A moment

I had a moment tonight.  I wanted to spit it out while it was fresh in my head.

I sat thinking of my husband, as of course I often do.  I was thinking how most of the unhappy things I talk about when talking about Storm are involved in how and why he died.  It hurts me still, two years later.  Sometimes I wish I could express this sort of pain, but I have never really found the words.

I was suddenly overwhelmed by the magnitude of the great blessing that the father had heaped onto our lives.  Marriage is never perfect, and we were as human as the next humans. The last week or so of our lives together was particularly difficult. 

Yet, when I look back at those eight years, they are unquestioningly the most amazing years of my life.  Not just in my relationship with Storm, but my life overall became amazing.  Everything that Storm touched in my life increased.  He could tap into my innermost needs and dreams, and help me realize them.  He was not only determined to make sure we prioritized my time with my daughters, but he also worked to make the times we were together as special as he was able, in his own loud, blunt way.  We returned home to Oregon so that I could be with my daughters, and my family, especially my Mom.  I’m grateful for that, because I was able to be close to Mom until the end.  Storm’s great love for me translated into helping me help him make our lives everything that was good for us, which was good for every single area of my life.

The most amazing thing about this man to me was that he so strongly believed in so many things that were Biblical, while he was, in his own words, a deviant.  In polite company I use the word heathen, which would make him chuckle, I’m certain.  It astounded him that he would state a standard of being, one of his uncompromising principles, and I would quote the Bible echoing what he had said.  He didn’t lie, he didn’t cheat, he didn’t hold back good advice.  He didn’t make traps for people, he confronted them directly.  He wasn’t one person in public, and another in private.  And he loved his wife not as he loved himself, but in so many ways, more than he loved himself.  That love has shaped everything about me, almost entirely for the good.

He saw that Torah was important to me, that the Sabbath was sacred, and that I longed to properly keep the feasts of Yah, though I barely knew how.  Together we learned.  He cooked the lamb for our seder together in Illinois, and he gladly broke bread at the table with me and my daughter.  We turned our garden into an accidental sukka every year.  We had scored a free gazebo frame with no cover.  This metal skeleton made the perfect up spot for all of our tomatoes.  By the end of summer, tomatoes small and large dripped from the bars, making us reach up to pick them.  I remember beautiful cool days standing in the shade, picking the last few that made it all the way to ripe. He kept Shabbat with me, grateful for the selfish day to have me actually sitting down with him, and each one was a highly anticipated day.

During my life with Storm I learned to garden, earned a business degree, learned how to admit I was wrong, learned how to apologize, and became aware that I was a person of worth.   The fact that he loved me filled me with confidence every day.  I reasoned that if this amazing man loved me, then there must be something of worth in me.  Shining in his eyes, I saw that person that he saw looking back at me, and I couldn’t help but respond to his confidence and love.  

The truth is, the last week or so of his life was insignificant to the magnitude of that love.  It was so intense, I am scarred by it’s absence.  As time passes and the scars and pains begin to heal, what I’m remembering is the love, and the good moments, and the walks on the beach, and the many bottles of beer, Fourth of July baseball games, and barbecues at five in the morning, cause that’s when I got off work.  I remember Sabbath mornings nestled in each others arms, and I remember laying in bed all night awake talking because we didn’t want to be done talking yet.  I remember traveling 2400 miles over four days and turning on the radio exactly once.  I remember feeling welcome every time I walked into a room he was in, even if I hadn’t even seen him yet.

I will never not love this man.  I can only hope it stops hurting so much.  I have no choice but to move on, because we only have the moment we are in.  

Storm once looked at me and almost casually asked me what kind of wife I wanted to be for him.  I grabbed the Scriptures, and together we read Proverbs 31.  After I finished, he was quiet a moment, and thought about it carefully.  Then he said, in his sexy southern fried Aussie drawl, “My Rose, my love, don’t you know that you are already all of those things?”

Please, Abba, Father, Yahweh, help me every day to be the woman Storm saw in me.  Amen.

