Blessed & Grateful: With Love, We Can Do Hard Things

With Love from our Angels, We Can Do the Hardest Things

My grandmother’s singing soothed and loved me through childhood, through the loss of her — and has helped me face every hard thing in life so far. When my beautiful friend faced her own death, I did the little I could, and leaned on the love, strength and singing of my angels.

 

When I was little, my grandmother held and snuggled me in her lap and rocked me as she sang this silly song about a mama fish and her baby fish swimming over a dam.

When I grew too big to sit on her lap, I watched as she rocked and sang to my younger cousins from her chair on the big front porch of her white bungalow house.

She did this with all 10 of her grandchildren. I was often at my grandparents’ house, and walked there after school most days. My mom and I lived nearby, and my aunt and uncle and cousins lived down the street.

I remember our post-war suburb outside Cleveland as a lovely place to be a child: Mature maple trees so big and lush their branches overlapped, making a green tunnel above Anthony Street. All the neighbors knew each other and as they walked by there was a constant-back-and-forth between the porch and the sidewalk of “hellos” and “how-about-this-weather?” and “how’s such-and-such doing?”

When the tough times come, I reach for these memories, as they are among my most cherished. I reach for the comfort of my grandmother’s love and strength, the sound of her singing.

Phoning Home

My first job out of journalism school was as a small town news reporter at a local newspaper on the Maine coast. Newsrooms — even in quaint coastal towns — tend to be chaotic, loud and crowded places.

Every day, from their corner of the newsroom the two sports guys delivered a lively variety show of silly jokes and songs that grew increasingly whacky and louder as our deadline approached. Dave and George covered, wrote and edited all the sports stories in at least two dozen towns and four school districts.

They sang that silly song about the baby fish that my grandmother sang to all of us. They butchered it, singing all the wrong words, and I could never remember all the right words.

So I would call my grandmother, ask her to sing it, write down the words and hand them over to Dave and George — who didn’t really care about the right words and continued to sing about the fishes with their words in their way, only louder.

The Message

On a hot Saturday afternoon in July, hearing my uncle say over the phone that she had died felt like a cannon had plunged a lead ball through my gut, leaving a hole that sucked all the air from me. I could not breathe. I doubled over.

Early the next morning, I flew back to Cleveland, anxious to reach my mom and the rest of my family, and tried hard to hold it together on that first flight.

But between flights, in the “privacy” of a bathroom stall in the Cincinnati airport, the sobs shook me. I could not stop weeping, leaned against the locked door and whispered to my grandmother, into the emptiness.

Are you OK? I just need to know you are OK.

She was no longer on the front porch, or in her chair in the living room, cooking dinner in the kitchen or at the other end of the telephone line. I didn’t know where she was now, and that was terrifying.

A moment later, she sang to me. I swear to you: That silly song in her voice was the only thing I could hear — and I had not thought of it in a long while until then.

Clear as a bell, her voice filled my head, singing that goofy little fishy song with all the right words I could never remember. She sang about the three little fishes and the mama fishy too, all swimming in a pool until the mama tells her babies to “SWIM!” said the mama. “Swim as fast as you can! And they swam and they swam all over the dam.”

An Extra Push

You may recall the chorus?

“Boom, boom, diddum datum whaddum SHOO!

Boom, boom diddum datum whaddum SHOO!

Boom, boom diddum datum whaddum SHOO!

And they swam and they swam all over the dam.”

She would always give us an extra squeeze on the SHOO!

In that moment, I was certain she was singing to me from her new life beyond her death, telling me she was absolutely AOK and not to worry one bit.

Swim!

That whole next week, our family gathered and did the hardest things together. We hovered over my grandfather — knowing the arteries of his heart were so blocked it was a ticking time bomb — kneeled at our matriarch’s casket to pray, visited with extended family and friends, wrote a eulogy and carried her to a cradle above a deep hole in the ground.

All week that goofy song propelled me through one hard thing after another. It was, after all, about a mama urging her babies forward over a hurdle. If I was alone in the car driving to and from the funeral home, I sang that silly song as loud as I could.

