Let it go

"Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" Isaiah 43:19

Last night we took a trip to the next town, simply because our bank is there.  And to celebrate a couple of different things, decided to eat some dinner at one of our favorite places, then pick up a couple of things I forgot that I needed to finish Maelynn's outfits we're giving her for her birthday.  On the way back, we started talking about the sweet spot where we seem to live.  Honestly, I'm a bit nervous.  Not sure how to take living in the same place for nearly four years!  We talked through the sheer amount of times I've moved, and arrived at about 18.  I'm 33.  I have no idea what the stats are on how many times the average person has moved (as in packed their junk and switched at least dwellings if not towns) but to me that seems like a lot.  I won't go into the circumstances or the explanations of them, but many of those times it was just me, and I wasn't exactly thrilled.  That doesn't begin to mention the time of my life I've spent living out of a suitcase, not exactly of my choice.

This is one of those ways I can relate to Ryan.  He needs a constant.  So do the other kids, to a degree, but they don't completely fly apart at the core if something changes.  And you know what?  I have to admit that I don't always know what's going on in the poor little guy's head.  I can make educated guesses, but when it comes down to it I just do the best I can.  But having an anchor... something to make you feel like you're you, just some little thing that's important to hang onto can mean the world.  Spending summers with my Father in Kansas meant leaving behind everything, packing a suitcase, and heading off to sleep on the couch for two months.  I always had with me a stuffed animal, doll, or something, and those things changed as I got older.  But I knew, no matter what I had with me or left behind, that my Nanny's house was there, and so was she.  I knew my Mom was out there somewhere, and in the days before cell phones and instant communication (yes, I was alive then) I was told I could call anytime... but you didn't just admit you missed your mommy to my daddy.  You could, but that might hurt his feelings.  And if you hurt his feelings, either he or my stepmother would make sure you KNEW.

No one but me at this point really knows what those trips were like.  There were fun things about those trips and I did love those people, but those trips are also terrifying, and unstable at best.  Especially in the early years.  But even before I placed my faith in Christ, I knew that I could pray... and I often prayed that it would just be over soon and I'd be back safely in Nanny's van or Mom's car on the way home.  During the holidays, I just wanted to be there... with my Mom, Nanny, Nanny's sisters, my aunt and uncle, and whoever else was there.  I just wanted to be home.

Baby Ryan and Nanny

Over the past few years, home as I knew it has, as it does as one gets older, slipped away.  It started with Nanny's cancer diagnosis.  Then losing Dad (stepdad, if you want to get all technical).  Then Nanny gradually losing strength and finally, losing Nanny.  It just changed it all.  I'll never forget realizing that I couldn't just pack up and go home.  I was in the dropoff line, thinking of where we'd go for fall break.  Eric's parents had plans, so I thought "Oh, I'll go to Heavener!" Almost as immediately, I realized I couldn't.  Mom works all weekend.  No one would be there.  For the first time I could remember, I couldn't just go home.  Show up and have that sweet, tiny blond lady ready to welcome me with beans and fried potatoes.  No more staying up too late talking, then getting up and doing it all over again with pie and coffee for breakfast.

But Mom still lived in Heavener.  So we still get to go to the same place, right?  Mom finally decided to move closer to her job.  A couple of weeks ago, I helped her get good and started.  The reality didn't really settle in, that there's not really a place for us there, until I was on my way home.  As the kids went to sleep in the van, a song came on that I'd never really considered as anything but completely for fun.  One of those cute little 80's songs.  The ones that make you want to tease your bangs and tight-roll your pants.  Get Miami Vice on Netflix.  You know the ones.  And I lost it.

I know this happens to everyone, and I know that everyone will go through this same thing at one point or another.  But it was hard.  Letting go of that place, those times... is so hard.  Then I remember that I can remember.  What?  Yes!  I can remember!  My kids may not remember Nanny, but I do.  And I have pictures.  And she loved them dearly!  I am so grateful that my kids were all born in time for her to know them.  And more than ever, I am sure that those people in Mom's family... the ones I always longed for... are still family.  They're still important, and they're still here.  Even better than that?  I have the opportunity to take the things I learned and loved about those times on the hill in Heavener and share them with my family.  Those times, that place, those people (as I can't keep them from perishing), will live on because I remember.

