Friend Level Platinum

I was talking to a young person recently who had experienced the death of his mother. He mentioned that he thought some friends were just around because they felt sorry for him, and that it felt weird. When I asked what he meant, he said they hadn't really been friends before his mom died, maybe just a grunt in the hallway now and then, but now these teens reached out to him, commented on his social media, and wanted to get together.

His feelings make sense to me.

Teens crave authenticity, and if anything has a whiff of disingenuousness, they will sniff it right out. No one wants a pity friend, because it feels out of balance. We want to be liked for who we are, not for what we've been through.

But here's what I said to this teen, since I'm a bit farther down the road, grief-wise, than he is, and I've got 30 years on him of seeing the complexity of life.

I told him I, too, had people reach out to me after Jack died, and my friends list is vastly different now than it was before Sept 8, 2011. Many people came into my life, and yes, it was a direct result of what happened to our family. However, those friendships are not based on pity now. A one-sided relationship is not sustainable in the long-run, but a friendship with someone who has already PROVEN a willingness to reach out despite awkwardness, is a treasure. Empathy and generosity are amazing qualities in a friend. How great is it to know up front that a person has those?

I also told him many people exited my life, never in an overt or hostile way, but because things became so complicated after Jack died. How impossible would it have been for us to hang out with baseball parents immediately after the accident? What about families from youth group, when we no longer had a middle schooler? Friendships shifted. We changed churches, jobs, schools, and neighborhoods. We had no energy, and some relationships faded away.

I believe many friendships are for a particular season in life, whether it's due to having babies close in age, working on a project together, being in the same school, or even in the aftermath of a tragedy.

I told the young man that if his loss led to his being placed on people's hearts, and they reached out of their comfort zones to express sympathy or be a friend, that's never a bad thing. There is a level of intimacy that comes from experiencing hardship together, while it could take years to get there with friends who don't know what you've been through. Some of the new friendships will stick and grow, while he will remember others just as a warm light in this dark season of grief.

Both are okay.

I've learned so much from the people who rushed toward me, rather than away from me in 2011, and I'm still learning today.

Tender Spot

Last week I was at Bible Study with my dear friends. We’ve been meeting together since Jack’s death, wrestling with faith and holding each other up in the hard times. We couldn’t meet until 9 pm, which is pretty late for a weeknight. I didn’t plan to stay too long because I wanted to tuck Margaret in bed and possibly watch The Americans with Tim after that. 

At 10 o’clock, I stood up and said I had to go. It seemed like a decent stopping point between the sharing and the Bible study. 

On my short drive home, I got a text from my friend Allie that said, “I’m sorry. XOXO” I texted back, “I’m fine. Love you.” And I truly thought I was. But in an attempt to be more open, something I’ve been working on, I began to wonder if there was something more. Something Allie had picked up on at our meeting that I hadn’t. So, I added a while later, “Home now. Sometimes I have to leave to protect myself from extra pain. XO.”

Woah. Where did THAT come from? 

I truly had planned on leaving at 10. My friends were talking about high school sporting events, and prom, and dating, and cell phone use, but there was nothing new there. It’s what moms talk about. So why did I add that bit about ‘extra pain’ to my text? 

Crap! I’m sure it made my friends feel bad, and these friends are some of the very ones who have stood by me every step of the way, embracing and including me when it would be so much easier not to. 

Now, my friends would probably beat themselves up, second-guessing the whole conversation, wondering which topics should be off-limits around me, even after all this time. There would be apologies. And awkward conversations. Oh boy.

In my attempt to be transparent, I was making things much worse, and maybe even hurting those closest to me, all because in my response to Allie's concerned text, I had led her to believe that something about the conversation that night was taboo. 

I realize now, that in my weird response, I was trying to protect Allie and my closest friends from something much worse: The truth. 

