Grief

In Denial

I got an email from Nordstrom Rack this week. A classic promotion and the subject line read, “Which type is your dad?”

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A dead one – I thought to myself.

Oy

I wanted to send of a snarky reply but I didn’t.

Sometimes it’s easier to keep those little remarks to yourself. Advertisers are not often in the business of being sensitive to these kind of pain points.

Here we are. Another calendar year rolled by and I find myself clicking delete on promotions in my email, in the accounts I manage, and ignoring blatant ads on social media.

These Father’s Day triggers are everywhere.

After reading some of the pieces I published last year on the holiday I realized I’m at year number four, not three, of this holiday without him.

Four seems so much bigger than three.

You can ask the toddlers who have become bigger children in his absence.

I’m in Father’s Day denial. I was hoping to keep it at an arms distance.

But Nordstrom and Macy’s and Apple and even Starbucks are telling me I better prepare.

Sigh. Deeeeeeeeep sighs.

I’m missing him and breathing in his scent found in the hot popcorn popped fresh at the hardware store. I finger his sweatshirts hanging in my closet, next to my work blazers reminding me of how his fibers felt when brushed against him as I rushed out the door.

I’m in denial this year and so I turn my attention here. To the …

White walls painted fresh in a completed basement.

Slices of crisp dill pickle on dry crumbly bread.

Ham spread with mayo, no Minnesota butter to be found.

Small floating bubbles in spritzer.

Peas sprouting up in the garden.

Translucent squirts of lemon juice easing their way down into glasses full of cool water.

Coffee beans grinding.

Fitness instructors reminding me to tend to my back.

Encouragement from bosses.

Kisses on the cheek with an old friend. The ones who knew him too.

Red lipstick marks on coffee cups.

Baby Opal just one miraculous week old.

Maintained eye brows.

Dinners with grandmas and aunts and mother-in-laws.

Lottery tickets scratched clean.

These are the beautiful things this week is made of. And I’m focusing on them instead.

 

Rising Waters – You Can Help

I met Heather when I was 23. I sat next to her in a big leather booth drinking cocktails at a girls gathering we liked to call “Philoso-tini”.

We’d discuss life and the women older than me discussed their kids and careers and the mystery that is faith.

Heather looked right at me that night as I was lamenting about my next job decision and she said, “Honey, it’s just a job. You don’t have to take it so seriously.”

It’s taken me five years to realize she was right.

She lost her dad a year before me and while we weren’t close at the time, I watched her handle the complete suckage of cancer with grace and honesty. She met with me at high top tables and was one of the first people to nod along as I started practicing processing my grief.

Heather is funny and hopeful and optimistic and has a big heart. And over Memorial Day her childhood home was flooded in Oklahoma. Her parents and her family need some assistance as they navigate insurance, adjusters, travel in flooded areas, and getting basic supplies in an area destroyed by rising waters.

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Today, dear friends, I ask you to help my friend Heather and her family. They are hoping to raise $6,000 to cover the costs of the following things:

– mitigation costs (clean up, dumpsters, haul off, drying, air purifying, etc.)
– supplies (masks, boxes, gloves, etc.)
– assist with payment of insurance deductible
– cost of accommodations when couches and spare rooms are not available (insurance doesn’t pay a dime)
– help offset costs when people host
– food (no food storage available)
– fuel and travel costs (driving back and forth to the house from wherever sleep happened; helping a daughter get there to help)
– storage costs for items that are salvageable
– eventual rebuilding
*while we don’t know what the insurance claim will be classified as, regardless, nearly all furniture was lost. there isn’t a couch to sit on or a table to eat at. even while clean up is happening.
– a little bit of help with travel costs (daughters trying to rotate through to help – flights, rental cars, time away from jobs)

Please consider giving financially here.

 

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I’d also like to collect gift cards to support her family still in Colorado. She has two kiddos and a husband who also need to eat and be cared for while she is away. If you can donate a gift certificate to King Soopers, restaurants, Target, or Amazon to provide for the family while she is back in Oklahoma, please let me know by Wednesday, June 5th.

Here’s a chance folks. To reach out and give and serve someone I know who is very much deserving.

Learn more about Heather’s family story and how to donate by clicking here. Please spread the word.

Let’s rally in support and give big. One of my favorite beautiful things.

