Category Archives: my story

What Mama Did: The Song and The Dance

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I’ve been spending the week reading LisaJo Baker’s series, “What Mama Did.”  Lisa invited some friends to share their stories of what their mothers did that left a mark on them.

What are we doing as mothers that will leave a mark upon our kids? Perhaps it’s not what we think.  Tell me all about what your mama did that made her yours…. 

It’s been bittersweet for my heart to read through these this week, an odd mix of joy and jealousy.  So many of the lovely memories my Mom endeavored to make for us were marred by her mental illness and eventual suicide.

Yet the longer I spend on my own motherhood journey, the deeper I understand my own mother, it this this is a universal experience for all parents.

The more I reflect on our memories together, the more I uncover the truth of who she really was.

As I dig into my past I emerge with pearls, moments where she was exactly the woman God created her to be, nearly free from the depression that gnawed too often on her heart.

I’ve already told you about the warmth of enjoying her muffins on the rug and the way she would curl up and read books with me, both of the memories are precious to me.

Dancing-Feet-300x225 Yet this week I’ve been reflecting on my Mother’s singing and dancing.

I remember vividly the gray plastic CD player that sat on our kitchen counter, and the cassette boom-box that preceded it.  Both of these devices were usually playing Celine Dion or Cynthia Clawson… a bit of Josh Groban in her later years.

They rarely played “kids music” because when mom sang and danced it was because something in the song freed her heavy spirit to do so.

Something in weaving of THOSE words set to THAT music left her no choice but to dance with us across the linoleum flooring.

She never sang without dancing, even if only with her hands.

I remember a childhood vacation that is completely soundtracked with my mother singingly “Earnestly, tenderly Jesus is calling.  Calling to you and to me, come home, come home all you are weary, come home!”

Or a car ride with her in college when she hijacked my Disney Hercules CD soundtrack and belted “Go the distance” over and over again.  ”I will find my way, I can do the distance! I’ll be there someday, if I can be strong.  I know every mile, will be worth my while…” 

When I re-read those lyrics, they tell me more now than they did at the time.  She needed to believe that Christ was calling her, that she could go on another day.

My Mom showed us the vulnerability of her soul through the lyrics of songs and the freedom of soul dancing, she taught us that words set to music can set you free.

She modeled the need to resonate with things, and to allow ourselves to become overwhelmed as our souls connected with something essential, eternal.

The freedom of the soul moving to words set to music, that’s what mama did.

 PS I did not know this was supposed to be a 5 minute friday when I started writing it Monday.  I should have.  Forgive me, I’ve been sussing through it all week.

Letters to my Mother {Day 18} So we’re 30

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Dear Mom,

Every mother has her day where she wakes up and her baby is 30.

Your day would have come this past January, and then Kel, your son in law turned 30 on Tuesday.

So, we’re 30 now. And to tell you the truth I’m fine with being on the other side of my 20s.

For me the 30s are when you come into your own, feel comfy in your own skin, and gain immeasurable amounts of grace.

We spend our 20s blaming our patents for our issues and baggage.

We spend our 30s realizing they were people just like us. Trying their level best to live and love well. Continue reading →

Memories and Milk Glass

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Last night the Verkaik women gathered together for a girl’s night.  We joined up to laugh, devour appetizers and catch up.  We try to do this any time the “out of towners” come back for our summer visits.

However, last nights gathering had a unique purpose, to absorb the history of all the dishes, antiques and memories that fill up my Grandmother’s curio cabinets and shelves.  To divide and receive, so that we may eventually take these heirlooms and integrate them into our own homes and stories.

There was a silent battle for milk glass, a confused googling over what exactly a “hummel” is and a hilarious roar when we found a little german sculpture of a naked couple intertwined in a passionate embrace.  We decided that our unmarried cousins must use this as a cake topper…. come on ladies, please?

At one point my Aunt Ruth commented that all this colored glass and delft made up my Grandma’s life, spoke of her journey, her memories.

