Dec. 9, 2015
Day 924
It's December and
I am slogging through it. It's not that terrible, I guess - not like the
last two Decembers. But it's worse than
the rest of the year. I wonder if I will
ever again have a holiday season where I actually enjoy and anticipate it?
Sunday marked 30
months - 2 1/2 years. That seems sort of
significant to me because it's half of five years. And there's a part of me that has always
thought, "At 5 years, I'll finally be ok." Or,
"At 5 years,
my life will be back on track." And,
"I can
survive anything for 5 years."
Maybe! Although, 2 1/2 years from now I may shake my
head and wonder what I thought was so special about hitting the five year mark.
Yesterday, I got
his grave decorated for Christmas. In
Oct, his mother and sister had decorated the grave - with fresh produce
(pumpkins, gourds). They were still
there, only not nearly so fresh anymore. What an icky mess. Our cemetery is rural and because of that
there really aren't any rules as far as what type of stone you can have and
what kind of decorations you use. Some
people actually have garden fencing around their stones. Some have planted peony bushes that are huge
now. The down side to this lack of
policy is that nobody cleans up your grave, either! They have a groundskeeper but if you have
junk in front of the stone, he's not going to touch it in order to weed eat.
So guess who had
to clean up the rotten pumpkin and gourds?
Yeah...
They had also left
this poem they had printed onto some supposedly waterproof thing designed for
graves. It's one of those that makes me
roll my eyeballs. You see them all the
time. The poem is supposed to be from
the perspective of the deceased and he's talking about how he's always with you
and when you're crying at night he's right there with you (creepy). He's talking about you shouldn't be sad
because Heaven is so awesome so go ahead and live your life, but hurry up and
die, too, so you can back together.
I'm
paraphrasing. Is there a problem with
drawing comfort from Scripture rather than cheesy poetry?
But, I understood
this brought comfort to Paul's family so I wasn't going to remove it from his
grave even though I certainly never would have put up something like that. I left it up there yesterday when I
decorated. However, I discovered this
"waterproof" case is not so much.
The sides are already beginning to separate. I'll just leave it until it completely gives
way, I guess.
I got done, rocked
back on my heels to observe my work, and decided that there isn't a whole lot
more sad in the world than decorating a grave for Christmas or a birthday, I
don't think. It's the only way you can
spend time "with" your loved one and it's the only thing you can
actually do for them. But it's not what
you would have preferred to be doing with and for them at these times of
celebration.
***********************************
Will got my storm
door hung yesterday. My contractor still
has some things to do on the house and he told me in Oct. he'd be back in a few
weeks to hang the door and do those final things. I haven't heard a peep out of him since. I finally got ahold of him a couple of weeks
ago and he said he's waiting on his supplier.
Sigh...
But it's getting
colder (well, not this week - it's actually unseasonably warm right now, but
that won't last). And I can't wait on
some balky supplier to have a storm door when cold air is blowing into my
house! It ended up being a rather time
consuming job and took Will several hours.
But it's all insulated and hung now.
I ended up
dreaming last night that my contractor said he needed more money from me
and when he said he needed a check for over $10,000 I just started
bawling. But then I thought to myself in
my dream, "I'm SO glad Will installed that door himself so I didn't have
to pay for that, too!"
********************************
Speaking of
dreams, I ended up dreaming about Paul last week. That is a very rare occurrence anymore. In the dream I was on the phone with a
repairman who was going to do some work on my van. For some reason he wanted to talk to a male
before starting the work (sounds kind of sexist to me, as I think about it) so
I wandered into the kitchen and handed the phone to Paul who talked with
him. Then he hung up and asked,
"Why are we paying someone else to work on our vehicles?" That is totally the way he would have
phrased it, too!
I answered,
"Because on June 6th, you're going to die." Paul's eyebrows shot up and he looked very
thoughtful. And then I began to explain
everything that would happen in the months following his death. He nodded and wandered out of the room. Obviously, time was a very fluid thing in my
dream. But it was interesting to me to
recall it once I awoke.
*****************************
Sam came home one
day last week, very serious (he always is) and said, "Well, Mom, you might think this is funny, but I have
something to tell you." He paused
and then said,
"I have a
girlfriend."
