You do not know what you are capable of, until the situation asks of you what was never thought possible. I know this now. I can think of conversation after conversation where I’ve said, “I could never handle that,” or “I could not live through that,” only to find that somehow, supernaturally, I did.
It amazes me and yet in truthfulness it scares me as well. What will be asked of me? And while I do not spend much time dwelling on the possibilities, the realization that the human spirit can endure the unthinkable is not always assuring. I would feel better knowing that there is a limit, not this seemingly infinite ability to be stretched and scarred and traumatized and still be able to live -- to love, to believe. Is it a good thing? Or a terrible thing?
I look back over the past 16 months and stare in disbelief. Thinking back to the intensity of those first months in the hospital, the move home to live alone with four injured children, the round-the-clock care and attention necessary to meet the demands of so many undeniable needs and responsibilities -- I cannot believe it was endurable. And yet here we are. Here I am. We live this life seasoned with the perspective that our gracious God supplies our needs; that we were supported by the goodness of friends, family and strangers; and that for so many around the world, our experiences would not even be close to their worst day.
I find myself breathing a sigh of relief, thinking the worst has passed only to find that there are those things that feel as though they should be simple, do-able, easy in comparison…that aren‘t. Sometimes it is those little events that cause the biggest stirrings, that create an unforeseen strain and I find myself mystified that I can walk the depths of sorrow, then stumble over a relatively simple task.
We are not predictable.
The past couple of days have been difficult. A couple of weeks ago a good friend called me after visiting Myron’s gravesite and simply and graciously said, “Gillian, it’s time.” I knew she was right and yet I had been dreading it. Did not want to think about it. I had not yet ordered his tombstone. Was unable to do it, literally.
Every time we’ve gone to the grave I’ve felt a sadness and a burden that there is only a plastic marker with his name and yet I have been rendered incapable of putting this final touch to his death. I’ve tried. I’ve given myself deadlines, spent hours writing epitaphs, looked on the internet for help…and could never take the step to actually do it. At first it was because I truly could not physically attend to another detail, but as time went on, I knew I was facing something that was far more difficult than I had ever imagined. And so when my friend gently asked permission to nudge me, I asked her to please make the appointment for me. Because I knew I never would.
How do I encapsulate the life of someone so meaningful with a few words on a stone? How can I possibly express who he was, what he meant to us, who we are without him on a 2x2 foot slab of granite? It felt impossible. It is impossible. And so, like so many things in life, you do the best you can and hope it is something you can live with for years to come.
Today was the appointment date. Today I ordered the stone that will mark his grave forever. Today is the day I did the last thing that needed to be done for Myron’s life on earth. Today was hard.
It lifted the shame that in expressing my sadness that I hadn’t been able to do it sooner, my friend reminded me that Myron’s supernatural gift of procrastination wouldn’t have necessarily guaranteed a speedy stone on my grave either. That helped. A little. At least it made me smile. As did the memory of a particularly colourful relative who one can only describe as a genuine hillbilly, a distant cousin who lived as a bachelor in Montana, gone to glory now, who always carried a squeeze bottle of ketchup in one of his backside overall pockets and a bottle of BBQ sauce in the other…just in case. Who kept a shotgun inside his hollow, wooden peg-leg. Who was about 6'3", 300 lbs, and handed out baggies with a chunk of sausage and assorted pieces of rock candy to all of us kids whenever we saw him. Who once, after a ride at the carnival, threw up his dentures into a trashcan, fished them out, licked them clean and replaced them in his mouth. And, when we visited him at his family homestead many years after his father had passed, was found living with his father’s tombstone in the living room, propped up against the side of the couch. Maybe I could give myself a little grace, after all.
And so I found the picture I wanted, a professional shot of Myron running the Vancouver Marathon, and wrote and wrote and re-wrote what should go beneath it. Nothing seemed perfect. So I went with what moved my heart.
Myron Neil Berg
June 15, 1962 - December 28, 2010
You’ve finished the only race worth running; keeping
your eyes on Jesus, and loving us all along your way.
There was no room to say all I wanted to: To thank him for all he had given us; to memorialize all he was; to pay tribute to all he had left behind; to emphasize all we miss and long for without him. I guess I will have to be satisfied that I’ve made those statements here. That we’ll live those statements forever.
Yes, today was a hard day. I finished what needed to be done, then went to my first baseball game since the accident where my daughter played and my husband was missing. It was a day of finishing and a day of beginning. And it was all hard. And I felt my spirit stretch again for the millionth time.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Baseball Season
In past years, the month of April has been bittersweet. While on the one hand it assures us that spring is on its way, that Easter is around the corner and that the weather should be warming up, it has also traditionally been the yearly starting point of insanity known as “baseball season”.
