Lord, Help me Remember

“No one was there for me. She should just get her act together.”

I had called to ask for a loaf of bread for a woman with an infant son in trauma. The mother of the mother had called me because her daughter had feared the reprisal if she asked for help. As we talked I remembered. Two years ago, that had been me. It had been my child who was crying incessantly because of her own inner trauma. It was me struggling to go on that one more day when sleep was a thing of mystery and I couldn’t even lay my baby on the floor because something was wrong that caused me to fear leaving her alone.

I talked to the grandmother for a while brainstorming ways we could help and then began calling the women in the church. I started with the woman who baked and often shared her bread. Her response shocked me. I hadn’t known her when her children were small and her response of defensive blaming showed me the struggle she must have dealt with then. So I let her have her decision and simply told her mine.

I think because my mother is so good at forgetting, I made a choice somewhere in my life to remember. I also made a choice about what I wanted to do with that remembering.

“When my child was sick no one was there for me even when we were running back and forth for doctor’s appointments and staying in the hospital. No one helped me through the days when she cried and screamed. But I made a choice then. I chose to remember so that maybe someday that memory would help me be there for someone else who felt alone and overwhelmed. No one can go back and change what happened for me then. But I can choose to let it be something I hold in resentment or something to give me the empathy I need to help others. I am choosing empathy. I don’t want anyone else to have to feel as alone as I felt then.”

She made the woman a loaf of bread. Others in the church contributed meals to take one more stress off the young mother and babysat the eldest as she went to the appointments where she found out her infant had a constriction in the bowels that required medical intervention.

We need to remember. When a celebrity dies, there is a reason it gets attention. Our western society is not very welcoming to signs of grief. Unless we are lucky enough to be born in a culture that understands the healthiness of emotions, we are taught to limit our expressions and time frames for grief through subtle and sometimes not so subtle judgments. We are given lists of what is acceptable and not acceptable to express grief about in an open forum. We are “shamed” for grief by comparisons to other areas seen by many as more worthy of our attention.

So we turn to films and books to allow a release of what we hold so deeply inside. Robin gave us many of those memorable roles that helped us feel the balance of pathos and mirth. Now he is gone. The laughter he was able to bring to so many was not enough for him at the end. He knew the power of laughter. He brought it to Christopher Reeves in his hospital bed when life support systems and paralysis replaced his image as Superman. The humour and hope he brought us didn’t disappear because he died. It is a legacy he left behind.

But for those who like me have known depression to the point of entertaining and even acting on thoughts of suicide, and for those who are one the other side of suicide like I am with several key individuals in my life, there is another level of grief that is expressed at this time. We stand with his family as they struggle to hold the balance of his light as they grieve his loss. We grieve the constriction of hope that characterizes the darkest regions of the illness. But there is also another level to the public outpouring of thoughts.

For these moments, we are able to defy the social mores against talking about suicide. We are reawakened to our own aloneness at the times when darkness surrounded us. We are reminded of others we may have pushed away when they needed us. We remember those in our lives who we didn’t know how to help. We remember and our remembrance calls us to respond.

I am a person who began an attempt at suicide but survived. I have now lived almost as many years on this side of the attempt as the years that led to that place of dark hopelessness. I survived. More, I have grown so that I can now make the active choice for life that I could not make then.

In those moments of despair I was not actively thinking of ending my pain. For me, depression skewed the brain into the rationalization that I would be benefitting others by ending my own life. I even went so far as thinking that I would force God’s hand into rejecting me since I had come to believe my existence hurt his kingdom plans.

I can’t even credit myself with making an active choice to not take that action. Even when I heard the words of the song that ultimately reminded me that I wasn’t alone and that God’s love held me, I defiantly took that one more pill even though I was already at a level far beyond what was prescribed. I cleaned up any clues so no one would know to help me if things had turned out differently. And I went to bed saying to God, “Okay, God, it’s up to you. Either I wake up or I don’t”.

I woke up.

Since that time a part of my healing has been finding the forgiveness and compassion to accept the part of me that could make such a choice. That the me of that time thought in terms of finding a way to die that “would not hurt others”, that she believed it was the only way her kids could have the chance of getting a “good mom” didn’t lessen my judgment of myself.  In retrospect, a lessening of the irrationality of the thoughts in that time caused me to want to push that part of me away just as many judgments spouted at present seek to distance from compassion at this time of mourning.

As with the response to the young mother at the beginning of this post, remembering gives me a choice. I do remember the loneliness and judgments. I do remember the experiences in life that brought me to that point.

But in remembering, I have learned compassion. I have learned that not telling my story just perpetuates the loneliness that increases the risk of despair winning the day. I have learned that we all respond to grief in our own way but often don’t even realize how we bend to the cultural mores instead of listening to our own hearts. I have learned that we can’t decide for another how they will respond to our own choices. We can only act with the greatest empathy if we are willing to acknowledge our own pain.

In her post for Sojourners, Carmille Akande says,

 “Relationships are hard. Discipleship is messy. Love takes sacrifice. But I believe it is what Jesus has called for us to do! Jesus had compassion for others. He cared for those who were hurting. He spent time with people. One of my favorite healing stories in the Bible is in Mark 1:40-45. A leper, an outcast of society, came to Jesus for healing. I know because of his condition, no one had time for him. No one offered him a place of belonging. A place where he could feel loved and accepted. No one offered him a sacred place. But, when Jesus saw him, the Bible tells us that he was moved with compassion. Jesus reached out and touched him! He was willing to heal him.

The people we see every day may not have leprosy, but they may have some type of pain. They may be going through a difficult time and need someone to have compassion on them. A place to receive love. A place where someone will listen. A place where they don’t receive scriptural formulas, but a heart poured out for them. Can you be that person? Can you provide a place? Will you be that place?

We are all broken in some way. We all need encouragement from others. Let us all strive to be a sacred, healing presence for others. We will never have all the answers about suicide, but we can certainly start by making time for others — not to lecture them, but to provide a sacred place for pain.”

When events like this cause stirrings of memory or asks me to step out of the comforts of my carefully scripted beliefs, may I have the heart to respond.

Lord, help me remember, not only the pain, but the grace that got me through so that I can live grace into the lives of others.

Lord, help me remember.

