It has been one month ago today that I walked through two doors. . . two doors that have forever changed my life in a most devastating way. And now I find myself without the one person who gave everything else in my life meaning, the man in this picture. Grief is now my new landscape. And I am having the hardest time navigating this dismal bleak terrain. I'm not sure how to function. My whole world and everything in it has been turned upside down, around and around. My entire world has been shook to the max, like a two year old with a snow globe shaking relentlessly with an obsession to see the snow fall over and over again. And my tears rain down and freeze hard against death's bitter cold! How to go forward without the person I love more than life itself is completely foreign. Every night in my heart I plead in an attempt to call him back. And in the morning light I do not want to go. I do not want to rise up and walk this path. I struggle to find my footing and I fear it will never be sure again.
Tonight, I'd like to write about so many topics; topics on health care and the real meaning behind it, topics on greed, topics on trust, topics on the difference between human error and gross negligence. Yes, today I'd like to write a thesis on subject matters that have changed my life, I shall save my tragic learnings however, for somewhere down the road, another day perhaps, when I have the energy to think and the desire to breath.
Tonight I'm going to try to focus on one single topic much different than those mentioned above. Tonight I'd like to write just a few words on something I believe can be a life line in the drowning effects of grief ---that of the simple element of gratitude.
Gratitude is a subject that doesn't immediately come to mind in the face of grief. I think it is monumentally hard to be grateful when grieving, but then again my world is cloaked in negativity. Death feels very negative. And the reality of grief is that it cannot be avoided. Death shoves you into the hellish realm of sorrow and grief almost with provocation. And it seems my emotions run unrestrained, unchecked, unbridled, rampant with everything that shreds the heart. Every negative disparaging feeling wants to attack like a wild animal waiting in the dark. . . disappointment, sadness, anger, despair, fear and even guilt. And all of it springs on me with a gale like force. There is no fighting it. I have not the strength to do so. Grief feels like a torrential current that smashes you up against the rocks again and again and then when your heart, body, and soul is crippled and totally spent it tows you under to depths you've never seen before, holding you down hard, refusing to let you up for air. I have had thirty days of the worst hell I've ever known and I've buried a son, I've seen grief before. I remember the ugly face of death. I have walked this hell bent road before. Everything inside me is completely spent, used up, broken and beaten, or so it feels. And yet strange enough, in rare moments when I can't go on, I feel gratitude quietly covering my anguished shredded soul. It comes in unannounced and tends to me with great mercy. Perhaps gratitude rests on the wings of faith, and it comes to perform its mighty rescue in the gentlest way. And when I feel the current of grief is too swift and too powerful and the undertow to strong for my broken heart, it is gratitude that hands me a small ore of hope in which to row upward for air and safer ground.
When grief holds me down under the water so long I feel my lungs heave with the last breath, I grapple for air by opening up my phone and turning to a folder I created with pictures. This is where gratitude lives. Every photo brings a memory that cannot be erased. The photo you see here is just one of many that convulses my body up and out of the drowning effects of grief. I hold onto it for dear life, sleep with it next to me and I see gratitude resuscitating me, pumping my chest hard to bring life back into my lungs. I am so grateful for nearly 38 years of love in my life with a man like no other! And I will continue to count each year with this man I love. We are still one in heart and soul. We are still together in spirit. Few people get the quality of togetherness we had. My 38 years beats most people's 60 years hands down.
As I thumb through images where love is captured and framed, gratitude speaks to me in a quiet voice. "Your love is not dead. While he is gone your love is still firmly here. It is a bond that can never be broken. He is yours forever. Your love is eternal. Your love is sealed by God Himself. This life is not the end. You are made for the eternities. You will always be one, together forever in every symbolic way that matters. . . and nothing, no, not even death can change this solid fact."
Tonight I am grateful for God's love. I am grateful for my temple covenants! I am thankful for God's sealing power on earth. Even in my times of anger towards Him, I am grateful for every blessing He has bestowed upon my life. I grew up in a home with a lot of contention and I prayed hard as a child and as a teen, that I could someday find a man in which I could have a happy home with. I don't know how many times I said over and over again, "Heavenly Father. . . Please . . . all I want in this life is a HAPPY HOME." God delivered in a most magnificent way. And then He followed it up with a million more blessings, He followed it up with eight children. There is nothing so great in this life as a happy home! NOTHING! And that doesn't mean that sometimes there isn't moments of unhappiness. What it does mean, is that at the base of it all, both the times when your kids are driving you nuts or your spouse is driving you nuts, it doesn't matter, happiness rests securely at the base of it all and every member of the household knows it. My home has been a place where everyone knows they are safe and they are supremely loved, even in times when the wheels come of the cart for a bit. Everyone knows every member in the family will be there to help put them back on. No matter what, if your a Crow, you know everyone in the family has got your back! And I am grateful to say I have had the very best in happy! The blessings in my life are uncountable. There are to many to lay a number to. They are present all around me and even in death they are sure. Mostly tonight I am grateful for the love of one man. The greater the love the greater the devastation and I will never not be broken without him, but our love will go on and we will reunite again in the eternities. I will live my life as if he is just in the next room. I will continue to live my life with him in it! Don't be alarmed if you see me talking and there is no one next to me. I am going to conduct my life as if the man I love is right here with me!
