Today is your day. And we remember.

As we look at the beauty of the day, as we struggle through commonplace challenges, as we get on with our lives forever changed, we remember.

As we pray for your soul and those who grieve most deeply, we remember.

As we heal and yet remain broken, we remember.

It’s hard to believe it’s been two years since we got the phone call on the country road, changing all of our lives forever.

Time dulls pain, or so the saying goes. But on January 3, after only two years, I can’t help but think that the pain is not so dulled.

I feel, sometimes, like I end up writing about things that aren’t mine. It wasn’t my husband who died, after all. It’s not my children who have to comfort themselves with thoughts of a father in heaven, as opposed to the feel of his arms hugging them.

Maybe that’s my role. Maybe my job is to share, to commemorate, to expose whatever small part of the grief that I can access. Maybe I am chronicling it and sharing the gift with more people.

Because it is a gift, even though it hurts. It hurts people whose pain I would carry, whose burdens I would bear.

I see it in her eyes, sometimes, when she doesn’t remember to guard them. I see it, other times, in the tilt of a head, in the extra-long moment spent in the bathroom, in the surreptitious wipe of hands across a face.

It’s funny, how we remember. There are times when we’ll be talking about something, and you will come up, be a part of the conversation.

It’s odd, in fact, how we feel that we know you better now that we’re around your girls–all three of them–so much more. I feel, at times, like you left us something like a living memory, one that we may not have appreciated if not for the lens through which we see it now.

You must be so proud of your girls. It’s hard on them, though they are brave and courageous and do their best to be self-sufficient.

Send them some comfort today, a hug from heaven. Have Mama Mary hold them tightly.

Related:

• In 2011: Remembering and Remembering with Prayer
• In 2010: Be a Mother to Us Now and Living in the Now
• Allen’s tribute

I have felt, in the last year-and-a-half, overwhelmingly helpless. I don’t know what to say; I don’t know what to do; I don’t know!

As with so many things with children and other people, sometimes just being there is as important as anything else. Thanks to a new release by Pauline Books & Media, I Will Remember You: My Catholic Guide Through Grief, I have a resource to share with the younger of my nieces, who’s ten.

This book has equal parts reading and writing/activity. It doesn’t just challenge the reader to think about the huggy-kissy parts of grief, but rather faces the steps of grief and explains them with short chapters and with fill-in-the-blank activities, craft ideas, and an ongoing Memory Box idea.

Reading this as the adult who’s going to be gifting it, I appreciated that it was age appropriate without pandering to kids. It’s intended for ages 7-12, but reading this made me want to look up the author for adult resources.

Kimberly Schuler has made a guide that is Catholic in spirit and essential in substance for grieving children. I can’t wait to share it with my niece, and I’m grateful to have a resource like this available to help her.

March 16 has long been a day I remember with a mixture of fondness and grief.

It was on this day that I witnessed the importance of life and the courage of people I would one day call family.

There, at the front of the chapel, in a casket no bigger than the laptop bag I carried with me nearly everywhere, was the baby. The baby she had been told to abort. The baby who lived his life through his mother. The baby who was held first by Mama Mary.

Logan is not a young man, scampering around and scraping his knees. He is not climbing trees or writing adventures. He is not here.

There’s sorrow in that. Even though it’s been nine years and it’s no longer new, there’s still the chance for tears on this day of remembrance and at other times.

But he was given a chance to live, however briefly, because of the faith and humility of a couple who wouldn’t play God.

Allen, who went to his eternal rest early last year, once told me that it was one of the best decisions he ever made with his wife, that decision not to abort.

They went on to bury their boy, as they knew they would. But it remains, for Susie, one of the cornerstones of her faith journey, one of the foundations of who she is.

In the midst of asking why, of wondering what’s next, of just trying to get through day-by-day, we have this day. It’s a pause to consider the eternal in the midst of the temporal.

And though we have tears leaking out of our eyes, it is possible, with God’s grace, to see the rainbow the sun makes as it shines through them. We fill the hole in our hearts with prayers for those who remain, and we thank God for the gifts He gives us, however short a time they may be in our arms.

