How do you survive when you’re left behind after your older sister dies?
     That’s what’s happened to our four-year-old granddaughter Maggie last week. Her big sister Lydia died from a sudden, unnamed illness. Her bunkmate and playmate - gone.
     No explanations work fully for her, not even that Lydia has gone to Heaven to be with Jesus. That doesn’t work fully for us either. We can’t wrap our heads around it.
     My heart aches for Maggie because I was about her age when my mommy told me Daddy had gone to Heaven to be with Jesus. A sudden, unnamed illness then, too.
     I watch my daughter trying to explain things to Maggie, and I remember my mommy trying to explain things to me. So as I observe Maggie, I’m seeing myself as a little girl. The grief. The aloneness. Feelings too heavy to hold. Questions too big to answer.
     Even Moses, the Hebrew prophet who knew God closely, couldn’t wrap his head around all the mysteries. Moses reconciled this by concluding that the secret things belong to God, and the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, and that was good enough.
     We’re wrestling with a lot of secret things now. A lot of mystery.
​     But of this I’m clear: the death of a loved one dents a life forever, yet hope intertwines with the sorrow. From the time I learned that Daddy’s in Heaven with Jesus, I’ve understood that who I am and what I do lasts forever.
     My sorrow hasn’t been wasted. Maggie’s won’t be either, and that’s good enough.

Maggie and Lydia beach bumming together

     My little Ladybug unexpectedly flew away home.
     Ladybug is what I called my grandchild Lydia. For her six short years, she crawled into my heart with her singing and dancing and flirtatious grin, a princess who could turn birch bark into a crown.
     Then a slight fever, a seizure, a blaring ambulance ride, the whirl of a helicopter carrying her to another hospital. Days and nights on beeping machines. Tests, and more tests. Yet no name for what had attacked her brain and robbed it of oxygen. She never regained consciousness. She slipped through the thin, invisible veil between this life and the next.
     The sky wept, then sobbed. So did I.
     I am broken, yet I know Lydia is whole.
     I climb a mountain of grief while she sings and dances and shares her flirtatious grin with Jesus.
     I have no answers to the “why” questions. It does no good to raise them.
     Only last week I was preoccupied with the hassle of a leaking sink. It’s no big deal now. Death has a way of laser beaming what really matters.
     Recently as Lydia and I read the children’s version of “Pilgrim’s Progress,” she was entranced by the tale of Christian on his journey through life’s perils. We never completed the book, but she finished the story on her own, reaching the Celestial City before any of us fellow pilgrims.
     I’ve been pondering a prayer of Moses, who implored God to teach him to number his days so he might gain a heart of wisdom. I’d heard that the average life span of Americans is eighty-five years for women and eighty-three for men. Lydia’s meter ran out so much sooner, but she made good use of every heartbeat by loving God and loving people.
     That’s what I want to do until I fly away home.
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     A GoFundMe campaign for Lydia’s medical expenses has been established here. Please share this.    

      My heart always aches at estate sales, especially when I knew the owners.
      Colt and Monette were pioneers in our neighborhood. Now treasures they accumulated over a lifetime are selling for a pittance. Everything parceled out - like the days of their lives.    
     We sift through Colt’s tools. He was a rocket scientist back in his day, a neighbor mentions.
     I didn’t know that.
     Monette was a counselor at Columbine High School who saved students at the shooting, someone says.
     She never talked about that.
     Wasn’t it just yesterday they were here? They were frail, but I never imagined their being gone. Then Colt passed. And shortly after, Monette followed, as quietly as a falling leaf.
     We come upon her pottery collection in her kitchen. I buy a terra cotta mug and walk back home, thinking about the neighbors I thought I knew - but didn’t really.
     In my kitchen, I sip tea from Monette’s mug and glance around. Some day, Duane and I will drift away like falling leaves. All his tools and my collections will be up for sale for nickels and dimes. Folks will wander through, searching for bargains.
     So what’s the point of living anyway?
     Definitely not in treasuring “stuff.”
     I take another sip from Monette’s mug and picture the smile on her wizened face. I wish I’d made the time to know her better.     Because that’s what matters - prizing people and the God who made them.

     A woman I know took a high-speed tumble on a mountain bike. She’s grateful she’s alive, not paralyzed, and that therapy is increasing her strength so she can maneuver a street bike now. But she’s mourning that she’ll never be able to engage in extreme sports again.
     I get that she’s grieving over what she’s lost, and I won’t go into an "organ" recital of all that ails me compared to her. I’ll simply welcome her into the Fellowship of the Fractured, the cadre who have learned to do what we can. To withdraw from what we can’t. Whether we’re hamstrung from physical, emotional, or age limitations, we smile through our pain. We try not to embarrass ourselves in a world that values vitality.
​     In a stretching class I attend, the teacher warned, “Don’t do anything that hurts.” The man next to me chuckled. “As if I can do anything that doesn’t hurt.” I relate to that. Those of us in the battlefield of compromised health are pros at playing hurt. We are richer for our adversities. We’ve discovered that gems such as compassion, patience, and gratitude are mined in the darkness of pain.

     I couldn’t help but admire this Ford F1 parked outside a barbecue smoke house near our home. The only things holding it together are rust and memories.
     When this model rolled off the assembly line, it provided wheels for my parents’ generation that was piecing together lives after World War II. The sprightly pickup first hauled drivers on dirt roads, then interstates, then clogged beltways. It’s taken travelers uphill and down on stock market rides. It’s watched passengers transition from mainframes to desktops to smartphones. It’s moved people from matchbox houses to McMansions and back to tiny houses.
​     Somewhere along the way, this particular truck lost an eye and turned into a stumbling Cyclops, struggling to read the road ahead. What a ride it’s taken on its way to becoming a classic. What a ride it’s been for all of us who carry rust on our fenders and lots of memories and are trying to read the road ahead in confusing times. But if we keep bumping along life’s highway, maybe we, too, will someday earn the title of classic.