My son said it best. "I have no doubt that as immortal spirits we all struggle with endings because our spirits are eternally wired. . . I am so grateful for the memories that remain with us. Nothing can ever take them away. I am also tremendously grateful for friends and family, they are my crutch in times when I feel so broken. Moving forward does not mean forgetting, it means choosing happiness and growth over hurt and stagnation." Such wise words!
I'd like to thank everyone for all the kindness you have shown to me and my family. Yes, as my son simply stated. . . you have been our crutch. In the beginning we started making a list of every kindness, trying hard to keep track of it all. The list has now exploded out of control and has become totally impossible to keep track of. I have received cards and letters, gifts of all sorts, money that will buy a granite tombstone, I could go on and on. And I weep out of gratitude for the love that blankets me. I know the words, "Thank You" seem so trite in the face of all we've received, but trust me they are not. All of these acts of love have been holding us up above water, they have been giving us life sustaining air. My whole family is grateful to all of you who have been so tender to us.
There is one more thing I am most grateful for. That is all the prayers and fasting that has been done and still goes on for me and my family. Those pleadings have been a giant life line to us. I have to tell you, when the nightmare struck, I called out for serious prayer and fasting. Those pleadings, your pleadings ---to a gracious Father in Heaven bought us precious, precious time. And with that time we got to love a little deeper and say things we wouldn't have had the chance to say. Those prayers and fasting got me one more, "I Love You!" and one last squeeze to my hand. They are little events that will hold me tight against the storms that grief now delivers up without notice. There is no way I can repay such a debt to all of you who spent your time exhausting the Lord, but gratitude rests heavy in my heart and I am keenly aware! I can in no way express my thankful heart enough. I will be forever grateful to you all. Those prayers and fasting worked a small tender miracle! A miracle that will never be forgotten and will sustain me, personally on those days that feel dark and lonely.
I feel bad I have not been able to speak. I feel so broken inside. Words will not come out of my mouth. I can't visit, I can't talk, I can't answer my phone. I struggle to do the simplest tasks. And I think this will go on for some time. I don't understand it at all and I feel bad I have withdrawn myself so. I am a person who takes a long time to process things, sort things out, ponder, sit with it, if you will. Please forgive me. Again I am grateful for my children. They have been right there with me, holding me up and together. They have not left my side and my heart is filled again with gratitude. I thought I had eight kids because I wanted lots of love around me. Little did I know it would become a sustaining love for a time like this. So on this night when the tears fall and I struggle to find sleep, I try to see with grateful eyes, hoping gratitude will somehow begin to usher in healing.
Many people have asked, "What can I do for you?" Again, my reply is the same, "Please continue to pray for me and for my children. And would you please pray that I can feel this great man of mine with me every day. I desperately need him. Will you pray that my children can feel him near as well. And that he will continue to be close to us, blessing our lives continually.
Now. . . one last thing! Do you love someone? Tell them today. Stop them and take a hold of them and look them in the eyes and express your love in a monumental way! Spend time with the people you love. UN-distract yourself! Focus in on what really matters. Speak the positive. Say it OUT LOUD! Complement, lift, and applaud the good you see in those you love. Put away your nit-picking, disguard your grudge, forget your anger, your announce, what ever it is that is preventing you from doing the real work in life, LOVING PEOPLE! TELL THEM, over and over and over again! Let go of the small and the insignificant! Take up the real and the valuable! Spend more time and love a little deeper. Forget yourself! Put someone else's needs above your own. It is the most important thing you can do today. Live in the present. Love in the present. Even as much as we made our time count, my vision is clear today and people spend a lot of time making much to do about nothing! Satan is so clever at distracting us, busying us, tricking us into spending our time on that which has no value. So take it from me, words of wisdom from a woman who thought she had all the time in the world! You only have today! Take my advice. Love much while you can!
