Not So Much As A Hair...

This was originally written in August 1996. I was prompted to find this by something my niece, who is serving a mission for the LDS Church in Vancouver, WA said not too long ago. I dusted off the old binders and started digging through my old ramblings and found it tonight. I'm sharing it more as a reminder to myself of the voice I'm trying to find again in my writing. 

Not So Much As A Hair...

I know I should've just let it be, but I couldn't. I knew it would be painful, but I couldn't have known just how painful. Nor could I have known the spiritual renewal I was about to receive.

It was late at night and I was the only creature stirring around our house. I was going through the motions of gathering up "treasures" for our yard sale that weekend. I'd gone through about every room in the house and it was too dark to fool with the garage. I'd saved the hallway for last (as most of the stuff in it is really Dad's responsibility to sort).

In the hallway is this beautiful cherry wood desk. It's one of the upright ones with the hideaway panel that folds down in the front. I'd gone through the four drawers and hesitated briefly before opening the front panel. I knew what awaited me there...Ganna's purse.

I opened the panel and there it was -- as it had been for almost five years. As I released the breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding, tears welled up in my eyes as a vivid memory stole into my consciousness. I recalled that same purse hanging awkwardly on the arm of my Mother as I walked into the hospital the night Ganna died. It was so foreign to see that purse on the forearm of anyone other than my sweet grandma. It was at that point that I knew she was really gone.

Mom and Dad took her to the hospital because she thought maybe she had a ruptured appendix. The last time she'd been admitted to a hospital was 45 years earlier when my Dad was born. She'd been diagnosed years earlier with an aortic aneurysm that the doctor assured us wasn't life threatening. It was this same aneurysm that ruptured as they laid her down on the gurney in the emergency room. She collapsed in my Dad's arms (her only child) and she was gone. Oh, of course they "worked on her" for better than an hour, but I have no doubts that when she collapsed it was because her spirit had left her body.

That night the only things we brought home were her coat, her nightgown, her glasses, her shoes and that same purse she had carried for years. 

As I reached out and gently touched the familiar soft, brown leather, I couldn't help but pick it up and hold it in my arms. I gently carried it over to the couch and sat down. I don't know how long I sat there hugging it before I decided to open the Pandora's Box.

As I gingerly went through each and every item in that purse I cried. How could it seem like she's been gone a lifetime, yet just a day? It wasn't all tears though - there were a plentitude of beautiful memories in that purse too: a program from my first college choir performance (4 weeks before she died -- it was her dream I'd finish college), a fingernail file (she was forever filing her nails down), a ton of pens (she could never find one when she needed one), letters and cards from people who loved her (and they were without number), numerous kleenex (Ganna always had one when you needed it), a beautiful handkerchief (a lady was never without one).

It was incredibly painful to find her glasses in that purse. I didn't know they were there. They were such a part of her that it's hard to imagine her without them. I also found a bottle of nitro pills I didn't know she had. Imagine my horror when I counted them and discovered two missing. That's just how she was though -- wouldn't ever saddle a person with her troubles.

I almost didn't look through her wallet -- I knew what was in it: business cards, scraps of paper, a few pictures. But something inside me whispered "No. There's more." So after I thought how silly that idea was I began my journey through Ganna's wallet.

I think it's important to understand a little about me at this point. I'd always been a black and white person -- there were no shades of grey in my world. Until the night Ganna died.

As a child, Ganna was more to me than "just a grandma". We lived next door to her and because both Mom & Dad had to work, she pretty much was my third parent. She became a grandparent, a teacher and a parent to me. As I got older, I added to this list a few more titles: example, counselor, confidant and friend -- in fact, my best friend.

As you can imagine, when she died my whole world fell apart. I felt as if everything that was ever good or sure in my life had been brutally stripped from me in a split second. And, in many ways, it had. So I did the only thing I could do (and the one thing she wouldn't have wanted me to do), I shut down emotionally. I built a wall around my heart and shut out a lot of feelings.

Because of this wall, my black and white world turned grey. Sure, it didn't hurt as badly as it had at first, but there was more than that. The good feelings dulled too. I didn't love as deeply as I used to. Not even my testimony (the purest love there is) could break through that wall. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make myself feel anymore than this wall would allow.

Between two pictures in Ganna's wallet I discovered the thing that has changed all of that. The sense of unreality and emptiness that had shaped my life for so long was gone with a discovery that most people would have missed. Most people wouldn't have noticed it, but Heavenly Father knew I would. There, between a picture of me and my Dad, was a single grey strand of hair...Ganna's hair.

Here in my fingers was a perfect strand of hair from the woman I loved more than anything in this world. The woman who raised me and taught me to be a good person and loved me completely and unconditionally was once again giving me what I needed most...a reassurance of what was reality. That hair was real. So was she. So was the love we had for one another. With the reality of that love came the reality of her loss. And perhaps, for the first time a recognition of the beautiful reality in the plan of salvation.

All the feelings I'd kept locked out for the last four years and nine months came rushing upon me at the same instant. As I sat there holding that strand of hair and sobbing, I was reminded of the promises give by our Heavenly Father in D&C 84:116 "Let him trust in me and he shall not be confounded; a hair of his head shall not fall to the ground unnoticed." Also in Matthew 10:30 "But the very hairs of your head are all numbered."

