The Anger Side of Grief

I tried to "google" the different stages of grief after my brother's funeral. It just made me mad and I stopped looking to the Internet for answers that will never come. I do remember in my research that there is supposed to be an anger stage of grief. This makes sense to me because I reached the anger stage of grief quite easily on my own. Actually, I believe that I may have taken up residence in this stage.

I had even suggested to my sister that she buy two sets of boxing gloves and whoever had a problem with anything for the rest of forever could meet me in a dark alley and I would be glad to school them. I was angry at every doctor who ever saw my brother, every medication he was prescribed to take instead of investigating the cause of his depression, the funeral director for a ridiculous suggestion for music and various friends and family members who dared to suggest that my brother's death would be a mere event that I "got through". Oh yes. I am quite familiar with the anger side of grief in the past few weeks.

But out of every flash of anger, each rage of emotion that crossed my heart, I never was mad at my brother. Several people have suggested that it will come; that it is customary, acceptable and even appropriate to be angry with those who take their own lives. But I have read my brother's journal, his emails, his text messages and his notes to himself. And there is no way on this side of heaven that in the midst of his depression and loneliness that I could ever be angry with him. Am I devastated by missing him? Absolutely. Angry with myself that I did not know the depths of his sorrow? I will be for the rest of my days. But mad at my baby brother for fighting off demons that I have never understood, nor fought off myself? No.  Never.

How could I be angry at someone who fought so hard to conceal what he battled, so that no one else would know? Why would I, for one second be cross with a soul that would have never harmed another living creature? And how could spend one minute of my given breath being upset that my brother's struggle had ended in any other fashion than him back in the Father's arms?

I may forever be in the angry stage of grief, but it will never be because I am angry with my brother.

 

Funerals Are For The Living

 It was a Tuesday. The Oklahoma air was so cold it would take your breath at the inhale. My brother had left us two days earlier. It seemed like a lifetime and a mere second before Tuesday. Someone had suggested Thursday for the funeral, but my sister had more of her wits about her than I did in that moment and had objected. The weather was predicted to be thirty degrees warmer on Saturday. I think the weather was definitely a factor, but I think she believed that Saturday would give us more time.

Who wants to attend a funeral on Saturday? I knew I didn't. But nobody whose loved somebody deeply ever has a desire to attend their funeral. Yes, Saturday technically gave us a few more days to plan and to process, but the time that I wanted had already been taken from me. I wanted more holidays, more blazing hot summer Sundays out by the pool watching our kids play together and us laughing at some silly joke. But the only time I had left alloted to me was going to be without him. So Saturday it would have to be.

While my brother's life was honored that day, the entire process of burying the dead is really for those who are left behind. We choose flowers and caskets and burial plots, not for those who are being planned around, but for those who are standing there to see it. I'm not sure if knowing that makes the process better or worse. If for the better, than it is so we carry the remembrance of those we've loved and lost into a honor we want those who knew them to agree with. Perhaps though it is always for the worse, because after all the flowers have died and the casket is lowered, the dead's status remains unchanged and the hollowness of our hearts are all that remain.



 

Preaching An "I Miss You."

"Lindsey?"

Every one's eyes in the room were looking at me for the answer.

I wasn't sure I had heard the question.

"Huh?"

The last two days had been such a blur, I would often stare into space thinking I would awaken in a few moments and I would have only been dreaming. I often would pray that I was.

The funeral director was taking notes and we had come to the part of the meeting where we had to decide who was going to "officiate" my brother's funeral.

"I am."

I heard the words and then couldn't believe I had said them. Did I really think I could preach, officiate or even stand up during my baby brother's goodbye ceremony? But I had been thinking and praying about it a lot.

I had a number of people who would have gladly preached. We live in Oklahoma for crying out loud. I could have walked out of the front door of that funeral home and hit a pastor with a rock if I had wanted. There were at least four pastor's cell phone numbers in my purse.

But if we were all going to be gathered on a Saturday for an event no one wanted to be there for, let's not choose someone who my brother had never even met. If saying "see you soon" to the only baby brother I'd ever have was going to be the order of that day, I owed it to him as his big sister to do it myself. I couldn't think of another way.

The air must have escaped out of the room, because for a moment time stood still.
Mike, the funeral director, tried to reason with me.

"Have you thought about how hard this is going to be?"

I had.
I knew.
Did he know how hard it was knowing that my life as forever broken into two places: life with my brother and life without him?

A bad highlight reel had been playing in my head about the funerals I had attended where afterwards, I felt as though I knew the deceased less after hearing the same old hymns and dismal words said over a casket. If this were good night, it was going to be one of which my brother would have been honored to have played a part.