 

Some of the blog posts and videos that played a part in informing my thinking:

“Suicide and Pain: What are We Missing?” by Carmille Arkande; blog: Sojourners: Faith in Action for Social Justice, God’s Politics by Jim Wallis and friends; http://sojo.net/blogs/2014/08/13/suicide-and-pain-what-are-we-missing

“Genie You’re Free” by Carol Vinton; blog: Upside Down Grace; http://www.upsidedowngrace.com/2014/08/genie-youre-free.html

“Our Weird Uncle Robin” by John C. O’Keefe; blog: john c. o’keefe; http://johncokeefe.com/2014/08/13/our-weird-uncle-robin/

“Thoughts on Depression, Suicide and Being a Christian” by Nish Weiseth, blog: Nish Weiseth; http://nishweiseth.com/blog/2014/8/thoughts-on-depression-suicide-and-being-a-christian
In which depression is NOT your fault” by Sarah Bessey; blog: Sarah Bessey; http://sarahbessey.com/depression-fault/ (Please note: Sarah is adding to this as she finds other blogs that speak with compassionate voices)

The-Lesson-Barbara-Walters-Learned-from-Christopher-Reeve-Video; http://www.oprah.com/own-master-class/The-Lesson-Barbara-Walters-Learned-from-Christopher-Reeve-Video?playlist_id=52420

What Robin Williams Did for Christopher Reeve That You’ll Never Forget; video from Oprah Winfrey show; http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Robin-Williams-Amazing-Gift-to-Christopher-Reeve-Video?playlist_id=52420

Ironically, I can’t locate the article that spurred this post by mentioning how emotions are shamed. Someone I knew shared it on Facebook. I just want to make sure credit for bringing that thought to my attention comes from elsewhere.

 

Let it Rain

The world sags under the weight of drenching rains. Bird song competes with the sloshing of tires speeding past on the road. The air is damp and tired. A chill permeates everything. It is not a day to be outdoors, especially when warmer jackets are packed away ready for the coming move. The last day of the long weekend, the beginning of camping for many.

There is a quiet around me as I sit in my home. Memories stirring are pleasant. The smell of wood fire. The slightly whipping crack of the tarp protecting us from the falling rain. My mind captures a moment past when we were just children on a family campout playing a game of cards while we waited for the rain to lift. The fighting and nattering of cousins together is silenced, quieted by the dampness in the air.

Matthew and I get into a game of Crazy Eights that seems to be without end. Back and forth we challenge each other, our earlier arguing forgotten. The curtain falls and the memory ends. This little window flows into other water memories as we forded the shallow stream to the pebbled beach of a small island splitting the stream in two. We imagined there that we were coming upon the place for the first time, natives to this world of rock and greenery, of the gurgling sound of the nearby stream, the gentle brushing of the leaves playing together.

In the spirit of mindfulness I don’t try to push the edges of the memories, nor do I try to untie the timelines. I feel the edges pressing in but I am quiet as I remember this place from childhood. The Duckabush is a place of family memories.

Almost three years ago, I sat with my father and my small computer looking at the pictures from the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. My brother had moved to the area and reveled in the lush greenness. As my father sees the pictures he remember the Duckabush and camping trips there.

Andie: Have you all found the Duckabush? This reminds me of those narrow rapids we use to fish and swim in there.

Bill: Walking along the river trail also reminded me of the Duckabush which is about an hour from our house.…

Andie: Dad says “I’ll meet you at the old camping place on the Duckabush at 3:30 on November 11, 2012. Be sure to have a tent for me and fishing equipment and I’ll show you where the best fishing places are.” Dream! Dream! Dream!

There would be no meeting in November. As I typed my dad’s words onto the screen my brother and I both knew that his battle with cancer was nearing its end. More, dementia had scrambled the files of dad’s life so he did not always connect to reality. Yet for all the pain we felt when his dementia turned mean, it gifted him with the ability to remember mixed moments of life for most of his last weeks, surprised when he would see his skin hanging loose around his hungry bones. Those moments  with my brother’s pictures would be a calling card for the gentler side of my dad in the days ahead. He would find peace in remembering.

The weight of the rain hangs heavy in the air but inside the sounds of water bring memories to sit lightly in my heart, memories of a moment full of love, a rekindling from the past. Today, my mindful gift is the falling rain.

* The stream pictures were taken by my brother, Bill.

 

G – Dear Granny

 Dear Granny,

Thank you for the picture you sent me. I got it a bit over 45 years after you sent it, but I got it just when I needed to know it was there. On the back it said, “To Andie, so she can see her granny”.

The few memories of you that I have are gifts , those that held brightness and those that held confusion.

I remember an honesty that was painful to a child but later helped an adult find answers. You loved one of the sisters in my family best and it wasn’t me. I think I know why. Of us all, she was most like your son, our daddy. I think you knew what I would come to know that last day I saw him, only days before he died. But then, that truth only went to show another gift I got from you. It didn’t matter who you loved the best, I could love you just because I did.

I remember the records you gave us on one of our long treks back to Texas from the Northwest. Full size LP records of stories. Carol got Sleeping Beauty and I got William Tell. They came complete with background music from the orchestral scores of those pieces. Added to the Reader’s Digest set of LP’s mom and dad bought, your records helped me see the story in music, something I am able to share with my music student’s today. Carol grew out of her record but I never did. As long as I could keep them, they were a part of my memory of the best of childhood.

There is one other gift I remember from you. When I was 8 or 9, you came to visit us. I asked you to a picture of me or did you ask me? It doesn’t matter. I told you I wanted to be a bride in the picture. Your face only showed interest. A bride? But did I have a bride’s gown?

I had already learned something about color then. I had a light violet satiny dress in my dress-up box. And you had given me that soft pink sheer scarf that would make a perfect veil. Since the picture would be in black and white, that would do the trick. With no hesitation clear enough for a child to see you went along with my lofty plan. If this was my dream, you let it be my dream.

In my adult life I learned the stories of how your dreams fell apart. First a young husband dies. Then you married another who was violent when drinking. That last summer with dad,  I learned you wore scars through your life. The last day with dad I learned your husband beat my dad too.

I am so glad you had the nonconformity to choose separation over the violence back in the 30’s. It would be an act that would take all your determination. I know from dad’s one story and his hatred for the peanut butter and banana sandwiches that filled his lunch every day, sometimes your independence took a stubborn turn of not being willing to let others help you.

But you didn’t stop dad from getting work to finance his dream of being an opera singer someday. You were a divorced woman trying to raise a son without alienating him from the dad he wanted to visit as much as he could. You didn’t stop him when he gave up his dream to go into the Navy. Did you recognize the resentment that he wouldn’t realize was locked inside of him until that last day when he tried to tell the story to the nurse?

Thank you, Granny, for leaving me with the innocence of my dreams on that childhood day.

