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Backwards N High Heels

Balancing work and play while wearing many hats (I mean heels).

Do you believe in angels?

January 22, 2020

I have shared in past blog posts and through stories on my Facebook Page, inquisitive questions asked by my young daughter, Logan, especially regarding heaven and the afterlife. I think the loss of my grandmother in 2018, left an imprint on her mental capacity to discuss death and heaven.

My grandmother was a very integral part of our life. She died too young in my humble opinion. At only 76, I felt she had so many more years to live. However, she suffered some health setbacks in 2012, and from that point forward her health declined. Still not at the shocking pace to leave her suddenly in the hospital with staff telling us everything was failing, but at a pace that required my mother to step in and provide in-house care on a daily basis for many years.

Given that my mother was also my daughter’s listed “daycare” through the workweek, Logan spent more time with her great grandmother than most children typically do. For those days and years, I am grateful. Because of that, her death was sudden not only for us but for a little girl use to seeing her great grandmother day after day.

We never sugarcoated my grandmother’s passing with Logan. We sat her down and told her Meema got sick, died, and is now in Heaven with God.

She didn’t attend any funeral services. That we did indeed shelter her from, but she has visited her gravesite with both me and alone with my Mom.

I share all this because she talks openly about Heaven, and Jesus, and death, and the afterlife. So when she asks about angels, I tell her they live among us. Her Meema is an angel, her paternal great grandfather, ‘Big Pap,’ who Luke was named after, and she never met, is an angel, and her extended family members that are no longer here among us, they too are in Heaven with God.

She smiles and goes about her day.

I don’t question these things that I tell my child, but as an adult with a different set of reality and perspective on life, I look harder than she does. I find myself wanting a sign to validate the things I say. I wonder if when we say, “Our loved ones are near or looking down,” is this really the case. And, not because I do not believe, but because I so badly want to believe.

If you read back through some of my writing you will learn that a red cardinal appeared days before my grandmother died, tapping on my window. The morning of her funeral service, a red cardinal crashed into that same window when in a fit of tears cried out for a sign she was near. And those incidents, signs, or whatever you call them have continued nearly two years after her death.

We are in the thick of a heavy remodel at our home. Our kitchen, living room, and dining room, are tore apart and covered in a dusty mess. Our other rooms contain all the possessions of the rooms ripped apart.

Home alone with both kids, I had just laid Luke down for a nap and Logan was basking in the glory of screentime on the iPad, while I packed up kitchen cabinet belongings into cardboard boxes and loaded our dishwasher for another round of power cleaning.

There were dishes to do, more boxes to be carried to the shed, and laundry to start.

I had just loaded an empty baby diaper box with Tupperware and some glass dishes, including the large mixing/measuring bowl I snagged from my grandmother’s home after she died.

With a kitchen torn apart and tools across the counters, I sat the box on top of the stove.

I thought about running to the basement to work on some laundry, leaving the kids – one sleeping, one nearby in her bed playing a game, but something in the sink caught my eye, and I decided to start the dish load before venturing downstairs.

In those split seconds of mental debate, I smelled it.

It was a hot smell. Strong smoke. I distinctly knew something was burning.

When I turned, the box that I had placed on the stove, less than a minute prior, had caught fire, and thick gray smoke billowed from the top of the box, which I had makeshift sealed shut.

In a hurry, without thinking too much of the consequences, I grabbed the box, opened the backdoor and threw it outside.

Somehow when I placed the box on the cold stovetop, I must have bumped a nob and turned the back left burner on high. It caught the cardboard box on fire, melting the Tupperware inside, and searing some of the glass with an orangish stain.

My grandmother’s mixing/measuring bowl, untouched.

I was a bit distraught by the quickness of the events and even more sick to my stomach on what would have happened if, in that split second of subconscious decision making, I had chosen to go downstairs to work on laundry.

My whole kitchen would have ignited most likely in just a few minutes.

