The Valley

As I sat down with a Pop Tart and a glass of wine it occurred to me that maybe that was the actual bottom of my present valley. And if it wasn’t, it needed to be. It wasn’t my healthiest decision. It was a moment of choice, like so many God puts before us – camp out in the valley of the shadow of death or trust Him to get me out. As I write this, I’m actively trusting Him even though the process is nearly as scary as being thrown in the valley to begin with.

So, here’s the thing, I’m an orphan. Yes, I’m 43 and that’s not what we think of when we talk about orphans. It’s a club I’ve recently joined, and no matter your age, it’s unpleasant. My mother died on June 17, 2008 and my father passed away on May 25, 2019. Yes, I’m adult. No, it doesn’t hurt any less to lose them. It’s probably less scary as an adult. But they knew me the longest, the best and were the one earthly place I could go for unconditional love.

Let me pause here to say there are millions of people in the world who have lost both parents, and I most certainly do not presume to be the only one or have any feelings or answers that any one of the others doesn’t have. I also don’t want to compare the loss of my parents to the loss of any important person in your life. This is simply my personal experience of a loss that most of us will eventually be faced with. In fact, I’m so new to it that I’m still quite raw in my grief. However, I’m a lover of words, their power and how God uses them to help others. I don’t want to waste my grief experience by not sharing what might also help someone else, so here we are. It is worth noting, and I’m more convinced than ever, that we are all allowed to feel whatever we feel. While there are some universal components to grief, it is unique to each individual.

I feel led – or perhaps pushed – by God to be a conduit for Him in this way. If I don’t turn around and shine a light back for others who will follow, I will have missed an opportunity to glorify God and just be a responsible human. The simple act of writing about my experience is therapeutic, so maybe we will all benefit. That said, I beg you to be gentle with me.

MOM

My mom was my north star, my compass, my lighthouse, my anchor and whatever else you can come up with to describe the core of my foundation. She was the person who taught me about faith and prayed for me daily. She emphasized the importance of education, good manners, the significance of body language, independence, responsibility and critical thinking among many other things. She taught me how to cook, how to do laundry and how to balance my checkbook. She taught me to look beyond the surface. She put too much pressure on me and drove me crazy always expecting more out of me than I thought was possible or even reasonable.

In one of life’s great ironies, she died of lung cancer (that metastasized to the bone) after spending much of her career trying to help Kentucky farmers become less dependent on tobacco as their cash crop. I was absolutely gutted. I watched her fight and suffer for two years. I knew it was coming but it thoroughly rattled my foundation. To this day I am devastated. She never knew her grandchildren. She only exists to them in pictures and stories we tell them. I’m forced to navigate the mine field of parenting without being able to ask her advice.

I am not a hugger, nor was she, but I miss her hugs. I miss having the person who loved me most in the world not being here. I miss her prayers for me. I miss that I could count on her to tell me the truth. I miss her faith in me and having her say she’s proud of me. I miss how she knew everything. Of course, she didn’t, but it felt like it to me. She was the voice of reason and the finder of silver linings. Sometimes it is still suffocating to me when I realize she isn’t here. How could the world possibly go on? How could God take her so soon? I needed her. A lot of people needed her. She worked tirelessly for the greater good. She made decisions based on how her community and the most people would benefit. Hers was a true life of service. To this day I have pages and pages of her notes and journals where she was wrestling with God and trying to extract lessons from cancer that she could teach others. That’s how she lived – looking for what she could take from today that would help someone else tomorrow.

Over and over she documented her faith and wrote things like, “this is the day the Lord has made, and I will rejoice and be glad in it” and “God has a plan.” She maintained a white-knuckle grip on the 23^rd Psalm until the very end.

Psalm 23: The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and they staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

DAD

One of the things I most learned to appreciate about Mom once she passed was how much she took care of Dad. He already had several heart problems and health challenges well before Mom was diagnosed. As the oldest of two daughters, much of that just naturally became part of my role. I made sure his bills were paid, that he had clothes and that he made it to doctor’s appointments. I filed that under the category of “you do what you have to do.”

There were plenty of caregiving challenges – distance, I had two kids, his heart got worse. There were week-long hospital stays that left my sister and I staying with him, sleeping in a chair for days and hoping my husband could manage the house and the kids without me. There were risky procedures, medication adjustments and extended stays in rehab facilities. It’s hard to watch your strong, protective father lose his ability to see, hear, stand and feed himself. The man who was always there with a bear hug when we were sad, a Popsicle when were sick or to just run interference when Mom was mad at us, became a shadow of his former self. He was joyful and patient, kind and compassionate, playful and strong, until he wasn’t himself anymore.

