The early months of grief were tender, they were soft, they were bent toward holding and being held and survival. 

Then the numbness came. 

I didn’t want to feel any of it anymore. I wanted to turn it all off.  So I turned to the numbing agents that work best for me:  Work, activity, entertainment, loud volume. 

They turned off, for a season, the pain in me. 

But as it usually goes, grief came for me. She started sneaking up in my sleep and in my dreams and in every still moment I had. I pushed her away to the best of my ability. I didn’t think I had the strength to feel any more pain, I didn’t think I could measure up anymore to all that had happened. 

I pushed it down as fervently and as far as I could… but as it usually goes, she still found a way through. 

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Since my mom passed, it’s been my ritual to watch the sun rise at least once a month. I go up to the Overlook on 86 where we celebrated her life at the same time of day, and I wait in the darkness, like I did on that November morning, for hope to rise.

I look for hope in the sunrise and I look for them: for my mom & dad and some promise of ongoing connection. There’s something about the ritual of it that feels soothing and sacred and inviting.

So, on the eve of my 37th birthday this year, I went again… and I searched the horizon and I wrote.

I share that writing now in case there are others with scarred hearts and stubborn hope who also need an extra outlet this time of year <3

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One thing is certain, as I prepare to pull out the special tableware and plan the perfect menu: Thanksgiving is nothing without a gathering.

I guess I should say that more carefully - I’m sensitive toward those that might feel lonely this holiday season - I get that too. This is my second Thanksgiving as an adult orphan, and I feel a little lost with still newly empty seats at the table. Can Thanksgiving carry forward with empty seats?!

My feels say maybe not. Maybe I cannot do Thanksgiving this year. Maybe it’s not worth mustering for. Maybe it's not worth the menu planning and the table setting and the making room.

Ah, making room… my heart skips a beat and I catch my breath:

I know how to make room.

For I have been made room for.

Not once, not twice, but hundreds of times...

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Grief is laissez-faire in our culture. It’s dismissive, it’s neat, it’s fast, it’s compartmentalized. 

It’s not honest. 

The honest truth of grief is that it is gut-wrenching. It is enraging. It is wild and unruly and superman-strong and it will not submit to our timetables and our niceties and the bows that we try to wrap it up in. 

Honest grief won’t let go of you, no matter how much you will yourself to let go of it. Honest grief takes you to a funeral that is not just of your loved one; it is for your very self.

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I think the wisdom of aging is that you realize what truly matters. Cliche perhaps, but it’s true - each year I learn a little more, the realization settles a little bit deeper into my bones - that investments in people are the only thing that changes people. Resources and policies and systems - these are great (and I’ve not given in on the careful re-design, advocacy, & leveraging of them)… but grassroots investments into people, well, these are the things that echo into eternity.

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I’ve written here and there, over the past several years, about embracing a theology of place and plumbing deep into the richness and redemption of God in concrete time and place. If you’ve heard me out and about, you’ve likely heard the phrase “In the trenches.” It has been my goal and desire to know God “in the trenches” — in the pockets and relationships and caverns of my own community. I have longed to follow Jesus in incarnation — to live a deep and wide life, right here - in real-time, in this place (Jamestown, NY), and with these people.

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Here’s what I know to be true: 

Joy and grief can co-exist. 

No, not just that. 

Let me try it again… 

Joy and grief necessarily co-exist. 

They are two sides of the same coin, just as love and grief are inextricably linked. 

When I am in the deepest of pits, joy is my great rescuer. 

When I am heavy with sorrow and overwhelmed by the sting of loss, joy is my hallelujah. 

When I am flat on my face, laughter is my best medicine. 

And I’m here to say from the pit this morning :: if you find yourself there too :: joy is not out of the equation for you. The two (seemingly polar opposites) do not stand against one another. Truly, they stand together, in a mutual-support kind of lean-to lattice for your soul. 

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As follow-up to a post on social media, here is the promised grief timeline that Hospice so graciously shared with me (in their words, not my own). I’m hoping that re-sharing this tool helps us all in grace for ourselves and for others.

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There was a poem on the wall of the women’s health office I’ve attended since a teen. Annual visits, pregnancy visits, postpartum visits… and all the things in-between…every time that I’ve waited in that room on that hard little table, in a flimsy gown, restless for the doctor to come in… I’ve read and reread and reread again that poem. 

When I was younger, it seemed a little cliche. In my pregnancies, I’ll admit it felt irrelevant. But as I grew older (and perhaps a little wiser), I warmed up to it. And every time I went into the room again, I’d smile at the familiarity of the old poem about a women aging and embracing herself — and something about it welcomed me - all of me. 

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