Bringing Life Up To Date

It has been years since words were poured on a page here at OD.  I am not even sure why those words stopped appearing here.  Perhaps life … sometimes we just find these lapses.  I did not stop writing. I changed to a fountain pen and a paper journal.  I have kept my words, which formulate into thoughts, and my thoughts, which on the page, convey my feelings about my world, and I wanted to keep them to myself.  I feel like today is a day to bring OD up to date.  So let’s begin.

The picture above was taken on July 12, 2015.  Mike had been out of town for five weeks.  We had attended church together with Jared, Tammi, Kayla, and Jaxon.  Tammi grabbed this pic of the two of us as we waited for the kids to come up from their Sunday School classes. I can’t begin to tell you how much this picture means to me.  It was the last picture I have of the two of us.  We had no idea as we posed this would be the case, but I am so grateful to have it.

July 14, 2015, me and three of my lady friends loaded into the car for our annual ladies trip to the lake.  We would meet Becky and Melba and spend the week soaking up sun on the dock, sharing meals, and enjoying libations.  For twenty years we met during this week to catch up on what the year had brought for each of our families.  No hubbies, no kids, and no worries…just five ladies on the dock.  The morning we left, I kissed Mike goodbye with a promise to be safe, a kiss, and an I love you. We arrived at the lake a little after noon and with drinks in hand, began our yearly tradition.  Later that evening, Becky, our hostess, asked if anyone needed to call home.  My response haunts me to this very day.  “Naw…I will see Mike on Friday and next week will begin our vacation on the beach at Gulf Shores…I am good.” We enjoyed a piece of cake and a glass of wine and eventually turned in for the night.

The next morning we all awoke to the phone ringing at 7:30. Becky brought the phone into me.  It was Tammi and she was in tears.

“Mom, you have to come home.  Dad died.”

She had to repeat herself several times because I could not take in what she was saying.  She went on to say that Mike had stopped at a stop sign about four miles from hour home and suffered a cardiac arrest while on his way to work.  A total stranger stopped and performed CPR until the ambulance arrived.  They pronounced him at the hospital. The police had tried to contact me at home.  They eventually found his business card in his wallet and called his employer. Mike’s brother works for the same company.  The connection was made and Derrick brought the news to Tammi who knew exactly how to reach me.

July 15, 2015, Mike stepped from his car into heaven. I came home from the lake.  I have absolutely no memory of that ride. I have no idea who was at the hospital when Brenda and I arrived. I remember standing in the emergency room with his brother and my daughter thinking to myself, “This can’t be.”  It was.

The next day, Paul arrived with Julie, Samuel, Jonah, and Norah Beth.  Funeral plans were made. Tears were shed. Sleep was non-existent.  Food arrived at my door, my house was filled with family and friends, and the phone rang non-stop.  My mailbox filled with sympathy cards that would remain unopened and unread for months.

We buried Mike on Saturday, July 18, 2015.  It had not rained in weeks, yet that morning it rained.  It was a light rain, and I would have sworn that it was Heaven crying. Not because Mike had left earth, but because his family felt so very lost without him.  Close to four-hundred people packed the church for Mike’s funeral.  I was hugged so many times that I lost count. I have no idea what the pastor said, nor do I know what songs were sung. I do remember the look on the faces of the two men we asked to speak.  The looks on their faces were exactly how my heart felt…lost.

Mike and I were one month shy of our 35th wedding anniversary.  He was truly my first love.  I started dating him in May of 1976. We married on August 16, 1980.  A son, daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, and five grandchildren later with lots of stuff in between the death do us part thing came true. You never think about that when you are making that covenant between each other and God, but you should.  It is going to happen to one or the other of you and it happened to me. I was totally lost.  My best friend, my confidant, my lover was gone in the blink of an eye.

I had never lived on my own. We were joint decision makers…. we were a team. We had a pact that neither of us would spend over $200 dollars without consulting the other. Not because we didn’t trust each other, but because we did. We wanted what was best for each other and our family.  Mike breathed in, and I breathed out. I was left here to breathe on my own. The girl who shared a heart with another person had to go to the cemetery and pick a place for her other half to occupy.  I picked out a casket, clothing, music, and pallbearers.  There were so many details…all mine to make.  The kids weighed in, but ultimately, I signed on the dotted line, and I wrote the check all by myself. I buried my best friend. Everyone went home.  I went on the vacation we had planned and paid for on the 22nd of July…one week to the day later.

I went to the beach with Tammi and her family.  I sat on the beach and prayed.  I watched the waves roll in and out. I watched Jaxon build sand castles. No one on that beach looked at me with sympathy eyes.  No one kept handing me a plate and expected me to eat. Tammi would wonder over and sit quietly with me and then she would wander away.  Jared would step forward and hold her and that is how the next seven days passed.

By the time we got home, I had made some big decisions.  The first was no…absolutely no big decisions would be made in the next year.  I was going back to work, living in our home, going to our church, the only new thing I would do was grief counseling. I could not do this on my own.  I could not pull my children into my grief, they had their own. I needed help and it had to come from outside of my clan. I prayed a lot…my grief group became a second family.

I knew I was going to be okay.  I knew it the night that I laid in bed, in tears, feeling like God wasn’t listening.  I heard clear as day, “Are you okay?” The answer from me was audible, “No.”  I felt a calmness come over me and arms surround me.  When I awoke the next morning, I knew I was not on my own.  I had known it all along. He had been there with me all along.  The silence I felt was because of all the noise that was pinging around in my head. When I settled alone that night, it was like I could hear for the first time. For the first time, since all of this began, I found my faith was rooted in a God who was there all the time.

Mike was at home with the Lord, but the Lord was with me. I bought a book called, Heaven by Randy Alcorn. I read, and I studied to learn about where Mike was and where I would be someday. So many questions….I needed to figure out the answers. I studied my bible, and I went to grief group; not one session but three.  I learned to be me. I learned to breathe in and out on my own.

A couple of years later, I began to facilitate  GriefShare groups. My loss of Mike grew into building friendships with others who had experienced loss. We trudged through this thing called grief together. The Lord and I made it through. I had hope. I could have never arrived at a point in which I could stand beside his marker at the cemetery with a smile on my face with my daughter without that hope.

The story of Mike an Lora had reached an end.  That book was written…beginning to end….until death parted us. A new chapter in a whole new book had begun. It is what it is and forward is the only direction to go.

 

 

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