strength

Strewn with loss

/ Fran Haley / 33 Comments

Yesterday I wrote to the WordPress daily prompt on fate/destiny.

Today’s prompt:

What experiences in life helped you grow the most?

Loaded question.

My title today comes from a line I wrote in yesterday’s post. Will this be my pattern every day I take on the Slice of Life Story Challenge? Don’t know. We shall see.

As to this prompt about experiences…

Doesn’t most growth come from a place of pain?

*******

Dear Mom:

Someday I will do a better job of writing about this than what I am about to do now, but here goes.

I understand you have died. About a year ago.

I’ve not been able to find your obituary anywhere, nor your grave. Your plate on the headstone beside Daddy’s remains blank. My guess is that things were kept private, simple, as inexpensive as possible.

After twenty-three years without any contact, I have a few questions, but not much to say.

I have to say it, even though you’ll never know.

I got over my anger long ago. I had to, or it would have consumed me. I had young children of my own to care for; they were my priority. I now have two beautiful granddaughters. Your great-granddaughters, who will ask for the story, someday.

I got over my fear of your destructive behavior, which marked Daddy’s last years, and which shattered our family. I know it continued because, every so often in the ensuing decades, debt collectors would call my house looking for you. I would tell them the truth: I had no contact with you.

The pattern would not be broken, but people would. There could be no going back. Only forward.

I am past the point of blaming. We make our own choices. We paint our narratives in the colors of our liking, to our own purposes. To keep living with ourselves, I suppose, instead of changing. I chose the filter of Fact. Grannie once told me that she didn’t believe in divorce but she had to do it to survive your violent father. I didn’t believe in cutting ties with my own mother, either, but I had to do it, to survive. In the better part of you – for it was surely still there, somewhere – you would have understood this.

But I am not writing to justify or to judge. It’s not my place. It doesn’t matter now, anyway.

What I want to say is thank you.

Thank you for every sacrifice you made throughout my childhood. You did so much with so little.

Thank you for the sewing machine running late in the night, making our beautiful clothes.

Thank you for playing gospel records that I listened to when I was supposed to be asleep, and for the way you could paint and repair most anything.

Thank you for your humor and your unbridled cackling, contagious laughter; no one else laughed like you.

Thank you for being a safe haven for kids of troubled families in the neighborhood as well as for our neighbor who suffered a nervous breakdown. I see her frantic blue eyes, even now. Thank you for inviting the meanest bully of all to my birthday party without telling me, because you saw a child who was hurting inside, who needed to be part of something happy.

Thank you for advocating (surely, as I can’t imagine it was Daddy’s idea), to get my pet parakeet, and later for the puppies (which he forbade, to no avail; you won out).

Thank you trying to save my sick kitten, Edelweiss, which died in your hands while you tried to feed her with an eyedropper.

Thank you for your incredible creativity, the way you could whip up a costume like magic, and for coming so proudly to my school plays, your sisters in tow.

Thank you for pulling my wedding together, for mending the gown and veil from the discount racks so they’d be presentable, for weeping with sheer relief when Grandma offered to pay for the cake, and for making my all my bridesmaid dresses and my sky-blue going-away outfit. I recall you saying you were married in a blue dress; you didn’t have a wedding gown. And thank you for removing the iridescent white beads you wore to my wedding, pulling them off your neck to put around mine at the last minute, to set off that sky-blue dress as I was leaving.

I bet you thought I’d forgotten, all these long years since.

I have not. I remember it all.

As I said, one day I’ll write about it better than I can right now.

Just one more thing, as I sit by the window on this bright day, with winter fading and spring stirring in a wild dance of golden light and flickering shadows across my kitchen walls and floors: Thank you for taking me to church when I was a child. When I lost you to the darker part of yourself, I still had the church. The faith. The Lord. This has been my life. This has been the life of my family.

You might have forgotten many things. I might be one of them. I will never know.

But it’s okay. I choose to remember the good bits of you reflected in every shard I salvage from this story strewn with loss, set in motion long before I was ever in the world.

Some will say how sad, that no one ever never reached across the abyss to make amends.

I do not say this. I say it is over. The abyss is closed. Filled in. Time takes us all. The hurt is gone, although the healing will never be complete in this life.

I carry the shards.

Peace to you at long last, Mom.

