Life's Sweet Journey: Sorrow
Showing posts with label Sorrow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sorrow. Show all posts

Monday, December 7, 2015

The Ache of the Wait

I finally sat down to write this post, after I spent the better part of the day trying to avoid it. This space has become more than I had ever envisioned for it, but it often times puts my heart at war with my head. Sharing the mix of the hard, in with mixes of the joy can make me feel as if I don't know the voice of this space, but then I have come to realize that it's all just my voice and some days that voice is light and carefree and some days it can feel as if the weight of the world can leak out when I open my mouth. That's where it started today. Yet, as I wrote, I found myself with this sense of deja vu, so I looked back through last years posts and discovered that I had written nearly the same post I had just started. As I reread my own words, they spoke to my heart the things I needed and so I thought I would share them again, but add a little more this time. 

You see, I had approached Thanksgiving with a sense of anxiety I didn't realize I had until the holiday weekend ended and I finally found that I could breathe again, like taking a long breathe of air after trying to see how far you could swim underwater before surfacing. And then on the ride to work the other day, I found myself singing along to my Christmas CD, when tears I didn't even know I had coming found themselves streaking down my face. It had started with the words, "...Trust me and follow me and I will lead you Home." The next thing I know I am trying to get out the words to my Grownup Christmas List and my heart seems to understand every word in a different way and the song became more of a prayer than a song and "I'm all grown up now, but I still need help somehow" seemed to reverberate through my soul and out into the world. And I found myself wondering if it's not just those that have lost someone close, but really all of us who have fully entered the world of adulthood and taken off the blinders that leave us feeling this ache of Christmas. 

When I was writing today's post in my head, before I ever remembered last years post, I had been thinking about the ache of the wait leading up to Jesus' birthday. The post I found was actually written a few days after Christmas and this is what it said... 
_____________________________________________________


The tree stands glowing in the center of the window, in the same place it has always stood, adorned with the same ornaments for over 20 years. It looks the same as it always has, yet it means something different this year. It holds on its limbs the sweetest of memories, but they are memories so very sweet that they leave an ache behind. An empty, dull, pit in your stomach ache, because they hold all that isn't there. It meant the same last year, but I may have been too blinded with grief that I didn't see them. Or they were too hard to put up. This year the sting wasn't so fresh. It didn't take just the feel of the breeze to make the world hurt. But the ache is still there, it will always be there. In the mention of a name and in the ornaments that hang amid light draped branches. They are the sweetest memories and they still can be. But it's the texts you get from your dad, who is putting the ornaments on the tree, saying it's a slow going process. He doesn't say why, but you know. So you go over and you help and though you don't hang but one ornament its just the fact that there is someone there to look and see. To look and see and not need to say anything, because you both know what the other is thinking. You both know that the ornaments mean so much, but feel so hard. 
The ache is still there on Christmas morning. It's there when you are making waffles and eating them. And it's there as tears fall down faces during a pre-breakfast prayer. It's there in between all the wrapping paper and bows. It's there when presents are presented. Beautiful paintings that so artistically brought sweet memories to life. Yet, the ache is there because on this side of heaven the closest we will get to life here on earth with my brother is the smile in the paintings and in the memories that fill our hearts. It's there when you smile at the joy of a three year old opening presents, hugging Elsa dolls close. It ebbs and flows and sometimes gets forgotten, but it comes back. And really that's ok. 

