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I finally did it–I threw away the card I got for my sister-in-law after she made it through weeks on a ventilator with Covid. My brother could finally visit her in the hospital and plans were made for her move to a rehab center. She had begun working on the skills needed to make the move. We all had been praying without ceasing for her ever since before she entered the hospital. I’m sure we were preparing for the worst, but when she got off the vent, we felt such relief.
No matter how much recovery she would need, I expected her to have–as well as need–a sense of humor to get through what came next. She was a fighter–and a bit irreverent. You know, laughing despite challenges. So I got her a funny “get well” card.
I was waiting to send the card after she’d had a few more days at the rehab center. But while I was doing my morning exercise routine–way too early for a call–my brother’s ID showed on my phone. He was stopped in a parking lot making calls that no one wanted to receive. Though he’d been able to visit her in the hospital, he was unable to see her again at the rehab center. So they had to call him to tell him her heart had stopped. And without the hospital equipment and procedures, there was no chance at revival.
Not quite two years and 10 months have passed since that morning. I don’t live in the same area as the family does, but there is no way to forget she’s gone. She was a force–and her absence has left a vacuum in the family’s days, routines, and spaces.
For the rest of us, life goes on. My brother continues to raise his four grandsons–but now he’s on his own with three teens and one pre-teen. It’s a household without a female presence. Yet it’s the house she helped choose a few months before she got sick–and, force that she was, she decorated quickly, imprinting her sense of style. I hope they all can still feel her presence–and hear that larger-than-life laugh of hers.
As for me, I walk around in her shoes and boots. Though I received most of them the year she died, I was surprised to receive four more pairs of her boots this past fall. It’s a fresh sense of grief to know that she hardly got to wear them. There is no way I can ever fill her boots, but those boots were made for walking–and I’m going to keep walking in them and loving her as I do.
She would have loved that card. And I would have loved to be able to give it to her–and to have her keep walking in those boots herself. Yes, I threw away that card, but, Lori, know that it was SWAK (sealed with a kiss)–I will love and miss you forever!
This year our kids hosted Thanksgiving. All my husband had to do was use his walker to get into the recliner at their house. And then he could stay attached to his recirculating ice machine and eat his meals on a TV tray.
I am grateful for our family, as always. But last night our daughter stopped by to bring over things like pudding and jello–and helped me go get some supplies (including ice cream!) and to pick up pizza. Our son came over to make certain his dad was okay.
Today our daughter’s fiance coordinated the meal and made all the side dishes. I brought the ham we bought–and my husband, of course. We had a nice, calm day together (although I can’t speak for how calm the preparations were!).
On Thanksgiving, it’s hard not to remember the times that came before–and all those who are no longer with us. I remember playing hard with my cousins while being with my grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncles. As I grew up, I was able to attend as a guest at the family celebrations of others. And then came all the times with my own parents and my brother’s family or with Sherman’s parents and family. I miss so many people from those Thanksgivings, especially those loved ones who left too soon.
Those memories make me all the more grateful for the people gathered together today at our subdued celebration (if you can call a celebration where five dogs bounced around subdued–and, yes, we put up gates to protect my husband from their chaos). At my age, every person at every Thanksgiving celebration matters.
We left the house this morning around 4:30. And we were pleasantly surprised with an efficient and friendly check-process. Actually, every worker we encountered at the hospital was positive and helpful. My husband went into surgery right as scheduled.
As I sat in the waiting room, I could see a status monitor that updated in real-time and I was sent text updates. The manager of the area came out and offered me a warmed blanket–which I greatly appreciated as the area was cold despite the pleasant day outside.
The surgeon came out to tell me how the surgery went as planned, with no complications. I was able to pick up the prescriptions at the hospital (first time ever when someone I love had surgery) before going in to be with my husband after he woke up. Pretty soon he was doing physical therapy and being tested for how he could manage walking and stairs. And just like that, we were out of there, about four and a half hours after the start of surgery. Wow.
I am so grateful for this efficient and successful surgery. I know recovery will be a little bit harder after the nerve block wears off tomorrow, but today went really, really well.
And I can’t believe how easy everyone made this incredibly disruptive process. For once, I have no improvements to suggest for a healthcare encounter. Well, except for the fact the wallpaper patterns didn’t line up in the hospital. Tee hee–if that’s the worst of it, I think we’ll take it!
