The heart of the matter

I am moving, leaving the home I have spent the last seventeen years of love and life raising our family. I have known this day would come and I have sought it out and I am oh so grateful that I get to move to a smaller house and hopefully a simpler life. But seventeen years!!! That's a lot of life. I have told my son that home is wherever we are. And so we will make a home.

I have been preparing to leave my house ever since losing Brian. I knew the day would come and in the past three years I have been thru many purges of stuff, the accoutrements that have a way of defining us, defining who we are and what matters. And then there's the stuff that doesn't matter but we hang onto just in case. I have purged and purged and purged and purged around the one untouchable space: Brian's office. You know it's bad when your fifteen year old asks you what you are doing with that room. I had no response; it had indeed become a shrine of sorts, one that I did not have the heart or capacity to dismantle. After avoiding this room for many long months I finally tackled it. The project was every bit as hard as I thought it might be and then some. I looked through every book, every scrap of paper, every photo, every document, every manual and yes he kept the manual for the toaster! With each item there was a decision to make; goodbye or keep. I plodded onward with pauses to breakdown, to sob, to wonder, to be still. In the stillness emerged one giant grand and beautiful picture. There was a birth certificate, a death certificate, job reviews, certificates of achievement, report cards, pictures of my kids, a father's day card with beautiful words of love for all the things loved and adored about dad. Every scrap of paper, every book, every photo put together a picture of completeness. A marathon won. A starting line, a finish line. And every inch of the race in between. He had completed it with vigor, with strength, with valor. In that moment the very heart of the matter occurred to me. Brian had been the nucleus of our home, our family.

Brian was an amazing man, he was both tender and strong and devoted to his Maker. He was typically self-effacing and pondering how to be better at loving people, especially his family, especially me. Brian had been the strong arm that propped me up. He was the steadying hand, the voice of reason. He was wise beyond his years and was constantly pointing me to the Creator God who reaches down into humanity and gently prods us onward. He was the nucleus of our home and I the recipient of an extraordinary love; he propped me up and steadied my hand but he also rode my emotional roller coaster with me.

Our brains are interesting. And my brain has refused to acknowledge in the deepest soul level that Brian won't be back in time and space. It's still just as absurd and gut wrenching and unbelievable as the day he died. To some, March 3rd is just a date on the calendar. To me it is the day that my whole life and dreams disappeared before my very eyes. My very substance was ripped to shreds and I am still bleeding out. I spend most of my conscious life in denial; and then there are the days that I can deny it no longer and I have to look it in the eyes. That's what cleaning the office did for me; it made me look in the window again. March 3rd makes me look in the window, thru the lens of shattered broken dreams and acknowledge that the unthinkable IS. And the only lens than can comprehend the unthinkable is love mingled with gut wrenching grief, passionate gratitude laced with soul deepening sorrow.

And so on this day, the eve before March 3rd, the day in 2014 I wish had never come, this day I chose to live in this moment, fully in it, and I choose extraordinary gratitude that I hope some day  may rival the extraordinary life and love I got to see and experience and learn from. And while the father, husband, and nucleus of our home is gone from our sight; his legacy of love and wisdom lives on in the hearts of his children and in my mind's eye and I am filled with a deep soul gratitude for all that has been and is yet to come.

My dear sweet precious granddaughter ... what an amazing gift ... just two days old in this photo!