Shelter in Place

Dear UD,

Five years from last weekend I was sitting at a local theater production in Willow Springs, Missouri to watch Laina perform in The Little Mermaid musical. Mom attended with me as did some siblings and nieces and nephews. Mom treated us to dinner afterwards as we celebrated the success of the play and performance. We were so happy that night. Together and secure in one of those moments of

sanctuary in the midst of the storms our family faced.

Alaina and I were in Missouri then because that semester, I was sheltering on the family farm, living in the upstairs section of my childhood home. I had returned home in time to have a couple of weeks of quality time with Dad after he went on hospice, and I had stayed to help Mom with all the small details that come when someone leaves this earth. I remember phone arguments with cable companies refusing to close his account, boxes and boxes of Dad’s extensive collections of CDs and DVDs that I shipped off, a red cattle trailer filled with Dad’s eclectic collection of books, a thorough cleaning and painting of Dad’s room, and a shopping trip for furniture to remake the space into a bedroom for me. A mere eight months before we lost Dad, Grandpa died. Born in April of 1918 (during the first year of the Spanish Flu), he lived for 96 years. A three-time war veteran, he was a Naval officer for 30 years before retiring to work the century family beef farm for the next thirty plus years. Grandpa was a constant and comfort all of our lives, and suddenly he was gone. And not even a year later, Dad was gone too.  

Those two deaths heralded the beginning of a new normal for me and my family.

Uncle David, I remember you and I talking about how the death of a parent would bring new roles and expectations within the family system. After losing your mom, Grandma Bonnie, when you were in your twenties, you understood all the dynamics. We discussed how the death of a parent not only changes the family dynamics, roles, and standings, but also changes the way we see ourselves and the way we experience the world. The way our shelters become unhinged. The way our moorings begin to loosen.  A new normal. My God, how I hated the idea of that. Unfortunately, it was only the cusp of “new normals” one after another after another that we would soon face.

Earlier that April, I remember celebrating spring with Mom, Laina, Jill, Sarah, and various nieces and nephews as we went on a mushroom hunt one stormy April day. We walked down the gravel road to Possum Creek before hiking into the woods. We spied a turtle just out of hibernation, still covered in mud, and spring buds and wildflowers. A garter snake slithered by, scaring us for a moment. Not finding any morels, we walked back home and past mom’s gardens (both the vegetable garden we’d helped plant and the flower garden full of spring flowers from seeds and bulbs you sent her) and into a field on the family farm, then down to the river behind the house. For hours, we hunted and laughed and searched and teased. For hours, we spied signs of spring but no mushrooms. The storm hit, and the rain drenched us as thunder boomed and lightning struck. In the end, we found morel mushrooms growing right by Grandpa’s old house, now Sonny’s place, and next door to Mom’s. How you loved that story. I can still hear echoes of your infectious and hearty chuckle. But that afternoon was another moment of sanctuary where we were safe and together.

On a Tuesday, a few weeks after the mushroom hunt and a couple of days after the performance, I called to talk to you, UD. I remember sitting in the new La-Z-Boy chair in Dad’s old room, my new abode, and chatting about my lesson plans and your dogs and asparagus shoots. The family was still getting used to the new normal after losing Dad and Grandpa, but I found shelter in my conversation with you and in our connection. You weren’t feeling your best, so we didn’t talk long. I told you to get some rest, and as per usual, we both said, “I love you.” Those were the last words I would ever hear from you, say to you. I love you.

 

Two days later, on April 28, 2015, I was grading papers at home when Mom called to tell me you died. I will never forget that gut-wrenching moment when I found out that we all lost another anchor in our lives, another shelter, another piece of our hearts. You loved us and guided us and taught us, and I didn’t know how we would move on without you. Another new normal already, only four months later, and I honestly just wanted to punch anyone who talked about getting used to that. Nothing can replace someone special in our lives. Nothing can replace the love, the connection, all the parts of the relationship that help make us who we are. There are no words to describe the deep loss and hole that blossomed into our lives that April day.

Within the next two years, so much changed as we adjusted to the losses and the grief. In the end, I had a full-time job and was back in Florida while Mom moved into a smaller place on the family farm and gave Ben our childhood home. At her new location, Mom worked to create another flower garden with bulbs from you and planted asparagus which takes two years to start producing. As much as we could, we had adjusted to this new normal, but our hearts would never be the same. Our lives would never be the same. We would never be the same.

