Summer Theme

This has been the summer for themes. I cannot help myself, I am a thematic person. It doesn't matter if I was hosting a birthday party for my girls or family members, decorating the girls' rooms, teaching a lesson to my students, hosting a staff meeting, giving gifts, or just hosting a family dinner, themes are part of who I am. I love them! I gravitate toward them, so it should have come as no surprise this summer, when my sister was planning a one year memorial celebration for her husband, Michael, that my mind went toward themed items to send, or bring, along. I never asked her what she was planning specifically, but lo and behold, we both had the same "theme" in mind, pink and green lanterns, white, pink and of course, green balloons, flamingo type decorations and plates, because, naturally, there was a story attached to them! So, pink and green it was...and a new theme came to light, No One Fights Alone. How appropriate to find these words on the choosehope.com website, so koozies were ordered, and on an on, we found our way to a pink and green summer.

Karen's picnic table had pinks and greens among the other colors, painted by a neighborhood, as she says. As friends and family gathered around, colors and designs emerged, words surfaced, providing love and inspiration. This table became the focal point of conversation. Prior to the memorial weekend, every store she went through, as did I back in St. Louis, held items of pink and green, green and pink, Allison and Michael, Michael and Allison. One with the other, as we have discovered, it should be...and what was really Michael's one year anniversary into heaven, became yet another honoring of this angel of ours that left us all too soon.

The honoring came on Allison Road. The story sweet and simple. And timely. Perhaps to be shared more in depth at another time, the gathering of loved ones, and scattering of ashes occurred on Allison Road. Matt spoke so beautifully of how Allison gave his father so much strength to persevere and fight. Joseph played the guitar with a quiet voice of "Blue Skies" on the bench as we filed by, one by one, with our own thoughts and memories. A family friend spoke so humorously and yet, seriously, of Michael and the year since he left us. All so beautiful, and all so much than one heart can almost hold. The details will come, but right now, our hearts are filled with pink and green, green and pink.

The koozies came to mind one day when I was perusing the Choose Hope website. The colors struck me at first, because lo and behold, that day, they were featured on the front in yes, pink and green. Then the words...NO ONE FIGHTS ALONE. Visions of "fighting" came to mind, fighting to live, to breathe, to walk, to talk, to attend, to BE, to sleep, to wake-up, to take the drugs, to endure the transplant, fighting to find faith and hope and love and GOD in all of this...our loved ones fought, but they didn't fight alone. We fought with them, each one of us, sister to sister, sons to father, wife to husband, mother to daughter, father to daughter, uncles and aunts to niece, and on and on. NO ONE FIGHTS ALONE. We hope, anyway. We know our loved ones didn't fight alone. We fought. We still fight. And we always will.

The summer theme will go on and on, I suspect. It will be pink and green for eternity. We will find our own way to bring the brightness of those beautiful colors to our existing world. We will remember the sunset we prayed so hard to receive, we will stand in awe at God's wonderment, knowing we received more than we ever hoped for...we asked for beauty and we got so much more. We received, in that indescribable sunset, the sweet assurance that all is well in their world, and we will hold onto that in ours. We will find the shades of pink and greens and we will know, we will just know, it's more than a theme. It is as they want us to be, happy in our pinks, and in our greens, in our sunrises and our sunsets. We will try. And we will not fight alone.

Sabbatical

We all need sabbaticals in life, from work, from daily living, from pressures and stress, but in loss, my sense is that they are needed even more. Sabbaticals come in many forms, and right away, after Allison passed away, and grief set in, I knew, that I must handle grief before it handled me. Never had I experienced anything of this intensity, from my inner core, to every part of my very existence, I only knew one thing, and that was, I was never to be the same again. I didn't know what it meant. All I could do, and still do, is to respond to where I am at that moment. Thus, the first sabbatical I took was from work. Questioned and even judged by many, it was what I knew had to be done. I asked God for guidance and I listened to the spirit within, and I took the many weeks needed to restore, reflect, regroup, rest, and prepare in the only way I knew how to go on living. That sabbatical served me well, on a personal level. It set the tone for what would become a lifetime of adjustments, a day by day existence without my child, a role that would not settle in, and if truth be known, still has not. The sabbatical did NOT set well with certain people, but as I have come to learn, it is much easier to believe what others SHOULD do, rather than try to understand what they choose to do.