Baseball was big in our home. Myron was a lifelong fan of the sport and played on a men’s team until our second child arrived. When Lauren was five, he put her in softball. By the time she was seven, he was coaching. One year he coached two teams, Lauren’s and Bryn’s, which almost killed the both of us, but most recently, it was the older girls he was working with.
Watching very small children play baseball is…excruciating. Bless their little hearts, it’s a great sport but its about as exciting as watching a garden slug run a marathon. We put Bryn in t-ball when she was five and were pleased that she was excited. For two weeks she was enthusiastic and then she kind of lost interest. I was driving her home one night and asked how she was liking t-ball. “It’s okay,” she said, frowning, “but when do we finally get the TEA?” Poor Bryn. She was under the impression that it involved some sort of tea party. However, she persevered and became a good little player. Taeryn began her first year two summers ago and Lauren’s team continued on to Provincials in Myron’s last year of coaching. We were all touched to the heart when his entire team came to the funeral in their uniforms. I will never forget that.
Last year for the first time in ages, there was no baseball in our home. April came and went. Driving by the fields made me cry. Lauren broke down after visiting the team at a game for the first time. I didn’t know if anyone would ever play again, which I know would have made Myron very, very sad.
So, this Easter Monday found me sitting on our deck, wrestling with Lauren’s fast pitch helmet. She missed all of last season because of the injuries to her arm, but has been working hard at physiotherapy, over the year has slowly been improving, and was now looking at her first game of the season. After two days of searching for her equipment, we found the bag in the garage where her batting helmet and gloves were. There I also found the brand new cage (wire mask that attaches to the front of the helmet so she doesn’t get a ball in the face) Myron had bought three years ago, sitting in it’s wrapper, unattached.
No surprise.
I love my husband, but he had a terrible tendency to procrastinate. (Note early blog entry about our honeymoon where he vowed to get counselling for this problem. Never got around to it.) The mask wasn’t actually attached to the helmet, so I got out the tools, opened the instructions and began putting it together only to find out he had bought the wrong cage for her type of helmet.
“MYRON!” I found myself yelling at the sky. “FOR PETE’S SAKE, YOU BOUGHT THE WRONG CAGE!” It took me two hours to manipulate a four screw cage to fit a three screw helmet, but after taking it apart four times and adapting a few things, I got it on straight and sent her off to the game…where she found out the cage was also too heavy for her helmet, tipping it forward, rendering it useless and forcing her to borrow one from another player.
I use to dread baseball season because everything we did suddenly revolved around the team schedule. Meals were scheduled around practices, tournaments took over weekends, every minute was scheduling and drills, coaches meetings and training, clinics, games, the detailed stats Myron kept on every player. It dominated our lives. It drove me crazy. But Myron loved it. Loved it. Every year he became obsessed and I’d lie in bed listening as he went over every single play of the night, all the ump’s calls, what each girl did or didn’t do and his plans for the next day.
It seems impossible, but I miss it.
I don’t think its easy for Lauren to play without her dad there, watching, coaching, cheering her on. I know it hasn’t been easy for his assistant coach who has taken over the team, who misses his friend and the time they had together. It is the second spring without him and its just not the same. Plus now I have to go find a new cage and I don’t have a clue what I’m supposed to get. Karson insists he will never play baseball. I wonder why and hope some day this changes. Even if it means having to endure those introductory, mind-numbing games all over again.
On Sunday we went to the North Shore to meet friends who were taking us to their cabin for the afternoon. As we waited at the marina, I was talking to a gentleman who said, “It’s too bad you weren’t here earlier today…you missed about 100 dolphins that swam by, right over there!” My mouth was hanging open and then I had to laugh. I missed them AGAIN! First in Mexico then right here in our own backyard. But it didn’t sting as much this time. Because for the past two weeks we’ve had dolphins showing up all over the place. Metaphorically.
Dolphins showing up unexpectedly to clean out the garage and take everything away; dolphins who fixed the kids bikes and our backdoor.
Dolphins who gave us a used swimming pool out of the blue. Our old one was ruined and I had been praying to find one for the three other kids to use this summer as I might not be able to move Bryn anywhere after her surgery and they‘d be stuck at home.
Dolphins who left anonymous gifts both in our mailbox and at our back door.
Dolphins sending birthday cards, giving hugs, rides, and a meal on some very difficult days. This month, dolphins have been everywhere. And I’ve seen them all.