“SWIM!” said the mama. “Swim as fast as you can!”

I felt her rocking me, remembered that sensation of being loved and cherished, let that comfort me and felt her sing and push me forward.

Our Angels — Seen & Unseen — Love us Through It

When my thoughts and worries buzz like hornets around my mind in the darkness, I hear my grandmother singing and I can feel her rocking me and her cool hand on my forehead. I can breathe deeply again. I can rest.

Especially over these last few weeks, my grandmother is singing for I have called for her and her comfort. She is one way I feel God’s unconditional love and presence. Her singing voice affirms my faith that there is something more, and something wonderful beyond this world.

I believe in angels. Those we can see in this life who are our family by both blood and choice, and those we can no longer see who have gone onto the life beyond, whatever that is. They are still with us, somehow, some way. When the hard times come, we can ask all our angels for help and strength and lean heavily upon them.

They get us through. We stand upon their shoulders and can do hard things — the absolutely hardest, thorniest, scariest and most painful things we must face in our lives — whatever they may be for each of us.

In these last several weeks, I have called in my angels, both seen and unseen, for myself and my friend Wilda, who faced one of the hardest things any of us ever will.

My Beautiful Friend

My beautiful friend knew she was dying.

She has been my mentor, inspiration and a badass role model.

She is a wife and mother, and a warrior. A fellow believer and sister champion of the importance of stitching and building community fabric by digging in the soil and planting flowers and vegetables. She fiercely protected our special gardens because of what they mean and what they give to our community.

She and her husband led a project to plant 111,000 daffodil bulbs that bloom all over this small central Pennsylvania town every spring. She helped start the Sept. 11 Memorial Garden in honor of a native son lost at the Pentagon.

She has been instrumental on nearly every public garden project in that town: a pollinator garden, a gorgeous garden of all edibles, the plantings downtown and in the park.

When we visited recently, I asked her to count the community garden projects she worked on.

Nine.

I wanted her to know this town would not be nearly so beautiful without her.

One of those gardens is especially near and dear to my heart. She fiercely protected it.

Every spring, second-graders plant lettuce, spinach and radishes in small plots of their very own within our community children’s garden. This April, the total over nine years topped 400.

Wilda didn’t do any of it by herself. She worked side by side with people, one task at a time and led by example. With grace and diplomacy in a way that was quiet, selfless and effective.

She is a warrior who cuts through the nonsense.

And she fought off cancer for 20 years. But not this time. 

Nothing would stop the tumors this time.

She fought the good fight, endured unimaginable pain, needles, tests, treatments, tubes.

The Hardest Thing

A little more than five weeks ago, my beautiful friend and her husband and doctors decided it was time to stop treatment. She has been at home in the constant care of her husband, with help from hospice.

Honored, I sat with Wilda soon after her decision. We talked about what’s next. Because we don’t really know what happens. That’s the whole point — the beautiful, excruciating mystery.

My faith makes it easier for me to face that. Yet, whatever people believe is intensely personal and private and they have every right to it.

Her husband and sons face life without her. Nothing can spare them this pain.

She had made some decisions about her funeral service. She was starting to draft her obituary. Maybe she would ask people to plant daffodils in town in her memory. She gave me a short list of things to do.

I was struck by her calm and dignity, as she sat in a wing chair in her bedroom, looking out the front window toward the bare maple in front of her house.

She said she didn’t really have much choice.

She hoped the medicine would let her just drift away. That was the plan.

Strength in the Silence

Weeks later, that did not happen. She was restless. She was in pain. It seemed as if she was between worlds — no longer really here with us and yet still alive.

I tried hard to say the right thing to them both. I pointed out the beauty of the maple outside her window, now covered in red buds.

I thought that maybe my job was to gently urge her to let go, to tell her she’d taken care of everything on her list, to remind her of all the incredible good she’d done in this world. Because she has.

So I did.

But who was I to say and to tell her the time had come? She had plenty more she wanted to do in this life, and she was entitled if she was furious that she would not get to do it.