The terrible truth is that our gathering that night didn’t hurt worse than any other night. They all hurt. To be best friends with Jennie means to remember that her sweet daughter Alexis was playing in the rain with my kids that terrible day, but mercifully was called inside 5 minutes before the accident. To be friends with Jane is to remember that she was the one who watched Jack while I was at the hospital giving birth to Margaret, and that we fumbled and found our legs as mothers together in those exhausting, innocent early years, sharing family dinners, planning egg hunts, and fretting. So many memories. And to hear about the sons in the group, whether it's their sports schedules or tentative forays into dating, is to miss Jack even more. So, I immediately knew what Allie must be alluding to when she typed, “I’m sorry. XOXO.” I guess I just didn’t want her to know, how it goes way beyond that one conversation. How much it still hurts every day-- how I am still living life on two tracks after all this time. Darn.

Being around people hurts. Yet to try to avoid pain is to avoid people and avoid living and loving, and that is not acceptable to me. Living in community is not perfect, but it’s absolutely worth it. 

Friendship requires sensitivity and acknowledgment, for sure. But while shortly after Jack’s death I hoped friends would spare me the details of their children’s lives, I do not want that any longer. I want to be a true friend who knows what’s going on in my friends’ lives and their children’s lives, too. I don’t want our relationships to be one-sided. I can’t NOT know about my beloved nephew’s driver’s license, new truck, or date to the prom, even though it stings mightily to hear it. 

I want to share others’ joy and pain with them, as they do for me, and if that means keeping the second track under wraps a lot of the time, then it's worth it. 

And we all make mistakes.  I know I do! How callous it is for me to complain about something Tim does that bugs me, when Heather’s husband starts chemo this week. Or to forget in the 27 years I’ve lived without my mom, that the pain of mother-loss looms so fresh for Allie at every holiday and family gathering. I'm glad my friends show me grace when I fail them.

I’m grateful for Allie’s text, and in a way I’m even grateful for my messy and muddled response to it. Because it reminds me that in general I am making it through my days in a way that doesn't scream “pain!” and “brokenness!” at first glance any more. In fact, I think my life sometimes manages to whisper "hope" and "joy" and "friendship." So that's something.

And the text also reminds me what a privilege it is to love each other through the messiness: mine, my dear Bible study friends' and yours.

End Times and End Tables, OR, Can this Friendship be Saved?

I think I’m in trouble.

So my friend Arnebya has been itching to do some furniture rehab. We’ve talked types of paint, good thrifting locations, and ideal shades of gray. For months, she has struggled to find the perfect nightstands for her bedroom, and when she came across some on Craigslist, she sent me the link. They looked promising. Since they were in my town, not hers, I ran over to pick them up.

I was hoping they wouldn’t be too heavy for me to carry to the car. Not a problem. The tables were not just small, they were Lilliputian. And as sturdy as a soggy piece of cardboard. In a word, they were ANNOYING.

(I'd love to show you a photo, but after 2 hours of trying to get one to post, and having it want to break my blog, I've decided to forgo putting a pic here. You may use your imagination to conjure up the sheer crappiness of the nightstands or take a peek over on my Facebook page)

Take that bottom drawer, for instance.

If Arnebya happened to be in bed and needed a little something something from that drawer-- say, um, reading glasses-- and she leaned over the side of the bed to get them, she would surely fall on her head.

Did I want to be responsible for Arnebya’s goose egg? I thought about putting wooden feet on the bottom to raise the stands up a bit, but there was nowhere to anchor them. And that top “shelf?” Puhlease. Not enough room for a lamp! Forget about a box of tissues. Annoying.

I tried to decide whether the nightstands were as terrible as I thought, or whether I was just PMS’ing. It’s not like my furniture standards are all that high. Our nightstands, TV cabinet, side tables and numerous chairs came off of people’s trash piles. Choosy, I am not.

But maybe I put too much pressure on myself because I was shopping for a friend, not myself. I mean, when it comes to shabby chic, I am the shabby, Arnebya’s the chic. She wears high heels, she smells good, and her hair deserves its own Facebook page. She has standards. So I turned down the nightstands on her behalf, and promised to find her something much better and much less annoying.

Except now she has no nightstands at all.