Now it is my turn. I am the Granny with a grandson who is 4 and a granddaughter who is 18 months old. It is my turn to listen to them. To find my way through my own preferences and wishes for them, my own fears from the past so that I can give them the same room to dream their own dreams and live their own lives. Both are already showing such distinct characteristics. It is my turn to learn to silence my own comparisons so that I can give them each what they need from me.

You showed me that model though. When I was small I heard your favoritism and saw you show it. But when I was in my elementary school, you sent that picture to me. Did you know how much I needed it? Did you know because of that letter daddy sent you?

Daddy gave me another letter spoken in words that day in August 2011. In that story he told the nurse, the meandering of his thoughts entwined my story with yours. The nurse afterwards confirmed what I had heard. My sister confirmed it further by telling me the words you said that first day I called on Skype during the beginning of his hospice care. Daddy said, “When I see you, I see my mother.”

I asked my cousins who had lived with you how they would describe you. They remember happy memories, but more, they remember your most distinct traits as non-conformity, determination and independence. When I look back on my life I see how those characteristics helped me.

When I got home from that farewell to my dad and looked at the pictures I had been given , your picture to me was among them. “To Andie,  So she can see her granny.” It sounds like you left a part of my granny in my life.

“When I see you, I see my mother.” I think that is one of the nicest compliments I have ever had.

Still and always loving you,

Andie

P.S. The night my daddy died I saw him with you in a dream. You were happy and laughing together.

Lillian’s Legacy, September 2011, in honor of my granny

 

http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/

 

 

Only in my Mind1 – The first years (BC)

Is it Only in My Mind – The First Years (BC)

Caught up in circles confusion is nothing new
Flashback, warm nights almost left behind
suitcases of memories
Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time

Is it only in my mind that a life different then this one existed for me? A world where there were those who had room for my joy and my sadness knowing that neither was the whole of me? I look at the world around me and even giving room for the skewed view characterized in depressions, I am still mystified as to find my way out of this isolation into the world out there. Was it ever really different. Was the me I think I was before I learned all the ways I didn’t measure up to the expectation in my marriage and the churches that took me into, did that me really exist?

She wasn’t perfect. She had angst and times she just needed to pull away. But she had friendships and laughter. She had a life she lived. She was not so alone and had the bravery to walk into places where it took so much time to find her way. She believed. She believed. The changes in that then-me didn’t happen in a day. It took seven years of the relationship with its distance from anyone but my family, his family and his best friend and family (the extra 2 hours to get to my friends was too much driving except for one dash visit of a couple hours at each stop.) Snail mail was so slow that if I wrote a problem the rollercoaster would hopefully be at the top when they received it and if I wrote a joy, the swing downward would be even faster.

I loved my nieces and nephew during the time we lived in the British Columbia town with his family.  I got along with my sister-in-law. I picked wild blueberries with my mother-in-law and was helped to have patience with my husband’s ways by the stories she told me about his dad.  I even lead a games night for the young singles in the community for a time with as many as 20 coming for a Friday evening of entertainment and food.

When my son was born, it felt like heaven had come down. Parenting was like a second skin to me. He had been born with his cord around his neck and a knot in the chord. He had been n the hospital for 13 days before I could bring him home but even in his isolated incubator, I knew when he cried.

When he finally came home, joy was complete. This was something I knew how to do and my son had a contentedness that filled my home with peace.  I made new friendships as I pushed my son’s stroller down the street. Life began to feel like home.

Only, I didn’t keep the house clean enough and sometimes sat and did “frivilous” things like crocheting when my son slept. And I didn’t have him stared potty training like my husband’s mom did when they were one. The only’s began to add up and it was alone with my son that safety was a part of life. Only, he began crawling with a vengence at a young age up and into everything. I baby proofed but could not keep him from the little hurts of childhood. The world began spiralling into a place where I held on to the islands of peace and cherished the relationships down the blocks and with my neices and son where, despite my imperfections, I was allowed to feel whole.

When my second was due, trucking dried up and my husband became unhappy wanting to look for pastoring work.

The first place we went to rejected me. Pregnant with my second child, the journey was not easy getting there. By the time we arrived, my son had a 104 temperature and I was frantic at leaving him when I was expected to go with my husband to the youth meeting he would be teaching at. Afterwards, I would have the daring to ask the pastor’s wife where we were staying if I would be expected to leave my children when they were sick to go to the meetings. She said she didn’t know and I should ask her husband.  His answers was circular so I asked outright, “Doesn’t the Bible give me the responsibility to care for my children?” My husband was rejected because I had talked to one of the men in the church about the Bible instead of going through my husband.

The family had decided a lady was to stay at our home since it belonged to the family so feeding her became a part of my mandate in the last half of  my second pregnancy. We had $125 dollars that I knew of in the bank. I had to just say the thank you when my husband tried to reject any charity giving from those who knowing him were bringing things with the excuses of too full freezers. I claimed lack of hunger and ate small amounts knowing I needed to eat for my baby but knowing that I needed to stretch the food to feed an extra mouth.

The doctor began sending me to Prince George for extra blood work because my weight was going down instead of up in the last months of my pregnancy. Looking back, I recognize the depression that at that time I just thought of as self-loathing and trying to help my kids survive. As I had learned to do, I hid as much of it behind masks as I could I had learned that tears were “just trying to get attention.” My husband was not one to let others help him so if he needed something held up under the gravel truck he drove, he would ask me to help him, pregnancy notwithstanding. To mention to man in the yard across the street who could help would be to just get more of the put downs that I just did not have a tough enough skin to handle more of so I would try to find a way to help without straining where the baby was.

My water broke in the grocery store 5 weeks before my second child’s due date. I didn’t go into labour. For eight days I was held in the hospital until they believed she would have the best chance for delivery. The night before I couldn’t even lay down because of the jerking in my legs so sat in a chair by the tiny peach sweater in the sales case – the one I hoped to get her if she was a girl. As I lay stretched back snoozing, the nurse came up and lectured me because I should be in bed. After all, I was going to be induced in the morning. I asked her if she had ever had a baby. When she said no, the snarkier part of me replied that I had and it would be tiring work. I told her what happened when I lay down then said, “Now please let me sleep, I have induction in the morning.” Then I closed my eyes and ignored her.

