Sunday Gratitude

It's been a long week, with remembrances and memories.  So I am grateful that a new week begins.  But for the official count...

I am grateful

1.  That the year of purposeful griefwalking has come to an end. For with an ending comes a beginning.

Yesterday I went back to the place where mother lived and died. It had been completely remodeled and nothing was the same.  The door to the room she lived in was open and I peeked it. There was a hospital bed and an elderly woman in it, but it, too, had been remodeled so it didn't look the same.  I was able to walk through the living area, dining area etc. and see that it was all different.  Time had moved on and her death there was no longer even a memory.

Then I stopped by the church and randomly opened a bible that was in the pew.  This was the passage that appeared.  It seemed rather fortuitous.

The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,

and no torment shall touch them.

They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead;

and their passing away was thought an affliction

and their going forth from us, utter destruction.

But they are in peace.

 

2. A brightly burning candle. I don't know why I don't light candles more often.  I have many but I seem to be saving them for some unknown reason.  But not tonight.

 

3.  A gift of home-made liqueur from a friend.

4. For Fabreze.  Don't ask.  Just think kitty litter box.

5. For a wonderful friend who walked alongside me on the actual anniversary of mother's death. She may never know how much she is loved.

One Year Anniversary

I woke up this morning feeling anxious. No, that's a understatement. I felt like someone had plugged an IV with caffeine into my veins while I was sleeping...and then put a black mamba on the pillow next to me. My heart was racing, my breathing was shallow and my mind was swirling. At first I wasn't exactly sure what was going on since there clearly were no IV lines and no snakes on pillows. (At least none that I could see!)

 
Then I understood. My body, spurred on by my subconscious, was reminding me that today was the one year anniversary of my mother's death. Now it's not actually the date, which is the 26th, but I've never been one to remember dates, but rather days. For instance, my father died sometime in May, but it was the Feast of the Ascension, and so every year when the Ascension comes around, regardless of the calendar date, I remember his death.

So it is with today. My mother died on the fourth Thursday of January and that happens to be today. Even though I was anticipating the anniversary date on  Saturday, my inner being had a different idea and concluded that today was the day to be remembered.

Over the past year, I've both experienced and observed my griefwalk. I had never expected, nor had any of the people who know me well, that I would have been so profoundly effected by my mother's death. I had truly believed that I had come to terms with most things and had made peace with the past.

Apparently that was not the case, because I have struggled with depression, anxiety and downright fear every day since her death. Every day has been a battle against the dark, a fight to see the light, a barring of the gate against the onslaught of the negative. Some days I've succeeded; other days it has felt like the war is nearly lost.

The irony is that in this year I completed a book on how the saints dealt with adversity. I wrote encouraging words I frequently didn't feel...or even completely believe. I talked about God's grace and goodness and love, even though I didn't feel that grace or goodness or love. I affirmed faith, when I doubted; trust when I had none; and hope when all felt lost.

If I had been writing honestly, I'd probably have talked about despair, loneliness, fear, emptiness, abandonment and pain . But I know that people don't want to hear about the negative and I know, too,  that dwelling on the negative only brings about more negative. Job said that when he cried out, "That which I feared is upon me!"

So I've tried, not always successfully, to keep looking for evidence of God's loving care, even when I didn't feel it all. Deep in the back of my mind, I kept reminding myself that all the grief counselors and grief books say that it often (usually) takes a full year before the griefwalker is able to recover the self. It takes that long to pass through the cycle of seasons with their own poignant remembrances and to commemorate what Longfellow called the "secret anniversaries of the heart."

The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart
When the full river of feeling overflows;

Those are now behind me (almost...there is still the actual date of her death and the date of her funeral in the next few days). With each "secret anniversary" I have mourned, not just the loss of my mother, but all the other losses and yes, sins, of my life. I've asked for forgiveness and while I know I am forgiven, I know, too, that the temporal punishment for sin, as I learned a child isn't erased by forgiveness. That "temporal punishment" is most often the consequences I have to live with, sometimes forever, for having acted out of selfishness and pride; consequences that created pain for others and placed my own life, security and future in jeopardy.

I'm not sure that God removes those punishment this side of Purgatory, but I hope and pray it is possible, for I have worn the sackcloth of pain and I have covered my head with the ashes of despair. I am ready for a new year, a year of the abundant life Jesus said he came to give.