I’ve long said my Dad never got the credit he deserved for being a good dad. Mom had a public job and was an active voice in the community. Dad willingly took a back seat and allowed Mom to thrive. I was frequently home or at a ball field with Dad while Mom was working. My friends loved him. All children loved him because he was always full of jokes, laughter and mischief. And often he had candy or gum to give away. He was gifted at getting me in trouble with Mom during church. Everything funny is funnier during church, and Dad was always doing or whispering something to make me giggle.

Dad was my safe place. My restful place. He never judged me unless it was about how I played in a ballgame. In the final weeks before he died, he often asked me if I remembered certain things about games I played in. Do you remember when you got that hit? Do you remember winning that game?

Though less studious about it than Mom, Dad was sound in his faith as well in the end. Dad frequently told me to pray about whatever issues I was dealing with. He didn’t quote scripture or have Bibles full of notes like Mom, he just simply continued to tell me to take it God. He also consistently told me how important it was to be ready to go because you never know when your time is up.

It was February when his primary cardiologist (he had a team) told us there was nothing else that could be done. Congestive heart failure had taken its toll and time was running out. I made many trips back and forth from Lexington to take him to appointments and get back by 2:30 p.m. to pick up the kids from school. Often two and three times a week in the last couple months. I hired people to stay with him around the clock. I called Hospice. I spent more time on the phone chasing around things he needed, his doctor’s appointments and taking care of his bills than I did anything else.

Despite everything I tried to do, I still couldn’t make anything any better. I prayed for God to take him. He didn’t want Hospice care. I called them anyway and asked them not to tell him. I had his defibrillator turned off. I also asked that they not tell him. These things were heavy weights.

On the day school finished I took my boys to visit him one last time. It was brief for them because he had grown more violent and less coherent. He told me I was trying to kill him. He told me to get out of his house or he would kill me. His final day was hard but the last few hours were peaceful. My sister and I were able to hold his hands, tell him we loved him and that it was okay to go.

I was with both parents when they passed – a gift that I’m forever grateful for. But they were hard days. When Dad passed it felt empty. Like I had come untethered and was adrift. I still fill that way. If losing Mom shook and fractured my foundation, losing Dad crumbled it altogether. I continue to try and find my footing in a world without them. Mom was 57, and Dad was 72. They were both still too young.

The thing is I was just getting settled into the new normal of life without Mom and here we are in the valley again. I knew a little more about what to expect the second time around. I knew I didn’t want to do it again, but I knew it was possible to get through it. You never get over it, but you can get through it. Your life is never the same again. You create a new normal. Days eventually come when it’s easier to cope, but the loss and void they leave is never fully healed.

The good news is that because of my faith, I firmly believe they are together with Jesus now. It was somehow easier to let Dad go knowing that Mom was waiting on him. Many of us know that when someone we love dies, a piece of us dies with them. When Mom died, I watched a large part of Dad die with her. That’s a whole other slice of life to brace for. Helping a parent cope with the loss of a spouse is a real thing. Even though yet another piece of my heart went with him, there was an odd comfort in knowing that they were together again. There is some solace in that.

AFTERMATH OF LIFE

As my sister and I stood beside Dad’s bed watching him take his last breath, we entered another phase of life – the aftermath of our parents’ lives. We stood in the home that they had made surrounded by things they had bought and loved. Though it was our childhood home and we have many happy memories there, being in the house without your parents is a strange place to be. Completely full of things, yet empty.

I found the funeral experience to be a little different the second time around. It felt like everyone turned to me for what seemed like everything. My sister and I had to answer so many questions. Dad was there to be the buffer the first time. I endured a gazillion well-meaning hugs. Nearly everyone who knew my Mom has decided that I look like her. And many used the opportunity to remind me of how much they still missed Mom. It was a bit like a second funeral for her. People mourned them both together. That’s okay, but it reopens wounds.

A weight of a different kind of responsibility started to sink in as we finished the funeral. Something had to be done with the stuff and the house. Houses actually. They also owned the house next door and it was occupied with renters. I am the executor of the estate, so I spent a great deal of the summer verifying things with an attorney, making phone calls and signing paperwork in front of notaries. Business comes before grief in this role. I turned off my parents’ home phone. Outside of mine and my husband’s numbers, my childhood number is the only other one I have memorized. That was surprisingly hard, and simply put I wasn’t ready for it.