The ache can be handled, it can be tolerated. Though we hate that it has to be tolerated, we will tolerate it all the same. Because it's better than forgetting all together. For numbing it down so much that you crawl blindly through the holidays. That's about where I was last year, there isn't much that I remember. This year the picture is different. There was more color, more light. There was so much more life in this Christmas. I am glad for that. I am glad that on Christmas, on the time of year that we celebrate life, that we celebrate the greatest Birth there ever was, that I can ache. When a part of you is gone, some of you will always ache. I think it is similar to the way our hearts are hardwired to ache for Jesus. We think fondly of the sweetest gift, the gift that filled the whole world with hope. We ache for the fact that we are so far from sitting face-to-face with Jesus, but we are glad for the fact that someday we will. I am glad that the ache can remind me of all that was good. I am glad for the sweet memories of life that will make it just as hard to take down the tree as it was to put up. And I am glad for the fact that, while I ache here on earth, it is just a matter of time before I see my brother again and get to rejoice at seeing his face. I get to rejoice because the sweet memories will be there, but all the hard things will be long forgotten. 
_____________________________________________________
My gosh, how those words just echoed in my heart again this year. But in a different way. This year, the anxiety felt different and now having made it through Thanksgiving, I have a better understanding of it. I know when it comes and I can greet it with a nod of my head. It still sits there, but there is more joy in those moments. The joy and sorrow aren't separate things anymore, but a mix of it all. Even in the midst of moments that, in the previous two years would have left me unable to speak, I am able to fondly talk about memories with a sense of joy and light in my voice. Time has given me that. And while time can not erase the hurt that lingers, I don't think it should. Our hearts should be hardwired to hurt for things that are wrong. Our hearts should ache and cry out and pray loudly words like, 

"No more lives torn apart
That wars would never start
and wars would never start
And time would heal all hearts
And everyone would have a friend
And right would always win
And love would never end
This is my grown up christmas list" 

Our hearts should ache for the coming of Jesus, so that His birth gives way to the joy of what the gift of His Love really means; which is that someday all of those prayers will be answered. Some day the ache will lead to Him coming to us, taking us by the hand and saying. "Trust me and follow me, we are going Home."

Monday, December 29, 2014

The Ache of Christmas

The tree stands glowing in the center of the window, in the same place it has always stood, adorned with the same ornaments for over 20 years. It looks the same as it always has, yet it means something different this year. It holds on its limbs the sweetest of memories, but they are memories so very sweet that they leave an ache behind. An empty, dull, pit in your stomach ache, because they hold all that isn't there. It meant the same last year, but I may have been too blinded with grief that I didn't see them. Or they were too hard to put up. This year the sting wasn't so fresh. It didn't take just the feel of the breeze to make the world hurt. But the ache is still there, it will always be there. In the mention of a name and in the ornaments that hang amid light draped branches. They are the sweetest memories and they still can be. But it's the texts you get from your dad, who is putting the ornaments on the tree, saying it's a slow going process. He doesn't say why, but you know. So you go over and you help and though you don't hang but one ornament its just the fact that there is someone there to look and see. To look and see and not need to say anything, because you both know what the other is thinking. You both know that the ornaments mean so much, but feel so hard. 
The ache is still there on Christmas morning. It's there when you are making waffles and eating them. And it's there as tears fall down faces during a pre-breakfast prayer. It's there in between all the wrapping paper and bows. It's there when presents are presented. Beautiful paintings that so artistically brought sweet memories to life. Yet, the ache is there because on this side of heaven the closest we will get to life here on earth with my brother is the smile in the paintings and in the memories that fill our hearts. It's there when you smile at the joy of a three year old opening presents, hugging Elsa dolls close. It ebbs and flows and sometimes gets forgotten, but it comes back. And really that's ok. 

The ache can be handled, it can be tolerated. Though we hate that it has to be tolerated, we will tolerate it all the same. Because it's better than forgetting all together. For numbing it down so much that you crawl blindly through the holidays. That's about where I was last year, there isn't much that I remember. This year the picture is different. There was more color, more light. There was so much more life in this Christmas. I am glad for that. I am glad that on Christmas, on the time of year that we celebrate life, that we celebrate the greatest Birth there ever was, that I can ache. When a part of you is gone, some of you will always ache. I think it is similar to the way our hearts are hardwired to ache for Jesus. We think fondly of the sweetest gift, the gift that filled the whole world with hope. We ache for the fact that we are so far from sitting face-to-face with Jesus, but we are glad for the fact that someday we will. I am glad that the ache can remind me of all that was good. I am glad for the sweet memories of life that will make it just as hard to take down the tree as it was to put up. And I am glad for the fact that, while I ache here on earth, it is just a matter of time before I see my brother again and get to rejoice at seeing his face. I get to rejoice because the sweet memories will be there, but all the hard things will be long forgotten. 