I'm ready for the second half of Longfellow's poem, the part we rarely read or hear:

The happy days unclouded to their close;
The sudden joys that out of darkness start
As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart
Like swallows singing down each wind that blows!
White as the gleam of a receding sail,
White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,
White as the whitest lily on a stream,
These tender memories are;--a fairy tale
Of some enchanted land we know not where,
But lovely as a landscape in a dream. 

Anniversary Anxiety

I've been dreaming about my mother every night for the past week.  

It's surprising because I had only dreamed about her once in the past year of griefwalking and now I've met her, at various ages and in various locales, each night as I sleep. But then, perhaps it isn't surprising because the one year anniversary of her death is approaching and my grief counselor tells me that it is common, virtually normal, to be disturbed in a variety of ways at this juncture.

Knowing that helps, just like knowing you have enough gas in your car to make it safely to the next gas station or that there is enough clean underwear so that you don't have to do laundry right this second.  But, on the other hand, it doesn't stop the dreams, as my subconscious pulls up a melange of memory and unresolved issues, throws in a handful of thoughts of my own mortality and stirs it all with a soupcon of fear and anxiety to create a potage of renewed grief--Tear Soup.

It's tough.  In its own way, it's almost as tough as the original griefwalk. In fact, in some odd fashion, it is even harder because it is so much more viseral than I had imagined.  I had gone through the other anniversaries--my birthday, her birthday, the holidays--with waves of renewed grieving, but not this  mind-wrenching, soul-knotting, intellect-fogging, hope-draining kind of emotional paralysis that I've been experiencing for the past several days.

It doesn't help that, despite the fact I know that grief simply takes as long as it takes, I feel like I should be over this, or at least more over it than I am. I had been taking care of my mother for nearly 14 years and I certainly knew that, at age 92, the end was coming.

Maybe that's part of it. After being her caregiver for so may years, after putting life and career on a kind of hold for that long, I never truly expected it to end.  I think I assumed it would go on as it had until my own death.

Mother thought so, too. She often said that didn't want to die before me and she didn't want me to die before her. I would tell her that the only way that could be arranged would be if we would die at the same time. She would smile sort of sweetly at that, but never made a response.  Deep down, I think that's what she secretly hoped would happen.

But it didn't.

However, her oft-expressed desire must have sunk deep into my subconscious because I dreamed last night that she was waiting for me as I came out of a doctor's office.  "We have to go," she said, as she headed out the door, indicating that I was to follow her.  I did, to a point, then stopped, in a dark, cold and half-frozen field.  Looking down I realized I was barefoot. "I can't go," I told her.  "I don't have the right shoes."

It's a few more days until the actual date of her death. Perhaps by then I will have found the right shoes to make the rest of my life, not a slog into the winter night, but a dance by starlight. I pray so.

The Body Remembers What the Mind Forgets

The body remembers what the mind forgets.

Never has this statement meant more to me than in this year of griefwalking after my mother's death. I know the concept of muscle memory--I can still ride a bike (I think!) and intellectually I understand that somehow the cells of the body store "memories" of emotionally intense events.

It's why, for instance, the scent of lilacs takes me back to my childhood in Montana or the song "Walking in a Winter Wonderland" propels me to the days of my first love. And it's why at certain points in my griefwalk I've been blindsided by physical sensations that have caught me off guard.

During the past twelve months (has it really been that long?), I have had days when I felt panicky, apprehensive, irritable or just plain "off." When I would stop to examine my feelings, generally I would recognize that I was approaching some significant anniversary or holiday, like Easter or a birthday or even the day my mother first went into hospice.  Even when I wasn't consciously aware of the date, my body would somehow remember it...and let me know somatically.

Now I'm coming up on the one year anniversary of her death and if I weren't consciously aware of it, I would certainly be bodily aware. My heart races for no good reason, I get a niggling headache, I feel slightly nauseated and I am tired, so tired that even my bones are weary.

This is the last milestone that I have to mark.  I've passed once through all the holidays, personal days, significant seasons. There are just two more days that I must traverse--the day of her death and the day of her funeral.  If the rest of the year has been any indication, the actual days will pass with little or no trauma. It's the time leading up to them that will be hard. It's as if my body is anticipating the memory, bracing and preparing itself. Then, when the moment finally arrives, it exhales and what's left is not the body's memory, but the mind's.

