Christmas 2006

Christmas 2006...Jim's last Christmas. He doesn't look sick at all, does he? He'd had surgery in September, and had gone through some of his first-line chemotherapy treatments. The folks at the Vince Lombardi Cancer Center had arranged his treatments so Christmas week was his "off" week. He felt pretty good. We were all really hopeful that our Jim would be the one to beat the beast. Somebody has to be in the 10%, right? Why not Jim? Dad took this photo of him while he was on the phone with me Christmas morning. It's my third Christmas morning minus the call or having him here with us. I miss him. Cancer just sucks.

A little grey

Scattered about my head are quite a few more grey hairs than I used to have. My hairdresser says it's time for a color. I've colored or highlighted my hair for fun for a lot of years now. I come from a long line of Swayne color-ers, and until Jimmy died, I really didn't have any more of a problem with putting color in my hair than I did putting on a blue sweater. I even colored my hair purple once - not like bright purple - but my hair had a definite strong purple tint to it. Unfortunately, I took a three-year-old Kirsten with me when I had it done and she announced it to EVERYONE we met for about a month - "MY MOM COLORED HER HAIR PURPLE!" But now I look at the grey in the mirror and I think "Boy, I've earned those." My own badge of courage. In an odd way, I find comfort in seeing the grey hairs. In my own warped view, I think "Oh good, I'm that much closer to seeing Jim again." I'm not looking to rush it or anything, but I don't mind getting older. I don't mind seeing it. In the end, I get to see Jimmy again and I'm looking forward to that. The greys are a daily reminder that life moves on. Some people want to stop the passage of time. I'm enjoying and thankful for every day I have here with those I love, but I also don't mind the days going by.

And now for a little funny story. I was sitting at the table with Mom after Sunday dinner. We were talking about how much we missed Jimmy and how difficult it is to get motivated for Christmas. So she says "I dreamed about Jimmy and my mother last night. I went to heaven and I saw them together." I said "Really? Last night? Because I dreamed about Jimmy and Grandma last night too. Only I didn't go to heaven. We were all at Grandma's house." Without missing a beat, she smiles and teases me (just like Jimmy would've done) "That's because they don't let atheists in heaven." Then she laughed at her joke, just like Jimmy would've done. It made me smile and laugh too.

The grieving process?

I'm an instructional designer. In instructional design, we have a type of content called a process. It's defined as "A flow of events that describes how something works rather than how to do something. It usually cannot be done by one person—many persons or organizations are involved. A process can be mechanical, business, or scientific and has either stages, phases, or cycles." Hmmmmm...that sure doesn't seem to apply here. Grief is quite solitary. There isn't a flow. It doesn't move nicely from one stage to another. It seems to jump around depending on the day. For example, shock and denial are the first stages described in many books on grief. I can tell you that two years after my brother's death, I'm often so horrified by the mere thought of it that I become Scarlet O'Hara "I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow." Shock and denial.

Life moves on without him now, whether I think about the consequences of his death today or not.

My truck wouldn't start the other day. I called Mark, who suspected what was wrong with it and had it towed in to be repaired. I drove Kirsten's car for about 30 minutes and then that wouldn't start either. Mark came home and fixed it. Kirsten drove to a friend's house late at night for a sleepover, but didn't call to tell us that she'd arrived like we asked. Mark got up out of bed and drove the route to the friend's house to make sure a deer didn't put her and the BMW in a ditch.

Kate ordered bed rails to change Jake's crib into a bed. She disassembled the crib and reassembled it into a bed. That's something Jim would've done. She was fully capable of doing it, and she did, but I'm sure she was wishing Jim was there to do it instead.

I sometimes complain about Mark and what he does or doesn't do, but I realize that I'm terribly blessed to have him around--to lighten my load and to watch my back. Jim isn't there to do that for Kate and that makes me really sad. I hope someday, Kate's heart heals enough to share her life with someone else if she wants. Sometimes the journey's just easier when we walk it with another person.