P.S. I dreamed of you awhile back. Small and white-haired, but you looked well. You held your arms out to me in welcome.

“My baby has come home,” you said.

And I hugged you.

Because it was finally safe to love you again.

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the annual March Slice of Life Story Challenge.
This is my ninth year participating alongside fellow teacher-writers,
as a means of continually honing the craft.

To those of you out there dealing with loss, death or otherwise:
Writing brings clarity.
Writing in community builds courage.

Write your story and trust.

Turning the page

/ Fran Haley / 2 Comments

February is nearly gone.

I flip the page in my daily planner to find this image on the March tab:

I am still, in contemplation of the message.

First thought: The Bible verse that has repeatedly reverberated throughout my life, ever since a youth minister gave me a plaque that hung on my bedroom wall during my teenage years: Psalm 46:10, Be still and know that I am God. The rest of which reads: I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.

A reminder that I can see so little of the big picture of events, why they unfold the way they do, and that I must trust even as life’s story takes dark and twisting turns. Even so, there’s awe to be found. Always. I am not the author of life, not even my own. Someday it will end, as it does for us all. In the meantime…living well means finding this stillness every day. Tapping into the underlying currents of perspective and meaning…here’s where writing becomes an invaluable gift. Sometimes you can’t know what you think or feel until you begin to write.

Within that stillness eventually comes gratitude for the gift of life itself, imperfect as it is. To what or whom is this gratitude directed? For me: God. Whatever sadness, mourning, grief, anger, irritation, guilt, worry that gnaws at my soul, it is stilled to submission, releases its hold, even evaporates like smoke in the wind, in my awe of God. Another verse: Luke 1:37, Nothing is impossible with God.

I know it to be true. When I was a teenager, I could never have envisioned my life now. I was an unlikely candidate for a minister’s wife. Today, my sons serve as pastor and church musician.

Awe. Awe. Awe.

I contemplate the illustration on my planner page. Living things are woven into the words Be still. The upper flowers appear to be cosmos, the Greek meaning orderly, harmonious; the opposite of chaos. These flowers attract pollinators which perpetuate life (note the butterfly). The garden cosmos is often symbolic of knowledge, beauty, and happiness. Be still and know…

The bottom bloom might be Italian leather flower, a form of clematis. A plant app tells me it was the first climbing vine introduced into the garden of Queen Elizabeth I. It has come to represent wisdom, royalty, high aspirations. I look at this bloom, with its leathery-strong petals, and think of resilience. Pereverance. Endurance. Faithfulness. Reliance.

The flower in the center, the least noticeable, seems to be sweet pea. It stands for goodbyes. And thank yous.

This journey called Life is inevitably strewn with pain, with loss, with goodbyes; yet along the path, if we will remember to stop and be still, we can find the sprouts of gratitude. The good is blossoming despite all. In the stillness, maybe only in the stillness, we can breathe that fragrance deep, and be strengthened.

Just the reminder I needed.

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge

Blessing

/ Fran Haley / 19 Comments

noun

a favor or gift bestowed by God, thereby bringing happiness.

—Dictionary.com

*******

I could hardly wait to get home yesterday to check the progress of the new finch nest on my door wreath.

On Day Two, it now has the characteristic cup shape. It’s lined with white fuzz, a soft cushion for the precious eggs to come.

It is comprised almost exclusively of fresh green grass. The color of newness and life.

House finches are said to represent new beginnings.

Their nests always fill me with awe, and never more than now, watching the parents working together to rebuild immediately after two of their babies died in the previous nest, which I tore down. Confession: I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing. Nature is mighty, ever-resilient, wise; it is imbued with regenerative power. Yet there are so many delicate balances within it. I didn’t want to upset any of these. I am a mere student of these birds. They are the experts.

So to see this nest being built in the exact spot as the ill-fated former one is a gift. It sends my spirits soaring, exponentially.

House finches are considered symbols of joy. If you ever hear one singing, you understand why.

In some parts of the world, they’re called the blessing bird.

They chose my door years ago as the place to bring new life into the world. I now share the wonder of it with my seven-year-old granddaughter, our “nurture scientist.” Together we have witnessed the miracle of tiny life coming into existence and eventually taking flight. In a couple more seasons, her baby sister will be able to enjoy it, too.

After I took this photo of the new nest, rejoicing and wondering when the first egg will appear, I went into the house to find a mysterious package my husband had retrieved from the mailbox.

