Water!

Isaiah 43:18-19  "But forget all that, it is nothing compared to what I am going to do .  For I am about to do something new.  See, I have already begun!  Do you not see it?   I will make a pathway through the wilderness.  I will create rivers in the dry waste land"

I look backwards and remember describing myself as a flower wilting in the dessert desperately trying to find water to bring the flower back to life.  I also began to think about water and how essential it is for life as I watched my father die.  I know that a human being can go three weeks without food, three days without water, and three minutes with out air before dying.  I count backwards from the time of my father's death and realize that he died just after three days without water.

It has been one month since my flawed hero, handsome Henry Kleinfeldt, Bop, Hank, The Hankster, Pops, Dad, and Daddy went home to be with the Lord guided by a glorious full moon.  Dad did it his way and waited until he was alone with his savior.  I know he didn't want us all hanging around fussing and crying. Or repeating Christmas Vacation word for word. ( That drove him crazy). He never was comfortable with being the center of attention, but I so wanted to hold his hand and walk him home just as he walked me to school, and my children to school on their first days.

I was tired and my heart ached as the nurse suggested that we go home 2 at a time to rest as she thought he would make it into the morning.  I walked over to his bed and lay my hands on his one more time.  Ok, "now"  I thought "it is time."  So I lean down and speak to him the words I couldn't bring myself to do earlier.  "Dad, it's Liz,  I love you so and forgive the last two years and I know from the core of my being that you are so very sorry and that you love me with a love that is deep and everlasting.  The past two years can not erase the other forty-seven years.  I am so grateful that the Lord gave us to you when you were so young, and although you will die young I had you for almost 50 years.  My boys, now really men,  adored you as much as you adored them.  I praise God that I was young when I had them. You gave them the gifts of love, support, friendship, faith, and fun.  And fun they had with you, although I probably wouldn't have let them watch Terminator, or Jaws when they were eight and ten years old, it is one of heir fondest memories.  Really they seem no worse for the wear."

I stop for a moment to catch my breath and say to him  "Dad I want to be here with you when you go home, but it is ok if you need to go before I return.  You have suffered long enough.  You deserve to be set free from all the pain; The physical, and the emotional.  Jesus suffered for you and he is waiting for you, to present you washed clean and forgiven to your heavenly father 'Abba'.  I will be alright."  I stop short of promising him that I will leave the eating disorder behind.  I couldn't make I promise that I knew I couldn't keep for the immediate future.  And just as I walked with the eating disorder back into his room, it was with my trusted friend that I walked out.  However this was searing pain that even Anorexia couldn't numb.

So it is in the dry waste land of death that I see the new thing that God has already begun to do as I allow myself to feel, to grieve.  Feeling my tears roll down my cheeks is like releasing a torrent of water from a dam.  It is grief for more than my father's death, but that of my feelings that I  have held in check for years, sometimes with the eating disorder, sometimes by my fear of not being heard, and more often than not disguised in anger.  

This torrent of water is different.  It isn't one of misplaced rage swirling out of control waiting to suck anyone or any thing under its surface to drown. A rage,  that like a swirling rapid, would cause anyone to seek to go around it; Not through it!  This rush of water is like the water that flows as the sun warms and slowly melts the snow pack of the hills allowing it to flow towards the streams, river, and eventually the lake.  As I allow the warm memories of my father to come to the surface, and learn to trust my heavenly father, his Son begins to soften the hard protective shell the eating disorder formed protectively around my heart.

Like the water of the river that flows in to the lake, there is an ebb and a flow to my life and my recovery.  There are times when my anger explodes like rapids, although there are few times that this happens.  There are times that I am calm and move slowly forward, making progress like sitting in an inter tube going with the flow of the current.  It is these time that I sit back and soak in all that surrounds me, and allow myself to be connected with the people in my life.  More importantly it is these time that I allow myself to just be. I connect with me allowing myself to feel happy, sad, lonely, cranky, and hungry.  Hungry, yes for food, but also for life.