These dainty cups and delicate plates came from California, Vietnam and Washington.   A few pieces remained from my great grandmother’s original journey across the Atlantic from The Netherlands to America.

There is something about a tea kettle that floated past lady liberty in an old wooden trunk that takes my breath away.  So much hope, and adventurous fear contained in a small silver vessel.

We each left that night with a piece of my Grandmother’s story, but more than anything we could hold in our hands we all left with a deep sense that our most cherished gift was the gift being a woman of this family.

We’re daughters, nieces and granddaughters, whether by birth or marriage, who will carry this family into the future.  We will retell and create the stories of “us.”

Of course we will cherish the vases and plates and retell their stories, but more than that we will carry and tend the flame of identity that is infused into our blood and bones.

Every time we gather I feel inner warmth and each time we part I feel less complete for the distance.

I’m honored to be a woman in this story, my grandmother’s second granddaughter, chosen to carry her legacy into the future.  To glimpse of her life in delicate blue delft and share it, and so much more with my own daughter and granddaughters.   I will teach my Daughter to love almond paste, appreciate delft and make blueberry buckle and pea soup.

Lineage, we all have a story that spans forward and backward from this very moment.  We are all part of some collective “we” and if your family has left you story-less, I must remind you that we are brothers and sisters together you and I.  Loved children of a God whose story includes all families in an infinitely redemptive tale that has neither a beginning, nor an end.

Today, may you see all that you carry and cherish, and may you share it into the future.

Road Trip & Hungry for Connection

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Good morning from Holland, Michigan!  We had a somewhat safe drive up North save for a very intense blown tire while I was driving the van just outside of Chicago at rush hour.

Luckily God provided with a durable spare and a nearby tire shop.  Total props to Kel who laid down on the dirty highway shoulder to take care of business, he’s a real life super hero.  Send Capes.

This is how we roll in a tire shop

seriously blown and smoking tire.

We are still recovering from our 1,000 mile, straight thru car trip but I am excited to share with you the link to the online version of my first published, print article with “The Banner, The Official Magazine of the Christian Reformed Church.”

Hungry For Connection

“I feel as if I’ve been hungry for a long time. Absolutely starving, really—I mean the kind of hungry you feel when you’re ready to tuck into a holiday feast complete with pie and appetizers. The thing is, this hunger I’ve got is not for food—although I love food; don’t get me wrong.

What I’m really hungry for is time to connect with friends and family. I crave a long, satisfying meal filled with delicious food, infectious laughter, and that comfortable feeling you have when you know you are completely safe with someone. When you don’t fear judgment because you know you’re loved and known.

Most of my communication these days comes from texts, tweets, and e-messages in at least a million forms. These forms of relating are like saltines for my hungry soul. When you’re so hungry you could eat your own arm and someone hands you one saltine, it’s a joke! You might be thankful for a little something to chew on, but you need a whole lot more than one salty little morsel to satisfy your hunger.”

To finish up this article, go to the Banner’s online magazine to read on.

As for us, we’re off to the beach.

The longest journey- the week I lost my mom

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 I’m positively in love with my home state and try to make it back as often as I can, especially in the summer when I long to escape the Oklahoma heat. The summer before my mother died was no different, Kel was unable to get away from work so it was just Noelle and I who boarded that early morning flight. Braving the trip without Kel would turn out to be a mistake, I needed his strength to survive a two week stay with my Mother. It was beyond painful to stay in that house which died the same day my father did. Every second spent there was a reminder of how much we’d lost and continued to hemorrhage with the passing of time.

Our visit wasn’t going well, the depression was absolutely consuming her, but I was too close to see the disease. All I could see was shell of the woman who raised me, yet no longer knew me. All of my confusion and anger shot out like steam from a kettle and I spewed out dozens of unfair questions and accusations. As I went through the transformation into motherhood I had to decide what kind mother I would be in light of the example I’d been given. I longed to have a relationship with the woman who’d given me life, bathed me in the sink and read me a thousand books. Yet, I knew in my heart she was no longer available to me, even though she was sitting right across the room. If I’d known this was the last time we’d ever speak face to face, I would have done everything different, hindsight is a clear, cruel gift at times.

