Chiaroscuro

Isaiah 45:7a - I create the light and make the darkness 

(I'm beginning to think that I should warn new friends that there's a risk in teaching me something or sharing something profound:  it might show up in my blog.  So, you know who you are-- keep being brilliant in my presence, ok?  )

"Chiaroscuro - Contrasting effects of light and shade in a work of art. Leonardo da Vinci brought the technique to its full potential, but it is usually associated with such 17th-century artists as Caravaggio and Rembrandt, who used it to outstanding effect."  

I've been thinking about the chiaroscuro nature of my days lately.  As Christmas approached and the lights went up in the neighborhoods, in the shopping malls, in my friends' photos on social media, they looked more beautiful this year than I can remember them being for several years. It's not that the lights actually were brighter, but it seems that light, when contrasted with the darkness I've lived in recent years,  is somehow more beautiful and more significant.  Just as Caravaggio's smiling young lady in blue, or DaVinci's angel would be less striking without the darkness in the paintings, it seems that the darkness that accumulates as I age only serves to make the bright moments in life that much more beautiful.

These days, I'm watching my two older kids grow through those teeth-clenching teenage years, and sometimes the shadows feel suffocating.  But then I catch a glimpse of that fusion of the sweet children that they once were and the admirable adults that they're growing into. In that moment, that vision is all the more beautiful because of the deep shading of these seasons full of ill-tempered, refrigerator-emptying, sibling-bashing, kitchen-trashing aliens in my home.

My trip through the middle-aged adult dating scene this past year has had its burnt siena shadings of frustration and hurt feelings, but where I stand now, a year later--still single, still wondering how life will turn out--feels bright with possibility.  I've met some wonderful men, added some of them to my life as friends, and I've begun to wake from my Rip Van Winkle social life to discover a whole world of people, music, activities, restaurants and movies that I'd somehow missed in my years as Andre's wife.  My life is rich now because I'm aware of how emotionally impoverished it was before.  I'm beginning to see that the shadow of loneliness is not one I have to run from. I can simply keep moving in the direction of living life as fully as I can, and enjoying the light of companionship when it appears. When it does, I'm finding that it's that much more soul-feeding because I know how precious it is.

The quote from Isaiah is a gift from a new friend in my life, a friend who has seen more than his share of darkness in recent years.  This scripture seemed to be telling him that both the light and the darkness are part of God's plan.  Carrying that reminder in his heart, he has begun to see more and more light. His sharing of that fragment of scripture with me was another way of multiplying that light and I'm grateful

Tonight, over a friendly home-cooked meal, I was catching up with a creative/inventor friend of mine, who showed me a piece of electronic art he's been designing/ playing with.  He calls it a "Starling", and it contains some beautifully color-changing lights and one dark spot. It turns out that the dark spot is simply where the battery is, but in discussing his creation, it seemed to me that the dark spot in his twinkling creation is perhaps another use of chiaroscuro: what is bright and lovely is made more so by the presence of some shadow.

As we move through this season just past the Winter Solstice, the days are getting brighter and longer; the darkest day of the year is past, and from here, the light grows until we reach the Autumnal Equinox, when the darkness will begin to move in again. Somehow, acknowledging the presence of both the light and the dark, the seasons of shading and the highlighting, makes the light that I see in this new year ahead seem brighter and more beautiful. In 2014, I wish you light, and the ability to see that the shadows don't steal the light--they enhance it.

"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."  John 1:4-6

Location, location, location

Recently, I was working on finding some real estate, but not the usual kind.  It's just the latest turn in the journey toward the New Normal ( sometimes I worry that I'll end up in the old "Normal", and I think that's in Oklahoma... How confusing would that be? ... sorry, blonde font on...).

It's June 14th, and we're just under a month away from the 1-year-anniversary of Andre's death, and the kids and I are still digging out around here. Here are a few updates since the previous blog posting:

The "toy car" (a 1981 Porsche 928 that needed constant tinkering) has been sold and moved out of the garage, along with the majority of the spare parts that Andre had stockpiled.  Some techy kid in Oregon now gets to figure out "what's that new noise?"  and I have space in the garage for my minivan.

I'm deep into my master's degree program studies (and loving it, even though I'm struggling to keep up with the paper-writing load. But it's writing about psychology, so, really, how hard can that be for an enthusiastic armchair shrink and would-be journalist anyway? ).

The kids have finished school for the summer.

There's a delightful, thoughtful, funny,smart, music-loving man who seems to like hanging out with me these days and we see each other just about every weekend, and talk on the phone nearly every day.