A Mary Moment Monday post

Nine days ago, it was Christmas. Nine days ago, it was a whole different year than now, 2010. Nine days ago, I began a special novena to Our Lady of Sorrows.

Today is an anniversary our family will hold dear and commemorate for many years to come. It is one that marked a ripping apart, a journey into pain, a year of worst fears coming true.

We have spent the year in prayer. We have spent the year with many tears.

We’re not done praying. We’re not done crying either.

All year, I’ve found myself examining Mary in light of sorrow and grief and especially in her title as Our Lady of Sorrows. I’ve gripped her hand and tried to let her do the worrying. I’ve placed worries and tears in her lap, trusting that her Son would nestle there and have special consideration for that heavy pile.

I want to write a lovely tribute about my deceased brother-in-law who, I’m ashamed to admit, I’ve come to admire and respect so much more in the closeness that’s come since his passing. I want to share deep thoughts and life-changing insights, but the fact is…I find that I can’t.

For one thing, it doesn’t feel like it’s my place. For another, I am at a loss for words. Though they usually string together for me, this time, they aren’t. They won’t. And I’m not forcing it.

When we watch our loved ones suffer, we suffer too. When we find ourselves unable to relieve them of their burden, we are changed, however slightly. This year, I have felt helpless, and I know I’m not the only one. I have done what I could, but it has felt piddling and inconsequential in the face of the huge pain and impossibility of so many aspects of this situation.

I have, above all, prayed.

So often, I hate being reduced to “just” praying. I hate not being able to show up and do-do-DO. And yet, looking back over the year and considering my own journey through grief with the people I love, I can’t help but see a glowing lesson, one that points me to prayer.

Today, I will begin another series of prayers. I will embrace Mary’s hand and marvel at the familiarity I find there. I’ll look to her face and find it as tear-streaked as my own, and I’ll remember that she knows this well. Not only did she carry her own grief through the Passion, but she looks on each of us, her children, and feels, so keenly, our burdens of heartache.

Perhaps more than anyone else, Mary understands.

Mary, Mother of Sorrows, be a mother to us.

image source

Tomorrow marks one year.

Don’t get me wrong: I feel pain. We all do.

But it’s nothing to what my sister-in-law and his daughters feel.

So I am posting this merely to ask for your prayers in a special way in the coming days. It has been a rough holiday season, I know, though they haven’t mentioned it. And after a year, the pain is different but still very, very there.

And he is not.

And we remember that.

I’ve learned a lot about my late brother-in-law in the last year. My respect and regard for him have grown. And, for some reason, I feel quite a bit of regret about that, that I didn’t take time, make time, have time in the 38 years he was with us to explore him further.

Mary, Mother of Sorrows, be a mother to us now.

A Mary Moment Monday post

I have small white caskets on my mind. We remember Lucas (Logan‘s older brother) on November 14, and that’s one reason why. I’m also due to have my baby in the next four weeks, and that’s another reason why.

For me, pregnancy and caskets are linked. It’s not a morbid linking, though as I look back at that sentence, I realize it sounds a bit alarming. Maybe I should compare it to how the crucifix means more to me in the context of Christmas than at almost any other time of year. When I see Mary at the manger in our Nativity scene in the front of our church, I sometimes sneak a glance upward, to the crucifix, and think of Mary’s baby boy hanging there. She’s at the foot of the Cross from the very beginning.

I’ve only witnessed two women bury their children. One of them buried her second son, while holding hands with her two daughters and husband. Years later, she would bury her husband, and as I watch her up close, I marvel. And I pray…very, very often, with more emotion than words.

When I read Rachel’s Contrition (reviewed here), I was struck by many things. One was the raw emotion of Rachel Winters, a mother who buried her daughter. I recognized that emotion; I had seen it up close.

