Six Months

 
 It's going on six months. Six months ago yesterday evening I lost my older brother. Six months ago tomorrow morning, my sister and I sang "Softly and Tenderly (Jesus is Calling) to my Dad, and ten minutes later he went to be with Jesus. It still hurts me to the point of tears whenever I think about how that all  came about. My brother had been on dialysis for months, had known two Christmases ago that he was going to need a kidney transplant to survive. He probably also knew that his time was ticking away and that he was not going to get on "The List" in time. He was getting weaker and weaker. He was angry with the specialist because he rescheduled his appointment, at least once, if not twice. (That part is kind of fuzzy in my mind.) And who could blame him for that?
   Dad was fine, as far as we knew, this time last year. We had gone down to celebrate my sister's August Birthday while my niece was home from Ireland. The day after that celebration, something wasn't right with Dad. That something wound up being diagnosed as cancer. Still, we hoped that it was treatable/curable.
Things went along in due course. He came through the surgery in January just fine. But something went terribly wrong during the course of his recovery. And, it's still a mystery to me, but both Larry and Dad wound up going to two separate hospitals on the same day, January 28, both via ambulance. And they both died within two days of each other, less than a week later. The rest of our family, my two younger brothers, my sister, my mom, and all of those whom belonged to each of us, were left reeling. My poor mom, they had been married 56 years. It would be like tearing half of your heart out and burying it in the grave. How do you "move on" after that? People expect you to, so you put on a brave front. But when nobody is there, you cry. You cry a lot.
   I am not ashamed that I still cry about this at least once a week. If I stop being "busy", I think about it. In unguarded moments, even sometimes with people all around, it just hits me. When I think about when we all first walked into that funeral parlor and were confronted with twin caskets, the shock of that...then the emotions take over.
   I know they are in a better place. There is a degree of peace that comes from that. Larry doesn't suffer anymore. Dad doesn't suffer any more. And there are people who have it a lot worse than we do. I think of the Ginthers, who lost three sons in one car accident. I think of the pastor of that church who lost his whole family, his wife and all of his kids in a senseless car accident.One of my Aunts lost her husband one year and then two daughters within five months of each other the next year. I guess we all have to deal with our own pain in life. And people would remind me that God doesn't give us more than we can handle, which I don't know if that is exactly true, because sometimes I feel like this is all making me a little crazy. Somehow, we have to hang on and learn whatever it is that we have to learn by going through this stuff. Maybe it is just so that we can comfort others when they are going through it. We know what others say and do that helps prop us up, so we can maybe help others.
    But maybe this is all just part of human existence. Maybe there are no lessons. Maybe we just go through this because the longer we live, the more likely we are to experience the pain of loved ones passing, one by one or in multiples (and God please forbid that we should lose multiples again). Maybe we are made more human because we have to face our own frailty. We have to admit that we can't control these things. I do have to think that if I was God, which I never will be, of course, I wouldn't have let this happen this way. I can't find the sense in it. Some of my friends don't believe that there even is a God, and I don't know how they deal with these times in their lives. But for me, I have decided that God is still mysterious. I haven't got Him all figured out. To me, He is in control and I am not. So, even though it doesn't make sense to me how or why these things happen, I am going to go on with life. I am hoping that some day I will have worked through all of this. But even if I never do, I know in my heart that God does not hold it against me that I am struggling with all of this right now. That is all.