It’s been five days since I’ve penned a single word here or in my journal or anywhere really. Save for a few e-mails, the word well has been dry.
At the exact time I published my last post, I received word that my cousin passed away. It was unexpected and much too soon. So many are grieving — his wife and three children, his parents, his brothers and their families, his friends, his extended family. The funeral was Monday. I’m home now but I feel in a fog. Though my day to day won’t change and though we cousins won’t experience the extreme void and grief of his immediate family, we grieve over this cruel reality and we grieve for those who will miss him most.
And so this sort of heavy haze, this dealing with mortality and grief and so many tears — it makes writing about the everyday seem meaningless and trite and terribly superficial.
I suppose it is and it isn’t.
I returned at one in the morning Tuesday. Drained and exhausted, I slept late and did absolutely nothing until I had to pick up kids at school. But then real life resumed and we had appointments and a flag football game and a late night at the urgent care due to a wrist injury. The oldest is stressed over testing and looming cheer tryouts. The youngest and I are soon on our way to the doctor this morning because I fear he has strep. There are groceries to buy and bills to pay and e-mails to return. And for once I don’t make my way robotically through the ordinary or resent the inconveniences.
Death has a way of breathing life into the seemingly mundane.
We are here. We are alive. We are storing up moments, everyday and superficial though they seem. Though big events and milestones dot the landscape of a lifetime, I’m learning that life is mostly a string of the simple — meals and messes, conversations and clean-up, rest and work, laughter and tears.
Death has a way of showing me that the simple is actually the sacred, that I would mourn the loss of any one of these ordinary tasks or interactions if snatched from me today.
And so I give thanks. For the trips to the doctor and the matching of socks and the conversations about cheerleading and the earthworm we dug up when we pulled the weeds.
I give thanks for the extraordinary gifts bursting forth in the simplest of moments. This is the sacred stuff of life.
When my dad passed away six years ago, I was mad because everyone around me (not family) went on with their life like it didn’t matter I had lost my Rock. Then it hit me, bills have to be paid, meals have to be cooked and clothes still needed to be cleaned. It didn’t matter I was hurting, I still had to live my life and take care of my family. I still think about him Everday but I know he is watching us raise his grandchildren who he loved with all his heart.
Yes, this, the everyday is really what’s worth writing about.
Oh, how this speaks to my heart today, dear one! Each and every little thing seems to take on a “dearness” it didn’t possess before.
I’ve been thinking: Life is lived along a path comprised of small stones here and there, perhaps a few with bright colors or unusual shapes, or arranged in an unusual way, and then . . . you come upon a Stonehenge. It jolts our very being. It is both a marvel and a mystery. But at some point, we turn to continue on the journey through small stones here and there, with renewed appreciation and an awareness that it is of these that most of our path is made. The jolt is used by Abba to remind us.
LYF
Oh, Marian. I am so sorry. Thank you for writing in your grief. You are right, and your words are a wise reminder. This stack of stuff I need to try to do before 5:00 P.M.? It’s evidence of life, that precious gift.
Bless you, sweet friend.