I called my Mom. Because that is what I do in such situations. I always call my Mom.

“Someone was looking out for me and the kids today,” I stated.

When I got off the phone, I heard a BANG on my backdoor window.

There it was – the red cardinal.

I hadn’t seen the bird in months, and within minutes from the ordeal, and after stating out loud that someone was watching over me, the bird had appeared.

I quickly grabbed my phone and captured this video.

You can even see the cardboard box, which had lost most of its bottom from catching on fire, sitting there on my deck.

“Where are the angels?” My daughter asks.

Well, they are here. I like to imagine…

they sat at the edge of the bed as I laid awake at 3 am in a freet of worry.
they stood watchful in the doorway when my baby’s fever entered uncharted territory.
they caught my wandering attention when the car in front of me suddenly stopped.
they walked the hallway of the hospital as my bed was wheeled to the operating room for my c-section.

And, maybe they shine like the sun, a light hitting the glass in the sink, drawing my attention to stay, so I don’t walk away from what would have been a dangerous disaster if that box had sat more than 30 seconds longer on my hot stove.

Was it a coincidence the cardinal appeared so soon? Maybe. Although, I believe in God, Heaven, and my angels, what I search for is the sign, and I choose to believe it was just the sign I needed to know they are indeed near.

2 Comments CATEGORIES // Family TAGGED: Angels, Backwards In High Heels, Backwards N High Heels, BackwardsNHighHeels, Dealing With Death, Grief, Stories of Hope

Someone Is Missing

April 21, 2018

Someone-Is-Missing_Grief_BackwardsNHighHeelsBlog
The day of her funeral I found myself feeling an immense sense of emptiness, sadness, and exhaustion. If you have lost someone exceptionally close to you, I imagine you can relate. The feeling is numb, with pangs of sorrow that stab your gut out of nowhere.

After the service had ended, after following the hearse, after a brief, intimidate family moment at the cemetery, my husband and I were en route to pick up our daughter from his mother’s house. The only way I know how to describe what my body and mind was going through is to relate it to a plug hidden somewhere on my body that had been released. You know, the plastic plugs that are placed on inflatable balloon toys? Someone must have pulled it from me. But, BAM out of no where, as if someone decided to blow hot air into the deflated balloon, bringing it back to life, I would be hit with the deepest sadness and reminder of her being gone. Sobs would overcome me and I ached in a need that I knew nothing could fulfill.

Family and friends gathered after the service for food and togetherness. I still find it odd that we as American’s observe the conclusion of death services with a lunch/dinner service. Usually eating is the last thing on most of our minds, yet we gather and try to carry on some sort of conversation with those around us.

As I walked into the room, holding my three-year-old’s hand, searching for a seat, I found myself subconsciously scouring the room. “Who is missing?” I recall thinking, my eyes gazing up and down the rows of tables and chairs, seeing face after face. “Someone is missing.” I felt anxious, identifying my siblings in the room, to make sure they all had made it back from the cemetery. There was my mom and dad, paternal grandparents, and cousins. As I made eye contact again with my mom, the words were on the tip of my tongue, “Who is missing?” But quickly before the breath turned into a voice, a heavy weight hit me, it was her. She was missing.

It is a moment, a feeling, and a reality I will always remember when I think back to her services. She was missing. She will always be missing.

And, that is the part that lingers with someone’s family after death. A feeling I have never experienced fully until she left us.

When someone suffers with grief – noticed I said with, not through, because we never get through the grief, often friends and family with best intentions will say things such as, “It will get better,” or “Every day it gets easier.” The sentiments are meant well, but being so fresh off of her death, it feels too soon to imagine those days. The reality is there is now a point in our lives that we will always refer to as with her in it and with her gone. Living now in the “with her gone” phase is a mix of guilt and sadness.

I find myself wishing for more time to make every day count. I should have visited her more. I should have called more often. I could have taken Logan to see her more and made more time. More, more, more – everything is about the more I wish I could have done.

