This road, it's a long one, but it's not without love

I've survived one week, and the looping thoughts like he was here this day last week, or we were doing that on this day last week, etc., have now been bumped by the date. I'm not past the point where my body wants to refuse food. Thankfully, however, I am past the point where my stomach violently returns whatever I've eaten. In seven days, my body has dropped 15 pounds. It's startling and unhealthy, but I am addressing it through liquid nutritional supplement meals. I'm able to sleep for longer stretches through the night. And today I have not cried. Not one single tear has fallen from these sore eyes. Lord, progress comes slowly, but it does come.

It's hard enough to be broken, to realize you can't go through it on your own, to not know what to do. And to admit it. It's hard to realize and say out loud, I need help. But there have been friends who have let me say it. And they've shown up. There have been arms and hearts and compassion. There were (and are) stretches of days this week when my dear friend in Vermont has called me hourly, letting me pour out my heart to her, and speaking to me in a tone of such love and compassion that I could close my eyes and feel her fingers rubbing my forehead and she could actually calm me. It's been torture for her to be apart from me as I've gone through this, but she has closed the distance and we've been together.

I didn't leave the house much at all this past week because I haven't felt able to and even if I had, I've been unable to drive with the crying and shaking. Two different friends have taken time from their days to take me to two different very necessary doctor appointments, and wait for me in the sterile boredom of a waiting room with year-old magazines. One friend delivered flowers to my door, with a canister of warm chicken soup. She just showed up and rang the doorbell. One friend talked to me for much of her drive from Dallas to Houston, letting me speak and returning strong belief in me and support of me. And one friend hung the flagpole and flag from the side of my house today, a gift she'd given me for my birthday last year but one I lacked the equipment and knowledge to hang myself. I needed, really needed, some change in this house so that I could feel it was my own and be comfortable here again. She and another friend have helped me with those changes this week. Inside and out. The closets, the electronics, the garage organization, furniture arrangement, storage, you name it. There they were, beside me, helping me figure it out.

I've received some wonderful support from comments made from friends here as well. Wise and compassionate words I've read again and again.

Yesterday, I could again drive on my own, a bit shaky but not risky. I went to my mother's and sat on her bed beside her, crying as I unraveled the story and told her that he was gone and that my heart was broken. While she couldn't answer me when I confessed I had no idea what to do, she did express her sorrow and pulled me close to her, where I sobbed on her chest as she rubbed her fingers through my hair. I needed my mother and for those moments, she was there, right there, loving me and consoling me. Once again I was the daughter and she was mothering my wounds with all her love. God works miracles and that was one. A small one in the grand scheme of things, but monumental to me. Absolutely monumental.

These are gifts of time and patience, compassion and love.

And then there's Jessie. Jessie who has been in my life I was two years old. She's changed my diapers, walked me to school, taught me to braid and has always called me her Sweet Baby. Jessie who worked for my mother and father cleaning their house three times a week for most of my life until her body got too old for that type of physical labor. Jessie is part of the family, and my third parent in my heart. On Valentine's Day, she called me to wish me a happy day. She immediately picked up the sadness in my voice and I spoke to her of it.

And she said to me, Sweet baby, I have something here and I want to read it to you: God is love. Love always takes away pain. Love opens all doors and love changes the impossible. Love soothes the wounded heart and soul. Love takes away fear and love goes beyond one's feeling. Love brightens one's day, and soothes all situations. Love heals the broken heart. Love grants a brand new day. Love is full of grace and mercy. God is love. And you are my sweet baby, and I love you.

As she was reading to me, I felt that she was saving my life. I wrote down her words as she was speaking, so that later I could wrap them around me in her voice and let them soothe me again. As I sit here right now and read them one more time, my sad heart feels some warmth seeping in. Because those words she read me, they are amazing and true. Love does change the impossible, and love is full of grace and mercy. I've been shown so much of it this past week, and it has helped me face each day and get through it when I had no idea that I could do so.

By the grace of God's love, through prayers, and the love and devotion of dear, dear friends, I am able to take steps. This road will be a long one for me, but I have stepped onto it and for now that is enough. Tomorrow is a new day and I'll be in it. Burdened with heavy heart, absolutely, but I will be there.

My Little Brown Valentine

What I know today

I know that once despair fades, progress can begin. Despair is what I feel though, heavy and dark. Despair is the dividing line between those who can take impossibility in stride and those who wilt with its weight. I'm strong, I know, but even the strong can stumble and fall, even strength can be worn down. A sympathetic friend said to me this morning, You've been around the bend this past year, this is the last thing you needed. That's it right there, my erosion and, the last thing I needed, my fall.

In the past few days I've come to understand that despair absorbs strength, strength gives way to weakness and the weakness robs us of our will to overcome.

I know I need courage to find that will again. I know I need to be brave. I know the despair needs to fade so that progress can begin. I am doing what I can.