Neither of us had ordered anything.

Curious.

I opened it…

A gift from a friend I met through writing, who reads about my finches each spring, who knows of the recent loss.

I am awed again.

A writing community is like a nest: a safe place especially created for growth, where we nurture one another and encourage each other to stretch our wings and fly.

It is here that we learn the true power of story and how it knits our hearts together. In the beginning, in the end, we are story.

To live it, write it, build it together, is a gift.

And the time for doing it is now. Today.

My love for the finches, like my love for writing, is inextricably woven through and through with gratitude for the blessings in my life. It’s all a song in my heart, greater than words.

Each day brings its own gifts. It’s up to us to see them, accept them, celebrate them.

And to give in return.

Beyond the horizon
Lies infinite possibility
Eyes cannot see.
Sky meeting sea
Sea meeting sky…
I fly ever onward
Nested and rested in the
Giver of every good and perfect gift.

Today, there might be an egg.

********
with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the monthlong Slice of Life Story Challenge

and my dear gift-giver

Filling the bucket

/ Fran Haley / Leave a comment

Bucket of Sunshine. gfpeck. CC BY-ND 2.0.

Dandelions represent the return of life, the rebirth of growth and green after a harsh winter, and a display of abundant strength and power.  – Lena Struwe, Director of the Chrysler Herbarium

At my school this year, every staff member is writing notes of encouragement and gratitude for each other. We are calling this “filling each other’s bucket” – everyone has a colorful designated bag for receiving the written messages.

I couldn’t think of better symbolism than this bucket of dandelions. Or the quote.

All too often, we never realize the collective abundant strength and power we have.

It is in the giving that we begin to experience it.

Shot of strength

/ Fran Haley / 2 Comments

On this final, frosty February morn, I wasn’t sure I had stamina enough to endure the day. For a short month, February can be so long. Teachers know.

I bundle up. I get in the car. I sigh. Could I manage to take half a day? Is it worth it? Probably not. A moment at a time, a moment at a time…

I drive. The empty fields seem sugarcoated with ice. I look for hawks. I am always looking for hawks. I don’t know why they lift my spirits so. They just do.

No hawks. No plump little goats in the goat pen by the stop sign, either. But something different in the glassy pond…

A great blue heron.

Symbol of self-determination, paragon of peace, harbinger of spring. Stoic, tall, unflinching. Stunning.

Just the shot of strength needed for the day.

Photo: Great Blue Heron at Sunset. Maxinux40k. CC BY-NC-SA

I stopped to take a picture of my beautiful heron but it’s not clear enough to post. I have to content myself with sharing this one instead; mine looked so like this.

In the time of broken hearts

/ Fran Haley / 15 Comments

Heard on the news this week: Broken heart syndrome is a real thing.

It happens after significant stressors. Too much adrenaline. The heart is weakened. It hurts.

There’s a scientific name for it: takotsubo cardiomyopathy. It derives from the Japanese word for “octopus trap,” after the shape of the left ventricle of the heart in this condition.

It is temporary. The broken heart can heal in a short time, maybe days or weeks.

It can sometimes lead to complications. Rarely death, though.

It seems to affect mostly women 50 and older.

But I wonder.

I wonder, as I regularly step in for teachers who are out.

I wonder, as I absorb laments and frustration and anger about the depth of student struggles.

I wonder, as I listen to students reading poems about tasting the salt of their tears.

I wonder, when I wake up so tired on workdays, when I have so little left to give when I get home.

And I am usually one to see the glass half full, to find the awe in each day, like…

the blue heron standing a glassy pond on the drive to work

the whorls of white smoke floating up from the chimney of a little house in the countryside, struck by the rising sun and transformed into clouds of peach-colored light

the newest photo of my three-month-old granddaughter who’s beginning to smile more and more

hearing my boy play old hymns on the baby grand piano at church with such a multitude of notes and joyful liveliness that surely, surely the angels dance

the one little bird (a cardinal?) singing for all it is worth, from the treetops

-these things strengthen my heart.

And keep it, I think, from breaking.

It is a long season, this pandemic, with its deep layers of residue.

On this day of celebrating love and hearts…I wish you healing peace for the pieces.

