FLM FRIDAY
Book DAY 15
It is Friday.
Fight Like Mike Friday.
I got up early because I want to make a post on the blog today.
Lately all of my thoughts, are all over the place.
I have been writing every day for the past two weeks.
An inspiring friend encouraged me to do that.
To write for just 30 min a day.
Her daily writing has turned into a memoir
a year later.
I thought, OK , I can try and commit to that.
Even if there are a couple of days I might miss along the way.
Or even if it is just a sentence or two that I write.
I have been writing on some days
from the floor of your closet.
To feel close to you.
I have learned of this word, Selah.
It is in the bible multiple times
and people don’t really know the true meaning.
But it is believed to mean a pause, silence, or end
in a musical writing or performance.
Or a pause for prayer, or a moment of stillness between moments.
As my mind has been clouded with missing you,
clouded with trying to figure out the next step for me.
As my mind has been struggling with staying in the present moment
and instead has been lost in memories with you.
I decided I liked this word and needed this word.
I need a pause.
I need to find the present moment again.
I want to write a memoir too,
maybe I want to teach school again , or become a nurse.
I know you are laughing at the last one
because you watched me almost faint changing your dressing
And stood in front of the mirror and did it yourself. Ha
So maybe counselor and not a nurse.
I want mostly to be present for the kids each day,
Not watching the days pass by lost in thought.
All of these things have seemed out of reach lately.
So I choose the easy.
To stay here , on the floor .
To stay here with you in grief.
I have paused.
Selah.
And allowed for the salty tears to flow like waterfalls.
I realize as they come , I have been holding them in for too long.
They have been rusting my insides.
and burning the lining of my stomach.
The have caused the lump in my throat to clog my breath.
As I sit and feel the excruciating pain of missing you.
I realize the volcano of grief has become active again
I have tried to hold it in.
But the absence of your larger than life personality,
the physical absence.
It is too large to stay in.
The pain that is in every cell , flowing through my blood
I can almost touch the grief.
I cry tears of your love, and the love we shared.
I let them flow like molten lave.
Healing tears that brings me closer to you
.
When I feel my way though this .
Feel the love through my tears.
I am empty again.
and there it is,
that moment of peace.
I am fully in the present.
Selah.
The emptiness brings clarity.
I hear you louder and more clear
then .
You tell me I can’t stay here.
on your closet floor,
in your shadow of death and loss.
that we can only meet here at times.
That you are ok where you are
and our work is not done here yet,
Only when I have allowed myself to
truly feel the depth of missing you.
I can not skip the grieving.
When I am completely empty of tears
When I have fully surrendered
To this life, God has given me.
Only then ,is there room for God’s grace
To surprise me with hope and light.
And then , only by the gift of God,
Am I able to get up.
And like you always did,
I am given enough courage
To get back up without question.
And I went to pass out Share Love, shirts to patients
and sweatshirts to nurses at Emory.
because I feel like those shirts
as simple as they are,
Are one way you live on.
I know your greatest legacy, as you always said,
Is Jake , Celia, and Graham.
Yet, I see the joy and how proud they are
when they they see someone wearing the shirts.
Your incredible life lives on through each shirt.
It is a tangible reminder that your spirit
Your love
Will never be gone.
On my way home from passing them out,
I drove behind five different cars at different moments.
Well I actually drove behind many cars, I can hear you
Saying that to me. Haha
However those specific five cars,
had license plates with a 329 tucked inside the numbers.
You are with me when I choose the present moment.
You tell me to choose life.
I have no greater teachers than your three children
They live in the present.
The find you there, wherever they are
And I thank God they tell me every time.
Your old ties, medical supplies, boxes of medications, will not connect me to you,
our memories will not connect me to you now, not the way I want them to.
My thoughts of the future that we will never have together physically
will not connect me to your spirit,
no matter how hard I try to think my way to you,
No matter how long I beg from your closet floor.
Selah.
When I pause.
And breathe.
You are here
in the present moment.
In every crescent moon, in every 329, every Share love shirt worn,
in every smile the kids smile, and every elephant in the stories we read together.
You are in the voice in my head that tells me
to you tube how to tie the boys tie for their Harry Potter Costume,
You are in every rubix cube solved
And in every person Jake teaches how to solve it too.
You are in the crystal hot sauce Celia puts on her eggs and
Every raw potato she eat from the pan before I bake them.
You are in Grahams nervous heart as I remind him before his basketball game.
He smiled and ran on to the court.
They feel you with them. They know you.
You are alive in the present.
I want to be in the present with you too , Mike .
Keep meeting us there
I love you and miss you 29, the most there is.
Me
Thank you for purchasing shirts, wearing shirts, and supporting the foundation. To us , it is everything.
Seeing one, can turn a moment around for us. I am so grateful.
I have been getting emails from the school about Middle school. I have been crying, lol. How is Jake’s time at Briarlake almost over??
When he started Kindergarten we did not know anyone . It was also the year of Mike’s diagnosis and we started a journey with strangers at Emory . When I reflect on all that has happened in these short yet long years, I am filled with so much love and so much gratitude.
Jake’s friends ( and Celia and Graham's too:) and their parents have become family. The teachers and staff have loved us through the hardest years. All the while the nurses and doctors became our family . We are so lucky to have been loved so well.
I got this picture from one of my mom friends of some Jake’s buddies.
It was twin day and all these guys wore Share Love Shirts and masks.
Now it might have been the only matching shirt they had. Haha
But I know different.
There is no words to describe it.
A feeling that can only be fel .
To be loved is our greatest gift.
Thank you ALL for loving us.
Thank you for making us know
That Mike is still alive,
Every day.
Our dreams with the foundation is to return that love on the ten fold.
And… I feel sure with God and mike guiding us we can make it happen.
And I feel confident Jake will survive middle school,HAHA, even if I don’t .
Some