Climbing to the light

I am approaching the two year mark from the beginning of this scary and disturbing journey, and I am trying to take stock.  February 13 marks two years since Storm’s suicide.  

The first thing that comes up for me are the differences in my life.  My life is dramatically different than it was with Storm.  When Storm was alive, I spent my time working or I spent my time with Storm.  We had an insatiable need to be with one another, since it was such a joy to fill the missing parts in one another.  We set each other first, in all things, and sought each others company constantly.

I spend my time these days with my daughters, or grandchildren, or studying and learning, or with friends and family.  I have friends, real friends, which is a big shift from where I once was.  I think I value my family even more highly, though I thought I valued them very highly at the beginning of this mess.  

My work life is different.  I don’t go to work at a fast-paced job where I am expected to turn away from my home life at a moment’s notice and give myself over to the religion of my job.  I no longer feel a pressure to conform to the happy, happy, joy, joy atmosphere, and to be positive even when it sucks, even when I am hurting or miserable or totally un-valued as a human.   I’m satisfied at the end of every work day.  I spend my days at work reading the Bible and assisting people trying to serve our mutual Elohim, and I spend my volunteer hours serving the church that I love, and that loves me.  

I live a life full of gratitude.  Great gratitude.  As I look around my world and see the influence of Yah on all the things that I touch, I am even more grateful.  I have my home because I obeyed the promptings he gave me.  I have my family close by because I have tried to employ the gentle spirit he has put inside of me.  I have friends because I obey the promptings he gives me to love others.  Just love them right where they are.  

I think the addition of real friends, people who come to my house, talk to me on the phone, sit across from me at a table, listen to me cry out my anguish and confusion, remind me to walk in His faith, is the most startling thing of all.  I don’t consider myself very likable.  I’m sure this hearkens back to a time when I was a bit of a bitch.  I had hardened myself to the impact that my words had on others, and now when I am with people, I cannot help but to feel the pain that is inside of most of us.   Now I pray every day to be a blessing to my friends, family, and to the people I touch in the world.  More than any other thing I want to be a shining light, so that everyone who looks into my life will say, “She’s a child of Yahweh.”  Not for my glory but for His, so that He will be lifted up for the great works he’s committed in my life. 

I was talking to a friend recently about the experience of grief and pain.  How Yah allows us to be dropped in a pit; to shake up our lives until only the unshakable remains.  In those moments, we stand down at the bottom of the pit, and stare up at the light, we are waiting only for Him to drop the rope so that we might begin to climb out.  We have no distractions, no other desire but to stand in the sunlight.

Until very recently, I got stuck on my way out.  I was hanging there, dangling, uncertain about whether I should continue climbing up, or whether I should just drop back down to the bottom.  The sunlight was tantalizingly close, yet I couldn’t seem to get over that hump.

Now I find myself with a couple of friends who are giving me a hand up.  They are pulling me into the sunlight, helping me to not only see it, but to feel it on my face.  I didn’t expect that, but I am delighted.  I hunger for the brethren of my faith, and the fellowship I had done without for so long.  Both men and women, and I am so grateful to know them all. 

I have opened myself up to love in whole new ways, and I have been so enriched by my experience with it.  There are people that I have met that entirely impress me every time I talk to them.  I come away feeling like I have stepped into the presence of greatness.  When I am with these people, I’m always thinking I am about to learn something new, or hear something I really needed to hear.  The most amazing, healing things come out of their mouths, and I am just in awe of them.  If you are reading this and you have been my friend, thank you for being who you are. 

More than anything else, I feel daily that I am walking in the footsteps of the Father.  He is my friend, and my front and rear guard, and I pray daily that he allows me to bless him that very day.  That is my fondest hope.  That I can bless my father in some way every single day.  Nothing is better than that. 

I have also felt the grief easing these past recent months.  Part of it is the joyous friendships and kind people I have been exposed to.  When I’m with some people, I just don’t feel like crying.  More of it is the father, easing it up in me, showing me the path to healing and to goodness and to taking care of myself.  Of understanding that depriving myself of companionship and friendship will not improve my world in any way.  