I know of a surety Heavenly Father knew where that single strand of hair was and for what infinite purpose it was there. He gave that strand of Ganna's hair to me so that I might be able to give myself completely to Him and His beautiful gospel. "And thus we see that by small means the Lord can bring about great things." (1 Nephi 16:29)

Morning Drive

Sometimes, at the most unexpected times, in the most unexpected ways reassurances come to us. They can come in a multitude of ways, but once in awhile the answer is so profound it can't be ignored. That's what happened this morning.

As I left for work I was marveling at the beauty of the day. The sun hadn't come over the mountains yet, but the light from it was streaming over the top in the most profound, beautiful waves. I love when you can see the actual beams in the breaking sunlight and this morning there were 2 very distinct ones.

I was watching the coming morning light (obviously since my drive to work takes me East), thinking about a lot of things. I have a lot weighing heavy on my mind right now, but one thing in particular was really troubling me this morning. As I was pondering on that, marveling at the beauty of the morning and seeking some sort of answer, I reached down to start channel-surfing on the radio and I hesitated.

I don't know why I didn't change the channel on the radio - they were yapping and it was annoying, but I didn't. I let them prattle on, lost in my own thoughts.

That thing I'd been really worried about? As simplistic as it sounds, I felt like it would be okay. My rational mind starting questioning whether that was really the answer I was seeking or if it was me giving myself a pep talk. Remember that radio I didn't change? This came on & I knew I had my answer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X_E2t7r1pY

He listens. Sometimes it's easy to forget that or rationalize it away, but when we're ready to listen He's ready to answer.

Silence is Golden. Or not.

Imagine the most beautiful flower in all of the garden beginning to open it's tiny little head to absorb the much needed nourishment from the sun. At the last second: "Nope. Just kidding it's not your time to bloom."

Now close your eyes and imagine the melodious sounds of the songbirds as the dawn begins to break the horizon. Just as the first bird begins it's morning prayers of welcome to the new day: "Nope. Just kidding it's not your time to sing."

Imagine being stranded in a desert, parched, thirsty, hallucinating from the heat and fatigue. The sky begins to darken, the wind begins to blow, the thunder begins to rumble, the clouds are banking and then the first drop of rain begins to fall. "Nope. Just kidding: it's not your time to rain little cloud - keep moving."

In all of these scenarios you can feel the anticipation, the excitement, the need for release and then the anguish of this wholly unfair reality crashing down and destroying things. Cruel, don't you think?

Now imagine you've always had something of a love affair with the written word. Your earliest memories are those of being read to by a loving parent or grandparent. Then at the tender age of 3, consumed with a lust for prose, you learn to read so that you are no longer reliant on others to read to you.

As you age, you discover the beauty, the strength, the comfort, the power in capturing your own words on paper. Whether it's a poem, prose, a short story, ramblings in a journal it matters not. What matters is that you have found your passion, your "real" voice and it has a life of it's own. It's powerful. It's overwhelming. It's healing. It's cathartic. It's beautiful. 

Perhaps one of the hardest lessons I've learned is about what happens to our gifts when they aren't used. 

Sitting in an attorney's office in November 2012, I heard the words that would change me in ways I couldn't fully anticipate. "No writing." Ummm..what? No writing about the accident, your feelings, how it's affected you, nothing. Are you kidding me?!?! "If you write anything, make sure it's purely a factual account, leave yourself and your feelings out of it."  Even a personal journal is "discoverable" in a court case. Remember the flower? The bird? The parched desert dweller?

I remember thinking this whole thing had to be a sick joke. First, we deal with the accident - sitting beside my husband's bed in ICU for 4 days, hours away from my kids (the first time ever being away from them), seeing the hulking mass of twisted of metal that (for all intents & purposes) he should have died in, adjusting to everything in our lives being thrown completely upside down and now this? Now you're telling me I can't go hide in a journal somewhere to sort through the jumbled mass of emotions and feelings that I am? I sure as heck can't talk to anyone about this - who else could possibly understand? How else am I supposed to muddle through this? 

My petals were plucked. My wings were clipped. My rain never came. 

So, as much as I've hated it, I have dutifully done what was expected of me. Don't write about those feelings. And, in turn, ignore them as best as you can. What choice did I have?

Part of that mandated ignorance was holding things in. I can't do it anymore and I've decided I'm not going to. Funny thing though...did you know when you have a gift you don't use, when you go to use it again, it's hard to figure out how? For the first time in my life, I find myself intimidated & silenced by the power of a white screen. And it pisses me off. I want that part of me back, but I don't know if I'll ever get it back in the way it was there before. I hope so, but my confidence is seriously shaken. Think when they finally settle this mess, they can compensate me for that too?

2 Years Later

October 8th, 2014

I hate today.

I don’t use that word lightly, but with every fiber of my being I hate today.

Most days I do my best to focus on the blessings in our lives, the good things that came to be, the positive. But on this day, I can’t help but give into the darkness that creeps upon me.

I catch myself glancing at the clock remembering where I was, what I was doing, how I was feeling, what I was thinking at this moment 2 years ago. I can’t stop it. And, I suppose, in some way, I don’t want to stop it.

I need to feel these things. I need to hurt. I need to remember. I need to be angry. If I don’t allow myself this one day, it feels like nothing else will ever make sense.

Not that things make sense now.

I don’t think anyone can fully understand or appreciate how much that moment in time changed things. Changed everything, in fact.