On things Intermingled

Grief and joy are my roommates now. How do these two oddfellows dwell in the same house?

Sometimes I stand in the spot where Frank drew his last breath. I make a fire in the fireplace, I light scented candles. I celebrate knowing that heaven is so near. Sometimes I put on music and dance to the Lord. I thank him for life and for providing my every need. I have food and light and clothing and heat. I have a roof over my head and for this moment anyway, everything’s alright. Sometimes I feel such deep joy and gratitude for all the good life I’ve known.

At other times I am overwhelmed with the pain. I look harder and longer at Frank’s pictures and remember how the two of us were together like glue. We were best friends. We sat and walked and swam and flew together everywhere, around this globe so many times together. We were one flesh. Then the pain rushes in like the tremors of an unexpected earthquake and I am quickly thrown off balance.

How Lord? How can two become one like that? It’s a mystery, Paul said. But then, how on earth can the one be torn in half again? This must surely be a terrible mystery also.


Case in point: Different shades and Dragon Tails

Friday night I had my grandkids over for a slumber party. Judah and I played cards in front of the fireplace and sipped hot chocolate. It was so sweet. They both came into bed with me in the morning to watch cartoons and then we got out the playdough.

Of course, those eager little hands sometimes squeeze too hard and colors get mixed beyond repair. I spent a good deal of the time trying to separate the clumps of white in blue, the bright pink in yellow, and the green in the black.

With a kitchen knife I was actually trying to splice through the spots on animal legs and dragon tails. It was impossible.

It would be so much easier to roll them all together like a big marble than to try to maintain the original colors. The soft clay had been pressed together and rolled too hard. Oh Judah, we’re just going to have different colors now, I finally told him. The pink will be a little more purple and the orange will be a little more brown, I explained. We’ll just have to work with different shades from now on.

Now I realize what a powerful image this is for my marriage. Like soft clay, our lives had been so completely intertwined. For more than thirty years we were pressed together, rolled and shaped into one animal. How do you sever that incredible work of art that the Lord created us to be? We were such a team!

Even with the sharp blade of death, it is impossible to totally REMOVE the colors of Frank's life from this lump that remains.

I will never be the same, never feel the same, again. I am not my original color or shape. You will always see the pressed in colors and reminders of the one I love.


Dear Lord, I will never really understand why you wanted this shade, this severed piece to remain. What’s left is discolored, squeezed and soiled by the pain of life.

Perhaps the only good left in it is to make marbles.


Pliny the Younger (62-113CE), a lawyer, author and philosopher of ancient Roman times said, "Grief has limits, whereas apprehension has none. For we grieve only for what we know has happened, but we fear all that possibly may happen."

I'm not entirely sure that grief has limits. A sense of loss extends into one's perceptions of the future, doesn't it? And for me, there's no visible or predictable end in sight... at least until I also get to leave this body behind. I grieve not only for what we had and for what has already happened, but for what could have been.

How long will grief live here? If I could, I would evict this tenant.