I went through boxes and boxes and boxes of papers sorting through everything from old tax papers to my parents’ old report cards. I learned things about them I never knew. How is it possible that your Dad completed firefighter training and you never knew or that your Mom was a Kentucky Colonel and apparently told no one? Oh, and the pictures. I brought home thousands of pictures. Every time I look at them, I cry. I don’t even need to look at the actual photos – just looking at the giant stack of old photo albums piled up in my dining room and knowing that they should still be residing on the bookshelves at Mom and Dad’s brings tears.

Dad had a collection of hats that my boys liked to wear around every time they went to visit him. One day a couple years ago Dad told me that when he died, he wanted them to have the hats because they got so much joy out of them. So, we have them now. The boys have been playing in Papaw’s hats. I love it. And, I hate it.

My sister and I put a few things in storage. We gave some things to friends, neighbors and family members. We filled an entire 40 cubic foot dumpster. My parents lived in the same house for 40 years. We threw away, or boxed up for sale, the vast majority of it. I have never been more familiar with the phrase, “you can’t take it with you when you go.” And we were reminded of the Bible’s promise that things will ultimately rot and corrode.

We hired help to clean it out because it seemed like the only manageable way. We had been through some of Mom’s things over the years, and had, with Dad’s permission, taken things that we wanted when we wanted them. But cabinets full of Mom’s China, tea sets and tablecloths for all occasions were still tucked away as if waiting for the next holiday meal. So, my sister and I just out loud apologized to our parents like they were standing right there and then got to work sorting and throwing away. It was all kinds of hard – not because we were overly attached to their things but because it was proof that they no longer needed them.

We reminded ourselves that it’s okay not to keep it all or even much of it. Neither of us really cared for Mom’s taste in décor and design. Keeping a couple special things is better than allowing yourself to be overwhelmed with so much stuff that you really don’t like in the first place. For us, it worked best to do it quickly.

Then we walked out, stood in the driveway and ugly cried for a long time. As I stood there looking at the house, I could see my Dad hanging out an upstairs window collecting snow for snow cream off a portion of the roof. I could see my Mom standing in the kitchen fixing a meal like it was the most natural thing she had ever done. I could hear laughter as my Dad hid behind doors and jumped out to scare us. I could see us two little girls helping Mom decorate an old silver aluminum Christmas tree fresh out of the 1970s with bright colored lights. I could hear bedtime giggles coming from the room my sister and I shared and my Dad yell, “Girls, I don’t want to hear another peep out of you.” Then, as it always, always did, followed a timid but very real, “Peep.”

It was as if those and a million memories of moments that created the person I am just whipped through my mind and heart on a movie reel at warp speed. What was once my entire world now lives only in my memories. While I am deeply thankful for many memories of a wonderfully happy and stable childhood, a twinge of sadness is left in the place of a tangible connection to those times.

An estate auction took care of what was left. That was another in the run of hard days. Though we were comfortable letting stuff go, it isn’t the easiest thing to stand and watch it happen. We sold all the remaining stuff and both houses. Almost all the long-time neighbors came and gave us a hug. It was sort of like another funeral. We momentarily stood in a house that we’d never seen empty. Those walls contained so many happy times. It’s where both parents took their final breath. We walked out, drove away and closed the book of my parents’ lives.

Their stories and imprints live on in my sister and I, in their grandsons, their remaining family and friends, and in the lasting work and love they put into their community, but it isn’t the same. It alters my reality. It means that instead of talking baseball with my Dad, that when I play catch with my son, I’m passing on my father’s passion to another generation. It means that instead of calling my Mom for advice, handwritten notes from her on McDonald’s napkins reminding me that the answer to all of life’s questions can be found in scripture, become my most valuable possessions.

EXPERIENCING GOD

Loss hurts. Any loss – a death, a job, a divorce, a way of life – leaves us reeling. It’s healthy to grieve and mourn. It’s also one of the easiest times to watch God show up. Psalm 34:18 tells us that the Lord is near to the brokenhearted. I can testify to that.

Mostly I have experienced peace that only God can give. From the second my sister and I told Dad that is was okay to go, I have had peace that God was in control. I know where my parents are. I know that I will see them again. I know that He has been propping me up on the days that it has been a struggle to function normally. I know that it is okay to feel the sadness, to cry the tears and to sit a while with the waves of grief that roll in on any given day. And, friends, they do roll in. It doesn’t matter that I am an adult or that I don’t actually need my parents every day. It’s just that the world isn’t the same without them. But I also know that I have amazing grace, new mercies and joy unspeakable given to me fresh from God every day. Even without all the things that I grieve the loss of, I have all I could ever need in the hope I have in Jesus.

