Family Update #16 – Loss, Pain, Darkness, Remembering…(video below)
Have you ever tried to describe darkness? Sure, it’s the absence of light, but what does darkness look like? It’s like closing your eyes and trying to describe the back of your eye lids. Blackness everywhere…darker shadows seem to emerge before slowly fading into their surrounding. How do you identify detail in darkness? Can you? Why do I try? My eyes start to hurt as I consciously navigate my closed eyes. The only fruit to my effort is a headache. Darkness remains dark and I still can’t see but everything inside of me wants to. Open my eyes, right? What if I can’t? And this is my reality. Eyes shut yet wide awake. I don’t know what to say…I don’t know what to do…and I can’t seem to motivate myself to find a way to peel these eyes open again. It’s dark…it’s been dark.
(click below to see a video honoring the Lord and remembering dad)
I hate admitting this depression, but I can’t escape it. I wish I could tell you how my mom is doing, and how my brother is doing, but I can’t. I really don’t know. They seem to be doing ok, but I haven’t taken time to really ask them. I haven’t taken time to do much of anything this past week except try to escape. The further and further away I am from reality the harder and harder it becomes to try and take a step back. I miss my dad. That loss is growing…but what’s even more painful right now is the loss of the life I knew. Dad passed away on March 8th, and for the next week and a half, we went on a pretty crazy ride through emotions, activity, planning, people…it didn’t end. We sat at the house with friends until late into the night leading up to dad’s death and even after…we were up well past midnight the night dad went Home. Mom and I went into overdrive trying to get details in place for dad’s memorial service, friends came in town, people stopped by with food and to see how we were doing, Hospice was here to take away the medical equipment that had become part of our home, flowers arrived, letters, emails, more friends came in town, plans for the service, the service, another roller coaster ride of emotions, the reception at our house, more people, more phone calls, more flowers, a weekend of incredible encouragement and a flood of support, the weekend winds down…people leave…Sunday night…sleep…the weekend ends. Monday morning…silence…nothing. The weekend is over…the activity is over. Mom is gone…she’s at work. I’m sitting in an empty house blind sided by the eerie quiet of the new normal. I wasn’t ready…could I have been ready? I don’t know. I knew that life would start to go back to “normal.” I just wasn’t ready for what hit…and how quickly it hit. Loss becomes real.
I tried to get up and work, but all I could think about was how futile and vain my efforts felt. What was I doing? I didn’t take time to sit and think through my thoughts…I just started to run from any sense of reality. Movies, sleep, anything that could take me out of the reality that life is completely different and the purpose I had for the past three months is now over. I didn’t, and to be honest, still don’t even want to talk about it. I’m not writing this looking back on this time…I’m writing this in the middle of it. My eyes still hurt trying to focus on the darkness in front of me. It’s not fun to write about these feelings…and I feel bad because mom and DR have allowed me to speak on their behalf during these updates and I really have no idea what to say for them…this really isn’t about us…it’s about me, and I find myself locked in this introspective and self absorbed world…wildly more so than usual.
We have a lot of work to do around the house. Mom and I are going to try and spend some time today making a list of what we need to get done over the next several weeks. We have already started to get rid of some of dad’s stuff but there is so much more to go through. We are just trying to organize the settling dust from the last month. I am shocked at how much of life had been put on hold. The questions that loom on the horizon inch closer and closer…what is mom going to do with the house? Is she going to move? Where will she move? When do I go back to Atlanta? Do I go back to Atlanta? What do I do next? I think that’s where I get overwhelmed. I can’t separate answering the question, “do we throw this away,” with “what is next for me in life?” This is a clear crossroads for me…for us…and questions dominate the scene. For some reason I feel like if I start to answer one question I have to answer them all. So, I won’t answer any and avoid everything.
It’s strange. I sleep more and grow more tired. That doesn’t make sense…but nothing of life right now does. I hate that I can’t break out of this funk, but the pressure to find a way out only ads to the frustration. I see the unhealthy threads in my thoughts of escape and wish I they weren’t real, but they are. I hate admitting them. It’s ironic how depressing it is to admit depression.
These updates began back on November 3rd as a means of asking for prayer over dad and our family. I never thought I would have written 15 long updates that seem to keep getting longer and longer…but dad is Home, and we are trying to move forward…as are you. You are so special…you are. But I just don’t want to keep filling up your inbox with long winded emails that I know can be draining and weighty. I guess I just don’t want to take for granted how much you have already given. You continue to pray and give on levels and in ways that grow more and more amazing. Thank you, thank you, and thank you. For those of you that came to the memorial service, I hope you know how much it meant to mom, DR, and me to share that time with you. For those of you that were praying for us and sharing in that celebration from somewhere else, please know how special you are as well.
I wish I would have written an update immediately following the service because I think it would have been much more fun to read than this. Regardless of how difficult this past week has been for me I will remember March 16th as a special time of remembering dad and celebrating the Lord. Looking back at the service I really believe it was a special time with the Lord. Eric did a fantastic job of sharing about who dad was, full of his quirky tendencies and his all out love for joking. Brent encouraged me with his words about dad and our family, and Scott Dyer put together a worship time with his team that opened the flood gates of tears. It was worship. I find myself wishing I would have spent more time sharing stories about dad and enjoying some of his quirky tendencies, but I felt like the most important part of dad’s life was how he finished…and more than that…how the Lord restored areas of his life that I thought were damned. As dad is now, enjoying the presence of God and the fullness of life as it was intended, I’m sure he would have wanted us to be joining him in praising God for the restorative work of the cross.
Two friends of mine, Reggie Goodin and Mack Kitchel, put together a short movie with pictures of dad as a way to remember him and celebrate the Lord. I still can’t watch it without crying…guys, this is a special gift, thank you. I wanted to share this with you all; I hope you catch a glimpse of the story God has been writing in our family over the last several years. These are images of restoration:
Please continue to pray for us as we navigate this unknown. I am reading a book right now called “A Grace Disguised” by Jerry Sittser, and I am reading words that are describing how I’m feeling at different moments. I am trying to learn how to let the darkness be dark. Please keep praying for mom. She seems to be doing ok, but I think she knows that it’s going to continue getting harder and harder. Right now she is very focused on some of the immediate “to-do’s.” Please pray that the Lord would allow for mom to really connect with women that would help her lean into the Lord. DR is back in New York and we have been playing phone tag since he left. We had some honest conversations after the memorial service, and I remain so thankful for his friendship and the ability to share life as it really is. Please pray that the Lord would comfort and guide his heart through the journey he is on.
I don’t know if this could get any longer so before I find something else to write about I will end this with a statement that grows more and more meaningful despite its simplicity, thank you. You help point me, and us, back to where life is found…in the Lord. Thanks for being an outlet for these thoughts to get out of my head. It helps.
trying to take one more step,
LV
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