Tomorrow my husband gets his knee replaced. I am so grateful for modern medical options that allow people to keep moving into their golden years. He loves to move–mountain biking, skiing, and hiking. This has been a hard year for him as his movements have gotten more painful and have restricted what he can do.
About two years ago, he went to a doctor to talk about his knee. At the time, the doctor said he could try some PT to see if muscle changes could lessen the pain felt–but that there was bone-on-bone in his knee. The PT didn’t really make a difference. Basically, it was up to him when he’d had enough.
A few months ago he conceded he’d reached that point. He then had to pick which season to give up for recovery time–so he chose skiing season. That’s a hard enough decision. Though he basically mountain bikes year-round, he went with the winter season. I know he’s going to get antsy whenever the weather is good for snow biking–but with our late-season snows, it’s likely he’ll still get to do that once or twice in late spring.
Tomorrow we set out around 4:30 a.m. (yikes!) to get there at 5:00 for a 7:00 procedure. A few hours later he’ll be bionic–but he won’t feel like it yet! And, yet, it is such good news that he still gets to improve how his daily activities (like walking and sleeping) feel–and still bike and ski–someday in the future. Thank goodness for medical advancements that allow us to keep on keepin’ on for just a bit longer!
I am grateful we no longer own part of a commercial property. Right before I became pregnant with our twins, my father-in-law coordinated and completed the purchase of a building in order to have a reliable space for the family’s growing medical supply business. He included his three sons in the purchase–he was looking not just toward the future of the business but also toward his sons’ futures.
The plan got more than a little rocky when the initial business struggled as managed care came to dominate the market. Ultimately, the family sold that business but continued to rent out the commercial property. Eventually, my husband’s brothers started a new business there, with help from their father until his health forced him to reduce duties and hours until his main duty became making deposits.
My husband, on the other hand, worked outside the firm and managed the building. He was usually the one repairing the roof, coolers, and heaters or pulling the weeds, though his brothers helped when they could. He paid the bills and kept the books–until I took over those tasks less than a decade ago. He, along with some help from me, became the snow removal crew. Though last winter he outsourced that job, he still had to get up on that roof whenever a leak sprung.
Toward the end of 2020, the guys lost their father at 92-years-old. At the same time, it was a tough time for the brothers and their Covid-devastated business and also rough for my husband as he prepped the building for other renters after the one other long-term renter decided to close his business and retire. Last year his brothers moved to a more appropriate space for their business and my husband had to prepare more of the building for other renters. Thankfully, businesses were seeking out light industrial space and getting renters wasn’t difficult, even if upgrading the units was.
Offers started coming in to purchase the building. At first, none of the three brothers wanted to sell. But my husband was working his day job and then having to go to the building to do more work. His brothers were trying to run a business that was experiencing a post-pandemic rush they could barely handle.
I think they felt they were disappointing their father by not wanting to manage a property. But it seems to me that owning the building had done exactly what their dad had wanted: it provided a space for their personal business until the time came to move while the value grew so they could choose to sell it and either buy something else or get out of the management business. Their dad might have made another decision but I think he would have been proud of them for keeping the building going all these years.
About six weeks ago, we sold the building. Since then, this bookkeeper has been chasing down the final refunds and payments. I look forward to the day when I can hand over the books to the CPA to close for good. My husband is starting to relax on weekends without having to run to the building for some duty or another. And I know he’s going to enjoy snow a lot more without having to worry about whether the parking lot is cleared.
My father-in-law looked to both the present and the future when he bought the building. I am so grateful that his hard work and that of his sons has paid off. Thanks to his vision, his sons can rest a little easier as they face their own retirement years. But, being his sons, who knows when that will be??
I no doubt heard music while I was in the womb as I am the daughter of a choir director and accompanist. When I was four years old, my mom went back to teaching. I remember going with her to school concerts, district competitions, and All-State music when I was young. After we moved, she no longer taught, but she continued to direct our youth choirs at church and in 4-H. She also taught me to sing harmony while singing hymns and the church liturgy. For me, singing in church keeps me close to my mom.
But singing in church is also a way to use those musical muscles she helped me to develop. I get to read notes, follow the written directions throughout the songs as well as those from the director, and work to blend with the voices surrounding me.