Then there are those times that I feel more like the salmon that I sit and watch on the Bear River fighting to get up and over the dam to even begin the arduous task of insuring their survival. Some will fight with all they have to survive.  Time and time again they move backwards then thrust themselves with great effort to make the leap just to keep swimming upstream.  Some will keep this up for hours on end until they succeed.  Others will try once, twice maybe three times and then give up allowing the river to carry them back into vast cold waters of the lake where there future is uncertain.

This past week I was the salmon that tried a few times and gave up.  I felt like just riding the current backwards even if it meant falling into my rage, that leads to restricting, and eventually purging.  then waking up the next day feeling horrible not from the purge, but because I purged.  Even if I had the energy to make the leap I wasn't sure I deserved to try again.  How many times do I get to begin again?


The sun rose Sunday and again today, and a new day dawned.  So I guess I get to begin again.  Today I am the salmon fighting to take the leap.  Mine isn't over a dam, but a leap of faith.  Faith that He holds my future in His hands and has already begun something new that may be just out of my view. The tears that I feel hopefully are making a stream that will forge its way through this wilderness of my life and finally water this flower allowing her to bloom.

Life in Death

September 16


Psalm 17:13-14 "I am still confident in this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord"

I find myself slipping back into old thoughts, anguish and frustration the past couple days.  I wonder if the fog I am trying to look through is a normal part of grief, or if I am being swept up by the depression that threatened my life a few short months ago.  Maybe I am just worn out from from trying to be strong  through my dad's death, and trying to "be strong as I wait on the Lord to heal my gut (whatever) and the eating disorder.

My life has been a blur.  The past 3 weeks feel like one.  Well, one very long week that began September 16, 2013.  It was on this day that for the second time in my life I thought "I am an adult." The first was watching my son get married, but on this, the sixteenth day of September I do not want to be an adult.

The call came minutes before my alarm was set to wake me from my restless slumber to call Hospice  to care for my father.  Eight o'clock I figured was an appropriate time to make this call.  My ring tone "I love the way you love me" shatters the silence, although  I am already in and out of sleep and quickly reach for the phone I look  at the caller ID "unknown"  "shit!"  I think as I am pretty sure it is the nursing center calling me.  I fear that he has died during the night, and guilt began to crowd my thoughts.  First I was concerned that I hadn't been there, and second that I hadn't arranged for Hospice the day before so that he could have at least pasted comfortably.  Why me?  I am going to have the be the bearer of bad news to the whole family.  So no matter how small and frail I try to make myself,  I am still the go to person. Somehow my weakness is my strength.  I think to myself sarcastically that starving does take a great deal of strength. (I guess)

"Yes" I tell the voice on the other end of the phone, "we all agree that it is time to call in Hospice
especially if his night was as horrible as it sounds.  The second call comes minutes later.  "Can we start the Ativan and morphine before you actually meet with the Hospice nurse"  The words piercing through the fog of just waking up and my heart at the same time.  "Yes" I say, "he deserves to be comfortable."  I wonder for a moment if I am dreaming?  I have had dreams like this before.  Then I hear some noise from the end of the hallway.  Mitch!  How could I forget that he had come home yesterday just to hold Bop's hand one last time. I see him now walking out of his room, bleary eyed in boxers. It is then that I realize with a heavy heart, that this is not a dream.  I hear the toilet flush and I ask him what his plans are.  "I am going back to bed,"  he says as if I am missing the obvious.  All the while I am wishing I were still in bed dreaming my reality.

Well, now what?  I make the phone call to all my family and a few select friends, including my pastor.  I find myself wandering around the house picking up this and that.  Pouring another cup of coffee, eat a few bites of cereal, and take my meds.  I have a feeling I am going to really need them over the next few days,  just when I was wondering if I really needed them at all. Can I face my brother after our phone call that brought me to tears for hours?  Am I really the shallow, selfish person that he left me feeling like?  I remind myself that I am doing the best I can, and ironically I think out loud "It is well with my soul", but it still hurts.

