Mix Tape for the Melancholy

Have you ever yelled for your child to be quiet because your favorite song is playing on the radio?  Or turned the car radio up really loud while not-so-subtly asking them to be quiet by saying, “I REALLY LIKE THIS SONG”?  Have you ever sung very loudly and emotionally along with your favorite song using an umbrella or a spatula as a microphone?  Yeah...I have on way more than one occasion.  I love music.  I’ve always been quick to find personal connections to song lyrics, deep meaning in someone else’s words.  I have always been the “music person” in my family.

 

You know how in most - not all, but most - relationships, there is one person who is just more musically inclined?  I don’t necessarily equate being “musically inclined” with playing a musical instrument or being trained to sing well, but with liking and relating to music more.  One who not only sings loudly along with the radio but who can tell you band name, album, song title and year it came out; one who assigns real life value to lyrics that “move me and that mean something to me” versus one who kinda likes that guitar riff and sorta remembers the refrain of that one song, you know, the one that goes “la la lalala“ by that one group….sort of, you know?

 

Maybe that’s just the way my marriage is, but since I’m the one writing, we’re just going to assume that most relationships are just like that.  ;)  I enjoyed all sorts of music growing up - 80s music, hair band metal, country, pop, Latin, alternative rock, etc.  The ABCs of my CD collection - yes, CD collection (with a few MP3 downloads thrown in for modernity’s sake) - run the gamut from The Avett Brothers to ABBA, from BarlowGirl and Black 47 to Andrea Bocelli and Sara Bareilles, and from Coldplay  to the Cure.  My musical tastes are nothing if not eclectic.  I’ve always liked listening to music while driving, doing crafts, cooking dinner, cleaning the house, etc.  But that all changed in the days and weeks following my daughter’s death.

 

When my sweet girl died, I wanted nothing more than silence.  I could NOT stand noise - loud, soft, words, songs, any noise at all.  Noise was too hard to be around.  I didn’t watch TV.  I didn’t listen to the radio.  I left my cell phone on vibrate, just as it had been set while I was in my daughter’s hospital room for all those months.  I didn‘t want to hear a ringtone.  I asked my boys to talk softly or not at all.  I didn't want to hear anything.  I just wanted silence, as though silence could ever translate into peace.  But at a certain point, even the silence got to be too loud.  Silence and the non-stop, can’t get away from them, can’t make them stop images of the last days of my daughter’s life and especially of her death.  At a certain point, I had to let noise, and more specifically the music, back into my life.

 

But it took weeks before I could tolerate any noise while driving.  When I did finally allow noise in the car, I could only handle so much.  No crap, no kids’ music, and NO CRAP.  So that ruled out a majority of what’s on the (secular) radio nowadays, especially pop/rock and even quite a bit of today’s country music.  Heck, it even ruled out some of the Christian music on the radio.

 

But I eventually started listening to KLOVE.  Oh, how I hate the name of that radio station.  It makes me roll my eyes to even say it - KLOVE -  but it was and still is the only station that gives me what my heart and soul need.  I was still so angry with God at that point, yet I couldn’t listen to any music but that which praised Him or talked about Him.  I was furious that He took my baby away from me, but even in the midst of my anger, I knew that listening to most of the drivel and tripe that passes for modern music wouldn’t help my mood, my spirit or my soul.

 

Music, and more specifically Christian music, has been a balm for my soul, providing comfort and reassurance when mere words couldn’t and offering hope and even a little bit of light during the darkest time of my life.  The lyrics of certain songs just spoke to my aching soul and broken heart in ways that other words could not.

 

So without further ado, I present my play list - a mix tape for the melancholy - full of songs that have meant so much to me and have helped me the most during this past year.  I think that several of these songs would provide comfort to anyone experiencing difficulty, not just those in the throes of grief.  I’m sure we’ve all felt very far from God at some point in our lives, as though all sorts of crap is raining down on us while He appears to be keeping His distance, watching but not helping, hearing but ignoring.  It’s nice to know that the simple words of a randomly played song on the radio could bring us closer to Him and just might be the way He reaches out to us when we need Him most.

