Happy Valentine's Day

To say that I had low expectations for Valentine's Day this year would be a massive understatement.  One year from the day I lost my husband and best friend, my goal was survival.  Anything better than a nervous breakdown or a day spent under the covers would be deemed a success.

It turned out to be a good day.

That had very little to do with our carefully designed strategy for the day.  We considered a lot of options, but the boys and I ultimately decided to spend the day with Mat's sister and her kids at an indoor wave pool that we visited with Mat a few years ago.  A change of routine and scenery would protect us from well-meaning but ill-timed wishes for a happy Valentine's Day and the possible onslaught of emotion that could follow.

Under no other circumstances would it be a good idea to drive almost three and a half hours to stay at an indoor wave pool for two hours, but that's what we did, and under our circumstances it was a fine idea.  The day was all about passing the time, spending the day together, and being in a place where we had happy memories of Mat, and we did. The kids got along, complaints about the car ride were minimal, and we had some great sushi for dinner.

Valentine's Day didn't start, though, until we got home at 8:30 p.m. to a porch almost literally fully of flowers.  Women in my congregation had stopped by throughout the day, leaving one or two or a dozen flowers in a container stationed there by my brilliant friend Ellen.  The container was overflowing.  I don't know how many people brought flowers, but I suspect that it was dozens.

The picture of my porch was taken sometime in the late afternoon -- by the time I got home, there was more.  In addition to the flowers there was some of our favorite chocolate milk, a batch of cookies, boxes of chocolate, notes, cards, a balloon, and dinner.

The boys were just as awestruck as I was.  Colin put himself in charge of the candy, and Ian took one look and ran to find some vases.  He helped me arrange the flowers into six big bouquets including a special one for his room with purple, pink, and yellow flowers.  Ian very proudly put his arrangement next to his picture of Mat on a display shelf.  Then he ran around the house finding places to put bouquets, and finding pictures of Mat to put next to them.

In the end there was an onslaught of emotion, but not the kind I designed the day to avoid.  It turns out the possibility that I imagined for myself and my boys for the day was not nearly as good as the one my friends had in mind.

It was a happy Valentine's Day indeed.

2:14 AM

I just glanced at the clock and read the time:  2:14.  Why does everything remind me of Valentine's Day?  The upcoming one-year anniversary of Mat's passing is weighing on me like a grand piano.  It's getting hard to breathe under this thing.

People in my bereavement support group agree that these days would be best taken off the calendar.

Official announcement:  There will be no February 14th this year.  The date will skip directly from the 13th to the 15th, and February will end on the 30th.  February is already such a flexible month, expanding and contracting as necessary -- why not just take advantage of that?

It seems easier -- although not easy -- to think about the fact that Mat has been gone for almost a year now than to live through this one day.

It's not as though February 14th will somehow remind me of his passing more than the empty space next to me in bed already does. And yet Mat's passing -- and the excruciating detail of the events of that day -- become more present with me every day as I approach the one-year mark.  I feel as though I am approaching a hot stove, and on the 14th I will put my hand directly on it.

The heart-shaped reminders in card displays and candy aisles are not helping.  Why is the whole world celebrating on the worst day ever?

It was then-nine-year-old Ian who said, "Why did Dad have to die on Valentine's Day, of all the days?"  Good question.

Valentine's Day is not much of a holiday -- it's a Hallmark holiday that plenty of people despise.  (Let's organize!  Down with Valentine's Day!) Heaven help the people whose loved ones died on a real holiday.  My heart hurts for them.

Now it's 2:41.  There are those numbers again.

We are coming up with a strategy for this dreaded day.  It's a bit loosely shaped right now, but it involves the boys skipping school to avoid Valentine's parties, and doing something that helps us feel connected with Mat.  I suggested handing out sugar cookies and sandwiches to homeless people near Mat's office.  He would like that, I think.  Ian liked that idea but thought we should also do something fun that Dad would have enjoyed, like going snowboarding.  Seven-year-old Colin suggested that he get presents.

Maybe we'll do all three.  I'm pretty sure we won't do my original idea, which was staying in bed with the covers over our heads.  I think we can do better than that.