Budget cuts placed me in a shared room with a young 15 year old mother. She was a sweet young girl full of hopes for her baby. Unfortunately, her mother was a gruff demanding  woman who would reprimand the girl when she would be in labour pains for making faces at her. I was so tense with the drama going on across the curtain that my labour progressed slowly. When the mom would be gone we would open the curtain and talk. She had lived a confusing life but she wanted to give her child a better life than she had had, she just needed to move far away. Then her mother would return and the ranting would continue. When the nurses would ask this tall broad woman to leave she would advance on them letting them know she was her daughter’s coach so had the right to be there. When the girl finally dilated enough to go to the labour room, my contractions started. After a full day of induction, my daughter was born two minutes after her son. I still remember the joy of touching her head even before she was out and I could hold her in my arms.

The girl and I were put in a room together for the 48 hours that we were allowed to be in the hospital. The nurses would come and give the girl lessons on how to care for her baby and I would see the loving carefulness in all she did. Then her mom would come and the reprimands would begin. Everything the girl did was wrong. One time, the girl said she needed some sleep and the mom told her to sing a paper and she would leave. The girl signed it and the mom left. That visit had been so hard that we both agreed we would only see our babies in the nursery where the nurses could keep her out. That we were in there more than necessary only brought smiles from the nurses. They understood the need to lock her away from us since her present partner knew me since they lived right next to the church my husband’s family seemed to control.

It was only on her departure that her mother let her know the paper she had signed gave custody of her son to the mother. The girl had talked of moving to the grandmother’s and the mother let her know that if she did so she would do it without her son. Hearing this my stomach was sick remembering the story the grandmother had told me once while the girl was in the nursery with her son.

When the girl was only about 2 her mother knocked a boiling kettle off the stove. The girl’s brother knew to run for the grandmother. When the grandmother got there, the girl was lying on the ground screaming from a scald burn across the side of her face and across her chest. I had seen the scar that covered half  her face and chest and wondered. The mother was holding a tiny kitten that had been slightly burned and was crying because the kitten was hurt. This was the woman who had custody of the girl’s son.

I tried to visit the girl and her son when I could. Each time I would watch her go from competent mother when alone with me to everything wrong – even what I could see was right – the moment her mom walked in the room.  In the end, the girl was kicked out of the house. Court records would give her the right to gain custody of her son when she turned 21. In the meantime, no visiting rights were granted accept as the mother allowed. I never found out what happened since we moved away. I only remember how helpless  I felt to help her and how hard it was to get her into any kind of social services.

My nieces came over to play many days. The laughter of children has always bee a balm for my spirit so for a time I was happy. I could chase away the things that were hurting. I had two beautiful children. That I would reach places where my child’s crying would be too much for me and I would set her safely in her crib and curl up in the hall shaking until I could handle it again was what I had to do. I couldn’t ask for help. That wasn’t allowed.

But it would get better. My husband was negotiating with a church in a town in Alberta. My failure to measure up in Saskatchewan hadn’t destroyed his dream to pastor.  Once he was doing what he felt he should be doing out lives would be better. Everything would be all right then. Right?

Giving up

Say Something”

…..
Say something, I’m giving up on you

And I am feeling so small
It was over my head
I know nothing at all

And I will stumble and fall
I’m still learning to love
Just starting to crawl

Say something, I’m giving up on you
…

(A Great Big World and Christine Aguilera)

Knowing I enjoy the Pentatonix I turn on the YouTube ready for the beauty in their voices. This song plays into my ears and my heart is torn with waves of grief and I remember. I remember a night when I had given up until just one more word was said.

The pen held firmly in my hands I wrote my words, the last I would say, that I loved my children, that I was so sorry I couldn’t be what they needed me to be. Less than a page was all I would leave. I had given up on me. I was going to say goodbye.

It had been over 6 months since I began my fight with suicidal thought, the darkest night of depression. I had tried to hang on, finally taking my month at the mental hospital and following through with weeks of group therapy and one-on-one appointments with my psychiatrist. I had stayed a week with my children at a shelter, always coming back believing that within me I could find what I needed to be the mother, the wife, the friend, the Christian I longed to be but the darkness wasn’t lifting.

The road ahead seemed so long and the well-meaning gift of a book on depression had shown me a way to not be without my action being a cry for help. I could do this and my children were still young enough to not remember (so thought my twisted logic) and my husband could marry again and she would be good enough to give them all what I couldn’t give. She would know how to be the person who others expected me to be. If I was gone, he could try again and everyone would have a happy ending.

I didn’t want to be cruel, I wanted to be there for my children but he had told me he would make sure I looked like an unfit mother if I tried to leave. If he couldn’t have the children, then I wouldn’t have them either. I had failed being able to keep my cool when the things that were said got louder and more hurtful. I had struck out at him to stop them and then he would laugh and stop. I had proved I was bad and he could go back to pretending that he could mold me into what he needed me to be.

There were good moments. Moments of laughter. There were even times I could say I was sorry for something and he would forgive me …. Until I needed to ask him for something, then it would all come back. He was as trapped in the scripts he had been raised to follow as I was by the ones of my past and attempts to talk about what was between us would crumble into a defense of myself against the accusations that it wasn’t an us problem, it was a me problem. But I would end up striking back and so I held myself accountable for my actions and hated myself for my failure to live up to what I believed.

Now meetings were being called on the days he knew I had therapy sessions. I needed to miss again and again. Even when we got support, he would fail to pick up the kids if my session went late and that fell through. Finally, I had to believe I was as well as I could be but my heart was still so torn.

There had been a short time of relief after I returned from the shelter but things were spiraling down to the bottom. Fearing as always that I would become the mother of my childhood example, I could not let things reach that stage and so this night had come.

He was at one more meeting and the kids had been bathed and read to and were safely asleep. I had an hour or two before he came home and knew my children would not wake. And so I began the action that would let me say goodbye to the world. One step by another I moved myself closer to the place where choice would end, where thought would end and I could just go to sleep and not wake up again.

I walked around my home, focus dimming, touching all the things I had tried to do for my family, empty things that could not fill the hole of the pain I felt I was to everyone whose lives I touched. How I had believed I could make it was beyond me in those moments. Now I just felt the grief that I would not be the ones to raise my children. I had once felt so sure that I could do this. I had such dreams of the mother I would be. But I knew I couldn’t be that mother with him and if I tried to leave he had said he would do whatever it took. But the children needed a good mother, maybe if I was gone and he could find the right person, he wouldn’t be so unhappy. Maybe she could keep from striking back and then everything would be okay.

And so I entered my children’s rooms, brushed back their hair and kissed them one last time.

I was close. I could feel it when I reentered the living room. Was there one last thing before I couldn’t remember anymore? My eyes spied the small tape deck sitting on the table. I had bought some tapes the last time I was in the town where I went for treatment. One of them was in the machine and so I flipped the on switch. The voice of Chris Christian filled the room:

“Don’t give up, Don’t give in, Give it all to Him
‘cause he cares so much more than you know.
If you think that the person you want to be is the person you’ll never become
then look how far you’ve come.”

