This is the first Easter I’ve spend away from my family in, well, a long time. We spent it with Mr. Fix-It’s family. Yeah, I know we’re all family, but it’s not the same. There’s a groove to your own family…a fit that comes from know them for 32 years of my life vs. the 13 (or so) Mr. Fix-It and I’ve been together–or really even the 9 that we’ve been married (since that’s really when we all became family).
Since the kids started from 0, they don’t have the same inhibitions. :)
I find it hard to be separated from my family at this time of year. Honestly, I would pack them all up kicking and screaming and install them in houses around the corner from us if I could. Every single one of them. Easter is a season of hope for Christians, but since the accident, I find most of the Spring to be an extended countdown from one painful reminder to the next.
Mother’s Day without a mother…
The anniversary of the last weekend I ever spent with them…
The anniversary of the accident…
Father’s Day without a father…
Mom’s birthday…
Straight to the gut, they just keep coming. As hard as I try, the 4th of July is still nothing more than the last holiday we had made plans with them for (they were supposed to come down and help us start landscaping our brand new front yard). Like the endless parade of growling Harley clubs cruising past our house in the summer sunshine, the wound seeps and flows.
One day after another after another, all summer long I’m forced to put on a happy face, make fun family plans, and pretend that we’re all happily moving on.
At least, I’m pretending. Thankfully, the rest of my crew is not. They’re having fun, going to the beach, going to museums, going to concerts and picnics and seeing fireworks and making cards and crafts. There is eternal value in trudging ever onward. Even those time when you just. don’t. feel. like. it. If you don’t believe me, I have 11, 342 pictures from last summer to prove it to you.
But it’s silly to think that having “something to live for” (like my children) somehow overcomes everything I’ve lost. Oh, the foolish platitudes I’ve heard! (And truly, I mean “foolish” in the biblical sense because Jesus didn’t use words like “stupid” and “asinine.” But we’ll save that for a different post.)
It’s like thinking that a guide dog makes being blind better. Easier, maybe. But not better. Like losing a limb. You learn to compensate for it, but every day you’re reminded again that it’s gone.
Because you forget.
Each time you copy a great picture 3 times and then remember you only have 2 grandparents to send it to…each time you hear a song they’ll just love to hear and remember you can’t call to tell them about it…each time you reach for the phone to share a new milestone, a new report card, a new performance…
…And you remember that you can’t call, and it’s been 5 years, and they’ve missed all the milestones up to this one too…
I don’t know how the heart forgets. How it can pretend like nothing has changed just because the sun is shining and your children are healthy and the grass is green.
Or maybe it’s not forgetting.
Maybe the memories are so vivid, so clear, so true to life that it doesn’t believe it either. Maybe you can still see them, still hear them, still smell the garage dirt-motor oil-cigarette smoke that was his cologne…
Maybe it’s remembering.
Maybe that’s what hurts so much.
“Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me. I am wearing of my crying: my throat is dried: mine eyes fail while I wait for my God.” (Psalm 69:1-3)