"I do. And I don't know that I can pull it off, but I have to try."

As we drove home, my sister looked at me through tears and said "If we have to do this, then we have to do it together. I'll be in charge of his graveside service."

I'm not sure what Laura and I said that Saturday afternoon. I know we both made it. Before I got up in front of that church, The Hero squeezed my hand and said "you've got this. You can do it. It's not goodbye; only 'see ya soon'."
My baby brother was so felt and present that day that Mike pulled Laura and I both aside afterwards and thanked us for letting him be a part of a funeral that was honorable and fitting for the "I miss yous" we were making.

And I guess that's a song my heart will sing for now until my last day because some days there are no other words than "I miss you."

Preciously Beautiful

After my brother's near fatal car accident in 2002, he was diagnosed with a severe brain injury. I think my family was medically advised about his condition and the limitations that would forever be placed on his life, but I don't think one person ever fully prepared us for the side effects of his medication. Since the accident he was evaluated and re-evaluated only to leave yet another doctor's office with a new prescription for his depression. Nothing worked. The side effects were weight gain and sleeplessness, which only reduced his self-esteem. And those are only the side effects I know he struggled with because they were the only ones he told me about.

He became more and more alone. As we searched through family photos of the last several years, he was always in the background, never at the forefront of the family merriment. In the few pictures we have, he was always forced to partake and I think he forced his smiles too. I don't think anyone truly knew how much he had been struggling. I think that was the point, he never wanted us to know.

I hash tagged a picture of him a few nights ago to my Instagram account with #depression. The people who responded to that picture ranged from friends to people who are searching under that hash tag quite often, to people who have named entire social media accounts to depression. It got me to searching even further and I searched Pinterest for #depression posts. I thought for sure that since we have grown into such a visual society that there would only be pleasing posts and pictures of triumph and celebration over such an ailment.

What I really saw broke my heart.

The harshness and rawness of what people are willing to display to people they know and those they have never met only reaffirmed that my precious baby brother struggled fiercely and his struggle was not unlike a lot of other peoples and I am broken all over again that I never saw it.  He could not see how preciously beautiful he was to those who loved him.

And he remains preciously beautiful. 

What Makes It Great

It's no big secret. Adoption is hard. Damn hard some days. Some weeks even. 

Hard is definitely a four letter word to describe it. 

But there are moments in this parenthood that are, that I wouldn't take back for all the hard that has been produced between now and back then. 

Like, for the last two days at pickup, one of my babies who is no stranger to the hard and how to make it hard, screams my name and throws themselves into my arms. 

And last night a bed time, as he curled his fingers through mine, he whispers "Mommy, you are my friend." 

Yes, there is hard. And sometimes it is all that I see in a day. But it is the moments that are breathless that make it easier to breathe. 

"Of course it's hard....it's the hard that makes it great." Tom Hanks, A League of Their Own

Every Good Thing

I love this time of year. 

The growth, the heat, the shades of green.

I started gardening two years ago. 

It's the most amazing communion with God's world I have every day.

From the first tomato on the vine yesterday,

to my first eggplant ever,

our first time growing sunflowers,

 dreaming about pickles soon to come,

the two teensy raspberries, 

and my favorite daylily plant.

All is grace,

All is good 

and it is our personal gifts from our Maker.

Daily changing. 

But worth exploring to discover. 

Every. Single. Day.

"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights..."James 1:17

What have you been blessed with this weekend?

To Be Loved Well

He's never been overtly kind to our dogs. He likes them and they try to tolerate him, but he's a boy and curious and hyper. And often with them he tries to be the boss. We're blessed both of our dogs are older and have lots of patience. More patience than I do some days.
But things were different when he met my sister's English Bulldog, Edith. I'm not sure if it is the fact that she's big, or whether it's that she mothers him like he's her own baby, but there is something about these two together that is beautiful to watch.
He asks about her all the time. Wants to buy her toys at Target so she'll have something to play with. She follows him every where. Sleeps near him when he sleeps at my sisters and refuses to go inside if he is still playing in the yard.

My sister went out of town last weekend and we were all to glad to have another four legged friend in the house. And The Dinosaur was on cloud 9 when we told him Edith was coming for the weekend.

Sometimes life's best teachers are the ones who never do much talking. The bible tells us that every good and perfect gift is from above and it's funny to think that a dog would be heaven sent, but all you have to do is see them together to know for sure.

My Rules

I think The Hero has acclimated nicely to being married to a justice junkie, spontaneously thinking crazy woman such as myself. He has very few rules that I must follow when developing a project, a plan or an idea. And while the rules are few, I still have a hard time following them from time to time. It's not because I am intending to break the rules, but most often it is because I forget.

