Memoirs

If you follow me on Facebook or instagram (which, if you are reading this...  means you do.  Because I don't think my readership extends past cousins and my mom) you know that my Grampa Roy is very ill.  His cancer is terminal, and he is receiving hospice care at home.  We traveled to Denver to see him last weekend.  It was the only time my grandparents have seen all four of our boys together.  I usually fly out there my myself...  just me and whatever baby is still nursing.  Because someone is always nursing.  
It's so hard to imagine my world without him in it...  
I know that I am beyond blessed and lucky to have known my grandparents.  So many do not have the privilege.  And I am even more fortunate to have known them as an adult.  To know your older family members when you are a child is so different.  You love them of course, but you don't yet have the perspective to really appreciate how amazing they are.  To be awed by the brilliance that years of experience, loss and love have made.  To see how the triumphs and failures of a life well lived have shaped a truly wonderful human being.
When we were in Denver last week, I asked my Grampa if there was anything I could do for him.  He had been writing out some of his memories, his stories as he called them.  Six pages of tiny, even writing in pencil.  Apparently, when you are dying, hospice gives you worksheets.  I know, right?  Worksheets.  They are really a guide, a checklist of things to do to get your affairs in order.  His memoirs are hand written in pencil on the back of these worksheets.  This is so fitting to me...  He didn't need these guidelines, these checklists.  Because he lived.  He really lived.  It's done.  He's taken care of all of us.  We all know how much we mean to him.  Because he has never, ever failed to show us.
I set up my camera and took some video footage while we were there also.  Telling his stories in his own words, with his own voice.  Sometimes it's hard to hear him over the clatter of my baby playing at my feet.  Or the thunder of the older boys and their cousins running through the house.  But that only makes the scene more precious.  
When I returned home I spent about four days compiling his writings with my video footage.  Double checking the military history with Naval records (incredibly accurate, by the way.  How on earth does a 90 year old man remember so well?) and hammering it out as fast as I could.  I think I've channeled all of my grief, all of my feelings of loss and despair into this project.  Because here is one little thing I have control over.  Nothing else.  But I do have control over this one little corner of this experience.  
So I've sunk my teeth into it.  Like a rabid pit bull.  It surly has typos.  I know it could be better.  It probably seriously needs editing.  And a second draft.  And maybe a third. But I don't know that there is time for that.  So.  It's done.

Typos, imperfections, huge old people font and all, I think it will be available on amazon.com sometime next week.  Which is insane.  But I think it will make him smile.

My Heart of Many Colors

It's strange how one day can change your whole life.  But that's how it is, isn't it?  One day you're sixteen, the next you're seventeen.  One day you live in Colorado, the next, you live in Oklahoma.  One day you are single, and the next you are married.  One day you are just you, then in an instant...  the second you see that little blue plus sign, you aren't just you anymore.  In that moment, you are forever changed.  You will never be the same again.

One day I was a sister, and the next...  I wasn't.  And now for the first time since I was seven years old, I am an only child.  It feels so wrong to say that, surely it can't be true.  I don't remember how to be an only child.  I don't feel like I ever really was one, I was just a big sister waiting for my little brother to show up.

We say a lot of things to people in hard times.  Things will get better.  God is in control.  Everything happens for a reason.  When you are the person standing there, with the broken pieces of who you used to be scattered around your feet...  Those well meaning phrases are nothing but air.  There is no peace to be had in words, they are so empty that it is almost laughable.  If you have ever really, really lost...  then you know what I mean.  If you don't, well...  good.

But here's a little secret.  And they don't tell you this when you're mapping out your future.  When you are picking out what college you are going to, what you want to major in.  No one bothers to tell you this when you are excitedly leaning over a glass cabinet in a jewelry store picking out an engagement ring.

Life.  Happens.

Good.  Bad.  All of it.  Just...  happens.  Not necessarily because you deserve it, but just because it's life.

It happens.

Life happens.

It happens to me, it happens to you.  And no amount of preparing, of planning, of deciding what your future will be like, can change the things that can't be changed.  There are some things that will come that you cannot control.  And these things change you.

Max was playing with play doh yesterday.

As his Mom, I'm careful to remind him to put the yellow in the yellow tub, the white in the white tub...  Don't mix the colors.  But he isn't so careful.  He just wants to play.  And a ball of yellow and blue streaked play doh plays just as well as a ball of pure yellow play doh does. The only difference between the two, is that the one with the blue streaks has been played with.

