Daddy: He’s Everywhere I Go

I was a Daddy’s Girl. I didn’t know it until after he died. A boyfriend told me. You’re a Daddy’s Girl. I guess that means I was close to my dad. So is it any wonder I still feel him near?

This Father’s Day will mark the 12th one without Dad. I don’t expect it to be a happy day, but I expect it to be at least a tolerable one. I love and miss my dad every day, but the edge is off my grief. Most days. But sometimes I again feel the knife turn in my belly. And the tears flow.

I give a kiss to my dad through the fence.

I think it helps to know he isn’t gone. He’s away. But not gone. He didn’t leave me willingly. And I’ll see him again. It’s like he’s on a trip overseas or to a distant – very distant – star.

I find pieces of my dad like crumbs along a trail. I come along the crumbs accidentally. Last week, I parked my bicycle in the shade to rest, looked up and discovered I was under an elm. Dad loved elms. A crumb may be a song he loved that plays in a store. Or a place I pass.

More recently, I perused a booklet that came with a fancy paint-by-number kit. My mother-in-law purchased the kits for our neighbors, ages 9 and 10, for Christmas. Unable to coordinate my mother-in-law and the kids being over at the house simultaneously, we decided it was time that they opened the gifts. Yes, in June, nearly six months after Christmas.

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Putting a Price on Ourselves

Value. We put a price on everything. On houses. Cars. Jewels. Stocks. Milk. Eggs. Our morning hit of java. We also put a price on people. On relationships. And on ourselves.

We treat everything according to how much we value it. Or how we value him or her. We will protect our person from all sorts of harms. And things we may lock in a vault. Whatever it is we value, we spend time admiring it.

Do you treasure yourself? We know more about ourselves than anyone knows. We know about all the dents. All the angry words in traffic. All the vengeful thoughts. All the curse words under our breath. All the ways we might have helped someone – but didn’t. Can we value ourselves despite those ugly truths?

I was thinking about value the other day while cleaning my mother’s wind chimes. As a child, I loved to hear them tinkle from the wind that drifted into the open windows. A sound memory.

One of the last things I removed from my parents’ home last month before selling it was the wind chimes. The five metal tubes hung below a pagoda that dangled from a delicate chain. I don’t suppose the chime would sell for more than a dollar at a yard sale, but it’s valuable to me. Despite the tarnish and the thick covering of dust. Valuable.

When We Wonder, “What’s Next?”

I feel like a cook tasked with making a stew of two dozen ingredients from a recipe I’ve never seen, and I’m a bit overwhelmed and not sure where to start.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed with a new task? Do you ever wonder where to start? Which direction to go? Where to put your energy first?

“What’s next?” may be a question we ask repeatedly during our grief journey. We probably ask it after the funeral. We may ask it later, after our grief has changed us,  but we’re still recreating ourselves. Or we may ask it after we’re finished sorting through the belongings of our loved one.

Where to next? Don’t we wish our pathway was laid out as clearly as this trail?

After selling my parents’ home three weeks ago and saying my goodbyes, I was enthused by the idea of paring down belongings at my own home and devoting more time to writing projects. But I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed. I’m bogged down. So much to do. So little me.

I should feel excited. I want to be excited. Instead, I am trying to peel carrots, sear chunks of beef, unwrap bouillon cubes and answer a ringing phone. I’m trying to make something deliciously wonderful out of a lot of moving parts. Where do I start?

I’m going to unpack four suggestions here. What might yours be?

Mother’s Day’s Most Difficult Moment

With the sanctuary lights up and the pastor in the pulpit, they stand. They tower above me like a forest. A forest of women. I am small. An unimportant insect. Applause breaks out.

It isn’t for me. It has never been for me.

This is perhaps the most difficult moment of Mother’s Day. It is the deafening sound of a silent scream – I am not a mother! A nice alternative would be to be seated beside my own mother. To applaud for her. But she is dead. Dead. It is the loudest unspoken word in the church.

My mother

Mother’s Day is one of those days we get through somehow. How do we manage without our mothers? Perhaps we bask in the appreciation of our children. But what if we are childless?

I stood up in the church one Mother’s Day. Seated along the fringe of the sanctuary this time, away from friends, I felt inconspicuous. I felt raw. I stood for the beloved dog I’d lost only days before. He’d been like my child for 15 years. I grieved him as a mother for a child. I missed the earthy smell of his fir. I missed the sound of his breath.

