2:28 on Mondays

Grief is weird.

It is hard and consuming and so very different for every person.

My mom died just over a month ago. July 3, 2017 at 1:28pm... it was a Monday. I was there at her bedside, along with my brother and three sisters, my dad, my grandparents and my mom's siblings. I can remember every little detail in the few minutes before and up to her passing. I remember what I was wearing and what I was doing. I can very vividly see every person surrounding her bed and how they were reacting and responding. I can hear the people in the back ground. I can remember exactly what my mom looked like. This is an image that I replay over and over in my head every Monday around 2:28 in the afternoon (because I live on the East coast and she lives in the mid-west... she always forgot that we were an hour ahead when she would call late at night). It is a hard thing.

Everyone does grief differently. I don't know that there is a right or a wrong way, but I do know I don't like doing it.  I go through phases of being overly whelming sad... hard to get out of bed and function, uncontrollable weeping sad. I will be angry. Angry with God, angry with life, and sometimes just angry. And then there moments of normal. Some days it is all consuming and some days I stay busy and sidetracked and just have moments.

It is hard for me sometimes to watch the people around me doing everything normal... not that I want other people to be consumed by this or have to live it... but just that life keeps going and I feel kind of stuck. It is almost a jealousy I have of those around me not grieving.

I have spent a lot of time hiding out at my house. I don't venture out much where I think I might see people I know. I'm afraid someone will try to console me, or someone won't know and ask my how my mom is and I will loose it. I actually had to say the words, "my mom died" out loud to my doctor the other day, which resulted in me in an uncontrollable sob for about 5 minutes to try to regain my composure. I think it was the first time I had to say it out loud.

I have become completely obsessed with studying everything the Bible has to say about death. What happens, when it happens... all things I was pretty confident I knew, but I guess I never really in depth thought about it. I have always been a person that has looked forward to death. Not the actual dying part or in a suicidal, "I am unhappy with living" sort of way... but in a "I can not wait to meet my Savior face to face" sort of way. I have always looked forward to the day when the troubles of this world are no longer and I am enjoying the magnificence of heaven. I have never feared death. And I guess, to some extent that is still true. I do not fear me dying. But I have become (some days completely) consumed with the thought of those around me dying. My husband, my children... it is hard for me for not all of us to be together. The simple task of my husband going to work some days  puts me in a full blown panic. My kids having play dates or sleepovers when they aren't with me makes me overly anxious. It is very weird and not a natural thing for me.

Sleeping is hard. My thoughts are at a constant about my mom when I try to lay down and sleep. I wonder how things are for my dad. I worry about him a lot. I think about how my siblings are handling it... all of us so very different. All in different seasons of life and missing a different aspect of my mom in their life. I'm always afraid to call someone, thinking it might be a moment they are doing well or not thinking about it and I will turn on that grief switch for them. I think about my grandparents and them loosing a child. It is just nonstop when I try to sleep.

I have come to hate any phrase that begins with, "Well, at least..."

"Well, at least you know she is in a better place."
"Well, at least you know she is no longer suffering."
"Well, at least you got to say good-bye."
"Well, at least you know she is watching over you."

The list goes on and on... and I hate it. I know people are trying to be comforting... I know. Do I think she is in a better place than this broken world? Yes. Am I happy she is not suffering in her cancer riddled body? Absolutely. Am I thankful that I got to be there with my family when she passed? I am... but it doesn't mean I wish that is how it went down. I wish she was still here. I wish cancer wasn't even a thing we ever had to deal with. I wish she never had to fight, or hurt, or that my dad didn't have to be alone. She had a husband that loved her unconditionally, she had her dream job of teaching kindergarten, and she had 13 grandchildren here on earth, one more coming very soon... and she loved being a Marmee. There were lots of things about this life here on earth that she loved too. I wish people would just say, "I'm sorry and this totally sucks!" Because there is nothing you can say to make it better or hurt less.

God is good. I know this. I rely on this.  But this is hard. I lean on Him, and I trust that His plan is bigger and better than any dream I could have. I'm just struggling through this part of the plan. I take comfort in knowing it is just PART of my journey here on this earth.

When we were going through a lot of my mom's things the week after the funeral I found a piece of scratch paper tucked in a book. It was about a 2X2 inch piece of paper with a verse jotted down on it in my mother's handwriting. This is what my mom wrote, " By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain... 1 Cor 14:10 " I keep this tiny little scratch paper in my wallet. I look at it several times a day. I don't know when my mom wrote it, or what she was doing but when I first found it I thought, what I perfect way to sum up my mom's life in words. So I kept it.  As most people, I would assume, when they see something written like that with a verse attached, they assume that it was the scripture says. It wasn't until this past week that I looked up 1 Corinthians 14:10. I looked it up in about 12 different versions actually, because what she wrote does not match up to the verse. 1 Corinthians 14:10 actually says this, "There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification."  I don't know, because my mom is not here to ask, but these words that she wrote (that I thought where scripture) I like to think is what she thinks God was telling her through that verse. He says... there are so many voices (us all having our own) and they are all significant.  And her take was.. "This is who I am, and God's grace is enough. I am significant." Only she and the Lord know what her reasoning for the words or why those words with the scripture reference... but I do know this... whether is it a misquote, her thoughts, or whatever it may be... it is exactly what I needed to think about my mom... and quite honestly exactly what I need to think about myself at this stage of my life. " By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain..."

I love my mom. I miss my mom. This is part of my journey... and it is oh so hard... but good or bad, hard or not,  2:28 on every Monday is part of the journey none the less.