 

Track 1:  “All of Me” by Matt Hammitt

You’re gonna have all of me

You’re gonna have all of me

“Cause you’re worth every falling tear

You’re worth facing any fear

You’re gonna know all my love

Even if it’s not enough

Enough to mend our broken hearts

But giving you all of me is where I’ll start.

Of course, a song written by a heart dad had to make it to this list!  It’s one of the first that I remember noticing and really listening to after I let the noise back in.  Matt Hammitt’s son Bowen was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), a congenital heart defect that usually takes at least three surgeries to correct.  The first time I heard this song, I couldn’t stop crying.  I was driving at the time, so that wasn’t good.  I honestly felt like I could have written every single word in this song because I lived every single word of it.  The lyrics took my breath away; they were my own thoughts and emotions set to music.  Mine was a reckless love for my daughter, and she was worth everything, every sacrifice, every tear shed both then and now.

 

Track 2:  “Praise You in This Storm” by Casting Crowns

I was sure by now

God, you would have reached down

And wiped our tears away

Stepped in and saved the day

But once again, I say “Amen”, and it’s still raining. 

As the thunder rolls

I barely hear You whisper through the rain

“I’m with you”

And as your mercy falls

I raise my hands and praise the God who gives

And takes away.

It is so easy to praise God when things go well, when life is good and when the blessings are abundant.  To praise Him when everything goes south is beyond difficult and can seem downright impossible.  It’s hard to praise the One at whom you’re shaking your fist and swearing like a sailor.  This song serves as a reminder that God deserves my praise, my thanks and my adoration in all circumstances.  And believe you me - I have needed that reminder time and again for the last year!

 

Track 3:  "Held" by Natalie Grant

Two months is too little

They let him go.

They had no sudden healing.

To think that providence would

Take a child from his mother while she prays

Is appalling.

…

This is what it means to be held

How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life

And you survive.

You only have to listen to the first verse of this song, changing a few words here and there, to understand why it touched me.  It is truly appalling to pray and to hope only to have those prayers seemingly ignored and that hope crushed.  But God is faithful even when we aren’t, and though the prayers aren’t always answered in the ways we want, He holds us through it all.  This is a lesson I have to relearn with each new day.

 

Track 4:  "The Hurt & The Healer" by MercyMe

Breathe

Sometimes I feel it’s all that I can do

Pain so deep that I can hardly move

Just keep my eyes completely fixed on You

Lord, take hold and pull me through

…

I’m alive even though a part of me has died

You take my heart and breathe it back to life

Oh, heavens, this is another song that could have come straight from my own hurting heart, and it‘s another one that makes it hard to breathe for all the crying I do while listening to it.  I was so freaking ANGRY after my daughter died, but in the midst of that anger, I still found myself turning to God, talking to Him constantly and relying on Him to carry me through the pain.

 

Track 5:  “Untitled Hymn (Come to Jesus)” by Chris Rice

And with your final heartbeat

Kiss the world good-bye

Then go in peace and laugh on Glory’s side, and

Fly to Jesus

Fly to Jesus

Fly to Jesus and live!

I heard this song for the first time while listening to a CD that my boys got at vacation Bible school a few summers ago.  Even then, before experiencing the soul crushing pain of losing a child, the song made me well up.  Now that my own sweet girl has flown to Jesus, it touches me more.

 

Track 6:  “I Will Rise” by Chris Tomlin

And I will rise when He calls my name

No more sorrow, no more pain

I will rise on eagles’ wings

Before my God fall on my knees

And rise

I will rise

What a beautiful thing to imagine - my sweet girl forever before her King, no longer in pain, no more sick and broken heart.  That I didn't want to hear such a sentiment after Ella died or have those words offered as comfort doesn't change the fact that my little girl's heart has been made perfect in Christ.  For as much pain as I am in, for as much as I desperately miss her, for as much as I ache - truly, physically ache - for not being able to hold her in my arms, I would never begrudge her Heaven.

