Sundays and October

Combine Sundays and the month of October and many emotions charge and explode. Everyone has that inner sense in their soul when it is THAT time, when you don't need a calendar or a clock to know what took place then and what takes place now, in relation to loss and grief. We ALL have those anniversaries, those times when without being told, we just know what was happening then, compared to now. We may not want to go back to that time, we don't want to dwell, we want to live today, but that internal beat surges and sends messages that must be dealt with...and this year, I have tried faithfully to prepare, weeks in advance, praying that I can simply move through the times that are, and have been, painful, that I will find the simple blessings in the reminders that this is a very rough time, season, even in all its beauty, there is deep grief. I am brought back to times when I would bend over in the utmost pain and want to scream, cry, vomit, die. I am brought back to the disbelief that I would spend every day of October in a hospital with my mother in a coma, in total shock of her sudden illness, changing prayers from please save her to your will be done, dear Father. I am brought back to the sense that I believed no loss would ever compare, only to find myself and my family spending yet another October, 12 years later, in a hospital or doctor's offices nearly every day, tending to my courageous daughter who battled cancer as if it were just a cold. Thank you God for the innocence of youth. I am brought back to so many things as I comprehend that it takes time for the shock and impact of it all to subside and ease, but to never completely wear off.

I am reminded of something shared with me by a counselor/therapist I see from time to time. When speaking of after shock, and all that encompasses cancer, not to mention death, he reminded me in his gentle way to be patient and to look at it differently. He made the comparison that if I had been in an accident, or been struck by a car, or God forbid, cancer myself, I would perhaps accept the healing process much better. He shared that I may indeed understand the longevity of time it would take to heal the shattered bones and the rehabilitation it would take to restore and resume life. And he, in all his wisdom, helped me see that with grief there is no description, there is no timeframe, that healing comes as it is intended, and the peaks and valleys will arrive, to be lived and endured, and that in time, there will be restoration. I understand more fully now that there is nothing you can see about grief, it wears no bandages, no casts, no loss of hair as in cancer patients, no outward signs, only inward, for no one else to "see".

So, as the Sundays and October begin for me a new season, I tend to what needs attention. I do as I have tried to do from that first January, when Allison left this world for her eternal peace, to live my grief and walk through it. That will mean something different for me than Joe or Jen. Individually and together, we have begun to face the new season, knowing the senses are deep and painful, yet wonderous and freeing. It's complicated. No one can understand the complexities of it all until they walk the walk. No one can comprehend just how saddened we are, the leaves representing God's beauty, yet reminding us of a time when loss prevailed. But in that loss we must prevail, we will, and we shall. We will face the pain straight on, we will cry and grieve, we will bend to our knees in tears at how Allie should be here to help her sister move into an apartment, be with her friends on their first real vacation, be the one everyone could count on as she did in this life, shop with me, take Joe and me to the airport as she always did for the annual Florida trip, meet Lucie under different circumstances. But that is not meant to be, so we will take our memories, too, and we will remember the laughter, the girl and young woman she was before cancer, the family gatherings, the fun she had with aunts and uncles and grandparents, and we will be thankful for the blessing of God that He has reunited her with her grandmother and grandfather in His blessed Kingdom.

I will continue to pray for a season of grace, that we will move through the conscious and subconscious memories and times. That our pain may be replaced with the beauty of a daughter/sister's smile, of a mother who left in October, free from
her own pain, that we can find joy in the simple pleasures and that we have this day to laugh, cry, celebrate, mourn, whatever God deems necessary.