When the girls were little and we first moved into this house, lilies were planted with the shrubbery that surrounds the house.
Yellow. Pink. White. Purple. Orange.
Calla. Day. Easter. Tiger.
In spring 2018, I pulled them all up.
Years passed. Five years, to be exact. No lilies.
Until last year, 2023, when some of them reappeared at the end of May.
Just the purple ones.
Ella and I wondered…how? Is it a sign of something?
Among other things, lilies symbolize wonder and respect for things beyond the everyday world. Also sympathy, beauty, and rebirth.
Are they a message from one or all of the Dads we lost last year?
The lilies are back again. Just beginning to bloom, and just the purple ones.
Yesterday as I noticed, and snapped a couple photos, a dragonfly landed on me and then hovered around.
In some cultures, dragonflies are viewed as the actual soul or spirit of a loved one who has come back to see them. They are also symbols of spiritual awakening, rebirth, and immortality.
A comforting message. A big hug. A symbol of hope. Prayers answered.
Hurry up and wait is the current story of my life. Rush to get into the parent pickup line, then wait while teens saunter to cars filled with other rushing parents. Rush to the airport, then wait because the plane isn’t even there yet.
I generally make notes while I wait, and the tone of those messages is greatly impacted by the music choice I’ve made that day. Hollow Coves and worship music produce calm and thoughtful words, while The Beastie Boys might lead to firm or cynical words.
My notes usually go somewhere later – logged in a contact management system, pasted into a journal, or sent in an email. But occasionally I open my notes and find that my screen is full of oddball entries that had nowhere to go. They are just mini-rants from days I did not choose peace, or my crankypants notes.
Emus are supposedly docile. Except the females. They are the queens of crankypants.
1. My box of Raisinettes has never made it through the previews. Also, $5 for a box of Raisinettes is highway robbery, so I will continue to buy movie candy at Target and sneak it into the theater.
2. The time for living my best life is half over. I will waste none of it eating asparagus or honeydew, wearing a bra that’s uncomfortable, or drinking cheap wine.
3. When you’re young, bras can be cute or sexy. When you’re old, bras have a job to do.
4. Top 3 things that are not going to work for me: places without AC, anything starting after 8 pm, and people who don’t choose my girls or put my girls first.
5. In a presentation about growth optimization, I will spend a dumb amount of time thinking that I missed the opportunity to establish evenly distributed growth of menopause pounds.
6. Value propositions aren’t just important at work, when reviewing contracts and partnerships. We need to fully understand what we and others bring to the table. And then not waste time.
7 Pruning is a critical component of growth.
Your 15 minutes are up.
8. Grief photos don’t include makeup; those are called sadfishing photos.
9. If it takes alcohol for you to get up and dance, just don’t dance. It’s not good.
10. If someone who deals with criminals tells you “(person) has done some of the shadiest shit I’ve ever seen,” what level of shady even is that? It turns out there’s a name for it: white collar shady. Won’t the real shady please stand up?
Emus are one of the dumbest birds on the planet. I guess the message in that is time spent being a crankypants is when we’re at our dumbest.
We’ve celebrated all the birthdays and holidays without our Dads and Grandpas. Sometimes we stared at empty seats. Sometimes we took fancy dishes to the couch so a meal seemed nothing like it did before, in a layout where no one was missing. Sometimes we spoke their names. Sometimes we didn’t. Sometimes we cried and sometimes we couldn’t.
Grief is not just about physical separation, a loved one being in another location and not accessible to you. It’s also about what the people who are gone will miss in your life and what you will miss out on because of their absence. For little girls who always assume their Dad will walk them down the aisle one day, grief involves reimagining how big events might go. Grief is about accepting what is, and the loss of what might have been.
Part of why grief is different for each of us is that we process loss and change differently, but also that whoever we’re grieving was a dozen different people. They may or may not have been different with different people, but it’s more that each of us sees others through our own lens – the lens of who we are. Every single person who knows us might describe us differently based on how they encountered us, how we treated them, what they needed from us, what we needed from them. Some people would tell you I cry easily, others would say I’m cold and stay focused. They are both right. One person’s “what a great gal” is another’s “she was a real b word.”
Humans are complicated. Sometimes we hurt people, sometimes unintentionally and sometimes intentionally. Sometimes we love extravagantly. Sometimes we offer anger and sometimes we offer grace. We can all grieve the same person and yet grieve different people, because we grieve imperfect people.
