Life Happens…

Ever since she can remember, puzzle building has been a family activity though not all members enthusiastically participate, and some not at all. The border incorporates an essential part of the whole, therefore the first stage. Carefully machined cut pieces provide placement hints through shape, colour, and design. Building a beautiful picture takes time and patience, with an eye to detail and lots of light. Understanding the objective and overall picture provide additional guidance. One missing piece frustrates the process for completion. Unintentional or unexpected disassembly after such committed efforts elicits grief. Life happens. . . so do missing pieces.

Headache, nausea, and dreading performing for children and caregivers during a half-hour of stories, music, and rhymes, she reaches for the phone. She notifies her boss of the continual pounding at her temples, which delays her attendance at work. Thankful for co-workers that support each other, pitching in when needed, she curls under soft cotton sheets into in her comforting ball position, knees tucked tight against his pillow pressed to her stomach, back curved unable to garner the strength or will to move. She hugs herself, arms wrapped around her knees, and feels the stinging salt escape bloodshot eyes. Puzzling at this sudden emotional outburst, she searches for understanding. Why today? Tightening her grip on herself while sniffles and tears obscure her concentration, she remembers as her migraine subsides. How could she forget that awful day was exactly three months ago today? Guilt settles. Grabbing tissues to wipe her eyes and blow her nose, she determines to summon the energy necessary to throw off the covers, slip her feet out of bed and go to the sink for a douse of cold water before changing out of pyjamas. Work awaits.

Days pass slowly. Her February cruising highlight brightens, but overwhelming sadness lurks in night’s darkness and hours of alone time. It tries to rise with the sun. The unexpected dismantling of her puzzle brings inconsolable grief. How does a memory fit in the picture? She forces herself to recollect with smiles, look at pictures of him, and push away the guilt of sometimes feeling happy without him holding her close, convincing herself that it will be okay, but she is not always successful. First removed was her best friend from high school and into adulthood. Next, taken to another sphere of existence, a granddaughter. His piece, the biggest most significant one bordering all else in her life, and firmly set in a cherished spot, is gone. Though her puzzle changes with visibly empty places, missing pieces, she recalls those whose influences shape her still. Missing from view and touch, but not heart and mind, life’s happenings call for choices, gratitude, and remembrance. Can she?

She resents the sun and moon with their cyclical rising and setting, providing even slivers of light through darkest starless nights and black cloud-filled skies. Turning her mind to those she loves restores, in small measure, her sense of belonging propelling her into robotic action. Life happens, breathing continues, and regardless of her wishes that things slow down in humble acknowledgment of her distress, all around her people live and love, including her aging parents. Needing her presence two hours away from home, she welcomes the opportunity to revert to childhood moments of innocence when the world seems whole, despite evidence to the contrary. Anxiety over her mother’s mental and physical health stab her heart with the force of a sword plunged deep into its tender tissue. At the same time, her father’s decision-making skills alert her something is amiss, but what requires further investigation.

Between her mother falling and requiring hospitalization for several days and her father buying and selling three brand new vehicles in the previous nine months, she springs into action by making phone calls before leaving home. Having planned arrangements to meet one sister, set up a meeting at the car dealership, visit the hospital, and a doctor’s appointment for dad, she prepares her mind for a busy day. So much for her childhood innocence returning. Her deflated spirit hides its woe when she tries to explain her worries about his car-buying adventures in less than a year. After questioning the salesman and lodging a complaint, the sisters take him to the hospital and the doctor’s office. Speaking with the physician, the decision to suspend his license meets with a lack of understanding then denial of any problems with his memory and safety behind the wheel. “It is so sad to see dad almost like a child as we talk about our concerns for him, especially his memory,” she records upon returning home. Part of his mind is losing a connecting link.

Home again, flooding with memories, worries, and flickering despondency that time does not allow her to wallow in, she readies herself to attend a Library Worker’s and Municipal Employees Committee Conference five hours southeast. A sense of normalcy helps her focus on tasks at hand and her responsibilities in organizing the conference.

The second to final day at the conference goes well until 10:30 p.m. when her phone rings with unsettling news from her brother, who is visiting from South Carolina. He informs her that six police cars and two ambulances responding to 911 calls intervened in a life-threatening situation, forcefully removing their mother from the premises, and taking her back to the hospital for admittance. They witness the frenzied behaviour of mom screaming, swearing, spitting, and throwing things at family members while in a state of delirium. Mom, armed with a butcher knife and yelling at her husband, “I am going to kill you,” stuns. Exhibiting unimaginable strength for an elderly woman weighing eighty-four pounds, she flails the knife-wielding arm menacingly at the family as the officers and paramedics move quickly to subdue and restrain her. Sundowning, a neurological phenomenon associated with increased confusion and restlessness, the doctor informs the family, a form of dementia occurring during the middle stages of Alzheimer’s is voraciously attacking their mother’s brain.

