Two Deep.

I learned in Taco Bell my mom was going to die. For once, she and Dad chose words that were not coated in hope and partial truths. A fast food dining room was a fitting setting, both the plastic, fast-food booth and the news unforgiving. The melanoma skin cancer that had existed as a barreling train on the tracks of Mom’s life for five years, always behind her but never upfront about how far back nor how fast it was gaining, was going to get her: she had less than two years remaining.

I learned that my son was going to die on the night he died, but my husband and I got the first news of his congenital heart condition while I was on my back, watching the ultra sound technician squint and stumble over her buttons in an effort to get a closer look at Baby B’s disfigured beating heart.

These two bits of grave information landed on me very close together.

Too close.

I did not know how to lose my mom. I did not know how to house twins, one with a broken heart that would need multiple surgeries to fix once he came out, one whose body would eventually grow too weak to keep up the fight. I did not know how to say goodbye to a cherished life a generation above me at the same time I was bringing one so precarious into the world a generation below me.

What I did know was that I could not handle these deeply emotional journeys – my mother dying and my son sick– concurrently. When pain hits two deep, I learned that there is only so much space for it.

Is your pain two deep? Three, four deep?

May I nudge you: house one pain at a time. Let each one do what it wants with you, fully taking you over – but only one at a time. Let one pain fill you like a water feature with a ceaseless stream cascading into a bucket. Let it fill you until you yield with the weight and gush out – in your bed, in the shower, over your journal pages. Then, back upright, let it fill you once more.

Listen for the other pain, meanwhile, for when it is louder or stronger or more white water. Then, consciously break from housing your first pain and commit fully to the second. First Pain will not feel cheated or slighted; it will be there for when your bucket is available for it again.

I would take breaks from the knowledge that I had a very high risk pregnancy and a very sick child on the way. I would cry then only as a daughter losing her mom… like that was the only thing in the world to weep over. My tears were not split. One bucket.

Then, I’d return to the pain of my son’s broken body, the medical trouble he faced, we faced. More tears. One bucket.

Sometimes the change-over would happen after days, weeks. Sometimes a handful of times in the same hour. But always I forced my pain, two deep, to take turns.

Like a toddler wanting your attention, give one pain at a time all of it.

What's here + What's gone = Confused

It was June 2012 this last happened. I can remember it hitting me then the same way it hits me this weekend: so much fullness and so much goneness that the only way for them both to exist is to be confused.

People always ask if her birthday brings me sadness. That's an easy one to answer: Nope, it's my mom's death anniversary that gets me. It's the same for my dad - his death anniversary is when I mourn - but usually Father's Day gives me a run for my money, too, especially when it falls the day after Mom's death anniversary.

And that's the way it feels now. Mom died eleven years ago today; tomorrow is the seventh Father's Dad I'll experience without one by my side.

Like six years ago when they were back-to-back, What. A. Weekend.

But it almost seems that there would be sad beauty to the synchronicity, IF I were able to lock myself in my room for the entirety of the weekend and cry or drink from a vodka bottle or take long baths or watch sad movies where loved ones die before their time or journal or all. of. these. things. at. once. Now THAT would be depressingly delectable.

But, no, I can't do that.

I don't want to do that.

Well, maybe I do a little bit, but mostly I can't.

Cuz I have this powerhouse husband who is also a fully kick ass dad to our children. And tomorrow, Father's Dad, is about him, too. There's so much fullness in observing our four darlings spill coffee all over the counter and up the steps in an effort to serve him in bed, in their handmade cards and juicy kisses, in his smiles and misty eyes at the lives he gets to mold and mush around as best he can. I observe all of this with such gratitude and I can hardly believe that I'm missing the other half of Father's Day. I smile. I cry. I smile. I cry.

And today: My mom's death anniversary, one I spent at the pool with my little brood - smearing sunscreen, propelling tooshes upwards that eventuate into cannonball splashes, wrapping a shivering body in a towel for a lap sit, Dairy Queen blizzards at outdoor tables on the way home. Living. Motherhood. Like. A. Boss. And experiencing all the love and irritability and sentiment and short-fusedness and moment-relishing and doubt and warmth that come with living like a mom who cares her ass off. I observe all of this with such gratitude and I can hardly believe that I'm missing my own mother. I smile. I cry. I smile. I cry.

Surely it makes sense that holing up this weekend with my loss, fully honoring that which is gone, would be easier on my mind... I could be singularly unconfused.

But by now I've learned life is rather not-singular. In fact, it almost always overlaps and vacillates and blends and doubles up. It's never This-then-That, rarely Arrival, Departure, Next Arrival. It's almost always, "Here ya go," pouncing you with lots of both fresh and spoiled groceries with no bag and little time to sort the two out so that you are doing a little crazed juggling dance to keep it all in your arms.

I've decided to experience the spoil and the bounty simultaneously.