To believe this is possible.

Sixteen seasons. And the producers renewed for three more years.

“You still watch that crap?” people ask me.

Yes, yes I do.

“It’s not crap,” I say, sticking my tongue out in their general direction.

The wisdom and wonders found in the writing of Grey’s Anatomy have woven their sentences and story lines into my life, into my traumas, and into my recovery.

As the sixteenth season came to a close, Meredith encourages Jo through a dark time. Jo’s traumas are not mine. Not similar in any way.  But Meredith’s words touched a tender place in my heart.

Especially seconds 38 – 1:07.

 

“You’ve taken all this darkness and used it to help other people who are walking through the same,” says Meredith.

I hope so.

“You’ve turned the darkest experiences that life gave you and you turned it around and you turned it into light.”

Yes!

I’ve spent a few years soaking in my own grief process, writing things for strangers to read. I now seek an outside perspective, more tools to help me process, label and understand so I can continue transform my darkness.

This week I started therapy.

I tell you not to get your sympathy nor to get your pats on the shoulders. I tell you because this world is hard. I tell you because I’m not ashamed. I tell you because if I can do it, so too can you.

Being human is hard. Talking about our negative patterns, our dysfunctional relationships, our emotions, our traumas, our hopes, and our potential is hard. There are kind and compassionate professionals trained to help us with the scary process of facing ourselves. They are ready to welcome you onto the sofa when you are ready to walk in the door.

Today, I walked in the door. And I believe therapy will help me continue to turn my darkness into light.

To believe this transformation is possible, for me, and for you, and for all of us aching out there – what a beautiful thing.

Joy on Jumbotrons

I spent over eight hours at the ball park this weekend. Sitting in the stands as the sun beamed down on my shoulders, memories of ball games past flooded my brain. I’ve been going to the same stadium for over twenty years.

Each summer my family set aside one or two afternoons for a day in Denver.  If we got lucky, we ventured out for a night game. I sat in the squeaky green seats watching the sun set over the mountains and only occasionally track the score or notice the activity happening on the actual field.  I was often busy people watching. We’d buy ice cream and foam fingers and my brother would convince my dad for just one plastic container of nachos overflowing with gooey fake cheese.

Over the years, my tastes have matured. I’ve gone from asking for Dip-n-Dots and cool lemonades to cold beer and peanuts. My obsession with foot long hot dogs shrank and I now can stomach a mini-one (they still cost over five dollars) without too much pain.

Now, more than ever, I miss my dad in those squeaky seats next to me. We’ve started a tradition and go to a game as a family near his birthday. Our new memories mix with the absence of him and I come home fingering the stitches sewn on my healing heart. Red thread, white skin, circling over and over like a pitcher readying to throw the ball.

Despite my aging, his absence, our new stories, and my awareness of caloric consumption possible in one afternoon as a fan, some things about baseball games never change.

The concrete stairs and metal stands. The smell of onions and spill of mustard on my white t-shirt. The thwack of a ball hitting a bat. The announcers voices, deep and booming. Fountains launching foamy water into the air after a home run. The joy found on the jumbotron.

Spectators of all ages light up when they find themselves on the gigantic screen at the back of the field. Older women with expensive blow-outs nod their heads along to the music. Dads holding babies start dancing and flail their offsprings chubby legs to the beat. Young boys wave their hats. Old men raise their beers to the air and slug their buddy or son sitting next to them. Young women in too-short of shorts flick their hair, kiss their partners, or blush and wave.

Spectators caught on screen may pretend to be embarrassed. Really, they’re delighted. They’ve got their phones out to capture the moment. They tag a friend.

If you’re feeling down, think of all the ball parks all across the country and all the baseball games happening at any given time. Then think about all the people who will be highlighted on those mega-huge screens and all the joy those appearances will create.

Hold that positive energy  in your palms. Capture their smiles.

Tuck that beautiful delight into your heart pocket and beam.

It’s not all bad. Think of all the joy found on jumbotrons. It’s a beautiful thing.

 

 

 

 

Seriously, I knew this was going to happen.

I added a 4-pack of marigolds to my growing selection of plants in the cart on Saturday. The orange blooms are supposed to help with pests and pollinators and look pretty in my square of dirt. We came home and dug holes for tomato starts and zucchini and cucumbers co-workers previously grew with care. Out poked the green shoots and leaves that will transform energy into happiness later this year.

