Friends

It is fall in Michigan. Fall brings with it a lot of change. The days get shorter. The temperature gets cooler. The leaves change color. Just as fall brings lots of change each year, life brings lots of change as well. Change is a constant in life. Nothing really stays the same for very long. Change can be good or it can be bad. It can be easy or it can be hard. Sometimes change is welcome. Other times it is unwanted. I did not want life to change as drastically as it did for us one year ago. Ben and I were supposed to grow old together. We were already planning to go to Israel for our 25th wedding anniversary. We were enjoying life. We had made it through a wedding in the middle of COVID and gained a son-in-law. Sabin returned to in-person school. All was going as planned. And then Ben got sick and ended up in the hospital never to return home. Life changed a lot.

This month is going to be really hard for me. It was on the 11th that Ben was admitted to the hospital. Each day on Facebook is a reminder of the journey we were on last year. I am still amazed at the number of people who were praying and who reached out to help. A fellow widow friend lost her husband in November so for her that month became NO-vember. She gave herself permission for that month to say no to anything that wasn’t necessary. Next month it will be 14 years since her dear husband entered the gates of heaven and she still holds to NO-vember. My month is October. If I had to rename it, I would call it Suck-tober. Everything sucks about it. By birthday is on the 1st and after that everything will have sad memories attached to it. Maybe it is fitting that my worst month of the year ends on what I think is the worst day of the year, Halloween. I have never been a big fan of Halloween but after last year, I like it even less.

On the 8th I completed one of the goals that I set for the year. I ran my first 5k since I was in high school. I didn’t care what my time was, I just wanted to run the entire race and not walk. And I did that. Even the killer hill near the beginning of the course could not stop me! My sister and her son joined us. Sabin ran as did my daughter, Callie, and her husband Hunter. One of my best friend’s came to cheer me on and be there at the finish line. She even presented me with a beautiful bouquet of flowers. Friends like that are priceless and definitely a gift from God. After I had registered for the 5k, my Facebook feed was suddenly filled with ads for 5k races, both virtual and in person. So I signed up for a virtual one that my sister and I will run on October 31st. Then I signed up for one on November 5th. That is the one year anniversary of Ben’s memorial service. I certainly don’t look forward to running and it isn’t particularly enjoyable for me.

I have another friend whose goal this year has been to read more. I didn’t make the same goal but had I done that, I would have met that goal pretty quickly. I have not been a reader and rarely took the time to sit down and read a book. I have read several books this year. But the books I have read look very different than the books my friend has been reading. While she has been reading lots of fiction novels, the books I have been reading center around the theme of loss and God’s plan in suffering. I would not have chosen to read any of the books were it not for the death of Ben.

The most recent book I picked up is When Your World Falls Apart by Dr. David Jeremiah. The subtitle is Seeing Past the Pain of the Present. I have enjoyed listening to Dr. Jeremiah on the radio periodically through the years. I remember listening to him early in the mornings as I drove to Lansing the summer I worked at GM. I am only a few chapters into it but I expect that the rest of it is packed full of wisdom and examples of God’s provision and grace.

The GriefShare group has been good. I wasn’t sure how it would be with so many different people. It is amazing how God brings different people together to be able to share in each other’s grief. No matter who we lost or how, we all share that common bond of grief. One of the members said last week that he thought that after 5 or 6 weeks he would be okay and be able to move forward. He realized quickly that that would not be the case. Grief is a life long journey. We can’t ignore it or go around it. We can only go through it and learn to cope as we go along. It changes you and changes most everything in your life. We talked about how it has changed relationships in our session last week. It seems that the loss of a loved one will either make a relationship stronger or it will drive you apart. There are times in life when you really see who your friends are and who is there for you. The death of a loved one, especially a spouse or child, is one of those. Being there for someone that is grieving is messy. It hurts. It is hard. If I had one word of advice for others, it would be to talk about the loved one with the grieving person. That person was a big part of her life and just because he is no longer here doesn’t mean he has disappeared. He is still very much a part of who the grieving person is. And you probably have stories about that person that the grieving person has never heard. We have plenty of times that we are sad and crying so to hear stories of our loved ones gives us a chance to laugh and smile and remember the good things and good times together.