Come to Me

Come to me come to me come to me.  As the miles pass and the traffic disappears and the children quiet in the back seats, I hear You.  Come to me come to me come to me.  Like rumble strips.  Or maybe not even so much.  Like the tiny reflectors.  There is a path.  There is a place.  Come to me.  And oh, how I long to be with You.  How I want to come out to that place.  But tonight it just seems so far, those last steps so far and I am so weary, and all the noise noise noise noise has not faded away just yet.  Some days I feel like it just overwhelms me, the noise and the doing and the doing and the making and the smelling and the baking.  I feel lost and without the strength to break free of it, and so I sink back into it, small and still but too far in the middle of it to hear anything.  I become the spectator in the middle of a silent movie, watching it all go by and not quite entering into it.  Screaming roaring noisy crazy silent.  Come to me come to me come to me.  Come to me come to me come to me.

status - crummy

My father has fallen five times in the last four days.  He falls out of bed.  He falls in the living room.  He falls trying to go to the bathroom.  Yesterday he had a bowel movement while sitting on the living room couch.    Last night he fell out of bed on the dresser side, and Mom couldn't get him up because he got wedged under the bed.  She had to wait until Patricia, the night nurse, got there.  My mom can't so much as go to the bathroom without being afraid he will fall while she is in there.  It's worse than having an infant.  You can't tie him down.  You can't even keep him in the hospital bed because he knows enough about what is going on to refuse.

This cannot continue.  It's only a matter of time before something bad happens with all this falling.  Or maybe something good happens.  I don't know.  Maybe this is how he will go.  Maybe this is how it was going to be all along.

I am supposed to be scheduling a visit for two weeks from now.  I can't bring myself to because I don't think it will be two weeks.  But what if it is?

A Letter to My Dad

Dad,

I know that you're scared about what comes next and those storm clouds.  I want to tell you that I am not scared, and I am not scared for you or what happens after this life.  I wanted to remind you that you have a storm baby for a daughter, and that I have a storm baby for a daughter too, and so it follows through the generations.  And what we storm babies know is that while sometimes people think storms are scary, we are absolutely the most alive during a storm, the bigger the better.  We love to see the black clouds rolling in, thick and menacing.  We stand on hills when the wind blows fierce, laughing and hearing our laughter get swept away in it.  If there is a mountain, we climb up it to see if we can get in the middle of those clouds.  Instead of going inside like normal people, we grab our camera and go outside to try and capture a tiny bit of it.  We love when the thunder crashes so hard we can feel it in our chest, and when the lightning cracks from sky to earth.  We try to catch the rain on our tongues and let it drip from our hair.  We feel the energy of the storm race all through us so that we sparkle with it.  And when the storm is over and the clouds have gone, we know we will see the most beautiful colors.  We will find the best color purple in the world, that perfect purple sky that only ever comes after a big storm.  And we will see that perfect green, as if every speck of dust and dirt had been washed off the leaves and grass so that only then does the magnificent color come through.  And best of all, the gold edges on everything when the sun finally shines again, the most brilliant gold, touching everything under the sky as if every single thing were special and touched with love.  This is the time I know God loves us best, He made these colors for us, these colors that hint of hope to come.  This is the same God who made mountains and geodes, who made giant fields filled with tiny yellow buttercups.  He made black-capped chicakadees and eagles.  He made the wind and the sound of water over pebbles.  And I know that He made someplace special for us to go after we die.  I know in my heart that there is a heaven, and it is even more amazing than anything we have ever seen before or could even ever imagine.   Dad, my heart tells me that when it is time to go, when our time here is complete, He will lift us up so gently.  He will wipe us clean so softly and carry us up to this amazing place.  He will deliver us into the arms of the loved ones who are waiting there for us, and there we will wait in peace and joy for those we love to come.  I want you to know Dad that whenever you are ready to let go, it's OK.  Mom and I will be sad, but we will be OK.  I know that you will be watching over us from heaven.  Emma reminds me that you will be protecting us along with Jesse.  I know you will still get to see us and hear us and that you will still get to hear your granddaughters' voices from there.  And when our turns come too, we will be there with you.  And someday down he road we will all be there together.  I feel this in my heart, Dad, and I am not scared, or scared for you.  I know that all will be well, and we will all be together again.

I love you Dad.

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

The trouble with dinner

On the surface, it looks like a perfectly normal dinner:

meatloaf, baked potato, peas.

Simple, traditional.  But underneath, here is what it really is:

meatloaf, baked potato, smiley fries (because Emma and Alex don't eat baked potato or even mashed potato), mozarella pieces (because none of the kids will eat the meatloaf and they have to have some form of protein), and pasta (because Elisabeth won't eat any form of potato, but they had pasta for lunch so I don't want to feed everyone pasta but if I don't make it Elisabeth will have peas and mozarella for dinner and will be hungry later).  Oh yeah, and Glen doesn't really like peas but if I cook the wax beans or the broccoli that I also have in the fridge, Elisabeth will only have pasta and mozzarella and Alex and Emma will only have fried potatoes and mozarella...

Good old meatloaf.

And I suppose as long as we are paying homage to dinner, we should remember lunch, which was a nice homemade chili for Glen and I but leftover pasta for the girls because they don't like chili.  And Alex spilled hers and needed a second serving made.

I am having a cookie before dinner.  It just seems like a good idea.

Chipping away

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