Annie Gets a Party

Annie turned 12 earlier this month, and one thing she asked for this year was a party.  A Real Party. 

Given the fact that for the past three years we've not been able to have friends over on her birthday, either because of covid, or me having covid, or generalized illness, I thought it would be a nice thing to do, to celebrate this last year of pre-teenagerhood.

So today after ballet company rehearsals my husband and I are transporting nine girls home, with four others to be dropped off at our house a bit later, for Annie's Twelfth Birthday Party.  We've got cupcakes, chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, vegetables and dip, fruit, party games, a craft, and a dance playlist (many thanks to our niece, who took time out of her busy first year of law school exam time to send a plethora of good "dance party" suggestions that I used when I was choosing songs). My sister gave Annie a tabletop disco ball for Christmas, along with glow-stick necklaces.  Annie will be wearing her blue silk dress--you know, the one I bought at the secondhand store, tags still on, for $5 about 5 years ago?  The pizza will be delivered around 5pm.  People are excited.  (Is it wrong to say that I'm excited that tonight I will be done hostessing?  Because I'm excited about that!)

Annie is a pleasure to parent and it's a privilege to celebrate her.  She's my right-hand girl: reliable, kind, intuitive, thoughtful, and generous.  We understand each other on what feels like a mitochondrial level.  She has made countless sacrifices over the past year, with my Dad's illness, and she doesn't complain about it. She's so unselfish and unspoiled that it's a delight to spoil her just a little bit now.  She loves friends, and beautiful things, and cupcakes, and I'm thankful to provide those things for her today. 

A dozen years with my little girl.  I know you hear this all the time, but mothers will little ones: don't blink.  It truly flies.  And it's beautiful and bittersweet. 

{I make it a rule not to post pictures of my children, but this one is acceptable: Annie practicing piano recently in a straw hat. So sweet!}

Happy next year of life, Annie, and happy party day!

On Grief

 I had an interesting experience with grief last autumn.  

Since January, I had been deep in anticipatory grieving.  We knew my father's cancer was a terminal one.  We knew that the statistics on small cell lung carcinoma are grim. Last year before he died I cried most days.  Sometimes I'd be washing dishes and burst into tears.  Sometimes I'd be driving somewhere and start crying.  It was a constant companion: the anticipatory grief.  Knowing this was the end of something.  Knowing goodbye was so close.  

After my father's death, my primary emotion for weeks was relief.  The suffering near the end of his life was real.  I had envisioned that as a cancer patient, he would drift off in a morphine-induced haze and die peacefully.  That was absolutely not true. I was so relieved his suffering was done, so relieved that we never had to replay it again, that I did not cry.  I was exhausted, I was sad, but I was relieved.

Somewhere about six weeks after his death something else began.  It was like the time I toured the infamous underground bunker at The Greenbriar Resort when I was a teenager.  We walked into the tunnel that leads down into the bunker, and the 20-something ton door shut behind us.  That sound was so final.

Sometime in November I felt it.  The door was irreversibly closed.  The relief had faded and the reality set in: I will never talk to my father, face-to-face, in this lifetime, again.  Our morning cups of coffee, where we'd talk for hours from before dawn until the rest of the household woke up, are over.  Our long phone calls of laughter and teasing and nonstop talking are over.  Our hugs, when I'd rest my head on his chest, are over.  The door felt like it slammed shut on me every time I thought about this reality.  My lifelong Gibraltar was--is--irrevocably gone.

And so a different, deeper grief began.  It was like an underground river, flowing somewhere deep within my spirit.  It was a quiet grief that felt omnipresent, that felt below that place Wordsworth described as "too deep for tears."  

Yes, I have faith in God. The last solid food my father ate was the communion wafer his Anglican priest brought to the house three days before he died.  Was my father reconciled with God?  I believe so.  Will we meet again? I have no idea how heaven works.  I'd like to think so. I am confident of (and unendingly grateful for) my salvation and I'm confident that God has a much bigger plan than I can envision.  That faith does not negate the reality of the pain that I will never make my Dad's morning coffee again, just the way he likes it: black, with two small cubes of ice. 

Every year my Dad and stepmom threw a large Christmas party between Christmas and New Year's. Our initial thought was not to have the party this year, but sometime in the fall my stepmom said she was considering it. I am fully on board with whatever she wants, so I agreed.  We kept it simple, she had it mostly catered, and it was good.  All the neighbors she invited except one were able to come.  There were great stories told, multiple conversations for hours, loads of food, happy conviviality.  Our neighbors in Charleston are good people--it's a sweet, close-knit community.  My Dad, who loved to have his house full of people enjoying themselves, would have loved it. 

