January 7, 2012

• To be a winner

  Last night the tears that had been pricking at my eyelids all afternoon broke into a torrent for a few moments. I was scrubbing listlessly at a very greasy frypan after supper, soon after Tori cautiously asked me if I’m still taking my depression medicine. It didn’t matter that we just had a wonderful (but exhausting) Christmas vacation trip. It didn’t matter that the weather was mild and that we have more than enough to eat and wear. It didn’t matter that Dan is the kindest husband in the world and that Jesus Christ is all I need.

  Sometimes fatigue and hormones and peanut shells all over the floor and whining 4 year olds and batteries for broken remote control toys and lost receipts and stained tights and people fighting cancer and broken relationships (that you’re trying to help mend but seem to be failing at) just get the best of you.

  It didn’t help to check in online after being gone for two weeks. Why couldn’t I be decluttering like elizabethmarie and taking photos like Michelle and sewing like April and baking beautiful things like Kathy and being witty like Jenny (I mean Jeanette) and Andrea? Instead all I seemed to do was wash 33 loads of clothes (or something like that) and move piles of clutter from one spot to another.

  I tried really hard to kick the bad mood all day. But it came lurking back every time.

  So I cried for a bit. And then my eyes caught this faded and grease-stained memorial card. It’s the one that’s on the kitchen windowsill beside the miniature Norman Rockwell coffee can that someone gave me years ago and I still haven’t opened.

   

  It was oddly comforting to remember him. The sweet brother of mine who died almost four years ago when he lost his battle against a brain tumor. A man so young and so vivid and so robust, larger than life. He was known for his laugh and his wholesome hard work and his love of nature and elderly people and children. Especially children.

  You know what? Kevin was good at washing dishes, but he never has to scrub a greasy frypan again. He doesn’t have to fight the cold and the ice and the winter darkness anymore. In heaven the glass shines endlessly with no greasy fingerprints to goof it up. The gloves don’t ever get holes in them. I imagine that peanut shells are magically whisked away when you eat them and the remote controls never break and the batteries never die. The plants don’t shed faded leaves. You don’t have to unpack your clothes after vacation. Chocolate doesn’t make you fat. You aren’t embarrassed to be losing your hair when you’re only 27 and there are no stacks of receipts to sort through in which the one you’re really needing is missing. A trip to see the grandparents doesn’t take 30 hours. You don’t have to start battling the bulge when you get close to 40. Relationships are never strained. And cancer is no more.

  I miss him so very much. My heart still twists at those dates: May 21, 1980-March 7, 2008. But I don’t wish him back. (well.  Maybe I do.  But for his sake I don’t.)  He’s won the race. And I intend to as well. Which is why I finished washing that greasy frypan and went on to clean the toilets, give the houseplants some TLC, and read Mercer Mayer to the littlest 3.

  Yes. He’s a winner all right. A winner who made it Home.

  

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  Speaking of heaven: We were listening to a song about it the other day that said, “I’m going home, where dreams become reality”. Bryant’s take was: “And what about nightmares?”

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  And from our house today:

  I am amazed at how much better of a Christian I can be with the house clean. It doesn’t matter that it’s just a lick and promise cleaning. (Wherever did “lick & promise” originate anyway?) I feel 1001 times better than I did last night. Vacuumed floors and clean sinks make life brighter.

  The laid-back little guy in this house said to me today: “Mom, I WISH dat all my tractors (of which he has many) were ‘mote control. Then I wouldn’t have to push dem awound all the time. I wish my excavators were ‘mote control too.”

  Natalia was helping me clean the porch this morning and Bryant came in with manure on his boots. “Mom, I guess the men do the dirty jobs and the women clean up,” she said. So wise she is at 5. I know that’s a stereotyped Mennonite farm wife statement. But she knows what she’s about. In his defense, Dan is a very neat person about things like boots and clothes and showers. His dad & mom taught him well.

  Dan weaned the calves today, which is always sad for me.  Those poor mommies bawling for their babies, udders full of milk.  I am not a good farm woman.

  One thing I don’t like about blogging is that I feel responsible to keep this blog from getting stale. My neighbor lady friend told me before we left for Christmas that I’m a slacker because she hadn’t read anything new here for a while. I want to write about our big trip, all 8 of us tumbling out of our suburban at 10 p.m. and buying beef jerky and sunflower seeds at Kum n Go….Liesl’s fascination with every soap dispenser and hand dryer in the many public restrooms we saw in traveling 4000 plus miles….Nebraska sunrises….wood smoke and coffee in the Ozarks…and roasted turkey with garnishes in Wisconsin. And people, warm & interesting. I hope I find the time.

  Here is a photo from Christmas program night.

  

  I have every reason to live, to fight, to win.

  • 9:39 pm
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