Then, in November of 2018, Mom was diagnosed, suddenly and horrifically, of stage-four cancer. Within six weeks, we lost her. Again, our hearts shattered, our lives changed, and we had to start a new normal as orphans. Again, but even more severely, I went through it all—shock, horror, denial, fear, anger (lots of anger), anxiety with sleeplessness and panic attacks. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t settle. I wasn’t okay at all, but I was going through the motions day by day. I didn’t settle into a “new normal,” but I threw myself into my work and sought out adventures with siblings and friends.

“Really it was her mother she’d wanted to call right after the bad news, or in the middle of it... First thing in the morning, last thing at night, whenever a fight with [her daughter] left her in pieces, it had been her mother who put Willa back together. When someone mattered like that, you didn’t lose her at death. You lost her as you kept living.” Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered

Four months after losing Mom, my youngest daughter moved out unexpectedly, leaving me dealing with the empty nest on top of the still-raw grief of losing Mom. Another new normal in such a short time. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t settle. I couldn’t even see the point of living anymore. I don’t mean that I was suicidal because I wanted to live, but I couldn’t see hope or purpose or meaning in any of it. All I could see was deep pain. A pain that didn’t stop, never healed, and continued with loss and loneliness.  

UD, I don’t even have a new normal from all of that yet. I have tried some different things like hosting an Italian student for the school year and visiting my family in Missouri more, but now, I don’t even know what to think.

It’s a hundred years since the birth of Grandpa during the Spanish Flu Pandemic, and now we are in the middle of the Covid-19 Flu Pandemic. The world is shut down, and we are under a shelter in place mandate.

Now everyone has a new normal. Everyone is dealing with a public and collective grief and new normal, and it is bizarre and surreal.

I fluctuate between these—1. missing you and Mom even more, wishing I could talk to you both about this and feel that sense of security that came from having you both in my life. 2. not even thinking about my personal grief as much. Not because it is gone or because I have healed but because I am in survival mode and just trying to cope with too much uncertainty and loss.

Collectively as a nation, as a world, we’re sheltering in place, but we have no mooring, no guarantees, no sanctuary. We are, in a sense, “unsheltered.” Everything is changing for everyone all around the globe, and we don’t know when or how things will settle. We don’t know who will survive or what the world will look like when this pandemic is over. We don’t know exactly how it is impacting countries and people individually or what the end of it will bring for each country and person.  As one character living during contemporary times reveals in Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel, Unsheltered, “…taking all the right turns had led her family to the wrong place, moneyless and a few storms away from homelessness.” With too many Americans living paycheck to paycheck like this, what is going to happen to them in the next few months, in the next couple of years?

As another character from Unsheltered says, this one living during the 1870s, “We are given to live in a remarkable time. When the nuisance of old mythologies falls away from us, we may see with new eyes. … Without shelter, we stand in daylight.”

UD, sheltering in place is hard. Living without shelter is also difficult. Doing either without the sanctuary from you, from Mom is agonizing and challenging. As I pondered on everything that I wanted to tell you, two Bible verses came to mind, thanks to the strong example and foundation from Mom during my childhood, and these verses brought some comfort. Psalm 28:7 states, “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him.” The other is one of Mom’s favorite chapters in the Bible: Psalms 91.

Psalm 91: Safety of Abiding in the Presence of God

91 He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High

Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

² I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress;

My God, in Him I will trust.”

³ Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler

And from the perilous pestilence.

⁴ He shall cover you with His feathers,

And under His wings you shall take refuge;

His truth shall be your shield and buckler.

⁵ You shall not be afraid of the terror by night,

Nor of the arrow that flies by day,

⁶ Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness,

Nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday.

⁷ A thousand may fall at your side,

And ten thousand at your right hand;

But it shall not come near you.

⁸ Only with your eyes shall you look,

And see the reward of the wicked.

⁹ Because you have made the Lord, who is my refuge,

Even the Most High, your dwelling place,

¹⁰ No evil shall befall you,

Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling;

¹¹ For He shall give His angels charge over you,

To keep you in all your ways.

¹² In their hands they shall bear you up,

Lest you dash your foot against a stone.

¹³ You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra,

The young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot.

¹⁴ “Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him;

I will set him on high, because he has known My name.

¹⁵ He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him;

I will be with him in trouble;

I will deliver him and honor him.

¹⁶ With long life I will satisfy him,

And show him My salvation.”

UD, I don’t know what will happen, but I realized that, as distressing and difficult as this all is, I can stand strong in the foundation that you and Mom provided. The love and conversations and guidance from you still sustain me. The love and time together and everything Mom taught me still nurture me. And all of it shelters me.

Love, Rach