Photo: Broken Heart Chalk 2. Retta Stephenson.CC BY 2.0

Spiritual self-care

/ Fran Haley / 1 Comment

It is not what I expected in a meeting at the end of another long workday.

A series of self-care surveys.

Not so much the physical, psychological, and emotional ones.

The spiritual one…

There’s my word – awe!

‘Other’, for me: Write about all these things.

Which I do.

And my spirit sings.

On fire and prayer

/ Fran Haley / 9 Comments

On the last Monday of October I drive to work in pre-dawn darkness as deep as midnight. Rounding bends on deserted backroads past unlit houses, gaping stubbled fields, hulking shapes of farm equipment, shadowed barns, patches of woods, when off in the distance, through silhouetted tree trunks—fire.

A bonfire. Tall flames, bright orange against the blackness, undulating skyward. Startling. So Halloween-esque. Hauntingly beautiful in its way except….I can’t tell what’s burning. Probably trash. The fire seems large for that, and before sunrise? I am too far away to see anything but the fire itself. I cannot see smoke or smell it. No screaming sirens. No alarms. Only silence, stillness…should I investigate to be sure? The road twists and turns, demanding my attention, and as I reach a tricky intersection where a few sets of headlights from opposite directions approach and pass, I realize: I’ve lost sight of the fire now. I am not sure of its location. Somewhere close by it’s burning, consuming, destroying, I hope nothing precious, nothing of value… and so I cross the intersection, praying it is controlled until extinguished.

On I drive in the darkness, shivering.

I think of anger.

*******

Fire, anger. The contrast of being controlled, purifying, and righteous, or uncontrolled to the point of destroying, intentionally or not, what is precious, valued, and loved. Thinking of that fire throughout the day yesterday—there were no reports of damage—reminded me of a poem I wrote last week:

Why I Pray

In the absence of peace,
I pray.

When my mind cannot fathom
or even form questions,
I pray.

When I am weary
of injustice, of sifting truth and lies,
when my inner well has run dry,
I pray.

I pray for power beyond my own.

To overcome the red-hot dagger of fury,
that I should not wield it,
thereby scarring others
and myself.
To knit words of healing instead,
one by one, 
like snowflakes falling
to form a blanket of blessing,
a holy hush.

Freeing myself by forgiving
myself
as well as others,
feeling the weight drop away.

That quickening sense of awe,
for even if I cannot call
fire from Heaven (thankfully),
I can move mountains of ice
in my own heart.

Because, as long as I live,
I will battle need, loss, and fear, 
trusting that love conquers all
—its beating wings in my heart,
forever my reason 
to pray
again.

*******

with thanks to Andy Schoenborn for the “Embrace your why” prompt and the mentor poem written by a student, shared on Ethical ELA’s Open Write last week.

and to Two Writing Teachers for the weekly Slice of Life Story Writing Challenge, always encouraging “a world of reflective writers”—so needed.

Photo: Burning fire at night. wuestenigel. CC BY 2.0

Carry on

/ Fran Haley / 24 Comments

The road is long
With many a winding turn
That leads us to who knows where
Who knows where …

—”He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,” B. Scott/B. Russell

Dear Son,

I think this may be my favorite picture of you. For several reasons. I like to see you in such a peaceful setting, walking that country path beside lush green fields, under the blue summer sky. You were walking with a friend, so you weren’t alone. You told me that her puppy followed you—I still can’t believe that’s just a puppy; he’s massive!—and he got tired, so you picked him up and carried him the rest of the way.

That is why I love the photo so much. It captures the essence of who you are.

Quietly bearing your burdens, no matter how heavy. There have been many in these past few years. Ever how burdened you were, ever how twisted and dark the path became, you kept on walking.

No one knows better than I what a long, long road it’s been, from the day you started college to now. Graduation being canceled, just when the end is in sight, feels like a coup de grâce.

It all started off on such a high note, didn’t it? Getting that phone call two weeks after you finished high school, a church looking for a music director. Your childhood dream. I still have your kindergarten “All About Me” book with the prompt ‘When I grow up, I want to be’ … where you drew yourself as a choir director in crayon. You attained it at seventeen, before your formal training even began.

That summer was glorious and brief.

That fall you started college and almost instantly the shadows came.

Your father‘s diagnosis of ocular melanoma, the loss of his eye, the weeks waiting for pathology to reveal no cancer cells had spread. Despite your new job and your courseload, you stepped up to help him readjust.