However, hymns and choral songs are more than notes–their lyrics invoke meaning. Sacred songs are another way to connect with God. And sometimes, when our own words fail us, the words from these songs reach us in a way that would not happen without hearing them within music.
Today we sang a song that I could barely get through. The words touched me personally. Elaine Hagenberg’s “All Things New” speaks of joy after unspeakable loss. Three years ago we lost our nephew, but his wife lost her partner. Soon after, she left the life they’d created and moved with her son back to her hometown, starting over again. Since then she has reconnected with and married Jessy. Even though the relationship has strained her connection with her family of origin, we in our family celebrate that “all things (are) new” for her.
It’s hard to choose which lyrics catch my breath more, but probably the following do:
“Sight after mystery, sun after rain, joy after sorrow, peace after pain;
Near after distant, gleam after gloom, love after loneliness, life after tomb.”
Today I prayed I could make it through the song without crying. To sing for Mona and Jessy–and for anyone else who needs to know God can make all things new.
God speaks to me in the songs we sing. And speaks through us when we sing.I am grateful that God has called me to sing in choir. (And gave me music through my momma from the beginning.)
(Listen to the song beginning at 1:00:00 in the video.)
My Aunt Liz/Elizabeth went home last week. But where was home for her? She didn’t grow up with the certainty of home. I think that when she joined our family, she found that home, even if it wasn’t the picture-perfect home of her childhood dreams.
For those of us who grow up knowing only a home and parents who put us first, it’s hard to understand what it must be like for people whose lives begin differently. Home is both people and a safe space—and for far too many, it is not a given.
I like to think it was Liz’s destiny to find that space in our larger family. That when she was randomly assigned to room with my mom at college, that she was finally walking on that path toward what she craved.
Soon the babies—my cousins—came. And they didn’t stop until she had six within around 15 years. Her house was full. By the time I came into this world, she and most of her children were a big part of what I knew of as family. Their family home buzzed with a whole lot of activity, and was yet a place where a kid like me—who only had one brother—still encountered an aunt who kept a twinkle in her eyes—even when her eyes didn’t always work as well as they should have.
Growing up, I had my own home and family—but I also grew up feeling like my grandparents’ house, where our larger family gathered together, was also home—especially when all the people in our circle, like my aunt, joined us there.
I am sure this house was home to my aunt, too. When a person grows up moving around, it’s hard to know who to trust. Who really has your back? When she joined my mom’s family, she found that safe space. She had family—a big extended family that kept growing over the years.
In our family—despite the differences—we are home to one another. And Liz was a big part of why that is true—she knew in a way that the rest of us didn’t that family and home shouldn’t have to be aspirational.
As so, as many of us who were able came home to send her on to her next home. Rest, dear one—you are home, yet again.
I once dreamed of you, seeing you as a toddler who died from an allergic reaction to blueberries. I was so distraught—and I never forgot that feeling.
But you grew to be big and strong. It was only a dream, right?
Until that day you fell from the roof—and being big and strong might have been why your heart stopped when you hit the ground. And why it would not start again.
This year, as the third anniversary date approached on the calendar, my heart began to hurt. I held my breath—as if somehow, I—or anyone—could stop the fall. As if somehow the phone call did not happen.
On that day—so apocalyptic in my neighborhood with its heat and the smoke from fires so far away—I was alone. In my grief, I keened. I screamed, “No! No!” My dogs hid away from my raw demonstrations of my emotions. I ran in circles, trapped with the awful knowledge I still had to provide to my own family—while your family was already reeling with the nevermore.
Eventually my own family came together with me—and we had no idea how to share our grief. We were overwhelmed by our four walls and could not sit with that grief. And, despite the weather conditions, we went together into the heat with its orange-tinted skies for a walk into nature, trying to get our thoughts together before we would travel to be with your larger family.
That week was all about you. Your family team gathered mementos of you for a physical tribute while my daughter put together your video tribute. A few of us struggled to collect the words to let the world know who you had been—son, husband, father, brother, grandson, nephew, cousin, friend, uncle, right guard, protector, and superhero were just a few of your roles in life. We gave you a big sendoff and then we celebrated you through our tears. Your mom looked in my eyes and said, “My son is dead. He died.” And so we danced—to remember—and to forget, just a little, that we would never have you here with us again.