 

Track 7:  “Homesick” by MercyMe

You’re in a better place, I’ve heard a thousand times

And a thousand times I’ve rejoiced for you

But the reason why I’m broken, the reason why I cry

Is how long I must wait to be with you

I close my eyes and I see your face

If home’s where my heart is then I’m out of place

Lord, won’t you give me strength to make it through somehow

I’ve never been more homesick than now

I’m afraid.  That’s the long and the short of it.  I’m afraid I’ll forget what she looked like, what she smelled like, what it felt like to hold her in my arms while I swayed back and forth, her head resting against my chest while I kissed the top of her head.  I’m afraid I’ll forget how the weight of her wee body felt as I held her against my chest, sang her silly songs, and whispered “I love you” in her ear.  I'm afraid I’ll forget the words to the songs I sang to her.  I cry because I miss her.  I cry because I know where she is, but I can’t see her or visit her.  I cry because I wanted more time.  I miss her so much, and though I have the hope of seeing her again in Heaven, that just feels so far away.  Only God can get me through the wait until I see her again.

 

Track 8:  “Long Way Home” by Steven Curtis Chapman

I set out on a great adventure

The day my Father started leading me home

Said there’s gonna be some mountains to climb

And some valleys we’re gonna go through

But I had no way of knowing

Just how hard this journey could be

Cause the valleys are deeper

And the mountains are steeper

Than I ever would’ve dreamed

Not all the songs have to be sad or melancholy!  This song is catchier and more upbeat than almost all the others on my list.  Heck, it has a ukulele in it!  As Chapman said, “you can’t frown and play a ukulele.“  I don’t think you can listen to one while frowning either!  That it’s upbeat certainly doesn’t take anything away from the message.  We are all just pilgrims on our way home to the Father.  It’s just that some journeys are longer and harder than others.  We have to trust that we’ll make it, even if “we’re taking the long way home.”

 

This song is much more poignant when you realize that Chapman lost a daughter (whom he and his wife adopted) to a tragic accident a few years back.  When your child dies, you want to get to Heaven that much quicker, if only to see her again.  The hard parts are the wait and the journey YOU still have to take even when your child’s journey is done.  [Chapman’s song “Heaven Is The Face”…oh, it says so much, too.]

 

Track 9:  “Oh My God” by David Crowder Band

 

Oh, for the love of pete, do you really need a reason to blast an honest to goodness, foot stomping, play it loud and sing it louder kind of song?!  This one gets played in the car with the volume set at 15.  Crank it.  Yell the lyrics.  ENJOY.  And then when you’re done listening to that one, listen to this one.  Fantastic and fun!

 

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 Forgive the pun, but listening to music has been very instrumental in helping me through the grieving process.  It has given me words to sing, say and pray when my own have failed me, and it has given me an emotional outlet like no other resource has.  I truly believe that God used my love of and need for music in my life to reach me even when I felt completely unreachable.  He spoke His words of comfort and peace and love to me through the lyrics of the songs I heard when I finally let the noise in again.  I’m grateful for that because I cannot imagine what kind of head space I’d be in today if I hadn’t had those songs.  Music has absolutely been among the most valuable of all the cheap therapies I’ve relied on over the past year.

 

And if nothing else, perhaps by writing this post and providing some links for you to click on, I’ve introduced you to some new sounds or reacquainted you with some old ones.  Who knows?  Maybe you’ll come across some cheap therapy that you didn’t even know you needed.  ;)

 

 

St. Ella, pray for us!

Home for the Holidays

I love Christmas.  I have always loved Christmastime, and I love celebrating everything about it.  I love the holiday sights - green wreaths and red bows, trees decorated to the nines, sparkling snowflakes and smiling snowmen, Santa statues in stores, Nativity sets and twinkling lights on lawns throughout the neighborhood, Christmas cards in the mailbox.  I love the tastes and smells of the season - warm cookies and eggnog, turkey dinner with sausage stuffing hot from the oven, freshly cut pine trees, burning incense at midnight Mass.  And I love the sounds – excited kids opening presents, familiar lines from classic movies like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “White Christmas,” hilarious lines from new classics like “Elf,” a church full of people singing hymns and carols, and Christmas music playing on the stereo.

Oh, the Christmas music!  The frequency with which I purchased Christmas CDs in the past probably made me look a bit like a music junkie!  I couldn’t get enough of it.  My Christmas CD collection has something for every taste and includes everything from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the London Philharmonic Orchestra to Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald, from Martina McBride and MercyMe to light piano jazz and Celtic guitar.  I love it all!

