I can say the word without flinching; the memories are comforting, not painful; and I'm grateful beyond words I wasn't born into a culture that expected widows to throw themselves on the flames of a husband's funeral pyre and go up in smoke.
I'm in Seattle this week and I've seen my youngest for some sweet bits and snatches of time- he and I survived his tumultuous teen years which were, in several ways, defined by death and loss. He's becoming a fine young man and looking with logic and wisdom at his future.
He rides a motorcycle around Seattle and I'm not afraid.
His oldest brother finished his terminal degree and got a real job in real academia- against some odds. Not an easy career market. He and his brilliant wife are blessed with children and a warm, inviting home and I chose to see their blessings as the fruit of their choices early in their marriage. Instead of returning directly to grad school, they came home to nurse Bill and hold me up during the last three months of his life and the three months after.
I see God's hand providing for them and I'm thankful.
Another son is finishing up seminary and I was blessed to hear him preach this summer. He's good but the pulpit isn't his goal. He has goals of collaboration and supporting pastors to transform the church's view of work. He's a good writer and uses words well.
He's using his quick mind to be a part of a cultural change and I'm proud of him.
My one baby girl is no longer a baby. She saw her beloved at the end of the church aisle and gained the courage to overcome her unbidden tears and her heart ache for her dad on her wedding day. She's been marching forward ever since, loving her life as a military wife and a mother. Bill would have loved our grandchildren and my heart ached the first time I held a new babe with our DNA.
I see her and her husband doing the hard work of loving well and I'm confident of their future.
I didn't know any of these things a decade ago, let alone forty years ago. I have no pictures of us on this computer- a photo project for the next decade. But this one photo made its way over to Mac world from the old PC. I love that this picture doesn't even hint at the years to come.
It was the era of ginormous glasses and polyester double knit plaid jackets- trust me, it looks way better in black and white. He was being commissioned into the USMC (with uniforms to follow), we had been married almost six months and life was a piece of cake.
It has been cake- complete with life expectations being shredded- like the carrots in a favorite spice cake, and the shells of hard times to crack your teeth or your protective hard layer. There was a thick coating of sticky stuff we had to cut through to get to the essence of marriage and life. We had surprises, sorrows and unmet expectations. And in the end, there was death.
And I do it all over again.
These past ten years have stretched me and changed me more than almost any other. But perhaps all those previous one—the decades of young marriage, and then parenting, of hormones and struggles, of lean times and hard won abundance, all prepared him for heaven and me for my current life.
I'm missing you today, Bill Cleveland.
But I'm not afraid....of the future. I'm choosing to be thankful...for the blessings of the present.
I'm proud... of the hard work the children and I have done.
I'm confident...that he who began a good work in us with see it to completion.
Love, me
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