I have watched as God answered prayers to work out details that I couldn’t have done without Him. I have felt his presence with every friend who showed up to walk a few steps of this valley with me. He has given me rest and comfort on days when I needed them most. He has given me assurance that I am okay. I have begged Him in prayer every day to just not let me go. Whether grieving or just surviving the mess and chaos of life, there are days when we just struggle to hang on. The best I can do on some days when reality has battered me is just to beg Him not to let go of me. He hasn’t. He won’t. Sometimes He sends help and other times He just tells me. The day after the auction I woke up and opened my daily devotional, which for that day, was simply titled “God Won’t Let Go.”

I was 6 years-old when my sister was born. It was traumatic for me to say the least. If I was going to have a sibling, I wanted a brother. I was sleeping in the bed with my parents the night my Mom woke Dad to say that her water had broken. I remember trying to understand why they had woken me up and why we were in such a rush. I remember later standing in the driveway at the babysitter’s house as Dad was about to walk me to the door and turning to tell Mom to “bring it home even if it is a girl.” It was. She did. My life was never the same. I tried to sell her at a restaurant on the way home from the hospital. I tied balloons to her infant ankles and tried to float her away.

Fortunately, my early attempts at entrepreneurship and physics both failed. Because 37 years later we were standing together at his bedside as Dad breathed his last and left us on our own. As I look back, I can see that this a way that God gives us gifts and takes care of us. They are the worst moments wrapped in the goodness that He put in motion ages ago.

God promises us that we will find Him when we seek Him with all our heart. He does not limit that to a whole heart. He accepts the broken pieces. And when we find Him, He begins putting the pieces back together in a way that only the original artist can. Maybe it doesn’t look exactly as it once did, but on this side of the valley, I would argue that it’s stronger and more beautiful than before.

MOMENTS OF LIGHT

Flashes of light are all the brighter in times of darkness. People are the light that God sends. When the shadows in the valley are threatening to overwhelm you, and they will threaten, a glimpse of that light keeps you going. I think most of these people don’t even realize how God is using them. Sometimes they know exactly what they’re doing and sometimes you must look in their direction because they don’t realize the power of their own light.  

I have learned how important this is. God needs us to experience the light from different perspectives. Sometimes we are the light for others. Sometimes it is freely and openly given to us by people who walked in their own darkness enough to understand and want to share. And, still other moments leave you chasing the light that shows up in glimpses around the edge of the valley.

My Godparents have truly lived up to that title. They were my parents’ best friends. Always. They are the brightest of the bright lights and the truest example of how God wants us to shine for others. They’ve never not been there. Regardless of their own circumstances, they’ve shown up in a million different ways at a million different times. They continue to show up. It makes the most difference to have someone that you can count on when you are in the dark. They have walked the length of valley with us. I realize how eternally grateful for them that I am. It is beyond words.

It is true that you see who is real to you when you’re in your valley. My husband, my best friend and my children for sure have seen the worst of me – the person who in her weakest and most tired moments has given in too much to the sadness and to the temporary. I hope those have only been fleeting moments that don’t leave a lasting impression. The flip side of that is God has given me the clarity to see them in some of their best moments. They may not realize it, but I see them in their best light when I’m in the dark.

I have seen as others have shown up in their unique ways. Some have helped with tangible needs and others propped me up and prayed me through when I just couldn’t. And, of course, a few people proved less dependable. I’ve had what I’ve needed, so I don’t dwell on that. I believe that’s vitally important. Not just where friends are concerned but the valley itself. You absolutely must go through it. There is no other way. You have to feel the pain of it yourself, but friends it’s not a healthy place to live.

I don’t think there is any big secret to walking through this valley other than to keep walking. Just keep going. Ultimately, it isn’t about what we’ve lost. It’s about how much we’ve been loved and how much of that love that we can give away. That’s what Jesus asks of us. Whether we find ourselves in the valley of the shadow of the death, whether we are skipping along the mountaintops or are somewhere in between, love is what matters. I was wholeheartedly loved by my parents, and I know it. Love, in many forms, is walking me through the valley, and love will ensure that I see them again.

God doesn’t want us to spend too much time in the past grieving what we used to have. He also doesn’t want us to run away into the future worried about what we won’t have. He only asks us for today. He only ever asks us for this day. To choose, this day, to keep running our race. To choose, this day, to pray without ceasing. To choose, this day, to have faith. To choose, this day, to do good. To choose, this day, to love our neighbor. To choose, this day, to be the light for someone else. To choose, this day, whom we will serve.