Good Medicine

My sister Amy had the quote that best captures the reality of Gunga being gone. She was talking about her reaction in the moments that my Mom was dying. She said "I wigged out...and I may never wig back in."

Amen, sister. I truly may never "wig back in", but I am trying to engage in the life God has for me. One thing that means is being a baseball mom for the first time ever. Jack is thrilled that he gets to be on a baseball team this summer...
Last weekend was the first time I was able to go to a game and it was good medicine to sit with friends and watch my boy live out his dream. Lulu was exhausted...
And Tate wasn't feelin' the crazy pix...

(Could have been because he was sitting in a baby stroller)

But Jack, true to form, had a blast...
He forgot the belt for his hand-me-down pants, so he demonstrated his ability to multi-task as he ran while holding up his pants...
That's our boy!

We also found comfort in going to one of our favorite places in the world, Gunga and Granddaddy's lake cabin to celebrate cousin Willy's 20th birthday...

(Willy and his sister Sarah. Aren't they adorable??)

It was weird to be there without Gunga, but we know it would bless her for us to continue to make memories there even though she is gone...
Lulu is sporting the French Riviera look, as you can see.

We are engaging regularly in Pool Therapy...
Bill is working from home right now, so I put Lulu down for a nap in the afternoons and the older three and I often head to the pool. They are all water safe, so I am free to visit with friends, journal, read, cry, or just take a little nap. All while soaking in the harmful UV rays. I join them for playtime now and then and, if cajoled, I will do an awkward dive off the diving board for them. However embarrassing, for some reason, they revel in my quirkiness. We take Lulu sometimes, but those visits are not as relaxing since it seems to be her main goal to drown. Not my idea of a fun time.

I have been overwhelmed by the kindness of friends during this time. Having special friends at the Memorial Service held me up when I was feeling weak...
The flowers, notes, calls and comments have lifted my spirits. The providing of meals has allowed me to focus my energy on what I need to do to grieve and to enjoy my family. My friends who cleaned my house, watched the Hairy Beast, and had food waiting in the fridge and freezer brought peace during a time of emotional chaos. These and other acts of kindness have brought us great strength and comfort and have given me specific ideas and strong motivation to serve others in the future who are in need.

On that subject, I have decided what I want to be when I grow up. I want to be like Angela (center)...
She came to visit my sister and mom and to help Georgie, who was helping care for my Mom. Little did any of us know that my Mom would go downhill so drastically during that time. Angela took over completely in the kitchen. She took over without any of us feeling like she was "taking over". She made amazing meals from things she scrounged up in the freezer. She did dishes. She did laundry. She cleaned the house when the cleaning ladies were too grieved over my Mom's condition to do so. She ran to Walgreen's in her jammies at 3:30am. A diet coke would suddenly appear in my hand just when I needed it. Angela. You can see why she has ANGEL in her name..."Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?" (Hebrews 1:14). God gave her eyes to see what needed to be done and she did it joyfully with a ministering spirit to our family. I want to be able to serve others tirelessly with the same kind of initiative and sweetness as God gives me opportunity.

All these sweet activities and blessings with family and friends are good medicine for a grieving heart. But ultimately, I know that my greatest comfort is in the One from whom all these blessings flow.

"May your unfailing love by my comfort, according to your promise to your servant."
Psalm 119:76

Two weeks ago...

Two weeks ago today we were gathered in Gunga's house. In the wee hours of Monday morning, I wrote the following email to some friends to let them know what was going on...

It’s 1:30am. My sisters and I are all sleeping in my Mom’s bedroom. Under other circumstances this would be a really fun slumber party. But I am sitting next to my Mommy’s side, listening to her labored breathing as she prepares to leave this world. Her death is imminent. It could be hours or days. But we don’t even have the 2-6 months we were thinking we had a week ago. Despite 9 months of knowing she had terminal cancer, we were fully unprepared for it to go this fast at the end.