I hope we can.

Lost and Found

I found the missing diamond from my wedding ring this morning.

You might remember from a previous post that I lost the diamond from my wedding ring in late August -- almost five months ago. The boys and I were on our way out of town for a camping trip when I looked down at my hand on the steering wheel and realized that my ring was ... empty. The white gold band was there, the four prongs that held (or were supposed to hold) the princess-cut diamond were there, but the diamond was gone.

I pulled the car over and started hyperventilating. Then I calmed down. I decided I didn't want to ruin our camping trip worrying about the diamond.

That was more easily said than done, but there were some encouraging developments. For instance, in my sister's dream the previous night, she lost her diamond and found it in the middle of her living room carpet. Surely this was a sign: I would find my diamond in the living room. Then during a stop on our way, I instructed Ian to search the fully packed car for the diamond. When I got back to the car, he was sitting peacefully in his seat, not looking. He reported that he had prayed about finding the diamond, and received a firm answer that it was not in the car.  Surely then God would tell me where it was.

Although that didn't stop me from searching the car later, from top to bottom, as well as all the clothes and camping equipment packed inside the car.

It wasn't there, so I got home from the camping trip fully expecting to find the diamond. I didn't. Then I scoured every carpet on my hands and knees, swept every floor, moved furniture, inspected kitchen and bathroom drains, and searched the garage, where I had been packing the car for the camping trip. Nothing.

So I quit looking. I decided that if God said I would be all right without my ring, then I would.

Then this morning I went for a walk. I was multi-tasking, of course, chatting with my friend Amy about the merits of Costco (Soviet-style grocery store or happy place? discuss amongst yourselves) on my cell phone. As I approached the house to enter through the garage at the end of the walk, I looked down and there it was.

My diamond was in the driveway for almost five months through a storm (August), snow (October), and a very thorough leaf-raking (November).

I started shouting at my friend on the phone: "AMY! I JUST FOUND MY DIAMOND!" Then I called my sister and shouted at her for a long time "YOU'LL NEVER GUESS WHAT JUST HAPPENED TO ME!" In her excitement, she shouted at her kids for a long time ("KIMBERLY FOUND HER DIAMOND IN THE DRIVEWAY!") until they asked her to stop. Then I called some of my other people, who I didn't shout at because they were at work and because I was getting hoarse.

Every time I think about my found diamond, I laugh and marvel at it. I think the sheer improbability of it qualifies this as a miracle. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Thanksgiving

I'm thankful for my kids, and for my friend Amy, who made this quilt for me out of some of Mat's shirts. As she said, "If Mat can't wrap his arms around you, at least you can wrap this quilt around yourself."

The day Amy came over to help me choose shirts to put in the quilt was an emotional day. It was hard to let the shirts go -- the crisp blue and white ones Mat wore to work, and especially the soft plaid ones he wore at home. I've been told that all of Mat's things will someday not seem like so much a part of him and become just things. That day hasn't come yet, so I cried with Amy over the shirts.

But now they're back, and someday when Mat's shirts become just shirts, this quilt will not be just a quilt. It will always be a memorial to my best friend Mat and to the kind of friendship that sees me through the day.

Eulogy

This is the eulogy I gave at my mother's funeral in August.

* * *

My mother was born in 1944 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where her father was finishing a Ph.D. in dairy science. Her family soon moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where she spent many of her growing-up years learning to ice skate, taking ballet and piano lessons, and navigating life as the second oldest of six children, four of them girls.

Her sisters agree that she was the best of the lot of them, and her sister Janell says she is the only one without a mean streak, although she then proceeded to tell me about the time that my mom and her sister Stephanie hid all the Christmas presents in the trunk of the car, so when everyone woke up, there were no presents under the tree. She must have had a little bit of a mean streak.

Her family moved to Tucson, Arizona, when she was 12, where she loved playing tennis, writing for and editing her high school newspaper, and working in student government. She was selected to attend a journalism convention in New York City, a trip that she talked about for the rest of her life. She had breakfast at Tiffany’s, rode the subway, saw the Rockettes at Radio City Hall and caught a Broadway show. She wrote in her personal history, “The show was honestly worth the ticket -- $8.35.”

