Christmas thoughts

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Michael,

Sometimes I wonder why I keep writing when it most likely amounts to nothing more than cries of a grieving woman. But it helps me to get it all out and purge it from my system, I guess. It makes me feel like I can still talk to you and share things with you, even if I am being self-centered or self-piteous, negative or repetitive. I just want to talk to you. So here goes another bout of my ramblings….

With each new day, I find myself feeling more at home. I’ve wondered why that is, and I’ve decided it’s the little things—The hum of the dryer, the cleaning of messes, the daily trips to retrieve the mail, the yelling at Harry to come inside, and in the partaking of our usual evening indulgences of watching our favorite tv and cuddling up in bed. Lately Andi and I have shared lots of evenings in our bed, watching her favorite shows (“Caillou” or “Strawberry Shortcake”—a.k.a. “Bah Bah.”) and eating popcorn. This popcorn thing is a new obsession; every evening she says to me, “Mama bed popcorn!” So cute.

I have so appreciated these familiar sounds and feelings. Having a home—a home base, a place of refuge and self-expression—has always been important to me. There have been times after being at our Ogden house that I think I’ll never feel at home again. That place meant the world to us. We put our heart and souls into it, as silly as that sounds. It made me really believe in the sacredness of a home—That the walls enclose much more than a living space.

The walls of our little Ogden home literally seep with memories, which is why when I went up there to gather our last belongings and prep the house for renters last week, my heart just ached and ached. Each time I drive away from it, it feels as if I’m letting another piece of you go. They say there are secondary losses to deal with in the grieving process, and this house is most certainly one of those. With each visit I make, I end up spending days afterwards racking my brain in efforts to come up with ways to keep that house.
Last week, though, I had another one of those cool experiences when I felt your presence and the Spirit spoke. Let it go. This is a wise decision that will offer the security and foundation you need. Ever since then I have felt comfort in the decision to leave the home behind. And just as you often do, you reminded me that it doesn’t matter where I am, you are with me, inside of me, and forever a part of me.
I know how cheesy all this sounds, but it expresses just a part of the many precious and important moments I’ve had in this journey so far. I am so grateful for these times that buoy me up and guide my steps.

A couple of nights ago I came home, went upstairs, and emptied out my pockets. I don’t usually carry things in my pockets, but that day I did. As I set my phone, iPod, and change on the dresser the image of you doing the same thing popped in my head. With each homecoming, you’d always empty out your pockets on our dresser or kitchen counter. Your money clip, favorite pen, note paper folded into fourths, phone, iPod, headphones, and change would stay there until the next day when you’d load your work shorts up again. Your pen and note paper, however, would be neatly placed in your shirt pocket. That note paper held the keys to your successful days—Customers’ addresses, to-do lists, phone numbers, and of course, playlist ideas. I always liked reading those papers so I could get an idea of what your days were like and what you thought about as you drove around in the van.

Last week Andi and I went to temple square with your family to see the lights. A nice tradition to start. That particular night was a little crazy between traffic, parking, and a bashful girl in the face of a crowd, but I believe I’m never wrong in my efforts to have Andi around your fam, even if just to be around them and see their faces. There are times I wonder why she’s so bashful, but I suppose the answer is obvious. She comes by it so honestly having me as her mother. Just like me (especially in my younger days) it took me a long time to warm up to people. If I felt pressure to be outgoing, it pushed me the other way. I was much more comfortable getting to know people one on one, without expectation.
I remember in our dating years as we started to get serious, you’d express--in as nice a way as possible--that you had hesitations about my “quietness.” You expressed concern about my shyness and took great pride in the fact that you were not that way. You wondered if we could possibly be a good match with these apparent polarizing personalities. I often felt baffled by your concerns because I really didn’t consider myself such a quiet person. I just didn’t always put my whole self out on the table; it took time for me to warm up.
I would say with confidence that concern you had quickly dissipated as we grew closer. Perhaps I became a bit more forthright and you became a little more acclimated to intimate crowds.
As I watch our girl and see her personality traits come to fruition, I feel so much gratitude and love for who she is. I believe she’s a great mix of us both and that her qualities were given to her so as to face the unique challenges and experiences of her life. I’m proud of my strong-willed girl who even as a two-year old, insists on being nothing more than who she is. I happen to think we both were pretty insistent on being that ourselves, especially as we got a bit older.

