Category Archives: grief

Sandy Hook

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What if there was a list?
Of things no one wanted
The emptiness in a room
Blood memory
An unrelenting ache
my baby/my baby/my baby
Cannot be…

Worse than death
Stalking us at every turn
will we be
Safe?

No.
Not this time the children’s story
Man with a song leading us into the mountain
because our parents will not

What?
What is it we have not done?
Have not paid
To the coroner
To the cops
To the teeth of the dog
Who guards this hell we have

become
a houseful of memory
Of a Christmas most like the very first, second and third

When armed men broke through doors to wrest
Babes from nursing

Women who retain with their inmost thoughts each scrap of life
This child
This child
Don’t turn away.

Wakeboard Challenge

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Mom,

my young son says,

it is easy. Hold your feet like this, hold your rope like this and go!

.

He is right. His form looks good and he is instructing me mildly not because he knows how to wakeboard but because he has watched me face-plant dozens of times.

I can do the small pond ok, but I have a developing fear of the big cable.

The process goes like this:
Strap into your boots
Sit on bench
Grab rope/handle
Watch as a cable hitch traveling at 20 miles an hour zipping toward the rope you have in your hands

The advice is good:
Flex on 3
Watch the rope not your legs
Pretend you are jumping off a bar stool (going 20 miles per hour)
Keep your legs slightly bent, also flexed
Arms and handle at your hip
Hold on tight.

I have gotten off the dock a half a dozen times or so.
When I do if is wonderful–scary, not in my control. Wonderful.

But my fear of the launch process is getting to me. I have to do it enough that I am as comfortable hurtling forward at 20 miles per hour as I am brushing my teeth or riding a bike.

The process requires humility and commitment. And the consistent intellectual decision not to quit. I have to fear failure more than getting pulled across water at 20 miles an hour.

Forgive me if it all reminds me of Jesus.

Christmas Card

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I once gave someone I loved a copy of Michael Ondaatje’s novel Anil’s Ghost.

I am not sure she read it, but I know she did not appreciate it because she told me–

you sent me a book when you should have sent a card!

I am not a card gal. I wrote Fierce Angels as a Christmas card, Just Words was a wedding gift and Just was a PSA.

I used to tell friends I did not do Christmas cards because ours would be crazy weird. Really depressing.

But then I believe as humans our lives are all marred by grief and pain. It is this very reason we need the wee child in the manger.

He came to save us from ourselves.

Today I got a Christmas card from a precious friend. We know each other only because both of us have lost daughters and grieve for them.

Her friendship is treasure to me. The gift of Magi.

Seeing Ghosts

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The hotel is the same
The furniture is different
The name has changed
But the steps

In the pool where the babygirl
Hurt her foot
Are the same.

I remember

The way the road snakes around
Hills/river oaks
I once ran up and down
But don’t remember
How old her little sister was or
The specific children
Who trailed violence in their wake

We have all gotten
Old since then.

Do you miss him?

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In the midst of a morning of futility (guarantees are often NOT guaranteed) my young son asks me if I miss my father–a man who died before he was born.

I say yes
Infinite sadness
I tell him yes. I do.

I tell him that he looks a bit like his grandfather and that helps. He asks if his grandfather likes the athletic wear he favors.

He is so good at connecting himself
To the identities of ghosts
This fully living child
I love.

Homesick Christmas

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So. Being an army brat; homesickness was a big issue. Nothing in the routine ordering of life’s calendar evokes greater nostalgia, more intense pathos than the hoopla of American Christmas.
It can make us feel homesick.

But none of it is real. All the flashy lights, saccharine music, bubbly party dresses in the world cannot begin to fill the void of the solitary manger.

We need that baby.

We need Him because He is hope. He is the inexplicable star in an inky dark sky. He is our Ransom.

And all we do to “celebrate Christmas” can make us feel that much more shipwrecked if we don’t cut through all the noise and plastic.

And push toward the quiet winter manger. What God in His right mind puts His Son in the arms of a girl in the smelly dark of a stable?

Jesus was born homeless
Because He is our home
And we are sick without him

Christmas Stories

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I truly believe Christmas is the hardest season of the year. It is a characteristic of humans–our ability to make the most joyful event in human history into a frenetic, stressful, lonely race for the trappings of glee without the core of joy.

So this month I am giving myself the gift of stories.

My favorite storyteller was my paternal grandfather whom we called Papaw. My favorite thing about Christmas was his stories, his kitchen. For a nomadic military brat, his house, his kitchen was home.

Flawed, aging, ordinary home. But something about the combination of warm food aromas–coffee, pinto beans, brisket, pies–still comes back to me through all these years.

Home. The very place Jesus left to save us.

Cover

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It is a simple enough word
Cover
A blanket over me
The cleft of a rock
A bit of plastic tenting
as the storm blows in
.
These angels,
Fierce angels
Stretch wings of splendor over our history of blood

Turn your head to the side little girl
To the past where we both came from
And imagine for a minute
A world without cover
The shadow of majesty
Passing over us
Leaving us all
alone

Message in a Bottle

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Once a very wise person lost a child. Maybe children. He mourned because he loved them. so he came up with a plan. Put fire in the sky to guide them at night. Put smoke in the sky to guide them by day. Give them rules on something durable to keep them safe. Tell them from the beginning that you have a plan. Don’t worry, a plan of love.

Send messengers to remind them. Send someone like a son to find them. Document who you are and who they are. Leave a record of your love. Do everything because they are everything to you.

Understand that the story they are told about you may not be all true. Understand they may not want you in the end. Understand that no matter what no matter where no matter how, you will always love them. Because you are their dad. Because it is your nature.

Oh yeh, and write a book. Tell them in the book how much you love them. Pray they read it. Because it means everything.

If what i do ever seems a little crazy, remember that I am following that guy, that Wise Guy, so that one day I can tell my daughter face to face…

I have always loved you.