I am driving my husband’s Jeep today. One of my favorite things about driving the Jeep is the wave…each Jeep heading my way causes me to prepare. Hands on the wheel. Fingers ready. Glancing to see if the driver is looking…and Jeep wave!

Woohoo! Most of the time, the other drive waves, or at least does that hip-cool one-or-two-finger raised kind of wave.

I am in the club. 

Actually, a friend who has a coffee shop is having a Jeep rally today and I wish I could be there. Literally hundreds of folks showing up just because they all have Jeeps. To wave and acknowledge they are all in the club.

It got me thinking, though. What if we could recognize something in the folks we see through the day, what if we could see we are in a club of a different sort?

That weary looking woman you just passed on the interstate…she is coming back from visiting a parent in the nursing home. She is heartbroken because she can no longer care for them at home. The other person dealing with a diagnosis of cancer or some other illness. The parent who is dealing with a seriously sick child…what if you could see at a glance they had something in common with you. And you could give them a quick wave, a quick raise of your fingers to acknowledge you are in it too, that you understand.

Or maybe not even so dramatic. Maybe just that mom in the grocery line with the not-so-healthy food who is just worn out and could not come up with a meal plan for the night and is doing her best, but feeling overwhelmed. Yep, I think all of us moms could wave to her at some point.

Or maybe the young man who is about to enter college and wondering how he will measure up and if he is ready. Anyone waving to him? Or the young girl who is hoping she is pretty enough and smart enough. Yep, we can go on and on and on in the list, and there are countless ways we can relate.

Here’s the thing. We are all broken. We are all insecure. We are all overwhelmed and a bit fearful at times, just as we are all confident and joyful and filled with wonder at other times. We are all in this club of being human. How great would it be, though, if in that moment when things look a little fearsome if someone caught your eye and waved.

I see you. I relate. I’m overwhelmed too…but hang in there. There’s hope. 

Maybe it is a little bit of this….not just acting as though all is well. 

Allowing a little of our struggle to leak through sometimes. I’m reading Hannah Coulter from Wendell Berry right now and this caught me today, as she talked about people answering “fine” when they are asked how they are in a community walking through grief during the war…

“There is always some shame and fear in this, I think, shame for the terrible selfishness and loneliness of grief, and fear of the difference between your grief and anybody else’s. But this is a kind of courtesy too and a kind of honesty, an unwillingness to act as if loss and grief and suffering are extraordinary. And there is something else: an honoring of the solitude in which the grief you have to bear will have to be borne. Should you fall on your neighbor’s shoulder and weep in the midst of work?  Should you go to the store with tears on your face? No. You are fine. 

 (Here’s the key part…pay attention…)

“And yet the comfort somehow gets passed around: a few words that are never forgotten, a note in the mail, a look, a touch, a pat, a hug, a kind of waiting with, a kind of standing by, to the end. Once in a while we hear it sung out in a hymn, when every throat seems suddenly widened with love and a common longing:

In the sweet by and by,

We shall meet on that beautiful shore.”

Loss and grief and suffering are not extraordinary, but that does not mean they are an easy burden. We do often bear them in solitude, but how deep is the consolation when a hand of understanding is placed on your shoulder? I have had moments when the floodgates are open and tears come flowing just because someone asked a question.

There is so much burden around us these days. There is joy, and I like to focus more on the joy. I post lots of pictures of my kids smiling and laughing and enjoying life on Instagram…and it is not fake. We enjoy life. But there is burden and there is grief. And there are days that someone simply waving from a Jeep can make me feel more human and less alone.

Tomorrow most of us will fellowship somewhere with other believers. Look around. Catch someone’s eye. Wave. Remind them that they are not alone, that we are in this club of life together and that we all bear griefs and sufferings and burdens in solitude, but that comfort can get passed around. We don’t even have to know the details.  Maybe when we are a little more honest that the burdens are there, we can sing with a little more longing for the day all the burdens will be lifted. 

I haven’t written in a very long time.

 

Birthday posts, yes. Delighting in the growth month by month and year by year of the kids, the somehow slow and yet lightning-fast passing of time around here. Marking their imprint on our lives. I love writing those posts.

 

I do not write about politics, mostly because there are so many folks who are filling that space and I think that conversation happens better over a cup of coffee for me.

 

Mostly what I have written about in the articles here on this blog has been the journey with Mom. The experience of watching a loved one slip before our eyes from a vibrant and dynamic, brilliant human being to someone who no longer knows us and ultimately no longer knows anything really.  That is not a fun documentation…and for the last few years it has been more of a pause than a documentation.

 

We have been on this journey now for almost ten years I would guess. In the beginning there were lots of questions from friends and lots to share. There were lots of changes.

 

“Does she remember you?”

 

“Does she know where she is?”

 

“Does she know your Dad?”

 

There were markers, things we could distinguish and know we still had some touch with mom. Now, those markers are gone. She sits in her chair lost in a world we simply can’t know and she has been there for a couple years. She has not known us for quite some time. I asked the kids the other day when they thought she last had known them and my 14 year old said he wasn’t sure she had ever known him.

 

That was hard to hear.

 

She has never known Maddie in a way that touched her…I remember pulling up when Maddie was three weeks old and going to hand her to Mom. Mom immediately handed her to Dad. She didn’t want to hold her, wanting instead to hold her notebook. That was a drastic change.

 

A marker, you could say.