This is not to say that I had not taken sabbaticals before. Certainly, we all do. In my case, they were often out of intense necessity, such as after my mother died and I struggled for three years, to the point where my health was failing. I took a short time away from the pressures of life, very short. Another time, when my father lived in our home, facing his own cancer battle, I took that time to tend to him, then to tend to ME, so that I could tend to my family. There was that oxygen mask theory again! But I took so little time. Guilt set in, all the people at work were holding the school together, I needed to be there. So, once again, the sabbatical was short lived, necessary to refuel and restore, but not enough to really gain anything from it. Even when I took the sabbaticals in forms of vacations or trips, BEFORE, I was always linked to the family issues, the job, the house, the bills, the pressures. Sabbaticals were short respites that served a purpose, but there was no way to really get away.

Now, I know so much more about them! And if I have anything to offer from this experience and earned wisdom, it is to encourage others to find their own way to REAL sabbaticals. To shut off the phones, the computers, the links to the stress of life. To lie down for 30 minutes with the inspirational music on and listen, really listen, and be present to the lyrics and instrumental melodies. To sit on the deck in the wee hours of the morning when all is quiet and God is near. To savor that sunrise or sunset, or to really listen to the laughter of their children, or just the children in the neighborhood. To listen to the sound of buses rolling in the morning and smile at the memories. To cling to a picture that brings beauty and joy and cry if you must, or have that moment of gratitude for the life that was lived. To simply BE. To savor quiet. To embrace the noise. To cuddle with the dog. To hold a baby. To pray with someone. To pray and give thanks. THESE are my sabbaticals now. I wish for my daughter, Jen, and my nephews, and the young men and women raising children that the merry go round of life, and the activities, and the pressure of the world we live in, could stop, that they would make it stop, for a short time, and take their own sabbatical. That in doing so, they won't have to wait until they cannot make it another step to seek help, that they won't have to become ill and continually torn before they slow down, that they won't find that emotional pain takes over and consumes them before they stop to take a bubble bath, or read a book of prayer, or of inspiration.

I suppose we have to learn about balance and life in our own time, that it comes to us when we are most ready and when God's nudge tells us to put ourselves first, and in doing so, we can be most helpful to others. We have the right to say NO, I'm stepping back, I'm closing the doors of life, and doing what is best for me. We have the privilege of communicating to others that this is not a good time for me, or that event is not healthy for me right now, or that I must take care of myself and my loved ones before I take you up on that opportunity. We must have the courage and the wherewithal to take our own sabbatical. Sure, work must be done. We have jobs to go to, bills to pay, and for someone retired it might be easy to say and think all of this. But it isn't about that, it's about the here and now. It's about learning to heed the signs when it is OUR time, no one else's. We have the control, I only wish I had used it much earlier, when a half hour out of my day seemed like it couldn't be done. But I found time to do all the other things, take care of the children, husband, cook, clean, study, teach, watch the neighbors children, attend all of the girls' activities, be a Girl Scout leader, Sunday School teacher, sister, daughter, friend, and social diva! What I don't think I did enough was give myself the sabbaticals needed, but now, thank you God, thank you Allison, thank you Michael, I have learned a hard lesson.

I need my sabbaticals and I don't mean in the form of trips or anything that costs money. In doing so, I find my balance, my center, my purpose, my strength, my core, and my way to keep living. I won't look back with any regret, but I will continue to spread the message within to those I love and hold dear, take that sabbatical, it will be well worth it.