It was risky, putting those plants in the ground. I knew the forecast was calling for rain and rain in May often turns to snow in May and still I was stubborn. Full of hope for my little seeds had sprouted and I wanted to get them warm and cozy in their dirty bed.

We put in the flowers too.

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And just like the weather said, it started raining. I chickened out and brought my peppers and tomato stalks inside. Now my bathroom floor is full of pots waiting once again in the dark. We slept and it poured.

And tonight, just as they said, the rain is turning to snow. Damn. We got out the trash bags and pots and buckets, covering my little guys to attempt to keep out the cold. I could see my marigolds trembling, their little petals looking up saying “Seriously, I knew this was going to happen.” And I whispered “Good night, you’ll do great. Try to stay warm.” 

And I came inside.

Also happening in my life is the slow demise of my iPhone Six. Here comes a first world rant as I know my privileged problems are small in the grand scheme of things.

For months my phone hasn’t updated. No storage. Countless problems with the operating system. First went the feature of mobile deposits. Then no room for Spotify. Which is more important – King Soopers coupons or Starbucks. Trivial questions and simple choices, yes, and still very obnoxious. I paid for more storage – still no luck. Deleted photos. Archived emails. Desperately asked the kind folks at Verizon for help.

“It’s never going to update,” said the nice sales lady “There’s just no more space on your phone.”

I looked up at her, shaking like those marigolds, thinking “Seriously, I knew this was going to happen.”

The phone is only five years old! Technology be damned, if Apple wanted to be so innovative and the world is going to crap, shouldn’t we be able to sustainably use our very expensive devices until the end of time?

Nope. Not that innovative.

So after the research and the Youtube reviews, I found myself once again standing at the Verizon counter with a pretty package and an expensive new computing device to use for my texts and my photos, and the occasional phone call. The world’s information is at my fingertips and I needed to make sure I could have a head phone jack instead. Spoiled, yes.  I stood drawn in, addicted, and raddled looking for solutions to my technological deprivation. I made a choice and signed a contract.

As the same sales woman placed the new box in my hand, my heart started to drop.

“I knew this was going to happen,” I whispered to myself as I walked out of the store. My grief gremlin climbed out of my pocket and hopped into my hand. “Oh hello,” I murmured as her feathers started poking my hand.

This new phone will never receive a text from my dad. There will be no new photos of him and his phone number won’t live in my contacts.  I already lost his texts. But this device he will never even impact. No yahoo jokes. No butt dials. No bad connection calls.

A phone became a trigger and Apple’s planned obsolescence moved me further away from him.

There are lots of endings this week. Game of Thrones came to a close – I didn’t watch it but he did. So will Modern Family and The Big Bang Theory. Cultural movements that made up much of the last ten year’s pop culture just stopped. I didn’t expect them to last forever – I just didn’t expect it to hurt as much as it did when they were done.

Our good friends who we met just months after losing Dad are moving hours away. We said good-bye to them too.

Seriously, I knew this was going to happen.

Life moves on and things change. These changes are joyous and hard and even the best news and exciting devices can suck the breath right out of your lungs.

Like those little plants in my garden, being transplanted into new chapters of life can feel shocking and cold. It’s risky putting new roots in new places.

And yet, we have blankets, and buckets, and cups of tea to protect us. And I hope when the snow melts, beautiful orange petals and green leaves will keep turning their faces to the sun.

Shows end, we upgrade, they move, and we still we tuck ourselves in, saying with kindness to reflections in the mirror, “Good night, you’ll do great. Try to stay warm. The snow may melt tomorrow.”

That hope is a beautiful thing.

A Both Mindset

Easter. Resurrection weekend. It’s hard to absorb the magnificent power of Christ rising from the grave.

When people die, your people, my people, they are … well… dead.

And dead, my friends, is forever.

I went to Good Friday service this year because I’m finding comfort in the death part. I find comfort knowing Jesus doubted, just like you and me, and can tangibly connect to the excruciating circumstances present for those left behind on the hill that day standing in the dark shadows of the cross. I relate to the onlookers to suffering, those wiping their tears from a distance. I liked sitting in those creaky, auditorium-church seats and feeling connected with the very human problem of the chaos, confusion, and uncertainty coming from death.

