Category Archives: Grieving

Studying the Pictures

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I love looking at photographs of Nate. Now that no more can be taken, each is priceless. When pancreatic cancer came along, a widow-friend advised me to “take lots of pictures of him.” That sounded odd, since I already had 190 photo albums in my basement.

Not himself.But there were two roadblocks to taking those pictures: (1) quickly, as the cancer gained ground, he didn’t look like himself; and (2) how do you snap pictures of someone who knows he’s dying, without making it awkward for them?

Once it was all over, I remembered what my friend had said and wished I’d followed her advice about photos, because we have precious few of his 42 days of illness. That’s why I often find myself in my basement albums studying the face of my husband.

What impresses me again and again is that in most of the pictures Nate has a child or two in his arms or on his lap. Not being a “natural” with children when we married, I’m reminded of how significant this effort was. These pictures, the ones in which he’s busy “doing” for his children (and by that, for me) are the ones that mean the most.

At Chuck E CheeseFor example, here’s one taken at Chuck E Cheese’s. The occasion was Klaus’ birthday (turning 6), and Nate is holding 3 week old Louisa, his 6th child, while trying to manage the rest of his own children and a dozen young guests. The Chuck E Cheese entertainment stage was in full swing with it’s robotic characters singing at peak volume, a frenzy at best.

Nate was working hard, and I knew he must have been hoping the event would end soon, so we could go home to normalcy. But from his place across a mob of children, he caught my eye and flashed a smile. It was one of those very private moments between a husband and wife in a very public place. And today it’s a precious treasure.

Taking care of businessAnother picture I’ve studied recently was taken on Christmas Eve. We’d lunched at Marshall Fields’ in Chicago’s Loop and were on our way back to the suburbs on the “L” train. (We only had 5 children at the time, though a nephew is also in the picture.) But once again, Nate is hard at work, watching over the precarious steps of a two and three year old about to stumble off the bottom of an escalator.

My photos are a poor substitute for the man himself, but they’re wonderful gratitude-boosters for the wife he left behind. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing after all that I didn’t take many pictures while he was sick. Seeing him in action (and in good health) is probably much better.

”Every time I think of you, I give thanks to my God.” (Philippians 1:3)

Waiting Patiently?

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Patiently waitingOne of my favorite family photos is this one of Klaus and Hans, our children #4 and #5. We were on a family trip to Florida in 1985 when these two little guys, ages 3 and 4, were demonstrating patience. They were waiting for the perfect wave to lift their mini- surfboards off the sand and take them on a smooth, danger-free ride atop the ocean. They’d done everything they knew to do and were waiting for the water to do what they could not.

It’s a perfect picture of faith. We wait; God acts.

Today is the 4th anniversary of Nate’s death. Although I don’t know if he’s marking time the way we are, sometimes I get impatient to find out. Whether he’s looking forward to our reunion or not, there are days I long for it with everything in me, just like the boys longed to ride an ocean wave. It’s not that I have a death wish; life holds many good reasons to go on living. I’d just like to be with him again.

My children don’t like it when I talk about joining their father, but my desire isn’t to leave them. It’s that we all leave. In other words, my longing is for Jesus to come and scoop us up for an exit from this world and an entrance into the next. And it’s difficult to be patient.

Last family photoNo matter how hard any of us wishes for that day, however, we can’t hurry it along any more than a gardener can force a seedling to sprout. These things are up to God.

Today a handful of my children and I talked about their father at lunchtime. Their spoken memories of him were like gifts to me, and we shared our feelings about this anniversary day. Talking about how difficult it was to be in Nate’s presence when he died didn’t make us regret being there. It was deeply meaningful to experience those holy moments as a family, expressing love to the one who was dying as well as to each other.

My Spurgeon daily devotional book has a simple note written on this day, November 3rd.  It says, “Nate died today,” a bare-bones statement of fact. Maybe I should have written, “Nate went to heaven today,” or something more positive. But when he died, my heart was so swamped with loss, those were the only words I could come up with.

That November 3rd devotional happens to be about waiting for God’s timing. Spurgeon wrote, “We are in a hurry, but God’s time is the best time.” The last paragraph is a note to himself: ”Come, my soul, canst thou not wait for thy God? Rest in him, and be still in unutterable peacefulness.”

M&NMy little boys waited peacefully at the shoreline, hoping for the best, and since I can’t do anything to hasten my reunion with Nate, I can only do the same.

“Be still in the presence of the Lord, and wait patiently for him to act.” (Psalm 37:7)

The Webinar

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Once in a while each of us faces a task with apprehension. For me, it was the webinar I was asked to participate in on October 9. (Growing Pains)

Having no reference point for this newfangled communication tool, I was nervous about how that day would go and wasn’t sure how to prepare. The plan was for 3 of us to have a one hour discussion about grief: Tim, the moderator, Dave, who’d lost his daughter in an accident, and me, having lost my husband. We’d also be answering questions that came in live, online.

I was reluctant to say yes but sensed God wanted me to, so I did.

A few days beforehand, our moderator set up a video conference call on Google+: Tim, Dave, Dennis (the control room guy), and me. Getting set up for this cyber-meeting was a challenge I couldn’t meet. Despite help from webinar techs over the phone, I failed at my end, the only participant not visually present.

Speaker buttonInstead I put them on speaker-phone, and Tim did the same, allowing me to be present…. sort-of. We spent an hour getting acquainted, troubleshooting, and following Tim’s Power Point outline as best we could from different locations. When we finished, Tim gave us instructions on clothing that would please the cameras: “no black, no white, no red, no stripes, no checks, no colors lighter than your skin tone.”

To the WebinarI’d already spent the better part of 3 days shopping and had bought several outfits, planning to return the ones I didn’t wear. One ensemble was black, another white, another red, and the last checked, all on the no-no list. In the end, they approved a blue silk vest and white shirt. I appreciated their cheerful tolerance of my clothing violation.

Now that the webinar is history, I look back and see how focused I was on doing well for all the wrong reasons. Worrying about my wardrobe or clearing my throat during filming or spilling my water at the table had loomed larger than the over-arching purpose of the project, which was to encourage people journeying through grief.

Such self-focus could have sabotaged my part, and I’m thankful for God using multiple prayer times that day to tug me back to center when I was leaning sideways. After all, the webinar opportunity came from my book, which came from my blog, which came from God. All three belong to him, and if they accomplish anything good at all, it’s only because he’s behind it.

The webinar

(webinar, audio only)

To think the failure or success of that webinar depended in any way on my effort was to own something that never belonged to me. And there’s a beautiful flip side to knowing all the results belong to God:

Whatever he does prospers.

“If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 4:11)