 

She always, always loved babies. And especially her grandbabies. For her not to hold her grandbaby was a bit shocking. But she didn’t know her, and that notebook at that moment held her thoughts for her and was far more important. It was where she tried to hold on to reality. I can’t even imagine how important that notebook was.

 

So, now, the questions don’t come very often because the answer is the same. She hasn’t known me for years. There is not a question to ask about that any more. She can’t speak…she says words, but they don’t make any sense. So, no question for friends to ask there. The conversation becomes more stilted and the blog posts become a bit repetitive.

Maybe.

 
So, what is there to write about? 

 

Her eyes still twinkle when someone sits down. She still smiles. And she seems to enjoy dessert still. She hums sometimes and she seems to enjoy being outside. She responds sometimes to the conversations around her by perking up a bit. She seems to be aware.

 

She still draws people around her, even without being able to know them.

 

She is still here. 

 

In some way. Even though she cannot remember, she causes us to remember and she still is present in our family. She still is the matriarch and she still reminds us of all that she has been.

 

I was drawn back to this blog because I had just visited and been with Mom, but also because I’ve had probably seven conversations over the last month with people who are beginning this journey. Their parents are slipping.

 

And that is terrifying.

 

Let it be.

 

It should terrify us, and it should break our hearts and it should make us mourn. Let it. Weep. Find the space and the time and the ability to mourn in these early stages, in the middle stages, and in all the stages to mourn.

 

But hear this….it is a long journey. You cannot mourn the entire time. You will exhaust yourself. Find those moments to mourn, and then continue on.

 

Find things you can laugh about, because there will be plenty.

 

Like the time Mom hid all my bras while I was in the shower preparing for a lunch with a pastor. She was quite good at hiding things!!

 

Find things you can tell them, again and again and again and again. It will be frustrating that they ask the same question…but eventually they will not ask any more. Hang in there.

 

Find things that you can remember for them. Tell them stories and keep telling them. Love them well. Let them see you and hear you and feel you while they know even a hint of who you are. You are telling yourself those stories again and again, and that is worthwhile.

 

“We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.”  -Madeleine L’Engle

 

This is no easy journey. I guess that is the main thing I came back to these pages to say…to my friends who are on the start of the journey, and even friends well in to the experience of watching our parents slip away from us.

This is not easy.

It is piercingly painful.

There is a sadness that will settle upon you as you are aware of the brokenness of our world, right next to you.

Here is the hope, though:  there is grace in this, as there is grace in all of life. God will meet you in surprising ways and you will be more than you thought you could be. You will serve your parent or your spouse or your grandparent in ways you didn’t think you could. Those of us experiencing this from a distance…it is different. Maybe that is a post for another day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seven.

 

There are less glimpses of the toddling little girl who brought giggles to her brothers, and more glimpses of a young girl full of wit and enthusiasm. You are changing before our eyes.

 

 

You were the surprise we never knew we needed. God knew. He knew we needed a little more drama, a little more laughter. He knew we needed someone in the mix of the household who delights in pink and is able to switch between ninja moves and ballerina moves seamlessly.

 

 

God knew we needed on in the house who insists on snuggles and hugs. Insists. And one who hugs tightly and fiercely.

 

 

You, my dear, have made us slow down at just the right moments. Slow down to hear your stories. Slow down to look at something that catches your eye. Slow down to read a book. Slow down to snuggle.

 

 

You have also taught us to delight more. To laugh with abandon and to embrace being ridiculously silly. You have brought light and laughter into what we thought was already a home filled with laughter and joy…you showed us how much more there could be.

 

 

You are growing up, though. Like I said…right before our eyes.

 

 

Indulge us, though, as we relish seven years littered with glitter and fairies, with made-up stories and snuggles. Indulge us as we hold on to the littlest of the family and are not too eager for her to grow beyond childhood.

 

 

Keep being silly and keeping your brothers guessing.

 

 

 

Keep feeling everything deeply. Cry when you need to. Shout when something makes you angry. Laugh ferociously when something delights you.

 

 

Skin your knees. Get muddy. Make some messes. We need you to keep us from being too uptight.

 

 

Happy Seventh, Birthday dear girl.

 

 

We are so thankful for you!!!

 

 

Let’s make this next year the best yet!!!!

 

17.

 

Seventeen.

 

Amazing how seventeen years can go by in the blink of an eye. You brought us into parenthood, and now we are on the brink of seeing you enter manhood. Thankful for this one more year of not-quite on your own, this one more year of you at home and still a kid.

You have lived in five different houses now (if we count that condo in Kentucky), and two countries.

You have played countless hours of hockey, only after a short stint with gymnastics. You have learned to love music and books, movies and the stars.

 

And food. That too.

You have learned to seek God and wrestle with who He is and what it means to follow Him.

 

 

Consistently you have been a calm presence in our life. There has always been a maturity and ease about you, and a humor that comes at just the right moment.

 

Now that you are more man than boy, we could not be more proud.

We have loved every minute of watching you grow, of coming to this point.

 

You are strong, so intelligent, mature and at ease with being you. What a great moment in your life. So much is open to you in the coming months, and we know it means greater independence for you and our time to step back and allow you the space to step out. We are still your biggest fans. We love watching the hockey, we love hearing about what inspires you. We love seeing you grow.

 

 

Every stage has been awesome. Can’t wait to see this next unfold…

I have to throw a Buechner quotation in, just for good measure:

“The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us.”

 

Enjoy this last year of “childhood”. We know you are going to do wonderful and good things in the coming year…there is so much yet to see and do in your life. We love you!

 

 

Happy 17!