Monday, December 1, 2014

Saving Mr. Banks, Saving Innocence

"The rain brings life- so does the sun." -Saving Mr. Banks 
When one thinks Disney or Mary Poppins, they think happy thoughts. They think magic. But I have so often found that magic is given to the areas in our lives that we fear the sting of reality. Addiction is messy. It is messy and ugly and it takes away so much. Yet, it is very much a part of reality. Saving Mr. Banks hits that reality on the head in the most real of ways. But it also saves something too. It saves innocence and it saves magic. I have never been one who likes to watch realistic movies. I prefer my movies (and books for that matter), with enough fantasy to pull me out of the world for just a brief moment in time. I don't mean that in the sense that I watch only far out fantasies or pure science-fiction. I mean that I prefer movies with enough reality that they could almost be real, if it weren't for the fact that they aren't because there is far more that the movie doesn't show you. They leave out the messy and broken bits. Or they weave them together in such a way that they are all well and mended by the time the credits roll. I don't tend to watch documentaries or read biographies. Even Sundance movies are far too real world for me. Which is exactly why the story of Mary Poppins is something I can't stop watching. It is the hard and bitter truth of reality, of one grown child's story of addiction, told through the magic of one man's imagination, to paint for her a world in which things ended up alright. 

I watch Saving Mr. Banks and my heart breaks and mends and breaks and mends time after time. It breaks for the little girl who covers for a father she loves. It mends for the woman who opens her heart to the forgiveness she denied herself. It breaks for the cruel reality that addiction brings into people's lives. It mends for the resiliency we have within our hearts to keep going when it takes everything away. 

When I watch saving Mr. Banks I see my own story. I hear the lies you tell yourself to pretend it all away. I see broken people, wearing the physical faces of breaking hearts. I think about all the questions, the questions screamed outwardly and inwardly. When I watch Saving Mr. Banks I can't help but think about the questions that my niece won't have to ask because she was never old enough to understand what was going on around her in the heat of a relapse. But I wonder too about what questions she will ask the older she gets and knows fully the reality that her dad isn't here. I dread the day she asks why. How do you explain to anyone, at any age, the truth behind addiction? I still don't understand it. 

When she is three you can tell her that her daddy is in her heart and that he is with Jesus and that he loves her and that is and always will be true, but what about the day when she wants more? Yet, in it all there are things to be thankful for. Thankful that she was too young to realize what was going on, thankful that she was too young to be made into a crutch to hold up a world that was falling apart around her. I am thankful for the fact that she can hold onto magic, that we all can. When we loose that innocence, that magic, we turn our backs on the hope that life can have beauty. When we loose that, we build walls around our hearts. Walls that have thorns to keep out anything that can hurt us. We build fortresses around our battered hearts to protect us. Fortresses that shoot arrows to fend off anything at all; love, pain, life and death. I know, because I have been there. Keep out the good to keep out the bad. 

Life on Earth? Addiction? The reality of all the painful things? They are hard, brutal and messy. There is no way around that and no way to prepare for it. But I have hope and faith in the things that I can not see. I know that someday I will live in a world without pain and without tears. I will live in a Kingdom with no walls, because they won't be needed and that is no fairytale. That is the magic, that is the ending to the story- and the beginning. That is the reality that changed all realities. Walt Disney took Mary Poppins and he saved Mr. Banks. God sent us Jesus and He saved the whole world. It hurts- He never promised it wouldn't- that believing doesn't mean we all get to live here on Earth together until we are old and feel that we have fully lived. It hurts that people leave before we are ready for them to. Free will and the choices we make often hurt us, but there is the Promise of a life forever. And I will hold onto that. I will hold onto that and the innocence of a child-like heart. The innocence and magic of a child-like heart that can find beauty in the most messy of stories. 

