Who's in Charge?

For 30 years, Larry was the driver, I was the navigator. With the help of AAA Trip-Kits and maps; later with printed pages from Google Maps, Hotels.com, and Groupons, he planned the route, made any necessary reservations. I just needed to make note of our departure date and time and organize the packing. Some trips were more pleasant than others though my tendency to procrastinate on the last minute details of packing the car for two weeks at the lake, usually resulted in five hours of silence on our seven hour trip each summer. In 2003, our twentieth anniversary trip through London and Great Britain included a disastrous rainy night on a ferry coming back at 2 a.m. from Dublin to a locked up B and B on a Bank Holiday weekend. That night we slept in the car. The hotelier in Bath listened to our itinerary, scheduled to see as much of John Wesley’s sites in the shortest amount of time, and asked, “Do you always take a forced March on holiday?”

In the midst of grief this summer, I lamented that Larry and I had no time for the retirement trips we had begun to anticipate in May of 2013. By February, 2014, he was on dialysis, tethered to machinery. We kept planning, kept trying. We went to the Rose Parade in Pasadena on the coldest January 1 in history, made three five a.m. trips to the dialysis center, and Larry never got warm. We went with Alta and Snoopy Smith to Peurto Vallarta, which involved arranging for cases of dialysis solution that required a different set up system to work effectively, discovering that Ambien was not the sleep aid drug for him (sitting up in a chair for two nights, brushing imaginary things off his arms, having visions). We had the good fortune of a thoughtful and caring tour guide who made allowances for Larry to stay in the van as we explored the area. Each trip was more and more work, and I began to realize I needed to take charge of the details. We made it to Hawaii for Abigail and Lenissa’s wedding, but Larry’s fall on the path to the beach lead to an infection and fever and two days of bed rest before we came home. He was determined to cruise to Alaska last May to see the glaciers, but was transported to the hospital in Juneau and missed the grandeur of sailing into Tracy Arm and watching ice sliding off Sawyer Glacier into the ocean.

Alta and Snoopy listened to my lament about not knowing how to recapture traveling in my singleness and suggested traveling with Freedom Tours, a regional company which caters to senior citizens, offering opportunity to experience a full range of events, attractions and activities throughout the state, as well as extended tours farther away. We went together to Leavenworth for OctoberFest, and with their company, had a good day. I signed up again last week to go to the Tulip Festival in the Skagit Valley. 

With our wedding anniversary on April 9th, it was a trip Larry and I often made together. I wanted a do-over of our last effort two years ago, when we drove through congested traffic,on the warmest, sunniest Saturday of the month, four hours up, four hours back, Larry drove, but was too weak to get out of the car. We admitted that day how hard even the most simple trips had become.

As I sat on the bus, watching couples find their seats, I felt the pang of my aloneness. Fortunately I had a book to read. Yet, I listened to the pair of widows behind me, talking about how hard it is to live alone; I watched with envy as loving husbands helped wives into their seats, held their hands, exclaimed over the beauty of the flowers, posed for pictures, shared their ice cream cones.

Because I keep my days as full as possible, I expected to get home in time to attend my pottery class. My interior clock set off alarms when the bus made an unscheduled stop at the ice cream stand/vegetable and fruit market. It was more than my timetable, it was my need for control that went on alert. Sure, I didn’t have to drive through traffic. I didn’t have to find a parking place and walk further to the entrances of attractions. I heard Larry’s gentle kidding about having control issues, and recognized how long I have felt not as an actor, but as a spectator in my life. I have been re-acting as needed to the reality of Larry’s illness. I have been extending care 24/7 with few (if any) moments of taking my own needs into account. The fatigue of the last four years swept over me again, and I realized my difficulty in permission giving. I asked myself who I am letting drive the bus of my emotions, of my life, of my destiny, of my future.

My interior coach has been ahead of me.  On April tenth, after a day of grieving the anniversary we could not celebrate, I discovered my new favorite store at South Center, filled with Papyrus brand cards, stationary, and gifts. Although I need no more coffee mugs, I carried my find to the cashier, paid for it and brought it home. Underneath a drawing of the Buddha are the words: “Let That Shit Go.”

It has been ten months. There are reminders every day of how hard and painful the last four months of Larry’s life were. How hope gave way to inevitable loss. How loss has become the background noise of my life. How efforts to gain control, find my footing, make a new plan, learn to let the shit go, remain constant.

Enough is Enough

Preaching was my passion. One of the first things I learned about the effect of preaching was that what people heard was not always what you thought you were saying. As carefully as a preacher may sort through historical texts and biblical criticism and engage hermeneutics (don’t worry, that is  a fancy theological/philosophical term that is a way to talk about interpretation), the intended point (or points) in a sermon are often usurped by the heart and mind of the listener. Preachers preach to themselves, often saying what they need to hear, and assume it has similar value and meaning to others. The hope is that somehow in the mix, people will hear a word from God. A wise colleague once lifted that promise before me, (thanks Jack Olive). This is an attitude of open receptiveness that I attempt to practice now that I sit in the pew.

My passion for preaching, my desire to be informed and inspired and challenged, is still with me. I carry my high standards for theological integrity and intelligent inquiry as expectations for other preachers. On Easter, though distracted by wiggly grandchildren, and displaced from my normal, comfortable place in the third pew from the front on the left side of the church, I was not disappointed. One phrase, one sentence, one idea grabbed my heart, and I received what I needed to hear. 

“With grief and death come things that require change.”

My own personal season of grief and death has been enlarged in the last month with the deaths of two more colleague/friends and a nineteen year old son of clergy couple friends. My love and concern has been stretched and magnified by a diagnosis of advanced colon cancer and life saving surgery for another dear one. Our collective outrage and despair over gun violence that targets children has sent me to March alongside them and cry out, “enough is enough!” Many days the reality of lost innocence, the brutality of public rhetoric, and the sense of despair, the contagion of fear, is more than enough to bear.

I want to embrace the battle cry, “Never again.” It is a plea and a prayer, a dream and a desire, but in my experience, in the mortal nature of humanity, our protests against death are futile. Death is our common end. The means, the timing, the circumstances are not within our control. And yet, we live, we love, we expend our resources and energy, we protest, we resist.

The change that is happening in me, on this day, April 9th, which would have been our 35th wedding anniversary is that I have come to the end of anticipating with dread those “first-holidays/events” since Larry’s death, and have turned to remember the last times, the final times that last year, those painful final six months. At the end, I could accept death as a blessing.

Today those memories began to give way for the deep memories from times before that, 35 years worth of tenderness. 35 years of kindness and shameless adoration, of always having someone in my corner, supporting and cheering me on, tolerating my moods and idiosyncrasies, infuriating me with his patience, loving unconditionally, always, never-the-less, never less, always more.

Today it feels selfish to miss him, to grieve so deeply, to feel my sorrow in the midst of seemingly greater losses, fresher pain. And yet, as I have been held, I hold others in love, and leave myself open to listen, to be present, to walk alongside. We are not alone in this world. We are meant to be together. I preached it often, I believe it still;

“In the beginning was the relationship.”