Switch to a Different Puzzle

I woke up this morning with Don Williams’ title line of his song reverberating in my head, “I Wouldn’t Want to Live if You Didn’t Love Me”.

The mind worm of the refrain was a likely result of yesterday’s conversation that turned stressful with my daughter, Stacey. We are in Tennessee with her spending time with our immediate family for a couple weeks on our way from Michigan to Florida. Our older grandson’s band had a music gig on Friday evening and we were proud to be Brad’s Gampie and Brad’s Gammie at Hop Springs as Apache Jericho rocked the house.

Brad is the lead vocalist. He has been writing music and performing for years. If you have a premium account with Amazon or Spotify you can shuffle songs by Apache Jericho.

With my fingers on the keyboard now, I am listening to “Essential Grief Education” with Meghan Riordan Jarvis, author of Can Anyone Tell Me? As I hear her speak about the synapses that are ministered to when you use pen or pencil and paper or work with words, I know the value of The Yellow Brick Road to save my sanity.

Thoughts of time spent riding bikes for miles and miles with Fred following the death of my friend, Linda, this summer allows the three key actions suggested by Jarvis to leap onto my page:

1. You need to take a walk. You need to move. EVERYDAY.

2. If you can tolerate connection, do this with with another person. They can walk beside you or behind you or in front of you, but breaking the sense of isolation that occurs with loss ad grief is essential.

3. We can work on the story of what we are telling ourselves about what happened.

Meghan continues to remind us while we might never be grateful our loved one died, we do gain gratitude for gifts and growth that come.

Grievers say there is meaning that comes….

The point of loss of rapport came in conversation around the issue of abortion. This issue has trailed behind me, having begun in the 70’s and 80’s when I was a delegate to Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church — a church that is no longer united.

In my earbuds, Meghan is sharing about the importance of asking grievers, “What’s the secret terror that you have since this loss?”

I witness now a secret terror in my central nervous system: John and I are standing in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., watching white letters scroll across a black screen giving the dates and actions being taken that led from banning a single book to 11 million victims of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany….

Stacey and I had been working on a jigsaw puzzle when yesterday’s rip in rapport took place and she turned and walked out of the room. Perhaps the puzzle itself holds a clue for us. It is a Advent Calendar puzzle, with the pieces of each section in 24 small, numbered, separated, boxes. I am realizing this puzzle does not feel like fun.

Working this puzzle, it doesn’t feel like we are looking at or for the same thing.

Working this puzzle, it doesn’t feel like we are working together.

Working this puzzle, I don’t like the feeling that things have been artificially segregated.

After Stacey showered and got ready for their evening out, she approached me. I am unable to remember that conversation. That happens with grief. We don’t recall when something happened or how it happened, because what happened is distorted.

I do recall answering a question she had earlier asked me about my beliefs about abortion. I told her the issue of abortion isn’t separate for me from other experiences about life and death. If an adult dies and somehow continues to exist — like her own experiences of loved ones speaking to her (her Grandma Smith and the dutch apple pie recipe or her Uncle Jim about not being a dumb ass) how could that be different for an aborted baby?

I was able to express a wondering about how she had become so black and white in her morality and the concern I felt that the divide in the mind might be too wide to bridge; that being the nature of the mind.

I can feel a tightness in my chest as those words appear on the page.

It’s love that makes the world go ’round
And my love for you
Just grows with leaps and bounds
‘Cause, you know just what to do
When the world has turned all blue
And I wouldn’t want to live
If you didn’t love me

I am going to ask her if she is OKAY if we switch to a different puzzle….