On that Mother’s Day, I was a grieving mother. A mother of an angel in heaven.

Wrong Question, Right Attitude

Is this from God or a tool of Satan? In religious circles, we wonder if a difficulty has been allowed by God to strengthen our faith or if it comes as an obstacle from the evil one.

If we decide it’s from God, we may relax a bit, for we assume it was sent to strengthen our faith. If it comes from the hand of our Creator, it won’t permanently harm us. He loves us.

But if it’s from the Devil, we may throw back our shoulders and ready ourselves for a fight. We resist the difficulty with all our might. We put on our soldier outfits and fight heroically.

Problem is, we often cannot be certain whether a problem is from God or of the Devil. And if we focus on God’s all-powerful nature, we may blame God, believing he caused the pain, or that he is cruel for allowing it. Or maybe he was unhappy with us. Punishing us. But for what?

I believed God was loving when things were going my way, but when they weren’t, the questions nipped at me like a feisty Chihuahua I could not escape. It put a wedge between me and God. I couldn’t really trust the one being who could comfort me in my deepest difficulties. I was alone.

Letting Go of the Place You Grew Up

I lifted the piece of plastic under the gutter drain and plucked a worm from the damp soil. I walked to the little girl at the end of my parents’ driveway, the gateway to 13 acres of beauty.

She was visiting with her parents, the people buying the property that’s been in my family 45 years. Her brother watched. At almost 7, he was the age I’d been when we’d bought the land.

“Do you like worms?” I asked the girl. I put the squiggling thing in her open, outstretched palm. “When I was a little girl growing up here, I found all kinds of creatures. Like turtles.”

Resilience: Growing Beyond the Barb

I hiked up the hill of the pasture with a destination in mind. Nearly two decades earlier, I had taken the same route after losing the man I loved. He’d abandoned me for another woman.

For as long as I remember, my parents’ pasture has been my go-to place when grieved or troubled. It was a refuge. A place to find peace, even before I became acquainted with God.

Losing Our Safe Place

What is your go-to space? A city rooftop? A quiet room? A park bench by a lake? Or maybe it is a person. Grandmother. Sister. Or the warm arms of your husband. What if that place is lost? Where do you go to find strength, encouragement and love after that?

Inheritance: How to Stem Conflicts

No two people could be as different as my brother and me, but even if siblings share a lot of similarities, the death of their parents and dividing of an estate can be a wedge between them.

I’ve heard numerous stories about money and possessions segregating families into warring factions. Accusations fly like nuclear missiles, and the devastation lasts a lifetime.

At the end of this post, I’ll provide tips to help others grease the task of dispersing an inheritance, but first allow me to share my story. I learned a little from being the executrix of my parents’ estate, but the two primary reasons it was mostly hassle-free weren’t things I put in place. You could say my brother made it easy for me.

He lacked an attachment to the family and to the household property. And he was a resident in a Florida prison.

The Biggest Factor to Heal Grief

What is the single biggest component of finding healing within grief, besides expressing it?

Embracing the new.

Inviting what’s next into our lives.

Believing we can love and laugh again.

Today is the first day of spring. I hadn’t noticed until I received a life-changing phone text this afternoon, and then I realized the irony.

The daffodils outside my parents’ home have bloomed every year since my family bought the property in 1973.

A real estate agent sent me a text about my parents’ home:

“Just sent full price offer in.”

The house where both my parents died, the house I’ve spent eight years cleaning out, has been listed for sale only four days.

It’s a mobile home enclosed by conventional roof and walls, and it sits on a beautiful treed 13-acre lot. The floors sag. The ceiling sag. The cellar fills with water.

The Grief of the Other Mother

I wonder if my mother was beautiful. I wonder if we shared the same hair color. If her eyes were blue. If she grinned when she held me. If she held me. I wonder if she thinks of me.

Surely she must think of me. At least on my birthday.

These are things normal daughters don’t have to wonder. But I’ve wondered these things all my life. Now I wonder if my mother is dead.

I was adopted. I don’t go around thinking about it a lot, but recently USA Today published an article by Betsy Brenner on its front page. She was adopted in the 1950s, a decade before me. She was 14 when her adoptive mother died and a new, emotionally-distant stepmother was insufficient to fill the void within her. Eventually, she sought out a meeting with her biological mother through an intermediary but was denied. By the time her state’s adoption records were open later, Brenner’s biological mother was dead.