MABEL

My mother-in-law died this morning. She lived a full and long life and was, indeed, ready to die, but she will be greatly missed by our whole family. I loved her sprite and unpretentious self!

She was a hard-working farm wife, marrying after losing her only sibling and parents in young adulthood. She was not a woman of great humor or spontaneous fun. She did not express her emotions well. Perhaps the great losses she had early in life or the serious nature of her daily vocation or being married to a stoic Swede tempered whatever mirth she may have otherwise displayed. But she was sweet and energetic in her own gentle quiet way.

At the beginning of our marriage, I always felt she thought I was from the wrong side of the tracks, or that Dick married beneath himself. I knew nothing of life-on-the-farm, and that was of great importance to her. For years I felt hurt that she never asked me about my career or my opinions and I was never able to engage her in discussions about deeper issues that I love to share with other women.

Eventually I accepted what I could not change, and learned to chat about things in her comfort zone. When I turned to the subjects of crops and farming and weather patterns and cooking and her relatives, she always had a good deal to share. Though I always yearned for a deeper relationship with Mabel, I learned to be content with what she was comfortable with and what mattered to her own sensibilities. When I had Sam, we often talked about raising children and she always had good common sense about that. She was always an engaged grandma whenever she was with Sam, and I loved seeing her interact with him.

She was a wonderful gardener, a good cook, and a generous neighbor and friend who was always inviting people over for dinner. There was always food for more mouths at her home. She took painting classes in retirement and became quite an accomplished artist. She and I shared a love of reading.

I loved that Mabel was a true prayer warrior. After my diagnosis, she never failed to tell me she was praying for me every day, and that touched me so. 

My favorite memory of her is also the funniest memory I have. A lifelong orthodox Baptist teetotaler, she was clearly out of her element when at my nephew Dan's wedding reception, the waiters poured champagne for all the guests to toast the bride and groom. We looked down at the table she sat at with my father-in-law and others and she turned pale as the toast was made and her husband picked up his glass and took a sip with the rest of the crowd.

The look on Mabel's face, the daggers in her eyes toward Art as he imbibed an ounce of champagne was too priceless for words. I can still belly laugh thinking about it. She was about as non-confrontational as a woman could be, but if in their marriage she ever chewed him out, it was probably that night in their motel room!!

I most admired about her the easy adjustment she made when she had to sell her home and move into an assisted living facility. She transitioned with grace and without yearning for the “things” she had to give up. What a great example she was of successful relocation in old age. She was so kind to other residents and to the staff and was always appreciative of any help given her. 

I was a verbal and expressive city girl, and she was a reserved farm wife. In most ways, our lives could not have been more different. 

And yet.

For the love of one man, her baby and my husband, we were united. She birthed the man whom I chose for life, the man without whom my life pales and weakens.

Mabel and I both deeply loved this one man.

In the end, perhaps it is not the breaks in the chain that define a relationship, but the links.

And our largest link joined our two hearts forever.

Rest well, dear lady. And thank you for sharing your son with me.

A SEASON OF SAD

At the temple there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it.
                                         Arthur Golden, Memories of a Geisha


I feel it. Loss is all around me.

Jesus never gave promises of a life without pain or trial. He only gives us the assurance that He can carry the load when I cannot.


My dad has cancer.

My mother-in-law is dying, and the family thinks it could be this week.

Our best friends at the lake have sold their cabin and moved. 

Our best friends at our summer church have left the church and are going to another.

Our son is now over 5 hours away from us, (as he should be and we are so happy for him), but this means no more quick overnights at home for Mom's cookin' and watching a game together. Being an hour and a half away for 4 years spoiled us.

My body's reaction to the chemo is taking a toll......details are unimportant, but most days I feel like I am 100 years old. 

My best friend is struggling right now and I am halfway across the country from her and cannot hug her.


I am walking through a season of sad, and my soul is in a world of hurt.

Arthur Golden is so right. You cannot read loss or even write about it adequately. You can only feel it. Try to take baby steps through it. Use God's shirttails until you get to the other side. Hold tightly to the hope that a season of joy may be waiting for you.

TOGETHER

I have so many words attached to so many feelings that I have been aching to put to print, but I haven't been able to start. The fear is that if I start to write about my dad and his prognosis, I will be swallowed up in the words, unable to come up for air. 

But I need to write. It's what I always have to do.

Many moons ago, my mom and dad and two brothers "did life" together. We fought and made up, played baseball, took lots of family vacations, raised a couple dogs, made tunnels in roof-high snowdrifts, went ski-dooing on the hills at the same golf course where we would buy Dreamsicles for a nickel all summer. Doing life together was not perfect, but it was easy.