But—I know you are not really gone for us. Sometimes I talk to you—and you always seem to accept that what happened happened. You don’t rail against it—but I feel you watching. I felt you pulling for your mom to keep living with us—I thought maybe you could maybe make a deal with God to get her through that awful illness. However, if that’s how it worked, wouldn’t all those prayers have started your heart again while the EMT crew tried so long and so hard? No, what happened happened—for both you and your mom.
Understand that now that you two are together, I hear you both: your dry comments and your mom’s laughter.
Such a big hole you left. That statement wasn’t intended as a joke, but I see your eyeroll even now.
Your little family is in a whole different space. They are finding their way. I am so happy for them—but it hurts to realize that their reality with you was numbered from the very beginning.
I believe you really lived with them in your joyful home of love, laughter, and adventure. You were committed to where you were—and it feels like you guard and protect them even now. “My daddy is a superhero” it says on your son’s wall. Yes, yes, and yes.
Here’s to you, Chris. Our Father’s house has many rooms—and one day we will be together—again.
Life is complicated—and included within that expression is the understanding that human life is complicated. I understand that many people, including dear friends of mine, think of life in black and white terms. For me, there is no way to ignore the varied shades of gray. It is simpler to say something either is or is not—and, yet, I cannot do so. I have listened to Bible lessons and sermons all my life—and I’ve dug into the Bible on my own and through study with others. God and Jesus and their Bible are also complicated. My heart and prayers tell me to look for the love within the rules. If God and Jesus are love—and I believe they are—then wrestling to find the love in the complications is part of that commandment to love one another.
When the rule is defined as life begins at conception—despite the science on the matter—and when there are no exceptions, then we are saying that emerging life is primary to existing living beings, and that any effects on other humans are secondary.
So when the young mother in the 1920s is in labor with her first child—it will be discovered the infant is a son with such severe hydrocephalus that he will not survive and his delivery will kill his mother. The decision is made to lance his head so she will not die. The sorrow at this loss will follow her to her grave—as she spends the rest of her life decorating his grave every Memorial Day. But she will go on to give birth to 5 living children, who will have 22 who live past birth, to 42 in the next generation to a number near that in the current generation.
Another young mother in the 1920s will have ectopic twin pregnancies, growing outside the womb, until they burst and destroy both her fallopian tubes. There was no chance for those fertilized eggs to grow safely, given a fetus cannot survive outside of the uterus. Unlike most women of her era, the woman survived the infection that followed. She recovered, but she had forever lost the opportunity to be a mother. (And the Depression years that followed turned out to be a hard time to find babies to adopt—somehow surprise babies were rarely born.)
Enter the 1950s. A married mother of two young children finds out her current pregnancy will kill her. A doctor (not a back-alley doctor, but a respected local physician) terminates that pregnancy. Years later, the woman who assisted with the hush-hush procedure will see that mother out with her children and realize just how different those children’s lives could have been.
None of these situations addresses the ability of a woman to control the size of her family—these were all women who had welcomed those pregnancies—and were devastated when the pregnancies did not end with a healthy baby in their arms. But with 1960 came the introduction of “the Pill.” And with Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965, married women around the country could turn their focus to the children they already had. Thirty years later as I reveled in the births of my miracle twins, I would listen to these women talk about the relief they felt when they could raise the three to five children they already had—and not worry about the cost, time, and possible physical complications of having more children.
Of course, unmarried women still had to wait for a decision on the right to birth control until the early 1970s, which was followed by Roe v. Wade in 1973.
I have known women who bore little responsibility for preventing unwanted pregnancies and who took a casual approach to abortion. But, so many more weigh the decision against a lot of those gray factors. And how do we as a society show love for women who do choose life in difficult situations?
The same people who would deny abortion (and many forms of birth control, should precedent also be thrown out against the privacy laws guaranteed by the 14th amendment) are often stingy about helping those in need. Education, medical care, food, and housing assistance are all called out as socialism—and admonishments to take personal responsibility come from political leaders and media sources. There is little recognition for how poverty affects the parents and those lives that were saved. It’s as if society’s own responsibility to care for life stops at birth.