Which is why today I played at the pool and tomorrow I will spoil my husband. And why today I tear up writing this piece. And why tomorrow I'll record in my Dad journal and eat a BLT, his favorite.

Confusing? Yes. Impossible? No.

I can dance with all of it.

(But a bag to hold it all would be nice.)

Cling Loosely

"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

And yet...

"Which of you, if you had one hundred sheep, and lost one of them, wouldn't leave the ninety nine in the wilderness, and go after the one that was lost, until he found it?"

Life is a funny little thing, isn't it?

I find myself uncertain sometimes of how hard to cling to it. This, coming from a woman who happily weeps when holding a newborn infant and commits to bleary-eyed sobbing at the news of funerals of strangers.

I went through a phase in my young adulthood years, where I often internally acknowledged, "I could die today. And that'd be ok."

I wasn't depressed, mind you. And not obsessed with death, though it sounds it, in the least. Quite the opposite. More: obsessed with living. Fully recognizing that it [life] is not guaranteed to last and fully accepting that living it to the best of my ability was what made that knowledge ok.

And then, during a recent gathering of women who dedicated some discussion time to what our role ought to be following the Parkland shooting, one participant brought an unexpected thing to light. The conversation had been caught up in a whirlwind of emotion, some of us sad, some of us mad, all of us distraught. And this one friend, who happens to be an ICU doc, said, "I think it is important to remember that people die every day. Hundreds. Thousands. Many not in as sexy a way as a school shooting..." I forget exactly how it went from there. I'm pretty sure we weren't buying it... so zero-focused on the current event and its awfulness, the whole school kids thing and the unnecessary senselessness thing making loss of life feel so much worse.

She wasn't downplaying awfulness; she was leveling the playing field of human life and, inter-connectedly, death.

When the towers came down, I remember shortly afterward finding myself in a church van on a road trip returning from leading a church event with two of my 40ish-year-old youth pastors. At the time, I was newly out of college and serving a church as the youth intern, so lost about how to frame the event for the teenagers in my sphere of influence, must less for myself. We stumbled upon the subject in the darkness of those interstate miles and this is what my youth pastor said: "This is how it goes. The facade that peace is guaranteed is nothing more than that: a facade. No nation is exempt from unexpected horrors and history is evidence of that. Loss of life is loss of life. Is it necessary to fabricate spiritual implications?" My. Youth. Pastor. Said. That. I remember being both heavily disturbed and oddly comforted by what seemed like a dismissal... a "What's the big deal? Move on!" response to one of the most devastating losses of collective lives in our country's history and THE most hard hitting events in my own lil ole life.

And then there was the death of our dear Duncan. After four and half months of many joyful and happy moments but mostly while weak and fragile, our little guy suffered two cardiac arrests in the hospital in a short time and was responded to quickly enough by a roomful of docs and nurses and meds each time to be brought back. In the hours that followed, Duncan was not in good shape, and Scott and I spent most of them prayerfully discerning: we felt that God were asking us to let Duncan decide...that we ought not take additional measures were his heart to stop again.

His heart did stop again. And we let it.

For us, loving him best meant not clinging to his life.

I think sometimes it is hard to approach the paradox of life...

One guaranteed to be individually valuable enough to be pursued, followed, sought after by the Divine, even when there are 99 identical bleating back-ups on deck

yet

One also summed up by the word "dust"... part of something, yes, and only separate from the bigger whole for this short time, insignificant compared to the rest.

We are taught to believe deeply that this life matters. And it does. It matters so much that becoming lost while in it will send a search-and-rescue team. How do we live it like it matters that much while keeping loose our grip upon it, resisting the tempting notion that we must fight to keep it?

I don't guess I really know.

But discussion group gal and youth pastor and Duncan all have taught me about perspective. And I think that's the best place to start... When I discover myself gripping, it's usually when I've zoomed in too small. When I zoom out big, I find myself most at peace and in connection with the Divine and ungrippy. It's then that I tend to remember what Perspective has to teach me : God's got this. Always has. Always will. This life isn't all there is. Mine is a life that is part of something bigger.

I'm both a speck of dust and a damn-important sheep.

And this makes me cling loosely.

I'm not here to talk about guns.

And I'm not here to talk about failed security measures. I'm here to talk about nests.

When something like Florida happens and something like Westerville, OH happens (which happens to be the tight-knit community where my alma mater is nestled), there is definitely a need to talk. It's just that I don't want to talk about the stuff of lawmaking or the stuff of breakdowns in safety protocol.

For now - at least - what I want to talk about is nests.

We have had a lot of them in our home recently. 

Since we moved in to our house, we've had a mouse problem. They would come and they would go with seasonal changes. And, despite significant cash being blown on varmint control services, the sneaky little devils found ways to enter, visiting for short whiles to crunch up some crumbs (PLENTIFUL HERE), and exit at their own free will. This past Fall, we did some remodeling to our kitchen. Knowing that their main entry point from outside was behind the existing 1950s cabinets meant that I WAS A MADWOMAN about having our contractor patch... patch...and then patch some more the walls once the old cabinets went Bye-Bye. Seriously... a mad woman. Lots of boards, plaster, foamy stuff, then more boards, plaster, and foamy stuff... Lowe's loved us. And, better yet, it worked! Our house was like Fort-freakin-Knox. 