Here are the rules:

1.) I cannot be led solely from emotion.
Allegedly, the rule doesn't allow for a reactionary response based upon my ability to be moved at a moment's notice. Like when I asked if we could become home base for all the animals and children displaced from Hurricane Katrina. He simply smiled and said "Rule #1".

2.) The decision I make cannot force us to move more than 50 miles outside our current location without prior notice. This rule was developed upon our first trip from Ethiopia wherein I announced on the airplane we were selling our home, cashing in his retirement plan with the fire department and opening an orphanage in Ethiopia for needy children.

3.) If The Hero is expected to be exert money, time or energy on one of my projects, I have to successfully implement and maintain such enthusiasm for a defined length of time. This defined length of time is also determined by The Hero, not me. This rule developed after reading Jen Hatmaker's 7 last year and advising The Hero I had hired a bulldozer to demolish our back yard and till up a garden plot that if successful would mean our kids' swing set must be demolished to make way for potatoes.

As I previously indicated in my last post, I love this time of year. As dominated the kitchen table a few weeks ago with growth charts, almanacs, seed catalogs and soil tests, The Hero tried to slink into his Lazyboy undetected. No dice.
"Hey did you rent the tiller for the garden space this year?" I batted my eyes his direction for effect.

"Uh...you're doing that again this year?" He was already looking for an escape route from the living room.

I stared out the kitchen window and daydreamed. "I grew tomatoes, herbs, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, cucumbers, leafy greens and peppers last year. This year I think we need to move the kids swing set to make room for a cut flower garden, garlic, strawberries, okra, black-eyed peas, onions and carrots. What do you think?"

I turned around to discover he was headed out of the living room mumbling something about Rule #3.


- Hugs n Love,

Lindsey

Near Miss

I wrote this a few weeks back and wrestled with whether or not to post it because really, I cannot think about this event without checking my pulse.

I've believed in Jesus since I was seven years old. As our relationship has deepened throughout my life, I have had several moments where I had a physical awareness that I was not alone. Moments that made no logical, scientific sense. Where I knew that He, the Lord of Angel Armies was present and I felt him.
I had another one today.
With The Dinosaur and The Angel being out of school, they've traveled back and forth to the office with me a lot this Christmas break. I know that it has been really boring because while most people are able to take vacation time around this time of year, being a family lawyer means that the holidays are a consistent hotbed for litigation. I can almost never gather more than a few hours away from the office during this season.
It really isn't too rough on them. I represent a lot of kids in my practice and one whole office is a dedicated play room. But for my two, they are definitely the outdoorsy type. Being in an office all day tests all of our creativity and ability to expend energy. Especially for The Dinosaur. He lives for our walks outside or running to the car for lunch. His quick little legs can bolt at just the crack of a door.
Today was no different. There were several other kids in the office today and he was dying for some fresh air. I knew it was going to be an early lunch. He needed to get outside. I rounded The Angel and the coats and my purse and all the "mom garbage" I think that I need. I had wrangled The Angel to put her shoes on, her coat and we were headed out the door. I told her just to meet me at the car when she got her stuff together. The Dinosaur was three paces in front of me, holding the door knob to his freedom, begging me to hurry up. I really was trying. I let him open the door and just as I have every day for almost three years each time he heads out, I shouted "Do not cross the parking lot!" My office does not sit in a busy area. There are not many cars during any part of the day. But I remind him at least three times a day regardless.
The air in his face and the pavement under his feet must have overloaded his senses because he never heard me. I was less than ten paces behind him when the whole world slowed. I remember the following details with specificity and horror. It must have happened in three seconds, but time suspended and I recall it all.
Black mustang.
Speeding.
The back of The Dinosaur's head heading toward our car.
His perfect stride of one foot pounding in front of the other.
Never stopping.
My voice screaming his name.
Me dropping every thing in my hands and running.
Him turning and taking one step back toward my voice.
The driver missing him by inches.
We were both hysterical when I reached him.
He jumped in my arms and screamed and cried and I screamed and cried.
The Angel missed the whole thing. Thank you Jesus!
I did not need a near death encounter as a reminder to hug my children today, but I'll tell you I haven't let either one of them too far out of my reach today either.
- Hugs n Love,
Lindsey

 

I'm sure that you've passed a scene like this in your city.
Perhaps you even passed by one today.

A person holding a sign,

stating they have a need.

I am the one who is always digging for cash.

Or bottles of water if I have planned ahead.

