I've always treasured my mom's laughter. My dad especially appreciated her bolstering ability to find humor in the most dire of circumstances. No matter the crisis, my mom would remind him of all the things they had to be grateful for...their health, their passionate love for each other, their children, and their Lord who promised to meet every need. Why, it would be positively un-Christian to let the calamities of this world steal their joy!
After my dad died suddenly of a massive heart attack, I feared I'd never hear her laugh again, convinced a "calamity"
had been able to steal her joy after all. My mother was just shy of her 58th birthday, too young to be widowed.
After the funeral, I accompanied her back to Florida and stayed with her for eight days. The rawness and intensity of her grief alarmed me. I helplessly ached with her, incapable of consoling her.
I'd always spent hours on the phone with my mom, never running out of things to say. I couldn't wait to regale her with the latest stories, eager to hear her predictable laughter. Now it didn't feel appropriate to relay a funny story--would it ever? Everything I thought to say seemed trivial, meaningless, or worse, make it glaringly obvious that my life would be mostly returning to normal, while hers
never would--just one lonely, sad day after another. For the first time in my life, I didn't know what to say to her. If I had that time back, I would allow her to grieve. I would encourage her to relive every memory she had of my dad, and I would have done the same. My dad was a very funny man, there
would have been laughter in the midst of our tears.
My mom always made an effort to look nice for my dad. A half hour or so before he'd be expected home from work, she'd fix her hair, put on a little make-up and change into something pretty. My handsome dad would stroll in from work and say she sure was "a sight for sore eyes."
When Mom and I returned to the empty condo after the funeral, we didn't bathe, wash our hair or get out of our pajamas for
days. It seemed pointless and somehow irreverent to get gussied up without Dad there to tell us that we were a "sight for sore eyes."
One day, in an attempt to distract her from the horror of my dad's absence, I suggested we play a game of Scrabble. It was a mistake. A few moves into it, she shoved herself away from the table, ran into the kitchen and leaned over the sink, sobbing.
"I can't stand it! I can't stand it! I CAN'T STAND IT!" she wailed, louder and more desperate each time.
As I put my arms around her, trying to hold her shaking, sobbing body, something in
me snapped. I was terrified. I had lost my dad, and now I feared I was losing my mom too. I started shaking and crying right along with her.
"I'm sorry, Mom. I don't know what to do," I sobbed, frantic. "I. Don't. Know. What.To. Do."
At that moment, her pain became secondary to mine.
She had always been the comforter, it had been her role.
I never had to play it, and it was obvious I didn't know
how to play it. She turned to comfort
me.
"Oh, Honey," she said softly. "I'm sorry. I'm going be alright, it's just going to take time."
We continued to cry and hold each other and the frantic fear that felt like a vice around my heart loosened a little. I was still desperate to relieve her pain, but at least I wasn't fearing for her sanity.
The next few years brought more loss. Unimaginable heartache. My brother, Craig, was the only reason my mom stayed in Florida. After he died tragically in an airplane crash, she came to Michigan to live with me. All the heartache God had allowed, had brought my mom to me just when I needed her most.
Long after we decided we were done having children, I inconceivably became pregnant with our son Brett. From the beginning we were told there were problems. We were advised to terminate the pregnancy. Of course, I wanted to believer God would make our baby perfect and prove the doctors wrong, but deep down I never believed that was His plan, so I thought I was prepared for the bad news. And yet, after Brett's birth, the reality of just how severe his disabilities were was staggering. We were told he would probably never respond to us in any way, that he he would never walk or talk, and would more than likely be blind. He wouldn't be able to do anything on his own and we would be caring for him the rest of our lives.
Those first few weeks after we brought Brett home from the hospital are a blur. Those days of carefully measuring and re-measuring his ever growing head, not wanting to believe the horrifying numbers. The days and nights of trying to get him to drink one ounce of formula from a syringe on the hour, every hour. The seemingly impossible, frustrating job of trying to keep the oxygen tubes in his tiny nostrils.
When we brought him home they provided us with a "mother tank" of oxygen that had a 50 foot cord attached to it so we could walk around the house with him. Anytime we'd pick him up we'd pull the cord several times, ensuring we had enough slack to keep the cord from pulling against his face.
Several days after he was no longer on the oxygen, I watched my mom pick him up and "pull" on an imaginary oxygen cord. I burst out laughing. What made it especially funny was that I had caught myself doing the same thing. We had both gotten so used to that cord that long after it was gone we were still "pulling" the air of an imaginary cord. It was ridiculous and we laughed until we cried.
The aspect of my mom I feared losing the most hadn't been lost after all. In spite of all the horrific heartache, her endearing capacity to find joy in the midst of heartache remained. Her ability to appreciate funny stories and laugh heartily returned. Her unrelenting gratitude and her
certainty of a Heavenly reunion gave her the strength and joy to persevere, and it provided me a much needed example of what deep faith in our sovereign Lord can accomplish.
"Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope." Romans 5:3-4