And I love all of the traditions that are part of celebrating Christmas, too; those I grew up with and those that my husband and I have created for our family.  I’ll always be grateful for one particular tradition my parents began with us.  No, not the annual torture session that was the dreaded family photo!  Oh, the stories I could tell…oy.  Rather, the annual tradition I loved most, one that I started with my kids, was that my parents gave my brother, my sister, and me each a new ornament, marked on the bottom with our names and the years they were given.  When each of us got married in turn, we received a box filled with our childhood ornaments.  A tree without those decorations may well be beautiful, but it would, for me, be incomplete.  Being able to trim my own family’s trees each year with ornaments from my youth allows me to incorporate my childhood traditions and a feeling of home into my home now.  And honestly, what are the holidays without home?  Indeed, home helps make the holidays.

So being away from home for the holidays is difficult.  The word holiday connotes family and friends, good times and traditions, smiles and fun…and home. Spending a holiday not only away from home but at the hospital with a critically ill child is even more difficult.  As a parent, though, you make it work.  You do what you have to do for love of your child.  You have to be there – heck, you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else! - so you try to soften the blow of the location and the situation by focusing on your sweet kiddo and on making the holidays as bright as you can for her sake.  You decorate your child’s hospital room with a tree and with Christmas lights, knowing that the brightly colored lights can’t really compete with the hospital’s ubiquitous fluorescent lights.  You play soft Christmas carols instead of lullabies, though the music is often punctuated by the beeping of alarms and monitors.  You hang cheery Christmas cards and cute stockings on drably colored hospital room walls.  You dress your baby in cute holiday outfits, being careful not to interfere with any medicine or oxygen lines.  You write letters to Santa on her behalf begging for a miracle.  You do what you have to do.

If there is something good to be said about being at a children’s hospital during the holidays, it’s that there are so many people who want to help you and so many organizations that want nothing more than to lift your spirits.  They understand how hard it is to be away from home with a sick child.  Many of the groups were founded by people whose own children were critically ill.  So during the weeks leading up to Christmas, those groups go out of their way to make the season a bit more festive.  They deliver gifts to the kids and families in the NICU and the PICU.  They provide meals for the families staying at the Ronald McDonald House.  They craft handmade blankets, pillows and pillowcases, hats and scarves, teddy bears and the like, so that families away from home can still have a touch of something homey.  Being away from home for the holidays can be so hard, but there are so many who try to make it…not easier, just less hard.

It was around this time last year that I stumbled upon a video on YouTube that really brought this message home for me.  [I hope it is still available to view by the time I post this to the blog.]  It’s really just a very glitzy, very well-produced TV commercial-cum-music video for a cell phone company that was beautifully set to the song “Home for the Holidays,” but it was so much more than that to me.  The first time I watched it, I got goose bumps and I cried.  Now, I have to admit that I’ve been known to cry at random commercials before – at ads for our local grocery store chain, for greeting cards, for the Olympics - so there is a precedent for tears.  But this time it was different.  This time, it wasn’t just the message and its delivery that tugged at my heart strings but also the circumstances in which I found myself watching the commercial.  I remember sharing it with my friend K., another heart mom whose child was in the hospital, and both of us crying.  I remember sharing the video on Facebook, saying, “There really is no place like home for the holidays, and for me, home is wherever and whenever all five of us are together.”

If ever anything forced me to ponder the concept of home and what it really meant to me, it was my daughter’s extensive hospital stay.  As the days and weeks turned into months, home was no longer a question of where; it was one of who.  Home was family.  Home was my husband, our two boys, and our daughter.  Home truly was wherever we happened to be and for however long we happened to be there together.  Yes, I longed to be able to take Ella back to our physical, literal home for the holidays - happy, healthy, and healed - but at that point, I was forced to be content with the fact that home was a room in the PICU.

Last year at this time, I was still in the children’s hospital with my daughter Ella.  Last year, I was still so full of hope – hope for a miracle for her, hope for a healthy, new heart, hope for the future, and hope simply because of the season.  You see, even though she and I were in the hospital in a town far from our family and far from home, and even in light of Ella’s long list of medical issues, I still had hope.  I still thought she had a future, and I still dreamt of her future and of our future as a family of five.

