Yearly Archives: 2010

One Year Ago: Part II

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Thinking back to the significant events of a year ago with Nate’s cancer dominating him, I’ve been reading my own blog posts: Sept. 27, the shock of diagnosis; Sept. 28, last day at work; Sept. 29, first radiation treatment; and Sept. 30, a difficult treatment day.

I’m letting my mind think back to that time just until the 42 dates have passed. And then, I tell myself, I won’t do it again. My widow pals say, “Go ahead and spend time remembering. Experience it again. It’s the most dramatic time of your life and won’t be dismissed without acknowledging the pain.”

And so I’m there.

Although reading the blog this week and looking at my 2009 calendar has been an exercise in mourning accompanied by occasional weeping, for the most part it’s been manageable and has made me appreciate Nate more than ever. But today a dam broke.

I was cleaning house in preparation for the arrival of nine college friends, sweeping up swirling clouds of Jack’s dog hair. Trying to slide a living room chair aside, I felt resistance so reached underneath, pulling out a child’s puzzle, the kind with tiny knobs on each piece for little toddler fingers. I’d bought it for Skylar, and when she recently visited, we’d found the other puzzles but not that one, the newest one.

With a rush of emotion, I knew it had to have been shoved under the chair a year ago when all of us daily sat with Nate in the living room. That one realization zapped me like an electrical shock, and I started to sob. When the puzzle went under the chair, Nate was still alive. Instantly I was swamped with overpowering longing to go back to this date a year ago; memories and blog reports weren’t good enough. I wanted to go back for real, to have Nate with me again.

Finding the puzzle produced a wrenching moment of impossibility without any remedy, and I could hardly stand it. The only thing to do was to pick up my broom and sweep… and sob.

In several more minutes the floor was clean and the crying was over. But then I thought of all the different reasons people cry, all the tough situations life brings. The variety is endless, and tears eventually come to all of us. No one is exempt from the feeling of “wrenching impossibility.”

As difficult as it was to experience that today, my gut instinct tells me it was a few moments of healing. I believe God orchestrates these blips on our emotional screens to distance ourselves from the heartbreaks in our history and bring us to a better reality absent of wrenching impossibility. This doesn’t mean new heartbreak won’t come. But somehow knowing we’ve made it through one disaster will help us get through another.

Before I put the puzzle away, I stared at it for a minute. I wanted to picture my grandchildren playing with it rather than the circle of sad family members in the living room last fall. And with the cheery mental picture of those little ones, I knew I could move forward.

At least for now.

“He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:4)

“It takes a village.”

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I love Hillary Clinton’s book title, because that’s true for all of us. We need each other. None of us gets life right by ourselves, and seeking counsel from mentors is wise, even scriptural. Four centuries before Hillary wrote her book, John Donne put the same idea in different words: “No man is an island.”

Because of Cousin Jan’s visit here from California (yesterday’s post), I’ve been reminiscing about her mom, my Aunt Joyce, who mentored me for 39 years. I clearly remember when it began. I’d just arrived in California as a college sophomore for a second happy summer of living with my cousins. A mob of us had finished lunch, and everyone had left the table except my aunt and me.

She said, “I know you had a great time here last summer, but you can’t be sure it’ll be the same this year. It could go either way.”

I nodded and took it in, thinking about her words long after I’d left the table. Her counsel had been practical and sensible, and in offering it, she’d put a welcome mat between us, inviting me to come to her any time. Over many years, I took full advantage of the offer.

Aunt Joyce faithfully prayed for me and offered counsel until she died in 2005, at the age of 92. Most of her guidance came in handwritten letters which I’ve saved, and I’m looking forward to reopening them one at a time every so often, in order to gain additional wisdom from this godly woman and friend.

It’s possible the miles between us actually enhanced her mentoring. Neither of us had to clean house or make muffins when we “talked”. Our calendars were not clogged with get-togethers, because most of our communicating took place through the mail. But the bond was stronger than distance and bridged several generations. Before she died, she’d begun mentoring our daughter Linnea and was spending large chunks of time praying for each of our family members.

The beauty of mentoring is its non-threatening, non-pressured atmosphere. Aunt Joyce wasn’t my mother, a police woman or a preacher. With all restrictions lifted, she could be herself (the wise aunt I admired), and I could be myself (openly seeking without being judged).

We see biblical mentoring throughout Scripture: Joshua mentored by Moses, Mary by Elizabeth, Barnabas by Paul and of course the twelve disciples by Jesus. And just like I still have Aunt Joyce’s letters, all of us are privy to biblical mentoring through the pages of our Bibles.

When I lost my earthly mentor, she left a void no other woman could fill, so I asked the Lord if he would be to me what Aunt Joyce had been. Although he often uses “the whole village” to bring us through, he’s also just fine with doing it all by himself.

“For this God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end.” (Psalm 48:14)

No Cousins in God’s Family

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For the last couple of weeks, we’ve had the pleasure of a visit from cousin Jan. Our two families-of-origin began in the same Chicago neighborhood, but when Jan’s family moved to California, a 2000 mile gap separated us. The distance between Chicago and Los Angeles, however, didn’t pull us apart. Our four parents enthusiastically pursued time together, no small feat during the fifties and sixties. “Regular” people didn’t use airplanes without a good reason, like a wedding or funeral, but our folks decided togetherness was reason enough.

My first train ride was to California. First plane ride, too. As we visited repeatedly, our cousins’ west coast friends became our friends and vice versa. When we got older, our parents swapped children for chunks of time, which served to cement relationships further. We viewed our cousins almost as siblings, and I remember feeling great joy when Mom said, “If anything happens to Dad and me, Aunt Joyce and Uncle Edward will be your parents.”

During three college summers I lived with these cousins, adopting California as my second home and landing my first real job there (i.e. one that produced a W-2), waitressing in a small diner… with my cousin.

We’ve always labeled Jan “the easiest guest on the planet,” because she fits in so well with what’s already going on. She’s eager to join in and also work with and for us, no task too tough or distasteful.

I’ll be forever grateful she was willing to organize my 388 blog posts with dates, titles, Scriptures and summaries… on a beautiful grid, no less! Although we’ve been keeping her busy, she maintains a spirit of good cheer, finding something positive in every situation.

In chatting about our lifelong cousinly relationship, asking each other what makes it so good, Jan said, “It’s a comfort to realize you’ve known me since I was born. We have history, and when we’re together, I can just be me. I know we’ll love each other no matter what.” That goes both ways.

What a blessing for someone to be fully known and still genuinely loved. Not everyone is blessed to have cousins who remain this close through decades of time. They might come from small families without any cousins at all, but once we become God’s children, we all have a giant set of relatives. Never mind that his family has no cousins in it. Instead it’s all about siblings, and amazingly, siblings of Jesus himself. That makes us “sisters in Christ” or “brothers in the Lord.”

Once we are in God’s family through Jesus, we have family history with him, too, since what he did on the cross drew us in. He fully knows us yet will always love us.

And when each of us is with the Lord, we can “just be me.”

”The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.” (Romans 8:16-17a)