If You're Happy and You Know It...

The other day my wife asked me what I wanted for Christmas. Over the last ten years my answer has been the same; What I truly want I cannot have. I wanted more time with my daughter. Another day with my wife of 26 years. Another chance to see the things I took for granted. A chance to see the things I would never experience.

Christmas without people in your life that were responsible for shaping you into the person you are today can be tough. I have two very close friends who are learning what it is like to not be able to call home and wish Mom a happy birthday. Or Merry Christmas. Or just to say I love you. They, like me, are having to unwrap presents that contain a little bit of sadness during the holidays.

But for me, that has become the ghost of Christmas past. 2016 was an incredible year for me. One of utter joy - and not just because the Cubs won the World Series! This year there is a little more joy in shopping. This year I don’t have to leave my shopping cart in the middle of the aisle and go somewhere to compose myself. This year I don’t have to force myself to stop when the gift tags say “from Uncle Kevin” only. This year God has blessed me with an incredible gift. This year I get to wrap and unwrap joy!

Perhaps this is a year of sadness for you. Maybe this year it is hard to focus on the good that seems so small in comparison to the bad. And maybe you are facing the holidays with dread rather than joyous anticipation. Well I’m here to tell you to STOP. But hear me out. Stop worrying that you are ruining Christmas for everyone else. Stop thinking it is wrong to mourn your losses during a joyous season. Just be where you are in your journey down your personal road of grief. It’s perfectly okay to miss a loved one. And you can still find joy in the season.

So, what do I really want for Christmas? What do you get a man who now has everything he could ever want? God has blessed me again with an incredible woman and two equally awesome girls that I fell in love with almost as quickly as I did their mother. He has given me a chance to not take things for granted as I live my life with these ladies. I will get to see weddings, graduations, babies being born and other wonderful miracles that I thought I would never get the chance to witness. He has definitely treated me, over my entire lifetime, better than I deserve to be treated.

As I review the blog posts I have made over these last several years I have seen the same theme you have. I have cooked up a dish of grief and sadness. Left alone it is a bitter dish. So I have seasoned it with occasional laughter. I’ve stirred in rare bits of happiness to add just a little taste. Sprinkled it with my love for the Father. Set the oven on high heat and let it cook for as long as God has wanted. But what has been pulled from the oven is something I hope you found pleasing to your palate. 

It has been a journey of a thousand miles but God has managed to get me there in as few steps as possible. While in future blogs I hope you will realize that I will never forget those who were a part of my journey, but my focus will always be where God wants to take me. And I couldn’t be more thrilled with who He has along for the ride!

My prayer for you, dear reader and friend, is that God will bless you with the joy He has given me in 2016. I pray that He overflows your cup with goodness and mercy. I pray that the memories you have will be memories you will pass on to your children and their children. I pray peace over you and I pray that God gives you a smile at least half as big as the one He has placed on my face.

Missing in Action: What takes us away from that we know?

Where have you been? 

Just the other day I had a friend ask me if she had missed a blog I had written. (It turns out that someone actually does follow these musings.) I told her that I had not written anything for awhile but promised to get back to it soon. Well, here I am getting back to it.

Why the absence? Why haven’t I penned anything for you to laugh or cry over? That’s a really good question. Why does any writer go through periods of not writing anything? Why does an artist not paint, a songwriter not compose, or sculptor not shape something from nothing? Come to think of it, why does a writer write, an artist paint, a composer compose, and a sculptor sculpt anyway? What inspires them? 

In ancient Greece a Muse was that entity that was considered the source of the arts. It was generally understood that there were nine Muses, each with their own domain. If I were to truly follow this mythology then I would rely on any number of them. Euterpe was the Muse for Music, Song and Lyric Poetry. So for the poems that I have written she would’ve been my Muse. Erato was the Muse for Love poetry so there are times I would reach out to her. Thalia, the Muse for Comedy, would also occasionally be consulted. But the Muse I would have spent the most time with would’ve been Melpomene. She was the Muse of tragedy.

In today’s terms I would say that for the longest time my Muse was a lady named Grief. She walked with me everywhere. She slept beside me and scripted my dreams. She was there waiting for me with a big cup of sorrow in the mornings. And there were times I drank deeply. But this Muse has taken a back seat of late. She has been replaced by a Muse that has caused me to reach out in other manners. Sure, I continue to write, but now I write personal notes. This Muse, Love, has shown me other ways to express myself. And, as she continues to work her way into my heart and fill up the cracks, crevices, and ravines, I find that I can write again but with words that bring tears of a different flavor. Tears of love and tears of joy are so much sweeter than tears of grief and bitterness. And while the tears of grief may still occasionally come, the overwhelming aroma of the tears of love and joy soon bring sweetness back to my life.

So forgive me for not being as faithful to my blog as I had thought that I would be. I’m busy being faithful to someone else.

How do those tears taste?

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth...

"You'll know when it's time." No. No I won't. I'll know when it's not time, but only because I thought it was time and found out it wasn't. 

Some well meaning people have told me countless times that I would know when it is time. And maybe I will eventually. But what I am finding out is that I am learning when it is not time. But just what exactly is it that I'm supposed to know it's time for? What if I feel it's time to get rid of some of the stuff that makes this house a home. The clothes, the trinkets, the jewelry, the make-up, the other objects that hold so many memories. What if I think I'm ready only to find out, after its all gone, that I wasn't ready after all? 

