Empty Shoes/One Month

At five in the morning, the house is always perfectly still. Yesterday, I was in the dark browsing my phone before beginning a busy day. Out of nowhere, it hit: the mental image of your house shoes, sitting empty. I pictured them as I had last seen them, in the hospital by your bed.

"All of her little shoes are now empty."

The thought sucked the breath out of me and grief thudded its crushing weight on my chest like a herd of elephants. My gosh, you're so very gone! 

I was so afraid your shoes had been left behind when you died, but they haven't. Big Sis has them. I asked her for this lovely photo and she graciously obliged. This image will replace the sadder one in my memory of the hospital the day we said goodbye. I am so grateful to you and  Dad for starting our family with such a quality person. I have found myself hanging onto her for dear life.

We went to the orchard today, my little family of four. You know the one: *our* orchard. The one you, Dad, Jim, Karen, Baby Sis, and I first went to one happy afternoon in 2001. On the ride down today, it struck me that only Baby Sis and I are left alive from our original group. That joyous afternoon blossomed into our annual pilgrimages to document the girls' growth in the chestnut trees.

I am heartsick that we have been without you for an entire month already. It is such a sad occasion to mark on such a special and precious day, but that is life, isn't it? It is death itself that makes the lives we have so incredibly dear. The memories we are making with our children were born in traditions started with you and Dad. How fleeting are these moments! 

So today I celebrate my children and the ways they have grown, inside and out even as today I grieve for you, for Dad, and for the years I feel somewhat cheated out of. 

Every thought, sad or happy, brings me back to the Savior and the overwhelming sense that He is good. 

Thank you, Lord, for giving me the parents I had. Thank you for the time we spent together creating the memories that will have to sustain us. I am so grateful that Dad and Mom are up there celebrating with joyful abandon in the most precious of places. Comfort us as we hold them here in our hearts. Help us to create and carry forward their legacy of loving and serving you. Answer the prayers spoken by lips that no longer utter, and also those we who remain speak over our own children. In your holy name, I pray. Amen.

We Are Losing Her, Too

 I had intrusive thoughts. I often do, but I had little breakthrough nudges that seemed so stupid.

I sat on my patio watching the garden and mulling over my mom's upcoming summer visit. She hoped to stop by for at least a week in July - maybe August. Her gallbladder was hurting: a lot. Aching *so* badly. It unsettled me: reminded me of my three month saga from hell. 

"Go get it checked out, Mom."

"They said the bloodwork is fine, but it just really hurts so that I can hardly breathe."

And so when I sat on my back patio watching the garden, any time I was alone - really alone, the intrusive thoughts started. What if... what if?

"Is this her year?" I asked God.

He knew what I was asking. 2017 was my dad's year. 

I chided myself for being overly worried. After all, I was likely projecting my own medical trauma worries onto her.

"Please go get scanned, Mom. Don't let your doctor off the hook." I pleaded.

"Yeah... but the blood tests..."

It didn't seem to matter how much I pushed. This went on for about three weeks. Finally, FINALLY, she found someone to listen to: her sister reminded her that their older sister had lethal cancers that began as unexplained pain in her side. Mom *finally* called the doctor. They couldn't get her in Monday, but they would Friday. 

Friday came and the kind NP at the doctor's office got her in for a scan straight away. But they didn't call her with the results: they called my sister. She called the rest of us. Pancreatic cancer, metastatic to a lesion on the liver and spots in her lungs. 

Oh, my gosh. *This* is why the pain left her breathless. Her lungs also had cancer. 

The bomb went off June 28th and the world has never been the same. 

Never, like we are so far in the future. 

It has been just about three weeks since 'the big day', and Mom has already been hospitalized for five days, has had a total of four CT scans (counting the original), one MRI, and one PET scan. 

This is all so surreal, so unfair. 

On the same token, I have friends who just lost their parents within the same set of months. I cringe with guilt, thinking that I cannot/shouldn't say that seven years is 'too close together'. Even so, both parents are dying in their 60's. That seems too young and this all feels too fast. 

I have such a vacillating sense of what I should and should not feel. I am trying to make space for all of it. 

I am rambling again. Losing parents does that to me. I ramble, or I am left speechless. 

Why did those nudges come to me in the garden? Why can I feel things ahead of time if I cannot change them?

"Is this her year?"

Yes. 

It is her year and now we are losing her, too.