The next morning I boarded a plane and flew home, happy to leave that house behind once again, determined never to stay there again. A few days later, on Father’s Day my brother called and told me that Mom had attempted suicide by overdose. When I talked to her later that day she blamed it all on me, on my words, my lack of support. We cancelled our Father’s Day Dinner and spent the evening at a low end rib joint here in town. I poked at my smoked turkey and canned beans, trying to muster up the energy to celebrate Kel in spite of the nauseating emotions of grief, fear and anger.

As my pregnancy progressed, so did her depression and in spite of the events of Father’s Day I continued to hope, begging God to break through her crust and heal her. One night in October my husband twisted my arm to stay up late and watch a movie. We laid on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and against all pregnancy odds I stayed awake until the closing credits. Just before we climbed into bed I heard phone from the other room. I mumbled at Kel to grab it, and just before he did he called out “It’s your brother!”
I glanced at the clock, it was too late for a routine phone call, my throat tightened, something, someone wasn’t right. I saw Kel lean against the dresser for his brief exchange with my brother. When he hung up, he looked at me with a heavy gaze. I couldn’t tell you his exact words, but it went something like this: “Your mom died, she killed herself, she walked out in front of a train… at the same tracks as your sister’s accident.”

I climbed onto the bathroom counter and curled into a ball, no small feat in my third trimester. I didn’t cry and I didn’t scream, I just stared at Kel as we looked at each other with a mutual, “Oh God, Now what?” We knew that we needed prayer and so we called our friends Jenni and Tiffany, who cried before I was able to. They started prayer chains and helped us through travel plans. Plane tickets were astronomical and bereavement discounts were a joke. The most practical choice would be to load up our mini van and drive through the night. We ran laundry and drifted around the house in shocked trances. Around 1 AM there was a soft knock at the door and it was friends from church delivering a travel basket with healthy snacks and gift cards. I remember being so strangely calm that I gave them a few grocery bags of fresh food, so it wouldn’t go to waste in our absence. I know that I couldn’t rest until a thousand things were set in motion and so instead of crumble, I focused on meaningless minutia.

 

When I allowed me mind to feel all I would think was: “How could she do that?” I had no

Her rocking chair, in her empty bedroom

idea she was that determined, that ballsy. I was terrified they would make me identify her remains and that my mind would never recover from it. Finally at 3 AM we carried our 1 year old Noelle to the van and started down the longest and darkest journey of my life. Our baby girl bounced in her car seat for the first 5 hours, thrilled about the surprise late night car party.

Our phones constantly lit up with blessings, assurance and text messages, bringing a steady stream of light to our darkness. So many people stayed awake that night simply to remind us that they were on this journey with us. That road trip lasted a grueling 21 hours and I can’t say I’ve ever been as tired as I was when we finally arrived at my Aunt and Uncle’s House.

We awoke, still in our nightmare and headed to the funeral home to arrange all the details that accompany death. We were greeted with the aroma of chocolate chip cookies instead of the usual lilly and chemical smell funeral homes typically provide. My family waited for me in the parlor and parking lot. I melted into the arms of all those who I’d longed to embrace from the moment the phone call had arrived.

Ron, the most amazing funeral director in the world, guided us through the details. He was young and compassionate and although we were planning a terribly unexpected funeral, the planning flowed from us easily. We chose the white casket, “The Old Rugged Cross” and James 1:12: “Blessed are those who persevere under trial, because when they have stood the test, they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.” The one detail I couldn’t figure out was the flower arrangements. I wanted her funeral to feel like fall, perhaps mums or sunflowers? Fall had been her favorite season, in better days she raved about the vibrant leaves and fresh apples. I couldn’t escape the questions, how could she take her life in her favorite season, with a grandson on the way and a wedding to plan? How could I have missed it? I was wracked with guilt, why was I so hard on her? Always placing healthy mom expectations on a woman who was so clearly sick and hurting.