I couldn’t go to Sunday service. Not this year. The resurrection – its very nuts and bolts – feel too far away and out of reach. Dead people stay dead right?

Wrong.

I guess.

I’ve been reading Rob Bell’s book What We Talk About When We Talk About God. His thoughts on human’s beautiful attempts to use of language, science, facts, faith and reasoning to grapple with the mysteries of an old story full of spiritual truth is really making me think. Perhaps, Rob suggests, the way we try to explain a living, vibrant, breathing, present God is a bit outdated.

“Mhmm”, I nodded along. “Mhmm”.

Rob walks readers through a series of six words and evokes critical thinking and a willingness to suspend the need to know. I got caught up in his “Both” chapter.

Perhaps both science and religion can co-exist. Perhaps God lives in both suffering and joy. Perhaps we can know all kinds of cool, hard scientific facts and still not quite know what happens when atoms merge and collide in a fancy research center in Switzerland … er is it France? CERN. Google it.

Enlightening. Expansive. And a little unclear. Right?

I went to yoga on Tuesday night. Before class began, my teacher shared about her trip to Tennessee. In her storytelling she lowered her head and said nine simple words.

“Yeah,” she said, “I just really needed to see my dad.”

And right there on the mat, my heart sank.

She’s in her late 30’s and still needs her dad. I do too. But my dad died.

And where does that leave me?

I put my hands up to prayer pose, took a deep breath, and honored the hole in my heart still working on sealing.

I wish, my friends and readers, I could step away from this grief stuff.

Every week I keep saying to myself, just focus on the good things, the beautiful, the light. Perhaps people are getting sick of tuning in to my pain.

And I can’t.

Rob Bell also shares in his book on page 110:

“The question then,
the art,
the task,
the search,
the challenge,
the invitation is for you and me to become more and more the kind of people who are aware of the divine presence, attuned to the ruach, present to the depths of each and every moment, seeing God in more and more people, places and events, each and every day.”

Exactly what I’m trying to do here.

So yes, I’m sad. And I’m noticing. I’m doing both.

 

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Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash

I see divine in the bowing sunflowers in a vase, in the red robins bouncing through my street, and the spray of freshly ground flour settling on my black countertops. Beauty in the questions and the words we use to grasp at answers. Beauty in intense emotion and in those willing to walk with me through, not out-of, this process.

Beauty in the lessons coming straight from my experience with pain, for God is creating a BOTH mindset in me.

 

In other news, I just launched my personal website. Check it out at www.katiehuey.com

Things We Try to Cover

The previous owners of our house loved color. A different one for each room.

When I got the phone call my dad died, I was working in my plum purple bedroom.

I passed tan stairs as I staggered down the stairs and leaned against mustard yellow basement walls to call my boss and spread the horrible news.

I kept working in my off-putting “home-office” for a few weeks more. I sat by myself, staring at the pillars, willing two contrasting colors to blend as my eyes glazed over with inability to concentrate.  Mustard yellow and sky blue will not blend. Their stark contrast refuses to budge and kept reminding me of the day he died.

And then I lost my job. And time kept moving.

I had to reclaim my bedroom and cover the purple with a lighter shade of wasabi green last summer.  The primary colors remained in the basement and I hated being down there.

I’ve been nagging about the walls in the basement for a few months. For some reason, after three years, I was ready to turn my attention to reclaiming my creative space. Dylan and my in-laws helped me rip down, paint, and repurpose the old cabinets. They hang on fresh drywall in our built-out laundry room.  I’ve picked up a roller and Dylan cut in, covering spaces where ceiling and wall and floor and carpet meet.

We need four gallons of “Veil White” Behr paint to cover up the hideous mustard yellow and sky blue. One coat will not cut it. Two may be insufficient as well. Despite primer and luxuriously plush roller sponges, the old is still infiltrating the new.

As we apply the silky liquid, I keep thinking no matter what we do, that gnarly yellow will still be there, underneath our applications of white.

