January 3, 2018 - Three crystals of flaky white snow

I’m sitting here watching the first flakes of snow fall, blanketing the grunge below it in a renewing white. In the first hours of snowfall I am reminded of how the earthly slate is gradually being wiped clean. No matter what lies beneath, the snow finds a way to hide the contents underneath. If only for a minute, the flakes are unstirred and able to recanvas the world in its opaque snow white. A clean slate. A freshly applied masterpiece. It’s breathtaking, really, at how quickly it all becomes transformed. The ugliest of landscapes suddenly rivals the most spectacular all because of the pre-scripted fall of a collection of ice crystals. Yes, soon it is marred again with the traffic of to and fro but for a moment, while undisturbed, it’s has the ability to be anything and everything you can imagine.

I see myself now, a year after my brother’s death, as the snow drifts down on the stone pavers outside,  that the past 12 months for me have been exactly like snow.  On January 11, I woke up to the ugliest of landscapes, seemingly unrepairable, scarred by the evil of life, forever transformed into “after Andy died” and from that singular moment of his body being found, unbeknownst to me at the time the very first flake started to fall.

It started with your praying us through it the moment you got the news. It started with friends and family gathering in his home the morning he died. It started the moment we began pulling the pieces together for his funeral.  It continued to fall as I traversed back into every day life at lightning speed, too soon now in retrospect. It started to accumulate on the sidewalks as I reached out to you in my struggles in the months that would pass.  And then as summer came, it built up along the grassy spots as I flubbered through not understanding my confusion. Finally, fall arrived and my crying out for restoration brought the most beautiful, peaceful, landscape-changing blanketing of snow.

Looking back, I see it took months before I saw the start of the snow canvas, enough flakes falling to begin to take its shape, but soon enough there it was covering the ugly underneath and renewing my landscape. But it, this restoration, started with a single snow flake. I know I am supposed to say 2017 was my worst year, I know those around me would expect this given what we experienced, but in all honesty, sometimes “the worst” finds a way of morphing itself into something else. The moment itself was the worst, but the aftermath, the snow fall, well, it softened my world into something transforming. I’m simply better at being. A miraculous outcome of tragedy.  

I’m able to function again now, albeit many months later, without the horrific triggers of his death infringing on my day. They no longer creep into my morning routine, my overheard conversations, or my leisurely moments. But I am aware I am at risk as I sometimes see it on the periphery of my existence.  A few days before his death, there was snow falling, this exact same week, and I felt a flinch at seeing the same forecast lining up to repeat itself this week. And next week, I will hear the ring of that phone call in my head while I am preparing for my day. But even in this experience (as I’ve termed it, traumatic grief) I am wiser than I once was. I have an ability to see a whole other side of the death experience that I didn’t gain with the death of my grandparents, or close friend from malignancy, or patients I work with daily. It’s as if a stone was pushed away revealing an existence I wasn’t aware of before.  Mastectomy did this as well, with its own insights provided, letting me know that we never really know it all. We think because we have watched something unfold around us, or seen something portrayed in literature that we suddenly “get it” because it was so comprehensively explained. It simply isn’t so. Until you walk in the shoes yourself you simply are an informed observer, a far cry from an experienced survivor. I get that now.  Never again will I assume I know what you are going through. And never again will I assume I’ve learned it all.

“We will thrive in the new scenery not despite the profound loss, but because of the gain and clarity that can come in the experience, even when it feels like tragedy.” These were my words on January 27^th, a few days after his death when I wasn’t sure what was up and what was down, but I had enough togetherness to know and trust God’s promises. And I’ve kept those words on my desk this whole year as a reminder of where I was going. Thrive. Gain. Clarity. Three crystals of flaky white snow. 

2 Corinthians 13:9 (ESV) - “For we are glad when we are weak and you are strong. Your restoration is what we pray for.”

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