On the day after tomorrow, I'll do my big run in the San Francisco Half Marathon (if you haven't yet donated to the American Brain Tumor Association, the organization whose work I'm supporting with my attempt at a run, here's the link:  http://hope.abta.org/site/TR/TeamBreakthrough/TeamBreakSF?px=2163952&pg=personal&fr_id=2570)

In early May, I had the unexpected... well, I won't call it "pleasure"... of emergency gallbladder removal, and a six week NO-training recovery period, which made all of the above a little bit more complicated than I might have liked, but thanks to the generous efforts of friends and neighbors, my kids survived my sudden hospitalization unscathed and I'm on the mend now.  I'm seriously anxious about being the very last straggler across the finish line in Sunday's race, but surely that is pretty much a first-world problem.

And so, with all that running in the background, my latest project is getting my head and heart around the upcoming 1-year mark, figuring out how the kids and I will get ourselves through that tough anniversary, and working on what to do with Andre's cremated remains.  In the immediate aftermath of his death, I knew I'd be dealing with this question, but at the time, it felt like too much to handle, and that is, I guess, the advantage of cremation: there's no rush on dealing with the remains.  So, the large, heavy (seriously, who knew it would be that heavy?) wooden box, the size of a shoebox, with a brass plate engraved with the name, Andre Hedrick has been sitting inside a suitcase inside the back of my closet since last August, when the funeral home turned over his ashes to me.



...except that I'm feeling like it's TIME.  And soon.  So, I made a call to my pastor, and got the name of a local cemetery that has niches for ashes... and got, after an ugly bit of refusing to play "what do you want to spend?", a "bottom-line" price quote of $4,000 !!!   I try very hard these days not to be rude to people, but I was so shocked that my usually empathetic, polite-to-others outlook dropped right to the floor along with my jaw and I said, "that's freakin' ridiculous!"  The poor salesperson then scrambled around to give me a quote for " a place to scatter the ashes" for roughly half that price.  (Um... if I wanted to just scatter them, I could do that for free, lady.)

She seemed puzzled when I told her that was equally ridiculous.

I unplugged my cell phone earpiece, pulled out of the parking lot, and began driving my errands, complaining in my head to God, the universe and anyone else who would listen about what a horrible racket the funeral industry is, preying on people in a vulnerable state.  But it wasn't until I got myself out of my pity party mode and began to spend some time with my heart in Andre's better spaces, as much as I can access them, that I began to get an inkling of what to do.

As I rounded a corner and made the turn into the hardware store, the answer came to me.   Andre talked often about how much he hated the Bay Area, and longed to move someplace out in the country and telecommute. Seemingly, out of the blue, I remembered a cowboy town, about two hours away, on Highway 120 in the Central Valley, a place where the Hedrick family always stopped on the way home from camp in the Sierra, to shop for Andre's favorite Wrangler jeans (by the numbers, MWZ13, 38x30 ) at Tractor Supply Company.  It always felt like Andre's demons didn't reach him there, for that short space of time in a place that felt like a slice of Tennessee dropped into California.


With a call to the cemetery in that little cowboy town, I got a quote for a very affordable price, for a burial spot, with a headstone.  The dear lady on the phone said, "You just give me 48 hours notice before you come, and I can be sure that you also have some chairs and a shade canopy for your burial, hon."   I cain't help it (yes, that's "cain't", in that soft Southern/rural twang that always makes my shoulders drop), I just instinctively like people who call me 'hon'.  A second call to my pastor got her enthusiastic response to the idea, along with her willingness to drive all that way and pretty much eat up her whole day, along with some logistical brainstorming on picking the exact date and time for the burial.  She even helped me come up with a plan to take the children camping near Yosemite, so as to be "outta Dodge" on the anniversary itself.  (Oh, and houseburglars, I just got the alarm re-connected, the video system working again, and the neighbors will be on-alert, so don't try anything stupid.)

With a change of location:  from "where it's convenient" to "where it's right" and from self-pity to a last bit of tender remembering the man that Andre used to be, the marking of this horrible anniversary is feeling manageable.  I know it won't be easy.  Nothing so far has been easy, really.  But somehow, I think we'll get through it with a minimum of horror and maybe some new memories of our first visit to Yosemite to soften the harder memories of mid-July 2012.

Last year, in the days immediately following Andre's death, a very dear friend made me a "mourning music" CD that contained this piece, among many others that spoke comfort to me.  As we come up on the anniversary, the lyrics of this one are speaking to me again:  (If you click the lyrics, you'll go to a YouTube video where you can hear the piece.)

"For He shall give his angels charge over thee, and their hands shall hold and guide thee.  They shall uphold thee in all the ways thou goest. They shall protect thee. "

Tonight, I'm very aware of all those angelic hands that have brought me and the kids this far.  And I'm so grateful.