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Ice Cold Breathing

... It's like that last sip of ice cold water before heading out to face a hot, humid afternoon. That last refreshing taste to quench your thirst until the sweating kicks in. Has a breath ever felt like that to you? They feel like that to me sometimes. They feel like that last needed bit of something sustaining; the sip you take to help put the smiling face on life. The face you show the world around you. The face that says that life is alright. I had this thought today, as I got out of the car to pick up some of "my kiddos" from school. This was no where even close to an I need a breath moment and really more so all about the sip of water that I took to fend off the heat. And yet, as the "ahh, that felt good going down" thought left my brain all I could think of was the way breathing has seemed to feel as I get older.

We have had a few days of cool, fall weather in Florida and it was a needed reprieve. Yet, it made the heat of yesterday a surprise I was not ready for. Like a breath you didn't realize you had taken; one that goes down a little too hard and comes up with a little bit too much life. The kind that comes when a hard day hits you after days that seemed to go so smoothly. It's that breath you take to remind yourself that the world is still watching, that you are still living and that sometimes you have to pick your head up and keep going.

As I processed all of this... all the breathing and the smiles that sometimes seem harder to wear than an itchy sweater, I realized, we are all doing it. At some point in every moment of each day, someone around you is the person who is smiling in spite of the fact that breathing hurts sometimes. They are smiling and holding up their own world, in their own way, because we are all doing it. We all have moments when we need that breath, that refreshing sip of ice water on a hot day, to remind ourselves to keep going. It's that breath that you hold in just long enough to pray, "Lord, I need you here."

So the next time I hear you breathe in- that really deep, down to your gut breathing, that seems to expel with it all that you are not saying- I promise to smile at you and simply nod my head, as if to reassure you that it will be ok. You are not alone and tomorrow the breathing may be easier.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Letting it Change


To say I have ever welcomed change would be the furthest thing from the truth. I have often feared change above all else, often gripping far too tightly to things, even ones that I knew were not the things God wanted for me. Even when things were going terribly I would often cling to what was known simply for the fact that it was comfortable. But recently, I have felt this itching for something that needed to be moved. It was me; it has been me. And yesterday, while sitting in a staff meeting it was all too clear to me. A wonderful leader at our church spoke on the subject of change; change in the way it relates to grief and to healing. He talked of the healing process in the physical sense. That sometimes, after a bad fall or an accident that leaves one injured, there is a period of unmoving. 

You have to be still to heal. 

You have to let the world move around you and you have to allow your body the time it needs to repair itself. It is the same for emotional wounds as well. The ones that often seem, at least to me, harder to face. We don’t have to look at them. We cover the bags under our eyes with makeup or fill our bodies with caffeine to keep us going. We bury ourselves in busy so that our emotions can remain at rest. Laid docile so that they don’t drown us. But eventually, as with a physical injury, there comes a time when we have to get back in the game. There comes a time where we have to welcome change, start some physical therapy and put the body back to the work it was purposed for. That’s where I am now. I have felt it coming because I have felt the grip on my heart, the hand around my throat that means I am trying to keep feelings at bay. I knew it was coming because when my schedule opened up more during the summer, due to one job being out from break, I panicked. I had been looking forward to the freedom, the chance to just sit, be and breathe. That was until I really thought about what that extra time meant, exactly what that sitting, being and breathing would bring about. 
It would mean less tasks to occupy my time; less "have to get dones" and more time for the "you need to address this". Getting back to blogging was another pinpoint sign that I needed to let it change. I needed to let some of that pain back in to fully keep moving. I stopped blogging because it was too hard to find words, it was hard to make words make sense. The things I did write during that time (simply because the words had to come out some how) are not words that I am sure I will ever share. They are hard. They are raw and they are void of much hope.