Being away from home for the holidays is a difficult thing, but even more difficult, even more painful and even more heartbreaking is being home for the holidays without my sweet girl.  Home is where the heart is, but so much of my heart has gone with her.  Home is wherever and whenever all five of us are together, but she’s no longer here.  We will always be five, but we are no longer five together here.  There’s no place like home for the holidays, but when you baby girl is truly Home while you’re in a too-empty house pining for her, the holidays feel less cheery, the season less bright.  It is still so hard to wrap my brain around the fact that she is gone, that she died before we could truly celebrate Christmas as a family.  And now we must celebrate the birth of a Child while we still mourn the death of ours.

I know that there’s no place like home for the holidays.  The idea of being home for the holidays has changed for me now, though.  Because of that, my focus during the holiday season has changed.  I’ve been so focused on how unfestive our home is, how hard it will even be to celebrate Christmas, how sad this time of year will probably always be for me now.  I’m sad because I miss my Ella.  I’m sad because she died three days before Christmas.  I’m sad because my arms are empty and no present under any tree will ever fill them.  But when I force myself to think about it, I know that, of the five of us, my girl is the only one blessed to truly be Home for the holidays.  She’s the only one of us able to celebrate with the Reason for the season.  Though she never celebrated her first birthday, she gets to celebrate His with Him.  Maybe remembering that will keep at bay the melancholy that often threatens to overwhelm me.

The last two lines of the song “Home for the Holidays” speak the truth:  If you want to be happy in a million ways/for the holidays you can’t beat home sweet home.  My daughter is Home for the holidays, and one of the things I have to try really hard to remember during this season – during what is truly the most difficult of all the hard times we’ve experienced without her – is that she has already achieved the goal for which we are all still striving.  She is eternally happy in a million ways for One Reason.  She is Home sweet Home, and while it breaks our hearts in a million ways for her to be gone, it gladdens them in the most important way because though she can’t be at home in our arms this Christmas, she can rest safe in the arms of the Christ Child born for all of us so many years ago.

 

 

St. Ella, pray for us!

Derailed

I’ve been walking a lot since Ella died.  Since I started walking back in the late winter/early spring, I’ve walked at least 500 miles, and I’m on my third pair of sneakers.  What started out as a way of getting my sad, depressed butt out of the house has turned into an almost daily form of exercise and therapy.  It’s a solitary pursuit, which is one of the reasons why I like it, and it has given me a regular time during the day to think and to pray, to cry and to remember.  That I’ve lost some weight and dropped a dress size in the process are just nice bonuses, ones that go hand in hand with another form of therapy…retail therapy.  ;)

I haven’t always been an avid walker.  I used to be a runner.  Well, let me rephrase that.  I used to try to be a runner.  My brother and sister were natural-born runners – built for it, naturally good at it, and good enough to be competitive at it.  Me?  Not so much.  As we like to say in my family, I’m of “good, Irish peasant stock.”  I do not have a runner’s build, but for years and years, I tried to run.  I ran cross country and track in both middle school and high school, and I’ve run a few 5Ks since then.  And though I tried to have one, I just don’t have a runner’s disposition.  Before anyone calls BS on all of that, let me say one more thing:  I just plain hate to run.  I’ll run if and when something chases me, but otherwise, why?  I never got the high.  I never won the race.  I never really enjoyed it.  I ran because it was the thing to do, because my parents required us to participate in a sport, and because I didn’t play any team sports.

But walking?  Walking I can do and enjoy.  Walking is a good fit for me, and walking has been good for me.  If I had tried to be a runner again after Ella died, I would still be sitting on my depressed, pudgy butt.  I’d still have low vitamin D.  I’d be no tanner and no thinner but very much worse for the lack of wear.  If I tried running again, I would quickly find reasons to not go running, and I’d quickly lose any motivation I might have had to start running again.  I would hate it, and then I’d hate myself for failing at it.  Since this is my blog and I happen to be both unscientific and lazy, I’ll just make up my own statistics on the topic.  It’s a proven fact that walking is 97% more awesome than running.  No lie.  Plus it’s easy, and mama likes easy.  If running were in the picture, I’d be able to give you 20 excuses in five seconds flat why I can’t go running every day.  But walking?  If I can walk to the fridge and the computer and the sofa, then I can walk four miles around the neighborhood.

