When Things Get Confusing!

I've felt this way a time or two! LOL!

Poor Sophie!

Sometimes life throws you curves... like lost cheerios!  

May your day be filled with laughter

and praying you always find the things that matter most!

Love, Always,

          Jane

Smiles for Today

A laugh for your Weekend...

Happy, Happy Weekend!

Love, Always,

                   Jane

When you Want to Run Away from Monday...

... but maybe a laugh or two might make it better... Here you go!

Happy Monday Friends!

Give Me a Sign...

Just because they made me laugh... And today, I needed a laugh!  Enjoy!

Looking on the lighter side today,

My Love,

         Jane

Seriously...

I need to laugh.

 

Cancer is serious business.  And terminal cancer is deadly serious.

 

If the human spirit was single-faceted, then that would be the end.  Seriously.  Game over.

 

There would surely be nothing to feel hopeful about... unless we were created to crave joy and beauty and laughter... and hope.

 

Yes, thanking Grace it is so.  For it is this life-giving hope that keeps the cancer warrior on her feet moving forward even in the midst of such a deadly serious prognosis. 

 

Right after mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and began treatment, she had the first of many medical complications... an occluded or plugged stent.  It involved fever, severe pain, a trip to the hospital and surgery to replace the offending stent between her gall bladder and pancreas...

 

The following week I picked up mom and took her to a check-up with her oncologist to discuss her treatment plan... not a place where you see many smiles, especially with a terminal cancer diagnosis...see note above, cancer is serious business ya'll.

 

So, there we were, sitting in the exam room waiting for the doctor.  Mom started telling me a story on dad.  It seems that while dad was with her in the hospital she overheard him explain the stent procedure to a friend on the phone... too tired to correct him, she got tickled when he told the friend that her bladder was plugged and they had to get it open.  In pure, clueless-dad fashion, he covered the phone with his hand and asked her if she could pee yet.  (Don't feel bad if this isn't funny... we're weird like that!)  But the bladder he was talking about had nothing to do with the gall bladder that was the subject of mom's pain and stent replacement.  For a good description of the stent procedure, check here. 

 

In telling the story to me, she got to laughing again and it tickled me to hear her snort... And there we were, laughing goofy, when the doctor knocked and opened the door... to say he was a little discomfited was an understatement.  I don't think he regularly found terminal cancer patients laughing in his exam room.

 

All's well regardless... it felt so good to laugh with mom again.   To feel the smiles bubble up real and true.  She was still the same mom we always loved to laugh with, even with a side of cancer. 

 

Mom would be the first to remind you that cancer can take you down a dark road if you let it.  And no, we did not laugh our way through the journey.  We cried a'plenty.

 

But in her best gift to us, mom showed us how to live life well and graceful.  She gave us hope, and joy, and yes, laughter...

 

 

 

 

  Seriously!

 

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Joy in the Midst of Grief, Is it Even Possible?

2 months ago we lost a friend...

Bonnie has been a part of our circle for as long as I can remember.  She lived just up the road from us in a little yellow house that bloomed bluebonnets all spring long.  Though in her 80's, Bonnie was a bundle of energy and the memories run long of the fun we've had together...

She and her daughter, Marilyn were a happy part of our Lunch circle, our Bible Study group and our Road-Trip Warriors escapades...

Her loss has left us a little off-center.  Her faith strong, we never doubted her home-going.  The goodbyes were sweet and full of love.  Her family centered in Christ's promises.   And yet, there is such a hole left in our lives...

We miss that smile, the encouraging hugs, even that sassy way she had of livening even the most ordinary of days.

And while we feel the missing, her daughter struggles all the more, for more than mother-daughter, they were best of friends.

And so, when life grabs you by the neck and drags you through paths uncharted, it is often that we end up adrift with no anchor... and in the midst of the uncertain, the bluebonnets bloom sure... and we dared to snatch Marilyn up for a Road Trip, even in the midst of grieving Bonnie...

For in our Cancer Journey, mom found that sometimes you just need to Get-Away for a bit.  And though we weren't Traveling with Cancer, we indeed needed a reprieve from the heart-ache... A granting of permission to go and enjoy the people, places and activities that bring us so much pleasure.

And so the Road Trip to Waco was born.  A Grace Break most needed.

Waco?!  Yes, the home of our newest addiction... The Fixer-Upper!  Have you seen it on HGTV?  Chip and Joanna Gaines are the warm and crazy hosts of a show that we simply love.  So where better to head off to if you live in Texas?  Magnolia Markets, the fabulous Fixer-Upper store front!

 

Oh and we shopped...

 

and shopped...

 

And then since you can only shop so long,

we set out to explore the Back Roads of Waco.

Friends, you need to visit Waco!

 

 

 

Such beauty... flowers spilling, heart-aches easing...