My little brother, Patrick, got married this weekend and it was a glorious, beautiful morning of celebrating new love and new potential. But things were missing, people were missing. A father was missing his eldest son and a daughter wasn’t able to kiss her daddy on Father’s Day. Instead, she kissed a balloon and sent it up to heaven. Makaylin was confused. Her eyes saw a balloon, but her demeanor said she didn't understand the meaning of the moment. What do you do in the situation? So I took some time to explain it to her, to let her know she was sending the balloon to her daddy. She still didn't seem to understand why everyone was circled around her or why they were watching her so intently, but she kissed it and she let it go. Then she grabbed her cousins hand and they ran, as fast their little legs could carry them, so that they could dip their toes in the water. And while on one hand she is young, there is a side that stands to reason that maybe we haven’t (maybe I haven’t) done enough to continue the story for her. John Wayne’s story has been continued in the life of the recovery community and shared to help others. But have we done the job needed to help her understand his story as her father? We add him to our prayers at night but outside of that it has been hard to mention his name outside of bigger events. Hard because when she asks questions or smiles and tells us her daddy is in her heart it brings it all back, it makes things fresh. That’s where I am now, at the road between wanting to avoid having to face things I was never prepared for and knowing that it is time. 
It is time to figure out the future from here. It is time to forge a new beginning and the bright possibilities that holds, while still remembering the past and all the good and bad images it contains. It is time to let change happen. To let God change me into the person he has been molding and will continue to mold for the rest of my time here on earth. It is time to get up, time to move forward. The tears that I fought hard against as I listened to the words of a wise man during a monthly staff meeting told me so. The tug on my heart that says, “this will be hard, but it will be worth it” reminds me of it every time I want to curl up in a ball on the couch and shut it all out. The breathing may seem hard right now, but it will get lighter. It will get lighter as I give it over, as I let go of the controlled face I have worked hard to put on and as I let go of the "strings" so that my hands are open to embrace the change.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Carrying the Story


I do not know much about what it means to be on the road to recovery from substance abuse other than my own, often bitter, sad or jaded feelings on the subject. I have watched what it can do to someone, I have seen how it can push at families to the point of breaking and I have seen what it means when someone doesn't reach the end of that road on this side of Heaven. What I have come to realize though is that we are all, in some sense, on a recovery road of our own. We are all broken and we all fall and we all stumble. We all go down that road in some fashion; battered hand over battered foot, pulling ourselves up rocks that seem too immense to climb. And that is just speaking of my own everyday struggle. I have never known what it means to fight an uphill battle with the weight of substance abuse trying to pull me back down. I saw my brother take that road time and again. For many years it was mostly at the prompting of those who loved him. And in the end it was his own wish, his own drive that kept him clean for over a year. I know what that hope feels like, I know because I felt it myself. I have heard the words that a father uses when he shares his story and the pride he has in his son as he hands him his year medallion. I have watched that same father break just months after, break into a million pieces that will never fully heal on this earth, as he comes to the realization that the redemption story didn't end the way he hoped it would.  And I have watched, most often in awe and envy, at the way he chose to carry on. It did break him, the fact the story wouldn't be redeemed the way he had hoped, with his son here on Earth. But he also realized that it didn't mean the redemption ended, it didn't mean that the story was over. Sometimes the redemption story is given to the broken left behind. God entrusts those of us that know what its like and have seen what substance abuse can do, to reach out to those struggling and share the story of a life that can still go on. It goes on through the loved ones still here. It goes on through my brothers daughter and through my dad and through those who won't give up sharing his story and trying to reach people who need help.
They are just men; your common everyday dads, sons, friends, brothers and husbands. They wear no visible capes. But to me they are warriors, warriors on surf boards. Men who took a passion and are using it to share the story of a lost son, of a friend, so that hopefully another family won't have to know what it is like to continue on with just the story. So that hopefully the redemption can be seen through the beauty of a life lived out, clean and fully and free. My hope now is that this message and these videos will reach you where you need them most. 

