a year ago

Tuesday was the day that we were warned that despite plans to stay and finish out WELL our years, if one last flight was made in those urgent March days of covid, we needed to be on it, no matter how we thought or felt. 

Wednesday was the day, at 10 pm, after the kiddos were all sleeping, the pilot called us. There would be one flight, tomorrow, be at the airport at 9 am. No guarantee of any future flights, until "covid blows over". 

Today was the day, 8 am, we kissed Gertha and Leme and Granny and told them we'd be back very soon, and knew our long night of urgent packing left much to be desired. Today was the day Nikki's father died, the day we unexpectedly were unexpectedly separated from our Emmaus missionary team and said bawling goodbyes, our children to their children, never dreaming a year later we would still not have seen them again.

We cried that day, that long and slow flight with other plucked people, our children in the same shock we were in, on and on and on and past what we even thought we could cry.

Today was the day I've been subconsciously counting down to in my brain and heart...we've not even been here a year yet.  It hasn't even been a year, yet.

Those confusing, hard and painful days that followed our suddenly-ripped-out total change of life and community and world...that was a year ago?

I am learning how grief is 

at first

like a pitched camp where one sleeps away 

the delirium of a fever--

and how afterward those sorrows and losses

must be collected and hefted on the back,

like the burden of a pilgrim's pack.

For a small time we might live in our grief,

but then we must move out from it,

exploring the new thing our life has become,

and learning now how our grief will live in us,

as it filters down through the dailiness

of our days, infusing everything.

This is the day that marks

the anniversary of my loss,

and waking to it,

I must drink again

from the stream of a sorrow

that cannot be remedied

in this life.

O Christ, redeem this day.

Let that which broke me

upon this day in a past year,

now be seen as the beginning 

of my remaking into a Christ-follower

more sympathetic,

more compassionate,

more conscious

of my frailty and of my daily dependence 

upon you;

Let the past wound, and the memory of it,

push me to be present with you

in ways that I was not before.

Do not waste my greatest sorrows, O God,

but use them to teach me to live

in your presence--fully alive

to pain and joy and sorrow and hope--

in the places where my shattering 

and your shaping

meet.

Douglas Kaine McKelvey

Dr. Jen and Nykamps,

you reaching out deeply touched me this week,

and Lisa,

for remembering.