Now we must "do death" together. We face the unimaginable task of saying goodbye to our dad. The time frame God alone knows, and He is not speaking. Hospice rolls "6 months or less" off their tongues, but they admit it can be more or less. So we don't know the "when."

I put my arms around my dad last week and cried and said to him, "I don't know how to do this, Dad." He understood without another word spoken between us.

This is so, so hard.

Have we had enough time with him?

There is NEVER enough time. God tells us in Psalm 139 that every day of our lives has been ordained for us before one of them ever came to be. It is a done deal.

I would beg God for more time, but Dad would not want that. He is in pain. He is ready. It would only be selfishness that would inspire that prayer.

So right now, I attempt to process all of this, and care for both of them when I have the privilege of being "on duty."

The caregiving that we are doing right now.....helping Mom and Dad out 24/7 as we get all the kinks out and see what exactly Dad will need for assistance for the future.......that part is not hard. We kids (and grandkids) do that with love and honor. 

No, the challenging part is the letting go that is to come.

I do not know how to do this. I take some comfort in the fact that my brothers don't know how to let go any better than I do. Nor do any of our spouses who dearly love Ed. Nor do any of the 7 grandchildren who have adored their PoppyEd since they were first placed in his arms. Least of all, our sweet mama. 

We are all clueless, and there is no Google search on the planet that can give us a blueprint. 

As my son said to me, "Mom, I can't conceive of my life without PoppyEd in it."

He is so right----for therein lies the pain----our worlds without him in them. He is our northern star, our fount of wisdom, the steady heartbeat of the Hieb clan. 

How will it be possible to "do life" without him?

We will not know that until later. For now, we do WIN (my brother Mike's acronym for "what's important now."). We do what is vital, an hour, a day at a time. As the importance of something changes, we change it. We tag-team and we share a commitment that while we will need respite, we are best people to care for our dad. At whatever level that is on any given day or week or month. We know his likes and dislikes, his idiosyncracies, what upsets him, his sense of humor and his deepest desires. His personality shaped our very lives; who he is helped define who we are today. His essence lives in our souls.

We can do this thing because once, many moons ago, we did life together. And now we will do death together. Our dad will not leave this earth without us doing all we can to make the journey bearable for him, for Mom, for the whole family.

This is the hardest thing I have ever done.

Ever.

And I could not do it alone.

But as a family, will we do this. When the time comes, we will do this very hard thing.

With arms linked, 
          with God's grace upon us,
          with hearts full of gratitude for his 90 years,
          with rivers of tears streaming over precious memories,

we will walk our dad home.

My PET results were somewhat unchanged. The tumor is relatively the same size. The cancer activity has increased slightly.

My own cancer seems insignificant when faced with my Dad's. I am leaving tomorrow for Fargo.

Please continue to pray for our family.

PRAYER APPRECIATED

On the heels of a happy graduation weekend, we have had to digest the news that my dad has metastatic prostate cancer. Horrific pain for 2 days (and plenty of daily pain for over a year) landed him in the hospital where the diagnosis was made on Tuesday.

As you might expect, our family is shocked and grieving. It does not matter how old your parent is....it is always too soon to hear this news.

They are trying to get his pain managed and then he and Mom (who has been staying at my brother's house) will return to their apartment with Hospice care.

There are so many of you who have been prayer warriors for me through this blog. Our family would covet your prayers right now; for strength to walk this journey well with Dad, for pain-free days for him, for all of the logistics of care in their home to fall into place, and for us all to feel God's undergirding and comfort.

Sam leaves tomorrow to step into the new chapter of his life. His job starts Monday, but his apartment is not available for 2 weeks so we will get a moving trailer then and move him in on the 1st. My mother's heart is pretty tender, knowing he is now 5 hours from me. It will feel like a real empty nest for the first time. It has been a bittersweet week with him packing up his room to leave home. We are so proud of him, and are so excited to watch his life unfold. I only wish we were not watching it from afar!!

I have a PET scan on Monday. They still produce anxiety in me. I pray always for total healing.

And so, transitions. They do not come without tears. Thank you in advance for your prayers.

DORDT COMMENCEMENT

     Sam's graduation weekend is over and it could not have been any more special. Commencement at a Christian college is so very different from any other college commencement I have attended. The entire tenor of the program was rooted in Christ, and just knowing that these graduates have been given the Christian worldview in all of their coursework, and equipped to go out and do great things for the kingdom of God gave depth to what is usually a very ordinary event. Richie and I were very proud parents, and given the reality that I was never supposed to have been alive to see this day, it meant the world to us. 

