Bo Stern

 

Today marks the last day of the fourth month since Steve went home.  I have been processing by writing nearly every day, though I’ve only updated the blog a handful of times.  I’ve been reluctant to share this part of the journey publicly, not just because it’s pretty raw, but also because I haven’t really trusted my feelings from day to day. Well, no. That’s not right.  My feelings are my feelings; they don’t need to prove anything to be valid.  Even if those feelings don’t last all day, they are legitimate emotions when I feel them.  What I haven’t been able to trust are the conclusions I tend to draw from them because my brain has been so crowded with questions – the noisiest, bossiest questions I have ever faced.

 

Some are general living questions, like: What do I do with the house? How do I use my money wisely? How much should I travel and speak? Or manage my time in general?  Who do I call with questions about my sprinkler system?

 

And then there are intimate, edgy questions, like: When do I move Steve’s collection of golf hats out of the closet? How do I parent kids who are living through grief while I am also living through grief?  Who will take care of me when I get the flu?  Should I keep wearing my wedding ring indefinitely or not?

 

The first month was like living inside a ball of yarn, trying to punch my way out. The harder I punched, the more the tangle tightened. Around day 27, I finally reverted to the old technique for escaping a Chinese finger trap: Relax. Go limp. Stop fighting. Rest. Countless times, I have stopped a runaway train of thought by saying out loud, You don’t have to know right now, Bo. Just relax.

 

I’ve learned a lot in this season of waiting and resting and I’ve mostly been letting life happen.  If I feel like getting stuff done, I get stuff done.  If I feel like binge watching Parks & Rec, I do it. When cooking sounds fun, I fill my kitchen with my favorite food and people. When it doesn’t, I grab a kid or a friend and go out for dinner.   In my very short time as a widow (a word that I’m not sure will ever sound right), I’ve been to more movies than in the previous ten years combined. Instead of three miles a day religiously, I run…whenever I feel like it. It’s like I’ve turned into the anti-Bo, but it’s been really good. I will always look back on these 120 days as an oasis in the back country of the Shadowlands.  I’ve been kind to myself and I’ve learned that the questions don’t go away at the oasis, but they can wait.   This is not a season I would be anxious to repeat, but I will be grateful for it forever.

 

Having said that, in the past couple of weeks, I’ve felt the unmistakeable movement of a  turning tide.  It’s not that the season of grief is over, or ever will be (it helped a lot when I stopped expecting it to end.) It’s that I feel my heart moving from recovery mode to reconstruction mode.  I remember the first morning I woke up with a strange excitement bubbling beneath the surface.  Is there such thing as “solemn excitement”?  If so, that’s what I felt. I began writing down some new ideas and reminding myself of some old dreams. Then a few trusted friends posed carefully-worded suggestions that I knew were meant to nudge me toward the daring idea that maybe my future had not been buried with Steve.  Ironically, from the day of my husband’s diagnosis, he began telling me that no matter where the road took him, he believed my best days were still ahead.  It used to annoy me so, so much. I would sob and shake and tell him, “I can’t hear you say this right now. I can’t think ahead that far without feeling like my whole life is ending.”  He would smile sadly and pat my head and say, “But someday you’ll be glad I said it.”  And he was right.  I’m already glad he said it. Maybe someday I’ll also believe he was right.  I’m not there yet, but maybe someday.

 

So, today, on the threshold of month five, I am here to say that I am changing. I am growing. I have wrestled down answers to the immediate, essential questions (keeping the house! found the sprinkler guy!)  and am hearing whispers for those that will shape my future (hint: it involves tuition and tests and scares me a lot!)  I am rebuilding on this broken ground and grief is still very present here, but it’s partnered up with hope and they’re dancing – sometimes well,  sometimes super awkwardly – together.

 

Over the next few months, I’ll talk a little more about the answers to some of my questions and the plans that are forming as Part 2 of Plan A unfolds, but for now I want to close out month four with this promise from Jeremiah, which hangs over my desk and has become the only thing I really need to know:

 

I will give those who are weary all they need and refresh everyone who is filled with sorrow. Jeremiah 31:25

 

With hope for all we need,

 

Bo

 

I am cooking tonight.

 

Cooking isn’t unusual for me – I try to cook dinner for my kids several nights each week, and we have our big family dinner every Sunday, so cooking is regular. But tonight, I’m cooking alone. Tori and Tess have things going that adult kids tend to have.  Josiah is at church.  I am alone.  And I don’t mind being alone – in fact, after a busy, people-filled day, the introvert in me is happy to sink into an evening filled with solitude and good food.

 

But, the thing is, I can’t stop my mind from running ahead.  It keeps racing out of the here-and-now, to a day not so far away, when this will be my normal.  Tess gets married in January. Tori moves into her own place in February.  Josiah goes to college in 2 & 1/2 years and is gone a whole lot even now.

 

I look at the six, fat bratwurst browning in the skillet and remember how my grandmother squirreled so many leftovers away in her fridge.  She just couldn’t learn to cook for one and I’m not sure she ever really tried.

 

I try unsuccessfully to deflect the feelings I’m unprepared to process.  I am fifteen years younger than my grandmother was when she was widowed. It seems I have a long road ahead, and that road is apparently filled with a lot of leftovers, which makes me wonder if I’ll hate being really and truly alone.  Almost as soon as that thought bubbles up to the surface, my mind starts racing for solutions which include, but are not limited to:  1) Have friends over for dinner  2) Have homeless people over for dinner 3) Stop eating dinner.