And the mind's memory is easier to deal with than the body.  I think that's because the mind pushes the memories front and center and insists that they be examined and processed. The body is more covert. It nudges the memory, allowing it to be expressed in odd symptoms and unexplained aches, pains, fears and worries. It's only when I am able to bring the memory out of the body and into the mind that the feelings begin to subside.

So I tell myself to breathe. For I've learned that healing comes one breath at a time.

Space for New Joy

A year ago at this time, I was reflecting that 2011 was probably the worst year of my life. Little did I know that 2012 was going to be even more difficult. When I was writing last year's complaint, I had no idea that my mother would die in a few days and I would be catapulted into a year of griefwalking, coupled with anxiety and panic.

It's a good thing we don't know what's coming or we wouldn't have the fortitude to withstand it. At least I wouldn't. If I had been told a year ago that the 2012 was going to be much more challenging on every level than 2011, I would have curled up in the fetal position and refused to move.

But today, in these first bright days of 2013, I realize I have gained an important lesson.  I don't want to look back.  I don't want to go over 2012 and remember all the dark and difficult days.  I don't want to relive the fear, the panic, the grief, the sorrow, the anguish, the struggles.  I just want them to be part of the past, and not carry them with me into the future.

I don't know what this year will bring...thankfully...but I hope and pray that after two years of sorrow mounted on sorrow, these words of the great Sufi mystic Rumi will ring true and soon "new joy can find space" in my life.

 Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.

A New Year and a Year of Gratitude

 
I've never been much for New Years or New Year's resolutions. Often January 1 comes and goes without my paying too much attention to it, other than to take down Christmas decorations and to note if either Oregon or Stanford is playing in a bowl game. 

But this year is different. My mother died a year ago January and even when I'm not actually thinking about the anniversary, it's always lurking in the back of my mind.

It has been a long year. A year of many changes and many challenges. Sometimes I didn't think that I would actually make it through. Panic, depression, fear and anxiety have all taken their places on the stage of my life; sometimes playing starring roles!

While it's tempting to look back and perhaps wallow in the pains and pangs of 2012, my one resolution for 2013 is to let the past be the past and to try to live more fully in the present. On January 27, the anniversary of my mother's death, I will truly start a new year, a new beginning to the rest of  my life. A year of mourning will be ended and I will have passed through all the significant events.

May my year of griefwalking give way to a year of dancing.

But before I leave 2012 entirely, I want to recount a few of the things I am grateful for:

1. Restoration of a once-fractured relationship
2. A positive ending to a breast cancer scare
3. The gradual ebbing of panic and anxiety
4. Friends who stayed with me during this annus horribulus
5. Answered prayer...more "yes" than "no"

Griefwalking to Myself

When it comes to writing about my life here at Ordinary Time, I'm sort of bi-polar. On the one hand, I was well-trained by a secretive mother not to let anyone know my business.  On the other, I have been a writer for my entire adult life and know how it is the personal stories of people's lives that change us. I also know how much I value writers who are open with their struggles as well as their joys. To know we are not alone in the world is one of the greatest gifts a wordsmith can give.

However, these past couple of weeks, my bi-polar sides have been battling and the secretive side has been winning, as evidenced by the dearth of posts.  Even though I have been going through some intense emotional events, public sharing seems, well, just too public and I could hear my mother's admonition, "It's nobody's business!" ringing in my ears.

But mother has been gone seven months now and I decided that I would try to override the tapes that play on endless loop, sort of like the French distress call that had been playing for years in LOST and talk about some of my struggle.


My mother and I were very close, too close actually.  For all that was good in her, she had one great flaw and that was that she was unable to ever let me go.  I was conceived, as I have recently learned, as a substitute for a love she had lost. So her apron strings were made of titanium cords and even when she reeled them out far enough to let me marry and have a child of my own, they never came close to being broken. She simply couldn't afford to let go. She had lost one love and she could not bear to lose another. The result was that there was not a day in my life that she wasn't either physically or emotionally present. In her mind there were no boundaries between us.  There was only a permeable membrane--and titanium cords.

Now I was quite unaware of this because our family kept secrets...and the secret that I was to be my mother's everything emotional was one of them. It just seemed normal to me because it was all I knew.  I grew up being so in touch with my mother and her needs that I always knew where she was and what she wanted. Even as she neared the end of her life, I could tell by way she would move her lips if she wanted another bite of ice cream or if she was finished.  All she had to do was literally twitch a finger and I would know how she wanted the covers adjusted.