Getting past the party was an emotional triumph for me, one more step in the right direction of healing and recovering.  So the grief has shifted, from that reverberatingly heavy closed door and that deep  underground river, to something different yet again.  I suppose the closest thing I can describe it as is "acceptance," although that's not quite right.  But it's close. 

If you're grieving, just lean into it and know it comes and goes in phases, it ebbs and flows, and it shows up when you least expect it.  The best thing to do is acknowledge that it is real, and be kind and gentle with yourself and others while you heal. 

A New Year

 The calendar has flipped again, and I am not sure I've ever been so glad to see the year turn.  The last time I posted I was sick at Thanksgiving (and the whole family got sick, although to varying degrees: what was a fairly unpleasant experience for me was 48 hours of body aches for my husband!).  Then it was Advent, and Christmas.

I did not have the heart to write much during that time.  Once I recovered from my illness, we were immediately thrown into Nutcracker week, my sister's 40th birthday, and my sweet aunt and stepmom visiting from out-of-state. The month continued to snowball: Finn's piano teacher sold us her car (praise the LORD --I had been looking off and on for months for a replacement to my 19-year-old car, and she just happened to be selling her 4-year old car with 45,000 miles, one of the only two brands I was trying to find!), so we spent an inordinate amount of time the week before Christmas on moving money, dealing with insurance changes, going to the DMV....you know. Then my in-laws lost power during the coldest week of the year, and my brother-in-law moved in with us for a few days while my sister also came to down for Christmas.  On Christmas Eve I was sending a hot Dutch oven of chili and thermos of coffee to my in-laws (who refused to leave their house although it was 39 degrees one morning!). 

But there was something deeper happening also, and I knew it and could feel it.  The dryness, the fatigue, the sadness of wrapping up what--I can see in retrospect--was the hardest year of my life.  I used to think that was 2018, when my husband had cancer. That was hard.  But this one was harder.  By the time the end of this year rolled around and Christmas was upon us, I just didn't have the heart to do much. 

We didn't drive around in pajamas looking at Christmas lights.  We didn't go look at the decorated trees in town.  We didn't bake a single thing--except that I did bake fruitcakes, some sort of primal urge, although my Dad (my annual fruitcake recipient) wasn't here to enjoy them. Although I ordered Christmas cards in October, I have yet to send them out. We didn't pull out our Advent book to read, and I think I watched one Christmas movie.  I didn't put out many decorations. 

 I did give everyone gifts.  We had a beautiful Christmas morning brunch, as always.  I threw a special 40th birthday brunch for my sister, whose birthday is December 10th.  But that's it.

I realized somewhere in there that I was really just wanting to get through the holidays, and get to January, so I could be done with it.  I wanted to check the box and move on. I adore Christmas, so this desire to just get it over with is not my normal state of being. But it's completely understandable.  Grief is a multi-faceted emotion.  I acknowledged this as my reality: my father has died, and I am sad, and I don't feel like doing the normal holiday things.  And I acknowledged this also as reality: God is here, the incarnation was real, and next year Christmas will be easier.  I know it will be. I feel it already. 

I allowed myself to feel all this without feeling "guilty" about it.  My children both said several times that it didn't feel like a normal Christmas to them, and I told them that I understood completely.  But in order for me to have the emotional space I needed to get through the season with grace and joy, I needed to keep everything very light and easy on myself.  I could tell that I had a twinge of depression; I sometimes wandered around the house wondering what to do, and didn't feel "motivated" to do much.  When that happens, I feel like it's important to get rest, to pray, to understand that it's okay to have a hard season.  They come and they go.

It has gone.  We spent four nights in Charleston around the new year, and when we pulled into our driveway on January 2nd I was almost elated: I had gotten through the holidays. I had gotten through Christmas. Most of all, I had gotten through the first Charleston Christmas party (a big annual event at our house there) without my Dad.  I had gotten through 2022.  Hallelujah.  

This new year feels like a gift.  We are only one week in and I feel like a revitalized version of myself. I feel the old optimism and energy, the old purpose and direction--I feel those things pulsing within me again.  

That's where I am, and I'm thankful.