You've been gone ten years...but it started a journey. Growth from grief.

 

Ten years.

Over five million minutes. 

A decade.

These are all ways to describe the passage of time and usually used in context of trying to communicate to others about the passage of time from an event of significance.

“It’s been ten years since I graduated”

“It’s been a literal decade since I’ve seen you”

“Dude…it’s been over five million minutes since I had that drink”

“It’s been ten years since I said goodbye to my Mom.”

A decade…five million minutes. 

My God. 

When I think about that time.  The person I was…what I was going through.  Who the most important people in my life were then…I can truly state that the loss of my Mom was a watershed moment in my life which is to say that it is a moment that would impact and alter every moment that came after it.    While the core parts of me are still here (A love of family, sense of loyalty, love of God, desire to make people laugh and most importantly…the dance I do when I’m about to break wind) so much of me and how I define myself feels different in many ways. 

Ten years ago I was going through what my therapist described as the ‘trifecta of trauma’.  I was experiencing the loss of a marriage, job loss and then the debilitating illness and loss of my Mom.  I can say now it was truly one of the deepest ‘valleys’ of my life.  I didn’t live so much as function.  Sure there were good times, laughs and great moments but they were overshadowed by the incredible sense that the life I loved was going to be irreparably altered in a way that would no doubt leave me hollow.  I often spoke of the ‘person I was when I shut the door’.  The idea being that I was one way around people, trying to show them I was ‘ok’ and that they didn’t need to worry about me.  Meanwhile every night, whenever I closed that final door to my bedroom or my apartment and turned around to face my ‘new normal’…I would become full of sadness.  My ADHD brain would start trying to figure out where it all went wrong and how I could have blown it this badly.  I’d beat myself up for things I said or did and would go to bed more often than not crying and missing my old life.

I would seek comfort in the presence of others.  Fill my life with ‘new relationships’ and ‘special people’.  Meanwhile, those who cared most for me I’d find reasons not to be around.  Not through any fault of theirs, just because the truth was being around them HURT. 

Then Mom Died.

I can remember that day with such vivid clarity.

The night before, waking up every 2 hours to check on Mom to let my Dad sleep. To waking up the next morning and coming to the realization that her breathing was slowing down.  Dad trying to make phone calls to family to let them know what was happening, Dad’s brothers and sisters who were coming over already and realizing that they had stumbled into ‘the day’.  The realization that it was almost 11 AM and the visiting nurse would be there soon.  The realization that I better take the dog outside now so that I can meet the nurse and that Bunny wouldn’t bark loudly at the doorbell of the visiting nurse. My sister deciding to come with me to grab that one quick smoke. Leaning down and kissing Mom’s forehead saying ‘I love you Mommy…I’ll be here when you wake up’. (Something I always said to her because I truly believe that if heaven has no ‘linear time’ than in essence a part of me is already there…so that when my Mom closed her eyes here…I’d be there when she opened them.).  Taking the dog outside and the incredible feeling of relief as I realized the pressure cooker that that apartment had become in the last hour while we waited. The fear as my Aunt Shirley came out not 30 seconds later to tell us she thought it was time. The moment I walked in, put the dog in the bedroom and went to her left side and grabbed her misshapen hand (gently asking my Aunt’s husband Jim to move…) and looked at her then up at my Dad across from her and next to my sister then back at her.  The feeling as we started counting ‘seconds’ between breaths and then minutes.  Finally the feeling when we all came to the realization that she’d gone.   

My Mom passed shortly after 11:00 AM on Tuesday August 13, 2013.  Survived by a loving husband Bill and her two children Will and Betty as well as two grandchildren William and Brooklyn Sue.  She was predeceased by her parents, a brother and survived by 5 brothers and sisters. 

As I look back now on that time.  That moment and all the ones that came after I can see that it truly did change everything.

I spent the next year taking care of things.  Making sure my Dad was ok..letting him take care of me too.   Starting to get back into my career.  Getting into a relationship with someone instead of MANY someones. Becoming closer to God again, becoming involved in ministry and trying to make sense of what I was to do.

The year after (when my Dad moved to AZ) I spent that time actually dealing with the trauma.  Getting into therapy, finding my new normal.  Learning what it was to be me without my Mom or Dad or wife.  The relationship I’d built began to crack as I realized that part of what attracted me most to that person was the fact she was the polar opposite in a lot of ways of my previous partner and that as I started to heal and grow; we were realizing that we weren’t good for each other. 

It was at the end of that second year when my life took an abrupt turn.  On a whim I went out to Albany area to reconnect with an old friend.  She was going through a similar life change…divorce and the end of the ‘post divorce’ relationship…and we just wanted to rekindle our friendship.  We spent that weekend laughing and just having a great time.  I of course was smitten but she still saw me as her friend.  It wasn’t till I left the Sunday after church when she started to realize maybe we were more. 

It set off a whirlwind. 

Within two months I had moved out here (after another job loss) and began the journey that would bring me to living in the backwoods of upstate NY where food delivery and the five minute trip to the grocery store are distant memories.  (Seriously…every trip no matter how close is at least 20-30 minutes.  I live across from the BP highschool…and that takes 20 minutes to get to.  I’d swear to that on a stack of bibles).

In the years since I’ve become a husband again.  Married to one of my oldest and dearest friends.  I’ve become a Bonus Dad to three amazing humans and even been able to take a more active role in the growth and development of my nephew as he moved out here to go to school.  I have a job I love in my chosen career, have found a church home and am starting to make roots in this community.

I’m out of the valley.  I’m on the mountain again.

That’s why I love singing ‘Mountain of God’ whenever I’m asked to lead worship.  It’s so descriptive of the journey I’ve had these last ten years.  “I thought that I was all alone, broken and afraid…but you were there with me, yes you were there with me.  And I didn’t even know that I had lost my way…”. It talks of the struggles of life and feeling of loneliness.

That feeling described me for so long. Grief and trauma were my companions even in the ‘best of times’.  Now I truly feel liberated. Through my faith, my love and my life I’m growing to realize that while those negative things are a part of life, they don’t have to define it.

So today I do something new.  I am getting baptized…again.  My wife is getting baptized as she did it years ago and it kinda started out as a ‘dumbo feather’ thing.  (She likes having me along)…but as I started to consider the idea I realized that I wanted to be baptized again.  Then hearing that the baptism would be today…the tenth anniversary of one of THE.WORST.DAYS.OF.MY.LIFE. , I found that it made some sort of ‘sense’ to redeem this day somehow. 

So I’m getting dunked today.  I’m saying goodbye to the past and arising again renewed.  An outer expression of an inward feeling.  The feeling that the last ten years of change and growth all served to bring me here.  I would give anything for my Mom to be here today.  I miss her daily.  Yesterday I broke down in actual full blown tears as I realized that it was ten years yesterday that I last heard her voice saying I love you in person.  Today I’m still sad.  This day will always be that…but now it will also be a reminder that my God still loves me.  My family is still here…just maybe grown a little wider and that life is worth living.

I miss you Mom.  I hope I still make you proud and that I’m still your bestest bestest bestest…

You’ll always be my bestest bestest bestest mommy a boy could have…and I love you.

 

Thanks for reading.