So it was with great annoyance and consternation that I couldn’t enjoy my walks for over two weeks this month.  I caught a cold that kicked my butt and sapped my energy.  Between that and certain scheduling conflicts, my daily walks got the old heave ho.  I really missed it (though the lazy part of me enjoyed sleeping in a bit while I was sick), but I shouldn’t have been surprised by it.  Catching a cold at the end of the summer is par for the course for me.  I caught one last year when Ella was home, and I’ve caught colds several other times in the past around this time of year.  Summer winds down, and apparently so does my immune system.  Kids go back to school, yet I’m the one stuck at home with the back-to-school special of snot, the sniffles, and a sore throat.  Any exercise plan I may have had in place is temporarily derailed.

A lot can change when you’re out of commission for two weeks.  When I was finally able to go walking again this past Monday, I did so in brisk 58°F weather.  A bit of cooler fall weather had crept in, so that was a nice change.  What wasn’t so nice was how quickly I had fallen out of shape!  My husband had warned me that I might be sore after my first walk back, and he was right.  OUCH.  Everything was sore from my butt on down to my toes; plus, I had two new blisters on my ankles.  I felt a bit hobbled and it would have been very easy to take a day or two or ten off to recover, but I knew that the soreness would only go away if I kept walking, if I worked through it, and if I focused on getting past it on my way back to where I was before my end-of-the-summer cold. I may have been derailed, but you can bet your sweet bippy that I was going to beat feet and get the Bridget-walking-train back on track.  I may have been derailed, but by gosh, I was going to make sure that the derailment really was only temporary!

If only it were that easy when the derailment is spiritual rather than physical.

If only it were that easy when your life is derailed.

If only it were that easy when your soul, your entire being, is derailed.

Nothing opened my eyes to how very far off spiritual track I was than the death of my sweet Ella.  Nothing before had ever challenged my faith and trust in God more than when He took her home, and nothing ever exposed how shallow that faith and trust was than the moment she died.  I call it a derailment, but can something be derailed if it were never on track to begin with?  Because that’s honestly how I felt once she was gone.

My faith was a very basic and immature faith, I think.  I knew – and still know to the depths of my soul – that there is a God.  I know that Jesus is my Savior.  I believe that He is fully present - Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity - in the Holy Eucharist.  I know that and I believe that, but I have never felt farther away from Him than I did when Ella died.  I still feel very far away, and I worry that I’ll ever make it back to Him.

Throughout my whole Ella-centric journey, a number of people have commented on how strong my faith is, how it has inspired them, how they think I’m strong.  But hearing all of that makes me feel like a damn fraud.  I feel like I’ve had to have this Suzy Sunshine façade with regard to my faith because if people really knew what I thought and felt, if they really knew what I said to God or how I felt about His plan...well, the shock would probably blow them away.  I feel like my own “pray it until you feel it, say it until you believe it” mantra would work for everyone else but not for me.  I feel let down and alone and forgotten by the One I constantly talk to, pray to, cry to, and scream to.

I want to get back to Jesus, but I don’t know how to.  Intellectually I know I should try harder to get back to Him.  I should try harder to get closer to Him and to rebuild the relationship that’s been shattered by my own faltering faith.  I should read the Bible and pray every day because while feelings are nice, love is a decision that requires constant devotion, cultivation and work.  But honest to freaking pete, I just don’t know how to do it.  I don’t know how to get there or how to get to a point when I think or believe it would be worth it.  Some days I feel like letting Him in would be as pointless as looking for a doorknob on an elevator and as futile as pushing on a door that is clearly labeled pull.  I feel lost, and that worries and scares me.  I am derailed, and I’m having a hard time not only finding the tracks but caring enough to get back on them.

