Just when you think it's getting better...

There are good days... times when I feel I am moving forward, healing, moving out of daily grieving, out of the anger, the sense of loss and guilt -- and then it happens... again.  Why does this surprise me?  In my head, I know this is part of the process... I read all about it in seminary!  But my heart seems to have forgotten.

Matt had been the repository of a set of hundred of family slides from the 1970s through 80s.  Hundreds of them... he kept them with him despite his ups and downs.  His brother and I found the slides in his room after his death.  He has now digitalized them and put them online so that we all can see them.

It started out just fine.  I was looking forward to seeing this historical account of our family in its early years.  I thought about the years we spend houseboating on the Mississippi River... camping... bicycle racing on the Kenosha track and racing on midwestern roads.  And in winter, cross-country ski racing and the Birekbeiner.

There were family trips to Toronto and  Niagra Falls and other places... family get-togethers... and then the feelings, the emotions, came rolling over me...  anger, loss, blame, grief -- you name it.  Chest-tightening stuff.

And then the realization that I might not have much time left with Sabine.  That another loss was looming on my horizon.  The stem cell transplant is not holding... her "numbers" are going up...

I realized that when this happend to other stem cell recipients in our support group it has been the start of a two-year fatal crash.

One side of me says that we are making great strides in cancer research and treatment protocols (that's my head), but my heart aches, even as I write this I feel that tightening in my chest agian, the start of tears...

The holidays are coming up... Thanksgiving and then Christmas.  They will be different in so many ways this year.  I realize that out of Matt's death has come the blessing of healing and restoration in the Couper family (the sweetness mixed in with our grief). 

I know I need to keep myself healthy and upbeat as Sabine's "battle buddy."  I need to be fully present for her.

The range of emotions I am experiencing with these two events almost become ovewhelming.  Yet I am committed to going through this (not around it only to revisit at a future date and time). 

Going through this will not be easy nor do I know how long it will take.  I sense God's presence with me, in my life and in the lives of my close friends.

My suicide support group meets again tonight.  I think I need to be there even though family members are assembling at the farm for Thanksgiving.  I also am realizing I may need more intense "one on one" help. 

Prayer has become life-giving... wandering the desert, lost and thirsty, I find an oasis with clean, fresh spring-water.  I am reminded of Psalm 107:

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;

his love endures forever. ..

Some wandered in desert wastelands,

finding no way to a city where they could settle.

They were hungry and thirsty,

and their lives ebbed away.

Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble,

and he delivered them from their distress.