And then there was a whale, of sorts. A bizarre message that I wonder if anyone who misses Myron might take as much comfort in as I do. A medical practitioner who never knew or met Myron, who didn’t know us until she became part of the huge team of people treating us this past year, had a dream. She told us that in all the years she’s practiced, she’s never had a dream involving clients. But this week she did.
She was sent to heaven to deliver a pizza, of all things. Walking down a street that looked like a street in Disneyland, she found herself repeating, “The father of…, the father of…,” not knowing why. She knew she had to find building number 17 and when she did, went inside. The room was filled with people, but she noticed one man in particular and said, “The father of…the father of... Karson! Are you the father of Karson?” She knew it was Myron, and he smiled a big smile and said with great joy, “I am!”
“Are you Myron?” she asked.
“Yes!” he said.
“I know your kids!” she said in amazement. “How are you?”
Myron smiled and said, “I’m doing great!” She realized that he was busy doing a job, that he had been given a job in heaven, not a stuffy office job (her words) but that he was organizing something, socializing with the people around him and that they were all having fun. She realized she was supposed to deliver the pizza to him and after she gave it to him, woke up.
He is well. He is happy. He has been given the task of organizing things, which if you knew Myron, makes more sense than I can explain, and he is enjoying the people around him. She asked Taeryn, “Why would I be delivering pizza?” Taeryn said, “I don’t know…but my dad sure loved it!”
Its funny what you miss, and what you take comfort in. I’m grateful for it all. The other night at supper, Karson dropped his fork and yelled, “I just realized that daddy is talking to JESUS! He’s dancing with Jesus!” He looked at us with huge eyes. “That’s SO cool!”
It is. Not always easy to live with. But so very cool.
_________________________________________________________________
A NOTE: An amazing CD has been written and recorded by the very talented Steve Mitchinson and produced by the incredible Philip Janz, called “Giver of Life”. I wanted to put a link to it here as it is a beautiful collection of original songs designed for those who are in the end-stages of life. Steve Mitchinson is a British physician who now lives in B.C.’s lower mainland and has felt a special calling to care for the palliative. His CD is soothing, thought-provoking, and an oasis in the midst of suffering. I would highly encourage anyone who is either in the end-stages of earthly life or grieving the loss of a loved-one to follow this link. I was asked to write a review for it on Itunes, and it was an honour to do so.
http://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/giver-of-life/id511496718
Baseball was big in our home. Myron was a lifelong fan of the sport and played on a men’s team until our second child arrived. When Lauren was five, he put her in softball. By the time she was seven, he was coaching. One year he coached two teams, Lauren’s and Bryn’s, which almost killed the both of us, but most recently, it was the older girls he was working with.
Watching very small children play baseball is…excruciating. Bless their little hearts, it’s a great sport but its about as exciting as watching a garden slug run a marathon. We put Bryn in t-ball when she was five and were pleased that she was excited. For two weeks she was enthusiastic and then she kind of lost interest. I was driving her home one night and asked how she was liking t-ball. “It’s okay,” she said, frowning, “but when do we finally get the TEA?” Poor Bryn. She was under the impression that it involved some sort of tea party. However, she persevered and became a good little player. Taeryn began her first year two summers ago and Lauren’s team continued on to Provincials in Myron’s last year of coaching. We were all touched to the heart when his entire team came to the funeral in their uniforms. I will never forget that.
Last year for the first time in ages, there was no baseball in our home. April came and went. Driving by the fields made me cry. Lauren broke down after visiting the team at a game for the first time. I didn’t know if anyone would ever play again, which I know would have made Myron very, very sad.
So, this Easter Monday found me sitting on our deck, wrestling with Lauren’s fast pitch helmet. She missed all of last season because of the injuries to her arm, but has been working hard at physiotherapy, over the year has slowly been improving, and was now looking at her first game of the season. After two days of searching for her equipment, we found the bag in the garage where her batting helmet and gloves were. There I also found the brand new cage (wire mask that attaches to the front of the helmet so she doesn’t get a ball in the face) Myron had bought three years ago, sitting in it’s wrapper, unattached.
No surprise.
I love my husband, but he had a terrible tendency to procrastinate. (Note early blog entry about our honeymoon where he vowed to get counselling for this problem. Never got around to it.) The mask wasn’t actually attached to the helmet, so I got out the tools, opened the instructions and began putting it together only to find out he had bought the wrong cage for her type of helmet.