So on the way home, as that cute song was finishing, I realized that those times may be over, but new ones are happening every day.  A place need not be visited to remember.  I have my little stones of remembrance, yes... but I need to be able to let those go because they are just things.  I have to let go, look forward, go on, and remember... but to do that, I have to let go.

Ninety-nine dreams I have had
Every one a red balloon
Now it's all over and I'm standin' pretty
In this dust that was a city

If I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here
And here is a red balloon
I think of you and let it go...


~99 Red Balloons, Nena

A whole year already...

My apologies to anyone coming to this web address for Autism-related speak.  This one's not terribly Autism-related, but it bears sharing.  Thanks for understanding!

It's an anniversary today, and I'm not sure what to do with it.  

One year ago today, if you count these things like the US does Thanksgiving, I walked back to change my baby girl's diaper in the guest bedroom at Nanny's.  Once she was clean, dry, and smelling sweet again, I decided we girls would go talk to Nanny some more.  By this time she was in her bed all the time, beyond thin and frail, not able to speak much at all.  I'd just about an hour before sent Eric back on his way home so that he and Ryan could be in school the last week before the Thanksgiving break.  Walking through the dressing room and bathroom, I stood an looked at her for a minute, with my little girl on my hip.  As I  stopped to admire her for a second before entering, I did a double take.  Is she breathing?  I ran closer.  

She wasn't.  

About an hour after, through tears and uncontrollable sobs at her bedside, I promised I'd take care of everything for Thanksgiving, I remembered everything she taught me, and how much I loved her, and appreciated everything she ever did for me, she left.  As I posted on Facebook after we'd called family, "Nanny was a lady, and a lady always knows when it's time to leave."  (stolen from Fried Green Tomatoes)

I can't believe it's been a year.  A whole year.  I will not tell you she was perfect.  I will not say that she had no issues, no problems, no shortcomings... but I will tell you that she was amazing.  She was giving, funny, tough, smart, loving, and just plain cool.  There's so much she did for me, and last year I wrote a ton on that here.  A year later, I can honestly say that my heart is still broken for her.  

I remember standing around with my Mom after she passed... I mean right after, when the hospice nurse came to do her thing.  There was a great sense of relief.  And, as with everything else in our family, we dealt with it with humor.  Mom had gone to school with the hospice nurse, and even when the funeral director came to pick her up, I'd been in band with his son, and I'm thinking Mama or my uncle went to school with him.  When you've lived in a small town for fifty some years, everyone is family somehow.  And you know, it's pretty cool.  But still, there we were... our beloved matriarch, friend, and for so many of us, our stability... was no longer with us.  I can't tell you how strange it was or how oddly hollow it felt.  Honestly, I didn't lose it until we pulled up to the funeral home.  I had the gray pants suit I knew she loved in my lap, along with shoes, jewelry, and a nice pink shell (which Bree and I later went home and traded for a pinker pink... we found the perfect casket and the pinks didn't match).  When my aunt Gladys Mae (one of Nanny's sisters) pulled up to the funeral home, I couldn't get out of the car.  Yup, I picked the perfect time to lose my marbles.  

Eventually the family managed to scrape my pieces back together and we got everything done.  The casket was just too neat.  It even had rosebuds on it!  Once we were through there, we went to the flower shop.  I'm still grateful for how sweet everyone at Bullard's was... Miss Marty really made things just perfect as they could be.  Through all that stuff, even the funeral, it was just make-it-through.  Just keep putting one foot in front of the other.  We were all together, and as long as we were together it seemed like we'd survive.  We all missed her.  We all understood who she was.  More than that, we understood each other's pain.  

Thanksgiving came, and I kept my promise.  Bree was bringing her fiance home for the first time, and dinner had to happen.  So with a very confused Grandad sitting at the breakfast table, I labored in the kitchen where I learned everything I know about cooking that I didn't pick up from Alton Brown.  I knew that kitchen like I knew the back of my hand.  Nanny, for the last couple of years, had called me... yes, all the way in Texas... when she couldn't find something in the kitchen.  If Bree and Mom didn't know, she knew there was a chance I would.  At one point, I went to the garage to take a pie out of the convection oven, saw how pretty the meringue was, and lost it.  I'd never see her pleased-as-punch eyes again as she smiled and said "good girl!"  