As much as our dear child meant to me before losing you, I have to say that since then, the way I now look at her is forever and utterly altered. Each expression, mannerism, sideways glance, spout of laughter, or cheesy smile is a way for me to find you. But it’s even beyond that. I now look at her with eyes that know loss--that know and feel how incredibly and inexpressibly precious it is to be able to hug her and take care of her.
Sometimes I’ll look at the families at church and observe the husbands and wives putting their arms around each other while each of their children sit at their sides. I look at those images differently now, too. I can’t help but wonder if they really know how lucky they are. I’d give anything to have you by my side like that again. I’d give anything to get back the terrible arguments, painful conversations, confessions, the make-ups, and the speechless moments. I’d love to have back the sobbing baby in the tense moments, the inconvenient requests, and of course, the late night company.

Anyhow, on the evening of temple square, we were walking the grounds when another image came to mind. Oftentimes as we’d be walking together, I’d let you in front of me so I could kick your bum. Sometimes I’d get “on one” as you’d say, and I kept at it until you’d get ticked. I admittedly took a lot of pleasure in pushing your buttons. Many instances I could recount in that regard.

And since I want to keep writing down memories, here are a few more that have come to mind—
“Drawing” with our fingers on each other’s backs.
How excited you’d get when it snowed—You’d scream like a girl. 
You’d wrap all our gifts on Christmas Eve so as to ease my Christmas to-do list. You’d blast your Christmas music while doing so.
How I’d always say to you, “You’re my hero.”
Tepanyaki—the long story behind that and how we laughed about it each time.
The t.v. shows you loved watching that the TiVo has still been programmed to record: “The Ultimate Fighter,” “Heroes,” “The Office” (of course), “Community,” “Overhaulin’,” “American Chopper,” “Dateline,” “Cities of the Underworld” from the History channel, “Parks and Recreation,” “Parenthood,” “Biggest Loser,” and “This Old House.” Some of them we enjoyed together, some of them I made fun of while you watched. 
Holding your hands. As simple as it sounds, I gratefully still feel the details of your hands as I imagine what it was like holding them. I can literally still feel your fingernails, the creases, and the grip we’d share as we’d sit in church. When we were dating I remember you kept trying to hold my hand in a way that was so weird to me—I kept telling you to switch your hand around so it didn’t feel backwards.

As completely and totally cheesy as this sounds, one of the most difficult parts of not having you physically here is that I can’t touch your face, hold your hands, or feel you by my side. I yearn and ache for that so badly. I know it sounds ridiculous, and I know I’ve said all this before, but I don’t care. I’ve been reading a book called The Message by Lance Richardson. It’s a story about a man’s near-death experience and the subsequent experiences he claims to have had in the next realm. He claims from his experience that spirit can touch and feel spirit –that you can hug other spirits and feel them. When I read that I just cried, ‘cuz the thing is, no matter how much I set out to memorize the feel of your face and body as I sat with it in the mortuary, memory is just not enough. No matter how much I leaned over that dark bedside to run the backs of my fingers across your cheek, no matter how much I envision every other time I’ve touched that face, I cannot live without the hope of feeling you again, and without the joyous hope of the resurrection.

Sometimes at my grief support group we’ll get handouts—little “food for thoughts,” if you will. One that piqued my interest was a paper entitled, “How Can I Celebrate the Holidays? Ideas from Grieving White House Families.” The article enumerates the surprisingly many different stories of presidents under the burden of grief while in office. For instance, it tells of Andrew Jackson’s wife Rachel, who was buried on Christmas Eve in 1828. Apparently Jackson wore her wedding ring on his watch fob for the rest of his life. President Eisenhower lost his son to meningitis and scarlet fever on the Christmas of 1920, and it was reported that he grieved his whole life. Apparently in 1961, almost forty years after his son’s death, Eisenhower was in his office one morning when his secretary repeatedly buzzed him on the intercom. It says, “Anxious because he had a major heart attack and stroke during his term, she finally entered the Oval Office and found him staring into space. ‘Mr. President!’ As Eisenhower swiveled to face her, tears streamed down his face. ‘Mr. President, what’s wrong?’ she asked, assuming he was troubled that his presidency was ending. ‘I was just thinking about my boy. He died forty years ago today.’ The boy’s death, Eisenhower wrote, ‘was the single greatest disappointment of my life.’”
And then, of course, there’s the story of Jackie Kennedy. As you may remember, JFK was assassinated in November, so she had to deal with the holiday expectations immediately. I just love what the article says about her experience—
“The angry, grieving woman finally began writing a “thank you” note to her weekend guests for the gifts they had brought her children. At one point, the friends had counseled her, ‘You’re young. You’ll marry again and maybe have more children.’ In essence, they were politely saying what you have heard: ‘Move on.’ It had taken all her poise to keep from lashing out at them. As she rehashed the conversation she thought ‘How dare friends say such a thing to a ‘futureless’ woman.”
“’You must know,’ she wrote, ‘that I consider my life to be over and will spend the rest of my life waiting for it really to be over.’ Jackie Kennedy mailed that note three weeks after the assassination of President John Kennedy. The lesson grievers might learn from Mrs. Kennedy is honesty. Mrs. Kennedy was not being melodramatic. She could not imagine a “John-less” future. At the time she left for Dallas, the Christmas cards were ready to be mailed, the holiday decorations were ready, and a busy holiday season of entertaining at the White House had been finalized. And in a moment, all that was gone. Another family would celebrate the 1963 holidays in the White House.”