She, in turn, never was able to see me as anyone more than an extension of her own being.  For example, she would say to me, "I'm cold. Go put on a sweater," completely unaware that I might have a different internal thermostat than she did. And, because I knew no other reality, I would go put on the sweater, never questioning or even considering what I might be actually feeling.

Now talking about all of this would simply be an exercise is exposing the neurosis and dysfunction of a family except for one thing: when she died, I literally fell apart.  It's not really a surprise, since my life was so completely entwined with hers that I didn't really have a separate emotional identity. The first few weeks after her passing, I was almost suicidal, haunted by a kind of "survivor's guilt," even though she was 92 and her death was not unexpected.  Then as, the weeks began to stretch on, I became almost paralyzed by continual panic about everything from how I was going to support myself (even though I have worked every day since I graduated from school and I supported her in the end) to how I was going to sort out all of her things (I'm still a little panicky about that, to tell the truth) to how I could go on without her to take care of.  I experienced a sort of dark, black fog of depressive grief that makes even a bright sunny day look, literally, covered in gloom.

It's been a hellish seven months. It has often felt as if the bleakness will never end, that only my own death will bring relief.  I understand, for the first time, why people consider suicide.  Without my mother in my life, I had no foundation...and hence no life. Even now, most days I wake up to realize anew that I am an orphan, completely and existentially alone in the world. Sometimes the moments seem to stretch endless while the days pour out as as fast as sand in an hourglass. There are times I hope that my end will come quickly and then realizing how how short life really is, feel the terror of an unlived life as well.

Now if this were one of those perfect pious stories, I'd have a nice, tidy wrap-up that affirms a miracle, talks about how God rescued me and leaves you and me with warm fuzzies. Maybe there is such a miracle in my future, but if so, it still is in my future. What has happened, however, as I have spent literally hours in prayer, often at the Adoration Chapel, is that although my mother was never able to let go of me, I am beginning  to let go of her.

While she was alive, I assumed, as did she, that my purpose for being was to care for her. And so I did. While caring for one's parent is certainly a good thing, as evidenced by the Fourth Commandment, I am being to see that my doing so to the emotional exclusion of almost everything else may not have been God's real purpose for my life. I have seen--or perhaps been shown--that my actions were harmful to other, equally important relationships. I've sadly seen that I have not walked through the doors God has opened for me and, in fact, sometimes actually closed them in his face. I let my mother's misguided, neurotic behavior become the cornerstone of my own life...usurping the place that God should have had. I have destroyed relationships, threw away talent, wasted my one and only precious life because I never sought my own purpose, but accepted her purpose as my own.

However, griefwalking has begun to make changes. Gradually, over these months, my grief has shifted from the loss of my mother to the loss of my own life. The tears I now shed daily are not for her, but for me, for the little girl who  sacrificed her childhood, the young woman who gave up her dreams, the wife who could never fully commit, the mother who was always and ever torn between between mother and being mother, the writer who would never be completely honest. Tears for a half-lived, unlived, squandered life.

As I have asked forgiveness, asked that the years the locust has eaten might somehow, miraculously be restored, I have encountered a Scripture verse that I repeat daily:

 Come, and let us return to the LORD; For He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us; On the third day He will raise us up, That we may live in His sight.-- Hosea 6:1-3

I've always felt like fall heralds the real new year, probably because it is the beginning of the school year, and so as I enter into both the fall of the year and the fall of my own life (since according to all actuary tables, I'm past the mid-point of life expectancy), I am expecting  a new beginning, one that no longer centers on my mother and her need to be loved.  A life that no longer waits for my mother to fulfill her life purpose. A life that sees the years I handed over to the locust to eat be miraculously restored. 

I am, in faith, expecting the third day of my life.

May it come sooner than I imagine possible.

Griefwalking the Unexpected

This month, which contains my birthday, my grandfather's birthday, my cousin's birthday, the birthday of my childhood friend's first child (on my birthday), and several significant personal anniversaries is always a bit hard.

But this year, add in a visit from my son for the first time since my mother's death and meeting a once very significant person in my life from whom I've been estranged for nearly 15 years and I've been sort of flattened by it all.  No blogging.  No writing.  Not much of anything.

