Grief

One of my favorite podcasts lately is Out of the Ordinary, with Lisa-Jo Baker and Christie Purifoy. A recent episode, which I finished while folding laundry on my bed, was about how to handle someone else’s grief, and while listening to it made me feel deeply sad, it also made me remember.

I am notoriously bad at dealing with other people’s grief. I can send flowers, fine. I can definitely send a card. Writing a note inside is not as certain, and if I show up at the visitation, it’s going to be awkward. I might hug you, or I might stammer all over myself, and I want to be there for you, but I also really don’t want to be there at all. People, I figure, are better off without me making things worse.

I think I am further stymied by the number of “helpful” items published on Facebook with encouraging titles like “Ten things NOT to say to someone whose dad just died.” Whenever I read these things, I am generally struck by two things: one, that I would say over half of the list and still can’t see anything wrong with it, and two, that these lists prohibit anything at all that someone might actually want to say or need to hear. If you follow these lists, you’d better just keep your mouth shut and stay at home. So I do, whenever I can.

But the truth is that I’ve been through grief. When my sister died at 17, I didn’t have good words for explaining what happened, much less for processing it. Most of my immediate grief was expressed in anger and extreme irritation with other people. I didn’t want to feel sad, at least not in front of everyone, not even my parents and my other sisters. Grief felt so private to me that all I wanted to do was get away by myself with my husband, to try to make sense of what had happened, or maybe just to binge Friends and not talk at all.

Despite my repressed feelings, things happened that week that helped me begin to heal, and every single one of them involved people who showed up. And so, I offer a list of truly beautiful things that people said or did after my sister died. I know some of these people are aware of how special what they did was; others may not be. Because sometimes the things that you don’t even realize were important matter immensely.

1. They came to the hospital. Before I could get back to my parents’ house, people they worked with were heading to the hospital to meet them there when my sister’s body arrived. They weren’t alone even there.
2. One woman my dad worked with headed to their house as fast as she could, stopping only to pick up pizza rolls on the way so that we’d have something to eat. This woman is a truly fabulous cook, but she didn’t wait to make something wonderful. She just grabbed something and came, and she had no idea that her choice was perfect: she picked up one of Melinda’s favorite foods.
3. My best friend cancelled work and skipped class and came to be with me, and she even slept in my bed with me when my husband had to go back to school or fail a class.
4. At visitation, old friends from high school came and sat with me on the front pews and made me laugh. They gave me a speck of normalcy in a place I didn’t want to be.
5. Magazines. Joe took me to Wal-Mart after the funeral and bought me fashion magazines in which I could hide when the public grief became too much.
6. People didn’t try to make me respond the way they thought I should. When I went back to work, my friends came in early to meet me, and they brought flowers, and they sat with me all during our planning period, giving up valuable grading time, to just be present with me. My students had collected money and bought gifts I still treasure. They had signed little strips of paper with their names and their prayers, and they put it all together as a chain and hung it around my classroom. I could just be, and that was so healing.
7. They were quiet. Some of my strongest memories were of my sister’s Sunday school teacher standing outside the church where she had been preparing lunch while the funeral procession passed. She stood alone, crying quietly, watching the car carrying her girl roll on by. I remember the line of my parents’ colleagues outside the funeral home as we left for the cemetery. They just stood together and watched in silence, and in both of these instances, I felt lifted by their love and prayers.
8. They made sure they were there. I am guilty of always saying, “Let me know whatever you need,” but the people around me didn’t wait for me to tell them I needed something. They came over and kept me company. They let me talk. They brought food. They kept other people away. None of this seemed to be a big deal or a burden; it was just people doing the work that they saw at hand to do.

I guess that’s what I would say if I were going to make one of those Facebook lists about how to help a grieving person. Don’t worry about the lists or what people think you should do or shouldn’t do. Just make yourself quietly present, and do whatever you see that needs doing. Don’t wait to do it perfectly. Just do what you see to do, and trust God to take care of the rest.

Mother’s Day

Like many people, I took my mom for granted for most of my life. She was kind and funny and strong, and she did everything and made it look effortless. She wasn’t a complainer or a whiner, and I really was, so it was easy to let myself think that my mom just really liked vacuuming the stairs, and cooking for ungrateful kids who tried to take the tiniest helpings of vegetables possible, and raking leaves after a long week of teaching. She must have really liked helping me with my math homework, which took hours for either of us to figure out how to do, and she must have liked reading to me, book after book after book. She must have liked staying up long after I had gone to bed and getting up hours before I woke, because she did it all the time, and she must have really liked being busy. I mean, if I didn’t like doing all the things that she did, I just wouldn’t do them. That’s what being a grown-up was, right?