I go through the usual debate of call, don't call my therapist.  Is this a clinical emergency, or just part of life that sucks for all of us?  I decide to just leave a message.  Maybe she will get it, maybe she won't.  She seems like a far away part of my life right now, but I am aware of the eating disorder as I think that this gives me an excuse for not eating.  Pitiful!  My dad is dying and I am thinking that at least I may drop a few pounds in the process of being with him as he dies, and as I grieve.  I tell myself that I deserve to go to the eating disorder since I can't go to my dad.

I can go to my heavenly father.  I need to pray, but am not sure what to pray for, or even how to pray.  I sit quietly then begin to pray in the spirit.  The Holy Spirit will know what I need and what my dad needs.  I listen to my praise music, turning  up the music to drown out the sound of my sobbing.  I don't want to wake up  Mitch.  Like anything can wake up a 21 year old used to living in a frat house?

I am wound and ready to spring out of my skin; wanting to spring out of my current situation.  I want to be with Mitch, but let him sleep.  I go out or a quick run, pounding the pavement as if it is at fault for my father's illness and impending death.

I wake Mitch to go back to school.  He seems sad and a little unsure of how to deal with the feelings a grief beginning to seep out of his pores.  He is torn as he knows he must go back up to school, but wants to be, no needs to be, with his family.  Bop could be like this for days even weeks, so I encourage him to go back to school.  I know that is what his grandfather would want him to do.  We go to lunch first, but I can't eat.  I send him off with tears spilling down my cheeks.

I enter the nursing center relieved to see a few friends there with him, because I was not remotely prepared to see him restless and in obvious distress lifting his arms repetitively  trying to breath.  I imagine that that is what Jesus felt like as he slowly suffocated on the cross for dad, for me, for us all.
Each breath sounded wet and labored.  It almost sounds  like listening to someone breath from a regulator under the surface of the sea.   After a while it becomes oddly comforting.  There is still a rhythm of life to it

I made some calls as it became evident that he would be with us maybe a day or two, not weeks.  Jerry, his life long friend comes down the hall, and I meet him to tell him that he has rapidly declined since Friday.  He cries like a baby.  How beautiful it is to see his unashamed love and emotion.  Their connection runs long and deep.  I cry, I shut down, I cry, I shut down as I watch a parade of my past march through the door. Their faces etched with age, their hair, if they had any was mostly gray, but every eye was misted in tears.  I am numb, I am cried out, and I fill the void by taking care of "business"; checking in with nurses, visitors, and signing papers.  How should I feel, what should I be doing, and am I doing it right?  Whatever the fuck right is in this situation?  All I know is I need to do this correctly.

It is loud and crowded in the room when the Hospice nurse arrives.  By the way he is nothing like the little old nurse I expected.  He is very young, very tan, very gay, very kind, and compassionate as he tells each us to give him permission to go.  I look at my dad and wander to rub his head, then turn back. Nope, not yet.  He may be ready, but I am not. He tells us, including my mom who decides to come that Dad is indeed in the active process of dying.  He will most likely die by day break.   I am anxious and irritated.  Part of me wants everyone to get the fuck out so I can be with my daddy.  Instead I wander outside.  How can this be?  It is a beautiful fall day.  I stand on the hillside that over looks the village that my dad dearly loved, and realize that life is going on all around me.  Did I expect the world to stop and pause because my dad was dying?  I pull my sweater closed around my waist letting it envelop me as it wraps over itself.  I am strangely comforted  feeling as physically frail as I feel emotionally.  I begin to scold myself for going there, but than think "fuck off "my dad is dying I will feel this way if I want to, and if the eating disorder wants to show up to ease my emotional pain, fine with me, and the two us make the slow lonely walk back to his room.