I coerced myself into a trip the mall to buy something appropriate for all the formalities. Who plans for a funeral dress when buying maternity clothes? I also needed to grab something for my daughter to wear. You have no idea how macabre it is to select a funeral dress for a 1 year old whose grandma just killed herself. There was something about having a perfect plan for our clothes that provided a retail therapy, a false element of control.

The next few days flashed by in a haze, I was soley sustained on adrenaline, a sense of duty and cans of V8 V-Fusion. It took all my strength to honor my mother and get her body into the ground, to tie up details and be strong. I knew there was a house to sell and a lifetime of “stuff” to sort through. I could do anything, and go anywhere but her house, the place she ran from to end it all. I hated that house and had dreams of standing in the front yard in my pajamas while it burned to the ground.

We had planned two visitation shifts at my parents church and I walked through the doors knowing I would be viewing her body for the first time. More than anything I wanted to jump into my car and drive home to the safety of our home. Perhaps this was just an awful dream I would soon wake up from, or more accurately, a nightmare. Maybe I would jolt awake any minute, sweaty and shocked in our bed back home in Oklahoma. Denial is the first stage of grief, and it was all so unbelievable, that denial was a sweet companion.

The woman in the casket looked like my Mother, but only barely. Her body had suffered from impact, and everything was all wrong. It’s a picture I don’t like calling into memory. I didn’t linger there in front of her casket didn’t touch or caress her cold hands more than once. I fingered her wedding ring and then prepared to receive mourners and friends a good length away from the casket. I endured 4 hours of visitation and stood on aching feet to greet visitors and receiving condolences and confusion with all who knew and mourned my mother.

The morning of her funeral arose grey and threatened rain. We gathered at the church to share our common pain, to give an outlet for the mangled mess of our emotions. Just before the service they closed the casket and we said goodbye to her face for the last time. The music started and we followed her body into the church, I wept through her favorite hymns and managed to sing “The old Rugged Cross” through the tears — when I was 9 she made me promise I would sing this hymn at her funeral. Mom’s friend Kathy spoke the perfect words on her behalf: “I love you, forgive me, move on with your lives”. 

Pastor Tom read Revelation 21:4 “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.” This brought comfort because we deeply believed God was keeping that promise to my Mother that very moment. He urged us not to feel guilty or responsible, that we couldn’t have prevented her end. He assured my family and I that it was alright to feel a dark sense of relief that her suffering and our worry was over. I’m forever grateful to Pastor Tom for honoring my mother with the perfect balance of wisdom and love. His task that day was not an easy one.

My husband, brother and uncles bore her body to the hearse which would take her to her final resting place, in the earth beside my Father. Family and old friends gathered for lunch and Noelle flitted from table to table bringing fresh life to a hard funeral. My mother’s tiny granddaughter was a sweet reminder, that on the darkest days, God gives new hope.

We drove to Georgetown Cemetery and laid her body into the ground on that cold autumn day which never delivered the forecasted rain. After they lowered her into the ground, I walked away, still shrouded in a fog of shock. I rubbed my cold knees as Kel wound our van through the cemetery maze. Driving away, all formalities behind us, brought a paralyzing fear. I would have to return to my normal life with so much pain to sift through. How on earth would I navigate through this new life, heart and sanity in tact? I was now one of those people children of suicide, this new chapter was forever a part of my story.

I longed to do an “I dream of Jeannie” blink and bring our family instantly back to the safety of our home. Far away from the cold reality of this cemetery plot. It was late in October and the holiday season, normally my favorite, loomed ominously on the calendar. There would be Halloween Costumes and Turkey, Christmas shopping and New Year’s toasts just before our son made his arrival. To be honest I had no idea how I would get through any of it, I just allowed my spirit to groan to God in faith that he would lead me day by painful, grace-filled day.