We went to the doctor this past Wednesday and he told that she had to stop chemo. She had already decided she was done fighting and we all knew she was losing strength. He said her body was shutting down. What we thought were side effects from the chemo actually were signs of her liver and kidneys shutting down. Georgie and I were with her on Thursday as we had the first meeting with Hospice. I left to go back to Lincoln thinking we would return one day later. But in the early morning hours, everything changed. It was like her body crashed. She went to “sleep” (which we were thankful for because she hadn’t truly slept in many days), and she hasn’t really woken up.

During that middle of the night time, she told my sister Georgie that she knew she was dying. Not just sometime in the next few months, but that it was imminent. She knew it. I believe God Himself told her. She said she had no fear. She and Georgie had a sweet time praying and talking together. And, though she was much more limited, she made sure she connected with each one of us who weren’t here before the crash. She opened her eyes to look at Amy and Carrie when they each arrived and told them she loved them. She did the same with me and since I was on the bed with her, my head near her waist, she lifted her hand up to cradle my face in it. I will hold onto that moment for the rest of my life. The look in her eyes was unmistakable: pure love. We didn’t know at the time that this would be the last connection each of us would have with our Mommy. But we do know that she must have mustered every bit of her strength to give us each that gift of love.

She has been basically unresponsive since then. All the family, except one grandson (who is on a Mission trip) is gathered. We are going through old letters, photos, and mementos as we read them to her. There have been lots of tears, though plenty of laughter too.

I know that my Mommy is being called by Jesus. I know she will go to Him. I know she won’t look back. But I have to be honest, this pain is excruciating. She has lived a long and full life. She has given me more love than a child could ever hope to have, but I do not want to see her go. I wish that I could have expressed more that we were “saving” for the months we thought would have of final preparations and goodbyes. And yet, I am thankful that we are a family who expressed our love every day. There really isn’t anything left unsaid. The things I wanted to communicate to her and what she would have communicated to me have been said over and over throughout the years.

I know I should get some sleep, but I am feel like I need to take my last opportunity to look at her beautiful face. Though it is hard to see her like this, and hear this ragged breathing, it is the last time I will see or hear them. For now anyway, and so here I sit.

Please pray for her to continue to be without pain and at peace. Though she is resting comfortably in general, there are times that she is disturbed and it is so hard to see her like that. Pray for us as we care for her. We only met with Hospice once and weren’t fully prepared for the duties that the weekend has been filled with. There is a lot of confusion and second-guessing ourselves. Pray for the kids who are in the house and not quite sure what to do. Jack and Tate have seen her, but it is quite disturbing to them. Emmie has grown more comfortable with coming into her room. On Wednesday of this past week, my kids wrote her letters. I am so glad that they were able to communicate their love and concern while she was still conscious. But there still is very little closure for them. And there will be a gaping hole in all of our lives.

Thanks for walking with me along the journey of the past 9 months of dealing with my Mom having cancer. Most of that time I have been able to focus on being grateful that I get to have her as my Mom and that she is still around. Now we have a new reality as her death is staring us in the face. I still want to be grateful, even as my heart is breaking.

That was finished just 5 hours before my Mom died. And now she has been gone from us for two weeks. I think I will look back on these weeks and realize that I have lived in a fog. But I am indeed grateful. Grateful for the Mommy that I had. Grateful that the end went quickly for her. Grateful for a God who is real. Grateful for the overwhelming displays of love and kindness from friends near and far. And I am grateful for my three sisters. I noticed an immediate change in our relationships with each other. We have always been close, but suddenly we became more motherly with one another. None of us could be all that my Mommy was, but we each have bits of her that we can offer each other. And that is a precious gift that we can uniquely offer each other.

Then...

(Wearing old gowns of my Mother's on New Years Eve sometime in the 80's)

And especially now...

(At my Mother's memorial service with a dear family friend)

I have no idea what I would do without my sisters!