My mom attended the University of Arizona and then Utah State University, where she graduated – with honors – with degrees in journalism and political science in 1966. She wrote a column for the school newspaper, the Utah Statesman, called “Smithereens,” was a student senator, and as a senior was named Woman of the Year.

After graduation, she spent a year working at the Salt Lake Tribune, where she was the first woman ever to work on the copy desk.

She was stunningly beautiful. She was beautiful the day she died, and if you’ve seen the pictures of her in her 20s, you’ll think you’ve discovered the next supermodel (if only she had ankles). As her sisters say, she was the complete package.

This is a letter of recommendation written for her when she applied for a job in the office of a member of the U.S. House of Representatives that says it all:

… she is highly qualified, would make you an excellent assistant. Each year we pick the outstanding journalism student from USU to serve on our staff as a summer intern. Sheryl was our pick this summer and she also won the Utah State Press Association journalism scholarship.

We all learned to love Sheryl during the three to four months she was with us. Her wit, grace and charm went well with her very capable work. An excellent writer and photographer, she dug into her job with a minimum of direction. …

[this is my favorite part]

She’s a pretty girl, too, and would add to your office decorations. Tall and statuesque, she has a dark complexion that is striking. We would have used her as our Peach Queen entry if she had lived in Box Elder County.

She was offered the job (are you surprised?).

She didn’t take the job, though. She had met my dad while a student at USU and they were married in 1967 in the LDS temple in Logan, Utah.

She spent the first years of her married life in Utah, where three of her children were born. We lived for brief periods in Virginia and then Anchorage, Alaska, where she made lasting friendships and wrote a guide book called Anchorage Altogether. We moved to Sherwood in 1975, where my youngest sister, her fourth child, was born. She continued to write, and her publications include Beautiful America books like The Mormons, guest columns in The Oregonian, and articles in The Ensign and the Exponent II.

My mom was a talented writer, but maybe she should have been a dentist. She would give us money if we would let her pull out our loose teeth. I knew she was not doing well a couple of weeks ago when I pointed out my six-year-old’s loose tooth to her, and she didn’t offer to pull it.

My mom was also a gifted teacher. Although she never taught full time, she used her talents almost constantly in her church service. She taught children’s classes, young women’s classes, women’s classes, and Sunday School classes, but I think she loved teaching the scriptures best. She taught a daily early morning scripture study class for teenagers for at least five years. My younger sister remembers spending evenings with mom at the dining room table, doing homework while my mom immersed herself in the scriptures, preparing for her seminary class the next day. She loved her students, and they loved her, going so far as to spend their weekend nights at my parents’ house to hang out. As Jeff, one of her favorite students, said, “She was one of us.”

Perhaps her greatest gift was her genuine interest in people. One of my friends wrote me a card this week saying, “I only met your mom a few times, but she made me feel like a friend.” She did that for everyone. My mom made fast friends wherever she went, because she genuinely cared about people, and was more interested in how they were doing than in how she was doing. My mom helped to carry the burdens of many people.

My mom was accomplished in many other ways as well, but her greatest accomplishments in her eyes were her children. She was devoted to us. She loved to laugh and have fun. We played spoons, Uno, fruit basket upset, Clue on her beloved Franklin Mint Clue board, and even had an occasional food fight, some of which she started. She liked to keep us on our toes, doing things like sneaking broccoli into our filled pancakes. She scheduled regular individual meetings with each of us, called “one on ones” where we talked about problems, set goals, and planned special individual outings.

She taught us to play the piano, to work, to stand up straight, and to say “may I” instead of “can I.” She taught us to make good choices and she wanted us to stay close to the Lord, but she loved us even when we didn’t. When we left home, we all had inflated egos because she told us we were each “the best in the world” at something (I was the best writer, SJ was the most creative).

Her job as a parent was not over when we left the house. My mom loved to visit her children, helping to take care of new babies, babysitting grandkids while we went on trips, and helping us do projects around our homes. Over the last several years, her heart’s desire was to help me and my family as my husband fought his battle with cancer. This is an email she wrote shortly after my husband Mat passed away earlier this year.

