Dear Tracy Birthday 2024

 Dear Tracy,

 

    This will be the third year in a row that you have missed your birthday dinner. Although you have an irrefutable reason for missing and a much better alternate venue for celebration, it still seems impossible that you will not be with us. And not celebrating at all would make matters worse. Ever since you died we have been making the best of what is left to us, your birthday is one of those things. Yesterday I found all of the cards I got at your baby shower. It helped to know the memories of my baby boy were mine to keep. All of my memories of you are mine to keep. 

    I have felt lately like I'm on the slow upward creep of a roller coaster just before the steep drop. The drop I fear is Neil's upcoming sentencing hearing. What will it be like to look in the eyes of the man who, intentionally or not, killed you? Will the love I felt for him that allowed me to forgive him on Good Friday return? Will I cry? Fall apart? I talked to the only person I know who has been through the criminal aspect of this--Brooke Block. She said it felt surreal, but she did not cry. I can handle that. And there were a lot more supporters there for Jake, the dealer, than for her brother Brian, which was uncomfortable, even a little hostile.

   We still feel the loss of Baldr keenly. A couple nights ago we heard a siren at bedtime and held on tight to each other, both missing the sound of Baldr's howling. Mykah never wants to come in when I am home during the day, though I go to the door and offer. Even when I am outside sitting on the deck, she doesn't come over to see me like Baldr did. She comes in when Reed comes home from work, but that has a lot to do with dinner time. Mykah seems content to be inside in the evening though. And once she laid down next to me on the floor. We've been taking her for more rides and she does get excited about that, spinning her playful circles. If we come home after Saturday breakfast, Reed takes her with him when he goes to Tool Palace.

    Emily is hosting your birthday dinner Friday. I would have been happy to have it here, but wanted to have a fire and our fire pit area only has room for a few chairs. I've invited Amanda but she hasn't said if she will come. We haven't even got together to give Kenzie her birthday gift yet, but we have texted. Ren and Brie have colds so Britten may not be there Friday. Will has to work that night. And you, of course, will not be there. Except in memory, in spirit, and in the thousand ways your life still impacts all of us. Happy birthday, Trace! We miss you.

                                                              Love always,

                                                                        Mom

And I Miss It

     I am not a dog person, not in the way my husband is. If we go somewhere there is a dog, Reed will automatically seek it out and pet it. I am more of a kid person, when we go somewhere there is a young child, I will automatically start trying to make eye contact and talk to him/her. But I do like dogs and cats, which is handy since we have had them for the past 35 years. Our current cat, Finn, doesn't wait for people to seek him out, he jumps in their lap and demands attention. Our remaining dog, Mykah, would rather be outside than with people most of the time. Baldr used to greet us with excited yips when we returned from a day trip, Mykah doesn't even stand up. Between eating more, un-eating more, and shedding, Baldr required a lot more maintenance than Mykah, but he wanted to be with us, and I did not realize until he died how much I need that for my own maintenance.

And I Miss It

 

When our big, Baldr dog was alive

I had to vacuum every other day

just to keep up with the tufts of fur.

The dust cup was always full

and I had to pull his long hair

off the brush roller every time

I vacuumed. Such a nuisance.

Now I vacuum twice a week,

the dust cup is only half full,

there is no longer any need 

to clean off the brushes--

and I miss it. 

I used to worry about 

stepping on our black dog

when I got up at night.

 He spent the first few hours

sleeping under my side of the bed,

as he had as a puppy, but after that, 

he could be anywhere.

 

Now I walk without worry,

there are no 70 pound surprises

hidden in the dark to be stepped on.

No Malamute wedged beneath my bed--

and I miss it.

 

When I laid down on the floor 

to stretch and exercise,

Baldr would lie beside me, 

spooning, like he did with Tracy,

making it all but impossible

for my work out to work out.

It was a problem.

Now if I exercise on the floor,

Baldr's dog buddy Mykah

pays no attention at all.

No mammoth Malamute in my way--

and I miss it.

I miss the guardian 

of my grand babies,

my welcome mutt

waiting at the back door,

my Bible study buddy

napping under my bed,

the solace of stroking him.

 

But, most of all, I miss

the tangible connection

with the son who loved him

and brought him to our home,

 the part of Tracy we could still touch. 

 

And I miss it. 

I miss them both.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

If I Was as Alive as You

     When I wish Tracy could leave heaven to come to earth and be with us again, I'm reminded of the film "Shawshank Redemption," a movie most men love and I do not. Guys usually like action movies and Shawshank is about as action packed as "Driving Miss Daisy." Both movies feature Morgan Freeman, but in this one, filmdom's narrator spends the movie describing what is happening to Andy, the main character--because you cannot tell by watching it. The one redeeming feature I find in Shawshank is the scene of Andy escaping from prison by climbing through the sewer pipe. A disturbingly easy-to-imagine scene that even narration cannot make boring.