I've learned these past months that grief and the subsequent changes just have to be lived. You can't plan your reaction and you can't plan your feelings.  You just have to see what comes and adapt to it along the way. Especially when it's a month that is already filled with major emotional events.

I've been adapting with chocolate and staring blankly at walls.

But now summer is drawing to a close and fall always feels like a new beginning. May it be so.

Sunday Gratitude

1. Corn on the cob.  Not genetically altered.

2. Coffee with cream, preferably iced.

3. The beginning of healing of old wounds and old estrangments.

4. Answers to prayer.

5. Apple right off the tree.

Answers to Prayer

With August nearly over, I've been slack on recording answers to prayer, but so far this month, I have 18 prayers listed in my journal.  I've probably prayed a lot more but didn't record them.  For reasons, see above.

Not answered yet--10

No--3

Yes--4

Sort of yes--2

The sort of yes deserve an explanation. One involves a health issue that seems to be improving, but it isn't fully clear what the result will be.  The other one is number three in gratitude: healing seems to be happening, but it's a long way from being a full "yes" to the prayer.  So they are "sort of yes."  Certainly not "no" in any event.

Six Months of a Death Remembered

It was six months ago, to the date and the day of the week exactly, that my mother died.

It has been a hard day, not because I am still wrapped in acute grief, because I'm not.  But because the body remembers what the mind seeks to forget and I have been weary and foggy all day.  My mind refuses to concentrate on details, like turning on blinkers and fastening seatbelts. Like recognizing that I might just be hungry.  Like remembering to turn off a light.

I have been griefwalking all day.

But six months have passed and, as I said earlier, I feel like I'm on the brink of something; a something I know not what. Perhaps today will be the turning point and I will begin to see what lies ahead.
Until then....

De Profundis

Psalm 130

Out of the depths I cry to You, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice.
Let Your ears be attentive to my voice in supplication.
If You, O Lord, mark iniquities, Lord, who can stand?
But with You is forgiveness, that You may be revered.
I trust in the Lord; my soul trusts in His word.
My soul waits for the Lord more than sentinels wait for the dawn.
More than sentinels wait for the dawn, let Israel wait for the Lord,
For with the Lord is kindness and with Him is plenteous redemption;
And He will redeem Israel from all their iniquities.

Griefwalking on Father's Day

My father has been gone 17 years and for many years, Father's Day didn't have any particular sting anymore.  But this year, with mother gone as well, it was a difficult day.  Sundays are always hard for me, since I spent them with her, but this Sunday, this Father's Day, was a bit of a wrench.

I tried to keep busy...cleaning, planting a pot of lavender seeds that my son and her girlfriend gave me at Christmas.  (The seeds said they were good until 2015, so I wasn't in a rush.)  Scrubbing places on the carpet where the cats had barfed. (Have I mentioned these are THE LAST CATS I'm owning?  When they are gone, it's libre feline for me!)  Picking up things that were out of place.  Trying to fix a leaky fountain.  Calling my aunt.  Writing a blog.  Downloading a book on Kindle. Stuff.

For a few minutes I could push away the feelings and get absorbed in the activity of, oh, say, deep cleaning a spot on the carpet or mopping up the spill after I dumped the fountain.

But it was still a hard day.

I think it was the memories, mostly.  Memories of my father. Memories of the father of my son.  Memories of memories of memories.  When my feelings are raw and ragged, like they are today, the memories, even the pleasant ones, come with glass-shard edges that leave little cuts that seem painless at the time, but the tiny bubble of red sorrow eventually rises. 

But tomorrow will be another day.

Griefwalking Visited

The Anchoress has a link to Terry Teachout's piece on his mother's death.  Today, my own griefwalk is close to the bone, so I will let their words speak for me.

"You know how I feel today?" I asked my wife. "Empty. Absolutely empty. Like my taproot had been torn out of the ground."

Griefwalking Observed

A friend of mine asked me how long I had been griefwalking, but before I could answer, she said, "My dad has been gone now for four years and five months.  I know when people would ask me how I was I would just lie and say I was doing great because that's what they wanted to hear."

Very true.  It's been a little over four months and most people's tolerance for grief is over and done with. Four months is a long time; long enough for them to forget, but the reality is that I am still grieving, not as much as I did, but walking in grief is still part of my days.  Take Friday night. I was driving to a friend's house and without thinking I drove to the last place where Mother had been, the night she died. When I "woke up," I was startled to realize where I was and how I'd gotten there, but my mind had become so deeply engrossed in grief, my body just took over and steered the car on autopilot.