After hanging up the phone, shocking unbelief gives way to heartbreaking dismay at the news. Unable to sleep and craving comfort, she texts a friend, who quickly responds with sympathetic ears and almost an hour of his time bridging the span of space separating them, giving her courage. Disassembling any more pieces in the framework of her puzzle, her life of inter-connective relationships so quickly causes weariness for her mourning heart, still reeling from the loss of her husband less than five months ago. Leaving the conference with a new heaviness burdening her soul, she contemplates life and her family while driving home. Sixteen days pass with hospital visits and trying to explain to her father what is happening to the woman he loves. Reality seeping like poison through her veins returns its destructive potion to her heart.

Monday, April 18, 2017 — “It is 5 a.m., my brother just called to tell me that my mother passed away.”
Plans made yesterday to visit her with two of my daughters were adjusted so we could go earlier to assist with arrangements and decisions. Sadness swept over me. Today was the day planned for us to visit, chat, hug mom (and grandma), not see her lifeless body. Disagreements and accusations between my sisters and brother elevated to nastiness. Trying to field calls from my siblings, while remaining even keeled during the incessant bickering, imagining my distraught father’s feelings, trying to relegate my own heart to the background, and the inappropriate display of anger irked me. I was glad two of the girls were great company. Finding myself in the position of mediator, deep sorrow envelops threatening emotional collapse. Closing my eyes, drawing fresh air into my attuned nostrils, holding it for a minute before slowly exhaling to control both mind and tongue slows my pulse.
“I was genuinely concerned about my father. It was so sad to see how much his mind has gone. Once at the funeral home to identify my mother and seeing her in the plain pine box with a white plastic-like sheet covering her, his damp eyes spoke what he could not. He gently leaned in to kiss her lips and face. She had lost weight in the last couple of weeks, now weighing sixty-four pounds, she looked so tiny and frail, but at peace. It had been a long time since last she smiled and spoke. I found out the last words she uttered were when I visited in the hospital a week ago. It was not easy, but it was peaceful. I felt her in the chapel where she lay for us.”

Friday, April 21 — “I woke up feeling like I was going to throw up. It was the grief. Things went well for the funeral, a family only gravesite gathering. She had been cremated and her ashes, except the small boxes we each received with a few remains, were contained in an urn. The hole was dug, and our family stood around the site sharing a few words about the mother in our life who was now missing in person. Then, with the urn in shared hands, my sister from British Columbia and I knelt, bent over, and gingerly placed our mother in her resting place. I stood up to hold my father with tears in our eyes, we hugged.”

Life happens. . . so do missing pieces.

Sunday, April 23 – “In the quiet hours when no one sees me, grief and tears escape. I cannot contain it. How I wish I had someone to hold me! It is 4:45 a.m. and I think. People who see me think I am strong through all this mortal loss, but it comes in waves and very few will ever see the sadness that feels like it will consume me. It will not but it feels that way sometimes. Like waves on the ocean, there are the gentle times when I seem to float across and dive into them for fun, and then there are those waves that crash into me with a powerful force that wants to batter me, pull me under and bang me around until they spit me back up for a breath of air so I can breathe. I have prayed out loud morning and night in deep anguished pleadings since Alan passed away, and now my mother.”

Four months and sixteen days after Alan crosses life’s threshold to the realm of spirits, my mother follows and only seventeen days after the 911 emergency calls for ambulance and police. Another piece of my life and heart taken out of its place unexpectedly. Searching heart and mind’s memories, they live elsewhere, and the Lord lets me know His hand is outstretched still and I can reach to hang on. He supports my climb over the rocks and out of turbulent water while I hold firmly to His hand. My life, my thoughts, my words and actions, my puzzle, with morality’s missing pieces, hurts and brings weeping among the thankful and happy experiences, each in their own time and place.

Life happens…so do choices, what am I to do now, gingerbread, waves, and missing pieces.

Fifteen months later: Standing vigil in another hospital at the bedside of my comatose mother-in-law, I watched her fade away. Distraught, I kissed her face, held her hand, brushed her hair back, talked and sang to her. In August 2018, sixteen months after my mother passed, my ‘mother’ and friend entered the eternities to be with her husband, son, and great-granddaughter.

Missing pieces, like a haunting ghost troubles our hearts and minds. How do you reconcile your grief and joys when your puzzle pieces are disassembled and missing from your physical sight and touch?

Puzzle –Be Not Afraid Artist Greg Olsen. https://www.gregolsen.com/