I realized I don’t get to decide the timing just because it so hurts to see her pain.

When I left with the luxury of returning to my so-called normal life, I wished I had said something different. Or better yet, maybe nothing.

I wished I could cradle my friend and gently rock her until all the comfort and peace of my memories seeped into her bones.

But that too would be for me, not for her.

I shouted for her angels, and hoped they had already filled the room and were singing the music that sounds the sweetest to her, and in her own time and way would lead her to peace.

Gratefully, she was not alone. Her husband was with her round-the-clock, loving her and managing — and being pushed beyond exhaustion.

There are no right words. This business of dying is awful and ugly. The anguish of it filled the house.

The day after my visit, Wilda’s best friend since seventh grade arrived from Seattle.

We Will Remain What We Were to Each Other

I cannot imagine what that next week was like. I choose instead to focus on what must have been the brightest spots: the final time with her husband of nearly 50 years and her very best friend of even longer, and her bravest visitors.

Wilda died eight days after I last saw her, last Sunday morning.

On the day of her local celebration-of-life service, the daffodils were in full bloom and children laughed and danced like worms as they learned about beneficial bugs and played bug BINGO in our community children’s garden. Just a small part of her beautiful legacy.

At her service, a friend read a poem she had selected, Death Is Nothing At All (Death of the King of Terrors) by Henry Scott-Holland.

The truth of this lovely line struck me:

“…the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.

Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.”

In this life she was an angel, bringing soup to my door when I was under the weather, listening with endless patience and kindness to my troubles, opening her kitchen and home to me for comfort in my hardest times.

And now, I believe that if it is at all possible, she will find a way to soothe and comfort her sons, and husband and family as they go on without her. I believe her soul is like that of my grandmother’s, an unseen angel, and that love lasts beyond death.

Nudged by the Love of Unseen Wings

Our angels in the life beyond death are not fixers. They can’t spare us the pain. Remembering the ones who have crossed is not the same as having them here with us. No way.

Yet, they can give us a little reminder of love and faith, a little nudge to dig deeper and find the strength to get through.

To help ourselves. To go on. To swim forward over the dam, whatever it is.

To take the next best step — toward life.

 

Blessed & Grateful: Rule #1 is Come Home Safe

One chilly Saturday morning in early April, I ran into my brother-in-law at our small-town post office. He and his family live in town, just a short walk out beyond our backyard, and down the hill toward the mountain.

He asked if one of our teenage boys had been messing around in the night, with his friends, perhaps?

My mind quickly flashed to the memory of the police car that had pulled into our driveway the night before. But the officer had actually been looking for the duplex two doors down. He was checking into a complaint about noise, but I knew it couldn’t be our house.

A few kids had just arrived for a sleepover, and they weren’t loud. I was still hovering to see what they needed.

But then I’d gone to bed.

The House Rule on Peanut Butter

Why? I asked my brother-in-law.

In the morning, he had found his truck handles covered in peanut butter.

Back at home, I reported to my husband. We hatched a plan.

Later, we asked our 14-year-old if he knew why we had both organic peanut butter and less-expensive, regular peanut butter. The organic for eating and the other for — well…?

His face instantly cracked into a smile.

Busted.

It was our way to send a few important messages: People are keeping an eye on you, a little peanut butter on your uncle’s truck isn’t a big deal, and we can share a laugh about it.

So we added to our rules list: If you’re going to prank your uncle, use the cheap peanut butter.

House Rule: Don’t Burn the House Down

For the record: I am not their mom. They have a mom and she loves them very much.

And these are my kids. All these things are true.

Their dad and I had fallen head-over-heels in love in our early 40s, so I loved these kids before I met them.

When I arrived in this family, the boys were already teenagers, 15 and 13, already well-behaved young men and they knew what their dad expected of them. They lived with their dad half the time and I moved into their house.

There was no rules list, no guide-book. I tiptoed for a long time. We all had to figure it out.

One day their dad and I left to take a walk and just naturally said something like: We’ll be back in an hour. Don’t burn the house down.

And I chimed in: And don’t hurt yourself — or your brother.

