Blogging Challenge - Day Five

Does it seem like the only things I write about are family and funerals? It does to me. I guess funerals are just a fact of life, especially as you and your friends and loved ones get older. And I can't make any excuses about my preoccupation with family. My family is everything to me. Maybe there are people for whom this is not so, but I don't think I know too many folks like that.

I think you learn the importance of family as a child - from the way your parents treat their parents and their siblings and the way they talk about and interact with aunts and uncles and cousins. And of course from the way your parents and other relatives treat you. I recognize that not all children grow up in homes like that, where family is a priority, indeed, the priority. I am fortunate that I did!

Then you grow up and have children of your own and then grandchildren, and it's your turn to teach the importance and blessings of family. Of course there are other things and responsibilities that compete for our time and commitment - jobs primarily. But to me, there is no excuse for making family feel like they come second in our lives.

And when you get to be my age and you feel time passing so swiftly, you just want to spend as much of that time as possible with the people you love and who love you. So yeah, family is important and we've crammed a lot of family time into this summer so far - the family reunion on the west coast, trips to see my Mom and sisters as often as I can, visits with the grandsons, your grown children, and the nieces and nephews.  Even the trip to SC this week for my Aunt's funeral was an opportunity, however brief, to reconnect with extended family who don't live close enough to see as often as we might like. In that way, funerals become almost like family reunions. Then again, so do weddings and they are a lot more fun!

Blogging Challenge - Day Four

Ok, ya gotta understand, we were in the car all day driving to Dillon, SC for my Aunt's funeral, which was this evening. So I've been kind of busy see. Well now I have about a half hour to write something witty, or pithy or brilliant. Let's face it...it's not gonna happen tonight.

I will share with you a few thoughts about spending time with cousins and other relatives that I only see at funerals or maybe once a year or so. Everyone has extended family like that. If you're lucky, you enjoy being with family that you don't see very often, and you think, gee, I wish we lived closer so we could get together more often. But of course, the reality is that you probably only enjoy being with some family members because you see them so infrequently. If you lived in the same town with them you still might only see them at funerals, right?

Regardless, I feel blessed to have a family that can and does share laughter, tears, memories and a history - even if we don't see each other very often. I don't know how common that is in other families, but I hope you have experienced it and if you have, I hope you cherish it.

UPDATE: I finished this post before midnight on Thursday, July 25th; however Google blogger would not allow me to save or publish my post until after midnight. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it!)

Blogging Challenge - Day Three

Ok, this blogging every day experiment is NOT as easy as it sounds.  Hey, I never claimed to be a pro; I certainly don't make any money doing this like some bloggers do. I guess the reason I do this is for my mental health. I don't do it because I think I have something profound to say, as I'm sure my 3 or 4 readers would agree with.

People blog for lots of reasons.  I follow a lot of blogs. Many if not most of them deal with political and cultural events of the day, but I also follow a lot of "religious" blogs that deal with spiritual as well as secular topics and are written from a Christian perspective. Some blogs have been started as on-line diaries, and I guess that comes closest to describing my blog, although that does sound quite self-indulgent. Oh well, feel free to check out another blog if you like.

My fun week with the grandsons has been cut short by the death of a favorite Aunt of mine.  We are traveling to SC for the funeral tomorrow. But it is important to be there, for my cousins and other family. With her death, I have only one remaining uncle, and my Mother left of that generation. When they are gone, a lot of family history will go with them. That's the thing about the death of a family member or close friend. You lose a part of your own history when they die, because they knew you as no one else did or does. Their memories of you and growing up or your parents or grandparents die with them and so you lose a little part of your history, not to mention your future - in the case of a child. I think I will spend the time in the car tomorrow remembering all the things we did at my Aunt's when we were growing up.  A treasure trove of memories that will make the journey shorter but more fulfilling.

Thanks for stopping by.

Day Two of Blogging Challenge

Yes, I know this day is almost over and I will barely get this post in under the wire. See yesterday's post for my excuses!

As I mentioned yesterday, I haven't wanted to blog at all since my son died in November. In fact, I haven't wanted to do much of anything. I have a number of good books, some on grief, that I should read; I have a room full of Michael's clothes and personal things that I need to go through and deal with; I have a spiritual life that I have neglected way too much (ditto for my husband and my friends and family).  All I have wanted to do is be a couch potato, a vegetable, and watch reruns of NCIS and CSI that I have seen countless times before.