Then there is the sadness part. Realizing every major milestone that now lies ahead of us, she won’t physically be here for. She is missing. A giant void is now in her place.

I am a Christian. I believe in God and I know she is living eternity in Heaven. I rejoice in knowing she watches me and her bright spirit is around us. We breathe her in. She walks beside us. She lives through us, she lives through me. But, I am here on Earth and she is not, and right now that does not feel like enough. That is where the sorrow begins and doesn’t end.

I read a quote shortly after my grandmother died, “Grief is love with no place to go.” Oh, how true. I have nowhere to send all this love since she is not physically here to receive it. Instead it sits inside my heart spinning round and round, and I sit here missing her.

– – –

Today you can honor her or someone you are missing by sharing kindness. I encourage you to spread love and a random act of kindness in their name.

1 Comment CATEGORIES // Family TAGGED: Backwards In High Heels, Backwards N High Heels, Backwards N High Heels Lifestyle Blog, BackwardsNHighHeels, Dealing With Death, Dealing With Loss, Faith, Family, Grief, Losing a Grandparent

Have Courage and Be Kind

April 15, 2018

HaveCourageAndBeKind
Yesterday we lost my grandmother. A woman whose life I could never rightfully honor in one blog post, through one story/message, or in the character counts allotted by social media accounts.

Too soon to write? No. My Meema loved words. She was an avid reader. In fact, she could read a book in one day/night. It often amazed me, as I would typically gift her a book for her birthday or Christmas, and laughed when she would call me the following day to tell me how good it was. “Seriously? You read that already?” I would ask every time.

She loved my Blog. Often I would send a transcript of a piece, usually the really personal ones, and she would review them through Facebook messenger before I posted to go live. It is in these somber moments that I am so glad I picked up my laptop many years ago and decided to share my life with you. As writing is therapy for me, it has fruitfully provided me with a digital collection of moments between her and I that I can keep forever.

Every morning my husband provides a subconscious love language gesture. He brings me my coffee in bed. Every morning. He could be running late for work – coffee. He could really dislike me for words the evening before or a martial spat – coffee. It is a steady routine that I note and don’t take for granted. This morning was the same.

Although, on this morning I laid in bed, staring out the window as the morning sun arose, the windows open from this unseasonably warm weather, listening to the birds chirping as a new day began, and feeling the deepest of sadness, questioning whether to get up or just continue to lay there in silence.

“Have courage and be kind.”

Of all the mugs that I own, which are stacked on top of each other, and shoved into the kitchen cabinet, this one made its way to me. “Have courage and be kind.” I smiled and thought of her.

I have always said that the most beautiful thing in this life is that on our darkest of days, the moments we find ourselves in the Valley, the sun still rises. God willing, our eyes open and gift us another day on this Earth the most powerful thing each of us will do every day is to sit up, place our feet on the ground and RISE. We rise up. We stand. We pick ourselves up and live. When we feel like giving up, when we want to wallow in sadness, when we can’t go on, when we question every single thing swirling around us, we wake up and we rise. This simple act that we overlook every day is our resilience in this life. It is our courage to go on.

So I rose.

She was the kindest soul I have ever known. She was selfless, and throughout her years she gave and she sacrificed. Oh, the stories of her acts of kindness could write a novel. Something we talked about. Knowing my love for writing and hers for reading, she would always share her sentiments behind a story of her life. Whenever someone did her wrong, her way of handling the situation was to love a little bit stronger. I see my mother in her, and I see how much every one of us could honor her by being kinder to others and ourselves.

Today hurts. Tomorrow will hurt. Forever without her is going to hurt.

But I can honor her today by having the courage and being kind.

3 Comments CATEGORIES // Family TAGGED: Backwards In High Heels, Backwards N High Heels, Backwards N High Heels Lifestyle Blog, Family, Grief, Have Courage And Be Kind, Loss, Motherhood

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