Rage filled me as I slammed the recorder off. No! Not those words! How could God be so cruel as to give me words of hope when I had almost finished my goodbye? I had looked so hard to find a quiet way, a way without chance of failure. With the words of a song, my plan was ruined. I threw the thing I was using across the room sending fragments everywhere. I was shaking at what God had done. Of all the words I had been given words of hope. I cleaned up the mess I had made once I stopped shaking, hid all the evidence knowing that I was at an edge of maybe and went to bed.

“Okay, God,” I challenged, “Either I wake up in the morning or I don’t. It’s up to you.” And  I closed my eyes and went to sleep.

I woke in the morning. It took almost three days to fully feel the fogginess lift and over a week before I told my psych, the first I told of what had happened that night.

_________________________________________________________

A month or so later a song I heard inspired the lyrics of two songs, on singing how Jesus totally gets what we deal with and one offering God this life that for some reason God believed still had value. Having written my songs and feeling my prayers were said, I began to walk toward my room and sleep.

“Aren’t you going to listen?” The words stopped me in the hall as if they had been spoken into the room. Only two other times had I heard a voice that clear.

“What am I supposed to listen to/” I asked this voice of One who I could not see but heard as if he stood in that hall with me.

“You will be as a fruitful field.”

Okay, and what was that supposed to mean?  Being married to a religious man had one perk, there were lots of commentaries in the house. The words were in the King James version, the one I had grown up with but the message given me that day almost 27 years ago became a promise that has walked with me through the years.

I will write it here from the Bible I read it in all those years ago. The servant who planted the field …. The enemy who planted the weeds …. The cry for the right to clean the field …… the admonish to wait and let the harvester who knew the grain make that discernment …. The cry in the car that with all the weeds I saw in my life there would be no room for any good grain …. the inner images of a barren filed with a few spindly stalks …. The gentle reminder that when all this was done there would be wheat in the field ….. the grieving in me that the harvest would be so sparse …..  and now, this voice in the field that led me here:

“till the Spirit is pour upon us from on high,
And the desert becomes a fertile field,
And the fertile field will seem like a forest.
Justice will dwell in the desert
And righteousness in the fertile field
The fruit of righteousness will be peace
The effect of righteousness will be
Quietness and confidence forever.

Isaiah 32:16 & 17

God was not through with me yet.

Don’t Give Up – Chris Christian

Pentatonix cover of “Say Something”

What will you do with me

I don’t think I am the only person in this sharing that is in the place I am in. I think this post is valid in here though and hope that people on all sides of the view of what openness a church should hold will feel free to share on this topic. I think it needs to be added because we, in all areas of beliefs, tend to talk about our response to others without finding out how what we are doing affects them. I am in a different faith stance then when I was younger and sure of all that I believed a church should be. But this is the person who needs to share this with you, this person who stands on the doorstep wondering….

I am one of the outsiders who stand waiting for room at the table. I am one for whom your decision influences my welcome to your table. I am one of the few who can be here and listen to you all, knowing faces that matched each of your positions and still know my faith even as you discuss my verdict in your place of worship.

I am one like I am because I have walked through Jesus’ words, asking his father to forgive him as he hung dying, understanding that “they” don’t understand what they are doing. I have walked through the hell of being separated from the church by my own pain and confusion, and I am one who has had the stone rolled away in her own soul so that I can now begin to walk out into the light of living Christ. But I am not the Christ, so my life as a part of the body is tied to what you live as well. I am a trembling part, a broken bone mending. It is yours to decide if, within your halls, I will be accepted or not as I find my way in this new resurrection of faith.

I am one who remembers questioning and seeing in a different way in the earliest memories of my life. I am one who taught and shared, who understood Christ as a companion from young and who saw beyond the walls of family and church to those outside who felt loneliness and pain. And yet I was taught to fear rejection if not adhering to some code that to that church epitomized the essentials of faith so that her young mind became focused on thoughts of hell and death because she lived in a world where the decisions of others mattered more when it came to punishment then the truth of her life. I am one who could be harmed by your decision, if you decide to be God’s judge here on earth.

I am one who has walked the journey of becoming and has had too many moments in my life that I cannot explain except through my relationship with God that has shown to me so clearly by the representation of God’s Son that I am loved and accepted. I am the one that over and over was told in some way different to each setting where I sought connection to the Body that I was not acceptable. I am now in the family of the woman who dared to reach out and touch Jesus’ robes in spite of the decision of those around that she was not clean enough to do so. I am one of the outsiders of whom you speak.

I am of the family of the woman brought to Jesus with things in her life that clearly went against the law. I am a woman who lived through life knowing that being a woman made my guilt even greater to those who sat in the seats of influence in the church. I am a woman who has stood in the place of despair of ever being clean and heard Christ’s words of letting go. I am a woman who reached a place of walking away from the church, even of being suicidal, because I had been told my non-worth so often that I felt the best favour I could do was cast my own stones at myself so that I would not harm the Body of the one who I loved. I am the woman who felt to shamed she could only grasp the hem of Jesus’s robe and still found healing for herself.

I am the prodigal who tried to distance from the God she felt she was harm to. I am the prodigal who tried to find the love that she had been told wasn’t available to her because of her anxious appearance. I am one of those whose verdict you decide. I am one of those who stands waiting to know if I will meet the Father’s love or the brother’s judgment when I come into your halls.

What will you do with me and those who I stand with in being who I am? I have quite literally experienced the “brother” stepping away so that I was left in a space empty of others in a room full of people. I have stood in a crowded foyer and had people talk across my face without even acknowledging I was there. Will you step away as well? Or will you welcome me to my Father’s table laid there for us all because of the gift he gave through his Son? Will you do this so that I can find that place where I can finally be safe enough to struggle through the questions of living as a part of Christ’s body here on earth?

That verdict is in your hands. I am only glad that the verdict of my acceptance by God is in God’s hands by the mercy shown through Christ.

Though the details included can be validated as true, the writer of this chooses to be anonymous so that those who made these choices can have the chance to learn for relationships with others through conviction of a heart that truly would like to live love instead of as a response to shame

She has Chosen the Better Part

I mentioned lectio divina, about a way of reading scripture where you let God illumine what God wants to say through a verse or even phrase that catches you as you read. I want to share this because of a posted conversation with a writing friend. Melinda, this is shared for you.