Maybe like me you are a sister struggling to understand what it means to be the sibling of an addict. 
Maybe like my parents you are at war about the best way to help your child, to keep them and the rest of your family from going under. 
Or maybe you are the child, the spouse, the parent, the friend, the one struggling to figure out how to keep your own head above water. 
My hope is that you find a "board" or whatever it may be that drives you and that you let it take you as far away from drugs (in whatever form that may be) as it can. 
My hope is that if you need help you reach out; to those who love you, to those who want to help or even to someone who you know is simply willing to lend a listening ear.
It matters. Your life matters. The things you leave behind matter. Your story matters. 

Saturday, September 21, 2013

I Want Her Back



I am linking up today with day ten's prompt for Blogtember.  Originally I had planned to make this a love letter to people. To all the people who made my family feel so cared for in these past months.  I went to type weeks but realize it has been much longer than that.  Time has seemed to have a warped sense of reality for me lately, it flies and yet goes so slow all at once.  I still plan to write that post about people (I have been meaning to for sometime now) but ever since posting the self portraits I have not been able to think about anything but that girl, the one in the picture.  I want her back. I want the girl pictured above back. And so I write this letter for her, I write this letter for me.

Dear Girl,
I love you! I am sorry it took me losing you to realize just how much.  I wish you hadn't gone away.  I miss your smile.  I miss the way it not only showed up on your face, but the way you felt it deep down in your soul. I pray that you will be back soon.

Your utter joy with the world astounds me.  You struggled, yet there was always something in you that sought the best.  I loved the way you said that everything would be ok and that you truly believed it.  I am sorry if that is not the case anymore.  I loved your optimism and your zest for life.  I miss your ability to believe that everything is not only going to be ok, but that it is going to be great.  I apologize that you now view life without that filter.  I am sorry that you now believe that life sometimes just is what it is. If I could give those feelings back to you I would.  Maybe we can find them together. But for that to happen I need to see you.  I need to feel you.  I need to know that there is a part of you that is still with me.

I want you back.  I want you to sing along to the radio at the top of your lungs, not to drown out the emptiness you are feeling, but because you find joy in singing along to a song that means something (or that just has an awesome tune).  I want you to watch a movie, or some corny reality tv show, and get crazy because it was a horrible ending that you had called all along but hoped you were wrong about.  I want you to be able to remember the movie days later because it was something you actually watched and not just some screen you stared at to pass the time.  I want your fight back!! I want you to get mad, I want you to have something mean so much that you have a reason to argue with someone! I want your sass back! I want you to care about the little things that drove you into a tizzy.  I want you to get upset when there are no garbanzo beans for your salad or when you realize you are out of Mt. Dew for popcorn night and the popcorn is already popped.  I want you to act like it is going to ruin your whole evening unless you have that Mt. Dew and pout so that Babe will go to the corner store and come back with five in hand (either because he loves you just that much or because he doesn't want to hear you gripe. I love how you always chose to believe the first even though you knew most of it was the latter).

I want to say thank you for holding on.  I want to say thank you for showing up and trying to make your face match what it always had. I thank you for the energy you left behind; it has helped to keep my feet moving and my body get out of bed.  I thank you for continuing to know that even though the picture may be a little different now, that you still look to a source higher than yourself and know that someday things will be better, that it just may not happen here on this earth.  I wish you continued to believe that would happen this side of heaven. But God did not promise us that we would not struggle, he did not promise us that we would not fall; thank you for continuing to hold on to the fact that He will catch you when you do.  Thank you for knowing enough of this world to know that there will be happy, blissful, wonderful moments. Please remind me, if you can, that they are all around me if I just look closely.

