Only He remains the same.
This past week, my nephew broke his leg – fibula and tibia
all the way through to a leg waggle where that leg should’ve been straight and
strong. Drilling into the bone, the Docs
inserted a never to be removed rod which his bone will eventually grow
around. Walk, they said. Day after surgery, walk they said and he
did. Crutched, drip lines dangling vinelike
from veins, he walked on that bone severed rod inserted leg.
Candy and snack
laden, we went to visit this beautiful boy in the hospital. I was ambushed by emotion – his pain, the
damage, the drugged boy not quite himself but still him, all grown up but still
the fair haired boy I held as a baby. I
was overcome. Emotions tornadoing. Relief that he was okay and a stake through
the heart pain that even in this pain, he is still alive and I am so glad. I couldn’t lose another. No rod strong enough to hold together more
broken heart. And he’s still hurt and we
still wait to see if all is well and pray.
But he breathes and I am thankful.
I thought in that hospital visitor’s chair that I would give
anything to have Zach in a hospital bed with only something broken – even needing
the rods inserted kind of broken but still breathing broken. I am living a life where I don’t know who I
am or who I’ll be or what will uncork the tear flow. Today it was a chocolate butterfly in a
plastic yellow butterfly dotted bag with a Godiva tag. A gift.
And the tears seeped through the dam crack and then flooded and I had to
hide in the bathroom – again and again.
And life keeps coming.
The culmination in sight, Taylor’s graduation is drifting unstoppable
and ever closer. Already wondering how I
will feel watching that public slideshow memory march of Taylor’s babyhood to
12th year pinnacle on that slideshow screen. How would a mother father grandparent aunt uncle
not be teary even if Zach was here? But Zach
will be there on that screen loving his sister, them so close and together and
smiling and breathing. Heartbeats
tapping through time, a rhythm of life joy.
And seeing that and we will just have to breathe through it. All of us, never knowing if we’ll be smiling or
so sad from the weight of ten thousand thousand tears. We are all different and unsure of what
happens in even the next moment.
Always asking the unanswerable questions – how did we get
here? Why? Why did this happen? Why didn’t we know? What could we have done? An unending circle of endless questions with
no door to open for answers.
And we are still recovering from two moves in 10 days and still
unpacking and we are tired and bittersweet happy. Together, Michael and I slowly unwrapped the
plastic holding those Zach drawers shut.
Those drawers full because we couldn’t face the insides before. Time now to empty them and give a new life to
that dresser. That dresser full of his life
starting a new life. Everything new
everywhere – this whole life we live – all different and unknown and unsure. And Zach there in every molecule of every
item in every corner of those drawers we unpacked and repacked. Tears dripping and heart pain throbbing and that
panic ever pulsing at the back of my neck stealing my air.
His white ribbed “gangster”
tank tops that became a joke between us sleep folded now on a shelf in my
closet. The green jersey he wore and
warred in on that football field hangs lifeless, but I play the memories alive in
me. And Jonathan with his broken bones
and rod breathes. And I am so thankful for
rods and broken bones.
If you meet me and I can’t look you in the eye, forgive
me. Sometimes I hide in the grocery
store. If you invite me and I say no, forgive me. If you call, sometimes I can’t answer even
though I skip a beat wondering if there is tragedy on the other end of that
ringing phone. There is no moment when I
am sure of what the next moment will feel like.
I don’t even know who looks back at me in the mirror. The only thing I can think about who I am is
that He knew me before there was time and He knit me together and holds me
together and I am changed and only He remains the same. These days seem harder than the first
days. The wall of numb fell like Jericho,
and I am left standing wishing I was invisible. Six months.
“Isolating?” asks Peter M.D.
I find that yes, I am doing that more and more, and I won’t tell him that
and my friends will be pushy and limit the isolation, but it is survival. There’s only so much real life I can survive
right now. And I never quite know when
enough is too much. I love that song
that says “fear is just a lie.” I hold
on to that – that this fear I feel is just a lie. What work God is doing I know not. I can barely take one step after another and
what work He is doing He will do. It’s
like I’m suspended again in the pre-birth amniotic fluid waiting to be reborn –
this place of being so weak that letting Him walk me is easy because I’m too
weak to get in His way with my way for once.
And every day, He gives me butterflies.
And I believe Zach is in those butterflies and knows about those
butterflies. And I tell him hello.
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