With each arm extension and application of the brush I am not erasing the grief nor the trauma created as shock moved through my back and into the radiant walls.  The yellow remains under fresh layers, a muted witness to where I once stood, shaken and weeping. I cried as I rolled blue to white, wishing Dad was here to remind me to add more paint to my roller. More tears came for the beautiful truth that I’m capable of transforming this pain. Whispering to myself and my experience, ‘Take that – this grief need not be the top layer forever.’

As I painted, our garden sat ready and waiting for love and attention. Six months ago we filled our little plot with all kinds of leaves. We dragged in detritus and waited – hoping the simple act of covering would encourage nature to do its thing, turning the leaves into something useful.

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This morning, Dylan threw four bags of soil on top of the crunchy pile and set about to mix and mulch two forms of earth together. Our rototiller machine failed to break up the mounds which had not, like we’d hoped, decomposed in time. Our attempts to cover failed. Too much matter remained.

I got out the shovel and he the rake, and we moved mound after mound of material into the green trash toter. The more we removed, the less resistance we faced and the fresh soil was able to mix with the old organic material. Rake, sweat, stomp, mash, repeat- all to prepare the pile for its next life.

Dylan did the math. We still need more cubic feet of soil to sufficiently cover the leaves and turn the mixture into something capable of growth.

We can’t cover our pain. It has to move and mix and honor the layers it added to our lives. We can, however, transform it.

We can use handcrafted brushes, and cushy rollers, and salty tears from our hearts or crumbling earth and warm, wooden rakes and heavy-handled shovels to do the lifting. The chemical components of what you started with still remain. Traces of previous layers compound adding thickness and texture to your heart.

And clean slates and fresh plots of earth come together, eager and waiting for what you will create next from your new form. What a beautiful thing.

 

 

 

Wooing

Shelby Forsythia sent me an email this week saying she shared a bonus feature with content from our podcast conversation back in December. Parts of our conversation now fill an “in the meantime” slot for Coming Back and when I clicked play in the email, the words caused my brain to pause.

She asked me what was beautiful on that day back in December. December! Wasn’t I staring at Christmas lights just yesterday? Three months ago it was dark and cold and we were wrapping up one year in anticipation of the next. I was trying to live and plan ahead while hoping to cut off the pulsing blood supply to my grief wound. March was looming and with it came the promise of big birthdays and hard anniversaries.

Taking action, I thought, could help me resist the need to stay burrowed under dirt and hurt.

Ruth Chou Simons, painter of beautiful words and the owner of GraceLaced, said earlier this week on her Instagram,

“I won’t regale you with all the reasons and circumstances, but this has been a long winter for me. You, too? 

But suddenly, branches are brimming with flowering buds and green shoots break through the cold, hard earth. Turns out, Spring arrived while I was busy thinking I’d never make it through the winter.

In reality, despite the way it feels to our feeble minds, God has not been hibernating or taking time off in our winter season …

While we’re wondering if He’s still at work in the circumstances that feel so impossible, He has been holding all things together for the unfurling of His plan.

Friend: what if your winter is His wooing?”

Wooing.

A gentle pursuit rather than a braggy ‘check out what I can do for you.’ I’m imagining a God whose wooing persists through desperation. Who woos while accepting angry blows to the chest from my flailing fists.  The wooing from a loving spirit invites rest, waiting, and hope. Wooing requires trust, intimacy, and vulnerability. And wooing requires a willing recipient of all that attention.

I’ve been praying while doubting the wooing for quite some time. Asking and failing to trust all the same.

March submerged me in a pile of small grief bubbles, triggers popping like soap suds as days rolled off the calendar, moving us closer to the three year anniversary. I noticed today, though, my gosh, the days have suddenly passed.

So much has shifted since December and that interview.

When I stop to listen and sit at the feet of God’s mountains, his foothills, his rustling bare trees I see all that God has done for me and my family in our dark winter season. I’ve been angry and weeping and moving and still he kept saying, “I’m here.”

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It’s light out longer now. The sun dances through my kitchen window long passed 7 pm. The things we had been praying for for two years just burst themselves beautifully into our lives like brave tulips poking their little heads out of hibernation and into our garden plot. The same patch of dry dirt that has been waiting. The place where we plan to cultivate beautiful things in this new season ahead.

Wooing.

God’s still at it – whispering to please slow down – for it is time to till the dirt and the hurt into beautifully rich earth instead.