I also cry a lot less.  A lot.  These past few months, especially, I have felt the need for tears ease away, and the space filled with a sort of joy I didn’t know existed in the world.  

Things that have improved are my cooking.  I’ve tried to convert to a mostly vegetarian diet for the primary reason that I don’t want to kill anything.  I’ve had to figure out how to feed myself good food.  I am learning how to cook the most amazing things.  I am literally going to be able to keep myself alive through my garden this year.  I no longer stand in the fridge, crying for myself.  I stand in the fridge, just a little excited by what is going to come out of that fridge and what I’m going to make for myself.

I’ve also realized that it’s time to get my s**t together.  My family uses this expression when a loved one needs to figure out their priorities, and start doing things right.  I started paying random debts this past month.  It’s a little toward it every month, but it’s getting paid off and removed my from credit a little at a time.  I have been not very good at adulting.  There is a lot of incomplete projects, clutter, messes and generally incomplete things that I must get moving on.  I love my family very much, but they can’t do everything for me.  I must start moving myself through this world to succeed at anything.  So I’ve started checking the dates on the car tag and making sure the insurance gets paid and walking regularly and eating right.  

A friend pointed out that I shouldn’t really call myself broken anymore.  He rightly stated that a broken item didn’t function anymore, and that generally, I do.  I drive, make decisions, go to work, pay bills, buy food, and all the things that grown ups do.  I love in relationship and have deep, sometimes unhappy feelings, because one cannot have a rich relationship life without both sides of the coin.  I’ve decided that logically he’s right.  I don’t think I’ll be calling myself broken anymore, though I’m sure I will still have broken days. 

Spring is coming after the end of a very cold and very miserable winter.  I look forward to putting my roses in the ground, and loving them where they belong.  I look forward to putting my trees in the ground, and beginning to let them grow.  I want to put my garden together, and dig a new firepit.  I want to watch the tomatoes come out of the ground, and watch the herbs begin, and stand in my backyard and eat the peas in the sunset, like I did in another life with Storm.  I’ll never forget looking up at him in the dappled twilight, and kissing his lips when they tasted like fresh vegetables.  Oh, how I love that man.  

I try not to hang on to the past.  I want to leave it behind, but I have wanted to leave the pain of all of this behind from the beginning.  I have been climbing to the sunshine, and I think it’s coming closer, I think I am almost there.  There are great scars on my inside; ugly things that cost me dearly, and which I’m certain will never fully fade.  May Yah heal me, nevertheless, and let the pain of them subside.

I’ll never forget what Storm did, or what I saw, or how badly it hurt me.  Sometimes I think back to that first horrible week, and I wonder how I survived any of it.  It just kept getting worse, and I was too broken to function.  I am so grateful that the Father immediately dunked me into a world full of love, and has rocked me in his arms ever since.  

I’ve tried not to make a holiday out of Storm’s death date.  I truly have tried.  The problem is, I can’t pretend it won’t hurt at all.  I think I will go visit my wonderful grandbaby, and his parents, and maybe we’ll have a Shabbat together, play some games, watch a movie, and be close to one another. 

I have that Monday off, and I will stay home and try not to cry, though I am sure that I will.  Becca intends to take me to dinner that night, and I will go and try to make the best of it.  Either way, I am prepared for the day to be whatever, and I won’t PLAN on it being a bad day.  I will cast it into the Father’s hands, and trust him to give me grace and favor.

I see that I am naturally being pleasant, trying to see the bright side, and yet still there is a great big hole in my life.  A loss of the things that can never be returned.  A sense of loss and regret that spurs me to be nice to people, and to say the good things that maybe others won't.  There are days without Storm when I still feel so lost.  I have lost my sense of direction, and space, and societal etiquette.   I still feel awkward in a room full of people, because he's not there to be my guide and lead me in the way I should go. I flounder over decisions because making decisions alone feels off balance and unnatural.   Yet, decision make I must, and more and more of them daily.

