Two years ago my sweet Nana left us....I'm sitting in the waiting room at Baptist while my dad has yet another hip surgery and I'm looking across the room at the exact chair that my Nana sat in while he was in his last surgery over 2 years ago. She had just lost her only daugther, my mother, 3 months earlier, and she wasn't in the greatest health herself and yet she drove to Nashville and sat through her son-in-law's surgery, just to be here for him. She made us laugh the whole time with her crazy sayings and saying whatever she was thinking (no filter!) That's how she was.....so kind and loving, fun, sweet, and a tad on the crazy side (that was the Cuban in her!) I miss her terribly....and some days I feel bad for feeling bad but I'm trying to come to terms with the fact that even though she's been gone two years and my mother has been gone three, it's still ok to grieve. My sister is reading a book and she quoted me something from it that really pierced me.....
"If you've been marked by what might have been, you don't forget. You know the day, the years. You know when the baby would have been born. You know exactly what anniversary you'd be celebrating, if the wedding had happened. You know exactly how old she'd be right now, if she were still alive. You'll never forget the last time you saw your child, or the last time cancer was a word about someone else's life, or the day that changed absolutely everything. It makes the calendar feel like a minefield, like you're constantly tiptoeing over explosions of grief until one day you hit one, shattered by waht might have been. On most days, for me, it's al right. We'll have another baby someday. I hope we do. But for today, for a minute, it's not alright. I understand that God is sovereign, that bodies are fragile and fallible. I understand that grief mellows over time, and that guarantees aren't part of human life, as much as we'd like them to be. But on this day, looking out at the harsh white sky of a Chicago winter, I'm crying just a little for what might have been......Life will keep moving, exactly as it should. No one might ever notice January 31, and what it means for me. But I'll always know.
I don't know what date it is for you- what broke apart on that day, what was lost, what memories are pinned forever to that day on that calendar. But I hope that.....hold yourself open and tender to the memories for just a moment. As one who grieves today, I grieve with you, for whatever you've lost, too, for what might have been." Shauna Niequist, from the book Bittersweet
A good reminder that is ok to grieve and realize that this world will not last.....our citizenship is somewhere else. I loved the sermon from my pastor, Chad, yesterday, where he talked about what the reality of the world is.....and the glimpse of hope that God gives us every once in awhile because she loves us....check out the sermon if you can!!! (gcomchurch.com)