Peace through Peach Jam

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Lately I have been struggling with my story, my past and all the grisly details of suicide and funerals.

Some days, as you all well know, the devil gets the best of my inner monologue and I feel “less-than” and as my friends Hannah & Heather put it, “like a total hack.”

Today I can’t get through life without this antidepressant.
Today I am not a published author, I hardly made progress.
This morning I wept publicly at the coffee shop trying to write about my Mother’s death.
Over breakfast the kids screamed and I wondered if there would ever come a season of greater peace and less chaos.

It’s noon on an unexpectedly hard day and I’m going to focus on what is and all that I can do. I can’t publish today, I can’t get my daughter to pee in the potty or teach my son to wait for food without screaming and pulling my pants down with his impatient tugs.

but.

I can go let out my friends dog while they finish adoption paperwork in the city
I can make a bath of freezer jam and zucchini bread from beautiful local produce.
I can tell my husband that his support is everything
I can confess to God that I’m a mess and I need his grace
I can stop caring what the people in the coffee shop right now think as I cry over my laptop
I can read my daughter “Count on Donald” again, even though I hate it
I will leave 10 encouraging notes to friends, both online and local
I will write that friggin trash check so the truck continues to haul away our nasty diapers and coffee grounds.

I will see all of this as something real, though it is small, it is beautiful.  I can’t conquer mountains today, but I can take these little, life giving steps.

I refuse to be defined by what today is not, I will feel peace and purpose on all the beauty that today holds.

Peach Jam and children’s books are enough for me today, and this is a priceless thing.

Want to partner with me in sharing all that is and forgetting all that isn’t?

Slice off a piece of zucchini bread and smear it with peach jam as we believe that we can and tell the voices of “can’t” and “aren’t” to go to Hell where they belong.

***************
linking up with Joy in this Journey

Seventh Anniversary

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Dave Verkaik, 1955 - 2005

It’s rainy, it’s gray and the heavens look like they’re about to open the flood gates and drench us all in a cool spring rain.  It was like that seven years ago today, the day I lost my Dad.

Each anniversary has been drastically different for me.  The earlier years were crushing and painful.  I typically spent them with close friends and we shared soup and pie, my two main comfort foods.  Each year has been different, but the common thread is one of healing.  Still, I always ache for him, not just on March 19 but always.  Some days it seems like he’s been gone forever but sometimes the thought of our seven year separation sounds ridiculous.

When I hear my friends use the phrase “my Dad said” or “I talked with my Dad” my heart and mind think this:  Oh, Your dad? I’m jealous that you have a Dad.  I remember what that was like, having a Dad.  I loved my Dad, he was awesome.  God I miss him, so bad.

When we buried my Mom my Uncle Rich said read this quote over her grave.  It is profoundly, perfectly true and it has permanently adhered itself to my perspective on loss.

Nothing can make up for the absence of someone we love and it would be wrong to try to find a substitute. We must simply hold out and see it through. That sounds very hard at first but at the same time it is a great consolation.  For the gap, as long as it remains unfilled, preserves the bond between us. It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap. God does not fill it but on the contrary keeps it empty and so helps us to keep alive our former communion with each other even at the cost of pain.  ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

As famous theologians tend to do, Bonhoeffer nailed it.  I walk this earth with an empty Dave shaped hole.  He was my one and only, and I am forever lacking him.  I would describe it as a constant dull ache, or a lost limb. Those who have lost an arm or a leg describe phantom pains that happen periodically, and sometimes my Dad-gap aches like that.  I’m constantly aware that he’s gone, but sometimes there is a sharp, acute pain, and in those moments his absence is almost intolerable.