… I’ve spent a month in Boston in January-February, was with her [meaning me] when Mat died. It was the best and worst month of my life. My kids have all spent a week with her after the funeral, and I’ll be returning in two weeks. This is so very, very difficult to be a continent apart.

One of the greatest gifts I could have been given was to have my mom with me as my husband was dying, and I find it to be no small miracle that the symptoms of her own cancer did not surface until shortly after Mat’s funeral.

My mom was wonderful, but I didn’t always think she was perfect. I sometimes wished that she were more inclined to make big moves or really shake things up. She worked at Intel for at least 20 years as a contract analyst, and although she loved the people she worked with, it wasn’t the best use of her talents. She often talked about other things she would have liked to do more – she earned a teaching license so she could be a teacher – but in the end she never made the move. If you wanted to start a revolution, she was not your gal.

Instead of being loud, hers was a subtle kind of courage. She took the circumstances she was given, and over years of persistent effort, through thousands of small acts, she made them beautiful. At the end of her life, she had beautiful children (if I do say so myself), a beautiful marriage, a beautiful home, and many, many beautiful friendships. With more inclination to make big moves, she might have been the New York bureau chief for the Associated Press. Instead, she blessed the lives of hundreds and hundreds of people through regular, conscientious, enduring effort.

I’m glad she had that kind of courage. New York bureau chiefs can be replaced, but her legacy is forever.

Walden Pond

My friend Kristen invited me to swim across Walden Pond with a group of women the other day, so although the idea scared me a little, I went.

I was sure the water would be punishingly cold, and although I know how to swim, I have never particularly liked to swim, especially for exercise. I can run, I can ride a bike, I can row a boat, so why would I swim? But still, how hard could it be to swim a mile, from the beach to the other side of the pond and back?

Really, really hard.

I thought I knew how to swim, but it turns out I don't. Not really. Instead, I flopped around in the water, trying to synchronize my breathing with my strokes, getting water in my mouth, either trying to hold my breath for too long or taking breaths too often, causing me to start to hyperventilate and creating mini panic attacks. I tired easily and had to take breaks often, and ultimately, I didn't make it all the way across Walden Pond. I went the short way, taking the half mile version of the swim rather than the mile that most of the rest of the group did.

It was hard, but it was also wonderful. It was a warm fall day, the sky was beautiful, the water was clear and refreshing, and my friend swam next to me to encourage me and be on hand to save me from drowning if necessary. Occasionally I got my timing exactly right and felt like a real swimmer.

Like many things, my swim felt like a metaphor for my life. Although I am struggling and may not be able to go as far as I would like, the sky is beautiful, the water is not as cold as I thought it would be, and my friends are staying near me to encourage me and make sure I don't drown.

Kenmore HE2 Plus Front Load Washer

I'm trying to pack for a trip, and the washing machine, which contains every last piece of underwear I own (but one), is flashing an error code at me.

This summer has introduced some new twist every few days that feels like it should be the last straw ... until another straw is added. Of course the aftermath of Mat's passing and my mom's illness and then passing dominate the scene. But then there was the broken garage door, the broken dishwasher, the refrigerator that leaked into the basement and damaged the drywall, the broken car, the broken cell phone (not replaced yet, so I'm not getting your messages and texts), my six-year-old's broken arm, probably broken friendships because I have little time and energy to return calls and emails, and now the washing machine.

And the broken wedding ring. I realized Friday that the diamond had fallen out, and have spent hours scouring the house since then. On the plus side, the house is much cleaner than it's been in months.

I've been thinking about the poem "Invictus" for the last few days. Maybe that's a little dramatic, seeing as I'm not about to be executed, but it seems to help. When I first read it, I found it too depressing to be helpful. Now I find the optimism in it.


Invictus
William Ernest Henley

OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.


I could use your prayers to help me find the diamond for my wedding ring. I am not ready to quit wearing it, and the gaping hole where the diamond should be is painful. There's the symbolism of it, and also those prongs are sharp.

In the meantime, my unconquerable soul and I are going to try to fix the washing machine.