 

When I started walking again, even after a break as short as two and half weeks, I was comforted by the familiar sights and sounds of the neighborhood – the kids who play while waiting at the bus stop, the older gentleman who always waves at me with both hands, the flocks of geese that can barely be bothered to get out of the way for passing cars and trucks, the various bumper stickers and license plate holders on neighbors’ cars, the worms that scoot slowly across the pavement.  They are all familiar and so much a part of the scenery of my everyday walks.

Why then do I feel little comfort when I recite the familiar prayers of my faith, prayers I’ve been saying since my youth?  Why do I feel little comfort when I hear His Word spoken at church, even as He speaks to me through His music and in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass?  Why do I feel comfort getting back to the mundane sights and sounds of a walk through my neighborhood yet feel little comfort getting back to the worship and prayers of my faith?

When I was able to go for walks again, it was good to see that everything that had a place was still in fact in its place.  Yes, my ankles hurt with just about every step because of open blisters being rubbed raw by my socks and shoes.  And yes, I was really sore after my walk, limping around like a woman of many more years than I.  But the comfort that the familiar evoked was so much better than the sometimes overwhelming apathy that I’ve experienced since Ella died.  The physical aches and pains I felt were so much better than the spiritual numbness that’s had a grip on my soul since my baby went away. 

But the pain of Ella’s absence – the pain that I’ve felt to varying degrees every single day since she died – you can’t walk that pain away.  That pain has only been compounded by my flawed human perception of Divine apathy because of His silence, because His apparent distance makes me feel small and insignificant.  It makes me wonder if He hears my prayers or if I’m praying the right way.  It makes me wonder if being able to see “The Big Picture” one day would make a difference in how I’ve felt since Ella died.  It makes me wonder how the bleep this could be His perfect will.  It makes me wonder why him but not Ella, why her but not my sweet girl.

Yet I know I’m the one who can’t seem to bridge the gap between us.  I know that I’m the one who’s fallen so far off track, not Him.  I complain about His distance though I’m the one keeping Him at arm’s length.  I complain about His apparent apathy even as I struggle with my own.  I complain…yet He trusted me with Ella.  He blessed me with the most awesome daughter ever.  He didn’t guarantee me peace here on Earth, but He gave me a piece of Heaven when He brought Ella into my life.  He had a plan for her and for me and for my family.  Why can’t I see that?  And why can’t I trust that?  Am I really owed more than that with which I was already so richly blessed?

I know I can’t get through this life without Him or without His grace.  I know that I can’t see her again without making my way back to Him.  Saying all of this out loud, getting it off my chest, off my heart and out of my head, can only help.  And even through all of my doubt and anger and pain, I have been hoping and praying for a life after death, for my life after her death. 

I may have been derailed, but I’m hoping that it’s only temporary.  I’m hoping that in recognizing it, I’ll be a step closer to getting back on track.  But I’m not just hoping for it.  I’m counting on it.

 

 

St. Ella, pray for us!

Eight Months, One Week and a Day

I have a bad memory.  That’s a given, and it’s been a fact of my life for a while, but especially of my post-Ella life.  I don’t necessarily like it, but I’m learning to deal with it.  And who knows?  Maybe my memory will improve as my peace increases, if it ever increases.  When it increases.  Maybe the bad memories and my bad memory will sort of meld and merge until they become just plain old memories, have-to-live-with-them-can’t-change-them memories.  Maybe. 

To say I have a bad memory is just a statement of fact, but to say that I’m also ridiculously scatterbrained is a ridiculous understatement.  If a squirrel and a Chihuahua had a love child that had been recently diagnosed with ADHD, that child would probably have a better attention span than I do.  My ability to focus is hampered not only by my inability to remember things but also by a certain level of apathy that settled in shortly after Ella died.  I’m trying to care more about the everyday things like decluttering the counters, cleaning the bathrooms, vacuuming the rugs and the like, but it’s hard.  I’m less of a cleaning machine lately and more a pile mover/rearranger.  I may not be able to focus long enough to clean a whole room, but I can stack the crap out of a pile of junk mail.  In the grand scheme of things, though, it’s just hard to care about that stuff sometimes.  It’s hard not to give in to the apathy that’s crept in and settled in.  Why clean?  She’s not here.  Why bother?  She’s gone. 