Or the kids' snacks if I can find them.

But whether it's out of convenience or a lack of planning,

I always feel like I am just giving money.

Offering a "God bless you"

and sometimes with a smile.
If I can remember it.
But I always try to give something.

I just cannot ignore the thought of passing by some one
who may have a need and I perhaps have the ability to provide even a small part.
It aches my heart to see some one, especially in my home town,
who isn't being properly provided for.
Whether it be by their own choices or
my lack of civic involvement,
but I cannot just push through the light and drive on.

When The Hero and I first started dating,

he use to roll his eyes when I would dig through his wallet,

force him to change 3 lanes of traffic,

and he would tutor me on how giving money wasn't really going to change some one's situation.

He use to say that the result would only result in perpetuating a cycle,

support substance abuse,

or dissuade some one from getting a real job.

But honestly, even if everything he said was true, I can still resonate with this:

If my life had been relegated to
having no home,

having no one I felt I could turn to,
sleeping in alley ways,

wondering where my next meal would come from

or being disconnected from my thoughts

and forgetting that I am fearfully and wonderfully made

by a Creator who loves me more than anything else on earth,

I can understand that my choices may not always be the best.

 

 

The Hero has stopped hounding me about my stop light activities.
He now just hands me his wallet without ever being asked.
 I love that about him.

We gave a man a few dollars a few weeks back and
I told The Hero that I wanted a homeless friend.
He just stared blankly back at me.
I tried to explain that I didn't just want to pass by people on the street.
I wanted to engage them.
Enough to where I would know one of them by name.

He asked if any if any of the people we knew were homeless
would they still consider us friends.
I told him I didn't know.
But Jesus had several friends on this earth and he was still homeless.

I told him I just wanted to begin to put myself in situations where
I wasn't offering a piece of my wallet,
I was finally offering a piece of myself.
Maybe that's all Jesus really wants from any of us after all.
Offer yourself to some one else fully,
not to change their situation but to simply be their friend.

 

Love Is Work

I think the biggest lie we tell little girls is that their wedding day is the end and all that lies after is "Happy Ever After".
Don't misunderstand, the wedding to The Hero definitely makes my top 5 days, but happy did not follow us into our days there after.
We married 10 days into December. He was beyond gainfully employed and I had only a few months left of studying until I joined him in the work force. Our future was amazing on paper. Less than one month after our wedding, The Hero's position was terminated. I was only working 15 hours a week as a legal intern, with two months to go before the bar exam; no where near enough income to even pay our house payment. We had known prior to the wedding we'd have to put off our honey moon so I could study for the bar, but now it would be indefinitely.
We were already into the "for poorer" part of our vows. It was no longer the choice of whether or not to eat out, but whether it would be beef or chicken ramen. It wasn't fun, but we were determined to see each other through. Looking back it seems so ridiculous that we were malcontented with our circumstances like we were but it was stressful for a new couple to sit at home every weekend and lament over the pennies we didn't have.
By April, things were looking better. The Hero found a job and I had passed the bar on the first try and making a real salary. A week into that month, The Hero went in for a regular eye exam and was advised he'd have to have major surgery to correct his vision within the month. We had neither the money nor the patience to endure this yet. The Hero was on bed rest for a week and couldn't use his eyes for the following week. I lost my temper a few times and called my mom-in-law in tears more than once. No one told me this part of the fairy tale. He wasn't supposed to be in bed, needy, and depressed. We were definitely in the "for sickness" part of our vows.
Is anyone supposed to go through their entire vows & live them out the first year of marriage?
I grew up watching my father lavish my mother with gifts. Flowers, jewelry and dinners eaten out were all a part of his love language. I expected a man just like my daddy as an adult. It wasn't until my first year of marriage to The Hero, I learned God didn't send me what I expected; I got what I needed. I needed The Heros working approach to our love, because there wasn't any money for gifts even if he had possessed the desire to give them.
The Hero's love language is the other side of love from my father's; The Hero speaks in action. If he never says it again, I'll always know he loves me. It's in the dishes being done, the oil change I forgot my car needed and the calm while I'm being crazy. The Hero loves consistently, always and without fail. It isn't often with great fan fare, but it is always and I know it is to the end.

I babbled a few months ago that I missed being outside, working with my hands; I needed to play in the dirt and watch something grow. Today, I came home to a man covered in dirt, a rented tiler and a plot of dirt perfectly turned over; a place to play and grow, just like where we started from 9 years ago.

A heros love is tangible, dirty and it lasts through hell longer than a vase of dying flowers. And glass slippers don't fare well any where I've ever been.


- Hugs n Love,

Lindsey