   For Tracy to leave the refreshing purity of heaven to return and remain on this sin-slimed earth, would be like crawling through a sewer pipe to get here . . . and spending the rest of his life at the treatment plant. I would not want that for anyone I love. Tracy is now free from sin, more alive than he has ever been.

If I Was as Alive as You

If I was as alive as you,

free from my sin nature,

free to do and to be

all that God intended for me,

perhaps we could stand together

taking in the setting sun,

which in heaven is not 

needed for light,

 only for familiar comfort,

 

We could share a moment

where moments never end,

farewells are not for long,

and everywhere we look is beauty,

even in my heart and mind.

We two could stand together

in the unfading brightness

reflecting the glory of the Son,

if I was as alive as you.

Water for Butterflies

     Of all the plants we received when Tracy died two years ago, only one remains. Frankly, I am a little surprised one managed to escape my Connie Kevorkian effect. I don't know the name of the plant, I simply think of it as the lone survivor. Because there were originally four plants in that pot, there is a lot of dead space. (Pun intended) Most of the floral arrangements we received incorporated fake butterflies, whose delicacy is not something I would  associate with our sturdy, mechanic son, but they are a good metaphor of one form changing into another more beautiful one. I knew if I tried to replace the dead plants in that pot, I would probably kill off the live one, so I used most of the leftover lepidoptira to cover the dead zones. I don't know if this will inspire lone survivor to keep going, or die and let the butterflies cover it too.

    Last year in a probably futile attempt to be less lethal to my plants, I bought plastic self-watering bulbs in hopes those inanimate items would be more conscientious than I am about my plants' water needs. All my granddaughters like the water bulbs, which I why I went with plastic. They especially like the part where they get to poke the tips into the soil because poking things into plants is something they would not ordinarily be allowed to do. So when I had three year old Ren for Grandma day this week, she brought me the bulbs to fill with water. But she did not know the water was for the plant, she thought it was to give the butterflies a drink. Leave it to a child to see beyond the lonely plant and mostly lifeless planter to the beauty within it, and the blessing of bringing water for butterflies.

Part Time Vampire

    All through my recovery from cataract surgery I was unable to give myself the necessary eye drops. No surprise, I'd never been able to before surgery, and necessity is the mother of invention, not instillation. Reed handled most of my scheduled doses. My daughter and daughter-in-law did eye duty when they dropped off kids on Grandma Day. I took the bottles with me to appointments--eye, massage, hair, even dental. I also asked neighbors and a visitor. I probably would have let a total stranger put drops in my eyes rather than attempt it myself. But now, long after those eye drops are no longer needed, I am trying to learn the skill because my eyes are red much of the time. I told Reed I look like a part time vampire. He said if I was a vampire, I wouldn't be able to see my reflection, much less my eyes, in the mirror. I told him that was why I am a part time vampire, I can still be seen in mirrors and be out in the sun. Although that last statement is mostly untested in Kalispell in the wintertime.

  The reason my eyes are red and that Reed and I sometimes have bags under our eyes we could rent out as storage space, is because we have not had a dozen full nights of deep sleep since Tracy died two years ago. But we can't blame it all on Tracy's death because we were having trouble sleeping before that. As people get older it is normal to have sleep issues because mature bodies have less melatonin and more maladies. Melatonin supplements are available although, as I shared in my blog Supplemental, replacing one casualty among the cascade failure that is aging does not reset our body clock. Which, just like the Timex commercials Takes a Licking and Keeps on Ticking, unfortunately, it is counting down. And even if the melatonin helps, the maladies linger on. In my case, neck and shoulder arthritis often make for restless slumber. But insomnia does not come with a note, most of the time we don't know why we can't sleep.

   I have not found that the drops I manage to actually get in my eyes reduce redness enough to push me from part time vampire to retired vampire status. There is an old Rod Stewart song about having Bette Davis eyes. I will have to settle for having Bela Lugosi's.

  

Dead Reckoning

     In the wondrous way God weaves His word and our daily lives together, our BSF study of the crucifixion in John intersected perfectly with this year's early Easter. Though I have done the study of John many times, this year I learned that the reason Jesus could have Passover with his disciples and still be killed when the Passover lambs were, is because Galileans observed Passover on Thursday. They reckoned days as being sunrise to sunrise, not sundown to sundown as most Jews did. What troubled me about learning this was that I, who pride myself on logical reasoning, had never noticed this discrepancy before. I know there are some who believe Good Friday was actually Thursday, or even Wednesday, in order to fit three days and three nights in the tomb before the Sunday morning resurrection. However, the Jews of that time considered any part of a day as a day. So, instead of trying to adjust the way Jews in the Bible reckoned time to fit how we do it in our time, we should probably go with their flow. 