Later, we added the bit about which peanut butter to use when you want to prank your uncle. Then, after ribbing about the big pocketbook I carry and the number of lost items that had turned up in it, we added to the list: If you lose anything, look in Lisa’s pocketbook.

Looking back, that rules list was kind of my way to establish my role as someone new in their lives and home. As a second adult and parental figure I could make rules.

And they could be funny ones because these kids already had a great base and, if anything, they just needed an occasional friendly, funny reminder of what was expected of them.

Your Heart Walking Around Outside Your Body

Somewhere in there, I became a parent.

They were growing up so fast and the world is so big and dangerous.

I remember telling a friend how scary it was when they went out the door, especially as they started driving.

That friend was not yet a parent. She said she’d heard it described that it’s like your heart is walking around all day outside your body.

Exactly.

I mean, driving.

I overheard a dad at a baseball game say to his son: Don’t do anything stupid, and you’re old enough by now to know what that means.

That went on the list with the not hurting anyone, or our home, the pocketbook and the peanut butter.

House Rule: Watch out for Stupid

The morning my older stepson went to college, I had about 25 different things I wanted to say to him.

I picked the most important one. I told him he had a good head on his shoulders and made good decisions. All true. And sometimes it’s really easy to get caught up in the bad decisions of other people. Also true.

So — Watch out for the stupid things other people do. Onto the rules list.

As my younger stepson began to drive, and his senior year of high school was upon him with college soon to come, we retired the rules list into one simple, number one rule.

Come home safe.

Because kids are going to take risks. Most of us can remember times when we were the ones doing stupid things, or taking so many risks at once that we somehow survived by the grace of God.

Sometimes you find yourself well beyond your limits. There was the night I accidentally drank too much and could barely walk, supporting myself against a brick building as I made my way toward Boston’s Kenmore Square. And that night in Maine when four-wheeling on the beach in the pickup truck I’d just bought seemed like a great idea. So did the idea of a friend trying to stand up in the bed of the pickup as we zipped down the road.

All, gratefully, turned out OK.

We all know those things don’t always turn out OK, that terrible, life-ending things that happen. I do not know why some people survive those dangerous moments and others do not.

I don’t know why sometimes you can do everything “right,” the best you can, everything you can think of and it’s not enough and they can’t get home.

Come Home Safe

If you find yourself in a bad situation, just focus on survival. Just get home.

If you ever get to a point where it all seems impossibly broken and you don’t know where to start.

Come home safe. Everything else can be worked out.

If ever you are worried about being shamed or judged or yelled at, don’t. Just get home. We will listen with love. No matter what, we will fall to our knees and be grateful you are alive.

Come home safe.

There is always time to make things right.

Keep Them Safe, Please

As I write in the early morning, I am far from home, in a hotel room. I’ve spent the last couple of days with a very sick family member. I’m worn out and weary.

My husband and older stepson are on their way, driving a long distance. We are here to see my younger stepson play baseball as a college freshman.

I try not to worry about all that could happen on the highway, as I try not to worry every time they drive away.

The boys are all grown up now. Fine men.

Our oldest graduates college this year and has a great job lined up.

Sure, there were probably more peanut butter incidents and other things I don’t know about. We’re not naïve.

Just because we live in a sweet little antique town, full of beauty, family and love, we know there are plenty of dangers, and lots of pain.

Life has already thrown them curve balls and there will surely be more.

They are good and solid, well-prepared. They are absolutely the most amazing men you could ever meet.

I know, I gush.

And they never really needed my rules. All along those rules were probably just for me.

Occasionally, I will remind each one of Rule #1. I know, he’ll say.

As I stand at the window and watch them drive away, it’s my prayer. Please bring them home safe.

Then I can let go and move on with my day.

 

Blessed & Grateful: High-Altitude Insight

The man buckling his seatbelt beside me looked comfortable in worn jeans, a plaid shirt, glasses, and a grey wool cap— and he knew something about love that I needed to learn.

As we flew through the darkness, a stranger delivered a powerful, hopeful message I needed to hear about finding love after divorce.

