Monday Morning Musing: Cloudy With a Chance of Tears

The Pacific Northwest is having a heat wave just now….we reached 90 degrees yesterday and the same is forecast for today and tomorrow.  Then we get to return to our blessed temps in the 70’s which is far more tolerable. 

We all check the weather app on our phones and plan to participate in outdoor activities in the cool of the morning.   In 2019, census data showed that only 44% of Seattleites had air conditioning in their homes.  By 2023 that number had increased to 64%.  (Reporting by KIRO-News, easily searchable online. No footnotes today because this isn’t an academic or a theological paper).  Climate change means that we experience far more days of hot weather in the summer than we did when I arrived in 2007.  I’m not a fan. 

The weather arrives like it arrives….sometimes it’s pleasant and cool with low humidity and sometimes it’s blazing hot and sometimes it’s both in the same week.  Rain is scarce in the summer. 

In case you were wondering, though, this isn’t a weather report.  Well, maybe it’s an emotional weather report.  Because what’s happening now in the Land-of-my-Grief is that, much like the unpredictable and ever changing weather, I’m finding myself experiencing some unpredictable and ever changing emotional responses to this still unfathomable loss.

Just the other morning, on my way into work I stopped at the local grocer to pick up my favorite sandwich from their deli for my lunch.  They always ask if I want a pickle and when I offer an enthusiastic yes, I usually get two.  And the store itself is filled with lots of local goodies as well as with a local cooking school and lovely employees.  As I left with my brown bag lunch I realized that I was….happy.   Not necessarily because of the pickle or the sandwich and not because anything had happened or was about to happen.  And not because any of this sorrow was better.  I just felt, somehow,…lighter.  And then, for a moment, I almost felt guilty about that, but I let that go and just let that feeling of warmth and well being fill me for that moment in time.

My internal forecast felt 75 with bright sunshine.

Then there was yesterday after church.  A question I’m asked on Sundays very regularly is “how are you” and I can tell by the looks on their faces that these dear people of God really want to know.  And the truth is that we don’t have the time in the handshake line and I don’t have the energy in the handshake line to tell them that it’s still so damn hard.  It’s hard not to know that Bruce isn’t gathering up my water bottle and leader’s book for me.  It’s hard not to see him pop up in worship taking the most gorgeous photo of some moment of grace.  It’s hard not to peel off in the recessional to join him in his pew for the last verse of the final hymn.  So usually I just say “I’m okay right now.”  Or something like that.  I want them to also know that there’s room for all of our complicated emotions in worship.  But yesterday two dear people took an extra moment.  One of them, overhearing the ‘how are you’ question and my fumbling attempt at an answer, lightly touched my shoulder and said “It’s so hard.  That’s okay.  I remember.”  And I recalled that he’d lost his soul mate, his wife, to cancer.  And another woman, who lost her dear son to cancer, took care to inquire after my practical circumstances.  Such an insightful and thoughtful query. 

My internal forecast felt partly cloudy with sun breaks.

But oh, last night, and many other times like it.  I was in the kitchen, baking and put on a playlist to have some music and began to weep.  The song that came on was from the movie A Man Called Ove.  Bruce and I went to see it at our neighborhood theatre in Columbus, and walking home we talked about how lost we would be without one another.  I remember that night so well.  We loved living in the Bexley neighborhood because we could walk to everything we needed and we did.  And we held hands, because we always did.  Even at the end.  And we knew, deeply, that our love for each other was so big that the space it would leave would be filled with tears.  In some ways, I’m glad that he didn’t have to walk this journey.  I would never want him to feel this sort of wild sorrow.  

Standing in my kitchen, with oven mitts on my hands and another failed attempt at the perfect white cake on the counter, my weather forecast was dark and rainy. 

Everyone who writes about walking through grief writes of this phenomena: grief bursts.  Like the worst cloud bursts ever, they come upon you when you least expect it and wash over you and leave you with flour on your apron and tears on your face. 

My failed cake attempt was to be for a staff birthday celebration today and just before I went to bed last night another staff member texted me.  She, a seasoned baker, would be baking in the morning, and could she bring treats to staff meeting?  Yes, please.  And how could she have known?

Unlike the weather, our internal forecasts can be impacted by those around us – who ask really good questions or put a hand on our shoulders in understanding.  Those who bake when our cakes flop and those who give us an extra pickle in our lunch bag.  It doesn’t change the sadness, but it makes it easier to walk in the unpredictability and the great swings of the weather. 

Two things in closing:  Does anyone have the secret to the perfect homemade white layer cake and would you be willing to teach me?  Bruce and I used to stop for a slice of the most heavenly cake at Thistle Farms Café every time we were in Nashville.  I’ve yet to succeed in recreating it.

And finally, here are the words to Til You’re Home. (Rita Wilson and Sebastian Yatra; David Hodges, composer) It’s a lovely, haunting piece and describes so well this season:

Sun through the shadows

Light through the door

Voice like an echoI can't hear anymore

So I follow your steps

While the love that you left is burned in my heart

With dreams in my mind

Of the next time that I have you in my arms

'Cause I will tell you the whole truth

That there's no color in the world without you

And I finally see how your love is the best of me

Yeah, there's so much I want you to know

Guess I'll wait 'til you're home

The way that you smile

When you think you're alone

The best gift of this lifeIs to see you up close

Now and again, in the palm of my hand

I feel your touch

So I write it all down in these moments I've found

'Til I see you, my love

And I will tell you the whole truth

That there's no color in the world without you

And I finally see how your love is the best of me

Yeah, there's so much I want you to know

Yeah, there's so much I want you to know

Guess I'll wait 'til you're home