 

But I love to cook. It’s therapy for me.  And Steve loved to eat what I cooked.  It was therapy for him. I would give about anything for the chance to  keep making moussaka and curry and shepherd’s pie for that guy for the next thirty years. But plans change and people go and then we have decisions to make about why we do the things we do and what it would mean if we stopped.To stop cooking would be to hand more of my life over to the greedy abyss that is ALS and I just will not, cannot do it.  It doesn’t get to win this one.

 

Dinner is ready. Sausage, maple glazed butternut squash, roasted broccoli, and way too much of it.  But it is delicious and I feel warmed and fed in a world where so many will go to bed tonight alone and hungry.  The minute I lose sight of that, I’ve become the very thing I swore I would never become (starts with a v and ends with ictum.)  Again I’ll say: ALS doesn’t get to win this.  It doesn’t get to slap labels on lapels. Not without a fight.

 

So, cook I shall. For many or for me.  For life.  For love.  For Steve.

 

It’s just the right thing to do.

 

With hope,

 

Bo

 

Two months today.

 

Two months since Steve went home.

 

Two months of the deepest, darkest heartache I have ever known.  It has been a wonder and terror to me.  (Dramatic words, I know, but I mean them.)

 

Two months of groping through inky black nights of fear and strangely dim summer days.

 

Two months of miracles.

 

Two months of surprising discoveries, both internal and peripheral, that have awakened me to new angles on the character of God and the ways He has woven my heart together.

 

Two months of wondering if He would, again, today, be enough.  Be real enough.  Be peace enough.  Be provision enough.  Be close enough.

 

Two months of finding that He is the Yes to all questions of want.  He is always the Yes, even when my heart is no, or maybe, or prove Yourself first and then I’ll trust.

 

Two months and I am still standing and still astounded. In awe. Undone by His ways.

 

I ran into this prayer today and it sang my heart:

 

God of all our times:

We have known since the day of our birth

that our primal task is to grow to basic trust in You, 

to rely on You in every circumstance,

to know that You would return when You are away, 

to trust that in Your absence You will soon be present, 

to be assured that Your silence bespeaks attentiveness and not neglect, 

to know that in Your abiding faithfulness, “all will be well and all will be well.”  

 

We do trust in You: 

we are named by  Your name,

and bonded in Your service.

We are among those who sing Your praise

and who know of Your deep faithfulness. 

You, you however, are not easy to trust:

We pray against a closed sky; 

our hopes reduced to auto-suggestion; 

our petitions are more habit than hope;

our intercessions are kindly gestures of well-being. 

 

Sometimes,

because Your silence and absence, 

Your indifference and tardiness are glaring among us. 

We are drawn to find lesser gods, 

easier loyalties,

many forms of self-trust…

that do not even fool us. 

 

On this Friday of remembered pain and echoing deathliness, 

We pray for new measures of passion, 

for fresh waves of resolve, 

for courage, energy, and freedom to be our true selves…

waiting in confidence, 

and while waiting, acting our life toward You

in Your ways of forgiving generosity. 

 

We pray in the name of Jesus who trusted fully, and 

who is Himself fully worthy of our trust.  

Amen.     {Walter Bruggemann, Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth}

 

 

With hope,

 

Bo

 

 

I have had a remarkable week.  It has been as full and beautiful as the preceding six weeks were desperate and ugly.  Some of the reasons are easy to identify –  I survived a minefield of paperwork and red tape, the administrative necessities that accompany death.  The headaches have finally been relenting. I went back to work, which I love. All good things, but not good enough to account for this stunning increase of peace.

 

Peace, I’ve discovered, doesn’t actually diminish grief and that’s okay because I’m not looking to be free of grief.  I think the Bible is clear that sorrow tethers us to the presence of God in a way that few other things can.  Grief is my journey right now.  It’s the weight that reminds me that I was the luckiest girl in all the world for 30 years, 5 months and 16 days. Healthy grief is good for me; I’m not going to pray it away.  I am, however, quite desperate to be free of fear – and that’s the power of His promise of peace.

 

Today I feel peace.  I feel beauty in the season and the weather and in the switch to a fall wardrobe and in my heart.  I’m not going to worry about how I’ll feel tomorrow. Today is enough for today.

 

 

With hope,

 

 

Bo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last night was my longest night since Steve went home. Just the longest, hardest night.

 

Tossing and turning, reminding myself at 12:23 and 1:37 and 2:15 that the sun would rise, that morning would be faithful to break through mourning, that it could not be otherwise because it is the law of nature and the law of God’s mercy.

 

I’ve read a lot about people in grief who want to stay in bed indefinitely, but that’s not me. The dark silence is deafening, suffocating.  Not every night, just a few nights. But on those nights, the long term reality of Steve’s absence is palpable and powerful.

 

I keep looking for a strategy to avoid moments like this so that I can get on with this process and make some progress.  Then I remember: this is the process and this is progress.

 

This is grief.

 

It is weighty and consuming and it isn’t heavier than the love of God, but it’s the second-heaviest thing I’ve experienced.  I know that it can’t separate me from His love, but I do feel it pulling at my ankles sometimes with a strength that is surprising, wanting to drag me away with my hope. And if it were up to my muscles or intellect or emotional fortitude, grief would win without even breaking a sweat.

 

But, God.

 

He is strong and stronger still.  And every time I am rescued from the deep abyss, I am stronger, too – not necessarily in my ability to strategize and fight, but in my ability to rest and trust.

 

This is a big week ahead. I have a long list of things that need to be done and decisions that need to be made, and on Friday – the ALS Fancy Dance!  It’s too early to declare that it will be a great week, but I am going to go out on a limb and say that I’ll be stronger at the end of it than I am today.  That’s the ground in which I’m planting my flag on this Monday.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

 

With hope,

 

Bo