If you could read this

Today is your birthday. Today is also the fourth day that I've been able to do little more than cry. Sleep is elusive, eating impossible. Friends are worried about me. One says to me on the phone, you're not coping. It's true. I'm not dealing with this with any sort of success at all. She pleads with me to go see a doctor, ask him for something to help me through this. I don't want to medicate myself but also can't stand the weight of the pain, the feeling of hopelessness. On the way to the doctor, I cried at the irony of it all. You got off medicine when you were here because you were happy and could think clearly, and now that you're gone, I'm being urged to get on something. Bittersweet irony, that one.

You left me to fix what you left behind when you came to me. When you returned, you broke me. I don't want to be broken. That you love me now or still, and miss me now, only saddens me deeper. You are not here and you will not be here again. Friends ask me how I know that, and I tell them it's the truth, I know. I will not see you again.

Right now, I sit here in the deafening silence of this house that was just so recently filled with our voices, laughter, touch, happiness. Our togetherness. Right now, it's as empty as I am. I just don't know what to do.

This is a man's world

I stand beside his absence. Insomnia and pain, my new companions. I understand that it will take time to heal, I do. I am living my minutes waiting for them to evolve into hours, and the hours to turn into days, the days into forgetfulness. My friends are confused and angry. With him. They are protective of me, bless them, but anger is not what I can hear right now; anger is not what I feel.

I feel fear. I am afraid because the love I feel lives on in my heart. I am afraid because I have not heard his voice. Afraid because he lived here and we had made this house into our home. Now it's back to my home, and I'm afraid of being here with his absence, afraid to be here with the ghosts.

I am afraid because of the pain left for me in the wake he left behind when he drove out of my life.

Tomorrow is his birthday. On my fridge are two Bob Seger tickets held by a magnet from a trip we took over Christmas. The concert was one of my gifts to him, a show we were both looking forward to; one neither of us will be attending.

The problem is that my love is pure, and very much alive. The problem is the sadness I'm left with. And I don't know what to do with it, or myself. But I can tell you this time he's gone for good. I know that, and I suffer that now.

Wednesday is Valentine's Day.

Hey internet, can you spare a rock large enough for me to hide under?

Wednesday's child is full of woe

It's 5:30 in the morning. I'm drinking coffee, burning a candle, smoking a cigarette from the pack you left behind. Your absence and my emptiness fill this place. You left a book, a photo, a Christmas present I had given you. You left your creamer in the fridge, your cookies, and the jam that you like. You left movies for me to return. You left empty shelves in the garage, your bike hooks hanging from the ceiling, and spaces of nothing and empty hangers in the closets. You left an emptiness in our bed. At the bottom of a note I'd written to you weeks ago, you wrote that love is never wasted, and you'd always love me.

What's left are all the boxes I filled to make room for you, all the changes and effort I made for you, all the holes I have to fill, the sadness I feel. And this weighty quiet.

Oh, and me. I'm here.

Two years ago today I sat in the front pew at my Father's funeral. Today I sit across from the chair you sat in just yesterday morning.

Timing never was your strong point.

My girl

It's hard to tell if those are ears or devil horns atop her brown head. I know what most of those who know her would say. In fact, a friend once gave me a framed photo of her for Christmas. The frame was red, and printed on it were the words Devil Dog. It was a two-part gift that came with a framed photo of her dog. That frame was green, and printed on it were the words Angel Dog.

Though she is loved by many, I am clearly the only one able to see her halo.

What can I say?

I wish I could remember the exact details, the dates, the paths and links of how I found her. I had seen her site and she had seen mine. I had commented; she had commented. She knew who I was but I did not know the same of her. On a comment I had made to one of her posts, she commented back and eluded that she knew me. Intrigued, we exchanged a few more comments and then went to personal email addresses for her story.

Turns out that she used to work for my father's company in Louisiana. We did know each other. She took mercy on me a long while ago when my father sent me to that office to conduct some writing workshops. I was fresh out of college, very green and very nervous. I wouldn't dream of admitting my shattered nerves at the time but she sensed it, and she calmed me down, graciously and without a hint that she was in on my secret. I could not have gotten through that day without her.

She found my site by googling my father's name after he died. In our email exchange she shared things with me that I'll keep between the two of us, but she also told me that my site was one of the reasons she started blogging. I'm honored by that because I enjoy reading her words daily, and in a way that is my own, each time I go to her site, I feel a connection to the page because what's there are the life and words of someone my father admired.

Last night she sent me an email:

Just a note to send a few warm vibes your way to maybe help you through a difficult day tomorrow. I feel the same kind of admiration for you that I've always felt for your father. You're so strong, your instincts so natural and good, that he must be beaming with pride at how much grace you've shown under the pressure of the last two years.

There'll be a Louisiana arm stretched out to wrap around your shoulder all day tomorrow. Lean on it if you need to.

