It's Thanksgiving week for me, as we celebrate early, and I have started the cooking preparations. That said, every day is a day of thanks giving when you choose to embrace gratitude. Stick with me on this, we'll circle back around.
Today I cubed bread to make stuffing. I know I can buy dried bread, sometimes for less than what I pay to make it myself. I know there are stuffing mixes out there. None that compare with homemade though. I also know, no matter how much stuffing I make it is never, ever, enough. So I slice the bread, and for the next few days I'll gently turn it over and over as it dries out. I'll remember other Thanksgivings each time I stir the bread cubes.
Other Thanksgivings were different, some were much much easier. Some were full tables of 20+ people. There were adult tables, and kids tables. There was polishing the good silver, getting out Great Grandma's china. There was the joy of the holiday and the fear in the background that too much alcohol consumed by the adults would change the joy to tense moments of anger. Childhood holidays often went like that. There was one Thanksgiving I was sick with mono. The kids and I ate just the basics, turkey, mashed potato's, gravy. Pretty sure I didn't make stuffing that year. We ate off of paper plates and it was good. There were smoked turkeys, deep fried turkeys, and feed the college kids and their friends turkeys.
The times change, the faces change, but the traditions continue. The bread must be cubed and dried. It's what I do to feed those I love with love. It's hard to accept that there are empty places at the table and there always will be. It's hard to find peace in knowing they were fed with love over the years and still they are gone. It's hard to wish you could have fixed it for them, that enough love would have made a difference. It is finding the grace to accept you did all you could, and the choice was not yours.
So I find myself looking ahead, and looking back as I cube the bread. There are tears and anticipation. There are memories to savor, memories to heal from, new memories to make. They are simple cubes of bread that hold so much love. I'd be remiss if I didn't stir in vast amounts of gratitude. Gratitude for feasts, for faith, for family. Gratitude for the path I'm on, for the pain that I feel, for the healing that I find on the journey. Gratitude for bread, cubed, dried and shared with those I love.
Since my loss I'm taken aback by all the "first times", all the hurdles one crosses in life and on a grief journey. I know, that all of life includes first time hurdles, but loss ramps up the intensity, the poignancy of them. I am acutely aware of life choices and experiences now. Frankly, I'd like to go back to being rather blissfully unaware. If you are in that stage of life count your blessings. Give thanks for the innocence, do the happy dance for simplicity. Now, I also am going to give thanks for losing said innocence, and for the lack of simplicity in my life. Gratitude embraces all of it, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
I am where I am. I can't go back to who I was, and I'm not sure I'd want to...except for the pain that brought me here. I wish I could have prevented it, or fixed it, or changed it. This new me is still evolving, still taking the hurdles with less that stellar grace, with tons of questions with no answers, with one step forward, two steps back. I should come with a warning sign: caution figuring life out and prone to weeping. Calm, cool and collected one moment, but watch out the next. Knows there are hurdles ahead, unable to anticipate their location. Or, caution - hormonal spill pending.
I had the absolute pleasure of attending my favorite concert of all this week. Tran-Siberian Orchestra is just the best, my happy place. I was delighted to be going and couldn't wait to experience it. Enter a caution sign, tears up ahead. It was everything I hoped it would be, and I was a weepy mess. You see, I am not the same person I was last time I saw them. I was thrilled to be excited, passionately excited, for the first time in over two years. Progress, right? Yes, and sometimes progress doesn't look like you'd expect. Sometimes it's wrapped up in sorrow and tied with a tearful bow. Sometimes it's a mix of emotions hard to fathom much less explain.
Next time I see them, and I will...I'm hoping it will be easier. Well, at least different, and beautiful in another way. It was amazing, even though the hurdles snuck up on me and I temporarily stumbled on them. I still came out touched by their talent and music, humbled by the experience and stronger on the other side. I guess that is the purpose of life hurdles, to get stronger on the other side.
There is something comforting in listening to the winds blow as a storm rolls through, and yet those same winds remind me of how alone I often feel. It reminds me I long to share the daily experiences in life. The changes in the weather, the world as I experience it, the little and big in life.
Therefore, I am torn between accepting my solitude and knowing that the experiences are mine alone, and wrestling with them. If the winds are blowing and I alone hear them, don't they still blow like crazy? If I laugh, loud and long, by myself is not the laughter still valid? Where do I find the peace of acceptance? Why do I lose sight of the fact that this is a chapter of life, not the whole of it?
I have a thousand blessings, and still miss those blessings lost to life changes I never asked for. I suspect that is because I still look back at what was and what no longer is. I am both in the past and out of it. If I can not find a peaceful understanding, a closure, how do I at least find gratitude?
I have to wonder if struggle is universal. I have to wonder if the gifts in this chapter of life are the very solitude I try to push back, and the acceptance that is slow to take root. It is what I have and don't want, and also what I dislike and need to embrace. It's like desperately wanting pizza and always getting Chinese food. My needs are met, but my wants are in another drive thru. May I find acceptance and sustenance, if not joy, in my fortune cookie. Pizza will come another day.
So how to move with the storms and find the grace involved. It's somewhere in the letting go and the letting God of life. It's reminding myself I'm not entirely alone even when I feel like it. It's trusting an outcome that feels miles down the road. It's reminding myself that feelings aren't always facts. I feel like this part of life may never end, and that is not the truth. I won't be in this same place in life tomorrow, just today. I only need to do today, today.
So today I listen to the wind and marvel at it. I laugh out loud, and own the pleasure. I know I'm okay right where I am, and I trust that growth is taking place. I can breathe and release. I can embrace that life is hard and also that I am strong. I can speak my truth, share my thoughts and count my blessings.
As a survivor of suicide loss, I struggle with feeling connected. Honestly, trusting and feeling connected has always been baggage I've carried. The stigma of suicide added greatly to that. Part of me feels completely invisible and the rest of me is just afraid to be seen. Of late, I've been unpacking it, sorting it out, and working on letting it go. It's not an easy process.
I don't believe Gordon's choice was instantaneous, it came after a long downward spiral, and he was at risk from having lost a sibling to suicide. The connection we shared as husband and wife was repeatedly challenged, and over time became so broken. Looking back I can see how many emotional hits we took as a couple, and to a degree how it affected us individually.
Connection is hard, it involves trust and trust involves vulnerability. While my instinct is to not trust so easily, that results in great isolation. I will not let my life choices, and his, define me. So I am taking baby steps to feeling more connected.
How do you do this you ask? And why would someone own this publicly? I'm learning how to walk this path by faith, with the help of a wise mental health care professional, and the support of people who love me. Why would I share this? Because I choose not to be alone. Alone is where we hide our inner pain. Alone is where we can lose our way in life. I'm unpacking it, looking it over, deciding what needs to be saved and what needs to be released. There is great knowledge in there, and there are mixed messages that need the light of day to be put to rest.
I'm allowing myself more. More time with friends, more time in prayer, more grace when I make mistakes, more self acceptance, more self understanding, more gratitude. And, yes, I have to push myself to do it. It's okay to have to push myself, in fact it's absolutely necessary. I have made so many mistakes along the way, and have many regrets. Pretty sure I am not alone in this feeling. And I love knowing I am surrounding myself with healthy connections as I learn and grow.
So I share these thoughts for my growth, and for others who struggle. For others hiding their pain and hurting, suffering in isolation. For people like me, like you, and the Gordon's of the world who lost their life to mental illness.