To my credit, I did
not laugh. Instead, I asked him what it
was that he liked about this particular classmate (named, "Sky" of
all things!). But on the inside I was
thinking, "Seriously?...and then, "I hate public schools..."). I was reminded of a conversation I overheard
the night of parent/teacher conferences.
Two moms were talking and they were commenting how one of the lower
elementary classes seemed to be "pairing up" awfully fast as in,
"boyfriend/girlfriend" stuff.
At the time it made me inwardly roll my eyeballs. It never occurred to me my own kids might get
sucked into that.
Later I did talk
to Sam about the importance of saving the words, "I love you" for
someone really, really special and for when he's a lot older. He seemed to take that to heart.
The next night we
went to the elementary Christmas concert.
Now, that was a real disappointment to me. I've always appreciated Ben's Christmas
concerts at the high school level because there is always a selection of sacred
holiday music used. They've always been
really good concerts, as a result. I
mentioned that to his old music teacher and she commented that the parents and
the community at large seem especially enthusiastic about including songs about
Baby Jesus so she always made sure to do that.
In contrast, I remember the joke of a Christmas concert we attended at
the Missouri Valley school when Ben was in kindergarten. It was held a couple of weeks before
Christmas but was called a "Winter concert." Every single song was about Santa Claus. I homeschooled for the next 7 years, but
found Pleasantville's Christmas concerts, once Ben was back in school, to be
very refreshing.
So imagine how
disappointed I was last Thursday night
when I got to the school and was handed a program entitled, "Holiday
Concert." And then these elementary kids all got up on stage and
began singing songs about Santa and getting lots of presents. Sigh...
Fortunately,
intermission came after the 2nd graders performed so we were able to leave at
that point, rather than having to sit through three more grade levels of
similar performances.
As we were
leaving, Sam pointed out a father/daughter duo and excitedly told me,
"That's Sky, Mom!" Sky is a
good six inches taller than Sam, which made me smile.
Tomorrow night is
Ellie's preschool Christmas concert (or "Holiday" concert?) so I will
be curious to see what they do. The
preschool is held in the basement of the Methodist church and the program is in
the church auditorium, so surely they will have some sacred selections - right?
*************************************
It's sunny out
today. The weathermen are saying to not
count on having a white Christmas this year, in fact. I guess that's ok. We've had quite a few white ones in recent
years. It seemed like it rained non-stop
the last two weeks of November. I just
remembered the other day an experience that I wanted to share.
So it was one of
those rainy mornings and I was heading north on Highway 5 after dropping Ellie
off at preschool. I needed to go to Des
Moines, as I recall. All of a sudden, I noticed
this pretty rainbow. As I drove closer,
the clouds dissipated and I had to reach for my sunglasses. The brilliance of the sun and rainbow was
simply astounding. My first thought was
to wonder if there are rainbows in Heaven.
And then it occurred to me that maybe what I was experiencing, this
sudden brightness and explosion of color, was just a taste of Heaven sent down
for our pleasure. I sat in my van while
passing under the sun and rainbows and felt warm from the inside out.
As I looked in my
rearview mirror I could still see the gray clouds behind me. And after just a few miles, I found myself
removing my sunglasses as I drove into more clouds and rain began once again
spattering the windshield. It occurred
to me that life is a lot like this highway (I think Rascal Flatts recorded a
song by that title, in fact).
So much of life is
just plain hard. And it seems
like problems seem to multiply when you're already in the midst of one. Or as the adage says, "Trouble comes in
threes!" But every so often in the
midst of of sludging through one heartache and trial after another, a bit of
sunshine and happiness slips in. God
clears the skies for a little bit and you get to experience a gorgeous rainbow
and sunshine in the form of some unexpected happiness.
It won't
last. We know that in this sin-sick,
rotting world, nothing good can. But for
a little while, that happiness is enough to infuse our weary souls with enough
hope to shoulder through the next round of clouds and rain.
That dream was so vivid and interesting. Do you usually remember your dreams that clearly? Does a dream like that bring any comfort? God bless you! (Laraba)
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