26.27.28

These are very important numbers in our lives related to our adoption of Luci May.

May 28th was the day we received our referral. June 26th was the day we passed court and our (Luci May)Rediet became legally ours. And July 27th was Luci May Day (aka Gotcha Day) when we first held her in our arms.

Today is June 26th. I remember that day one year ago so clearly. I had finished my first conversation with my friend LeAnne after finding out she had breast cancer. As a result I was a jumbled mess of fear, sadness, confusion and belief as I drove to pick up Bill for a lunch date. And that's when the call came with wonderful news that the court date we'd been waiting for had already happened!

Now I was even more of a jumbled mess of fear, sadness, confusion, belief, and add to that elation. The more I live, the more I see that life is just like this. Rarely can the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the wins and the losses be completely separated. As we celebrate this day when our family legally became a family, we know it must have been a heart-wrenching one for Luci's biological Grandmother. We have pictures from that day. Luci is smiling, but her grandmother is clearly numb with grief.

Though it's a different kind of grief, I understand that numbness right now. I have lost my Mommy. Now Luci has lost two grandmothers. And once again, I am a jumbled mess of fear, sadness, confusion, belief and elation as I think about a life without Gunga, but joyfully celebrate our life with Lulu...

Her Children Rise Up and Call Her Blessed

Blogging has been the last thing on my mind. That probably goes without saying if you read my last post that cut off in mid sentence. I would go back and edit it, except that it sums up the overall sense of "lostness" since my Mommy died. Even writing that last phrase "since my Mommy died", it's hard to believe that it's real. But God has been very real in the midst of it all. I would love to share the stories of how He has made His presence known in such sweet ways. But I just don't have the energy right now.

What I can do is to include the transcript from her Memorial Service of what Bill shared on behalf of the family. We wanted the opportunity to "rise up and call her blessed", but we knew that would end up being a sobbing, ugly mess. So we gave Bill our thoughts and memories (along with the other sons in law and grandchildren) and he compiled them into a beautiful "capturing" of our Mommy. A friend deemed it Mission:Impossible to try to capture my larger than life mother in 10-15 minutes. But Bill, by God's grace did a beautiful job...

I have a number of titles in my life: I’m a man, a husband, and a dad. I also have a title related to my job. But this morning I come to you as one of only four men in the world who has the privileged title of son-in-law to Danny Colladay. Over the last several days Danny’s daughters, sons-in-law, and grandchildren have shared remembrances of their mommy, their mother-in-law, and their grandmother. I’d like to take a few moments to relate some of them to you, knowing that in many cases our remembrances are yours, Danny’s beloved friends.

A lesser known fact about Danny is that her given name is Georgianne. Georgianne Lou Dutton was named after her maternal grandparents, George and Lutie Riley. When she was little, she couldn’t pronounce her name properly, so she called herself "Do Danny Du Dutt." Ever since she has been known affectionately as "Danny." Now if that isn’t enough of a departure from her given name, “Gunga” takes the cake. “Gunga” was the first word her first grandchild used to refer to her, and since then it’s been the preferred name for Danny in her immediate family.

Our family remembrance begins and ends with Danny’s faith in Jesus Christ. Her parents raised her with that faith as she grew up in Dodge City, Kansas, and that faith had a powerful impact when a young man named Marty Colladay began to take an interest in her. Marty asked her on a date that happened to conflict with a church service, so Danny politely declined. Undeterred, Marty suggested they go to the church service together, to which Danny agreed. “What church do you attend?” Marty asked.

Danny told him the name of her church. “Oh, that’s my church!” Marty exclaimed. “

Well that’s funny,” Danny replied, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you there.”

That changed. And as Marty proposed marriage to Danny, he was committed to building a family on the foundation of Christ. Danny responded to Marty with complete devotion, and that’s one of the things her girls love most about her. She loved Marty deeply, supported him completely, and followed him wherever he led until the very end. Theirs was the epitome of a loving and faithful marriage.