July 12, 2010

This next entry is rather uncomfortable to share but need to be to show the progress of spirit. It goes back to the impact that I had from a Madeleine L’Engle book in which by naming someone she had rejected, the girl is able to save her brother’s life. Healing came from acceptance. These images are characterizations of feelings and imagery that I have learned to use when confronted with emotions that I am not able to rationalize away. Perhaps it is the writer in me….

I worked at a time in shelters for children and the girls who would cut themselves to get a numb haze of physical pain to silence their inner pain were called slashers. This part of me that reacts to anger and fear by suggestions in my right arm of physical pain has been named for them, and does not relate to an actual action I have taken.

July 12 ( have just returned home from a week up north where I stayed with a friend and had time with a daughter and her family)

“Home – the part of me that hates being alone is protesting – where the Slasher gives feelings of cutting, this part feels like an inner rampage….. She feels like I would imagine a caged, frightened animal would feel. The Slasher part will allow herself to be held. This part growls at me, accusing me of being her captive, launches herself at the bars. But I AM her captor, maybe not intentionally but I am….

“Lord, I feel like I have to ask you to save me by layers. Here are two pieces of me, one that love is beginning to reach, and one that is so wary of love that I don’t feel like I can touch her at all. She is right though. She is part of the fabrique of me and deserves acceptance if I am to become truly whole. Acknowledging her stops the rampage but she retreats to the far corner muttering all the labels I fear in myself like a litany of condemnation.

“But she does not feel like an alien “other” to be exorcized. This is the part that has been my whipping boy all my life so I could stay whole. I have spent my life writing the memories in a book so I could forget – so I could forget her.

“Lord, she is full of so much poison pain – but she is not poison. Help her, Lord. Help this lonely, hurting part of me that is wary of you because I have used you as an excuse for her being caged.

Lord, each time a part gets assimilated, there is another. God, this part is so cruel and self-defeating. I really need your help with this one.

Luke 10:42b “Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken from her.”

“…I understand Martha. …… The story of the 70 seems to focus on Christ, the Messiah. If Jamie is right, the story of the Samaritan focuses on Christ as the needy.

“So is this the Christ of devotion? – Christ, the light on the tree, Christ , the light of love on his face? This Christ show me the way to reach that rampaging part of myself as he enters her cage, walks toward her but doesn’t reach toward her. Instead, he sits down beside her, wraps his arms around his knees like hers, but relaxed, looks toward her, and is simply quiet.

“There are times the “best” part is quiet listening.

“I ask the slasher if she would be willing to sit with that part. She says she will but only if I take away the bars. I say there are no bars, no locked doors. She asks me to take them away. I react with protest fearing what this part would do to my life if the world saw her.

“The Slasher –I am going to rename her “Mary” – does not let me overlook the reaction of fear to this part being free, but calls me on the inner lie about the cage. I acknowledge it. When I begin to move the walls of bars, the image of Jesus takes the other end and helps me move the wall. The bars are thrown over the edge into a nothingness to be no more.

“The voice of my Mary commands that I finish it. It is time for contemplation now as bars are removed.

“But she does not sit with her in that opened space. She walks her to a door and lets her “out”. I don’t think of her as not being there but now there is only an empty room with three walls. An to this the Lord simply says, “Mary has chosen the better part.”

“The bars are cast into the sea where they are dissipated into the waves and become victory. She is loosed through a door that I had not seen before. On the other side of the door are “people”. She moves into their stream and fades from sight into the crowd.

“There is a dizzying empty, calm feeling in my head. She is gone. Just gone. She is not assimilated. She is released. There are things you hold on to and others you let go.

Poems and prose as recovery begins April to August 1987

Skydancing
-April, 1987-

Skydancing
Dancing to the rhythm
Here inside me
Singing out a song
High soaring
High above the mountains
Skydancing
To an eagle’s song

Flying high
Wheeling to the rhythm
Sailing on
Into the sunset’s glow
Laying back
Floating on the northwind
Going places
Only eagles go

High strutting
Walking down the sidewalk
Houses around me
And the trees close in
But inside me
I still hear the music
And I’m dancing
Anywhere I am.

Flying high
Wheeling to the rhythm
Sailing on
Into the sunset’s glow
Laying back
Floating on the north wind
Going places
Only eagles go

Skysong
April, 1987

Open and free, going on to forever
Touching the world with its sunshine and rain
Home of the songbirds, palette for dreamers
Spangled with stars in a lover’s refrain.

Path of the eagle that flies over mountains
Lapped by the waves of an ocean so wide
Stage for the power of lightening magic
Open and free, there is nothing to hide

Coloured by sunshine, clothed by the clouds
Touching the mountains with sunset’s soft hues
Parting of the picture shining in dreams
Here touching me and yet there touching you

Colours are changing, hues rearranging
Sure to be trusted, yet never the same
The world all surrounding, beauty abounding
Touching all people with sunshine and rain

Questions
April 20, 1987

O where are you going?
Where have you been?
What did you see there?
Did you lose or win?
I’ve so many questions
But where do I start?
How do I ask you
What’s down in your heart?

I’m running from somewhere
I’m running – to where?
I’m running and asking of you
Do you care?
O where are you going?
Can I come along?
I’ll hold you and love you
And sing you my song.

O where are you going?
Where have you been?
What did you see there?
Did you lose or win?
I’ve so many questions
But where do I start?
How do I ask you
What’s down in your heart?

I’ll give you my sunshine
I’ll hold out my rain
I’ll touch you in sorrow
And help in your pain
Just hold me and love me
And tell me you care
And I? I will love you
And always be there.

O where are you going?
Where have you been?
What did you see there?
Did you lose or win?
I’ve so many questions
But where do I start?
How do I ask you
What’s down in your heart?

Renewal
23 April, 1987

Was it only yesterday
the trees were green and flowers tinged the plain
Was it only yesterday
we laughed and smiled—
and can we laugh again?

Was it only yesterday we talked together
stopped to plan and dream
Can the night be ending?
Is a new day dawning?
Are things as they seem?

Can this new tomorrow be
a day that’s even better than today
In my mind are questions
mixed with hope and fear
in joy and tears I pray:

Let this new tomorrow be a promise,
be a flower bright as flame
Let this new tomorrow be the start
of more tomorrows just the same.

Love Sneaks Through
29 April, 1987

 A touch of hope
a breath of understanding
A whisper of kindness
A tremble of shared pain

Even the greatest fortress
has tiny chinks
for love to sneak through.

A Song for You
April, 1987

A song for you with thanks for all you’ve
done for me
A fortress strong and lonely once
I used to be
But you reached out and touched me from
within your own pain
And hand in hand we both learned how to
Sing again.