I just want you to know that I will fight for you.  I want you to know that though it may not seem like it right now I am looking for you.  I vow to not let you go forever, I wish we hadn't needed to take a break. You are amazing, you shine and you love so wholeheartedly that it often hurts.  Don't ever lose that!

Until we are one again,
Yours,
Melanie

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Where to go from here?


I had wanted to get on and post a recipe, to share in the swapping of yummy food.  That is the place my mind went, "I just want to care about food", but I am just not in a place yet to wrap my mind around writing anything other than what I am going through in my life right now. And I have not been in a place where I can focus on putting elements of a meal together.  Since beginning this blog it has always been a place I have shared how I felt in the moment. Right now the best recipe I can give, or hope to look for, is a recipe that gives me the ingredients on where to go from here.  I don't know what they are. I think for me it may start with admitting to myself that if I want to actually post something, this blog will have to look a little bit different than it did before.  I had hoped to keep up with these Whatever Wednesday posts because I so look forward to them.  I like to stick to things I start and in my mind every Wednesday I think "oh, I should post today" but there are going to be days where it may be like pulling teeth to stay on topic. I have loved the topics that Shay and Alissa have come up with and I don't want to throw a wrench into the plans, so if I don't make it back for a bit, I hope to pick up again soon.

 If you have been following and had chosen to stay for the quirky, random, spastic posts that often find their way on here then you may not find what you have found before, at least not for a couple of weeks.  I have written many different posts since last week. Some I have considered publishing, others I have almost completely discarded because of the mess of jumbled emotions that I do not even want to have to read back to myself.  I have used the blank slate of a computer screen to try to record my thoughts, to try to figure out what is going on in my head, and to try to process what it is that will actually let me feel something other than nothing. Then there have been things I have read through that had been written long before this blog came about, things that I wrote in many different phases of my family's (of my own) journey through addiction over the past ten+ years. Some of the words are hopeful, some sad, many angry. The angry ones only seem harsh now and I don't know what to do with them.  I think to myself, I can't share that with anyone. Though a logical part of my mind (or really a good friend who helps me think logically right now) knows anger is normal, but another part of me now can't even understand it. I'm sure it will come, I am sure I will feel angry for all of this too. Right now though I am still just trying to figure it out. I hope that you will bear with me while I explore that some.  I think for now I am going to consider posting some of what I have written on here, to share with others some of our story; the prior parts and the new ones. I had always planned on sharing more about that side of my life at some point anyways, I just never knew it would be due to what has now happened. I thought I had plenty of time to get around to it without feeling like I was bombarding the world with what addiction looks like from the outside in, when you have a front row seat to a show you wish you could walk out of. I hate the fact that it has to be told from this side of my brother's life now. I hate that he is not here to read what I shared.  I can remember asking him not long ago if he was fine with me sharing how I felt. He was always a very open person and so I knew he wouldn't mind but I wanted to know if there was anything he wanted me to leave out (his answer was no). I also remember his reaction after he had a chance to read that first post I shared on the subject. I wish now there had been more I shared with him; more of the hopeful parts anyways. I pray that when I share them here, or write them down privately for my own purposes, that they find their way to him so he knows just how much hope there was, so he knows how much I love him. 

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Our Middle

What have I been spending time doing? I have been spending time trying to figure it all out, trying to understand, wanting to make myself get on here and let it all flow through my fingers. So I sit down to write; something that I have so wanted to do in these past two weeks and yet something I have been dreading. I wasn't sure if I would post this at all. Part of me even briefly considered just giving up on blogging altogether... 1.) because I wasn't sure if I wanted to or even how to go about posting this and 2.) because I knew that I also couldn't go on blogging if I didn't write about it, because to just continue on as if the world was as it always had been was an impossibility. But so often I have wanted to come on here; to lose myself in someone else's space for a while and then to share in my own.  I knew I couldn't give this space up because this blog and this community have given me so much.  I have found solace, friendship, warmth and support.