Getting up after the fall

In my previous post, I shared a picture of my 22-year-old self with a boyfriend, at "The Great Waltz" in Austin, TX in the Spring of 1987.  And lately, I've been thinking about that dance again, and something that happened that night.

Here's the photo, in case you don't want to back-track.  This was taken at the beginning of the evening, before The Fall. That evening was full of the dizziness of a new romance and that might be why, during a particularly giddy waltz, Scott's foot caught in the hem of my dress, and I felt my feet go out from under me.  The next thing I knew, I was on my back on the floor, with Scott on top of me, utterly mortified.  Getting up, I felt an odd breeze at my back that hadn't been there before.  But after Scott and I had apologized to each other, and assured the other couples watching that we were ok, we continued dancing.  Nothing was going to stop us from dancing every dance together, except for the one or two dances on my card with someone else's signature on them.  (Yes, this was an "authentic" evening--dance cards and all.)  But there was this matter of the "breeze" at my back.

Yup, my dress had ripped, at the zipper seam down the middle of my back.  There was no way to pin it back together that night.

I was devastated that my regal gown was ripped and ruined, but I was even more devastated at the thought of missing the rest of the dances that evening.  I don't quite remember how it happened, but I do know that I ended up with someone's lacy shawl draped across my back and over my shoulders, and we danced until the ball was over.  A fairly happy ending to that fairy tale of an evening.

**************

But lately, I've been working on getting back up after another fall, this one much more serious, and repairing the gaping rip in my life.

Many of you, my "in real life" friends, know that this summer, on July 13, my husband, Andre, suddenly and unexpectedly took his own life.  He had struggled most of his life, and certainly all of our marriage, with mental illness.  He had refused to seek help, and no matter how hard we worked on perfecting our steps together, his demons won.

Our dance together has ended, but I am trusting that somehow, the music will go on.  I even have a hope for much farther down the dance-card, that I will dance again.

But for now, as the kids and I work on clearing the emotional and financial chaos left by Andre's death, I am reflecting on all the people who stepped up to pick me up from the floor and offer me something to help cover the rip.

There were friends who came right away and helped me deal with the first responders, wash the blood off my hands and feet, make a plan for telling my kids.  Friends who came and kept vigil in my house that night, comforting my nervous dog and starting the process of notifying others who could help.  Someone took me and my kids to her house that night, put us in clean, cozy beds, prayed the rosary aloud to help me sleep, and fed my kids Pop-tarts and silly breakfast cereal in the morning.

My church's youth staff arrived within an hour to be with my kids that night and stayed well into the wee hours of the morning, and then returned by mid-day the next day to  take them out for frisbee-throwing, walks, and slurpees, and to let them cry as needed.  One brave staffer even braved the jungle of my son's room to help dig out some items that needed to disappear for a while.

Friends arrived to do my dishes, wash the laundry, put away Andre's things, and fill the fridge with groceries.  One friend set up a website to schedule meals brought in, while another friend set up another website to notify our larger community and collect memorial donations. A team of fearless women (with strong backs and wonderful humor) helped me reclaim the master bedroom by moving all the furniture, re-arranging the pictures on the walls, sprinkling holy water and prayers, with a generous dose of sitting and listening to me cry.

And that was just in the first two days !

After that, people (well, they might be people, but I'm pretty sure they are angels):

• made funeral arrangements, notified people near and far, and protected me from the kinds of people who might not understand my boundaries.
• got in touch with my husband's employer, helped me fill out forms, and helped me figure out the immediate financial picture.
• cried with me, prayed with me, made sure I ate occasionally and stayed in my house at night so that I would not be alone if I woke in the night with a need to talk.
• took my kids to Six Flags, to the movies, to Waterworld, and to the mall for appropriate funeral clothes.

Over the next two weeks, there were dear generous ones who prayed outside my house at night, who brought meals, flowers, and fresh fruit, 

and dear practical ones who froze the un-eaten fruit, and the un-touched meals, who fielded questions from neighbors, watered my roses, and cut my lawn.  

Some of my oldest and dearest friends came from across the country to clean-out my husband's closet, to glue me back together each time I fell apart, and to offer their glorious musical gifts at my husband's memorial service.   My local friends drew my long-distance friends into the embrace of our community and made me feel like I was wrapped in a quilt of love that stretches from coast to coast.  

Recovering after this fall has required something larger and more substantial than a lacy shawl.  That "quilt" of love and support from friends far and near seems to be keeping the worst of the cold breeze out for now.  

I am so grateful to all my angels who seem intent on making sure that the music will go on, and for all their help as I learn totally new steps. I've always loved the verse in the Old Testament book of Jeremiah: "For I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord, "plans to prosper and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."   My angels seem determined to hold God to that promise.