The funeral

As I sat huddled with hundreds of strangers and friends, I felt like we were all sisters and brothers.  Here to support and show our love for our siblings, friends who have become like family over the years.

I could feel the palpable love in the room.  The sorrow over a missing friend, for sure.  And yet love triumphed, I sensed greater affection than sadness.

As we heard of his life well-lived, I began to feel a deep respect for this man I barely knew.  I admired his devotion to his family, the good father and husband he’d been for so many years.  I  felt disappointed to not have known him better.  I appreciated his sense of humor and delight in adventure as those close to him shared stories from their lives together.  I clung to their words for clues about his life and the life they’d created as a family. I tried to learn from him.  The way he lived deeply and with his heart.

I reflected on the significance of family times they talked about.  Vacations, hunting, fishing, biking, hiking, working.  Everyday days.  Driving together, dinners, holidays.  I loved the pictures and videos they showed us, the music that resonated within our souls.  I realized again that these are the important parts of life, this is the stuff that matters.  I felt strongly that families need more of this.  And that this family got it right.

Of course I was crying for this family we care about so much.  I felt their heartache so poignantly.  But my tears sprung up over other friends who are also struggling, just in different ways.  I, like you, know so many families that have things.  Big things.  And I worry about them, cry about them, and wonder why and how to help.

This sweet family inspires me to draw my own family a little closer, to overlook the dumb stuff we sometimes get ruffled about, to cherish the ordinary, every days.

Todd and I were talking after a cozy after-church nap as we were making dinner for the kids; just holding each other in the kitchen he told me how much he loved me.  We cry more easily these days especially when we talk about our life together and our family.  The older we get, the faster time passes, the more we realize how much history we have together.  He said he just can’t imagine how much stronger a couple’s love is after like 60 years together.  We’re no where near that, but it’s incredible to me how much we’ve weathered and experienced and been through together as a family, as a couple.  Of course there have been lots of sad and hard and frustrating times. Obviously.  But we were just noting that’s why it feels so good.  Because it’s all worth it.  It works out.  It’s made us stronger and closer over the years.

I just think weekends like these are reminders of family love.  Whether it’s family living in our homes, those who share our blood, or those who simply have a piece of our hearts, those we mingle with and become close to make life worthwhile.  When you pare it all down, all this grieving family could talk about was the love they shared, their cherished memories, the times they’d had together.  No one once mentioned what kind of house they have, how much money they have, where they vacationed, or what he wore (although I think it was jeans every day of his life).  All I really got from it all was that he cared about his family.  He worked hard to provide for them.  He was there for them.  He shared his passions and hobbies with them.  He made time for them.  He fulfilled his role as dad and husband beautifully.  He loved with his whole heart. It’s evident that love permeated their family and that he will continue to be a source of comfort as they move forward.

And so I’m glad I went.  I’m grateful for such a tender afternoon with those I love.  I’m so thankful for this family who has welcomed us into their hearts, who has taught us about the power of unconditional love and who encourages us all to hold our loved ones close.

The re-entry

How hard is it to be on your best behavior when the biggest decisions of the day stem from if we should eat before the state park or wait till it’s dark, fish tacos or pizza, blueberry pie now or sundae later?

Of course we were great on our trip, it was reminiscent of our honeymoon almost 25 years back, we had nothing but time and small towns up and down the coast to explore.  We ate out every meal, slept in soft clean beds, wrapped in luxurious bathrobes and towels, showered with all sorts of delightfully-scented soaps, and watched tv in bed holding hands till it got too late.  We didn’t buy much more than a few souvenirs for the kids, but we perused shops every chance we had.

What was there to fight about? We actually did have a couple of altercations.  On a few occasions we didn’t get what we ordered (ie a brownie sundae with no whipped cream gave us a non-brownie sundae with whipped cream, fries with a burger when I’d asked for only a salad, just stuff like that), but only one caused a little rift.  Silly I know.  Because I'm not one to make a fuss over something so little, it’s not that big of a deal, who cares, they’d just have to throw it away, and I hate to add to their workload.  And Todd knows that about me.  But this one night we got the Special delivered to us when we’d just ordered the regular fish.  It came with lobster, on top of haddock, soggy spinach and tomatoes, all drenched in a pool of butter.  I was disgruntled because meals are already expensive, I have this thing with money, and I didn’t want to pay a Special price for something we didn’t even like, we just wanted plain haddock with rice and broccoli.  But we never said a word to her.  We just ate.  I can’t explain why this particular instance of food mix-up got to me when it’s honestly never a big deal.  I just think it was the end of the week and I was feeling super guilty about all the money we’d been spending on pampering ourselves.  Just a tense dinner for no reason, I totally accept responsibility for my inconsistency and for blowing it out of proportion.  I felt really bad.

