn’t say — the succinctness of His word, his instruction, like so many of His actions. In these spare words, I try with all I have to trust it’s never too little. God’s word and His actions are never too little. But I wrestle with the notion that it’s also never too much.

In everything.

It doesn’t say in the obvious times. When we’re happy. When we understand. When the plate before us looks overflowing. When the path is well-worn and level. No, it says “in everything.” When a mind is ravaged by depression. When the specter of death looms larger than life. When a man chooses to take his life and you lose your husband. When you grieve that you really lost your partner long ago. When you’re alone and questioning. When you’re angry. And tired. When you look into the eyes of three young children and beg for wisdom. When you know you’ll never know more. When you have to go on. It says “in everything.”

As I began to really consider this tradition of writing about thanksgiving, I knew this little phrase, “in everything,” would be the theme. If I could possibly form any clear thoughts about it, find any real wisdom and understanding of it. In deciding, I looked back at the verse in my Bible — to the part beyond what gets printed on greeting cards and notepads. “For this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.”

When I read that again, I wanted to yell at the top of my lungs, “Thank you!” At least one definitive answer in this great and complicated ball of thinking. “For THIS is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.” After weeks and months and even years of what has felt like such intense searching at every moment for what God wanted me to do, just WHAT He was doing — what was best or doable or possible or good or wise or safe or free or kind or sane in an impossible and mind-blowing situation — to hear one small, but definitive answer was a relief. Such a relief. I may not understand much of anything right now. I may not know the what or how or when or certainly why of anything. But, in this one moment at least I know one thing… in everything give thanks, for THIS is the will of God for me in Christ Jesus.

And so I’m writing twelve essays for the purpose of understanding the role of giving thanks in this most challenging season of my life. I might be late. (Like I am tonight.) Or inconsistent. I might include thoughts I’ve already been working on, just tempered through the lens of thanksgiving. I might even brush against the silliness and light-hearted thoughts that have been sprinkled into past years — the thoughts that seem so elusive at times now. The best I can articulate on some days may be mere words or single sentences. But, I’m determined to do at least this one thing I know matches up with the truths I’ve held so dear.

In everything give thanks.

October 8, 2012 widow's tale

Moments

Today writing is a chore. Like washing dishes or dusting. I like the results. I need the results. It’s the doing that often becomes so hard — the discipline of doing something I know is good even though it’s so hard to muster the motivation.

Writing is the least of so many things like that for me right now. The slow efforts of remembering. And forgetting. Of moving. Of routine. I’m starting to pick up my habits again, the daily routines that make for normal. My normal, at least. I’m trying to draw and write and cook and read and work, though these things sometimes feel like chores. We’re returning to bedtime routines and extracurricular schedules, movie nights and afternoons of yard work. We’re doing Fall things — celebrations the children are each clamoring for in this season. They are experiences that would never feel like chores except in these lingering moments when I’m so intimidated by them. And so awed by the living of them.

It’s been two and a half weeks since my husband Mike died. It seems like so much longer. And so much shorter all at the same time. In my mind, each day seems to have stretched and stretched. Each hour, even. And yet, at any given moment, I can tap into that continuous play in my head of the last morning I saw him. The color of the shirt was he wearing. What was it? What he said. The pained look on his face. I know it was there. How I heard myself respond. The mundane facts I shared. The children’s comments I added. The hard choices I was making. The important things I’m so thankful I spoke. The ones I withheld. Reconciling his last words to me. What was different that morning. What was the same. Him closing the door. And what in the world he did after that? All the things that will live only in my ridiculous imagination, too raw to really be spoken.

Even as I’m sitting with the sun warming my back, I can’t shake the chill of his choices that Thursday. His steps, whatever they were, creep along through my mind. Even as I take my own best wisdom — gleaned from God and so many friends and my own experiences — to focus on what I know. To recognize what can’t be known. To resist the simple indictment: This caused that. Or, that would have helped him do this. I see the wisdom. I can even embrace it, but I know. The continual replay is there. Ready to invade my thinking at the least provocation.

To say he is free from his struggle now is such an angry and inadequate but glittering truth.

This Bible verse keeps running through my head. I think I’ve written about it before…

“So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom.” 

A heart of wisdom — an understanding that seems so elusive when I am tracing and stretching and rushing to these moments in my mind. All the decisions made and yet to face. When to stay. When to leave. When to speak. When to silence. When to seek. When to hide. When to press. When to release. When to cry. When to laugh. When it’s OK to laugh. When to dream and hope. And remember. And remind. And live. Again.