“MYRON!” I found myself yelling at the sky. “FOR PETE’S SAKE, YOU BOUGHT THE WRONG CAGE!” It took me two hours to manipulate a four screw cage to fit a three screw helmet, but after taking it apart four times and adapting a few things, I got it on straight and sent her off to the game…where she found out the cage was also too heavy for her helmet, tipping it forward, rendering it useless and forcing her to borrow one from another player.
I use to dread baseball season because everything we did suddenly revolved around the team schedule. Meals were scheduled around practices, tournaments took over weekends, every minute was scheduling and drills, coaches meetings and training, clinics, games, the detailed stats Myron kept on every player. It dominated our lives. It drove me crazy. But Myron loved it. Loved it. Every year he became obsessed and I’d lie in bed listening as he went over every single play of the night, all the ump’s calls, what each girl did or didn’t do and his plans for the next day.
It seems impossible, but I miss it.
I don’t think its easy for Lauren to play without her dad there, watching, coaching, cheering her on. I know it hasn’t been easy for his assistant coach who has taken over the team, who misses his friend and the time they had together. It is the second spring without him and its just not the same. Plus now I have to go find a new cage and I don’t have a clue what I’m supposed to get. Karson insists he will never play baseball. I wonder why and hope some day this changes. Even if it means having to endure those introductory, mind-numbing games all over again.
On Sunday we went to the North Shore to meet friends who were taking us to their cabin for the afternoon. As we waited at the marina, I was talking to a gentleman who said, “It’s too bad you weren’t here earlier today…you missed about 100 dolphins that swam by, right over there!” My mouth was hanging open and then I had to laugh. I missed them AGAIN! First in Mexico then right here in our own backyard. But it didn’t sting as much this time. Because for the past two weeks we’ve had dolphins showing up all over the place. Metaphorically.
Dolphins showing up unexpectedly to clean out the garage and take everything away; dolphins who fixed the kids bikes and our backdoor.
Dolphins who gave us a used swimming pool out of the blue. Our old one was ruined and I had been praying to find one for the three other kids to use this summer as I might not be able to move Bryn anywhere after her surgery and they‘d be stuck at home.
Dolphins who left anonymous gifts both in our mailbox and at our back door.
Dolphins sending birthday cards, giving hugs, rides, and a meal on some very difficult days. This month, dolphins have been everywhere. And I’ve seen them all.
And then there was a whale, of sorts. A bizarre message that I wonder if anyone who misses Myron might take as much comfort in as I do. A medical practitioner who never knew or met Myron, who didn’t know us until she became part of the huge team of people treating us this past year, had a dream. She told us that in all the years she’s practiced, she’s never had a dream involving clients. But this week she did.
She was sent to heaven to deliver a pizza, of all things. Walking down a street that looked like a street in Disneyland, she found herself repeating, “The father of…, the father of…,” not knowing why. She knew she had to find building number 17 and when she did, went inside. The room was filled with people, but she noticed one man in particular and said, “The father of…the father of... Karson! Are you the father of Karson?” She knew it was Myron, and he smiled a big smile and said with great joy, “I am!”
“Are you Myron?” she asked.
“Yes!” he said.
“I know your kids!” she said in amazement. “How are you?”
Myron smiled and said, “I’m doing great!” She realized that he was busy doing a job, that he had been given a job in heaven, not a stuffy office job (her words) but that he was organizing something, socializing with the people around him and that they were all having fun. She realized she was supposed to deliver the pizza to him and after she gave it to him, woke up.
He is well. He is happy. He has been given the task of organizing things, which if you knew Myron, makes more sense than I can explain, and he is enjoying the people around him. She asked Taeryn, “Why would I be delivering pizza?” Taeryn said, “I don’t know…but my dad sure loved it!”
Its funny what you miss, and what you take comfort in. I’m grateful for it all. The other night at supper, Karson dropped his fork and yelled, “I just realized that daddy is talking to JESUS! He’s dancing with Jesus!” He looked at us with huge eyes. “That’s SO cool!”
It is. Not always easy to live with. But so very cool.
_________________________________________________________________
A NOTE: An amazing CD has been written and recorded by the very talented Steve Mitchinson and produced by the incredible Philip Janz, called “Giver of Life”. I wanted to put a link to it here as it is a beautiful collection of original songs designed for those who are in the end-stages of life. Steve Mitchinson is a British physician who now lives in B.C.’s lower mainland and has felt a special calling to care for the palliative. His CD is soothing, thought-provoking, and an oasis in the midst of suffering. I would highly encourage anyone who is either in the end-stages of earthly life or grieving the loss of a loved-one to follow this link. I was asked to write a review for it on Itunes, and it was an honour to do so.
http://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/giver-of-life/id511496718
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