    For example, one of the members of our small group is named HeLEna, emphasis on the the second syllable. I figure most people know how to pronounce their own names, so it would be rude to call her HElena, emphasis on the first syllable, as in the capital of Montana, just because I am used to saying it that way. And I would be totally out of line to try to convince her to pronounce her name differently, so l am going to interpret three days the way the Jews of Jesus' time did. 

   The other reason we cannot knock Jesus off a couple days earlier to entomb Him longer, is the Passover problem mentioned above. Jews could not just choose a day to celebrate such a specifically regulated feast. Galileans may have had a little wiggle room, and there is one exception in 2 Chron. 30 when Hezekiah held Passover one month later because, though he had the temple cleared out to reinstate worship, the priests had not been fully consecrated and the people hadn't had time to assemble yet. Other than that, the date is as precribed as all the other requirements for the observance. They could no more pick a different day than they could decide to eat leavened bread and ham, like we do at Easter.

   It may be hard for modern western minds to reconcile three days/three nights dead with partial days and nights, but cultural context is something we cannot simply pass over. At least, not by my reckoning.

As We Forgive

    When I sent my letter about Tracy to the prosecutor this week, I also asked if I could give Neil my Lament of the Lamb book and a letter I wrote to him long ago as a Griefshare exercise. At that time, I put it in the following blog:

 

What I Hope to Say

 

 Drug Dealer: 

    I believe two things that seem contradictory by human standards. The first is that my son Tracy died because it was his God appointed time. The Bible teaches that. Ps. 139:16 says, “Your eyes saw my unformed body, all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” The second is that Tracy died because you sold him, and he took, fentanyl poisoned drugs. The fact that God appointed March 22^, 2022 as the day my son would die, does not absolve you of your guilt for selling him the drugs that killed him. There had  been enough fentanyl overdose deaths already that Tracy should have known not to take them. Until then, he had been off drugs for six years. And you, who make a living selling drugs, should have known about the fentanyl problem. 

    As someone whom Christ has forgiven, I feel compelled to forgive you. I want you to pay the legal penalty for causing my son’s death, but I also want you to know Christ’s forgiveness. Otherwise, you will bear the guilt of killing Tracy for all eternity. I don’t think he would want that for you. Trace was very understanding of human frailty. The other contradictory thing is that God’s forgiveness does not remove the legal consequences of our actions. I want you to pay for what you have done and I want you locked away where you can’t bring this agony to another family like ours. 

    Tracy was six weeks from graduating from aircraft mechanic school. He had already earned one of his certifications. For 18 months he had been a top student in his class while working more than full-time as an auto mechanic to support himself. He was already a gifted mechanic and was planning to become a pilot as well. He had many friends, a family who loved him, and a good future ahead of him. God’s plans for him were different from ours, and better, but I want you to know something about the man whose life you took. 

   Until recently, I didn't even know how to spell your name. I don’t know you at all. I’m sure you have friends and family who love you too, and I’m sure they are suffering also because of this. That’s what sin does. It hurts people who don’t deserve it. But God forgives people who don’t deserve it, and I want that for you, in spite of what you did to my son, because of what God's Son did for me. 

 

 

    I wasn't sure I'd have a chance to say it to Neil, apparently we do not share at sentencing. And I wasn't sure, when the time came, that I would forgive him. Prosecutor Barry sent both my letters to the probation officer compiling the sentencing information, and gave me the email address for Neil's attorney. I emailed him a copy of my letter. He said he would make sure Neil got it. That Neil was sorry for what happened to Tracy.

    Later I wondered if I lied. If I did forgive him. I told the Lord I didn't feel forgiveness for him. The Lord said, Do you need to? I don't really know what forgiveness feels like. The scripture meditation app I use, always ends with the Lord's Prayer. Today as I said, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, it really made me think--as we forgive. Those things were on my mind when we went to our church Good Friday service. As we sang song after song about the price Jesus paid to forgive us, I realized I felt something, I felt love for Neil. I didn't pray for it, I don't even think I wanted it. But there it was in my heart--love for Neil. 

   The pastor's brief message that followed emphasized that love means being willing to lay down my life. Forgiving the man whose drugs killed Tracy, felt not only like laying down my life, but laying down my son's life as well. Could I do that? My letter said I felt compelled as a Christian to forgive him. That I felt Trace would not want him to suffer for eternity for his part in Tracy's death. But I did not know until now what forgiveness feels like--it feels like love for the person who wronged you.

    It seemed so basic I wondered why I haven't learned this before. The Lord said, No one has wronged you so greatly before. So now I know the offer of forgiveness in my letter is true. Not because God can forgive what I could not, or because as a Christian my forgiveness is linked to forgiving others, or even because Tracy would want me to. I can forgive Neil because I love him. It is as simple and profound as that. Forgiveness feels like love.