Mary’s a part of Rachel’s Contrition, in a way that might seem surprising. Here’s her first appearance:

I turn to the front of the small chapel area and see above me in an arched alcove trimmed with sculpted doves, a statue of the Virgin Mary, her eyes turned skyward while angels, bent in prayer, kneel at her feet. As I look up at her, I find my eyes drawn upward as hers are, and gradually I quit thinking of mysef and think only of my nightmares, of Seth and Caroline, of life. I slide into a seat and stare at her. As I study her, recognition dawns on me. She is the lady in my dream, and the very same woman I saw running into the church. She is the one who was holding my baby.

My baby. How could you take my baby? The pitch in my veins rises to my head and pours out in tears. I may be a horrible person, but I was her mother. She’s my baby. How could you take her away from me?

We find Mary and Rachel again, together, later on:

I look up at the crucifix and try to picture Jesus holding her. I can’t.

Instead I say something I don’t mean to admit. “I had a dream once. Not about Jesus or God or whatever.” I pause not wanting to go back to the memory. He waits silently. He’s good at that. “I saw Mary holding her. It was Caroline’s baptism and Mary was holding her instead of me. I thought it was a lady with long white hair, but then I saw that statue over there and I realized it was her.”

He nods. “Baptism washes us clean and makes us open to salvation. I think it’s very fitting you saw her that way. That’s a good image to start with. Now think of Mary rocking your baby in heaven and Jesus looking over her shoulder, touching her cheek, delighting in her beautiful smile.”

I try, but I’m not ready for that yet. I picture Mary holding her and I still want to pry her out of Mary’s hands. I want to hit Mary with a stick and tell her Caroline is my baby. I don’t tell Father Jacobsen that.

In some deep part of me I understand where Father Jacobsen is going. If I can get to the point of picturing her with Mary and Jesus, I will be able to release her to death, to accept that she’s in heaven and not coming back. I can say it to myself a million times, but I have to make myself believe it. And he’s right, I have to become comfortable with it or I won’t ever really lay her to rest.

I picture Mary holding our nephews, playing with them in heaven, introducing them to her Son, and I smile. But I know about being mad at Mary: it’s something I’ve observed, and something I think I could experience myself, firsthand, given the right circumstance.

HOW DARE YOU TAKE MY BABY? How dare YOU hold him first? What more DO YOU WANT?

Isn’t she supposed to be helping us? How is taking a baby — or a young father — help? Oh, she’s not God; I know that. But she has influence; she has say; she has weight with the Big Guy. Why not help a sistah?

Good can come from what appears to be tragedy; is it still, then, tragedy? Who’s running this show, anyway?

Rachel’s Contrition tells a good story, but it also challenges me to examine my attitude a little more closely. Author Michelle Buckman told me it was a story she had to tell. She also told me that she couldn’t, in any way, remove her Catholicism from this story; it was as much a part of what had to be told as the death of the little girl.

Leave me a comment on this post and tell me why you’d like to win a copy of Rachel’s Contrition, and I’ll select four winners next Monday. Comment by midnight EST on Sunday, November 14. One entry per person, please.

I usually notice it, mind you. This is one of my favorite times of the year. But I can’t help doing a double take more often when I pass a tree with flaming red leaf tips or a particularly brilliant patch of orange. I spy a combine in a field or a tractor pulling a load of grain down the road, and I think of how she’d be pointing her camera without a second’s hesitation.

Her enthusiasm for the changing leaves and the many forms of harvest all around has me smiling. On her way to take her daughters and our nieces and nephew to school, she’s bound to stop and take a picture. They laugh, but she challenges them to look around and see the loveliness they have taken for granted.

It’s so easy to take things in life for granted, from the exquisite fall fashion show right outside my window to the people who pepper my life with blessings. In this season of things dying and gorgeous color, I find myself reflective. As a foot edges into my ribcage, proof of new life within, I think of the life we can’t forget and the grief that hovers on the edge of our days.

I find myself wondering if there were flowers blooming on the path winding to Golgotha, if there was evidence of hope even there, in the desolation surrounding the Cross. I clutch my rosary this month, in the midst of rainbows in trees and cerulean skies and apples everywhere, and I think of how it took the Cross to achieve the Resurrection.

