Monday Morning Musing: Maps & the Places We Inhabit

There is a store near Pike Place Market called Metzker’s Maps.  I’ve always loved this shop where everything they sell is designed to show you something about a place and how you can get there.  In 2022, I bought a spiral bound atlas of the United States there, anticipating that the following year we would be driving on a grand adventure across the country as we returned to our home in the Pacific Northwest.  Which we did, atlas in hand and navigation map on board, too.

And here I am, two days after Bruce’s Memorial Service wishing that I had a map that would tell me something of this new land I am inhabiting.  If the path we walked during his very brief illness was the Alatucky Mountain Range (stupid, terrible, Alatucky Mountain Range), where, exactly am I now? 

While we were in Seattle last week in preparation and for the service, everyplace reminded us of our life with Bruce in it.  We passed places we’d lived and restaurants and coffee shops and the bank where we both took out and paid off our mortgage.  We passed Taylor’s high school where her Pops would drop her off or pick her up.  We ate at our favorite places, too….on the evening after the service eating just across the room from where Bruce and I enjoyed a wonderful dinner in December. 

Where am I, now? 

Even if I’m unsure about the answer to that question, I do know this:  in this sea of grief, I am supported by the wave of love present with us on Saturday.  It wasn’t just a wave, it was a tsunami.  Hundreds of people from so many parts of Bruce’s life (and mine) came to sing and pray and hug and cry and eat and tell stories.  So many stories. 

I am so grateful for every single person.

And there are some I must single out.

My brilliant, faithful friends, Julie, Katy, and Deanna led us in the service from the unique perspective of their love for Bruce, their love and long friendship for and with me, and their great capacity to speak words of hope and resurrection into grief and sorrow.  I will always carry your words with me (and btw, would like a copy).

Robby, my middle “kid” whose instinct is to always give 100% to make things better,  made the day infinitely better with his stories of how Bruce breathed life into our family.  That sort of life never dies.  Ever. Wow.

 Jeremy, Bruce’s nephew…Bruce liked to think that he brought a little PNW “cool” into the lives of his three nephews and it seems, as Jeremy told the stories, that he did just that.  He loved you so much and was so proud of each of you.

Dan, musician extraordinaire!  Bruce had exactly ONE specific request for music and that was Clair de Lune and it was divine.  And every hymn and every note was perfect. 

Kelley and Ken….whose rendition of Imagine, one of Bruce’s favorite songs, was, as Taylor put it “better than Sir Paul”.   Bruce was a dreamer, as most artists are, but he’s not the only one.

And the dear people of God at Luther Memorial Lutheran Church.  Thank you for the extraordinary amount of work it took to host the service.  Your hospitality reflected the wide welcome of Jesus. 

To all of our friends and family who traveled from far flung (and closer in) places to be with us.  Thank you.  Thank you for taking the time and effort to support me and to honor Bruce. 

I love you, from someplace definitely not on the map I currently have, but most certainly from the depths of my heart,

Julie

Our destination in our atlas