My world was cold and stormy,
mighty crashing waves
Had taken all the love I knew,
hiding it away
My mighty walls began to crumble with
the strain of waves of fear and
mighty thunderings
of pain.

You touched my world with hope
when it was hard to smile
You shared with me your tears
You made my life worthwhile
Your love crept in so quietly
I was surprised
Yet hope began to bloom
The sun began to rise.

Goodbye
April 30, 1987
On release from the hospital

Today is the day I say “Goodbye”
I can hardly remember the day I came
I remember the numbness of bitterness there
It was hard to trust anyone to care
I hurt so much it was hard to cry
It was hard to hear through my inward lies

But today is the day I say “Goodbye!
I’m not at a place that is quite the same
When falling hurts now the tears can come
I can offer my hopes and fears to some
I can hear the voices that help me change
I can hold on to me and yet rearrange

I’ll be following treatment, there’s more to grow
I may stay again in the future, who knows?
But I’m somewhere that’s more than what once was me
And what I’ll become is worth waiting to see

Today is the day I say “Goodbye”
I harly remember the day I came
There is more I’ll be learning before this ends
That all is together I won’t pretend

But today is the day I say “Goodbye”
I’m not at aplace that is quite the same
Today I may stand and tomorrow may fall
But I’m going to make it after all

Going Home
August, 1987

Lord, I’m feeling weary
How much further to go
Where is the new tomorrow?
Lord, I wanna go home.

Only a little farther
Only a ways to go
Only a few more turnings
Lord, I wanna go home
Lord, I wanna go home

Drinking my cup of sorrow
Here in my shelter of joy
One more night of weeping
One more morning of joy

Only a little farther
Only a ways to go
Only a few more turnings
Lord, I wanna go home
Lord, I wanna go home

Then I see you smiling
Arms of love opened wide
Calling me from my corner
Telling me come inside

Only a little farther
Only a ways to go
Only a few more turnings
Child, you’re almost home
Child, you’re almost home

Breezes
July, 1987

Like a breeze upon my mind
Gentle, warm, soft and kind
Thoughts of you like gentle rain
Tap a simple touch refrain

Like a songbird on a hill
Song of joy warbled, trilled
So my heart once sang with ease
To a gentle summer breeze

Then the colours turned to autumn hues
Black the nights when I was wanting you
All my feelings tumbled into pain
Like a cold and freezing rain

Winter’s hold was chilling, cold
Blew the breeze, sad and old
In its howling, mocking way
All the music swept away

Then the sun began to shine again
Winter’s hold had finally come to end
Melting pain replaced by buds again
In the breeze of spring’s refrain

Now the breeze upon my mind
Gentle, warm, soft and kind
Brings the thoughts of you again
In a loving touch refrain.

Lonely Little Corner
July, 1987

Lonely little corner
Your are no one’s special friend
We walk on right beside you
But we do not bend
To clear away the scattered refuge
Take away the weeds
We leave you lone and ugly
We let you go to seed

Lonely little corner
Still you touch our way
With dainty little flowers
If we only stay
And pluck a handful of beauty
From upon your breast
You ask us for so little
And yet you give your best

The Plague Test:
Which is for Real?
A Spiritual Analogy
Summer, 1987

A plague infested a town and those who had not yet been infected locked their doors, fearing for their live. Among the well in the town were two men.

The first man was highly esteemed for his professional integrity and training. He had come from all the right family, studied at all the right schools and graduated with honours as a doctor of medicine. His expertise at surgery was a thing to marvel at. His bedside manner acclaimed. The best families in town flooded his office and soon his practice was booming.

Across town lives another man. Born of poor parents on the “wrong side of the tracks” his hope for medical training was only a pipe dream. Yet often he would meet a sick or wounded person unable to get to the doctor and he would help them as much as he could. He was looked down on by those with the “correct” understanding of medicine.

And so the time of plague came upon the town.

The first man checked his regular patients and finding most seemed well, he closed and locked his practice for all but his clientele feeling he must avoid any chance of infection for his work’s sake.

The other man, too, trembled within his house. He, too, knew the chances of infection, the risk of getting involved. But as he heard the crying and mourning that penetrated the walls of his house his heart began to break. With shaky hands, he opened his door and gave the best help he could to those who came. When his house could hold no more, he went to other houses ministering to other plague victims and many, under his care, were brought to health again.

Now tell me, which was the real physician?

New World Dictionary:
Physician: 1. a person licensed to practice medicine
2. any person or thing that heals, relieves or comforts

Songs in the Dark

It was the first days in the Psych ward. Sitting in the room with Dr. O, my first experience with a psychiatrist, all the overstatements I had ever heard about people like him raged in my head so one of my first sentences spoke the defiance of letting him mess with my head. I put on a limit based on experience. “You can challenge anything you want about my religious beliefs because I know that what I understand there is not truth because it has not made me free. But if you challenge my belief in God, I will leave here first because that is the only  reason I am living.”  I guess I came by my family reputation as a “sassy brat” for good reason.

Dr. O calmly responded, “People need God because they need to know they can be forgiven.” Something in my released the fear and I could begin to hear and heal. What was said in those sessions about others in my life will for the most part remain in those conversations between the psych and me. I do know he asked me to honestly say to those in my life what was happening with me while I was in the safety of the ward.

My husband’s response was already known to me. My mother’s response was, “How selfish of you. Don’t you know that would kill me?” The response of church people was distance and platitudes with, interestingly, the question if I would be getting out soon enough to organize the Sunday School picnic for the beginning of June. Cards and flowers felt like knife points tearing at my skin. If they all thought so much of me, why was I here. The guilt and self-hatred mounted with each visit rife with Bible verses but no room to listen.

One pastor and his wife did visit me sharing that she had been hiding a bipolar disorder for years. It was almost with shame they talked to me. My response was not kind as my loneliness cried out, “Why did you hide it? If I had known maybe I wouldn’t have felt to alone.” I then had to admit I understood. Except for in that secret visit, it was never shared again. Our religion had no room for broken people. As I had often been told, “How can we talk to people about a victorious Lord if we didn’t have the image of victory?” Don’t let others see the scars.

Those who shared that ward with me were the comforts doing most to heal my heart. Since I was more often alone, since it was a journey of over an hour to get from my town to the town where the hospital was, I would often sit on my bed in free time strumming my guitar and singing the songs I had written that spoke from the place in me that understood this pain. One song always drew visitors, first patients, and then patients bringing their families asking me to sing it again to help their families understand the hope that was present even in the dark.

