Friday, May 18, 2018

Beauty for Ashes

“...this is what loss has taught me of love. Our house isn’t simply empty, our home has been emptied. Love makes a place in your life, it makes a place for itself in your bed. Invisibly, it makes a place in your body, rerouting all your blood vessels, throbbing right alongside your heart. When it’s gone, nothing is whole again.”
- An American Marriage


On the anniversary of my father’s death, nothing captures my last 365 days of loss more poignantly than this passage. Our home has been emptied. Dad’s room no longer holds his energy. Though last night in the dark, I was certain he stood in door, I felt him that strongly. The truth is, it has taken much of this year for us to find a different rhythm, and today, I feel like I’m exhaling for the first time since hospice rang my phone on Friday, May 19, 2017. I was convinced my mom would pass within this year of losing dad. Her own health issues and the way their lives had gnarled together over 48 years, I never envisioned a scenario that didn’t end with both of them lost to me. If I’m honest, in a lot of ways her dying would have been the easiest thing. It would have freed me from my obligations as a daughter and let me off the hook relationally. And yet, the Universe in all of its Cosmic Goodness handed my mom and I an invitation to participate in our own healing. In 365 days, I’ve watched my mom through sheer force of will and determination progress from being primarily bedridden to getting into a wheelchair with the assistance of home health aides to walking with a walker to walking with a cane to sometimes doing a quick shuffle with no assistance of her own accord from her bed to a chair. And like her physical progression, she and I have went from combative to distant to tap dancing fragility to cordial to warm and sharing laughs and conversation. I’m scared of the word friendship. It’s not a word I ever thought I could possibly use with my mom, but we both look at each other and know loss has handed us “something”. I never imagined a time when I could be in my mom’s house more than 3 or 4 days without alcohol to get me through. I never imagined a time when I could willingly pick up the phone and talk to my mom for more than 10 minutes without rolling my eyes in the top of my head. And I certainly never envisioned a day when my story would have any parts of restoration or contentment, and yet I feel like this is the gift the loss of my dad has handed my mom and I. We’ve intentionally had to choose not to come at each other from pain or the past or fear. And this is a different choosing. One where we are choosing each other and in doing so, restoration is unfolding. Will the emptied places left vacant by my dad ever be whole again? For sure, no. He was the constant that we all loved. But just as your senses tend to compensate for loss by strengthening another sense, my mom and I are compensating - and in this place, who we are together, who we are to each other is being strengthened day by day. Today, as I lay flowers upon my father’s grave to mark this one year anniversary of his passing, I will thank him for the seeds of life his death birth in mom and I. Truly, this is the nature of grace. Beauty for ashes. 

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