Wednesday's Woe - The Shock of "Merry" Christmas

Just one of the many greetings which has my baby's name in it...

Wednesday's Woe

The Shock of "Merry" Christmas

Holidays are bad enough. Christmas is hard enough after having lost our child. But for us, with our child's first name being "Merry," it seems almost impossible. Her siblings and friends always called her "Merry." The first Christmas or two after Merry Katherine was gone, I had some interesting experiences with text messaging. On my phone, all I would see by a text message until I clicked it would be one word... I saw by the phone number that popped up on my phone that I had received a text message from my hairdresser of many years. I was shocked at what she might have to tell me as the only word that I saw was, "MERRY" (my daughter also had been her hairdresser customer) ~ and my first thought was "HAS MERRY BEEN FOUND?!!!" and was greatly shocked and even disappointed to just read a Christmas greeting from her of "MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!" because however sweet it really was intended, it was a let down because my hopes had been driven up so high by just one precious word... I knew of course she would have no way of knowing that all I would see at first was my child's name, so I accepted the gracious reaching out that she had intended.

But later in the afternoon, I received a text from my oldest child, my son Rollin. We had all been to the beach together that second Christmas holiday, but he had to return home early before Christmas to close the deal on a new house he and his fiancee would be purchasing as their wedding was coming up soon thereafter. So, back at home before we were, he was texting me a message. I saw his name, and then I saw right beside his name was, "MERRY" and my heart leaped once again to the excitement that she must be here(!) only once again to be disappointed by the excited Christmas greeting inside: "MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!" So, even my son had stepped into that texting trap accidentally, wanting to send a loving greeting to his mother that instead melted her to tears... (thankfully, he didn't know that however!)

My younger son called me from down in Georgia last week, having been greatly triggered by some sweet Christian songs on his radio that he and Merry had loved. Then he added, "All these billboards down here with "Merry" on them are driving me crazy as they wish us a "Merry Christmas"! I see them everywhere! Living away from home now after his having lived with us these past three years since college ended for him, he was anticipating coming to visit us for the holidays and was thrown into the deep grief of knowing that unlike most of the Christmases of his life, his baby sister (just two years younger than he, and like a best-friend to him) would not be here awaiting his arrival to enjoy the laid-back days of the holidays together. It also didn't help that he had received the devastating news from here that two of his very good friends from middle school and high school had just died last week, one from "natural" causes and one murdered... They were just 25 and 26 years old, one 8 1/2 months pregnant, and the other had a 4-year-old baby girl. And of course we all know the devastation ahead for these parents...

Picture, thanks to Google Image

Friday's Faith - Making Music With What You Have Left ~Jack Riemer, Houston Chronicle

Friday's Faith

Making Music With What You Have Left

~Jack Riemer, Houston Chronicle

(With special thanks to The Compassionate Friends, Atlanta for sharing this inspiring story with me recently.)

These past two weeks have been hellatious, Trauma City for this "Trauma Mama" (as my best friend Danielle Helms calls herself and me in that tragically, we have both lost our only daughter). Secondary losses piled onto the Major Primary Loss over these weeks, and my poor heart has no room for any more Grief nor Trauma! O so painful. O so traumatizing. O so much sleep loss. Devastating.

And yet God proved faithful. Early in the Trauma week, He whispered re: my current secondary loss,

"You must go through this; you can't go around it."

I hate to admit I responded to my precious Lord with a cuss word. (Has anybody else had that dynamic at play? I used to never - well almost never - utter a cuss word; now they seem to be the only words fitting the occasion. God help!) God has held us together and even provided many healing opportunities; He is an amazing God.

So reading the following article was quite significant for me because I feel I am at my wit's end with almost nothing left...

*****

Making Music With What You Have Left

~Jack Riemer, Houston Chronicle

On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that getting on stage is no small achievement for him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he has braces on both legs and walks with the aid of two crutches.

To see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly, is an unforgettable sight. He walks painfully, yet majestically, until he reaches his chair. Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down and picks up the violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the conductor and proceeds to play.

By now, the audience is used to this ritual. They sit quietly while he makes his way across the stage to his chair. They remain reverently silent while he undoes the clasps on his legs. They wait until he is ready to play.

But this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it snap- it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant. There was no mistaking what he had to do.

People who were there that night thought to themselves: "We figured that he would have to get up, put on the clasps again, pick up the crutches and limp his way off stage- to either find another violin or else find another string for this one."

But he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled the conductor to begin again. The orchestra began, and he played from where he had left off. And he played with such passion and such power and such purity as they had never heard before.

Of course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings.

I know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that.

You could see him modulating, changing, recomposing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like he was DE-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them that they had never made before.

When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. And then people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming and cheering, doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had done.

He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and then he said, not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone,

"You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left."

What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it. And who knows? Perhaps that is the [way] of life--not just for artists but for all of us.

So, perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in which we live is to make music, at first with all that we have, and then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left.

http://www.tcfatlanta.org/Waitingforthemusic.html