This morning

A friend from high school now leads a Lutheran congregation in Alaska. She posted this poem on her Facebook yesterday.

The pains of the world:
There are many.
The joys of the world:
There are a multitude.
To hold one while avoiding the other:
A human struggle of distraction.
Both are vital.
Give both the attention they request.
Your soul demands tending of both.

This is what I’ve been doing. Tending both.

Today, it has been three years since I was introduced to sorrow so deep. Three years since he died. Man, it still sucks typing those words.

In the last 365 days I’ve been flirting with joy, allowing it to tickle my toes and tempt my heart as we begin to believe that maybe, just maybe, we’ll get used to this pain.

This morning I will write a letter to my father and I may weep. I’ll head to work and have my people on speed dial should panic attacks decide to knock on my office door.

I’ll breath deeply and drink Pike’s Place coffee and mostly, this morning, I’ll remember. The sparkle in his eyes. The badly dancing hips, the sound of his laugh. The way he would get out of bed on Saturday mornings when I was in high school, making room for me to chill with my mom. I’ll remember waffles, his Einstein hair, plaid pajamas and encouraging texts and bad jokes from yahoo. I’ll remember how it got worse before it got better and how far we have come. And I’ll listen to this song by JJ Heller on repeat.

Thank you to all who have walked with us this far.

Dad, we miss you.

I see the tears sitting on your cheeks
I know you’re tired, fall now to sleep
Stop fighting so hard, it’s time to surrender
Raise your white flag and always remember
Your heart will feel lighter
Everything will be brighter
Find peace in knowing
That all will be well in the morning
In the morning
All will be well
All will be well in the morning
It’s been a long day, and you did your best
Let go of the past, it’s time now to rest
The weight of the world is getting too heavy
Give it to Jesus, His arms are steady
And your heart will feel lighter
Everything will be brighter
Find peace in knowing
That all will be well in the morning
In the morning
All will be well
All will be well in the morning
Close your lovely eyes
Can you feel the sunrise
Your heart will feel lighter
Everything will be brighter
Find peace in knowing
That all will be well
And your heart will feel lighter
Everything will be brighter
Find peace in knowing
That all will be well in the morning
In the morning
All will be well
All will be well in the morning
In the morning
All will be well
All will be well in the morning

 

Crying in Church

I’ve only heard God speak to me once before.

Seven words imprinted on my soul as I sat in a big stone church in Tacoma, Washington where I couldn’t stop crying. I was eighteen and had spent three months trying to adjust to my freshman year of college.

You are coming home for a reason, he whispered.

I didn’t know then what the heck that meant. I only knew I felt I had made a horrible choice in going to school so far away from home. I knew I wouldn’t stay and I hated the Pacific Northwest, and the rain wouldn’t stop, and I was ready for my mom to come and get me.

A few days later, I dropped out of the picturesque private school and my mom arrived with boxes to move me back across the country. I tried.

God told me I was coming home.

Years passed and I went to college an hour away from where I grew up. I spent time with my family and met a boy and as you know, the rest is history.

And then we lost him.

And things got murky.

And I began to wonder, ‘Is this the reason God was telling me about all those years ago?’

I like to think yes, yes that’s what God meant. I came home to bend and to grow, to meet my husband, to learn about family. Mostly, I wonder if he meant I came home to spend time with Dad.

This weekend I sat in a quirky auditorium and listened to denim-wearing hipsters with big beards play beautiful worship music on well-worn guitars. The building was much different than the stone church a few hundred miles north that I sat in years ago.

I joke I know worship songs created up until 2011, when my church-going became more sporadic. My friend told me she often doesn’t recognize the songs because the worship band writes the lyrics themselves. No wonder I didn’t recognize the tunes.

As they sang of God turning ashes into new life, and sorrow to joy, I felt it again.

God talking directly to me.

This I will do for you.

Despite my best attempts to swallow up emotion, tears started slowly rolling down my face. In a dark auditorium I wiped at my eyes and smeared my tears on my sleeves, turning my chin down so people I just met wouldn’t see.

I’m having trouble believing transformation is possible.  I want this whisper to be true.  The sorrow we carry will morph, lift and change, and the ashes we’ve spread will turn to joy.

I’m not sure I believe him, but I heard God again. Whispering loudly to me.

I was crying in church. What a beautiful thing.