Keep Calm and Carry On

I survived Father’s Day 2014. Think I should get that printed on a t-shirt or something? Nah. I’d need too many t-shirts to cover all the holidays and hard days I’ve survived this year.

I knew from the very start that this first year would be the hardest. This year is full of firsts that amplify his absence. This is year is full of firsts that make me sad or miss him or angry that he up and shuffled off this mortal coil (Shakespearean for “died”), leaving me to figure out these things on my own.

There have been birthdays and holidays on top of milestones that come as children grow up. Those are the hardest sometimes. They are tiny victories of childhood that he’s missing. That’s the thought that struck me when the first one came up. It was Jarod’s first high school play and all I could think was, “Kraig’s missing this.” It repeated when Lucy lost a tooth or Kati ran in track.

Right now the meme for “Keep Calm and Carry On” is all over Pinterest and the internet to the point people are sick of it. It will be so dated in about five minutes from now. It has become something people have altered to fit their fandoms or their hobbies or their warped senses of humor. “Keep Calm and trust Daryl Dixon” or “Keep Calm and Call Batman” and so on, and so forth, all line up to put a personal twist on the original. I’ve loved seeing the creative takes on it. But as I’ve walked through this year of firsts, I must say I find something steady in the original.

I looked up the origins of it online tonight which made me love it more. If I can believe sources on the internet it was a slogan created for the Brits in WW2. Only they saved it for extreme emergency. This was the poster to pull out when things looked bleak and so it was never used. These posters were found in storage and instead of tossing them, someone thought they’d be cool to circulate. And an internet sensation was born.

Seriously? Bombs falling on London, children evacuated from their families to the countryside, and air raids weren’t enough for Brits to think it was bleak?! We may grossly underestimate the toughness of the English, I think. Perhaps it is the British in my lineage that contributes a bit to my being able to keep calm and carry on. My love of tea would seem to back that up a bit. And then there’s my love of Dr. Who, Sherlock, Downton Abby, and other British TV. Hmmm… Perhaps I’m more Brit than I realized.

So today I kept calm and carried on. I limited my Facebook more than normal and didn’t talk to anyone on the phone. I focused on getting the kids out of the house into the sunshine. The recent rain limited our hiking choices so we went to the Arts and Crafts festival I usually sell my wares at, this time as customers and spectators.

The kids had fun and each left with something. Jarod purchased a concrete lawn gnome that eerily resembled one he’d drawn for his movies. Lucy spent her money on a cheetah purse. Ryan admired a bud vase a potter had made and was rewarded when she gave it to him. She’d dropped it and the chip meant she couldn’t sell it. He was thrilled. Kati found an upcycled bohemian blouse for only $8 and she does need clothes so I caved.

On the way home we went to Armadillos Ice Cream, a family favorite. They were serving Kraig’s favorite flavor of the day—Strawberry Butter. I seized the moment in the van when they all had ice cream and couldn’t escape to ask that each one share a fun memory of dad. Three of the four could think of something. We laughed. I tried to ask more but was asked to change the subject. I did. I let them lead on many of these conversations. I’m far from perfect in how I bring up his absence but I don’t want them to think we shouldn’t talk about him, remember him, or laugh about his stories.

So for today, I managed to keep calm and carry on. For today I survived. For today I made it not so bad for my kids. Ryan even told me as he went to bed, “Except for missing Dad, this was a really nice Father’s Day, Mom.”

I’ll count that as a win.

 

 

 

A Good Memorial Day

Today was a good day. It could have been terrible or sad or both. Today is a day people think of fallen veterans and departed family and visit grave sides. We went hiking instead.

We visited the Badlands. It was a place we’ve loved to take the kids for years but oddly enough last year we never made it out there. I think that helped it be a good choice for today. There were no fresh memories with Dad here. Lucy didn’t even really remember this place. To her it was a vague memory enhanced by a visit to a photo album.

Today I tried to do things differently. We didn’t stay long at the visitor’s center. We chose different places to picnic and hike at the start of the day. I passed up places we “always” went. Today was a day for new adventures with a touch of the familiar.

We were treated with several firsts today—a gift from God perhaps to help today be a new experience?

We fed prairie dogs right out the window of the van! That’s never happened before. The kids crammed out the windows to toss grapes and lettuce and at least pretend we were trying to feed them things the game wardens would approve of. I kept glancing on the horizon for any official vehicles arriving to make us stop while the giggles and requests for the camera kept coming. One little prairie dog even sang for his supper. Either that or he was yelling, “Hey! I want a piece of that action!”

We saw mountain goats on the ridges as we came to stopped traffic around a bend. We don’t remember ever seeing them this close before. Kati even saw a mom with a baby.

As we arrived in the last portion of the park to get out and hike, we were greeted with the most breathtakingly beautiful views I think we’ve ever gotten here. It was certainly the most green and lush we’ve ever seen the Badlands. A winter with record snowfall and wet days in the past weeks have been rewarded with bursting green growth and astounding contrast in the hills of yellows and reds bursting forth where normally a sea of tans awaits. It was phenomenal.

I watched as my own little mountain goats romped and climbed higher and higher until I had to shout out for them to return. A storm was moving in on the horizon and I wasn’t sure I wanted them perched precariously on a precipice with thunder rolling softly in the distance.

Today was a good day.