I’m embarrassed to admit how long it took me, but I stopped every bit of taking my mom for granted pretty much the second my daughter was born. My mom stayed with us for a couple of days when we came home from the hospital, and I clung to her desperately. I had zero confidence in my ability to change a diaper, feed her properly, choose clothes that were warm enough, put her down to sleep…I had no clue what I was doing. But my mom had done this four times, and she had done it well. I was immediately in awe of her greatness. How did she do this four times and never complain? I was so very tired.

I’ve had a little sleep since then, but I still think my mother is the greatest mom ever. Here’s a top eight list, in no particular order, in praise of my mom.

1. She’s a master organizer. She has patience with my constant little piles everywhere, but when she washes dishes in my kitchen, or folds my sheets or towels, every corner is neat, every spot is gone, and they are almost too beautiful to put away.
2. She’s got the energy of five mes. I want to clean my screened-in porch? She’s there with a hose, dragging things into my yard that I didn’t even know could move. I get the hare-brained idea to paint my living room, hallway, and daughter’s room, all in the same day? She’s on a ladder or kneeling in the floor long after I want to quit. When I decide that freezing fresh vegetables in the summer is the exact thing to save us money all winter long, she spends all day at my sink and stove, and she makes me keep going even after I’ve decided this was a dumb idea, and we should all just quit and watch Netflix while gnawing on raw green beans.
3. She listens like a champ. No matter how little or insignificant the story, I never have to tell it to her twice, and she remembers and asks me about how it’s all going later.
4. She’s beautiful. She always has been, but as she has gotten older and let her hair go white, she’s even more beautiful than when she was younger. I hope I age gracefully just like her.
5. She has the most gentle, patient voice and spirit. Being around my mom, even just sitting in her presence, is soothing. While she is full of energy, she also knows how to relax, and she doesn’t make sudden or wild moves. She knows how to just sit and be with you. She shows with her life the loveliness of just being.
6. She knows how to love like nobody’s business. Generations of kindergarteners who have gone through her classroom can testify to that, but as her oldest kid, I got the best seat for it. She believes the best in people, and she makes them want to be that best.
7. She’s thoughtful and intentional in her decisions. She didn’t parent by the seat of her pants, and she once told me that her constant prayer was that God would guide her in her parenting, and that he would make up for her mistakes.
8. When I was pregnant, I called her once at 11 p.m. to ask how to get vomit out of the carpet. Her answer: lie down on the couch, and she’d be there soon. And she was.

The older I get, the more I realize how blessed I am to have this woman for my mother. She still shows by her words and deeds that Christ is first in her life, and her family is second. To know someone like this is lucky. I get to call her my mom.

Thinking About Summer

Tonight I’m thinking about summer.

My daughter’s school had its Student Showcase tonight. She and I checked out the presentation and poster she made, and the diorama her brother made. She signed herself up for door prizes, and we wandered the halls of the school. I love that her school is small, and that everyone knows her. I love that she has a favorite Maya Angelou quotation on the wall, and that she still bounces with joy as she goes through the hall.

I don’t like that we are over halfway done with her time in this school, and that all too soon she will be walking down the halls of a new school. I hope she will still be bouncing.

But tonight was a night for happy plans of immediate adventures. After Showcase, we

drove to Subway, and while we ate, we threw ideas back and forth for all the dreams we have for summer.

“Go to Florida!”

“Go to Chicago!”

“See a movie at the drive-in.”

“Read in the hammock in the backyard.”

“Visit Grandma.”

“Hang out with my new cousin.”

Summer is magical, isn’t it? The possibility and the hope stretch on and on, wrapped in sweet heat, the smell of cut grass, and a soaking humidity. The freedom makes everything seem new, and the everyday holiday feel reframes the perspective. In the summer, untrapped by the rigidity of my schedule, freedom is real.

Freedom is hard for me in the rest of the year. I have to get up at a certain time, leave the house by a certain time, be in my classes at certain times, be home at a certain time, make dinner by a certain time, and get everyone in bed by a certain time. There is less room for play, for fun, for noticing the delightful, whimsical gifts that God plants along the way. There is less room, so there is less freedom. Right?

Freedom is a concept I’ve always struggled with because of my perfectionism and constant need to get things right. It’s hard to understand freedom when you’re busy checking off a bunch of rules. I know that the Bible promises freedom for those who belong to Jesus. But freedom from what, when my schedule is so stiff?

I’m wondering if the freedom Jesus provides isn’t a little like a summer afternoon: a way to notice the beauty of my own life. Whether I’m in the car on a road trip or crowded into the hammock with two giggling kids or weaving my way among desks to answer student questions, I have the opportunity every day to see where Jesus is at work, and to join Him in it. I can embrace the joy that walking with Him brings. I can notice Him, and when I do, the weight of the burdens can start to lift.

There is undoubtedly a lot more to freedom than this. I’m no theologian, and greater minds than mine have no doubt plumbed the subject thoroughly. But when I think of summer, I think of freedom, and now, I’m thinking of ways to hang on to bits of that freedom all through the  year.