I used to read a Shel Silverstein book to the girls called, "Missing piece."  That's now me, running around the world, looking for my missing piece.  Unfortunately, I know I will never find it again.   I don't cry as much as I used to, praise you, Yah, but I still get my tears in.  Usually when I am tired and feeling lonely and frustrated.  I intend to go to group this month.  I am sure I need to spit some things out, and maybe I can help somebody. 

I have, most importantly, been moving myself to fulfill my passion of helping others go to Israel.  The feeling of walking hand-in-hand with the Father each moment, of standing in the presence of ancient whispers and ancient memories.  In America, nothing is ancient.  Everywhere we look the world is new.  

In Israel, the entire world around us is full of the ancient, their bones whispering words of the past.  Everywhere you look are words springing out to you from the Bible, place names that seem like abstract stories in a book that seems even the more real for standing there.  Most importantly, seeing Yah’s prophecy come to life right in the streets around makes you feel like a part of history is happening through you, right that moment, and a bigger picture of the world starts to grow inside of you.  

Either way, I find I am turning my heart toward this, which is wonderful for me. It distracts me from my pain and the gaping hole inside of me, and fills me with hope in a way I never thought possible.  

May Yah continue healing me and bringing me closer to him in faith and light.  I long to be healed of the afflictions of my heart and soul.  Shalom. 

Before I go...

I've been thinking about traveling to Israel and the emotional toll that is likely to take, and I've been thinking about writing a blog about it for a while.  Sort of an emotional shower before I go, I suppose.  A good mental scrubbing.

A subtle shift has happened inside of me, with the progress of my grief.  I don't buy into the "stage of grief" model for a few reasons.  While I do think there are stages, it seems that each  individual is unique, and there are millions of possibilities for what those "stages" might be, how long they might last, and what might be next.   I think of it more like healing, a sort of injury, which takes place in it's own time in each person, and generally leaves some sort of scar.  Perhaps I've reached a new point of healing.

I see that when we lose someone it makes a sort of wound.  Generally, a bleeding, gaping wound.  The Bible says that when a couple marries, they become one.  When one half of one dies, that leaves a pretty big hole behind.  Eventually, this begins to heal.  It doesn't feel like it at first.  There's just this aching hurt inside of us.  But like all wounds, it does start to heal, and we begin to feel that healing.  Every now and again, something makes you realize that you actually are progressing in the healing.

That healing point seems to be that the pining, as in, "I'm "pining away" for him," is diminishing.  Not that it's gone, exactly.  Not always, at least.  But it's STARTING to be gone.  That's the thing.  There are still times when I miss him so much it feels like an acute pain inside me, like the burning, stabbing need that I felt immediately after his death.  But not all the time, now.  Not every day.  As I move through time toward this trip, I realize that much of the time the excitement of the anticipation and the thoughts of my time there fill my heart and my mind so completely that I am unable to think of much else.

It is more than just the replacement therapy of the trip.  It's a sense of change inside of me.  Like when you've hurt your leg or ankle; it's that moment you realize that you can stand on it again.  Or after an illness, of it finally passing, and the symptoms easing, so you can rest.  That feeling of the fever breaking.  That's how it's feeling.

It's a good time for it.  19 months in, I am getting tired of dragging this chain behind me, this rattling mess of grief.  I have been tired of the tears for so long I can't express it, but it's more than just tears.  It's the sense that there is always this heartbreak that pulls me down.  This terrible tragedy.  It's depressing, frankly, and it's not the life I ever wanted to live.  

It's also something that weighs down my future.  It's a story that I must tell any future men that I know.  It's a story that I must tell my future friends and future acquaintances.  It's something that will always be on me, like an invisible tattoo that no one can actually see yet still generates conversation.  It's not that I mind talking about it, exactly.  It's that I mind having it to talk about to begin with.

My friend, Glenda, who amazes me, shared with me that this time I am visiting Israel is a time of repentance; the month of Elul leading up to Yom Kippur.  It's fitting.  I am turning away, repenting of my past life, being healed to walk into the future of my new life.

May my God, Yahweh, open up my heart to what is ahead.  May he remove my heart of stone, and replace it with a heart of flesh.  May he bring me shalom.