I started thinking about this in terms of my own heart.  I started my life as a pure, bright yellow ball.  Every meaningful experience I've had has added another color.  And once that color has been added to the ball, you can't take it out.  It's part of the whole now.  Not all of these other colors are bad, in fact I'd say most of the things in my big, semi-yellow ball are pretty great.  I married Chris. He brought a different color to my life, and I will never be the same.  I'm so thankful for that big, orange streak in my yellow that grows as we do.  Then there's the boys.  Lucas blue, Max red, Harrison green.  They've changed me.  Changed my heart.  I'll never be quite the same person that I was before they were part of me.  And I wouldn't want to be.  I like my big, messy, multi-colored ball of play doh.  It means that I've lived.  If you are so busy keeping your life pure from change, protected from the unknown, from mixing colors, it just means you've been keeping your play doh safely in it's tub... you haven't ever enjoyed it.

But sometimes, things happen in your life that you wish hadn't.  Keeping yourself safely in your tub, not getting your colors mixed cannot stop life from happening to you.

Your sister battles cancer bravely.  Valiantly.  You know she will beat it.  She has to.  She fights, and fights...  and looses.

The pregnancy you've waited for, dreamed about, ends in another miscarriage.

Your husband is sick.  So sick.  And no one knows what to do.

You hear the words abnormal cells and your daughter's name in the same sentence for the first time.

Your best friend doesn't pull through.  You think she will, you know she will.  But she doesn't.

Your baby brother takes his own life.  He takes himself away.  Without permission, without your blessing.  He is gone.  The loss leaves a dark ribbon through your many colored ball, leaves a clouded place in your heart.  You can't pinch out the dark spot...  It's part of you now.  It can't be changed, can't be forgotten.  The oppressive weight of this new reality makes you feel like your ball of play doh has been destroyed.  Smashed flat, with no hope of ever being anything else ever again.  Unrecognizable.  You can't get up, and you don't want to get up.  You want to stay smashed.  Being anything else but broken is unthinkable.  You don't have what it takes to be anything else.

But here's another secret.  A secret that only the old people who love you best will tell you...

You do have what it takes to go on.  You will go on.

A couple of months ago, I was talking to my Grandparents on the phone.  I'm not completely comfortable discussing my brother with them...  I just love them so much and I can't stand to hear sadness in their voices.  But there are times when that just can't be helped.  My Grandpa said to me in a very soft voice, "You'll get over this."  

Coming from anyone else, and out of context, that sounds like a really horrible thing to say to someone who has just lost a loved one.  But it wasn't from him.  I knew what he meant.  My Grandpa has seen a lot of life.  Things weren't always rosy for him...  This is a person who ran away from home at fourteen, jumped a train and rode it across the country.  A man who joined the navy when he was seventeen...  and was later presumed dead when his ship was sunk and he was missing in the South Pacific.  He has seen a lot of things, a lot of hard things.  He has lived.  His ball of play doh has got to be one of the most colorful ones out there...  And he told me, You'll get over this.  He didn't mean that I will forget, or that I can go on and pretend that this never happened.  Pretend that I never had a brother.  He didn't mean that this will ever go away...  He meant that I won't always hurt this much.  That my anger will fade.  That my life will continue.

My life will continue.

I will always be different from what I once was, the colors of my heart are forever changed.  But...  I'm still nothing but a lump of play doh.  The same as when I started.  And I can still mold a beautiful life out of that.

I'm Sorry and Golden Light

So many lovely people have reached out to me in the last weeks.  So many don't know what to say, what to do.  Most have absolutely no idea what my family and I are going through.  This is good.  I do not want you to know what I am going through.  I don't want you to understand what this is like.

But there are some, a few...  A small band of brothers and sisters that are bound by the unthinkable tragedy of loosing someone they love to suicide.  They have been a comfort to me, and I have such mixed emotions about that.  I'm grateful that I don't have to say anything, you been where I am standing.  But I hate that you have stood here, have carried this broken heart in your chest.  I'm so sorry that you know how I feel.  I'm so sorry that we have this in common.

I'm sorry for the hollow where your heart used to be.

I'm sorry for the hollow in your life where your loved one used to be.

I'm sorry that your imagination won't let you rest.  For the images that creep before your eyes...  Even though you weren't there on that horrible morning, you feel like you were.