I have grown to have a peace with my Dad gap, I couldn’t get rid of it so finding a peace with it was the next best thing.  I honor my connection with him by honoring the purpose God put on my life.  One of the last and best conversations we had was him reassuring me that once I had found my call, my “thing”, that I would soar.  I was floundering in those days, only on the cusp of giving him something to be proud of.   would be proud of me, and although I have a hefty amount of self-doubt, that is one thing I am pretty confident in.

No one really knows whether or not the dead bear witness to what is happening here on earth.  There are logical parts of me that are sure that they don’t, and then there are corners of my heart that are confident that they can.

I do still feel that painful connection Bonhoeffer refers to.  My Dad and I are still in communion and although I don’t understand the logistics of it, I know that he’s at peace.  He’s with God and he’s bursting with joy, his burdens are gone, and he’s fully the person God created him to be.  I can also feel how much he loves his grandkids, even though he’s never held them or pushed them on a swing.

Yes, I love being my Father’s daughter, yes I feel him, and oh yes… I miss him even seven years out it stings and it’s hard.  But we are intrepid, we carry on.

My Story Part two- The cold march, the loss of my Dad

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No matter how much I grow in faith and trust in God I still don’t trust a ringing phone, it could be bring something as simple as “pick up milk” or something far more serious.  I have good reason for my disdain, my world has been rocked by ringing phones.  I shared about the phone call I received from my Dad that brought the news of my sister Laura’s car/train accident.  That one was bad, this one is worse, but first a little backstory.

I got a late start on growing up.  I wavered and quit, trying different colleges and majors before I found my place at a small bible college.  My transcripts were a mess of failed and dropped classes.  I spent my paychecks at TGI Fridays or the mall and I borrowed money from my parents, which I never paid back.  Even with the hopes of another new college on the horizon, my Dad was frustrated to his breaking point and in an effort not to enable me, he kicked me out of the house.  I was 22 and terrified, and really pissed at him so I left without anywhere to go.

For a while I lived in a make shift bedroom in my cousin’s basement, sleeping on the worst pull out couch imaginable.  When my best friend Becky got back from a semester in Spain we started apartment hunting together and decided on a 3rd floor, two bedroom apartment mostly because it was cheap.  We paid no attention to the fact that it was in a really ghetto and high crime neighborhood.  We ended being the only apartment on our floor whose tenants weren’t evicted at least twice during our lease.   Some lessons you have to learn the hard and dangerous way, like don’t live in a drug neighborhood even if it means more square feet.

We moved in the first week of January, the same week that I started a new job, a new college and turned 22.  I was so busy that my Dad and Mom set up the apartment for me and my Dad even painted us a couple of wine red accent walls.  We were so crazy proud of our new place.

Amidst the pride however, I was terrified of my first round of bills.  Pay Rent? Utilities? Groceries?  I was anxious that I couldn’t cute it so I took the next logical step and got three jobs and stopped sleeping.  My brilliant plan was to work days in an office after my classes, overnight at a coffee shop and weekends delivering newspapers with my Dad.  I wouldn’t sleep from Tuesday morning until Saturday afternoon, but I got free espresso so I was determined to make it work.  I sustained that pace for two weeks, and after sleeping through all my classes and sobbing from lack of sleep I quit the coffee shop for a weekend waitressing job serving burritos and margaritas to mall shoppers.

February rolled around and I managed to pay all my bills, I had no money for food buy my end of the roommate agreement was fulfilled.  I decided that my parents would feed me so one night I headed to their place to watch My Dad try out his new George Foreman Rotisserie.  After dinner my Dad headed to the garage to work on one of our 4 mini vans, which were always breaking down from the start and stop of the paper route.   Immediately I put my head in my hands and sobbed apologies to my Father as he laid on a dolly underneath the blue Dodge Caravan.  I was ashamed of how irresponsible I’d been and how I had made my parent’s life harder with my debt.  I apologized up and down for my behavior and told him that I couldn’t pay him back just then, because I only had $37 left for two weeks of food and gas, but someday I would make things right.