Anyway, you know me—I love reading about this kind of stuff, and this obviously spoke to me in a way I never thought it could. I’m unafraid to admit that those expressions of grief tell my story….particularly the one about Jackie.

I am so grateful, that unlike them, I have the foundation of the Gospel. The Gospel of my Savior, our Savior and Redeemer. I am so grateful that we made sure to be sealed in His house. I am so grateful to feel the Spirit every day that gives me strength and comfort. I am so grateful to have a piece of you in our sweet angel girl. I am grateful I can now further my journey as a witness of Jesus Christ that He is in fact, very real, and that through the experience of losing you, I can testify He loves us and is there to help.

With all of those profound things sincerely proclaimed, I still very much feel connection with Mrs. Kennedy’s words when after people politely urged her to “move on” she said, “You must know I consider my life to be over and will spend the rest of my life waiting for it really to be over.” I also can relate to what she must have felt as she watched a new president and family take over the White House—To see them benefit from her holiday preparations and to take over what she must have felt so robbed of. What was hers was not only gone, but her role was replaced and what she left behind was used for others’ benefits.
I am coming to know those feelings very well. I live that anger every time I see a young family have the opportunity to be an “established” family. I live that anger as I watch our home be occupied, as I see others’ joyful laughters as they so easily move on. I live it as I see a father hold his child, as I stand alone at family functions, and as I drive to the cemetery in the evening rather than to meet you for dinner.

I can hardly calm the sea of rage that storms within me as I battle with this reality I can do nothing about. I cannot bring you back, we cannot have more children. We cannot grow old together. We cannot hold hands in bed at night. We cannot grieve together, laugh together, raise our child together. There are so many “cannots” in all of this that there are days I’m simply unable to take another step for fear my near and far future will reveal more forbidden paths.

Sometimes I get the impression from others that I’m a faithless woman for feeling these emotions. And ya know, there is certainly a large measure of sadness that is eased by the promise of our eternal bonds. I am truly grateful. But I can be sad.

The other day went to my parents’, sat down at their table, and asked my dad, “How am I going to deal with watching other people live the life Michael and I should be living?” He told me about his mom, and even though she didn’t speak much of the pain of losing her husband, he said she often wished people would be a bit more sensitive in their conversations with her about new babies, marriages, and so forth. Inasmuch as I hate my current life’s predicament, I am grateful it is teaching me more about my grandma.

When all this sadness I talk about leads me down the road to bitterness, though, I know I’ve got a real battle to fight.

I oftentimes wonder how the heck I can keep that bitterness out. What I’m rightfully reminded of time and time again is that I am still Andi’s mommy. I’m still my parents’ daughter, my sisters’ sister. Someone still needs to fill Harry’s bowl and take him for walks. There are still races to run, moons to admire, books to be read, ice creams to savor, good movies to watch—even without you.
There are still sobbing children to be held and comforted and sent back out into the world. There are still your favorite ski resorts to be visited.

I still have that garden to plant, that book to write, those dogs to rescue, and further education to pursue. I still have kids to love and teach and watch grow up. There are still days for me to stay in and wear my infamous red fleece sweater and my knee-high socks underneath my leopard-print pants—your most favorite of my outfits.

Most of all, I’m still being called as a witness of Christ, and I’m still your wife.

Yes, there are still these mountains to move before I touch you again. I hope and pray for the Lord’s help. I’ve been receiving letters from a dear friend once a week. She writes down some of her latest spiritual thoughts and how it perhaps ties into what I’m facing. It’s so nice and her words have offered much comfort and hope. In one letter she says, “I don’t know, but I do know that the Lord rarely moves mountains until the shovel has been in our hands for a very long time and when the mountain is moved, we truly understand the miracle that has happened. I believe you and I are moving mountains of our own, moment by moment, and someday we will see the fruit of our faith and the mountain will be moved to reveal the fulfillment of our hope and faith.”