I'm sorry for the frenzy that is a tight knot somewhere between your stomach and your chest.  The rage that is right there behind your tongue.  The rage.  The storm below the surface of your skin.  The sensation of your flesh straining to contain it.  The urge to not contain it.  The unspoken wish for someone to say the wrong thing, so that you have someone to lash out at.  Or for some nameless bad guy to foolishly cross your path.  So you can beat him bloody.

I'm sorry for the way it feels to desperately dig your fingernails into everything within reach.  To manically scrabble to hold onto your children, your husband.  Because you cannot, cannot, cannot.  Loose them.  And you are terrified that someday you might have blank space where they should be too.

I'm sorry that you weren't very nice to that sweet woman at church yesterday.  Because she had the audacity to ask you how your mother was doing.

I'm sorry for the times when you are almost asleep, when the questions come.  The questions.  No answers.  Only questions.  Was he afraid at the end?  Did he change his mind when it was too late?  What did he see?  Did he hurt?

I'm sorry for the things that hurt so much that you won't let them come.  The things that you firmly keep both feet on, stamping on them when they try and wiggle around your shoes.  Did he know?  Did he know how much I loved him?  Did I love him enough?  If I loved him more, would have mattered?  That time when he was 13...  And his jazz band was playing at the Jazz Festival, and I overslept and forgot to go.  Would it have mattered if I was there?  Was there some other pivotal point, some unnamed day in the past 26 years that I dropped the ball?

I'm so sorry you know what this feels like.

But we'll be okay, right?  It won't always hurt this much, right?

Right?

Good news.  I saw something today.  I was driving Lucas to school this morning.  (I'm not sure if you picked up on this, but I'm having a little bit of a hard morning.)  I was trying to keep the sound of suppressed tears from my voice as I was talking to the boys.  The road between our house and the elementary school has trees growing on each side, and the branches arch around the road like a green, leafy tunnel.  I've always loved that road, always thought it was so beautiful.  But this morning, there is a lot of haze in the air, something somewhere is burning.  There is a fire somewhere.  The haze in the air worked magic.  The light was coming through the trees in golden, sparkling bars.  Shafts of yellow hazy warmth, turned the dew on the grass into a sparkling sea, and the leaves above into a great, green cathedral window.  The ethereal beauty on the sides of the road took my breath away.  The glittery gold light warmed me inside, just a little.  Simultaneously warmed my cold grief and soothed my fiery rage.  Just enough.

There is still beauty in the world.

There is still beauty in this life.

And when we are better, when we can get through a few more days, and we are healed a little more...

It will be waiting for us.

So... Here I am.

Allright, Gentle Reader.  I wrote this last night, and I'll be honest.  It''s a little raw.  You might not want to read it.  You won't hurt my feelings.  In the harsh light of day, I realized that I was coming off a little scary...  So I deleted some of the more...  ummm....  intense parts.  I thought about not posting this at all.  This goes way, way more personal than I usually write.  But the fact is, this is where I am right now.  Not all the time, thankfully, but just an honest slice of my sometimes moments.  I know that I am not the first person to ever feel this way, nor will I be the last.  And if my baring my not so pretty soul today can help one person know that they're not alone in the big universe, than I'm glad.

...........................................................................................

So...  Here I am.

I haven't written here since my brother died.

I haven't touched my camera since my brother died.

That is, actually, quite telling.

But, here I am.

I haven't had the heart to write, haven't been able to pick up my camera.  I know that I want to, that I need to, but somehow those things are linked in my mind to picking up and going on with my life... And I'm not really sure I want to do that just yet.  It seems vulgar somehow, to go on with normal things like taking photos of little boys playing in a sand box, or writing about cookies, when I am an only child now. I didn't used to be, but I am now.

To say that my "my brother died."  or, "my brother passed away."  makes it seem much softer than it really feels.  The truth of the matter, is that my baby brother committed suicide.


There.



The unimaginable.


I said it.


Now it's true.


I wish that my deleting the words would take it away.


I want to pack up my little family of five.  Move far away.  Never talk to anyone we know ever, ever again.  Give ourselves new names.  I pick Lola.  New life.  New friends.  New everything.

Then this didn't happen.


So, that's where I am.  One minute, I feel like yelling at everyone that my baby brother is dead.  No, you do not know how I feel.  I hate you all. My name is Lola.  Don't talk to me.  The next, I want to just play on the floor with sweet little boys and pretend that this never happened.  Anybody want some chocolate chip cookies?  Charming, huh?