Since Danny married a young officer in the Air Force, it’s no surprise that one her favorite sayings was, “We’re off on another one of life’s great adventures.” Not only was this a family motto, but her girls never once heard their mother complain about packing up her household and children, yet again, to move far, far away…yet again!

Wherever Danny went, she was the kind of person who lit up a room. Her presence was enough to fill a room with fun, joy, and love. She brought out the best in everyone she met. Her faith, laugh, and love were contagious. So was her compassion. In the 1967 edition of the Colladay family Christmas letter she writes, “The greatest joy outside of my family has been the opportunity of making tins of fudge each week and going with our wonderful Minister to take it to the Paraplegic and Quadriplegic Ward at Walter Reed (Hospital).”

The joyful compassion she expressed in 1967 foreshadowed the compassion she expressed years later through her leadership in Quality Living Incorporated, a facility that serves people with brain injuries and physical disabilities. Danny loved the people and the mission of QLI. She also loved her church, Avery Presbyterian. She loved Fox News. She loved her dogs, Dickens and Fritzie.

And people loved and adored Danny. People from all walks of life: whether generals, hair dressers, diplomats, cleaning ladies, or CEOs. Pretty much everyone who met her wanted to be related to her. But even if you weren’t, it was OK; she would make you feel like you were. She even shared her love with telemarketers, engaging in warm conversation that would even include her saying things like, “I just have to ask: are you a Republican?”

Danny was a staunch Republican to be sure. But there was a great breadth to her personality and love. She could be serious without taking herself too seriously. She was classy, but also down to earth. She was very sympathetic, but also very strong. She could be childlike and silly one moment, and be sitting on a board of directors the next. She loved fun and consistently shared that fun with others, and yet she was also an extremely hard worker and self-sacrificial mother and friend. She knew how to make people feel comfortable and welcome and at home, but she never inserted herself into other people's lives. She was concerned and involved and invested, but she rested in the peace of God and left the results in life ultimately in God's hands.

Her four daughters appreciate that she delighted in them. They remember a mommy who was excited for snow days and summer vacation so that she could have her girls at home. They remember feeling like they were a source of joy to her, not of impatient frustration. Danny’s girls love that their mommy prayed for them. They love that she taught them to love each other, their mommy and daddy, and the Lord. They love that she let them be who they were and find their own way. They love that she lived a life like Christ and gave them an example to pass on. They love that they never doubted her love for them, no matter how difficult they might have been. They love her purity of heart. Even on a certain occasion when she got cut off in traffic, all they got from her was, “Up yours you…bad man!”

Gunga’s 14 grandchildren will miss many things about her: her competitiveness in card games and Candy Land, going out to eat when the family was together (especially at Jade Palace), talking with her and sleeping with her in her bed, paying for the girls’ cute haircuts, letting them do whatever they wanted at her house (as long as they kept it clean), the sweet smile that was always on her face, her beautiful singing voice, and spending time at the family lake cabin together.

They’ll always be grateful for a Gunga whose faith has affected their own relationship with Christ, a faith in Christ that guided everything she did and was at the center of her life. Whether family member or friend, we’ll all miss Gunga’s boundless optimism. There was never a question of whether the glass was half-empty or half-full. It was full to overflowing. She didn’t take lemons and make lemonade. She took lemons and made a lemon frappe! After having bunion surgery, she described it with words like “wonderful” and “delightful.” After having a port inserted into her body and receiving an MRI in preparation for cancer treatment, she described the day as, “all things considered, a pleasant experience.”

We’ll all miss the perspective Gunga brought to our lives. She was fond of saying, “In the grand scheme of things, this is no biggie.” She was also fond of saying, “I fine,” a statement borrowed from family friend Chad Matthews that expressed her trust in God and contentedness in spite of her physical limitations. But we’ll also miss Danny’s more light-hearted sayings like, “I made my favorite thing for dinner: reservations,” and “Behind every successful man is a woman who made it necessary.”