But I have to care - or at the very least, try to care - because this life at home is the life I chose.  This life as a wife and mother is my choice, and my choice comes with duties and obligations that require my focus and attention.  Even if I fake it until I feel it, I have to care enough to at least get things done around the house and to properly take care of my family.  I have to care enough about the duties I’ve chosen so as to prevent this home from being just a house.  There may be piles of clutter, but doggone it to heck, those piles will be really neatly stacked! 

Of all of my duties as a wife, I always believed that the most important one was to help my husband get into Heaven.  I understand that Jesus already died on the cross for our sins.  That’s not what I mean by helping my husband get into Heaven.  I mean that I don’t want to be a hindrance, a near occasion of sin, or a stumbling block on his journey Home.  I don’t want to be the one that hands him the apple, so to speak.  [Some might believe that I’m helping him not necessarily to get to Heaven but to at least knock out some serious time earned in Purgatory!  Whatever works, I say.] 

The same can be said for my duty to my kids and for my obligation to guide them Home.  I wish I could be more confident in that department, but honestly I feel like I fail them more than lift them up.  I feel so immature in my own faith, especially after this past year when the difference between my faith in God and my trust in His will became abundantly clear.  I feel like I’m leading more by bad example than anything else – don’t do, say, or act like mom does, and you’ll be a shoo-in for swift entry through the pearly gates! 

I always believed that I should help my family on its journey toward Home, but I didn’t take that belief as seriously as I ought.  Home was way, way over there in the future sometime when we’re all old and gray and ready.  Home was a place I’d get to first to wait for my kids and their kids and their kids' kids.  That’s how it was supposed to go. 

But when your child dies, Heaven is no longer just a nice idea or something to be hoped for at some random moment in the distant future.  When your child’s absence occupies so many of your random thoughts, you can’t help but turn those thoughts to where she is.  When your child dies and you can’t remember things very well or focus on much of anything, you cling to the random things that do pop into your thoughts.  You hold onto them and focus on them, though there’s a fine line between focus and perseveration, I think.  When all you can do is focus on your baby who’s no longer with you, you cling to the random but persistent thoughts that won’t leave you be.  You think about random but persistent thoughts like eight months, one week and a day. 

Ella died when she was exactly eight months and one week old.  She died eight months, one week and a day ago.  Today marks the day that Ella has been in Heaven longer than she was here with me.  I always said that Ella was my child but God’s first.  She’s with Him forever, safe and whole in His arms, but it breaks my heart every single day that she is not here in my arms.  At the same time, who am I to begrudge her Heaven? 

Could I ever really begrudge her Heaven? 

I’ve been thinking about this day since shortly after Ella died.  I can’t explain why this day has occupied so many of my thoughts.  I can’t explain the fear I felt that I might let this day slip by without remembering it.  I actually got out of bed earlier this week to calculate exactly what date this day would fall on, and then I recalculated it that night and double checked my numbers the next morning.  I didn’t want to let it pass without some sort of what…remembrance?  acknowledgement?

 

Eight months, one week and a day.  I never thought she’d meet Jesus before I did.  I never thought she’d go Home first.  I knew Ella had a very sick heart, and I knew her life, however long it would be, would include more suffering than many people realize.  But I honestly never thought she wouldn’t pull through.  I never thought she wouldn’t be here today.  I never thought she wouldn’t be a main feature in all of my future.  And I certainly never thought I’d outlive her.

 

I want all of my family to go to Heaven.  I want them to live better lives than I have, to make better choices than I have, and to want eternal life with Jesus more than I have.  I want Heaven to be real to them now.  I want life in Heaven to be their goal, their final destination after their journeys are complete.  I want them to want it because they want to be with Jesus forever in Heaven.  I want them to want to see Ella again.  I don’t want it to take a tragedy to make Heaven real for them, and though I have the attention span of a gnat nowadays, I don’t ever want to lose my own focus on my journey Home. 

Eight months, one week and a day ago, my sweet little girl took up permanent, glorious residence in paradise.  For better or for worse, my Ella, my sweet little saint, is the reason why Heaven is really real for me, and for the rest of my days, I’ll be counting on her intercession to get me through this life until I can see her again in the next.

 

St. Ella, pray for us!