If it were not for my husband, I might have become a total recluse, shutting myself off from everyone and everything. He, and that little girl I keep every day, are probably the only reasons I haven't done that. Walt and I went through a 13 week class called GriefShare at our Church. It was very good, forcing us to deal with our emotions in relation to the loss of our son, as well as our relationship with each other and with other family and friends. It also emphasized the importance of our relationship with God during this journey of grief that we are on. That should be pretty obvious for a Christian, right? 

If I can, and by that I mean if I have the strength and courage, I will try to deal with the relationship between my faith and the experience of losing one of my two sons in a blog post this week.

Thanks for stopping by.

Responding to a Blogging Challenge

So, one of my favorite bloggers, Conversion Diary, has issued a challenge to post something everyday for seven days, starting today. Well this is a challenge indeed, for a number of reasons. First of all I have not  posted anything to my blog since my son, Michael, died last November. I hope the reasons for that are self-explanatory. (I would start to post to my blog, but couldn't think of anything worth talking about in light of that life-changing event.)

Oh, I have other excuses: I keep a one-year old every day and this week my three grandsons (ages 12, 10 and 7) will be here as well, and the weather is rainy with a chance of rain, and I need to plan indoor activities for them. . . etc., etc. etc.

But then I remembered that the woman issuing this blogging challenge has six children under the age of 10 and they all live with her ALL THE TIME.  She homeschools, blogs, writes books - and that barely scratches the surface of her active life. Needless to say I am in awe of her. So I decided to participate in her blogging challenge.

One last thing for today's post: not to sound too much like a country song, but my dog died last week, so the grandchildren will help to fill an otherwise empty house.

Thanks for the challenge Jen!



The End is The Beginning

First of all, I can't believe it's been two months since I posted something on this blog. Well, at least I'm consistent in my inconsistency. I might ascribe it to my general lack of self-discipline or laziness, but in this instance I've got a good excuse.  No, really.  The long-anticipated October wedding is just a few days away and I've spent many, many hours over the past few months preparing for this moment.

In February I made a vow to lose at least 50 pounds before this event.  I did it!  I also decided early on that I wanted to do a lot of the work on the rehearsal dinner myself and I did that.  I spent untold hours scouring the Internet for ideas.  I picked a theme, made the decorations and the invitations, and I canned 60+ jars of peach jam for favors. I've located various and sundry sources for the things I couldn't make.  [Thank you Etsy.]  Today we travel to Cape Cod for what I know will be a beautiful wedding and a great time with family and friends from all over the country.

In some ways this is the culmination of nine months of planning and hard work.  It is also the beginning of a new phase in my life as surely as it is the beginning of a new stage in my son's life.  For the first time, he will be a husband.  I will have a daughter-in-law. She is the little girl, now a beautiful young woman, I've been praying for since my son was born - the one that God picked out for him and him alone. 

A wedding celebrates the beginning of a new life, not unlike the celebration at the birth of a child.  This week, we celebrate the beginning of one life from two lives.  "And the two shall be as one..."

Twenty Years Ago

Last week I took my NIV Study Bible to a bookbinder to be re-bound. [The original binding, genuine faux imitation leather, was showing its age]. So tonight, when heading out to my weekly Bible study, I had to find another Bible. I grabbed one of my favorite translations, the Good News Bible, from the bookshelf. I have not used this version in a long time, but I remember buying it and using it for some of the first Bible studies I participated in as a young wife and Mother.

I flipped through the familiar and well-worn pages of this paperback and found the usual assortment of papers, bulletin fragments, etc. that I often stuff in my Bible. A couple of those were dated - 1992 - so I guessed that was the last time I had used this particular Bible. Because I'm a whiz at math, I quickly realized that 20 years had passed and of course I was immediately struck by the thought of how quickly they had passed too!

I've spent some time trying to remember what was happening in my life and in the world that year. You can go to any number of websites to research the latter. I will only share a few of the former memories with you. I do have a written journal, but alas, I didn't start that until 1997, and of course "blogging" was a thing of the future. [In fact, in 1992, the phrase "surfing the Internet" was first coined, but the White House did not yet have e-mail servers and you could not order pizza on-line!] In 1992 my boys were 12 and 10 and I had been selling Discovery Toys for 10 years; plus my Daddy was still living. I'm sure 1992 was a good year, although I can't remember many details, but the next year my world would fall apart.