Which is exactly the opposite of what Jesus says in his Sermon on the Mount. He doesn’t say, “Blessed are those who take personal responsibility.” And, instead, he continues to provide parables that show he is not so concerned with personal responsibility as are so many in our current times. The older brother in the “Prodigal Son” story is not the hero—despite how responsible he has been. The first workers in the vineyard are not praised simply because they have always done the right thing. These kinds of people are called out because they lack compassion for those who have made mistakes. And they are reprimanded for not thinking they should share with those “others.”
If you’re pro-life, then you really need to also show that by supporting a society that provides a safety net for those who need help to raise that life. But, really, pro-life should be pro-God, which means trusting God to be in the details. Jesus didn’t address abortion in any way. But he did address topics such as loving all your neighbors (including your enemies), caring for the poor, forgiving 7 x 70, and “judging not lest ye be judged.”
Lest we forget, our country was founded with a separation of church and state. Not as a Christian nation nor as a nation where Christians get to tell everyone else how to live. The best way Christians can promote Christian values in this nation is by following Jesus’ mandate—to love one another. And empathy is a huge component of love. Taking baby steps in others’ shoes is a way to begin to understand how complicated life is. Taking away someone’s choice is oversimplifying all the repercussions of continuing life at all costs. In the gray, we can take circumstances into consideration.
But with the current push toward legal changes with their all-or-nothing application, I fear my whole large family’s future existence would have been erased in the moment when the doctor was required to let my grandmother die.
Almost 40 years ago, I received a gift of shoes from a grieving mother—shoes I never had the heart to wear. The thought that kept running through my head at the time was “I can’t fill Jenne’s shoes.” No, but I know now that her mom wanted me to honor her by walking in her shoes. Not to be her, but to show my love for her by wearing something she, too, had worn.
I’m much older now and have said goodbye to many significant people since then—but Jenne was one of my first goodbyes, and I didn’t yet understand much about grieving.
When my father died, I brought home his hiking boots—the ones he thought he needed for his new life in the mountains. But as he was rather the same person in the mountains as he had been on the plains, those boots didn’t get much use. From him that is. I, on the other hand, wore them out. By then, I realized that wearing someone’s shoes was a way to keep someone walking with me just a little longer. It was my goal to take my father to all sorts of summits and vistas and show him what you can’t really see from a car. I liked to think about him when I hiked in those boots that are long gone—though not so long gone as he is after these almost 20 years.
My mom’s feet were smaller than mine are, so I shared her shoes (including her hiking boots, which she did use on a few trails) with others. From her, I ended up with socks I bought for her to wear in her care center. If you’ve had a loved one living in such a place, you know the drill—you have to mark the name on all their clothes and shoes. So, after 11 years now, I’m down to a pair or two of dark socks with “Elda” painted on the bottoms (in Wite-Out) that still make me smile.
And, when I got a text last summer from my nephew’s wife asking whether I had shared a shoe size with my late sister-in-law, I remembered all those trips together to the outlet mall when we could never find size 9 ½ shoes—for either one of us. Yes—I shared her size.
Oh, did she have shoes—and I couldn’t even fit in all her shoes. These are good quality shoes, the kinds you can wear for working on your feet or walking while shopping. The first trip I took her on was up to Estes Park, CO, where we used to meet when my parents lived there. And just like back in those days, we ended up in the grocery store gathering picnic supplies so we could eat outside, and we walked around town shopping and shopping—just like she would have done. Then when day was almost done, I walked her beside the lakeshore where we left behind part of her and her son. What a hard walk that was.
But for much of this winter I have practically lived in her Bearpaw boots. It’s hard not to think of her as I go about my life—knowing that I get to walk while she is done with that journey.
It’s that thought that has inspired me to keep wearing my mask when so many are done with them. I consider my masks a way to honor her—by protecting others who might be vulnerable as she was. I don’t know when I will stop with the masks—even though the CDC today said I am pretty much free to do so. What I know is that I have so many shoes to walk in—because she didn’t get to do so. And not only did she die, but she did so in a protracted, horrible way. So, I hesitate to change my habits yet.
Here we are a year later—a year after that morning when my brother’s phone call came way too early to be good news. She’s still gone. Every time my brother sends me a card with only his name on the address label, my breath catches.
The world is emptier for her absence. It’s cliché to say, but she was one in a million—and one in 947,417 of those lost to Covid-19 in the U.S. (according to Johns Hopkins, as of today, February 25, 2022). I carry my memories of her in my heart—and right on down to my feet.
Walk on.
Going the Distance 
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