Our remembrance of Gunga begins and ends with her faith in Jesus Christ. A few years ago, one of her grandsons graduated from high school and sang a duet with Gunga at his graduation party. They sang “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” One line in that hymn speaks of “thine own presence to cheer and to guide.” He writes, “I think this line epitomizes the life of my grandmother. Everything about her—her servant’s heart, her joyful attitude, her nurturing relationships—pointed those who knew her back to the Lord, whose presence cheered and guided her throughout her life. Now, he has guided her to himself, and the cheerfulness that defined her earthly life is nothing compared to the pure ecstasy she is experiencing this very moment.”

Another grandchild wrote a letter to Gunga shortly before her death, saying, “You have touched many people and their hearts.” All of us—whether daughter, grandchild, son-in-law, or dear family friend—thank God for working through Gunga to touch our hearts in a way that has pointed us back to Him.

There's so much more that I could communicate about the past two weeks, but it's hard to know how much to write of such a deeply personal experience in a public setting. And given the combination of exhaustion, numbness and grief, this seemed like the easiest place to start. I'm taking it one day at a time as we adjust to our new normal without Gunga in our lives. But despite the pain, I can't help but smile when I think of her. If you knew her or have read my posts about her in the past or only the above remembrance, I think you can understand why. She was an extraordinary woman and I have nothing but a heart of gratitude that I got to belong to her.
I'll love you forever. My Mommy. My friend. My hero.

Saying Goodbye

Tomorrow we will bury my Mommy. How is it that even possible. A week ago

The post I find impossible to write

I love words. Words are my thing. But tonight the words are hard to find. Probably because I am struggling to wrap my mind around the drastic turn of events in my life in the past 5 days...

My Mommy died this morning. My heart is broken. But my hope is real.
And the ransomed of the LORD will return, And come with joyful shouting to Zion, With everlasting joy upon their heads. They will find gladness and joy, And sorrow and sighing will flee away.

Isaiah 35:10

So wrong yet so right

I spent the weekend walking down memory lane. I traveled back to Muncie, Indiana for a reunion with my old playgroup friends...
I love these girls. Every single one of them...


The purpose of this reunion was more than just catching up. It was to honor our friend Randi, who died unexpectedly on April 1st.

The trip was everything that I hoped it would be. We laughed...
We cried...

(Obviously, it was ugly crying)

We were silly and didn't act our age......
Though there were times that we were reminded of true our age, like when I got stuck in this position with a cramp...
Thanks Tam, for capturing the moment on film...

We were well-fed...
My new dearest love is on the bottom of that pile-o-meat, bacon-wrapped hot dogs on the grill. (I will eat them on a train. I will eat them in the rain. I will eat them in a boat. I will eat them with a goat...) And a close second, smores made with a resee's peanut butter cup and cinnamon graham crackers...
My roomies surprised me with an early 40th birthday party in the hotel room...
But the pinnacle of the trip was a remembrance time for Randi that was beyond beautiful. Which was fitting since that is exactly what Randi was. We shared verses, memories, poems, and what Randi meant to each of us. And then we each chose a word that we thought represented her and wrote it on a little card. We each chose different words to try to capture this lovely person. I chose PURE. Then we attached them to balloons and let them go in her old back yard. They were headed straight for trees and power lines, but they somehow dodged them both and floated away...

I will never forget that moment.

These women are precious to me. It was interesting to see how each of us had changed and the journeys we have walked in the 7 years since we had all been together, and yet how we were still the same.

It was so right to be reunited again, yet so wrong that Randi wasn't with us. It was fitting that Randi was the one who brought us together again, even if she couldn't be a part of the fun. She was just like that. Always seeking the good of others. She exemplified selfless love.

We had a meaningful and fun time together. But we missed you, Randi...
We always will.