 

And we found the tallest Crepe Myrtle we've ever seen!

 

 

And of course, we ate and laughed...

and talked about our moms, and Bonnie,

and cried a bit...

And felt the Grace Break right on down to our very hearts.

And, naturally we found our bluebonnets...

 

Spring time in Texas...

Somehow Grace gives joy even in the midst of grieving,

for sharing the heart-aches together, surely eases the pain

and gives way to such beautiful memories.

Thanking God for the gift of you, Miss Bonnie,

your light and legacy live on...

P.S. You would have loved this trip!

Mystery Keys and Piles of Ammo... The Surprising Journey of Grief

These last weeks have found us walking a wobbly path...

Grieving and Mourning often take hard turns, and to our surprise, during the heartache of losing Leroy's dad, we have had more than a few occasions to bubble up in hilarious laughter.   Is it only our family?!

Tears have spilled and visits to funeral homes have sat heavy, then... in the midst of family and shared meals and loud stories and babies messy, humor finds a crack and lightens our load.

Leroy's mom, Millie, made the decision to sell the family home within days of Don's passing.  It has been on her heart to do for ages... she is happy and content with their "apartment" in the nursing home and has no desire at all to move back home.  In typical Millie-fashion, she met her challenge head on, came to a decision and set her focus on the things that needed to get done.  And that list of things to get done was extensive to say the least...

Find an auctioneer for the estate.

Find a realtor for the house.

Begin the arduous task of sorting through years of precious keepsakes and other assorted oddities!

Yes, yes, many have asked, why have we waited so long to start cleaning and sorting thru the house?   Don and Millie have been in the nursing home for near a year...

It is true, but... here, reasonable logic bows to emotions deep and the heartbeat of love... Grandpa Don has struggled long and hard with letting go...   this has been their family home, for decades.  It is where family has gathered around to enjoy Thanksgiving Turkey and trimmings, celebrated Christmas joys, shared endless pots of coffee, said goodbye to loved ones, watched the babies play and grow up visiting Grandma and Grandpa, lived life, made memories... all within these four walls.

It is no less hard for us to pack up a lifetime of memories for them.   Even though the irony is not lost on us... Don no longer needs any of the treasures he stored and kept safe.  His treasure is safe in heaven.  How often we forget?  And hold on to meaningless treasure here on this side of Glory?  But that is perhaps a lesson for another day...

For these past days have been a blur of activity from dawn to long past dusk.

We have found an auctioneer... Love him to pieces already.  He gets the memories.  Knows these are family keepsakes.  He will be taking inventory of the house in the coming weeks for an auction later this fall.

And so, our friendly auctioneer gave us the job of removing all personal and private "treasures" from the house, unless we wanted them to go to auction, which, no, we don't... Enter an abundance of empty boxes and family worker-bees.

We ate donuts... made a plan... divided up... each took a room...

The Goal:  find and gather up all pictures, keepsakes and anything else Grandma might deem valuable (which meant bring it into the kitchen where Grandma sat comfortable and let her decide...this is where the plan de-railed regularly and the hilarious tripped us up often)

Within hours of implementing the plan, we realized the enormity of the task... The boxes could hardly contain the abundance of memories...

We started making piles in various rooms.

Old Photos and Pictures began to appear with alarming speed... in boxes and bags, found in dressers and desks, layered in frames and hidden in books.

 

 

Precious images, yellowed with age, a glimpse of our family from years long gone...

 

The genealogist in me just melted at this sudden connection to the past!

And of course, Grandma Millie reminisced with joy, hours flew by as we gathered to listen...

 

 

A favorite... Grandpa Don as a young man with his parents and sisters..

 

 

 

And Grandpa and Grandma courting...

 

Love...Love...Love these...

 

So easily distracted we were... but back to business... and we began to notice that there was loose change everywhere, along with keys that seemed to multiply like bunnies... in the china hutch, in cereal bowls, dumped in kitchen drawers and hanging from pegs in the utility room...

 

 

So many keys... we asked?  Grandma shrugged. 

 

One for the front door, one for the back... the car in the garage, the truck in the shop...

 

The others for doors long forgotten.  Important once, now a mystery, gathering dust in dark corners.  But we keep them anyway.  A story of our lives.  Keys to unlock gates along the journey... our homes, a diary, that first car, an office... keys to our heart... keys to our memory... keys that keep us safe... keys that bind us together... all marking the passage of time...

 

And the loose change?  It all went into the brown jug and those pennies and nickels and dimes filled fast, weighing heavy.  We all took bets, wrote our guesses down on slips of paper and at the bank we laughed at our lack of faith.   A grand total of $99.07.  Much more than our bravest guess... We stopped at the Steak n Shake to celebrate, Grandma ordering a Large Mocha Chocolate Shake.  It was the first time she had ever ordered a large...

