Coffee With Linda!

Grief is a tricky thing, especially at this time of the year.  There should be a rule that someone can’t die close to any special occasion.  Although, every day with a loved one is a special occasion, so that probably wouldn’t work.  But it does seem that some days are intrinsically worse than others.

The older you get, the more you must deal with loss.  I was in my early twenties when my father died unexpectedly.  I’d been touched by deaths before, but in his case, it seemed like my world ended.  I was a daddy’s girl and I honestly didn’t know how to handle it.  My solution was to go off the deep end and do some fairly stupid stuff.  Not a solution I recommend.

Fast forward about fifteen years and my first husband died, which was almost a blessing since he’d been cancer ravaged.  Almost.  Another hard death because we hadn’t even reached our third wedding anniversary, so I had a hard time wrapping my head around why God would allow that to happen.  On the other hand, I knew Bruce was no longer hurting.  That helped.

In the intervening years since then, it’s gotten easier.  Notice I didn’t say easy, because it never is easy to deal with.  It just gets easier the older you are.  Probably because the older you are, the more time you’ve had to lose important people in your life, so you’ve had a lot of practice.  Between parents, friends, dogs, and kitty babies leaving, I think I’ve become somewhat of an expert in handling grief.  And since I am a firm believer that I’ll see some of those people again, that does make it a little easier.  Not so much if I don’t know whether they took the elevator up or down.

I think I’ve mentioned my mom’s death before, but since I tend to get sidetracked for WAY too long and not do a blog post, you probably don’t remember.  Neither do I, so I’ll just mention it again.  When Mom died, I was heartsick.  Since Maggie had moved about 1,500 miles away, Mom was my closest best friend, was there for support every step of the way when Bruce was so sick, and the first person I always wanted to tell news to, whether good or bad.

In our backyard is a mesquite tree right outside one of the windows in my library, and hanging from that tree is a glorious sounding windchime.  Unfortunately, as a general rule of thumb, I couldn’t hear it unless I was outside.  Shortly after Mom died, I was in the library working on my computer and heard it.  That was unusual enough that it caught my attention.

Like me, Mom loved the sound of windchimes.  And something dawned on me.  God was letting her send me a message that she was okay and right where she wanted to be.  I know…it could have been a coincidence, but I prefer to think otherwise.  From that day Mom has lived in the windchime.  When her sister died, I swear the sound changed and another ‘voice’ was added to the music.

Last month, my sister died.  Not my biological sister, she died earlier this year.  But I considered Linda my sister.  We were super close, even though she lived a state away.  Linda’s mother (Ilene) went to school with my parents, so her family had been involved with mine long before I came along.  I called Ilene Mom and Ilene’s husband Uncle Jess.  Don’t ask me why.  I still don’t know and it makes no sense.  But we’re all a little oddballish at times, no?

When Bruce and I got married, Jess walked me down the aisle, since Daddy was long gone.  When Ed and I got married, we walked ourselves down the aisle, but Jess and Ilene were there.  My mother brought back a picture of her and Ilene from one of Mom’s trips, so I’d have a picture of my two moms together.  After Mom died, I called Ilene to tell her and mentioned that I was now an orphan.  Her response?  “What am I?  Chopped liver?”  Our family ties are strong.  When Ilene died, I really did feel like an orphan.

Linda’s death last month was a hard one because we used to text each other regularly with nonsensical stuff.  In other words, she was just as goofy as I am.  We both firmly believed we were blood related, we just never decided who had fooled around with whom to make that happen.

So that brings me to the point of this post.  A random thought crossed my mind the other day, which was that I wished Linda was here to send me a funny text.  My favorite coffee mug has ‘I can’t adult today’ written on it.  Linda got me that cup and I’ve used it every day since.  It’s so her.  Probably because neither one of us ever really grew up nor wanted to.  Although, she was the older sister.  Just sayin’.  I took a sip of my coffee and that’s when it hit me.  She’s still here making me laugh.

If you do a little research into grief, you’ll find all kinds of things designed to help you cope.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen a cardinal something or other.  Seeing one is supposed to signify a loved one is near and you can find a million different things on the internet depicting that.  I suppose that might work, but it seems rather impersonal.  What you need to do is find your own something.  Don’t look for what others suggest, look for your own.  Open your heart to the signs, like I do.  It helps.

Find your windchime, find your coffee cup, find your whatever that helps you get through it.  Grief is tricky, but one of God’s greatest blessings is that He gave us the capability to remember.  And as long as you have memories, you’ve got your loved ones close by.

I’ll see both my moms again, and I’ll see Linda again.  Until then, I’m taking comfort in the thought that every day Linda is still here with me, because I’m having coffee with her.  Every. Single. Day.