without a goodbye

I often wonder what it will be like to look back on this chapter of my life.  This collection of days, weeks, and months in which I have been stretched.  And just when I think I've reached the limit, I'm pulled a little bit further.

I will never forget the week in September when I found out Liam died.  I'll never forget the sense of anguish I experienced as news of his loss was layered upon four other pieces of bad news I received within the space of a few days that were really painful to swallow.  I'll never forget laying alone on the floor in my apartment.  In the dark.  Overwhelmed.  Philip felt so far away.  The End felt so far away.  I thought I was maxed out.

Little did I know what the next 10 months would hold.

Multiple obvious losses alongside of the more ambiguous, somewhat disenfranchised experiences of grief.

I've abandoned this notion of somehow deciding that I've reached my limit.  Life keeps happening.  I'm just learning to really surrender to what Philip often reminds me:  it's less about why and more about Who.  I'm finally leaning into that.  Leaning In to Him.  I have no.where.else.to.go.  I'm not going to get answers.  I just have to trust and surrender.

It's not what I would have chosen.  It's not what I predicted.  But it is.

I simply cannot understand many of the events that have transpired during this chapter of my life.  The heartache.  The disappointment.  The "unfairness."  But I've got to get used to not understanding.  I'm getting more used to not understanding.  And trusting.

In the last 10 days  my life has been touched by two more deaths and a suicide.  The thing with loss is that that with every experience of loss, the emotions connected to a person's preceding losses and shoot straight to surface.   I had a powerful dialogue w/ my in-laws last weekend about grief, and they said something that was SPOT ON.  You don't "get through" grief or "get over" it.  You assimilate to it.  It changes you.  

I've recognized that part of the pain of grief is not only mourning the loss of someone who has died, but it's feeling the pain of the people around you.  I have watched two women my age lose their mother.  They had no idea that the last day the last time they saw her they shared the final moments they would have with their mother on this earth (and thinking about that makes me think of my own mother which of course makes me feel like I'm going to scream, vomit, and sob violently given that I only get to see my parents a few times per year).    I have watched my parents lose one of their dearest friends.  It is horrendous.  And you just want to make it go away.

Loss brings everything into clear focus.  Painfully clear focus.  Priorities.  Choices.  Time.

What really matters.

Who really matters.

How painfully precious time is.

I struggle with this. . . trying to live in the moment but not get swept away by the oh-my-word-something-could-happen realities that loom scarily near the surface.  Military life, particularly our military life, has always given me a deep appreciation for time shared with the people who matter the most to me.  But it's tricky.  And it's hard not fall into the trap of guilt and questioning and lots of other not-so-pleasant emotional spaces.

So it goes back to Leaning In. (not in the Sheryl Sandberg feminist sense of the phrase)

On May 29th, I sat at my desk and cried with my mom as I learned that an incredible woman of faith, dignity, compassion and grace breathed her last breath mere hours early.  I knew something was wrong as soon as I got the email from my mom asking that I call her as soon as I could.  But I didn't imagine it was this.  There was no goodbye.  My heart aches for her husband and her children.  Even before I was born, through her and her husband's relationship w/ my parents she played a powerful impact on the spiritual fabric that has impacted my faith. Jeanette has prayed for and encouraged me since the first day I entered this world. When Philip and I got married, he was welcomed into the fold (the photo below is from a couple of months after we were married in 2007 before we left for England.) I have years of memories of sugary sweet Friday evenings of lefse and laughter in which Jeanette is front and center (or in a more unassuming, Jeanettelike fashion, slightly to the side, wearing her beautiful smile, her sweet calming voice and laughter gently ringing through the air).  She has been on the top of the shortlist of people I have reach out to regularly as I have weathered the storms of graduate school.  The last note I have in my inbox from her was from two weeks before she died.

It is my prayer that I can love and live with the faithfulness and unassuming grace that she did.

Several months ago she quoted Alfred, Lord Tennyson to me in an email:

More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams. . .

I'm putting that in my suit pocket and carrying it into tomorrow.

I just had the urge to send her my usual night-before-the-interview email but quickly realized that she would never read it.  Tonight, as I sit here in my hotel room with tears streaming down my face,  I celebrate that August may have unknowingly been the last time I gave Jeanette a hug on this earth, but it was not goodbye.