He rolled the dolly out from under the car and beamed at me, clearly his strategy of kicking my butt out the nest had worked as planned.  He forgave me and I could see the pride in his eyes, it was something I hadn’t seen from him in a while, I hadn’t given him much to be proud of.  He stood up and started filling grocery bags with frozen hamburger meat and boxed potatoes au gratin and there in that moment our relationship changed.  He saw me as an adult, he took pride in me, he answered every phone call and he was my biggest fan.

One freezing cold morning in mid March, four years almost to the day after my sisters accident, I was working my job as a Driving School secretary when my cell phone rang, it was my mom.  I was on the work line with a customer arguing about a failed road test so I let my cell go to voicemail.  Immediately it rang again so I politely put the angry mother on hold and answered it asking my Mom to wait just a second.  She said she couldn’t wait: “Leanne, you have to come home, I think Daddy’s dead.”  

I hung up with numbly, she thought he was dead?  Thought leaves wiggle room, right?  But I had heard the terror in her voice and I knew.  I managed to pick up the line with the angry  road test mom and tell asks her to call back Monday because my Dad had just died.  I locked up the office and called my  then-boyfriend Kel to fill him in.  I had no information to give him other than my mom thought my Dad was dead and that I was headed home.  He begged me not to drive in my current state, so I found a friend to meet me halfway and deliver me home.

As we pulled up to my parents house I saw ambulances and police cars.  I was so confused, he wasn’t sick so I was guessing car accident on the paper route but after a quick inventory I realized that all the mini vans were accounted for, undamaged in the driveway.  I jumped out of the car and ran through the garage to find our neighbor Bob, sobbing on the front steps.  He hugged me and said “I’m so sorry Leanne, he was such a good man.”   Confirmation, my Dad is gone.

I walked in the house, my Mom grabbed me,  I learned that she’d gone downstairs to the office to file a few bills and found him in his chair, the life long gone from him.  He had died sometime around 2AM from a massive heart attack while playing a game of spider solitaire on the computer.  I wasn’t allowed to see his body but I from the way they laid him out at the bottom of the steps, I could see his hand.  He was wearing his yellow fleece jacket, the one we had gotten him that Christmas.  They sent use to a back bedroom while they carried him out to the ambulance to deliver him to the coroner. Everything after that is just blurs and flashes from that day.  Family and friends came in and out, we exchanged words and tears.  Becky forced me to eat a piece of pizza and followed me everywhere, even into the bathroom.  I couldn’t tell you where I slept that night or how I got there.

The next morning we all gathered again and descended the stairs at Cook Funeral Home to plan our formal goodbye.  I remember weighing in on so many surreal questions, which flowers?  which casket?  What photo for the obituary.  You don’t know until you’ve walked through it, but there are a lot of whats and whens in death.  Somehow we got it all arranged and in the middle of coffee and phone calls to Kel I realized that I had nothing appropriate to wear to the funeral.  So we headed to the mall and I let me friends dress me up like a paper doll.  They chose a flared black skirt and jacket, with a bright green lace camisole underneath for a pop of color.  I loved my Dad, he was energy incarnate, the least I could do was add a pop of color to his funeral.

When you lose someone the moment usually arrives when you go to view their embalmed body for the first time.  Many people will tell that their soul is in heaven and that its just a shell.  They are correct, but for me there is a lot of sentimental attachment to a human body.  If its okay to be attached to a house, a car or a piece of jewelry then surely you are allowed to have a fond attachment for the body that housed the soul you loved.  I loved his face, his blue eyes always hidden behind paint speckled glasses, his tight and tired muscles that body was how I saw my father’s soul come to life.

Approaching his lifeless body in the casket was a cold cold march through the funeral home doors.  There he was, and there he wasn’t anymore. There he would never be again.  Dead skin is so  jarringly cold, it’s lifeless flesh a shock to the touch.  That cold touch confirms every fear, there is no escape when death is laid out in front of you.