Acknowledging that your loved one wasn’t perfect does not mean you love them any less. It isn’t something we need to feel badly about – it shows that we love with grace.
The easiest grieving, if there is such a thing, is by people of faith for other people of faith. We don’t miss them any less but we know with certainty where that person is, that they are happy, and that we will see them again. One of the toughest is a child for a parent. Children seemingly go through the same stages as adults, but the foundation and security adults have isn’t firmly established yet for young people.
Grief will not end now that the firsts are behind us. Perhaps it will actually get tougher because its timing is not as predictable or because forever settles in. While it seems like we’ve reached a mile marker of some sort, I’m not sure it really means or feels like anything.
What does feel right is that the end of the first year is also the end of winter, and the beginning of spring. One of the colors my Dad loved was green. In the springtime he’d say look at how green everything is! and point out that trees are the most green this time of year. Green is the color of life and rebirth. Of renewal and growth. It’s yellow and blue mixed, or the combination of warmth and hope with calm and strength and peace.
I’m not attached to it, and unlike other years I’ve not spent a lot of time thinking about it. It doesn’t feel right and I just don’t love it. In fact, whenever I hear or encounter it I move to focus on something else. Maybe I simply haven’t been ready for it.
Much of the last year has felt like a trip through the car wash, gear in neutral, with all sorts of things happening around me. But now I’m driving out, rolling down windows, tentatively driving into warm sunshine after a pressure wash.
I can focus on things that used to be painful, and I am no longer afraid to let my mind wander. So I found myself annoyed this week when I couldn’t get a song that I haven’t heard anytime recently out of my head: The Byrds singing Turn Turn Turn is just awful.
To everything, turn turn turn, there is a season, turn turn turn…turn it off! And for the first time I realized that to everything there is a season is a biblical thing and I went searching for it. And to my surprise, the word purpose is also there.
KJV Ecclesiastes 3 says “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.”
We have a purpose. Each of us. Figuring out our purpose can be a daunting thing, and I think a lot of us never do it. What’s equally important I’m starting to think, and perhaps not always as big to tackle, is looking for and seeing the purpose of events and seasons in our lives. What is our purpose in them? What is their purpose in us?
Proud VCU Momma!
There are visuals all around me marking the passing of seasons, and the passing of purposes. The bracelet around my gear shift tells the story of a college Mom now, after so many years highlighting childhood cancer awareness. The walls in the room over the garage tell the story of a toddler playroom then paint projects then pajama parties then PlayStation competitions – the seasons of childhood and the seasons of motherhood.
But now a new season is approaching, and with it a new purpose. Maybe it’s been there all along, and I’m just now approaching it. Or maybe it’s been pursuing me and I’ve been running from it.
My first lesson in purpose in this season is that I have to purposefully seek purpose. (And I’ve already lost the first quarter – yikes!) My second lesson is that it sometimes takes a new season to reveal the purpose of events or people or things in your past ones. For things to come together. To fulfill the promise in Romans 8 that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
One Dad’s Bible at another Dad’s desk.
Thankful for nudges, crappy songs, old bibles with new lessons, old desks made new and glorious, and old me made new.
Just typing the words makes me feel like I can’t take a deep breath. Like a brick is laying on my chest.
I hate that I didn’t talk to my Dad the day he died. I love that the last time we did talk he was focused on how he might get someone stubborn to believe in God and go to heaven.
He was a prayer warrior, a prankster, and a protector. He was tenderhearted and yet he was steel.
Sometimes I look at the girls and think he’d be so proud of them and how they’ve handled this year. And then I think he sees them and he knows.
Valentine flowers
I picture his smile when I see yellow flowers or smell honeysuckle.
I picture him holding his hands up in prayer every time we left the house as I watch Audrey walk to the bus stop each morning.
I picture his hand placed lightly on my back, encouraging me, each time I have something new or hard to do.
Perhaps because I was searching for them, this year was filled with signs he’s still close. Eagles hovering near the house. People named Paul. Finding long forgotten books.
I love opening up his old bibles and books and seeing his handwriting, his highlights, and his notes. I had a full circle moment last week that I know would have brought him such joy. It came via a text from Ella. She took one of my old bibles to school with her, and on a night when she was struggling she opened it to see a 25-year-old affirmation of mine: The healing power of God is working in me right now.
Brave, Anyway 