Sometimes the struggle comes in trying to pull even one clear note from the sheer cacophony of emotions and thoughts zooming through my head in this numbering of hours — this marking of moments and words and movements and feelings. Still I want to mark them. To write them and remember them and forget them. To experience them in whatever depth they emerge without hiding. All these moments spinning through my mind. I step over them. And around them. And sometimes I plow through them to unearth the truer picture. And I know I will march across them — whatever minefield laid out — until I find that path of broader wisdom. Of putting these moments in their context. Of starting again.

Habit by habit and moment by moment, I’m starting again. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. A little each day. I’m starting.

September 29, 2012 beautiful ordinary, widow's tale

Saturday

I’m listening to the early morning sounds of my babies waking up. My parents are here, so I’m given the privilege of sleeping in when they begin to stir. There are whispers of conversations because they know Mommy is sleeping. Or trying to. Soft and tender words spoken just to themselves and their imaginations, unaware and unhindered by self-consciousness. Something about sharing and lunch and babies. The little patters down the hallway rush to get this or that. Faint sounds of electronics let me know they are piled up in the living room — our Mario Bros and Transformer “tech” paired with some intermittent rattling I’m now convinced is a toy mixer. There’s that thick cough I’ve been concerned about. The on-and-off of the air conditioner briefly dims the sounds and now I can hear the Weather Channel forecasting the day. And maybe the dishwasher.

They are the sounds of normal. And so very daunting. I know getting up will get easier. I know moving will get easier. I know the fatigue will lessen and the sleep will become more sound and the rising of the sun will just get easier. But now it’s so daunting.

When I hear these sounds, I’m so intimidated and overwhelmed to face them. Yes, it’s intimidating to think of dealing with their grief in whatever unexpected ways it comes out and the sadness I know they feel. But, more than that, it’s their overwhelming normal-ness I’m not sure I’m ready for. They are SO glaringly normal. Their blessed youth and innocence of this life makes normal so much larger for them and unquestioned. They are still young enough to be a little confused by time and place. And absence. And so today is just Saturday, like most Saturdays. A new day.

They deserve this day. This new day. They deserve that great luxury called normal. And as I continue to listen — someone’s winning a race with Bowser and Baby Girl has chosen another puzzle — I can almost know the sound of normal in my own spirit. It’s only a faint rumble. And it brings this strange guilt and shame and sorrow and loss. Which I know is all, yes, normal. Hearing it, I can almost be ready for this day. This ridiculously normal Saturday. I can almost be excited for this new day with them. Almost. And almost is something. It’s something.

“The Lord’s mercies indeed never cease. They are new every morning. Great is His faithfulness.”

September 27, 2012 widow's tale

We Are Alive

Is it ok to write about this? I’m asking myself that question — almost afraid to ask anyone else for fear their shock might escape. And I would hear their shush that this should be private. Because it is so unspeakable.

Is it ok to write about it? And expose such a gaping but multi-layered wound to the world’s scrutiny? My husband is dead. One week ago he ended his life. He chose to leave this world. And our three children. And me. And any hope of our family. Now I’m facing his choice after so many years of living and loving and moving and working and creating and answering and questioning and accepting and raging with him in this struggle. A struggle that made me hate him. And love him. And pressure him. And comfort him. Years of relearning and protecting and coping. Of being so proud of his effort. And so frustrated by his continued battle. At times with laughter and hope and the stretching of our faith. At times with silence and disappointment and stubbornness. All in a sea of thinking and thinking. So much thinking. Now his struggle is done. And mine is born again with a much larger and more daunting face.

Even as I write these things, I know it’s so much more complicated than what I can articulate. What I already recognize I’ll never know is so very much more complicated than anything I can say in these early moments. I’ve always used writing as a window to help me fling open the realities in my own soul. So that I could look at them. In some sort of logical way and glean some kind of larger truth or pattern. Now, in these days of realities that seem to defy any logic, I wonder. Am I able to write them? Do I have the courage to turn the screw in what I know will unplug a whole well of thoughts and emotions and realities and maybe truths? Can I give myself permission to embrace stigma and shame and sorrow to write these stories? I don’t know beyond today, but I do know one thing.

Our healing begins with this: We are alive. WE ARE ALIVE. And each day that we choose this precious life we’ve been given is a victory. Simply choosing to experience this life in whatever painful or joyous or even unspeakable way it presents itself may be the only victory I experience today. Just waking up and choosing to move may be my day’s only victory. But, I’ll take it. I’LL TAKE IT. And use it as fuel to claim the next one. Until that which I know without question is true replaces the doubts. Until I conquer each demon that dominates my thinking. Until I peel away each and every layer of all these complicated emotions. Until I see them surpassed with new joy and new hope and new living. Until the very best I know of this kind and gentle man called Mike rises to the surface to live in our memories. Until we laugh and run and leap and shout and sing. Until I KNOW. And believe. And embrace this one profound fact: WE ARE ALIVE.