I’m always glad when February ends and March begins because I foolishly like to think March = Spring. All hard feelings aside, February was actually a pretty good month though. The beginning of the month brought my favorite holiday: Groundhog’s Day. Life has been pretty busy (all good things of our choosing) so I actually kept forgetting it was coming up. The kids were so excited though and kindly reminded me to make plans. We celebrated by putting up our…
“The dead are never far from us. They’re in our hearts and on our minds and in the end all that separates us from them is a single breath, one final puff of air.” ― William Kent Krueger, Ordinary Grace Today marks one year since Glenna, Noel’s mom, died. The first year was both brutal and beautiful, (or brutiful as Glennon calls it) for our family. I’ve been reading over the posts I wrote in the months following her death…
I’m not one of those moms that counts down the days till school starts. I’ve mentioned it before, harped on it really, but I love summer and I’m always sad to see it end. This year I found myself dreading the start of school even more than usual. I was so vocal about it that Noel told me on multiple occasions, “You know, life isn’t over when school starts. We can still have fun.” As I contemplated my overwhelming feelings…
At the beginning of April, Noel and I dropped the kids off at school and went for what was supposed to be a quick trail run. As we ran, I got caught up in doing one of my favorite things with one of my favorite people and didn’t pay as much attention to my feet as I should have. About a mile in, I tripped and fell to the ground. I screamed out and Noel who was in the lead,…
I did a post over on our neglected food blog. Since I’m talking about grief and Glenna I thought I’d share it here too. Click here to check it out.
I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams…” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince Noel got three days of bereavement leave when his mom passed and we knew that we needed to use some of that time to decompress before heading back to regular life. Fortunately, Glenna’s funeral services were in close proximity to one of our favorite healing balms: red rock canyons. The day after…
“I’ve come to understand that there’s a good deal of value in the ritual accompanying death. It’s hard to say good- bye and almost impossible to accomplish this alone and ritual is the railing we hold to, all of us together, that keeps us upright and connected until the worst is past.” – William Kent Krueger, Ordinary Grace I’ll admit my attitudes on the celebrations surrounding death used to be a bit callous. When I talked about my wishes for my…
“Be kind because everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” – Ian MacLaren In the days leading up to Glenna’s transfer to inpatient hospice our kitchen sink backed up. The threads on the clean out in the basement were stripped making it impossible to open it and clear the pipe. This of course meant a trip to the home improvement store to acquire fun things like a reciprocating saw blade that can cut through cast iron. (For the record,…
“Death is the enemy. But the enemy has superior forces. Eventually, it wins. And in a war that you cannot win, you don’t want a general who fights to the point of total annihilation. You don’t want Custer. You want Robert E. Lee, someone who knows how to fight for territory that can be won and how to surrender it when it can’t, someone who understands that the damage is greatest if all you do is battle to the bitter…
“And whether you believe in miracles or not, I can guarantee that you will experience one. It may not be the miracle you’ve prayed for. God probably won’t undo what’s been done. The miracle is this: that you will rise in the morning and be able to see again the startling beauty of the day.” ― William Kent Krueger, Ordinary Grace The lung center clinic Glenna went to is world-renown. Her oncologist is involved in cutting edge research on lung cancer. He…