I was ready to take off the wedding band one day, and then later that day I rushed to put it back on. Eventually I managed to take it off my finger and move it to a chain around my neck. But I still find my thumb searching my ring finger for that thing that gives it it's name. I try to spin the ring on my finger only to be reminded that it is no longer there. I tap my hand on a table expecting the sound of the ring striking the hard surface only to hear a different sound. Different than I have heard in the last quarter of a century. 

I was ready to pass along some items to family and had more success there. Perhaps because I know my family values those things and I can see them whenever I want. I won't ask for those things back because they aren't really gone. Like the ring that once announced to the onlooker that I was taken, they are merely residing in a different location. 

What about other things in my life? I know when it comes to dating that I am not looking for a replacement for Wanda. For similar reasons, I didn't replace Beth with anything. As I've mentioned before, Beth and Wanda have already been replaced. Everywhere they once resided grief now fills that void. What I am looking for now is to replace the grief. However grief doesn't get replaced as easily as the thing that once held the space grief now occupies.

I've spent some time with a number of people in the last six months in an attempt to find something to replace the grief. The toughest part is recognizing my feelings for what they are. Am I developing feelings for a person or am I developing feelings for something to replace the grief? I've know too many people who, in an attempt to replace grief, have acted quickly. I know a few friends that have chosen wisely but I've also know people who regretted those choices. Don't you think they thought they knew it was time?

My friends know the grief that fills my heart. That grief that pours from my eyes in a cascade down my cheeks. It happens every day. Still. And they want so much for me to not hurt. And I can admit to myself that it would be nice to not hurt. And there have been several nights lately that I have not cried myself to sleep because I had a nice day or evening that left me focusing on the good. But replacing the grief with something long lasting is a bit more difficult. The last thing I want is to anchor myself to something or someone that I will (or more importantly, they will) regret a few months down the road. 

Do you remember losing your first tooth? The adult tooth came up and pushed the other out.  Eventually it was replaced by a larger, permanent tooth that eventually fit in with other teeth as you began to lose those. But until it did there was a noticeable gap. Especially if the front two teeth, those most prominent, are gone. You look at the grin of a six year-old missing his incisors and you can't help but have an emotional response. When it comes to losing baby teeth, that emotional response from that toothless grin usually results in a smile of your own. However, when you see me and recognize the gap in my smile, in my life, the emotion is not usually marked with a smile. And, until what is supposed to grow in that spot finally shows up, I guess we will all keep our smiles to ourselves. 

So today I am just going to admit that I probably won't know when it's time for whatever it is supposed to be time for. Instead I am just going to try to recognize when it isn't time. Sound confusing? You should see it from my side of things. But then again, I pray you never have to. 

If you're happy and you know it...

Most of the time, when you, my dear reader, come across one of my recent blog posts you begin to steel your heart. I've even been told by some of my friends that they have chosen to not read some of my posts because it makes them cry and exposes their own vulnerability. So maybe this post is for them. But I really believe that this is really targeting those who have been grieving their loss. This post comes from a speech I gave about a year after losing my daughter but it's still relevant today after losing my beloved. 

We all have something in common. You know what it is? It's how we treat a remote control when the batteries start to die. We begin by banging the remote on the arm of the chair, the palm of our hand, or the coffee table trying to get it to work a little better. Eventually it's just no use. You have to take the little battery cover off and spin the batteries to see if that works. Then you begin pushing the buttons a little harder. And when that doesn't work you use your best marksman's eye and really concentrate your aim while trying to "throw" the signal to the TV. The last thing you want to do is get up and go put new batteries in it. So, you leave the channel on the National Geographic documentary on the termite mounds in Australia. Eventually someone else will change the batteries for you. 

I know that, for a post about grief, that seems out of context. And, if you're reading this you may have been looking for comfort and not post on TV remote controls. But what I want you to focus on now is the battery. But let's look at the battery in a cell phone instead. 

When you first got your cell phone you could charge it and it would last you a good long time. The old flip phones, and even the old analog, heavy as a brick, phones would go for days before needing a new charge. But over time that full charge didn't last four days any more. In fact, after a couple of years you were lucky that the charge lasted all day. 

Our happiness is like that. We once knew what a full charge was like. It lasted a good long time. Then suddenly we find ourselves with a charge that doesn't last as long when it's full. But the charge is full. It's just that the full level isn't what it once was. Our bucket of joy can be full again, but the happiness doesn't stretch as far as it once did. But we can be happy. It's just a new level of happiness. 

But we can't be happy, can we? Isn't that an insult to our loved one? If we smile or, God forbid, laugh, won't people think we are over our loss? Well, based on my experience from seven years ago I can say that our loved one did not leave us so that we would be miserable. They want us to be happy just like they wanted us to be happy when they were at our side. We just feel guilty about having something or someone in our lives that could make us smile or laugh again. But it is what our loved ones want, isn't it?

Perhaps it's time to change our batteries. Perhaps it's time to realize that this new level of happiness is okay. Perhaps it is time to forgive ourselves for feeling happy or laughing and smiling. Perhaps it is time for us to thank our loved ones who left us for teaching us how to live, love, and laugh and for us to take that lesson and share it with others.