At dinner I decided I should tell them how some people who’ve lost a loved one celebrate today. They agreed this was better. Dad would have liked this better. Still grief snuck up on one of my children at bedtime. Ryan, because of his autism, keeps looping back to the night his father died and wrestling with his shock, anger, hurt, and so on. Today reminded him of Dad’s absence. But at least it didn’t hit him until the quiet of bedtime.

On another day I will ask one more time if they want to help me scatter Kraig’s ashes or just want me to take care of it. It’s time. It’s past time. On another day we will go pick out rocks to have engraved as monuments for Dad to keep in our garden. I’ve decided this is a more personal tribute than a cold cemetery they will never want to visit. Those things can wait for another day.

Today we laughed. We hiked. We climbed until Mom either couldn’t keep up or demanded for safety-sake they come back to earth. We fed prairie dogs and played “what do you see in that cloud” on a long drive.

Today was a good day.



 

The Fit that Never Was

There’s a t-shirt I’ve seen that reads “I speak in fluent movie quotes.” This is so me. Ask any of my friends and they will tell you that far too many of my sentences begin, “That’s like that episode of…” or “That’s like that movie…” or “Have you heard that song where….” What’s funny is that I think like that, too. And sometimes, God even uses those images that are trapped in my head or those lines to speak to me.

Today I had a replay of a scene from Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and it was not pretty. Remember the scene where the creature, Gollum, is arguing with himself? One side of his personality is drawing closer to being kind and letting go of his rage and the rage side is arguing. The argument is taking place inside his head but it is so masterfully directed that after a while, you think you are watching two people fight.

I sometimes feel like that when I get overwhelmed these days. There’s a part of me, sometimes but not often, that wants to scream. It wants to stomp my feet and throw a fit worthy of a three-year-old. Having my helper, my husband, my partner suddenly ripped from my life right as my children are becoming busy teens isn’t fair. Six months ago when my sisters came to grieve with me, they made me an offer I kind of wish I would have accepted. They offered to drive out into the Black Hills someplace and let me scream at the unfairness of it all until my throat was raw. I didn’t do it then and I didn’t do it today.

Maybe it would be cathartic. Mostly, though, I fear it would mean admitting defeat. I would feel it would be as immature as a small child, even if nobody else heard me. Or perhaps it would just open a floodgate of emotions. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not hiding from my grief. I cry and I feel sad. But I do not wallow and giving in to this seems like wallowing.

Tonight’s trigger was too many scheduled things at once and having to talk my 15-year-old through finishing dinner and trusting him to serve his siblings while I had to run to work later than was normal. It wasn’t even the worst day I’d had like this. But I was exhausted and as I drove to work, the split-screen fight was waging in my head. I’m pretty sure the one side might have been as ugly as Gollum. But it’s the smaller side.

I mean, I have friends who are doing the single parenting thing off and on and they don’t get to pitch a fit. Two of my friends have husbands working for the railroad. They can be gone 36 hours, home for 12, and gone again. Another has a husband gone in the oil fields for two to three weeks at a time. I have military wives as friends. They are doing this and therefore I do not feel I have the right to throw a pity party.

Instead I needed to put on my smile and go record my voice in a professional manner for the radio show I do. I needed to announce coming events and toss in some personal banter all with a smile in my voice so there didn’t need to be a schizophrenic fight lurking beneath the surface. Suck it up, Jenn.

But as the show went on, I think God was gently nudging me back to a place where I wasn’t focused on how hard this was. To be honest, working as a DJ at a Christian station means a lot of times the song titles are just words I’m reading. But not tonight. The very songs I was announcing were gentle reminders of God’s presence in this life I’m living.

There was “Broken Hallelujah” by The Afters reminding me to offer my praise to God even if I’m having to dig deep to find any. There was “I Am” by Crowder with its chorus reminding me where God is in this: “I am holding on to you, in the middle of the storm, I am holding on, I am.” There was Francesca Battistelli’s new song, “Write Your Story,” perfect for the journey I believe God is prompting me to pursue as a writer of the story of all He’s done in my life.

As I continued to struggle to keep the toddler inside me from pitching that fit the songs kept speaking to my heart. “Be My Rescue” by Nicole Nordeman and “Lord I Need You” by Matt Maher echoed that when the stress starts to overwhelm and exhaust me, I know where to turn. The tears were close to the surface now for a different reason. I knew that God knows this stinks. He knows this is hard and it’s gonna take time to figure it out. He knows it’s taking all my strength some days to keep moving forward.

And then I came to a song that reached me in another dark moment of my life. It was a day when my youngest child was having an MRI to see if she could handle open-heart surgery. She was three days old. In that moment of absolute helplessness to do anything for her, God sent me a song by Third Day, “Call My Name.”

Tonight as I listened to the last chords of that song play and started to talk into the commercial break, my voice cracked. I shared with whomever would be listening why this song moves me and encouraged them that God has promised to run to whomever calls on the name of Jesus. Maybe the tears in my voice will reach someone listening. I may never know. But they reached me and shut that little fit-throwing-toddler in my head right up.

Maybe there will come a day when I need to scream at the unfairness of it all—of losing my husband of twenty years with no warning, of having to care for four kids all by myself on the hectic nights when friends are too busy to help, of grief just not being fair. But not tonight. I just needed some reminders of who God is and where He is. I just needed to call His name.