Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

Lisa

Surprised by grief

The tears pooled as I handed over my debit card to the receptionist in the dentist’s office. Sure, I was a bit hormonal, but it was, as they say, the straw that broke the camel’s back. I, of course, was the camel.

It had started days earlier when the office called to reschedule my son’s 6-month cleaning. We’d had to reschedule in July when we unexpectedly left town to attend my grandfather’s funeral. An appointment two months later, in September, was the best they could give me at the time, so I took it. Now, they were canceling due to a lack of dentists in the office.

When I called back trying to reschedule for a time when I didn’t have to take my son out of school, I was met with resistance. The earliest available appointment that fit my parameters was the day after Christmas. Nope. So, I hung up and called back a few hours later, fuming that an appointment that fit our schedule was being canceled by the dentist’s office and they couldn’t accommodate us with anything new. When I called back, I found a sympathetic ear, and she found a Saturday opening at a different branch of their office for just a few days after I was making the call. I wasn’t thrilled, but I took it because why not?

A day later, the office called asking me to update our son’s insurance, which we had switched earlier this year because of an income change. “Or else we’ll have to cancel the appointment,” the caller said. “No! Please don’t cancel the appointment!” I practically shouted into the phone. I’m not usually one for outbursts but I was going to hang on to this appointment, whatever it took.

Once the insurance was updated, I breathed a sigh of relief. Until the next day, when I got another call saying they would have to cancel the new appointment because they couldn’t find a hygienist to cover for another hygienist who had a family emergency.

I was so very close to losing it. He offered me a Sunday appointment which I refused, then a Monday evening appointment that I took without thinking because we were on our way out the door and running late and this was not a hassle I wanted to deal with any longer. (Icing on the cake: this practice is the only one within 20 miles that takes our insurance. Ugh.)

As I thought about it later, there was no way we could make that appointment because of my husband’s work schedule and our one-car-family situation. I dreaded calling back for a new appointment, but it had to be done. I swigged some coffee before dialing the office. Again. The offered appointment times kept getting later. Six forty. Seven. No. Not interested. Sorry.

“I’m sorry to do this to you, but the next available I have is in November.”

I sighed loudly and explained to her that I was very frustrated because I was not the one who had canceled this appointment in the first place. Or the second. When she understood the situation, the receptionist put me on hold and called the office where our appointment was scheduled and found us another Saturday opening. Same day I was calling. Mid-afternoon. Yes. Great. We’ll take it.

Problem over, right?

Let me remind you of the tears.

We checked in at the new office and were immediately told that we would need to pay for sealants. Eighty-four dollars, thank you very much, an expense I had not anticipated. So, the tears. But I pulled myself together and we got my son into the chair and his exam and cleaning went smoothly. Until the dentist saw him and told us he wouldn’t need the sealants I had just paid for, and the hygienist explained to me that to get a refund I would have to call the billing center so they could issue me a check.

O. M. G. (Please understand, I do not say this lightly.)

I get that some of this is my fault for not being flexible about availability, but when my kids have school, I want them in school.

And maybe none of this would have been a big deal if the catalyst hadn’t been a sudden death in the family.

Milada Vigerova via Unsplash

Milada Vigerova via Unsplash

Grief is an uninvited guest who lingers, sometimes tucked away in the shadows or just out of sight, until one unexpected moment when it jumps out and yells, “Surprise!”

It’s been two months, and while I made space for my grief that week we went home to be with family, life has been busy and full these past two months. It’s not that I haven’t thought about my grandpa; it’s that the grief hasn’t been pervasive.

Until I ran into obstacles related to scheduling that started with an emergency.

—

And then there’s our son, who is obsessed with sports right now. He’s six-almost-seven and spends most of his free time bouncing a basketball in the driveway or tossing one into a net or practicing some kind of baseball skill or setting up “stations” in the driveway–the kind he’s seen his gym teacher use in class.

One night at dinner, we asked if he wanted to be a gym teacher because then he could play sports every day. His eyes light up when he realized that gym teachers teach sports every day. Yes, he said, that’s what I want to be.

It is the same thing my grandpa did for decades before he retired, and the kind of thing that never left his soul after he retired. He sat in the stands for every basketball game at the local high school, even if he didn’t personally know any of the players. He was a sports enthusiast, to say the least.

I nearly cried typing out that story on Facebook, especially when my grandma commented: “Great-grandpa would like that.”

—

These black walnuts nearly triggered another bout of tears.

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A large walnut tree loomed over my grandparents’ house, and every fall (and probably more), we grandkids were tasked with picking up the nuts out of the yard before Grandpa mowed. We filled bags with them. We probably invented games with them, too, but all I remember is hating that tree. We had to rake its copious leaves, too.

The house no longer stands, the victim of a fire a few years ago, but I’m pretty sure that tree is still there.

One glance at these fallen fruit and I was a kid again in my grandparents’ yard.

—

I am no expert on grief. Two months does not even feel like a qualification to talk about it, but I know this is the current that runs beneath the surface of my responses this week.

I don’t really want to invite grief in, but now that I know it’s still here, and will be for a while, I think we might have to sit down over coffee and have a chat. I’m learning from others who have traveled this journey longer that it’s okay to keep grieving. It’s okay to not be okay. It’s okay to acknowledge the sadness. Nobody gets to tell the grieving one that it’s time to move on. Nobody.

Besides, November is coming. And December. The first “Grandpa’s birthday” without Grandpa. The first holiday season from which he is absent.

Grieve now. Or grieve later. Or both.

I don’t think I have much choice.

The wrong crowd

I’ve told you before how I always wanted to be popular. And how sometimes I take steps outside of my safe zone to do something I might not have considered in early years of my life.