The man buckling his seatbelt beside me looked comfortable in worn jeans, a plaid shirt, glasses, and a grey wool cap. He was an artist flying home to Minneapolis. Self-employed like me. He seemed nice. His name was Rodney.

On this April evening, our three-hour flight from Phoenix would take us back to the cold Midwest. Soon it would be dark outside. We would land around midnight after a long, but really good day.

My interview near Sacramento for a magazine profile had gone well. The California warmth and sunshine had felt so good. All my logistics and first flight were smooth. My Minneapolis interview wasn’t until the next afternoon, so I could rest in the morning. It was good to be out traveling again.

For awhile, Rodney and I chatted about the ups and downs of a freelance life. We agreed it was a kind of crazy way to make a living and yet, we couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

Then the conversation turned personal.

A risky turn

That was risky. I was getting divorced, and prone to long bouts of sobbing best done in private.

Even though I knew this split was for the best, I was learning that my only way out of divorce’s jagged grief and deep sense of failure was to just cry my way through it.

Every day that winter there were tears and more tears. I’d been numb and teary through Thanksgiving, then sailed so smoothly through the holidays and the New Year with all its promise of new beginnings that I thought I was past it.

Wrong.

In mid-February, I crashed, paralyzed by anxiety and tears and felt no choice but to back out of important commitments and hunker down at home for awhile. Thankfully, I had good, caring friends, parents only four hours away, and my petite folk Victorian house that felt like a fortress.

I would rally to meet a deadline or handle a piece of divorce business, then retreat back to my house. Simple things were taxing. I’d be out and about, get a headache, head home, step into a hot bath in the middle of the afternoon and put myself to bed in the early evening.

I’d learned to confide in only a few trusted souls who had been through divorce and understood and to steer clear of some married people who apparently got it right the first time and seemed kind of mystified by the whole notion.

Painful questions

They were curious? Perhaps concerned divorce was contagious?

Surely, they had not meant any harm. And yet, they’d said stupid, hurtful things.

“What happened to the love?” asked the accountant’s wife and secretary, handing over the finished tax return that February as tears streamed down my cheeks. I never went back.

One curious acquaintance stopped me on the sidewalk, in front of the post office of our small town. “What happened?” she said. “Did he cheat, or … ?” She trailed off, hoping I’d fill in the details but I refused. Not today, I told her. I retreated to my house.

See, what those folks didn’t get is that for me What went wrong????? was the most haunting, painful question. And my answer at that moment from the eye of my personal storm would have been no clearer than theirs.

So I kept my guard up.

A little leap of faith

And now some guy on an airplane was asking about my life.

I found a little faith, probably took a deep breath and told him. Gratefully, he immediately shared that he’d been through a divorce, too.

He knew that deep sense of failure, and had shed his own tears. He had remarried — something I could not imagine then.

Hang in there, he said, being married to the right person is really good. He talked about his second wife, his right person, and how she had an awful illness. It was hard, he said, but yet wonderful and manageable because they faced it as a team.

Being with the wrong person was maddening, he said. Total insanity. I agreed. For the next hour we covered everything our ex-spouses did that drove us crazy.

I don’t recall precisely which of those painful things I shared, but I probably tried to make it something funny—or at least that sounded funny until you really thought about it. My ex was fond of critiquing my hair, my clothes, my body. He once told me: I’d like to see you with long, black straight hair.

To which I replied: I have short, reddish-brown curly hair. Did you happen to notice that before you married me?

To be fair, I had said unkind things to him, too. That we could say so many unkind things to each other was one of those big red flags that whatever we had was not the true, forever, lasting love.

I asked Rodney how he and his new wife knew they were right for each other.

Before they had met, at her therapist’s suggestion she listed all the traits she wanted in a partner. She told me I was everything on her list, he said.

The wish list

Holy crap!

I rarely go into a grocery store or start my day without a list. How is it that I neglected to thoughtfully and carefully consider all the qualities I wanted and needed in a husband and lifelong commitment? Inking such qualities onto paper seemed so basic and obvious — and yet I’d totally missed it.

