River of Tears

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

I jabbed the radio button letting the soulful Latin strains swell up and around me until the music became a magic carpet. I didn't understand a word of what I heard, but it didn't matter. I floated up and away till I was weightless. The relief was unexpected, welcome, and shocking.

More and more in the last few weeks, I sought this same refuge. At first, I was afraid to trust my magic carpet of escape. This time I sighed a ragged sigh of emerging trust and let myself be washed away.

I felt like a fern unwinding from the tight furl of infancy. I let myself float above the storm that consumed me. I tried to remember when I had not been holding on to rigging for dear life.

From the safety of my magic carpet, I looked below. I saw a river of tears, twenty-three years in the making, stretching out behind me. I could feel those tears pushing me along into a future I could not see. The current had been subtle and quiet until the storm reached a final frenzy. Then, the current erupted into an irresistible force.

May 2012

Looking back, I could not explain how the current was born or why it became strong enough to spur me to act in ways I never imagined. I had been without a gyroscope so many times but always found my way. This time was different. This time the storm had ripped away the mast, rigging, and motor of my life along with the gyroscope.

The words began to rain down around me like scud missiles of the soul. The boom was deafening and soul-shattering. I had endured before. This time the words were almost fatal. "You! This is your fault! You started this. Now you finish it!" It was a gentle introduction compared to what would follow.

When it was done, nothing was left. Not even a hint of who I had always believed myself to be. I folded inward in the days afterward trying to match the me I was with the me I had been dubbed. What

was true? What was false? How to know the difference among the voice that echoed in my head.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

When the current began to build into an irresistible force, I reached for the two-year-old bottle of pain pills. Three cracks in one leg had not hurt nearly as much as a broken soul. I swallowed one and eased away on another kind of magic carpet. A few nights later, one pill became two. Before too long, I found myself reaching for a third.

I held it in my palm and wondered how long before two would fail to numb the pain. How far was the leap from one to ten magic pills, and when would I stick the landing with both feet planted fully in the land of addiction? I dropped the pill back into the bottle and went cold turkey waiting for sleep that would not come.

I ventured out into public with decreasing frequency. I was sure that if what I had been told about me was true, I should cloister myself to protect me from public ridicule and disdain. If those epitaphs were false, I could not remain where I was and survive. I was dying a slow death of the soul. Of that fact, I was sure.

Slowly, slowly I began to fight may way back. I told myself I was up to the task. I could make peace with where I was and where I was headed. Success lay in the ability to quiet the noise in my soul. Drown out that angry voice, and I would survive.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

If only it had been that simple. The storm would wax and wane but never wear itself out. Looking back at my river of tears, I count the cost of each one. Was it worth it? Will I ever know?

I thought of Lot's wife, turned to salt because she disobeyed the angel's warning not to look back at the life she was fleeing. She was fleeing to safety in advance of God's hand of wrath, and yet what she was leaving was too familiar, maybe too comfortable, to believe flight to safety was necessary. She looked back and was frozen in time – a pillar of salt.

Oh, I am not her and yet I understand being frozen in time. I understand looking back and wondering 'what if' and 'what now'. A future I never dreamed of looms ahead. It is ominous. I close my eyes and let the music carry me away. I tell myself the one who created me knew this day was coming. I tell myself he saw twenty-three years of tears.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

What about you fraidy cat? Has life become a river of tears with a past that drives you into a foreboding future? You don't have to say a word. You are welcome here. Walk with me? Come back again. I'll be here.

Psalm 56: 8 (The Message)You’ve kept track of my every toss and turn through the sleepless nights, each tear entered in your ledger, each ache written in your book.

Legacy

January 2009

The words almost slipped out, but I managed to bite them back just in time. Dad and I were ambling up the driveway to the street where my brother's car sat idling. Son #2 had his hand on Dad's back just in case. We joked about his getting his aerobics for the day as he climbed the hill to the street.

When he left the hospital without her 16 months ago, his steps faltered and have never been the same. Now we have to be prepared for him to topple over one way or the other. I learned my lesson after he took a tumble out of our back door and did what the hip young kids call 'a face plant'. If I hadn't already had PTSD before that, I'd have it now for sure. His bones were unscathed; my heart was broken.

The December air was soft and sweet without a hint of the frigid stuff rumored to be headed this way. It was a perfect winter day. If only this was as bad as it will get. “Now that the leaves are all mostly off the trees, it's time for me to rake. I should be raking today to get ahead of the cold air coming.” And then, I almost said, “I'm so glad it's not 2 years ago....”

July 2010

My life didn't flash before my eyes. Her's did, and in that instant between thought and word, I was saved. 2 years ago, I couldn't rake leaves. So, I was on the cusp of sighing a deep sigh of relief that this year I could again indulge in my favorite hobby. Raking leaves. If you know me, you can testify. There's not one thing I like about fall and winter except for raking leaves. It's a sickness, but I try to pretend it's not.

I groaned inwardly knowing how close I had come to rubbing salt in his wounds. 2 years ago, I was dependent on the kindness of friends and family, but she was still here. That's how life is now. I'm often caught in that kind of conundrum. Life moves on and has taken us along without her. My relief and joy over a simple thing like raking leaves is tempered by the recurring, sudden realization that one is not as sweet without the other. She's gone. She's not coming back.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

Before the end came, the efforts to save her took her voice away. I know the last spoken words between us were about food because I was feeding her the last meal she would eat. She ate it 2 months before she died. You never really know how precious words are until they're gone. You never know when the words will stop. None the less, not one of us goes a day without taking them for granted. We do so with abandon and are brazen enough to spurn them if we think the situation calls for it. Ignorance is bliss until silence deafens.

I had known the end was coming and had measured time by holidays. She was like her mom. Stubborn. She lasted one more year and gave me time to cook on my own 2 feet again. I'm not one for saving stuff. You learn to live lean and mean when you grow up in the preacher's house when it belongs to the church and not the resident pastor. I knew, however, that the Christmas card of 2009 was a keepsake.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

I found it this week. In truth, I thought I had gathered it up and swept it away with the other flotsam and jetsam of life. I wouldn't let myself think about it too much to keep self-reproach at bay. And grief. I opened it wondering who it was from. My knees deposited me unceremoniously into the chair behind me as the grief sucked the wind out of my lungs.

Her handwriting had once been the stuff of a caligrapher's pen. The childish scrawl it had become revealed the coming storm. Her body was making its way to her appointed end. She was on her way to meet the good God in whom her trust had never wavered. Her painstaking effort included all the words of Philippians 4:6-7 and ended with:

“May the breaking season be over – breaking of bones, spirits, dreams...the whole 9 yards.”

Summer 2008

She is gone. Her prayers remain. Her older grandson combs thru her notebooks full of journals and treasures the scraps of paper with jotted notes he found pressed between the pages of her Bible. She is gone. Her legacy remains.

When the winds of time have carried you away like winter leaves in a storm, what legacy will live on?

Psalm 56:8 (New Living Translation)

You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.

Malachi 3:16 (NIV)

Then those who feared the LORD talked with each other, and the LORD listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the LORD and honored his name.