Receiving an email like that from a woman like her is better than being a little girl and finding the prize I'd hoped for at the bottom of a Cracker Jack Box. It's the kind of gift that reminds me how loved my father was, by so many people outside his family. It's a gift that reminds me of what a wonderful and kind and generous man he was and how very lucky I was to draw him as my father. Luck doesn't begin to describe it. You had to know him to understand the honesty in those words.

Several months ago, my Louisiana friend sent me a couple photos of my father. Photos I'd not seen before, which are a wonderful thing to have after you've lost someone. This one in particular, I adore. That's my father in one of his elements. A work party, with people he respected and enjoyed, a cocktail in hand. A smile on his face. (The only things missing would be a boat and a fish.) You can't tell in a black and white photo, but that shirt he's wearing was very colorful. The man liked his colors. Seeing this photo, I don't see black and white, I see those colors. And that puts a smile on my face.

I share the story and the photo today because both warm my heart and both have aided in making this day less about mourning and more about celebrating the amazing man, and the awesome life that was his. As time passes, this is how it should be.

Today, I have worked, visited my mother, and spent some quiet and prayerful time in the chapel at our church. I've read emails and taken phone calls from generous and caring friends. Shortly, I'm going to meet a friend to drink a martini in my father's honor.

Simple remedies, simple kindnesses, and a long arm from Louisiana, they help to heal the deepest grief. In being reminded I am not alone, there is healing. In that healing, I am able to carry on.

On the eve of my reality

A good friend of mine once told me that when you see a red Cardinal it's God's way of telling you that your loved ones are doing okay, safely in his hands. Naturally, I like that bit of folklore.

This weekend, I saw several Cardinals. They were at the feeder hanging from the low branch of the Live Oak beside the back porch, and they were in the woods across the way from the back porch. I smiled at each sighting as if I were seeing a signal from my father - not a drifting white feather, but a bright burst of red life.

The entire weekend was of birds. Finches and Chickadees, Hawks and Sparrows. The trees were alive with their chirping and twittering, calling and hooting. With the bedroom windows open, I awoke to their songs at dawn, pulled up the covers and snuggled deeper into the music and the breeze seeping through the screen and over my skin. This morning, I poured a hot cup of coffee, wrapped myself in a blanket, and sat outside listening to the symphony of bird sounds.



It was only after the sun rose high enough to send the chorus into hiding that I glanced over at his chair. And could not move my eyes. Soaking through me was the awareness that he's been there, right there in that chair, listening to the same morning songs as I. Time's seesaw of it all, him once there and now no longer, me there still. And the sights and sounds carrying on without him, but me still there to witness.



Tomorrow is another day, another X on the calendar. A day, a date, a year. A memory possessing the pull of gravity. Time is linear not round and yet the years circle back, dates collide with my heart. So well I can set my watch by them.

This afternoon, the sun was shining open and warm. Even though I had a doctor appointment and just enough time to make it there, I looked at Cheyenne and thought time would have to wait. I could not leave without going on a walk beforehand, would not rob myself of a few more minutes in the warm air and bright day. As we strolled the path, she sniffed out mysterious scents of interest and I connected with mysterious gifts awaiting me. The old Oak on the river's bank, one, and the drooping and open seedpods, two. The strength and stature of age, the delicate beauty of life and renewal.



In the roots and stretch of that tree, I saw him. In the renewal and promise of those seeds, I saw me. In the distance between, I saw us. The words of W.B. Yeats whispered through my mind,

O Chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music,
O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

On the eve of my memory

The drive to the cabin can take over two hours, or a little under two hours. Depends on which route you take out of Houston, and how many stops you make along the way. We got a late start out of town this morning and we took the long way, but I wonder if we left any earlier would we have seen the hawks along the Farm Roads. Seven hawks. Regal and rare.

I came down here to feel close to my father, to pass through this weekend in a place where he used to spend much of his time, to a place where I can still see him standing in the kitchen, or sitting in his chair. I came here to spend my weekend with him in the way I feel best - surrounded by the nature he loved. I came here to feel him in my heart while I put my feet in the grass and gazed through the winter trees, leafless and cold, revealing a broader view of the unknowing sky.

As darkness pulled its blanket over the light of the day, a fiery strip of orange hummed like an electric riptide unzipping the blue. In the woods across from the house, an owl called out, a young hawk circled. Cheyenne chased an Armadillo. All else was quiet and still. That's what I wanted from today. The earth's sounds but otherwise the odd comfort of winter quiet.

It was the kind of day he would have loved. He would have paused on the back porch, set his mighty hands on the wooden rail and observed the land, the sky, the owl and the hawk. He would have enjoyed the chill in the air and he would have done as I did - take a deep breath, take in the moment, feel at peace.

Standing at the rail as I was, and thinking about him as I was, I could have cried but instead allowed the smile that I was also feeling. Because as much as I miss him and as much as my heart aches, I know that this apple did not fall far from his tree. Seeing a day like today, a day that he would have relished in, and to live it while feeling him in my heart, so that in a way that transends the distance we are for the moment together again, that's the kind of good feeling that I've learned to take.