On this day last year My sweet husband made me breakfast in bed and he and Silas brought it to me cheerfully as we briefly shared sweet nothings then quickly fell back into the normal routine. I remember Jeremy and I trying to figure out the day to come. We were supposed to stay at your house while Dad was away with work. I was prepared to play “nurse” (fully prepared after Dad’s 30 minute medicine training). Instead Dad didn’t go and you were officially admitted to the hospital again for the last time. Still, there was my younger brother and we needed to decide if we should be there to help yet.
I went to work. Saw clients, pretended not to be in a crisis while attempting to help other’s amidst their own. Then I drove from Powell County to the hospital after my last client-though I told you and Dad I was close. A seemingly normal day from the outside looking in. The usual birthday wishes and phone calls had been non-existent with few exceptions. I came to the hospital early evening, and just incase my two hour drive to you wasn’t enough time to internalize and fret; I now had the weighted heavy walk from the garage to your room.
I remembered sending the pictures and texting back and forth with our own family doctor, and determining that we were going to do all we could to convince you to see the doctor just two days prior. I fretted that another hospital stay may be too daunting for your hope to remain. I feared what the surgeons would say. I picked my hangnails on my thumbs as I walked the pedway, biting my lip, overcome with how I was going to get up there and pretend to have hope.
{Listen; I wish I could tell you all that I was faithful, remained hopeful, and forever
clung to the promises of my God for I know Him to be a healer… But y’all doubt is
real. Wrestling with the Lord is all too real. This is why we need each other. We
need our own Aaron and Hur to assist us in our own prevail of this world
sometimes. I have shared before that the need to not show vulnerability but
instead strength is authentic. However, what I have learned thus far is that the
opposite of strength, in this sense, is not weakness, but trust which builds to the
leading of community.}
I finally reached your room. I opened the door, and in a moment all of that internalizing humanity of “what ifs” and my pre meditated ways to show strength to you subsided as you and Dad sang “Happy Birthday”. You were still mama, you both apologized for not saying it sooner but that was just silly. My birthday was moot point by then because there were more pressing matters at hand.
So now I’m 27. I spent a quarter of a century with you. One year trying to forget you were gone. And all of today realizing that I will lead the rest of my years with only your memory.
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