For awhile, we joked about that. I was hardly the first person to overlook that I could choose, that there were better options worth the wait.

We spoke softly inside our tiny, private world as the jet propelled us through the darkness. For those few hours we were the best of friends. Soon, we landed and each focused on what we had to do next. We wrapped up the conversation, wished each other well and pledged to keep in touch, then disappeared separately into the cold, dark city.

Before I turned the key in the ignition of my rental car, I knew our encounter had been special.

Only later did I see what an incredible, powerful gift Rodney gave me that night.

Powerful gifts

He helped me realize what I’d known in my bones all along: I’d grown impatient and settled for the wrong person. My intuition had tried to get my attention with those nagging feelings, but I’d misread it as anxiety.

I would have to face that. Yet, our talk had lifted me. I wasn’t hopeless at marriage, or men or love. All was not lost. I had not wrecked my life beyond repair after all.

The talk released me from the whole question of whether my ex was a good guy or a bad guy. It wasn’t for me to say. And it didn’t matter anyway. He just wasn’t the right guy for me.

My mother will read this and mumble to herself: ‘I tried to tell her. But she can’t believe me until she hears it from some guy on an airplane …

I know mom. You did. Close friends saw it, too, and you all stood and clapped at the wedding because I asked you to and I appreciate it.

I remember. And I remember telling you, mom, that if it was a mistake you couldn’t spare me from it. I’d have to make it and figure it out on my own.

So I did. And now I would have to forgive myself.

Time to rise and shine

That dark spring night, Rodney said the right thing at the right time in the right way so that I got it — and could move forward.

To finish my mourning, get on with my healing and the rest of my life in earnest. To not get stuck. To rise.

And appreciate that there are little pearls of wisdom and insight surrounding us, often found in odd places when our guard is down.

The warmth of spring came, as it always does. Most days were better than the one before. I tore out the old carpet, brushed a gorgeous rusted orange onto my living room walls and took lots of long walks and hot bubble baths.

Awhile back, I searched for Rodney’s business card and our initial e-mail messages, and could not find them.

He was right about everything

If I could, I’d thank him for his stellar pep talk, his encouraging wisdom and the generosity of his spirit he gave to a stranger.

I’d tell him how it all turned out, how six months later I made my wish list and somehow, some way got so freaking lucky and received every bit of goodness I asked for and more than I imagined.

I’d tell him I know exactly what he meant about the sweetness of being married to the right person.

And I’d tell him how very much I still cherish our conversation.

I’d apologize for losing touch when life got so big and full, for not becoming a good friend available with a pep talk on his toughest days.

I trust God put someone just as wonderful in his path for those times, the way he had appeared in mine to say what I most needed to hear: I know it hurts. We all make mistakes. You got this. You’re going to be OK.

About Blessed & Grateful

Sounds kinda corny, doesn’t it?!

I thought so, too, when I first heard my neighbor’s response to a friendly “How are you?

He replied with quiet confidence: “Blessed and grateful.”

Not the pleasant “Good, you?” or small talk about the weather I’d been expecting.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve realized this bearded and quiet older man is right. Or has the right idea. He’s inspired this blog of stories and reflections around noticing the good stuff and pausing for a moment to be thankful for it.

Blessed & Grateful is an aspiration, a goal, a practice

It’s not a mandate, forced and fake. I won’t smash a smile over anybody’s pain. I won’t tell you what you should think or do.

My goal is to give you a story around this theme that makes you smile, or think or lifts your spirits.

And in doing so, my hope is to face darkness with light, to stay up when there is so much going on the world that can bring us down. To inspire us all to stay up — as best we can. We can’t combat darkness if we succumb to it.

This focus on what I have, or enjoyed or learned is my antidote to my blues. It is no fix for anyone’s clinical depression.

The Blessed & Grateful blog launched Dec. 22, 2017, the day following the shortest day of the year. Because the light always returns, and a small amount of light is often plenty.

I hope you enjoy.

What are you Blessed & Grateful for? I hope you’ll share.