On the heels of his healing came Ma-Ma’s stroke, the beginning of her slow decline over the rest of that year. She knew how much you loved her. She treasured every minute with you; she savored every long phone call you made from the time you were little. She couldn’t keep from crying whenever you played the piano and sang—remember how she organized for you to come play at her nursing home, near the last? I will never forget her wet, shining face. She was inordinately proud of you. She loved you fiercely.

How grateful I am that you and your dad were there, holding her hands, when she died.

And so you bore her loss on top of an unexpected one.

I know you’re marking the date. Three years ago today, the accident that took your friend. Your little childhood playmate who sang with you in preschool choir, your high school band mate, the organizer of the Sunday-nights-at-Bojangles gatherings. As I write, I hear her pure, high voice echoing in the church to your harmony and piano accompaniment. Her going left all of us reeling—a swift, severe, deep cut to the heart, a knotty scar we’ll bear forever. And yet you play on. You still sing. You stand by her family in their remembrances, your presence the only comfort that’s in your power to give. She would be graduating, too, this spring … but no one is graduating this spring …

It’s one of the hardest things in life, losing people, and not only to death. People will come and go because they choose to, no matter how much we wish they’d stay. You endured this, too, with uncommon grace, never lashing out, just walking on with your invisible pain. I knew it was there. I could feel the weight of it.

Seems we were due a respite, and if there was one, it was those few weeks of vacation last summer before your dad’s heart attack. You and I had just come home from walking when the officer arrived in the driveway to say your dad’s truck had run off the road and hit a tree, it might have been a medical event, maybe a seizure, no, he wasn’t sure what condition your father was in, EMS was working on him when he left, and did we have a way to get to the hospital? With your big brother too distraught to drive, you did it. Calmly, carefully, you drove us to the emergency room where the nurse met us at the door. You were beside me when she ushered us to the little room where the doctor met us to say your father had been resuscitated and was being prepped for heart surgery.

You were there with me that first night of sleeping on the waiting room chairs, not knowing what tomorrow would bring. You were there with me throughout that long week of his hospitalization, until your dad came home, battered, bruised, trying to recover his memory. You got his prescriptions so that I wouldn’t have to leave him … and when I took him back to the ER with chest pains a couple of weeks later, you met us there. Another hospital stay. Another heart surgery. Two more weeks of sleeping in the hospital. Do you remember the surreality of it all? How we felt like it would never end, like we were caught in the web of the wrong story, a movie with a terrible plot twist we didn’t see coming? How could this be?

Somehow you managed to keep your studies up, only leaving for your classes and your church services, making the music and leading the worship for others.

So here we are, at last. Your dad, recovered and restored … able to drive me back and forth to work with my broken foot … until this tiny pathogen bent on world domination closed the schools. Here you are, completing your final weeks of college online, being denied the walk to receive the reward of all your labors … it is unthinkable.

I think about the whole of your young adult life. How your road has been so long, with many a winding turn, through many a dark shadow. I watched how you went around, through, or over every obstacle on this arduous journey. You’ve endured what might have caused others to quit college, others who might have actually enjoyed their studies; I know you never loved the “game” of school and that for you it’s been a test of endurance, in itself. But the end is in sight—despite a pandemic. A plague. Who’d have ever believed, in our time …

You have come this far, bearing every heavy load. You’ve carried on. Often you, the baby of the family, carried the rest of us. You’ve fought internal battles for your own wellness more than anyone else knows; in this spiritual war, you’ve earned a Medal of Honor for exceptional valor. I know it and God knows it, Son. I stand in awe of your heart, full of love and mercy, so self-sacrificial, so willing to lighten others’ burdens as your own grew heavier. Like carrying a giant puppy during a long walk on a hot summer’s day, because it got tired.

That is why I love this picture. It is your story.

There are no words for how much I love you.

Keep walking, Son. Carry on. You are strong.

I am stronger because of you. Soon my foot will be well enough to walk with you again.

When we come through this present ominous shadow, college will be over, we’ll find ourselves in a whole new chapter in our lives, and we’ll celebrate all of it. Just a little farther along … I know that in your quiet way, you’ve already made your peace with it. I can almost hear you singing:

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
And I say it’s all right...

All my love, my always-little darling,

Your forever proud, grateful Mom