Day 105

DIARY OF AN UNWILLING WIDOW

September 18, 2013

 

Day 105

 

Tomorrow is the adoption.  Today, I have a myriad of emotions running through my heart.  I hope they’ve all worked themselves out by tomorrow morning so I can just be happy and enjoy the experience.  I don’t want to do this.  I don’t want to adopt the girls without Paul.  I will, though,  of course.  It’s going to be like this, I suspect, at every happy occasion – every graduation, every wedding, the births of our grandchildren.  These are experiences not meant to be shared by me alone.

 

I’m tired today.  My feet hurt.  I think I’m developing bunions.  Although, I’m not 100% sure just what a bunion actually is!  I’ll be curious to see if my feet quit hurting when winter arrives and I’m not wearing sandals anymore.  Otherwise, I may be getting friendly with my podiatrist again.  I had a to-do list a mile long today, getting ready for tomorrow.  I was just composing my list yesterday and wondering just how I would get it all done when I got a text from my friend, Danielle, wondering if I needed any help today getting things ready.  God is so good!  She and her daughter arrived this morning and helped me clean.  She’s a busy homeschooling mom, too, but was willing to give to me.  She’s also the one that took care of my pool all summer.  I have been blessed.

 

Even with her help, it still took all day to get my things done.  If I were happier, I think it would be easier.  I am also just.so.tired.  I remember my pre-death blogs and it seems like I was always commenting on my busy schedule.  I am busier now.  I don’t have Paul and it seems like I have even more to do.  I guess I do.  I’m going to have to figure out a way to slow things down, but I’m not quite sure yet how to do that.  Everything I do seems so vital.  I wouldn’t even know how or where I could cut.  I am sensing a need for some grief counseling for the kids, but how do I fit something else into my schedule?  How do I not?

 

This week has just been crazy – constantly running.  I did my bi-monthly shopping on Monday with Sam.  He is simply delightful.  I am loving his stage of life right now – so intellectual, so determined to make sense out of absolutely everything.  We found his Halloween costume when we were out.  I refuse to buy anything new and I’m too lacking in creativity this year to make something.  So we had to check out the “assignment” stores, as he calls them (we also ate lunch at “Harbys” that day).  His brothers want to correct his mis-pronunciations, but I won’t let them!  We finally found a cute skeleton costume.  It barely fits him, but Sam was insistent that this was the one.  He gleefully told me how he just knows that none of the neighbors will recognize him!  The dressing room didn’t have a mirror.  I assume that’s still coming.  They just moved to a new, bigger location and are probably not all finished yet.  So it wasn’t until we got home that Sam was able to try the mask on and see himself.  He was quite perturbed when he looked in the mirror and discovered that the mask has the skeleton smiling!  Apparently he had dreams of being dreadfully frightful instead on Halloween night.  I have to admit, though, that the costume caused me a pang, since Paul is well on his way to skeleton-hood himself.  I wonder how long I’ll think like this?  The rest of my life?  Death changes everything.

 

I didn’t get done with my shopping on Monday so Tuesday morning I had to take David and Sam to the dentist for fillings.  Poor kids – I told them it was just a check-up for their teeth.  Then, when the dentist office called to confirm, they mentioned that the boys would be getting fillings.  Oops. 

 

Actually, I’m kind of perturbed, but in a helpless way.  The kids lost their insurance with Paul’s death and had to go on Medicaid.  Well, thanks to the new health care laws, their dentist is refusing to accept Medicaid as of Oct. 1.  This is the only dentist I’ve ever found who was able to work with Ben successfully because of his sensory issues.  When he was younger it was so bad that our only recourse was to take him to the dental school at Creighton where they would papoose him in order to work on his teeth.  I always felt terrible for him but there was nothing else to be done.  So now I have to find a new dentist in our area who will be willing to take Medicaid.  I have a feeling that may not be easy.

 

After the dental appointment I finished up my shopping.  Since it was a rare event that I actually had David with me I decided we had better go ahead and get him some new tennies.  This is the third pair I’ve bought for him in less than a year.  He is growing so fast.  In fact, I had to go to Scheels because now David is size FOURTEEN shoe.  He picked a pair of lime green Nike’s.  With the length of those things, you’ll be able to see him approaching from a mile away!  Will also wears a 14 shoe, but he didn’t hit that until he was 17 ½.  I am hopeful that he is finished growing since I have not had to buy him anything – pants, shoes, nothing – since about that time.  He seems to have topped out at 6 foot, like his dad.  But I have a distinct feeling that David will surpass that.  Ben’s feet are not as big as his brothers’, for some reason – he’s only a 12.

 

Earlier this week I told Lizzie to go put on her purple sandals.  Very seriously she asked me, “What color are my purple sandals?”  Yes, I made a face palm motion!

 

I liked my Daily Bread devotional reading today.  In fact, this was my very last one.  My pastor gave me two special Daily Breads on grief and I’ve been slowly working my way through them this summer.  Now, I guess I’ll need to go back to normal Christian Living devotionals.  Does this mean I’m supposed to be done with grieving? 

This is what it said:

 

Sorrow can lead us into one of four lands: the Barren land in which we try to escape from it, the Broken land is which we sink under it, the Bitter land in which we resent it, or the Better land in which we bear it and become a blessing to others.

 

I suppose one probably passes through all these lands during the grief process, but the key is where one chooses to remain.

 

Early this morning I had a profound thought and I am still shaking my head over it.  I’m really sleep deprived right now.  I’ve just been so busy that I am not getting to bed when I need to.  But even when I am getting the sleep I need I am not a morning person.  I could cheerfully sleep in past nine every single morning of my life.  It was not uncommon for me to think murderous thoughts toward Paul nearly every morning of our married life.  I’d grudgingly shuffle to the kitchen to fry him an egg and he’d be out by the woodburner reading his Bible.  He’d get done and start chatting away at me while I tried to sleep standing up.  Morning was when he had his best thoughts.  Morning was when I longed for death, because, like the song says, I can sleep then!  I didn’t have my best thoughts then.  I couldn’t even string two thoughts together.

 

So, this morning my allergies woke me up at 6am.  I had to take a chlortrimeton which would make me even more tired but I knew that was the only thing that would calm my sneezing down.  I couldn’t find my tissue box so I had to plod to the bathroom to get a box out of there.  I was so out of it that I was banging into doorways and tripping over my feet.  But as I approached my room, intent on getting back under the covers just as fast as I could I saw this huge shadow on the wall.  It made me catch my breath for a moment.  Then I realized it was only a shadow and nothing that could hurt me and continued on to bed.  Immediately, though, I thought of Psalm 23, verse 4:

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me

 

Here I was in my sleep-deprived, drug induced fog, but I had these thoughts.  I can only conclude they came from the Lord, since morning – particularly early morning, like 6am, is NOT my time for thinking anything.  A shadow can do no harm.  It is simply a magnification of something small, that gives us pause at times.  But once we realize what it is, we know we can pass safely.  This verse tells us that death is merely a shadow.  It cannot harm us. 

 

Well, I certainly feel harmed.  But am I, really?  I will see Paul again.  This parting is temporary.  The hurt I feel is definitely a valley that the verse talks about.  But I have the promise that I will walk through the valley because the Lord is with me, and there’s nothing to fear about death, really.

 

All this deepness at 6 am.  I am impressed!

 

So tomorrow I go adopt my girls.  Right now I can’t put into words what this means, other than it’s the fulfillment of a dream that God implanted in my heart as a child.  It’s very humbling to watch God work when you completely surrender yourself to His dealings.  He has given me the the desire of my heart by giving me these girls.  I don’t have the words now, but I have no doubt that they will come.