A Tuesday in August

It was a Tuesday, a beautiful, sunny morning in August, and I was waking up in a hotel room in Lapeer, Michigan. I’d spent the first 29 years of my life in that town, but now I felt like an outsider, just visiting from North Carolina. I was not exactly on vacation, although we do vacation there annually. No, although My Awesome Husband Greg had taken time off from work to be with me, this was not a family vacation. We were in town for my sister’s funeral.

Now, ten months later, those words, “my sister’s funeral,” still do not ring true. There’s something wrong. There should not have been a funeral for my sister last summer. Missy should still be here. I just can’t shake the feeling that this time, God got it wrong.

Melissa had a great love of God, and always trusted her life to him. She was quick to say, “God’s will,” but I think we were all pretty certain that God planned to keep her around a little longer. After all, she had willingly devoted her life to raising her son, who has autism. She had, with God’s help, done an amazing job, but there was still plenty to do. All of us love Alex, but no one can fill his mother's shoes. Plus, her daughter, Avery, was just entering her second year of college. Missy had home schooled Avery until 8th grade, and could not have been prouder when Ave graduated the previous summer as valedictorian of her high school class. Surely Avery was too young to lose her mother. No, my sister's cancer was just something our family was going to have to get through. God would give us what we needed, as he always does, and then everything would be all right.

I was at the hospital the day the team that handles end-of-life planning came to talk. The doctor calmly outlined the bleakness of Melissa’s situation as he saw it, then paused to ask what her plans were. She simply said, “To get better and go home so I can finish raising my children.” The doctor affirmed that that was a good goal, but that all of the tests they’d performed seemed to indicate a different outcome. Missy said, “Don’t try to take away my hope. Where is God in all of this?”

I saw clear evidence that my sister was leaving us, as she lay in that bed, trapped in a hard back brace that completely imprisoned her from hip to neck, screwed on so it couldn’t be removed. She was unable to keep down the tiniest bite of food, and rated her pain – only when asked -- as a “five” when she had just been given the maximum dose of morphine, and “ten” the rest of the time.

When I’m mindful, I trust God’s will. I believe his ways are good, and that we are not meant to understand, but to simply trust. But I was having a very difficult time reconciling a merciful, loving God with seeing my baby sister in so much pain. Surely she would be well again. This could not be what God wanted. So, despite all evidence to the contrary, I believed Missy when she softly said, “This is not the end. I’m going to get through this.”

I know that what I’m going through now is part of God’s plan. It was arrogant to think we could know his ways. I know that God forgives us for questioning him -- it's allowed. I can see, just a little, that his ways are good. Alex has a different life now, without his mother. Because she is gone, he has a new, closer relationship with his dad. He is sad, of course, but he has such an amazing way of communicating his feelings. He has a pure faith in God, and he feels his mother is still watching over him. I never end a conversation with him that I don’t feel like there is hope for this world.

Things are different for the rest of us, too. I think I speak for my sisters, Bev and Karen, and my brothers, Mark and Jason, when I say that not a day goes by that we don't see her face and hear her voice in our hearts, and wish for one more hug. We will be okay, but it will take more time. I know that when we travel to Michigan this summer (for a much happier occasion – our 45th high school reunion), I will remember that Tuesday morning last summer. I will go to Missy’s house, and I will hug her kids, and I know that in all the things she loved -- her family, her animals, her flowers -- I will find Missy there, too.

Note: All of the photos in this post were taken at Missy's house during various summer trips. My Awesome Husband Greg gets credit for capturing the beautiful sunflower in Missy's garden.

The Letter

Coming up on our 42nd wedding anniversary in September, this was a fun memory to revisit and share...

Dear Kathy, I've been watching and wondering how a pretty girl like you could be the girlfriend of an IT like Willum (phonetic for William) Malcolm.

I’m standing in the kitchen of our house on Franklin Street with my mom, who has just handed me an envelope from the stack of mail she’s brought in. “Greg Fischer? What’s Greg Fischer sending you?”

