More musings on… Loss and Gratitude

I rode around town with Nancy today, running errands before our upcoming move to the Olympia area. After eight and a half weeks of hyperbaric oxygen chamber treatments at the University of Washington Medical Center’s Northwest Campus, my eyesight has temporarily gone haywire. My glasses no longer work; everything is blurry, near and far. Now, with my bare eyes, things in the distance are blurry, even Nancy across the table from me at dinner; things close up like the fine print on a new medication label I can now read unaided with glasses for the first time in twenty years. My hyperbaric doctor told me it should take about six weeks to clear up.

We stopped at Fred Meyer’s for a shower curtain rod and shelf paper. Then, as Nancy was leading the way with me following behind, driving the electric shopping cart, we headed down an aisle of camping gear. My heart sank. Tears momentarily welled up, making my eyes a little blurrier.

I love to go camping. Nancy, the girls, and I spent nearly twenty years camping for two weeks at Lake Wenatchee State Campground each summer. Before our camping adventures began, we would drive to Fred Meyer and Walmart to look through their aisles of camping equipment, filling in the holes from what needed replacing from the year before. Then, after spending a day setting up our campsite for a two-week stay, the fun began. I remember our girls and their friends from Canada climbing into our yellow rubber boat as I drug the long rope out as far as I could out into the lake to where my feet barely touched the sandy bottom. Then waiting for giant waves driven by a long day of wind, I would pull the rope as fast as I could hand-over-hand as the yellow boat crashed through the waves and the sound of children screaming with joy rose above the waves. I loved sitting on the beach with Sarah and Nicole, making drip sandcastles, something I learned from my friend Dawson on the sandy beaches at the Indiana Dunes during our time at seminary. Children would come and join in until we had a lonely castle island surrounded by a moat and covered with dripped-sand trees. Inevitably the temptation was too much for some little boy who would come running pell-mell down the beach and bulldozer the castle into the waves with his feet.

I loved walking around the campground after dinner when the bats were out catching bugs at dusk down by the beach, seeing families gathering around their campfires, or visiting our friends from Canada whom we saw nearly every year we camped at the lake. I loved sitting around a brightly burning campfire on a chilly evening with Nancy, Sarah, and Nicole, roasting marshmallows and eating sticky, hot smores, the fixings laid out on the picnic table by Nancy. I loved lying on our backs at night on a warm wool blanket spread out on the beach, gazing up at the Milky Way, and watching for meteors during the height of the Perseid meteor shower. I cherish those times all bundled up in our sleeping bags, with only the sound of the wind in the pines, the creaking of branches, and the quiet breath of my family next to me in the tent.

As I rode the electric shopping cart down the aisle of camping gear, the Holy Spirit rustled through the blur of loss sinking in my heart, and I found myself grateful for all those trips to Fred Meyer, Walmart, and the shores of Lake Wenatchee. Loss certainly brings sorrow, heartache, and tears, but gratitude comes in the wake of those waves of grief. I am so thankful for daughters and yellow rubber boats crashing through waves, for dripped sandcastles, and for the joy of teaching children how to make them. I am so very grateful for our friends from Canada, whom we hope to see this summer—whom we looked forward to seeing every year. I’d offer the girls and Nancy, “How about we go to Disney Land this year—instead of Lake Wenatchee.” “No, we want to see our friends,” they’d reply. I am grateful for flying bats and shooting stars and the Milky Way spread out like a tapestry in the sky, for evening walks and families gathered, for the pungent smell of campfires and roasting marshmallows. Finally, I am very thankful for my wife, who cared for us with a banquet of graham crackers, Hershey’s chocolate bars, and fresh, spongy marshmallows.

I can’t camp anymore nor hike or pull children through the waves in a yellow rubber boat, but I can be grateful for all those times I could. Cancer is a journey into loss but can also be a journey into gratitude. For everything I’ve lost the capacity to do, I can be grateful that I once could, thankful for the memories. And as the circle of things I can no longer do grows larger and larger, the circle of things I am still able to do grows smaller yet more meaningful. The little things matter! The little things like running errands with my best friend, Nancy, or sitting down with her over a simple dinner of plant-based hot dogs and Keto buns.

When I first came to the First Covenant Church here in Bremerton, we had over thirty members in their eighties and nineties. As I visited them in their homes, assisted-living apartments, or rooms in nursing homes, I began to notice that they all shared one thing in common. So many of them had ceased to look forward but instead looked back over their lives. There wasn’t much left on this earth to which to look forward but a whole life lived behind, such treasured memories of joy and sorrow. They told me stories about things that mattered.

I remember sitting with a dear friend, Glenice Anderson, at her dining room table. She began again to tell me a liturgy of stories, often starting with the story of how she met and then married her husband, Charles. As I sat and listened, I was reminded of arriving home with Nancy and the girls from a long drive from Nancy’s parent’s home in Longview. As Nancy listened to the answering machine, Glenice’s quavering voice said, “Please come quickly when you get this! Charles is dying.” I rushed to the nursing home to find Glenice seated beside her husband in the hospital bed. I was there with them as he drew his last breath.

Now sitting at her table, she continued telling her stories—the same ones as before—yet I never found myself bored. I had been invited into a hallowed, sacred space. She told me how she and Charles came to faith, about the birth of their children, and how they came to live in Washington State. She kept talking as the sun set. With no lights on in the house, I found myself sitting in the dark, listening to her voice pour out gratitude for so much of what lay behind her in the wake of her life. Then, she suddenly came out of her reverie and exclaimed, “Oh, my goodness, I’ve talked so long it’s grown dark! Would you please kindly turn on the light?” I was privileged to hear her stories dozens of times and am grateful for every hearing!

She once told me, “I sat at this table for two years and sobbed over Charles passing, thinking with each passing day that I was twenty-four hours farther from him. But then the Lord said to me, ‘Glenice, you’re looking at this all wrong! With each passing day, you’re not getting twenty-four hours farther from him. Rather, which each passing day, you are getting twenty-four hours closer to seeing him again.’” I was there with her in the hospital room when she, too, drew her last breath.

The Lord willing, I have much life to still look forward to. Yet, I often find myself looking back, grieving the many losses while feeling overwhelmed with gratitude. I am thankful for my beloved wife and daughters, for a dearly loved congregation and community I had the privilege of serving for over twenty-six years, and for each of you wherever we met. Thank you for gracing my life with your presence, love, and friendship! The little things matter: a listening voice, a comforting hand on the shoulder, a shared conversation over dinner, or a hearty laugh—and in the wake of our loss and sorrow come the crashing waves of gratitude. Loss becomes a way to gratitude. And I find myself thankful.

"My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; he is mine forever." Psalm 73:26 (NLT)