And I’m seeing how these two things come together in my life and create circumstances I couldn’t manufacture.

All that to say, I’m constantly finding myself in the wrong crowd these days.

I used to think there was a right crowd for me, and if I’m honest, that crowd looks mostly like me. Skin color, stage of life, socioeconomic position. I have a desperate need to be “in” and liked and included combined with a serious case of introversion and hermit-like tendencies that keep me in my house a lot. Sometimes this results in feeling left out.

I know I could do the inviting but there’s this fear of rejection and the hurdle of how emotionally draining it is for me to work up the nerve to ask someone to do something and then recover if they say “no.” I’m the worst at being the one to organize a group or plan a coffee date or play date or party. These are skills I don’t cultivate.

This could be a sad story of how alone I feel or a pity party or a diatribe about the lack of community I see in our individualistic world. It could be, but it’s not.

Mike Wilson via Unsplash

Mike Wilson via Unsplash

What I want you to know is that sometimes you find your fit in a crowd and sometimes the crowd finds you. And sometimes the crowd will be the one you wouldn’t have imagined and didn’t think you needed.

It’s no secret that I spend Tuesdays with refugees. And occasionally other days. I am often the only Caucasian in the room. Definitely the minority. And I love every minute of it, even when I’m feeling useless because the only language I speak is English.

But then a father will have a question like “How much to feed a family of 6 here?” and I will sit and give the only answer I know: “It depends. On where you shop. On what is in season.” We work it out as best we can.

I sit in this room and there’s nowhere I’d rather be.

Or we visit a family at home and it’s chaos and broken English and translation. It’s sitting in silence staring at each other. It’s selfies with the kids and hugs. It’s an invitation to maybe go back to Africa someday. It’s friendship forged over hot sauce. wp-1474641163920.jpg

And three hours later, it’s time to go but also not enough time.

—

At our house, there are kids from the neighborhood who stop by to play with our kids. They barrel onto the porch any hour between after school and bedtime with a “Hello!” and my kids race to the door to either say they’ll be right out or that they can’t play tonight. These kids wander through my kitchen and eat tomatoes from the garden right off the counter. They play Barbies and dress up. Their English is limited and improving so sometimes the young boy will speak to me in Spanish and I will try to answer him.

“Hola,” he says. “Como estas?”

“Muy bien,” I reply, and he smiles.

Later, I will remember other Spanish phrases I know. My brain is not trained for languages that aren’t English.

These kids live in the apartments nearby. Their parents don’t speak English. We are not arranging playdates. This is not the middle-class suburban experience I envisioned when I became a parent. (We are not quite middle class, anyway, I don’t think.)

My relationships with neighbors and school moms and refugees are messy and awkward and unconventional. My next coffee date will be with a mom who grew up in Jordan. I can’t wait.

In all honesty, these are not the kinds of relationships I would have sought if I had my way. But they are the ones that are finding me. And with their arrival, I’m finding a place to belong in what feels like the wrong crowd. (And it’s only “wrong” in light of my own pride and prejudice.)

But when I read about the life of Jesus in the Gospels, I find him constantly hanging out with the “wrong” crowd. He was never where people thought he should be, and even when he was, the “wrong people” found him.

And the beauty of his way is that everyone was “in.” He could hang out at the temple and teach, or sit by a well and converse with a woman about her way of life. He walked with fishermen, dined with a tax collector, healed and touched people no one else noticed.

I want to be around the kind of people Jesus was around.

But sometimes I’m still scared.

The other day Phil and I were walking downtown toward the market, and a man on a bench called out to us, “Hi, how you doing?” I wanted to pass him by because I knew he was going to ask for money, but he continued the conversation before we were too far away.

“Can you help me get some food? I just want a 2 for $2.50 at McDonald’s.” It was right down the street, a block away. “I don’t want no drugs or anything, just some food.”

I had cash in my purse, which isn’t always the case, so I pulled out $2 because I thought that was all I had, and I gave it to him.

“Sister, can you spare $3?”

I found another dollar and handed it over.

“Thank you,” he said. Then he went on to say that he knew we were brothers and sisters in the Lord. I don’t know if this is true or how he knew that, but it’s what he said. I asked his name and he told me, and I shook his hand. It wasn’t until I was close enough to touch him that I noticed the sores on his body. By then, it was already too late, and I touched him and told him my name and we all went about our business.

Maybe you think it’s naive or unwise to give someone money. I don’t blame you. I know nothing about buying drugs or how much that would even cost, and I know that people take advantage of people every day. But I could not in good conscience walk past a person asking for food while on my way to buy food for a dinner party. I would have hated myself the rest of the day.

Not only that, I want to be the kind of person who sees other people, no matter who they are.

Jonathan, that was his name, is a real-life, breathing human being. I know his name now, which means I can use it the next time I see him, and I’m sure to see him again as much as we hang out downtown. (But only if I look.) I honestly don’t care what he does with the money. I mean, I care because I want health and wholeness for people, but I won’t be offended if he didn’t use the money for what he said he would. I’ll let God handle that.

I tell you that story, not to brag because honestly there’s nothing to brag about. I only want to say that in that moment, I felt like I was right where I needed to be. I was more at home with the beggar on the street than in the crowded market. I am more at home in the home of a refugee family than I even am at church sometimes. I am more at home in the basement of the church with the newly arrived refugees than I am at a Bible study or prayer group.

I hope that doesn’t offend. I’m not saying your way must be the same as mine. There is nothing wrong with these other places, but those aren’t the places that make me feel alive. Not anymore.

I’m at home with the wrong crowd and it feels so right.