   The college hosted a huge luncheon for every graduate and guest after the ceremony which was really a grand gesture considering that number was well over 1000, if not over 1500. 

   Everything about the day was just perfect, though I must admit that driving away from the school for the last time was pretty nostalgic for me.....I had a few tears. I have deep feelings about this place that has given my son such a great education. 

COMIN' FORWARD

THE BJ HAAN AUDITORIUM ON CAMPUS IS REALLY BEAUTIFUL

ALL DONE!!

RICHIE AND SAM

VERY PROUD PARENTS (squinting on a very sunny day!)

SAM AND ME

SAM'S ROOMIES AND ANOTHER FRIEND

THE GANG OF BEST FRIENDS FOR 4 YEARS

SAM'S GIRLFRIEND GRETCHEN WAS ABLE TO JOIN US!

SAM AND ONE OF HIS BEST BUDDIES, SAM V.

GRETCHEN AND SAM

SENIOR YEAR HOUSING IN KUYPER HALL, 4TH FLOOR CORNER APARTMENT

SO GRATEFUL TO BE ALIVE AND HAVE THIS DAY TO HUG THE STUFFING OUT OF MY GRADUATE SON!

MOMMY WARS

I thought the mommy wars were over.

My neighbor told me about a recent comment that her daughter's friend had made. My neighbor's daughter, with a MA from Notre Dame and working in finance in downtown Chicago, has just had her first baby. Her dream had always been to stay home with a child, and she has now made the choice to put her career on hold and raise her son. When informed of Sara's decision, one of her working friends expressed her shock and said to her, "But Sara, you're so smart!!"

Gulp.

Again, I thought the mommy wars ended in the 1980's when women got it out of their respective systems to criticize the "other camp" of mothering choices. I thought those battles and those biases were long in the past.

Apparently not.

As women, don't we all just make the best decisions we can for our children? And if that decision for some reason is forced upon us, don't we just try to do the best we can? There are moms who choose to be home and moms who work and both absolutely love their choices. I know working mothers who would love to be stay-at-home moms but their husbands are out of work and they have to take the reins. I know stay-at-home moms who would love to be working but cannot find a job. 

If women are putting their child's best interests first, then whatever choice she feels does that is the best choice, is it not?

I was passionate about staying home to be with my son. I could easily put my career on hold because I knew there were always jobs. I knew there was only one window of time for me to stay at home and guide my newborn into boyhood. I knew enough developmental psychology to know that he needed abundant amounts of security, familiarity, routine, physical touch, verbal interaction and cognitive stimulation. Dick and I felt that I could do that job better than a daycare provider could. (Add to that fact that I was so in love with this tiny person, I could hardly stand to leave him in one room and go into another for the first month :)

That was OUR choice for US. And while I remember feeling sorry for some of my working friends that they were missing out on the daily magic that I got to experience, I never disrespected the choice that they made to work. Neither did any of my working friends disrespect my choice.

I know a young new mom who wants desperately to be a stay-at-home mother, but she and her husband did what I think many are doing today. Making financial decisions based on two incomes. They bought a 2-income house and two 2-income cars. And they now have 2-income debts. And they need those 2 incomes to "make it." They are regretting living up to their means now.

When we got married, we put all of my income in savings and lived off of Dick's income and made all decisions based on one income so that I could have the choice to stay home when we had a child. By the time Sam was born, we knew we were able to meet all of our obligations because we had lived that way for years. That would be my advice to any young newly married couple. Because you really don't know how you are going to feel once that baby is in your arms. It was one of our best decisions in 30 years.

So my young friend asked me what I would do. She said, "I feel like we should sell this house and downsize to a small house with small payments that we can afford on J's income." I told her that if her heart's choice was to stay home with E, that would be a great idea. I told her I would do that in a heartbeat. I always say I would have eaten mac and cheese every night for the gift of staying home with my sweet boy.

I hate the mommy wars. It demeans those on both planes. We make choices only for ourselves, not for others. It should be no more a derisive issue between women than what type of home decor they each like. 

Though Sara will never read this, I say to her and to any other stay at home mom: If anyone makes you feel that you are putting your "smarts" in a closet in order to do this job, they are ignorant. Ignore them. You will use more of your brain every day than you had thought possible.

It takes smart women to work in finance and it takes smart women to mold a young life and assume the roles of 24/7 nurse, guidance counselor, nutritionist, dancing partner, librarian and reader, playmate, chauffeur, mediator, body guard, teacher, toy repair guru, and housekeeper (and plenty more).

Hang in there, Sara. You made the choice of your heart, and are fulfilling a dream of what you want your mommyhood to be. You have my respect. Welcome to the hardest and most wondrous job on the planet!!