Honestly, I have no idea, but I can feel my face getting red. I know Greg is the kid who lives next door to the Bommaritos. Mom and Irene Bommarito are good friends, and our two families often intermingle. I notice Greg, because he tries very hard to be noticed. He does things like climb up into a tree between the two houses, where he sings "If I knew you were a-comin', I’d have baked a cake.” I’m so shy, I would rather disappear from the face of the earth than let him know I that I’ve noticed him noticing me. But I think he’s cute, and I admire both his style and his smile.

Now, in our sunny kitchen, Mom, hands me the envelope with my name printed in bold, black letters. She is obviously waiting for me to open it, so I go ahead, although I would prefer to do so in the semi-privacy of the bedroom I share with my sister. The letter, like the envelope, is printed in black ink, pressed firmly into the paper. Mom would be able to read it from across the room, so I don’t bother trying to hide anything. After his comment about "Willum," Greg goes on to explain how he and William are friends, even though William goes to the Catholic school with me, and Greg attends the Lutheran school. He tells me again that he thinks I’m pretty, and asks me to write back.

My mother says, “It’s okay, if he wants to come over to the house and play with you kids, but I don’t like this letter-writing business. You can write to him one time and invite him over to play, but that’s it – tell him no more letters!”

Of course, I will die before I do that. I am beside myself with pleasure that this boy, who thinks I'm pretty, has gone to the trouble of writing me a letter in an attempt to “steal” me away from his friend. I wait until Mom is busy with something else before I sit down to reply. I then take a nickel from the desk and walk across the street to the Post Office to mail it myself.

I do not invite Greg Fischer over to play. I’m sorry to say that, in my letter, I dump William Malcolm on the spot. I explain that I’m not really his girlfriend, that it’s just something the kids at school say. After all, what does it mean to be someone’s girlfriend when you are 11 years old? For me, it means trying to stand next to William whenever any kind of a line is formed. It does not mean we ever actually speak to each other, and it certainly does not mean going on dates!

I do tell Greg that my mom doesn’t want me writing any more letters, but he sends another one. This time, I am the one who gets the mail from the box. Mom never sees the second letter. It’s the one where Greg asks if maybe we can just arrange to drop messages in the bush beside the church behind my house. He tells me to look for one the next day.

This kid has cast some kind of spell on me. I, who cannot sleep at night if I have disobeyed or disrespected my parents in any way, sneak over to the church the next day, and find it there it in the bushes, same black ink scratched almost through the paper.

The next time we visit the Bommaritos, I do not see Greg until we are pulling out of the driveway. He rides up the street on his bicycle with a sack of Grit newspapers anchored to the fender. Stopping the car, my mom calls him over, as I try to disappear between my sisters in the back seat.

“Greg, I told Kathy she can invite you over to the house to play, but I do not want you two writing letters to each other, do you understand?”

Greg shifts the weight of his bike between his legs, pulls a newspaper out of his bag and says, “Okay. Would you like to buy a Grit?” Mom buys a Grit from him, and admonishes him once again – “No more letters.”

We continue to correspond via our secret “drop” for the rest of the summer, into the school year. Some time in seventh grade the letters stop. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that Greg has become interested in another girl – one who is actually able to speak to him, one who he sees every day at school. I save his letters for a while, and then one day, with my sisters as witnesses, I make a little ritual out of tearing them up one by one, and throwing them away.

High school starts, and everyone now attends the same school – no more Catholic, Lutheran, whatever. I see Greg. He is still cute, and I am still shy. Even though we are in a couple of the same classes, we do not speak. Still, I ask him to write in my yearbook. He writes, “To the shyest and cutest girl I’ve known.”

A year after graduation, I am living at home. My mom is in the kitchen with me when the phone rings on a Saturday afternoon. I answer, and a deep voice on the other end of the line says, “Kathy? This is Greg Fischer.” I can feel my face getting warm as I say, “It is?”

Years later, when we are moving into our first apartment together, we discover that two or three of the letters that I wrote to Greg have survived. I regret that I don’t still have the ones he wrote to me.