When we went home I had a lot to do.  We were moving into the house we just bought.  The last conversation I had with Nanny was about this house, to tell her all about it.  She was so excited that I'd finally have room for the furniture she wanted me to have, and that the kids would have plenty of room.  Honestly, I do not remember much about packing.  I don't remember much about moving.  Christmas preparation was a blur, and Christmas itself wasn't much better.  The best part was getting to have my husband's sister's family all with us at his parents' house, and I'm so glad they were there.  Christmas Eve Eric's bulging disk became a ruptured disk, and Christmas Eve festivities melted into his Daddy taking him to ER, and the rest was a blur of pain meds, praying, and comforting.  The point I remember most in all that is a moment when I checked on my Vicodin-leveled husband as he slept in the big, brown chair in the living room.  "Just checking..." I told my dear father-in-law, "because you know, when you've seen one person you love quit breathing..." and I melted into a bawling puddle on his shoulder.  Not excatly our best Christmas experience, but surely not forgettable.  

In the next few weeks, we hosted Mom and Bree for our own little Christmas, had back surgery, had Maelynn's first birthday, and unbelievably, time kept ticking.  

If you'd asked me years ago how I'd handle losing Nanny, I would have likely refused to talk about it. If anything, I'd have said something along the lines of "i don't know, but it's gonna be bad."  I know I'm not the only person to ever lose someone dear.  But this was a more than significant loss to me.  Our every holiday is different when it would have been our turn to be there.  Nanny's house has been home as long as I can remember.  Even when Mom and I lived in OKC when I was a kid, home was on Morris Creek road.  It hit me, this fall, when we had our bye week in football.  Eric's Mom and Dad were busy, and I thought "hey, we'll just go to Heavener!"  Immediately it hit me.  Mama works on the weekend.  Nanny's isn't Nanny's anymore.  

*sigh*

So where am I going with this?  It's been a year and I still think about her every day.  I can still weep at the drop of a hat.  There are major changes occurring in my Mom's life, my sister's, and mine.  But the overwhelming constant in all this, is life goes on.  It just does.  It can go on with you, it can go on without you.  It can go on in spite of you.  And you know what else?  All that is your choice.  You can choose to take a step back, realize that the way you wanted it to be isn't necessarily the best, and fight the beautiful fight... the fight for your and your loved ones' happiness.  Part of that is feeling the hurt and allowing yourself to mourn in your way, and that no one should be allowed to make you feel bad or wrong for how that happens or how long it takes.  I learned a ton about mourning with and comforting others, and will hopefully put that to practice.  

The best part of all this... if there is a best part... is that I have the peace of knowing did my best.  I did everything I could to love her like Jesus.  With my husband's blessing, I took weeks of our life and spent them at her side.  God gave me the grace and inner strength to do things for her I never dreamed I'd be able to do, and he gave us the joy to keep her laughing through it.  I learned a lot, not the least of which is that when you love someone and are truly grateful for their place in your life, God will give you what you need to return the favor and care for them.  You will amaze yourself.  I was grateful for the privilege of caring for her then, and I'm even more grateful for it today.  I saw her care for her father in his last days, and Mama and I, especially Mama... she would say made her proud.  

So of all the times this year when I've started to call her when Mae did something cute, or when I've said "I can't wait for Nanny to see...", of all the times I've just missed her voice or the way she laughed, or wanted to tell her about something I knew she'd be proud of; of all the times I saw her handwriting and my heart broke again, of all those memories surrounding her final days, the most precious thing I learned in all this mess of tears and pain is that God is with us.  He is with us, and He is on a side better than our side.  He's on His side.  He can see what we need.  He knew I needed a little girl, and that I'd need her sooner than we'd planned.  He knew I needed a husband who would love Nanny as much as I did, and would gracefully give me the time I needed to care for her.  

Thanks be to God for the life of Carlene A. Holt, whose name and presence remain carved on my heart. 

I miss you, Nanny.