The short answer for my absence is that I have been away because of the funeral of a family member.
But the reality is that last week my family and I crashed into a terrible world of watching someone very dear to us struggle in a hospital bed and then pass away leaving us all wondering how this happened.
I am finding it hard, myself, to grasp what has happened in the last few weeks. Without betraying the intimacies of my family I can tell you that one of the loneliest and most difficult places I have ever been is the intensive care unit in the middle of the night. Hearing the beeping, watching the numbers go up and down and up and down, and feeling the echoes of the person beneath the fog of illness; I sat and I stood and I cried and I paced and I worried and I wondered. And I prayed. I prayed for healing and strength and wisdom and, eventually, for peace.
My family is starting to heal. We are grieving, but we are celebrating the life of the woman who made my husband's birthday cake every year. We are remembering good, strong hugs and playful pinches that made you laugh even though they may have left a bruise. We are holding close to our hearts the memories of card games and sledding and playing in the leaves. We are admiring the strength of a wife, mother, grandmother and great grandmother. And we are walking on, hugging one another and holding each other up.