Sorry.

I'm not returning phone calls.

Sorry.

I'm avoiding friends.

Sorry.

I'm a right pretty mess, friends.

Sorry.

I have no idea what this blog is going to look like from now on.  It might go a little dark at times.  So should I even keep writing?  Am I going to alienate everyone?  Do I really want to expose myself like this?  Can any good possibly come from my spilling my guts on the Internet?

If this were an episode of Blossom, we'd know the answer in just a short half hour.

But...

It's not.  And I have no idea.

But, here I am.  I'm writing, and you're reading.  So, I guess that I decided to...  Spill my guts on the Internet for college acquaintances, middle school locker partners, and perfect strangers to read about?

huh.

Guess so.

Weird.

I know I'm still in here, somewhere.  I know that I'll find joy and beauty in my everyday life again.  It's already starting.  Just today, I had to just stop and watch the way the light shone on the top of Harrison's head while he was playing...  I'm still in here.

My husband...  I am sorry I can't clone him for the rest of the world to have.  He is so.  freaking.  amazing.  I can't possibly be nice enough to him, I know I can't be.  He has been so incredible through all of this.  He even officiated my brother's funeral.

Yah.  I know.

It gave me so much comfort.

During the service, he read a passage that I wrote, and I would like to share it with you.  It makes me smile to remember Michael this way.  This is how he will always be in my heart.

...................................................................................................................................

Growing up, Michael and I weren't like "normal" siblings.  We hardly ever fought.  Perhaps that was because of the 7 year gap in our age, but maybe it was just because we loved each other so much.  I remember striding down the labor and deliver ward of the hospital the day he was born, my heart about to burst.  "Boy oh boy, it's a boy!"  I shouted for everyone to hear.  I proudly brought him to school for show and tell, and sewed him a little teddy bear in Girl Scouts for his one week birthday.  Now that he's gone, these are the memories that come to me more than any others.  His big blue eyes, the way his blond hair curled into ringlets on the back of his head.  His yellow baby blanket.  His imaginary friend, Pooh Bear.  I know that that baby had long since grown up, but he never stopped being my baby brother.  He was never grown up enough in my eyes for me to not give unsolicited advice…  that he never took…  or to boss around.  Some of my favorite memories of us together are him coming to stay with me when I was in college.  We would play tricks on my roommates and buy coconuts and pineapples at the grocery store, because Mom and Dad would never let us do it at home.  

When he was a teenager, I happened to catch a glimpse of a project that he was working on. It was a collage where pictures from a magazine were cut out to represent different things, the idea to tell a little about yourself.  There was one section entitled, "Your dreams for the future."  In that column there was a single photograph of a laughing girl with brown hair.  Underneath the clipping was written in Michael's untidy scrawl, "Happiness for my sister."  Happiness for my sister.  When the other teenage boys clipped pictures of cars and Michael Jordan dunking basketballs, all Michael wanted was…  "Happiness for my sister."  In a way, this really sums up my brother.  In his quiet, unobtrusive way, he cared much more for others than he ever did for himself.  

Back too Soon

Chris, Harrison and I are back in Colorado.  Much sooner than I ever dreamed.

My little brother, Michael passed away early Sunday morning.  I don't wish to go into any more detail than that, his passing was very sudden and tragic.

There are no words to express what is in my heart, the scenes that replay in my mind, or the numbness in my fingertips as I type this.  I am here.  I am making funeral arrangements.  I am talking about my brother in the past tense.  But it feels like someone else is doing it.  Like I'm watching a movie.  But this isn't a movie.  There is no end to this scene, no shot of me waking in my bed from a bad dream.  It's still there when I wake up, and it's still real.

I don't know to what extent I will ever really write about this here, I am actually an intensely private person. That might seem strange, but those who know me best know that it's true.  I may find that writing about this loss will be healing for me, but I might also find that I want to go back to writing about little boys in their pajamas and never mention this again.  I guess we'll just see.

So I'll be taking a little break from my blog world.  I don't know for how long, but this week for sure.  Maybe next.  Maybe the next after that.  I really just don't know.

Thanks, friends.  Please keep our family in your prayers.

Bed Head

Ummm...

Yah.

That's some serious bed head there, pal.

Ahhh...  perfect for a Monday!