A Journal of Healing

I am so glad that I had the fortitude and determination to keep a journal of the last 24 months, and even the 11 weeks before, when Allison was first diagnosed with lung cancer. Going back and reading some of those entries helps me to know that this journey of healing, while still a long way from completion, is taking steps for my own betterment and health. I still maintain that it would be easier to shrivel up and not live the life I have, the day at hand, and I cannot deny that sometimes I want to do just that. I want to drown out these "last" days that are upon us, I want to rest from the emotional fatigue and pain that has been caused this holiday season, thinking that she should still join our dinner table, sit and open gifts, call me with her new year's plans. I want to shrink and not go out or be seen, I want to recoil with just my memory and my comfort zone...but God, and Allison's spirit, will not allow it. I am thankful that we were left with the gift of life, seen now through new eyes that would never have known what we were destined to know.

So, I focus on the goodness of it all, as I recall the final days and moments. Even as I held her hand to my heart, and mine to hers, and held her all night long, and even as I knew she would leave us to meet her maker, with tears streaming in the most broken of hearts, I felt a joy for her, almost a euphoric, elated giddiness, that she would soon be released and free...and God had heard us so clearly and soon. I sensed it then, and I know it now, that Allison was on a threshold of some great adventure, that her real work was just about to begin, and she would never leave us in the true sense. I have learned that she lives on in my heart and can never truly be defined as gone. No, she is not here in the physical sense, but I have come to know her presence is more profound than ever....that is what gets me from one moment to the other.

She did not necessarily die a beautiful death. Some might think so because of her spirit and nature and sweetness and beauty and faith. But she suffered, God only knows how much, and it was not easy. She didn't just fade into eternal, blissful sleep without a fight. And those images are the ones that break my heart and cause the onset of never ending tears...and those images are the ones that only her close family captured...and those images are the ones that wake me in the middle of the night. Replacing those images with the true beauty of God entering her soul and taking her with Him is the key to healing and hope, knowing there is such a loving Lord who will walk with us in all ways, in all days, if we just ask. Replacing those images with the beauty of His love and the fact that she, now, has no recollection of pain or suffering, brings me the peace that passes all understanding. But I cannot deny it takes work to stay focused and work through grief. It doesn't come naturally or on its own. It is a full time job and one that takes incredible faith and love and patience. My suffering cannot compare to hers, but it does exist, and I will look to the promises God makes as I travel this spiral of grief, while learning to live in a new way.

Reading some of my past entries, I have come to see that I am indeed finding my way, not like anyone else, not like Joe, not like Jennifer, but each of us our own way, held together with the love of God and each other. There is light and life in each new day. I will always remember these final days, and they will most likely bring on sweet sorrow, and many other mixed feelings. But the gift of all was that God chose a special moment in time, with her family all around her, for us to say good-bye, knowing we will have that reunion of our own, some day, in God's timing, not ours. Yes, sweet sorrow to let her go, but how sweet to know she is comfortable and calm and pain-free, and guiding us in new ways throughout each new day.