After The Kiss letter 1

Dearest Pam,

First of all, I know that you won’t be reading this letter, however, as a tribute to your decades of love and acceptance I shall continue to address them to you as though you were reading them.

I’ve just completed my first 24 hours without any family in the house or nearby. On the one hand, I was ready to move to the next phase of life- living alone for the first time. On the other, it was a bit of a scary notion; not unlike a walk down a dark alley late at night having to face the uncertainty of the unknown.

You may recall many years ago when you had a softball size tumor or cyst that was scheduled to be surgically removed on a given Monday morning. We took the weekend to visit our lake condo to spend some time together before facing the surgery.

On our way home our pastor called and asked us to come to church that night. He said he wanted to have someone pray for you and the mass that needed to be removed. Purely out of respect for him I remember us going. You were tired, the experience unremarkable, other than you mentioned feeling as though you were lacking in faith.

The next morning I heard you screaming from the kitchen downstairs. As I ran down I found you overjoyed and dancing about. You had awakened asleep on your belly, something made impossible by the mass. Your acid test, however, was to stand at the kitchen sink that had always hit the mass resulting in pain. It was the surest test of what had gone on as you slept.

The reality came not from you felt, rather from what you didn’t feel. That is my life today.

I’m not so keenly aware of what I am feeling as much as what I am not- I don’t feel your presence in the room. I don’t hear your voice calling out to me. When my phone rings, I am reminded that I haven’t checked in with you. What “is” pales when compared to what “isn’t” any longer.

A Norwegian couple, the Mosers, discovered that a lab rat, equipped with appropriate headgear, would have neurons firing when it encountered a LEGO tower in an otherwise empty box. Many visits each day and the neurons fired on each encounter.

Once the tower was removed, when the rat returned to the location, neurons fired from a different set of cells, which the researchers called object-trace cells.

Mary Frances O’Connor, in her book The Grieving Brain, says that when someone close to us dies, our object-trace neurons continue to fire when we expect the person to be in a familiar place. And this neuron trace continue to fire until our brain updates the virtual map within our brain. We must create a revised cartography of our new lives. 

The mismatch between the brain map that predicts where I will locate you and the fact that I can no longer find you where I’ve come to expect you, is confusing and stirs up grief within me. (Walking In The Dark chapter)

I told our youngest granddaughters, before they left two days ago, that our lives are like the five foot model sailboat on the wall in our bedroom.

The bunnies you had made from their favorite nightgowns had just been handed out and when they held them they could smell your cologne, which I had sprayed upon each bunny. It had the same effect upon them that it did on me as I sprayed each one, immediately I could see the grief pour over their faces as the familiar scent reached their brains.

I reminding them of the afternoon sail we made where the wind suddenly shifted and we went from calm seas to a very choppy sea. As we began to tack, a stiff breeze pushed our toe rail almost to the water, our sailboat listed hard toward starboard and the girls screamed as it happened and startled them.

Yet, despite the tumultuous heave to the side, the boat did what it is designed to do: the ballast and the keel working together countered the heavy force of the wind in our sails and the boat righted herself. 

I went on the explain to them that we would each experience waves of emotion, not unlike the wind on that scary day. But our ballast (which is worship) and our keel (which is God’s hand of providence) will right our ship and we shall carry on life’s journey. Just as we did on that Sunday sail.

I love you as much as ever and despite the pain my heart feels, I am good. Also, I know you are even better. As Dillon said at the start of your funeral service, “Pam has never been more alive and echoing the writer of the book of Hebrews, though dead, she still speaks. In and through us”

Brad