Except that then we had a couple rogue furry friends trapped inside Fort-freakin-Knox. 

How do I know this? 

When a mousy has no home to return to in its natural outside environment, mousy makes one. When Tricia stumbles upon it (say: in her scarf and hat basket), he skitters out, makes a mental note not to return to that territory and then proceeds to scout out a spot for another one (say: in one of the kids' drawers of trinkets) and so on. 

You get the idea: Mice need nests. 

Fast forward to now. We finally found and captured our two little mouse inhabitants after awhile and all was peaceful and nest-less in our home.

Then, this week, our 5 yr old forgets to secure the little door clasp on his hamster cage one evening and the next morning... no Harry the Hamster. 

I'll go ahead and spoil this story by telling you that there is no happy ending for his owner: Harry is still lost (sad for Anderson), likely doing trapeze routines from one 2x4 to another in the inner structure of our home (happy for Harry). But while, in the first few days, we were still fervently on the hunt to uncover Harry's whereabouts, the first thing I told Anderson was that we were looking for clues other than a siting of the small, furry critter itself. Fresh off of the newly acquired Mice-Behavior-Crash-Course I said, "The very first thing an animal knows to do when it is newly in an environment is to make itself a home - a nest - to serve as his safe place." I then described the string and shredded paper and fuzz and carpet threads to be on the look-out for that might compose a hamster home.

As I said, no dice.

But when I listened to my unscripted description of animal homemaking instincts, I instantly realized that one could replace "animal" with "person." 

We humans are built to need nests. To need shelter. To need home. 

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs teaches us it's at the top of the list... We seek physical safety and protection above all else.

Yes yes. A physical nest is a requirement.

There's a another kind of nest that I argue is right up there with sticks and feathers and yarn and 2x4s and shingles. Our particular brand of animal - our human species - requires the social and emotional nest just as desperately. (You knew I was gonna do that whole figurative thing, didn't you?)

Where do you find your social and emotional nest? I go to mine to contemplate and to process and to disagree and to cry and to giggle and to drink and to gain perspective and to gripe and to get on soapboxes and to be humored and to be put in my place and to be listened to. I go to mine to feel loved, to feel sane, to feel safe, to feel my realest of real selves. I get the willy nillies even contemplating a life where my social/emotional nest doesn't exist. Actually, to get real with you, I get nauseous in my belly.

And, so here's what I want to talk about.

Why are so many people lost? Why are so many people hurting and confused and rage-filled and desperate and deranged and perspective-crushed and hollow and disassociated and isolated and departed-from-wholeness and... back to the crux of it... LOST?

Why are so many people eating next to us and driving next to us and grocery shopping next to us and working at the desk next to us and living next to us and coming home to a home every night like the rest of us... yet without a nest?

Why are so many socially and emotionally homeless? 

And how are we not seeing it?

Guns - the place they have in American society as it stands now - are a problem. Security measures, particularly in schools, have room for improvement.

But today I want to talk about healing people. And the most on-the-ground way I can think to do that in my I'm-a-normal-person way is to look around. Put on my sensitivity goggles and look through those lenses so hard that the socially homeless...the emotionally bankrupt...the "nestless".... do not go unnoticed or untended to. At least not by me.

But I can't do it alone.

As American society rebounds from our cultural abandonment of the work of intentional nest-making, I hope fleets of people will be on this same lookout... I hope that we will return to believing that we belong to each other, that we are in this together. I hope that at some point nestlessness will be not only a rare thing, but a forgotten epidemic altogether... something in our distant memory. That there will be not one soul left shivering in a dark corner, hungry and alone and scared. And by that point, I would hope that guns and safety and the work of dodging worst-case scenarios would not need to be talked about at all.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

* Know that I know there are reasons bigger than social isolation which bring people to a deranged state. I omitted diagnosable mental health from this conversation on purpose... In part, because I think the two are connected... those with mental illness know best the experience of being disenfranchised from social nests - sometimes by choice, sometimes not. The other part of the reason I left mental health out is because it's so damn complicated and, admittedly, above my pay grade. But know that I know that it is there and it is big.

* Know that I care deeply about the very things I didn't want to talk about today: legislature to change gun laws and protocol to keep our kids and police officers safe during the day. I do not intend to come off as flippant or "above" those very real issues. I just didn't want to talk about them today. (Maybe tomorrow.)

* I can't. I just can't. That's the reason this entry positions itself a distance away from the anguish and heartbrokenness of the actual events I cited. I don't get close enough to it in my writing to do what I've been doing for the past 5 days: crumble and cry. For those of you directly connected to these deaths, my heavy heart sits with you in your grief.