I also found it strange that of all the weeks for the post topic to be about our biggest heartbreak that would be last week, in the week when the world dropped out from under our feet. In the week that I experienced my biggest heartbreak and devastation. My brother died last Saturday. It was sudden, it was unexpected, yet it was also something we have spent much of our lives dreading in the back of our minds. If you had read this post you may understand more as to why. These are words my dad had put down, that "although solid in his recovery, the beast that is addiction caused him to relapse one final time." Final is something that I hate having to use in my vocabulary. I don't even know how to grasp the concept of that when it comes to my brother. There is a part of me that wants to cry every minute or scream at the top of my lungs, but my body won't let me. There is a part of me that wants to feel angry, but I can't. A part of me that wants to feel that at  he is at peace, and while I know he is, I am not there yet. Instead, I don't really feel anything.  Not a numbness really, just nothing. There is such a large part of me that still doesn't believe it is real. A part of me that is choosing to do and plan and prepare so that I don't have to fully face the understanding of what is happening.  I don't know if that is best but everyone says that people grieve in all kinds of different ways. That's what they keep telling me anyways.

For now, I do not know what else to say so instead I will share with you what I had already written and read at his funeral...

There is a quote I read in a book by Sarah Dessen that says, “There has to be a middle. Without it nothing can ever truly be whole."
From the second I saw this quote I thought “well, yes, that’s definitely the truth. So fitting for my brother.” 

John Wayne, you were the epitome of the middle child, maybe because you had it coming and going.  During the week I got to play the oldest while Patrick was the baby. And there you were in the middle.  Officially you and I were supposed to share that role but when Jaclynn was with us I still think I let you go ahead and take it, since you never really liked to share much anyways.  And with your wit and charm made it all your own.

Though our family will never physically be whole anymore we will always be whole.  You will always still be there in the middle. In the middle of all of us.  We just have an extra bit of crazy with us now, which is fitting given we are and always will be "those crazy Fosters.” 
 
I don’t know if you knew this but sometime in the past year I started to twirl my hair.  I thought “well I have joined the crazy hair twirling side of the sibling group now”.  When I found myself twirling the hair on the back of my head (John Wayne did this so much as a kid his hair always stood straight up on the back of his head, no matter how much you tried to control it) in the car just a few days ago I thought "oh man, I’m really in for it now." But it was nice, because now anytime I find myself pausing with my hands in my hair I will be able to stop and think of you.  I can still remember when you had that alfalfa pulled so tightly on the top of your head that when you shaved your hair off you had a huge bald spot back there because the hairs had just been magically stuck up in place from all of your incessant twirling.  It was a good look, but it will never beat the hair do that got you escorted out of chapel when we were at TCS.  

I can still remember the scene you caused walking in with your bright blond Eminem hair bobbing down the isle. Mimi had to come pick you up and take you to get it dyed back brown before you were allowed to return to school.  I can only imagine what she had to say when you walked in up there.  I can just hear her now, after she gives you a big hug, saying “Oh John Wayne!!” and then licking her fingers and trying to rub your tattoos to see if maybe they are just sharpie. Because, while I assume that God gave you a good little spit shine on some of those tattoos, mainly the ones you tried to give yourself, he also let you keep a good majority of them.  You would be one who would make it into heaven with most of his tattoos still lingering. I know you got to keep the one for May May.

John Wayne, please know that she will always know you and that you will always be a part of who she is and that we are blessed to have one of the best parts of you here with us.  It’s not as if we cant see you in her already.  She was beat boxing to me and Wally just the other night. She definitely has a good bit of her daddy in her. And while that may scare some of us, we know that she will be alright.  Because when that wild hair of a two year old becomes a wild hair of a young adult she will have the best of both sides of this world in her corner. You could not have picked a better person to be the mother of your child and she will have Kaley to look towards as an example, but she will also have you up there helping God keep watch over her wild ways in order guide her feet to a solid and steady foundation with which to walk from.  

I love you.  We all love you and you will always be with us, because you are our middle!