Another time was a critical day when Todd needed some important documents.  I’d been carrying them around with me all week in my bag but this day I knew I’d just be at his conference and didn’t want that cumbersome bag, so I left it at our place and just brought my purse.  Big mistake.  His too, he should’ve confirmed I had them.  And yet I’d had them every day since we’d gotten there, he just assumed I would.  Another tense time.  But I tend to think of problems as chances to get creative, and so we simply found them in our email and all was well.

I mean, honestly, there wasn’t much to quarrel about.  He did try to get me to buy an expensive (well, $40) sweatshirt that I said I liked, but I declined, I was annoyed that we had to spend $20 to wash two loads of clothes at the laundromat one night (but honestly, what could we have done differently? Maybe check in a bag?), anyway dumb stuff like that. We decided I’d choose lunch venues and he’d do dinner, but seriously, easy peasy stuff.  Just perfectly content vacation days blissfully strung together.

And then we started life on Monday at 5:30 and that was that.  Funny how easily habits come back.

That afternoon I’d taken Callum to mow, talked to my sister for an hour, and started dinner before my 6 p.m. meeting.  I had all the parts out for kabobs, chicken marinating, vegetables cut, skewers and pan all resting on the counter.  I had quinoa cooking on the stove.  Made caramel sauce and set it aside to simmer in a baby crockpot for family night to go with our apples.  Beds were all made, house back in order, laundry caught up.  But I inadvertently left the quinoa on during my whole meeting.  The house was dark when I got home.  Todd and B were picking pumpkins.  No one had done anything with dinner.  The grill is 1/3 not working.  So by the time I made more quinoa and laced the skewers with all their bits and made broccoli and cut up fruit and buttered the bread, it was 7:40, very late to be eating dinner.  When we were nearly through I realized I had the bread broiling away in the oven.  Good grief.  So the evening was tense for a bit.  So much for dining over lobster on a dock near sunset.  Nope, this was real life.  We still had a great dinner, loved talking to the kids again, catching up.  Then we did our family night right at the table since it was 8:30 or 8:45 by this point.  We ate apples and caramel.  We calendared the week.  We even sang a song, which I pointed out is what people are talking about when they call us peculiar people.  We talked about Conference coming up.  And we watched a tender video about suicide.  And prayed again.  That was our re-entry.

But this morning I was sad.  What happened to our vacation? And so I prayed.  And approached Todd and we talked for half an hour.  It’s super hard for me to do this.  Really really hard.  I haven’t really seen people in real life marriages apologize and talk about the hard stuff.  I guess people do it in private, but I don’t have much to go on.  And yet I had to.  Because I loved our time together and want to keep those feelings in the forefront instead of relegating them to a distant memory.  So it helped.  I felt close once more.  Vacation-close.

Here’s the thing.  Life is anything but a vacation.  It’s 90% just going through the motions, work, puppy accidents, cows getting out, broken lawnmowers, running the kids around, worrying about money, making sure the kids have what they need, staying engaged even though at this stage of life we don’t feel needed, feeling guilty about not doing enough with our callings, projects and messes everywhere we look.  We have a lot on our minds, all of us.  There realistically aren’t enough hours in the day to meander through the streets and window shop and pause for lunch before taking a little nap.  It’d be easy to stay in love, to be in a good mood, if that’s all life was about.

The trick comes after vacation.  After the kids come.  After the kids leave.  After a long day at work.  After seeing how much is left once the bills have been paid.  After realizing dinner is burnt. After we wake up.  After we’ve demolished another part of the house.

But it’s not a magic trick.  I know how it works, I’ve seen it.

It’s simply remembering the vacation.  The wedding day.  The first kiss.  The reason we came together in the first place.  It’s remembering all the awesome parts of our history.  It’s remembering our other storms and how the sun came out later.  It’s remembering our commitment to each other.  To put ourselves in their shoes.  To be kind.  It’s remembering how much we love each other.  And how much we want this family to work.

So while I’ll dream of our vacation for a good while still, I’m surprised that I can’t even recall the places we visited distinctly.  It’s all sort of a blur, it’s fading already.  We were ready to come back.  For sure.  But yes, real life hits hard, like being doused with a pot of cold left-over steamed broccoli water.  We knew what we were coming back to, we knew it’d be nothing like our week in Maine.  But we’re ok.  We’ve been on this road a long, long time.  It’s familiar and yet never the same.  It feels like we’re on the right track, even as we constantly wonder what we’re doing and where we’re going. It’s not sunshine and hot fudge and HGTV.  But it’s good. And so I’m grateful for a vacation to remind me of all that I love about our life together.