 

The sorting continued as friends and family filtered in and out... Leroy and his brother found a stash of ammunition in a back bedroom and brought it out to add to the growing heaps scattered over the dining room table... later a sweet granddaughter rolled her eyes upon seeing the ammo and said only in our family would we have piles of photos, old keys and ammo mingled amongst the cookies and coffee...  We laughed, because, well, because, seriously, true... Who does that?

 

Ammo was safely stored, we polished off the cookies, smiled over coffee cups and knew somehow it would be alright...

Perhaps it is the gift Solomon offered in Ecclesiastes, his advice for this road we all travel...

"To everything there is a season,

A time for every purpose under heaven:

 

A time to be born,

And a time to die;

A time to plant,

And a time to pluck what is planted;

A time to kill,

And a time to heal;

A time to break down,

And a time to build up;

A time to weep,

And a time to laugh;

A time to mourn,

And a time to dance..."

                    Eccl. 3:1-4

 

 

Sometimes we found ourselves weeping and laughing in the same breath... Grandpa Don would have been amused.

Keys to unlocking this hard, hard journey of grief...

The laughing easier when we're together.

Grandma and the grandkids...

 

Grandma and the family...

 

Grandma and her boys...

 

She does not journey alone...

 

For in everything there is a season,

God giving and taking and holding us close...

 

The Gift of Tears, The Grace of Laughter,

It's where we are tonight...

 

 

Carrying On...

We are home.  And it's back to reality!!  No more room stewards and towel animals,

 prime rib and lobster,

 deck chairs with spectacular views,

 or tropical breezes and aquamarine waves....

What a lovely cruise we had.  Despite Dad developing shingles!  Thankfully it has been a mild case, but the stress of the last weeks and the grieving process undoubtably opened the door to this "uncomfortable" development.  The doctor okayed our travel plans and Dad spent much of the time resting and eating, the true luxuries of cruise travel!

And this cruise was so important to Dad, for many reasons.  But mostly because it was one of those mountains he had to face.  The last cruise we had planned was just a few short months ago to celebrate mom's 1st Year Canciversary.  Mom and Dad have always loved cruising and have been on more than 20 cruises to points all around the globe.  We had planned an easy cruise for mom this time, out of the Galveston port to the sunny shores of Cozumel, but Pneumonia beat us out, and mom was in the hospital  the week we were scheduled to depart.  More than once that week, she murmured her regrets that we couldn't make the cruise, no matter how often we assured her it didn't matter.  But it mattered to her.  And to Dad.  I know he wanted to take her on one last cruise.  Maybe as a way to say goodbye, or maybe as a way to spend time with her in a place that held so many joyful memories, far, far from the world of cancer and its stranglehold.

That trip never happened.  She passed away December 4th, the day we would have arrived back home.

And so we have grieved...  Dad, especially has grieved a loss we can only imagine.  A wife, a companion, his best friend of 51 years.  The emptiness in his life now is vast... Each day is a study in loss, from the moment he wakes, alone in the bed they shared, to the dinner for one he eats alone in his study.  The grieving at times is monumental...

Thus we search for ways to walk through the grief to a new normal, a way to find joy in our shared memories, ways to find new meaning in a life altered beyond recognition.

It was Dad who suggested this cruise.  With great trepidation, but also a steely determination.  He needed to face that fear, wanted to continue on as mom had wished.  My brother, Steve, readily agreed to be his "roomy."  And Katie, my daughter, happily agreed to be mine!  No one else in the family could get vacation so quickly, and actually this smaller group was probably a blessing we hadn't considered.  Since none of us was there with our spouse, Dad didn't have to face the journey as the "5th wheel", the newly widowed.  He was just a part of our rag-tag family unit.  Perfect solution to easing into this new stage in his life, traveling solo, without mom...

And the week was marvelous.  Mom would have been so proud of him, after she scolded him for getting the shingles right before the cruise!  We all had our moments, tears were just as much a part of our day as was the laughter.  But the closeness, the sharing was all very much a part of the healing.  This cruise gave promise to better days ahead, not perfect days, but better days.  We saw glimpses of the Dad we thought we had lost when we lost Mom.  And we captured it in pictures - another delightful family vacation!

Lounging on the Beach

Seaside Lunches

Souvenir Shopping

Up Close with the Local Wildlife... Yes, those are Live Iguanas!!!

Exploring Ancient Mayan Ruins

Conquering the Pyramid!  Cue the "Rocky" music...

Charmed by the spring-fed cenote.  Absolutely pristine!

Food, Glorious, Food!  My, oh my, meals were culinary works of art!!

Birthday Shenanigans were all part of the fun...

Our carriage awaits, taking us to beaches of unspoiled beauty...

Opening our hearts to the possibilities of joy beyond the grief...