That incident is just one of a number of things that I've observed in myself these past months.  If I don't keep a firm focus, my mind will fly wildly, dragging my body along with "interesting" consequences. For example, some days it's hard to do much more than the absolute necessities of life. I find these days often follow a day or two when I think I've made great strides and am beginning to congratulate myself on how much progress I've made.  It's as if I  take three steps forward and then three back in a sort of stutter-step dance of body, mind and emotion.

I've also found that my emotions are much more deeply tied to the weather than they had been in the past.  A dark, gloomy day like today has a greater capacity to drape over my soul than before. As clouds gather in the sky, rain falls in my heart as well.  Conversely, a bright sunny day will lift my spirits, but oddly enough, sometimes the brightness is almost too much to bear. It's as if I can't bear too much light all at once and sometimes I find myself hiding inside, where the light is more filtered. Perhaps it is because the bright light casts too harsh a shadow and I cannot  to see the stark contrast between dark and light quite yet.

So I'm learning to be a bit more compassionate toward myself; to allow myself to have the occasional day when I really can't do anymore than make a cup of tea and go to bed. Because griefwalking, like life itself, is process and while I don't want to lose any more of my life to the process than I have to, I also want to honor the process itself by granting it the time it needs. 

Griefwalking through the Valley of the Shadow of Death

Mother died four months ago today and I did my best to not remember, but sometimes the body remembers what the mind strives to forget.  I woke up anxious and sad and have been that way all day, despite my best attempts to not focus, or even think about, it as an anniversary. My mind tried to block it, but the cells of my being are griefwalking through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

Well-meaning people have wondered why I'm not better yet and I try to tell them that yes, I am better.   I am coping.  I am doing.  I am accomplishing.  I am functioning. I'm just not all better and ready to leap joyfully into the next stage of life.

I'm still griefwalking.

It's not just mother's death.  It's a lot of things that all came together in one crashing crescendo with her passing.

First, it was the years of caregiving, which had begun to take their toll on me physically, spiritually, mentally and emotionally. In the eight or so months before her actual passing, I was growing increasingly fragile and so, when her death happened, it wasn't like I was in top form, at the pinnacle of my very best self.  The blow came when I was already stretched and strained.

Second, elder care is crushingly expensive.  By the time mother died, it was costing around $6000/month for her care.  Allowing her to be in her own space, surrounded by her own things, and loved unto death was invaluable, but the stress of finances, coupled with the fact that I was spending so much of my time and energy caring for her that my own financial situation was becoming precarious, hasn't helped the grief process.  In the past four months, I've had to sort out her financial situation, figure out how to pay her final expenses and now, begin to try to plan to provide for myself. Perhaps I should be looking at this as an exciting new challenge, but right this second it all feels draining, not energizing and stimulating.

Third, while it's still enwrapped in our legal system and I'm not free to share all the details, immediately after her death, I learned that she had been robbed on a massive scale by someone she considered a dear and trusted friend.  So as well as dealing with my own griefwalk, I'm now involved in criminal prosecutions on a federal level against someone I thought I knew well.  Someone who even attended her funeral. Someone who betrayed her...and me...while feigning friendship and caring. Needless to say, that has added its own level of stress these past months.

Fourth, it's Memorial Day weekend, and there is a great emphasis on remembering those who have passed. The anniversary of my father's death was last weekend, with all that entailed, and now I am reminded again, by every flag and flower, that death has been permeating my life these past months.

Finally, after 14 years of caregiving, her death wasn't just her passing, but also the passing of what I have known as "normal" since my son left for college.  Now, truly, I am experiencing an empty nest on many levels--and finding myself regrieving things that I thought I had dealt with years before.  Apparently, I hadn't completely resolved them, because they have come back, showing up in the mirror of my life, leaving me feeling rudderless and lost much of the time.

So today, I'm struggling.  Tears dangle on my lashes and needles of pain pierce my heart. Every cell of my body weeps.

But in the midst of the griefwalk, I remind myself that I have survived the past four months. I have dealt with many issues. I have not been crushed or destroyed.

And I remind myself, too, that God uses all things for good, including the times we find ourselves stumbling one more day through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.