I wonder if she’s mad at me. I mean, perhaps a nightstand in the hand is better than two in Arnebya’s um, you know. After 6 fruitless trips to various thrift stores, with no suitable tables in sight, I think I flew too close to the sun on this one. Sure I’ve had stellar thrifting success in my day. Yes, my chair collection is the envy of the dumpster diving set, but what right did I have to turn down Arnebya’s nightstands? What made me think I could find better? What if she hates my taste? I mean, in addition to our shoe incompatibility, she doesn’t like beans. Eep. I think I’m screwed.

So if you are local, and you have a heart:

 
If you see smallish (but not ridiculously small), vintage (but not fussy), nightstands in need of some TLC, please let me know!

Digging Deep in Turkey

We are back from two amazing weeks in Turkey!

I'm talking about a sunrise hot air balloon ride over the astounding rock formations of Cappadocia. Celebrating Margaret's 13th birthday in the resort town of Bodrum. And spending an entire week on a boat cruising the Aegean and the Mediterranean. Throw in an ancient city built entirely underground plus two short days in Istanbul and you start to get the picture of our remarkable experience.

This was no small trip, and our eyes, ears and taste buds had something new to experience every day. I won't soon forget the sound of drums parading through the streets of Istanbul to wake the faithful in time to cook and eat a meal before sunrise during Ramadan. Or platter after platter of fresh, juicy peaches that made my supermarket versions seem like nothing more than mush and fuzz. And the sight of hundreds of majestic mountains coming right down to the edge of a brilliant blue sea.

It was stunning and unforgettable. We loved it.

But vacations are also work. They throw us off a bit with necessary adjustments to our schedules and our habits, as they offer up something we can't get at home. Forgoing my crisp Washington Post and cup of Constant Comment tea each morning was an easy trade for the sights and sounds of Turkey. Putting my ailing shoulders to sleep on airplanes, in shuttle buses, hotel beds and a boat was worth views I'd never seen before nor will likely again.

The adjustments we make in order to travel remind us that we are not wed to the way things usually are, day in and day out. We sacrifice some of our stability to embrace a new experience.

And sometimes these changes are particularly uncomfortable.

I could see this most clearly from my daughter's perspective. A nervous stomach makes 8 plane rides, a 7 hour time difference, and bus trips on windy roads cause for anxiety. New foods and the back and forth motion of a boat (ask me about the dingy ride from hell someday!) are cause for concern.

But every stomach dropping, dry mouthed, clammy-feeling moment was under girded with, "We are in Turkey!" "This is a trip of a lifetime!" Jet lag doesn't last forever!" And photos of happy teen aged girls jumping off the side of a boat on "One, Two, THREE!" will always tell the tale of the summer when we ventured out with our dear friends and experienced a different part of the world. We put our daily lives aside for a while to experience something new.

...

Our continued discomfort and grief navigating life without Jack makes us feel off kilter too, even at almost three years out. Watching Margaret with our friends' teenage son reminds us of what we used to see each day, two brown heads together, leaning down, laughing. A happy birthday song with sparklers crackling on her cake throws the question into the atmosphere, "Is your older brother still older when you have now turned thirteen?"

And these feelings seem to increase rather than lessen over time. Yes, we can eventually grow accustomed to the rocking of a boat, so much so that by the time we reach shore again, our bed will sway for days afterward. But can we ever wrap our brains around a family of three? Will this ever feel normal? Will I always look at moms at the airport, whether they are heading to Riyadh or Spokane and silently count, one, two, three, sometimes four or five small heads and think, "Good, Mama, good. You won't be leaving one all alone if...if... if something goes horribly wrong."

In traveling on this most unwelcome journey, we face discomfort and change daily because we have no choice. But there is no reward for buckling down. There is no grand pay-off of an incredible vista, precious photograph, or historical site if we just dig deep and move forward.

There is just a life that needs living. So we do it. And there is laughter. Great new memories. Time shared with beautiful, generous friends.

But things are hurting worse right now.

Is it because we just flew halfway around the world, yet Jack's experience of a great vacation was a fountain coke and a Hampton Inn? Is it because we are once again in summer, and the feeling of dread of fall, September, and the accident weighs heavy on us once again?  Or is it because in life, there are discomforts, rearrangements, modifications that are worth it, but this one, which has left every area of our live so very different, will yield fruit, but will never, ever seem worth it to us?