There’s some comfort in that, but it’s distant somehow. The fact that there’s a host of shocking color and breathtaking splendor everywhere I drive feels more concrete, more like evidence of God’s love and His hand in the working of things.

Fall is a time of things dying, and the dying is beautiful. How can this be? When I examine it closer, I struggle to apply it, to make it more than a theory that applies only to agriculture and nature.

These pictures I found on my camera, evidence of a passion that can’t be dampened even in the face of heartache and tragedy, give me hope the same way that meditating on the crucifix gives me hope. They speak to me of so much more than Ohio autumns and someone with an eye for my taste.

There is hope. There is always hope.

I think this must be the way that Mary, even as she faced the incredible pain of the Cross, comforted the disciples and those around her. I think of my sister-in-law, facing her own struggles, as my very own Mary, living proof that God not only loves me, but that He will reach down constantly and touch me through every aspect of my life.

Maybe, in fact, that’s what we are to each other, each of us, as we face the uncertainties of life and the hurdles in front of us. Maybe we have Mary beside us to guide us in how we are to minister to each other, how we are to, most importantly, love each other.

For that, I’m thankful. With a dose of apple butter and a bright streak of maple leaves on top.

Another in the Mary Moment Monday series

This week, on September 15, we celebrate one of my favorite feasts of Mary, the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows.

She’s a special Mary to me, one who’s close to my heart, who knows my heart, who speaks to my heart. She’s the Mary who holds me when I let my guard down and just sob, when I shake my fist and God and ask Him what in the world He could be thinking, when I throw tantrums and stomp away and then curl up in a heap.

Suffering unites us in a way few other things can. Being able to picture Mary wracked with grief, torn apart with pain, clinging to a scrap of hope despite the torture of continuing to live…somehow, this makes her approachable in the midst of the turmoil of my life. I see her there, at eye level for once, and I recognize the tears hovering, ready to fall. She comes closer, offering me her shoulder: not advice, not an admonition to toughen up, not anything more than just herself.

I haven’t suffered greatly, not really. But I have watched, many times helplessly, as others have suffered. Maybe that is its own special kind of suffering, the suffering where you watch those you love and the only help you can offer is turning your tear-streaked face to God.

This week, when I see evidence of the many ways in which my life is filled with blessings and not filled with suffering, I’ll be reaching out to my Mother of Sorrows. When I see horror in my world, injustice and unfairness, or just plain mean “life ain’t fair”-ness, she’ll be the one I ask for help. I’ll greet my old friend Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows, and we’ll hug through the tears that will inevitably flow.

In that vein, if you have any special intentions you’d like me to remember this week, feel free to let me know. Maybe I can take them to Mother Mary on your behalf.

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My latest column is over at Faith & Family Live: “Turning to Mary in Suffering.” I share a few favorite devotions and some reflections that came out with tears, no extra charge. This ranks as one of the more painful pieces I’ve written, and I’ll admit to you…I tried to avoid it. I attempted to write a more sterile, less personal piece. What came out, and what just would not go away, was the start you’ll read over there. (Because, yes, I have more to say. I just couldn’t get it all out.)

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Last year, over at Today’s Catholic Woman, I wrote a feature about Our Lady of Sorrows. If you’re interested in the history of the title and a bit more of my own take on this title, you might stop over and give it a peek.

image from Marian Mantle

I don’t think I appreciated fear or the concept behind the admonishment to “Be not afraid” until this year.

Have you ever faced your worst fear? I haven’t, not really. I used to think that burying a child must be the worst thing a parent could ever have to cope with. Then I thought it must be the premature loss of a spouse. After this year, I don’t know.

During a long conversation on a dark porch, one of the people I admire more than almost anyone else told me that she has seen the good that has come from one of the hardest challenges she’s ever faced, burying two of her babies. I should have been shocked: it seems so counterintuitive that good can come from that kind of tragedy. But, the thing is, I’ve seen the good too, even if only in the corner of my soul that has become softer and more open to life.

