I have so many posts I want to write, have started writing…but my brain just can’t seem to write them. I thought I’d be further along in shoulder surgery recovery by now – further along in lessened pain. I’d be back to me, just in a sling. Back to writing.
But five weeks post-op, I still find myself either lowering the Tylenol when the vertigo it triggers gets too bad and wakes me up throughout the night…or in pain from less Tylenol which then gets too bad and THAT wakes me up.
Full disclosure: lots of tears and lots of swearing at stupid little stuff in the last week from lack of sleep.
Tag: grief
Or as my niece used to say, “Miiiiiiiiiinnne” with big, blue eyes and a small, plaintive voice. I swear, as a two-year-old, she had a whole legal argument in that one long, drawn out word.
Almost a year ago, I wrote about reclaiming the 8th anniversary of Cody’s epilepsy diagnosis on October 23, 2014, by hosting our fourth fundraising concert on that day this year, but, really, we had started riding the epilepsy rollercoaster August of 2013 – we just didn’t know it yet.
Cody’s first, out-of-the-blue seizure was on my 40th birthday. Well, technically, it was at 2:00 a.m. the day after my birthday but close enough.
Because the ER doctor that night thought the seizure was provoked by a fever, we didn’t get an accurate diagnosis for another 14 months (and two more seizures).
There have been minutes in the last eight years since hearing, “Cody has epilepsy” that were unbearably, painfully long, where I literally had a hard time breathing, and yet the years have gone by in a breath.
If I knew then what the epilepsy rollercoaster was going to be like and how long it would last, I would have spent those years living in terror instead of living each day growing in strength. Each day since then was needed to get me to today. Carrie at Day 1 wasn’t able to do this for eight years. But each day has been like training, making me a little stronger. . .and a little stronger, so Carrie today can do this for eight years.
I don’t want to but I can.
“a short period of time when… something else happens,”
“a musical composition inserted between the parts of…a drama“
Last week, I wrote about taking an interlude from grief. On Friday, I decided that I wanted to get dressed up, including jewelry but my necklaces were all tarnished…since I haven’t exactly been getting dressed up much lately. So, sighing, I put on my everyday necklace, the “come so alive” lyrics necklace…the one that started it all, this foolish idea to write a blog.
Cody and I then hopped in the car to drive to school. The CD player is always on in my car, so as soon as I started the engine, the music also started – started playing the song whose lyrics were written on the necklace I had just grumpily put around my neck!
I had excitedly wondered that morning what my joy bomb would be, after a week of paying attention to them. Was it the male and female gold finch eating together at the feeder while we ate our breakfast? Maybe it was hearing that song after very consciously putting on the necklace. If not that, when would it happen? Would He make me wait all day? (Because I kind of have a deadline here, God, on posting my blog.)
We talk so much these days
Because I have so much to say
You stay and listen to me closely even thoughYou already know
JJ Heller, “You Already Know“
You already know
I found that song a few months ago (more accurately, that song found its way to me) to add to the “100 Days” playlist. It’s a very catchy tune and those lyrics play in my head frequently. Sometimes, in the weeks leading up to surgery, they were the only lyrics in my head all day.
You already know. “You” in the song being God.
Last week, I reposted “Looking hard for signs of life” from Good Friday 2021, which it turns out is what we are doing this year after a new storm hit. In the original post, I wrote,
“After the storm, the ashes, the hard winter, do I usually look for life? Or do I just mourn the loss? Do I keep walking when the trees are bare? Even though there are dead leaves wherever I put my foot next. Do I hope, looking hard for signs of life?”
A year ago when I wrote that, God knew. He knew what life would look like a year later. And I feel a little betrayed. He knew and He didn’t tell me. That may sound odd. No, I don’t actually hear a literal voice of God but I do hear from Him. He knew and He didn’t tell me what was coming.
I debated posting on Good Friday because it seems too holy for anything I could write, but this post from last year came to mind. In rereading it, I had forgotten that, even though I wrote it in May, it took place on Good Friday in April.
I wonder if the disciples felt this way. A life-shattering event as the sun set on a Friday evening, the beginning of their Shabbat. Shocked and seeing only death around them. A Saturday of silence where there was nothing they could do. Scared and wondering how the story ends – or if it already had. Having no reason to assume new life was just around the corner.
I guess that’s where our stories differ. They could not have hoped for life after death. A year after writing this post, we find ourselves looking hard for signs of life again. As we mourn. As we keep walking. And as we have to trust that spring and new life will follow this harsh winter we have had.
Looking hard for signs of life, first posted May 4, 2021
I found a bench in the sun and waited for my friend to walk the labyrinth. I had walked it first and wanted to give her time alone in it. Once she finished, she sat on a bench across from me, and we shared our experiences, which in the same labyrinth were very different from each other’s.
There were large, barren trees in a ring around us. I wasn’t paying much attention to them but my friend commented on the one behind me, whose crooked branch I was sitting under. She had been quietly assessing if it was a dead branch and the likelihood of it falling on my head. But then she noticed very small buds on the tree and realized it was safer than it looked. She said,
“You really have to look hard for life.”
I realized, a long time ago, that I was depressed – once someone pointed out to me that I was depressed, that is. I talked to my therapist about medications, but she called it “situational” depression as opposed to clinical (chronic) depression. She believed that, once the situation resolved, the depression would too. I continued talk therapy and, over time, the situation changed and I pulled out of the depression.
Years later though, I still closely monitor where I am at when depressing hardships come. But while depression is a reality, so is sadness. And the two are not the same thing. Too much grief can lead to depression but sitting in your grief does not mean you are depressed. It does not mean there is something wrong with you, something that needs to be addressed and fixed immediately.
Grief means you are suffering.
And suffering just needs to be experienced.
Grief needs to be sat with for however long it sticks around and again during those times when it suddenly returns for a visit.
Fighting it, ignoring it, trying to rush it along – those things only make it more determined to stay and pop out when you least expect it.
Every blessing You pour out
Tree63, “Blessed Be Your Name“
I’ll turn back to praise
And when the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say, “Blessed be the name of the Lord”
I sat down to write an entry in my journal one morning several years ago. As I was typing this title, a song came on the radio with the above lyrics. “Bless,” “blessing,” and “blessed” popping up all at the same time…hmmm…
I didn’t have anything exciting planned for the day that would make me think these words were fitting. No new car or vacation planned that would seem like a blessing. I wasn’t even sure why I had started typing those words for the title; they just flowed out of my fingers.
I grew up in a small town (yes, I’m a small-town girl – no, I won’t start singing a Journey song). My parents grew up there too and most of my grandparents. I also had the amazing blessing of having 3 other sets of grandparents. One of my grandpas had 7 siblings, 3 of whom lived nearby and none of whom had grandkids when I was born…so I was kind of a granddaughter to all of them.