Category Archives: Grieving

Dear Nate,

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Yesterday was your birthday, or at least it would have been, had you lived. You died a few weeks after we turned 64 (ten days apart), and this year I turned 67 without you.

Remember how we always celebrated together? The kids would plan a “double-whammy” party, complete with a treasure hunt for our gifts. Their enthusiasm rubbed off on us, and before we knew it we were playing all their silly games with gusto.

The birthday cakes they concocted tasted pretty good coming from such young bakers, but of course even earthly angel food cake could never match whatever heavenly food you’re enjoying now. Maybe you don’t have to eat at all, but my bet is you’re partaking of all kinds of delectable goodies.

Since you left us, life has changed considerably for our family. Four new grandchildren have been added, with another due 8 weeks from today. I wonder what you’d think about Birgitta’s unplanned baby. Although we’re predicting a mix of happiness and struggle, you probably see it differently. Since you live free of calendar dictatorship and the bondage of the clock, maybe you’ve already met this 7th grandchild. While we wait, you may know.

I think often about you, sometimes every hour, always wondering what you’re doing. This morning I was remembering Jesus’ departure from earth to heaven, relating to the disappointment of the disciples who loved him so much. He said, “You can’t go where I’m going,” and they must have been miserable, wondering how they were going to live without him.

I know just how they felt.

When you left the earth, I couldn’t accompany you either. But Jesus encouraged his disappointed disciples by saying, “If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father.” (John 14:28) As unhappy as I was when you first left, I can now genuinely say, “Because I love you, I’m glad you’ve gone to the Father.” Besides, my turn will come, just as it did for all the disciples.

You probably know that these days I’m not blogging about you nearly as much on my web site. Sometimes I feel funny about that, but it’s happening because my heart is feeling much better. I rarely think about your cancer anymore but dwell more on our good times together. Paging through old photo albums this week has made me appreciate you more than ever, and I wish I had thanked you more often, when I had the chance.

I’m glad I can write this letter while thinking about you and your special day, August 18. Although you’ll never again go on a treasure hunt for your presents, surely that doesn’t matter now. These days every minute of every day is found-treasure for you.

“I will give you hidden treasures, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord.” (Isaiah 45:3)

Dialogue in a Deli

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On Friday I drove the 90 miles from southwest Michigan to Chicago, back to a place I call “Nate’s hospital.” It’s the place where we learned he had terminal cancer, where we drove the long round trip 14 times for radiation treatments, and where we met Dr. Ross Abrams.

Dr. Abrams had the difficult job of delivering one piece of bad news after another to our family as Nate struggled through his 6 weeks of cancer. The doctor also positioned himself to be our soft place to fall after each new (and always bad) development. Somehow, in the 2½ years since those dark days, the doctor and I have found enough common ground to become friends.

The relationship is based on respect for one another, fleshed out in hour-long conversations that take place only once every few months. All of our meetings are at Nate’s hospital. This time as I arrived to connect with Dr. Abrams he said, “Let’s talk upstairs in the deli rather than in my office.”

As I followed him through a labyrinth of halls, everything suddenly looked familiar. And as we came to the deli, which was full of medical personnel eating breakfast in their scrubs and white coats, a Nate-memory swallowed me up. I’d sat in that place before on one of Nate’s most difficult cancer days, and the feelings of confronting a hopeless disease came rushing back.

Nate’s brother had accompanied us to radiation that day, after which Nate was scheduled for a full body bone scan, the kind that requires an injection of dye beforehand. Those three appointments (for the injection, the radiation, and the scan) were supposed to take 4 hours total, but a big delay between appointments #2 and #3 found us waiting two extra hours.

That’s when Nate, Ken, and I ended up in the deli, a beautiful facility well stocked with goodies. My memories of that visit are only of sadness, frustration, and a husband in pain. Unbeknownst to us that day, Nate wouldn’t live out the month.

So this last Friday when Dr. Abrams and I sat down at a deli table with our coffees, it was difficult to focus forward rather than back. We talked about the sloppy realities of birth and death, marveling at how these two events have much in common. We touched on life’s disappointments and the unwelcome challenges that come to us. And we agreed that many of these things are tests from God.

I am an evangelical Christian, and Dr. Abrams is an orthodox Jew. Each of us knows what the other believes, and we disagree on many of the religious basics. So why do we keep meeting? What’s the point of our conversations? I’m not sure. Maybe it’s because I’m curious about his faith, and he’s curious about mine.

Whatever the reason, I have a hunch God is at the center of it.

“If someone asks about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it. But do this in a gentle and respectful way.” (1 Peter 3:15-16)

Camaraderie over a Cross

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Yesterday while at Walmart, I was on my way to the check-out through the seasonal aisle when something made me stop. Though the shelves were loaded with flags, red-white-and-blue merchandise, ice chests on wheels, and patriotic novelties, at the end stood a woman inspecting something that wasn’t festive at all: a wooden cross decorated with silk flowers.

Memorial Day had just passed, and the crosses had all been marked down for quick sale. But what did they have to do with Memorial Day?

When I was growing up, the name most frequently used for this holiday was Decoration Day. Families made time for a trip to the cemetery before the last Monday of the month, putting flowers, crosses, or flags on their family graves. Picnicking would come on that Monday, but serious thoughts of loved ones who’d already died came ahead of that.

The Walmart cross display let me know there were still people who followed the grave-decorating tradition, and apparently I was standing down the aisle from one of them. A woman studied the crosses, and I studied her, wondering what was going through her head. She picked one up, gently running her hand across the artificial white flowers.

Who had she buried? And how long ago? Was her heart still hurting as she held the cross? More importantly, did she have a relationship with God? Did she know he had gained victory over death?

As rambunctious kids a few feet from us begged their mothers to buy fireworks, I thought about how serious life becomes after death hits a family. When we were children, we didn’t think about death until a grandpa or great auntie died. Then we watched adults struggle with tears and became aware that death was a big deal, something unusual, unpleasant, and severe.

But of course it doesn’t have to be. In my prayer group this morning, one of the ladies asked the Lord to “take” a woman on our list who was in physical pain and a slow decline. If death was only unpleasant and severe, we couldn’t have justified praying like that. But because our friend was sure of her heavenly destination, asking God for her death was a way to bless her life.

As I stood and watched a stranger struggle over what to do with a Walmart cross, I felt a certain camaraderie with her. I, too, often thought of several important family graves. Eventually the woman gently put the cross back in its place on the shelf and then covered her mouth with her hand, an outward sign of inward turmoil.

In the end, she just walked away.

I hoped she knew about the cross, the one on Calvary, where Jesus’ blasted the power of death like a flame explodes a firecracker. Boom! Gone! Calvary’s cross had no decorative flowers, but what happened there is the one and only reason we could sincerely pray for our dying friend, “Lord, please take her.”

“He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” (Romans 4:25)