Valley of Shadow
1978

Paths cross sideways and roads run up
Trials crash loud in your ears
The thunder’s rolling. The lightening slashes
The sky while the clouds loose their tears.

Time becomes your enemy.
The moments pass by with their guns.
Yesterday was a fortress wall;
Today – the brotherhood runs.

Laughter echoes in endless canyons;
You run to shut out the sound.
Crying anger to still the voices
You stumble and crash to the ground.

Footsteps sound in a quiet world
Trembling you wait for a frown;
Then someone reaches his arms to you
And helps you up off the ground.

Only one set of footprints
Marking the path from here to the end.
He not only walks close beside you;
He carries you round the next bend.

Though I walk through the valley
Of shadow I will not fear
For thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff
Give me comfort and cheer.

One day, my visitor was the new woman that had only come in the night before. There had been talk in the ward about her. It was a sad case, she had been doing so well for so long on her meds for her bipoloar disorder. She had successfully held an aide job for some unmentioned length of time and now, she was in such a high state of mania that she was in a locked room and only allowed on the floor with an orderly or two with her because of the violence of her reactions. Her room was trashed, said those who had seen it.

Somehow, though, that day, she had come to my room alone. “I puh-laay guiiitaar,” she slurred through the high doses of stabilizing drugs she was on just to keep her lucid in those first trying days.

“Would you like to play mine?” I offered, taking the strap from around my neck and holding it out to her.

With trembling hands she reached out for it and settling on the side of the bed strummed a few cords, and though stumbling, she picked light melodies from the strings. She knew how to play. There was no doubt. After only moments, she gave the guitar back. “I haaave t-to go baaack.” she pushed through her fogginess.

“If you want,” I offered. “You can use my guitar when I am not here.”

There was a light and a sloping smile on her face as she turned and shuffled back down the hall. I could hear the orderlies lecturing her about leaving without them as I turned back to the songs in front of me.

I heard the orderlies talking out of turn that night. Somehow she had said something about my guitar and they were talking about how crazy such an offer was since everything she had in her room was trashed. Even her bed was ripped. For some reason I wasn’t afraid. I don’t know what it was. Maybe something I saw in her eyes.

The next day when I returned from the therapy space, my guitar was not in its case. At first I was afraid it had been stolen until I remembered the words I had said. The first sinking reaction in my stomach soon gave way to my remembrance of my own need to trust what was good in me. I had to believe that it would be okay. I somehow knew where it was.

I couldn’t read more than Psalm 77 at that time so just read it reminding myself that there was one walking through this storm with me even though I could not see or sense God’s presence. I had to just trust right then that this guitar which held the lifeline of music for me would be okay. Even if it did get smashed against a wall, I had to trust that that would be okay to. I had to believe beyond all rationality that the words I said, the invitation to share, had been right.

I heard the shuffling in the hall before I saw her. She entered my room with my guitar held out in front of her. “I brought it back,” she said then turned and walked away.

Today, I will go out to my living room and practice for the music lesson I will be returning to on Monday. I will reach over and pick up that same guitar that she was able to care for when everything else around her was torn to pieces. As I play it, I will remember her, sending up a prayer that she has been able to find wholeness in her life again.

Let Them Remember

It was my first Sunday in the psych wing of the hospital, the first Sunday not in the hospital with my daughter’s illnesses that I was not at our church supporting the singing in the sanctuary. I had been in the ward almost a week. For days, having let loose of my need to control my impulse to die into the watchful guardianship of the nurses and aides on the ward I had closed in to the tight ball of me in those first days. Others who had experience on the ward were slowly drawing me out.

It started with a woman named Linda. I was sitting on the floor working on a jigsaw puzzle, not looking up or speaking to anyone who entered or left the activity room. She came and sat across the table and began to talk telling me the routines, what to expect in therapy, about others who were familiar faces to her. She didn’t ask me for any response, just talked placing a piece or two into the puzzle. At mealtime, she took a seat near me and introduced me by name to those around. I didn’t look up and only spoke to have something passed to me. When we walked in our protected groups of others who were vulnerable like me, I would close up, tightening my arms around myself when someone would pass on our side of the street. I was brittle, untouchable, and those who had struggled for years had the understanding to invite without reaching through that fragile boundary.

It was at dinner one night the dam began to loosen. One loud, boisterous patient who I will name Johnny was telling one more of his clearly tall tales. When someone scoffed at his story he shrugged, “Guess I missed the boat on that one.”

Not looking up I mumbled, “You missed the whole damn ocean.”

The room went silent then everyone began to laugh. “You are going to be all right,” Linda leaned over and said to me.

From there the dam burst. I began speaking in therapy groups. At nights when sleep wouldn’t come despite medication I would go to the nursing station where, if logging was caught up, I was allowed to talk about the grief that filled my life. I found out the occupational therapist who put up the inspirational posters belonged to the one church I knew of in that town. She gave me an open invitation to attend with her if I should ever want to but never prodded me to do so.

Now my first Sunday had come and I could not obey the religious guilt of my upbringing to go to church. The cramping anxiety  at the idea of being with religious others, knowing my desire to die because of things that had been said and absorbed by me as to my own damnation was too much. Instead, I ask for the piles of magazines I saw in the craft area, a large piece of poster board, some blunted scissors and glue. I couldn’t read the stories in the magazines but let something inside of me cue me to rip out pages and careful snip around images and short poems and phrases that resonated with some place inside of me.

For seven hours I worked on this collage letting it speak for me the things I couldn’t say in words. The next day I took it to my psychiatrist session and he read clearly the love I had for my husband and children even though I felt that who I was let them down.

My songs began to reflect the hope and longings I felt inside even in the darkness of this emptiness of feeling God or love or light. God was walking through the storm though I didn’t feel his presence. The end of the rope might be frayed but there was still a piece to hold on to. I could try to express ideas of love even as I longed to know love. I could smile with those who understood that even in the dark souls can touch each other with hope. It was only the turning point of a journey that would last years but I was beginning to feel again.

Twenty-seven years ago, on the first Sunday of April the collage was formed. There is so much I don’t remember on that art piece from my soul which probably was lost in one of the purgings of mementoes I used to try to wipe out the person inside me that interfered with the expectations of others in my world. But there is one phrase on it that I remember to this day. It is my prayer for my children who have walked this long road in the company of a mother who for so many years struggled with a death wish but struggled to hang on for them.

I do not have the direct quote but this I remember. It asked that with all else my children remembered of me, “let them remember my laughter.”