It’s this experience that has her, through the anguish of losing her husband unexpectedly earlier this year, convinced that God loves her, certain that He’s holding her, persuaded that He’s running the show. As she faces what she calls her personal hell, I can’t help but shake my head at her rock solid faith.

She pulls her car to the side of the road to cry. She hides the sharp pangs during family gatherings. She puts on a brave face for her children, her mother, her siblings, her friends. She notices the absence, the empty space, the changes that wouldn’t have been necessary if he were alive. Underneath it all is a grief so deep that I think only Mary really knows it. Only Mother Mary can comfort her, really. With each new pain comes the memory of the old; with the passage of time and the slow healing it brings comes a new wound of guilt over forgetting, over moving on, over living.

On that dark porch, huddled in sweatshirts and talking theology and heaven, I was once more humbled by this woman beside me. Given her suffering, who was I to encourage her? Given her year, who was I to offer her anything other than love? Given her grief, who was I to laugh or correct or do more than pray?

From her example and unwavering faith, I’ve had a firsthand glimpse of the truths of our lives as Catholics. Our lives on earth are not complete or fulfilled, and they never will be. We will suffer mightily. Through it all, though, God loves us. He never stops. He never gives in. He never hesitates.

God loves me.

Facing that worst fear, whatever it is, doesn’t seem so bad when I have a mentor who is going through a personal hell and is sharing the walk with me. Her brave forging forward makes me think of the saints, of Mary, of the great women of the Bible. That worst fear of mine, seems, indeed, to be a bit of a smokescreen, a ploy to scare me away from living as I should, a distraction from the importance of the life of tangible faith.

I don’t need to battle my worst fear. I just need to hold on to His hand and jump into His arms as needed.

On Sunday, we celebrate the Feast of the Assumption.

I’ve written about it at Faith and Family Live, but it remains something strange to me, something I’m just not used to. It’s hard to explain how I’m drawn to it — it’s a feast of Mama Mary, after all! — and how I’m confused by it, how I want to celebrate and how I struggle to justify my joy, how I tear up and how I look heavenward.

I think it’s lovely, don’t get me wrong. It’s an example of how God loves me personally and all of us individually. He thinks enough of us to make sure we have a heavenly mother! He is sharing His Own mom!

This year has been a whirlwind. It started with a death that rocked our world and continued with terrifying health problems with our oldest daughter. It has included news of a pregnancy and watching the ongoing health struggles of Poppa Gene.

There have been a lot of tears this year, more in eight months than I would have thought an entire decade could hold.

And so it is that we come to a major Marian feast, the Assumption.

It is on this day, as the Church celebrates the Mother of God and her glorious entry into heaven, that my sister-in-law will come “home” to Ohio. She and her girls are coming in a caravan of Reinhard brothers.

She’ll be surrounded once she’s here, and yet I know that she’s going to feel more alone than ever. She’s going to have family at every turn, and yet I know that there will be a glaring absence, one that, though healed by time, is always present. She will smile and cry and hide what she can. She will muddle forward, do her best, get through it and over it and around it.

There’s something beautiful about this painful day being on a feast of Mary. I have felt, over the years of watching this sister-in-law hero of mine, that she has a very special place in Mary’s heart. From her openness about her story to her unwavering faith, she continues to show me the path to Mary, the way through the sorrow and the heartache. She shakes her fist and throws things across the room, but she also drinks a beer and laughs heartily. She picks the splinters out of her feet and tosses them in the face of the one tempting her to give up.

She’s spunky, this sister-in-law of mine, and it does all of us good to have a taste of that in our lives. I’d carry her cross for her if I could, I’d hold her head in mine. I’ve watched her mother sob, unable to help her daughter more, wanting to take the pain and make it go away, and I’ve felt utterly and completely helpless.

Sometimes, when I’m paying attention, I get a glimpse of God’s grace. This year, the Feast of the Assumption feels like one such grace. It feels like Mary reaching down and letting us know that Allen’s regaling her with stories and playing ball with his boys.