A recipe for Grief

Grief is stealthy. It doesn’t usually attack head on. It prefers to sneak up on me when my guard is down.

It very effectively did that yesterday, one day short of a year from my sister’s diagnosis of stage 2 ovarian cancer. But the realization of that isn’t what caught me off guard.

My brother wrote that he’d been in contact with a friend of my sister. The friend wrote that the last time he spoke with Helen, a couple of weeks before she died, she had asked for 2 of her own recipes which she had misplaced. He attached the recipes in the email.

The email didn’t hit bother me even though I immediately remembered overhearing that phone call.

That memory didn’t bother me.

I opened the attachment and there it was; the sucker punch, grieve’s modus operandi. The recipes were written in my sister’s handwriting. I wasn’t expecting her actual handwriting, which like a thumbprint, is unique to all of us.

My feelings started with just a gasp, but rose quickly from the void recently created by her death.

A gasp, a sigh, a groan, then deep silent sobs, and finally audible sobs, which summoned my husband to my side with a ready embrace.

Grief is never finished with its ambush of me until it reminds me it will compound my loss again someday when I lose another loved one. Grief reminds me how fragile my loved-ones’ lives are. How fast and fleeting is mine.

But grief, where is your victory? By reminding me of the fleetingness of life you remind me to treasure each moment, to store up memories in my heart, which you can not destroy.

Grief retreated. I know it will sabotage me again. But it can not win the day. I have a Savior Who has overcome death.

“O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?”

1 Corinthians 15:55 ASV

https://youtu.be/rnRD1XxKOk0

https://bible.com/bible/12/1co.15.55.ASV

Life Without Mom

One hundred and two years ago today, my mom, Helen Devlin Murphy was born. I sometimes wonder how much I am like her, whether I would have made her proud or if we would have grown from mother/daughter to friends. What would we have disagreed on, argued about, come to agree on. Would it have been a relationship that was a roller coaster, eye- rolling annoyance, or a warm and trusting relationship?

I wonder if she had lived into my teen and adult years how her presence would have impacted the me I am today.

I will never know. My memories are scattered, mostly vignettes, and as much as it’s hard to admit, mostly dim and dimming.

I think I know how her loss impacted me. Imagine a tsunami hitting a beach where I am standing alone. That about defines the loss.

I was 12 when she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia. She died 9 months after diagnosis. I imagine the outcome would have been different today, 57 years later. But about this I can only wonder.

If you are an adult with a mom, tell me about it. There is in me a gaping vacuum which is curious and longing to know what it’s like to have a mom as an adult.

On this day, 102 years after her birth, nearly 53 years after losing her, I allow myself to look into the void and wonder. But most days not.

If you have a mom as an adult, good or bad, consider what it would be like to do life without her, and do me a favor: call her. Chat about everything important or nothing of significance. Do that for me, because I can’t.