Invisible Storms
I stopped recognizing the world I woke up to on February 10th, 2020.
Travel a handful of weeks into the future and it is even more unrecognizable than it was before. In some capacity or another everyone now can understand what it feels like to open your eyes and not believe what is happening all around you. I felt like I was trapped in a bad dream before … but now in true Inception-style, the dream has gone several levels deeper and is even more disturbing than before. Our world is foreign, off-kilter and void of normal.
Oh Dad … you never would believe all of this even if I could somehow tell you. This is unprecedented and feels straight out of a movie. If only that was the case. The world you left is not the same one we are living in today. It is in shambles and so incredibly unsettled.
I just wish I could sit outside on the patio with you and talk like we used to.
You would be bundled up in your chair with your hood over your head and most likely throwing Maddie her disgusting tennis ball (she misses you lots by the way). Together we would shake our heads and wonder what the heck was going on. We would nervously laugh at the newfound value in toilet paper, hand sanitizer and bulk food. I would tell you how my salon had to lock its supplies up so people would stop pilfering them. Who steals toilet paper? In March 2020 … apparently many people. I would tell you how I am not allowed in my salon now until May and that means two months with no pay. I would tell you how I found the last gallon of milk at the store, so your daily glass of milk at dinner was safe - for now at least. Underneath it all, we would both silently wonder if you would make it through this pandemic alive.
I hear comments where the severity of the situation is downplayed and the importance of susceptible lives is minimized. I find it infuriating …
“It’s no big deal. At least it’s ONLY affecting the old, the sick, the compromised…”
To those voices I say, “Your ONLY would have been my dad. Your ONLY would have been my disabled son. Your ONLY … IS my mother.”
How is it possible that in this moment I am actually grateful you are not here?
My gratefulness is tempered by my broken heart, but nonetheless, is ever-present. I would be worried sick about you and the fact that you are safe from this mess gives me comfort. It is volatile, shallow and anything but consistent. However, in my core I know it’s better you are not experiencing this with us. Problem is, I so badly still want you here.
We had to postpone your service. You are very loved and surely would have exceeded the 10 person capacity that has now been implemented all over the country. We want so badly to celebrate you but there is a global virus threatening to destroy our normal, our economy and most importantly - many priceless lives. That sentence sounds so incredibly ridiculous and dramatic and yet, is entirely true. It has left us in such a weird limbo and a tension that is difficult to explain. There is a little voice inside me wondering when the dust finally settles … who will be left to still care?
I know that voice is being hypersensitive and irrational. I know people will still care. It just feels like all of this has massively overshadowed your death and minimized your absence. There was no time to process your passing before the entire world was literally shaken, flipped upside-down and left unrecognizable.
It actually started spinning faster after you died - not sure how that is even possible. Your death felt like something that just happened over the weekend. The following week, life resumed as usual. Kids in school, Andy at work, swim lessons, homework, emails to families whose babies had just died … I was back in the salon by Wednesday. Over the years I have become skilled in the art of “faking ok.” It comes in handy in my profession. But in reality, I have been a shell with glazed eyes going through the motions of life on auto-drive.
If I am being honest, it all felt disrespectful. You deserved for things to slow in honor of you. We as a family deserved a moment to process and lament. We deserved our world to shift into a lower gear for a moment. That simply did not happen.
And now COVID 19 …
Our world felt like it had already reached its top velocity and then somehow managed to exceed its previous speed the day you took your last breath. Somehow … it continues to gain speed with each and every passing day. It feels utterly out of control and I wonder how long it can withstand such force and pressure before it explodes into a thousand pieces.
I’m glad you are not here to witness it Dad. I’m glad this was never a world you had to know …
Just weeks ago life was so different.
My dad was still here. Days came and went. Work. Cancer. Kids. Chemo. Life was scary and difficult but now I look back and shake my head. How have things become more complicated in a way? One moment I find myself burying my face into my dad’s housecoat longing he was still in it - the next I’m fighting crowds at Costco in an attempt to stock my fridge.
Now, as I sit on my couch everything is quiet and still. It is a massive misrepresentation of what is happening outside my front door. It feels like there is a hurricane … just one that we cannot see or hear or feel. There are uprooted trees, broken windows, overturned cars and branches everywhere. The trees that have been able to -thus far- stand their ground are bending and creaking … threatening to succumb to the winds force at any moment. The rain seems to defy gravity and as it travels horizontally and crashes into the windows of my house. Outside the world is a disaster, and yet, when I look out my window … I CANNOT SEE IT.
I see a bright, sunny, and non-threatening sky. It is eerie, to say the least. The storm is invisible from my vantage point, but I can feel it in my bones and it feels dark and ominous.
In some form of irony, this picture is similar to what the broken and bereaved feel every single day. We walk around and on the outside may look calm and collected. We may seem “normal” or “better.” We may look like we are through the worst of it. However on the inside, there is a storm. It’s raging and violent and wreaking havoc on everything it touches. The world around us ... simply cannot see it.
Right now there are just too many invisible storms.
I’m no stranger to grief, but navigating grief in the midst of a pandemic is something very new to me. Managing a pandemic in the midst of anything … is something very new to us all.
Lamentation … pandemic … grief … quarantine … chaos … heartache … chaos … fear … chaos … anxiety … chaos …. chaos … chaos.
Though it all, my dad’s fingerprints are still warm on my life. I can still see them everywhere. My memories of him are fresh enough that I am still able to reach out and touch them with the tips of my fingers. They don’t feel like memories of someone who used to be. They feel like memories of someone who is.
But every day that passes those memories will float further and further away from me. Slowly a fog will begin to emerge as it always does when looking deeper into the past. The pictures may stay in mind but will not remain as clear as they once were. The memories of my dad are no longer renewed and replenished daily as they once used to be and the reality of that truly scares me.
What will happen as time goes on?
Will I begin to forget him? Forget his voice? The laugh he made when he threw a blueberry into Sullivan’s mouth from 10 feet out? It was epic by the way. That unfiltered laugh of his was my favorite and emerged often when he was interacting with his grandchildren.
Will I forget what it felt like to follow his tracks on the mountain? Admiring his perfectly spaced turns and skis held so tightly together that they appeared to be glued that way?
Will I forget his hysterical lack of rhythm and his signature dance move that would cause a ripple effect of laughter to roar throughout our house? That memory has already started to fade... I can see it, but at the same time, I can't.
Will I forget the late-night sound of cabinets opening and shutting and the soft shuffle of his feet in the kitchen, as he emerged from the basement to pour a giant glass of milk to go with his nightly cookie? I so miss sitting on the couch and hearing him through the doorway.
This is all so new and I just don’t know. Of course his memory is in my heart and will ALWAYS be there. But I’m not going to romanticize this. I know as time moves forward and further from him … he will fade.
I’m just not ok with that today.
There is a verse we were (and still are) planning to use on the program at my Dad’s service.
“I will restore to you the years the locust have eaten …” Joel 2:25
It’s significant to our family because we need to remember that ALL OF THIS will be restored one day. Everything we have lost will be regained. Right now in the middle of so much loss and so much potential loss, it is something our souls need to lean into. The storms that surround us - seen or unseen - are not too big, too dark or too scary and their damage is not permanent.
God can - and will - restore, redeem and renew it all.
Deep breaths my friends …
Much Love,
Jamie
