January 24, 2017 - The Living Room

This certainly isn’t the first time you have heard me discuss my mother (Dad, we are bonded too!). We’ve had a long road. I know, a majority of children are bonded to their parents. It’s God’s gift to humanity. Nine plus months spent in a womb was purposely designed. He could have continued to create life in the snap of a finger. He created an entire world in 7 days. I can’t help but think there was some providence in his purposeful selection of 40 weeks of baby spent in mother’s womb. He carefully concocted the role of relationship and even more carefully orchestrated the complexity of family, but his master design was that of the maternal bond beginning with the first tingle of baby’s foot moving under mother’s skin or the sound of that first heart beat. My bond in specific with my mother continued to grow from that very first tingle, and even more after my traumatic birth, then again with birth defect, again as a teenager with lymphoma, and again and again when life continued to toss all three of her children with what life tosses as my mother gathered up her ducklings under her powerful wing in every attempt to save us from humanity.  Mothers do what mothers do. Every single thing she absolutely can.

Four years ago, while I was in the middle of my double mastectomy, mom moved in for a few weeks. There were many mornings spent in my living room in conversation about the given circumstance. Bandages. Breast drains. Body images. Navigating this. Navigating that. One morning in particular after Ron had already left for work, I woke up and my sheets were covered in blood, mom was there to help me pull it all back together. Twenty one years ago, I was a teenager with lymphoma. Amy and Andy were off to school, Dad was at work, and mom and I were often in her living room navigating malignancy. The conversations were different, often without words, but the bond was there because we were it doing to together. In fact, that was the start of our living room bond. These past 2 weeks, after Andy’s death (if you are new to this blog, my brother passed away just a few days ago), mom is back in my living room and kitchen. We are back to our morning discussions. The bandages are different, but we are there pulling it all back together. I made the statement just this week to her: “It’s funny how we keep finding ourselves back in the living room.” I’m not a mother, so I don’t have the mother bond all figured out. But I know as she stands in my living room and kitchen with her youngest daughter as we have always done when I am in crisis mode, she is missing the bond of middle son she lost a few weeks ago. I work in a world of mothers losing their children, but those mothers aren’t my mother. Nothing prepares you. 

This week, while in crisis in the living room, I have been swimming in the legacy of my brother, Andy, and therefore the legacy of my parents, my sister, but also now the legacy of myself. Nothing has been more therapeutic to me than to hear the amazing stories of my brother. Being his younger sister, I only got glimpses into his life. Sure, I know the stories of his life when he shoved me into the closet to play “hide and seek” and then went next door to play while I continued to hide for what was seemingly “hours” on end. Or memories of running behind trying to keep up on my bike pedaling as fast as my little legs would carry me in awe of little sister chasing big brother. There were the times we camped in sleeping bags in the living room, or lined up the dining room chairs to play “airplane”, or the times (more than once, mind you) Amy and Andy shoved me in the floor board of the car so they would have more room on the bench seat for the road trip (collateral damage of being the youngest), or memories of jumping off the top bunk over and over again yelling “Geronimo!”, or Andy telling me stories about dog doo-doo so I would throw up my Twizzlers ( I use "doo-doo" because those are the childhood words he used, and it worked), or digging the 9 foot hole in our neighbor’s (!) back yard to build a fort,  or sledding down the drive way in the mountains, or pulling my dad’s pants down to his knees while he carried groceries in the rain, or laughing until we cried as Andy told me about his last prank, or finding out Andy had a crush on my best friend and me not being so happy about that, or being locked out of his room because little sisters aren’t as cool as big brothers, or banging on the bathroom door because boys don’t need longer showers than girls but Andy didn’t understand that, or perpetual frustration at Andy always being late, or rolling my eyes at the trail of girls following Andy in high-school, or having to suffer through living in the trailer with Andy in college but sharing that same trailer with his two smelly pet ferrets, or everyone oohing and aahing over his red hair and freckles, or trying to beat him over to grandmas after school on our bike so I could be the one to spend the night. But as young life transitioned into adulthood the experience became less as our lives morphed more into independence. I didn’t know Andy bled into the lives of your children by encouraging them to be bold and confident. I didn’t know he encouraged other Christians to rely on their reading of a passage not what their pastor told them. I had no idea he still read books to his teenage kids. I didn’t know he spent hours telling you about his faith in college. I didn’t know he pranked your dad in high-school. You have so many stories I had not heard. When Andy entered your room, he left you feeling good about yourself. He would bring you to your knees in laughter. He taught you to do the right thing in middle school (Thank you, David, for telling me that story). He left you wanting more of him. Andy wasn't perfect. I know there are even stories where he let you down. But where he was on target most of the time was when he spent time with other people. He made other people feel valued. He made you want to be a better version of you. 

Do I do that? Being a woman (or having been an adolescent hormonal girl at one time), the chances are I have let you down on numerous occasions. Women are notorious for bringing other women down. We size each other up and do everything we can to make the others feel “less”. I’ve written about that before. You can find it Here - Stripes. But hearing the stories of Andy these past few weeks from each of you, I want to rethink my role in each of your lives. Am I doing enough? Do you see God in me? Do you see God INSTEAD of me? After I die (and even before I die) will you look back and see that I changed your life? Did I leave the room and leave you wanting more? Did I leave you feeling better about yourself? Do you find yourself wanting to do life better because you knew me? If not, I have let you down. And trust me, I know I have let you down. It didn’t take losing Andy for me to know this. I have been a “typical women” just as most women have, but I know that I live in God’s grace, and I know that God is the God of second, and third, and fourth chances. Losing Andy, and time spent with my mom in my living room, is re-reminding me of a few things. See, I told you God does glorious things in complicated and heartbreaking situations, even death.  My hope is that each interaction you have with me is better than the one you had the time before as God continues to grow me, and as He continues to reveal Himself to me, and as He continues to reveal MYSELF to me.  

My mom and I continue to do life in my living room. Andy brought us back together once again. Who knows what will bring us back to the living room in the future. Now, I’m inviting you to my “living room” where we are left to do our living. Some of you have already been coming here as you have been reading my posts for 4 years now. We’ve done mastectomy together. We’ve down downsizing together. We’ve done fibrosis together. Now we are grieving together. I don’t have any magic to offer you, but sometimes doing life together is all we need.  I’m starting with this question: What kind of legacy do you want to leave? One day people will be grieving you. But we need to start now. This is our chance for a do over to get it right. What kind of impression do we leave when we walk into and out of a room? That is where I am starting.

It began as a story of prophylactic mastectomy and became a smattering of everyday life. I write so I can remember. I write so I can advocate. But mostly, I write to overcome. 



To access previous blog posts - click HERE.