The funeral process was exhausting and as I took my place in the parlor, greeting and receiving those who came to grieve alongside us I gazed across the room at my Mother.  There she stood in her black dress pants and Merrill hiking shoes.  If I had seen her drift away with mental illness before that moment, then it seemed as though she was totally gone on that day.  Her eyes looked hollow and empty, as if her soul had left and laid down in the casket with my father longing to join him in his peaceful end.

Kel flew in from Oklahoma for the funeral and one of my brightest memories during that week is of him, walking around the funeral home and handing out water bottles to my family.  If they were on the fence about him before, his supportive and loving presence there solidified things.  As I followed the casket out the church, scattered in easter lilies, I saw his face and my world felt a bit brighter, a bit safer.  I knew he was “my guy” now.  The one who had my back, would kill my spiders and talk to the mechanics on my behalf.  I breathed a silent prayer as I marched, for my Oklahoma boy.

We gathered at the cemetery to return his body to the earth, it was the coldest moment of my life.  I’d stepped in a puddle and my black ballet flats were saturated with melted snow.  The funeral home had set up a walled tent around the grave, but even those thick strips of canvas couldn’t keep out the bitter wind of that March. My uncle prayed and I wept bitter and long.  My little brother played his trumpet for our Father, the man who never missed a band concert or a booster meeting.  The casket lowered, we threw our flowers and it was over.  There were no more formal events, just lives tattered with loss.

That night I tried to sleep at my aunts house, just two blocks from the cemetery.  I couldn’t stop thinking that his body was out there, growing colder and farther away.  I was restless, desperate and terrified.  God provided my friend Melissa a milk shake, and the energy to drive to my small ghetto apartment and sleep long and hard.  I had lost but I was never alone.  God sustained me with constant blasts of warmth.  Tn the midst of the cold there was soup, warm embraces, comfort and even laughter.  I was bathed in prayer, swimming in support and I never marched alone.

When a week passed I had to take Kel to the airport and head home without him.  It was the first time I’d been alone since the phone call.  The void felt infinite and terrifying, I was all by myself, alone with all that loss.  That’s when I realized that even in that dark, frozen cold moments there were always beams of hope and spots of light all around me.  There were so many break downs and get-back-ups on my journey through grieving my Dad.  There was anger and depression, and an ocean of tears but always, always hope.

I grieved the only way I knew how, fiercely and with hope.  I’d gotten half a dozen lilies that were making my apartment smell like a funeral home, so one night Becky and I threw them off the balcony  and watched them slowly die in the snow.  I did what I needed to do to survive and survival meant an apartment that smell normal, not like death. As I reflect back on what I wrote just days after Dad’s death I breathe deep thanks to God for helping preserve my hope:

March 25- 2005: “I am broken and I am barely breathing. But I promise you that somehow, someday I will go on. I am forever altered. I will need to be built up again. I don’t know how, I know it’s God, I was just given another breath, and for now that will sustain me.”

April 5- 2005: I really am trusting in God, taking steps in that direction. I can either let this destroy me or change me for his work and his world. Lots of people tell me that God is preparing me for something, and right now I don’t think about that. Mostly I just keep breathing. And try to sleep at nights, which is a new sucky problem that I have been having…Life is not good right now, but I live in faith that it will be again and I shall emerge better, somehow… and of course never the same but, a different me, I guess every day brings a different you, and if you’re not changing then… stop staying the same, there is too much life for stagnancy.” 

I am forever thankful to God that through my journey, he has always sustained and fed me, allowing my hope to stay alive even when it was tiny bud fighting up through mud and pain.  There is no guarantee against the inevitable sting of death, it has come and it will come again.  The more of your hope and life you transfer into the unfailing hands of God, the more peace and hope you gain.  This is just one painful piece of my journey.  Thank you sharing it with me.