Three events occurred in 1993 that changed my life - my Father was diagnosed with lung cancer and died within four months, my husband retired from IBM after a 27 year career and our children left private school and began attending the local public schools. I might have been able to deal with one of these things, but the combination of these three events sent me into a deep depression. In thinking about them now, I realize that all three events had something in common:  they were a full frontal assault on my sense of security.

Of course my Daddy represented the security I'd known since childhood. He was still a powerful force in my life, and I was very close to him (and my Mother) even as an adult. My husband's IBM career represented our livelihood, our financial security. We weren't close to being able to retire permanently and our children were still young. How would we survive economically? And although I knew that private school was a luxury that we probably couldn't afford for the boys indefinitely, I was not prepared for the move to public schools in 1992 - with one son in 5th grade and the other starting middle school. Private school had been a safe and secure cocoon for me and the kids for 7 years. I wasn't ready to leave the nest!

Eventually, of course, I was able to come to terms with the new circumstances of our life. I still miss my Daddy, but mourning cannot and does not last forever. We experienced several years of financial  uncertainty as well as some new job situations that were hard on our family in other ways. I went back to work, first part-time and later full-time. The boys did not adjust immediately to their new schools, and there were many days when we all cried, but in hindsight, at least one of the boys adjusted very well. I still have guilt feelings about the other son in light of his subsequent difficulties with school.

But, all-in-all, we coped. We adapted. We survived. And maybe we were a stronger family as a result. One thing is for certain, God brought us through all the changes and upheaval. He always does. And I know that He is the real soucrce of my security. I may not have known it then, but I know it now! It's never too late to learn that lesson is it?

Country Roads

I just returned from a trip into my past or more accurately my Mother’s past.  A visit with cousins in Louisiana led to a trip down some back roads in Washington Parish which led to a remote Baptist church and a small cemetery and a surprise.

Mother says I’ve been to the cemetery before, but I have no recollection of that.  My great grandparents and some of their siblings and children are buried there, and I amazed my family by locating the cemetery on the internet via my iPhone and accessing a website that actually listed all of the people buried there. 

There are thousands of such cemeteries accessible to varying degrees via country roads in every county and state in North America. This particular cemetery, Sunny Hill, is maintained by the descendents of another family whose name appears on many of the headstones. The sad truth is that too many small family cemeteries are not maintained and thus likely to be overgrown and lost forever.

Does it matter if they are lost or found?  Maybe not.  I suppose I’m interested in such things because of my love of history and dabbling in genealogy, but there was something compelling about standing in the yard between that cemetery and the small white country church that my Mother remembered attending as a child. [She says it used to be a lot bigger church back then!]
 

As we stood there she started talking again about the Sunny Hill community of her childhood, pointing out where the Methodist church and the general store used to be, where the school she attended was located.  She reminisced about walking to school for one year, first grade, because her Daddy wanted her to go to the school he went to when he was growing up.  Funny thing was that he made Mother’s little sister accompany her on the one mile walk, so my Aunt Pansy sat through first grade that year and then had to go the next year too.  Oh, and by the way, I’m not sure what a five year old could have done to protect a six year old had something bad happened to them on the way to school. But those were different times.

We had piled in the car to begin our trip back to the present, but the past wasn’t through with us yet.  As Mother pointed to a wooded area across the road from the church and told us, “The school was right there,” my cousin said, “I see something.  It looks like a shack.”  Sure enough we got out of the car and peering into the woods could just make out the building, or what was left of it. 

Just as my cousin was promising to come back and explore the area later, we discovered a path that was more or less clear so we all traipsed into the woods, right up to the dilapidated two story structure where my grandfather had gone to school and played basketball, and where my Mother had attended first grade. 

There wasn’t much left there to see, but there was a broad staircase, walls, parts of the floor and the roof, and somehow I had no trouble picturing my Mother there. 

For good or ill, the past lives and is always part of our present.  For me, it is all good.  I think John Denver said/sang it best: “Country roads take me home . . . “