In another of my favorite letters from her concerning a different topic, she says:

“I was in a class that used the scripture from Alma 31:5, and I saw it differently than I had ever seen it. It reads: ‘And now, as the preaching of the word had a great tendency to lead the people to do that which was just—yea, it had had more powerful effect upon the minds of the people than the sword, or anything else, which had happened unto them—therefore Alma thought it was expedient that they should try the virtue of the word of God.’”

She continues to point out that His word can heal us…that the “pleasing word of God…healeth the wounded soul (Jacob 2:8). She says, “His word can heal us. How, how can it heal us?” She spent the entirety of the letter in efforts to answer that question. All of her words are wise and comforting, but at the end I liked it best when she quotes the scripture that says, “…will ye not now return unto me, and repent of your sins, and be converted, that I may heal you?’ I don’t know how He does it, but somehow, through our faith, He can heal us. He can heal our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, parents and grandchildren. And through the sealing covenant, He can heal our families and make us whole again. His invitation is to the whole world. I have seen healing in my own life and I look forward to the time when little by little and life by life, healing will come to the whole world and to those who ever lived upon it through the power of “Him who is mighty to save.” (2 Nephi 31:19)

As impossible as it may seem to me at times, I pray for that healing. And I pray that through time my life and heart will reflect those wise teachings.

In the meantime, once again, here’s the latest with our girl:

One day I took Harry to get a haircut and for the rest of the week we talked about “Hay” going to the “doctor” to get a haircut.
She had her first real band-aid after her first real cut. She got blood all over and it was interesting to see her reaction. She was nervous.
It’s an official routine for her to require 45 minutes after her nap until she starts to interact. Until then she needs her alone time. Sounds so familiar, doesn’t it?
She counts to twelve all by herself, perfectly clear. After that it goes, “uh-teen, uh-teen, uh-teen, uhteen!”
She loves talking on the phone and her words are getting much clearer. I can understand her language perfectly and I adore it.
It’s funny…When we go somewhere in public and she gets in that quiet, overwhelmed, grouchy mode, I can usually solve it if I can carry her to a quiet place where we’re alone. I’ll talk to her and give her food—But she’ll only eat it in private, minus distractions. We talk about Harry, band-aids, Caillou, juice, her pink ball, her blankets, Christmas lights, playdough, and Santa—All her current favorites. Oh, and another favorite is “pillow pets”—A stupid, over-commercialized toy that somehow becomes endearing when I hear her say, “Mom! Pillowpets! Me! Christmas!”
She went to a little kid play with Elyse and Cambri a few weeks ago. She could have cared less about the play, but loved to be with Cambri and eat crackers.
She has a new friend named Anastasia--a two-year old girl that comes over and plays with us. They rarely talk or even look at each other, but it’s cute to see them side by side.

She’s just the best.

As it always is this time of year, traditions are on the mind. I have a lot of different ideas about what Andi and I can do over the years, but one thing I’ve concluded for certain is that I want you to be a part of our lives and hearts. Through these traditions I hope to instill in Andi the essence of what you were and are: Happy, optimistic, fun, and loving to your girls. When Andi thinks of her dad I hope she will feel happiness. I know that’s how you’d want it. So that’s a goal I’ve had in mind and hope to apply. Guide me, okay?

As Christmas is now just days away, my heart is growing a bit fearful to face the days without you. There are obviously so many different emotions that make this holiday season more dynamic and heartfelt than it’s ever been. One main emotion though, amidst the aches, is gratitude. I’m grateful for all you have and are teaching me. I’m grateful to be meeting so many incredible people in the widow community who inspire me. I am so grateful for experiences that remind me of our closeness—like my experience at the temple last week that confirmed the love we still share. We are indeed still a team, even amidst this newfound independence I’m gratefully beginning to appreciate.
I’m grateful for your encouragement.
For our dear families and your endlessly loyal friends.
For the continual kindnesses shown.
I’m grateful, more than ever, for my Savior.
Michael, please be with us…your girls. Help us feel you.

For Christmas this year, there will be no neatly wrapped gifts to exchange nor kisses to share. Just these words to express and memories to savor.
More Christmas expressions and pictures to come later this week.
Until then--

Forever and everlastingly yours~

Our friend, Anastasia:
My bedroom was taken over by a fort:














With Uncle Daniel and his girls:












At the Kaysville light parade with the fam:












Here she is, in Grandma Cathi's get-up: