Forty-Four and Two-Thirds Years to Be Exact

I met him at 6 a.m. seminary in October of 1975. I was 15 and he was just about to turn 18. He came with his best friend, Tom, who I had become friends with too. The seminary teacher, Brother Price, had written his name on the chalkboard: MIKE FITZGERALD.

He lived 70 miles away from my parent's Lake Oswego home, in Monmouth, Oregon, on a 700 acre cattle ranch that he'd persuaded his father to buy. His father, a lifelong Catholic, had threatened him that if he joined the "Mormon church," he would be taken out of the will, and any Mormon that came onto the property would be shot. Those threats did not stop him from doing what his heart was telling him to do; he was baptized on November 14th, 1975, his 18th birthday. Before leaving the baptism that evening, I gave him a hug.

We started writing letters, because back in 1975, long distance phone calls were absurdly expensive. We wrote letters at least weekly for the next 3+ years. Two of those years were while he was away on a mission to Cleveland, Ohio, and when he returned, I was away at Ricks College in southeastern Idaho. We continued to write, pretty much until we were married in August of 1979. We had never lived near one another the entire time we'd known each other. It was always a long distance romance.

One year for Christmas, he took all of our letters, organized them chronologically, and filled binders with them. We had a lot to tell each other while we were still growing up. They serve as a history of our lives during those years.

Following our wedding, we packed up our little brown Volkswagen Rabbit, hooked a tiny U-Haul trailer to it, and headed east, chugging our way over the mountains to Rexburg, Idaho, where we'd make our first home. We had a furnished, two bedroom apartment, amazingly close to campus. Previously, it had been a girls' apartment but had recently been converted to married student housing. It had a tub but no shower. I'd always wonder how four girls managed with only a tub!

We took too many classes that first semester. It was hard to be under so much pressure from school while trying to adapt to married life. We both dropped a couple of classes in order to pick up some sanity. We were in a married student ward, we made many friends, and we were living the newlywed life!

Eventually, we moved briefly to Tooele, Utah (summer sales, please don't remind him of it!), back to Rexburg, then on to Orem, Utah, while he attended BYU. Then to Tualatin, Oregon, where we lived in an apartment, then rental home when he got his first grown-up job. Back to Orem when he thought he'd get a master's degree. And once more to Oregon, this time to West Linn, Lake Oswego’s neighbor, where we made two more moves within the city, and lived there for 16 years. We moved to Mapleton, Utah, living in two different homes, then to downtown Salt Lake City, living in an apartment and then a condo, and finally purchasing a townhome in Draper where we fully intended for our next move to be the final one, the one into eternity.

Fifteen times we boxed up our things and went together to the next adventure. We also collected three daughters along the way, five grandsons, a few equines, numerous felines, and several canines too. We loved hard and we prayed hard. We survived some VERY challenging times and had created a full and rich life together.

Then, with a stroke of Judge Kelly's pen, it all ended on June 16th, 2020.

We were two-months-minus-one-day shy of celebrating our 41st anniversary. There has been serious upset in the family, and in some ways, our family is no longer the way it once was. There are wounds galore that have not healed. In the end, we could not find common ground when the family discord and wounds caused even small, old issues to become monumental. Consequently, the house came tumbling down.

The wreckage is by far the most painful thing I have endured in my life.

I had a doctor make a small error in surgery that landed me in the hospital for three weeks and nearly claimed my life. I later had a major surgery that caused my body to nearly call it quits. He has endured an autoimmune disease (gout) for several decades, and now fights illness constantly due to the damage done to his body from medications used to treat that disease. None of this though compares in any way with what it is like to watch your family come unglued and your marriage crumble.

They have their reasons. He has his reasons. I have my reasons.

I have watched longtime friends fall off their chairs when they heard this news. 

"It knocked the wind out of me," 

"I never ever saw this coming," 

"You were the last people I would have ever expected this from," 

"I am shocked beyond belief," 

"I don't know what to say; I have no words right now." 

Me too. ME TOO!

I am a Grief Support Specialist. I sit with people who have lost their beloved, and I listen as they tell their story of loss, sorrow and pain. I cry with them because my heart hurts too when someone else's hurts. I encourage them to "get it out," to not hold their emotions inside where they can erode both health and heart. "Tell me about your wife/husband/mother/father/companion/friend; I want to know them the way you know them." I listen as they confess that they feel they didn't do enough, or did something thoughtless that they feel may have hastened the passing, or they tell me they did not treat their beloved as good as they wish they had. My heart listens when they cannot speak because their emotions have hijacked their vocal cords. I sometimes read to them the words of scripture or the quote from an old man who compares grief to waves in an ocean. And I encourage them to feel all of their feelings.

What though do you do when your loss is not due to death? When your eternal dreams are shattered right before your very eyes? When you do not want to disparage anyone in your family but you are hurt so deeply that no words exist to describe your feelings? Or the stream of divorcees who quickly proclaim, "You will feel so much better,” or “This too will pass,” as if it is a gallstone that is hung up on its way out. Or when you refuse to tell, or let anyone else tell, your father because this was his first "son," and you cannot handle his broken heart on top of your own?

A song, a memory, a place, a word, a movie . . .  they all can trigger my tears. Sometimes they trigger anger, but most often it is sadness. The deepest sadness I have ever known. There is stress, as I have shared before. Employment struggles due to the pandemic, loan challenges due to the employment struggles, additional health insurance costs, and on it goes. In the end though, it is still the disbelief and the sadness that permeate everything else.

Sorrow has won the day.

I do know, deep within my soul, that healing is found through the atonement of Jesus Christ. He is the only one that knows "my" sadness, my unique recipe of life ingredients that came together to cause a broken family, a broken marriage, and a broken heart. I hold tightly onto that. In faith I make it through another day. In faith I choose to believe that He heals ALL wounds. In faith I walk the path before me, not knowing where it leads. He is the Master Healer. My broken heart is in His capable hands.

My Child, artist David Bowman

A Mother's Aching Heart

My soul aches on this day, the day set aside to honor and remember mothers.

I have fond recollections of honoring my mom on Mother’s Day, both from the time I was small, as well as into adulthood. I remember making or choosing things that I hoped she would love and would be a keepsake for her. I too recall receiving things from my own daughters that they had made or chosen to celebrate me on that special day. For about 35 years I was given love and attention, as if I was actually a mother worthy of it. Mike used to go so overboard, and wear himself out, that we finally agreed on simple gifts and take-out food, just to conserve energy and clean-up time.

These past few years have been brutal. I anticipate Mother’s Day nearly as dreadfully as I would anticipate a surgery. That is the only thing that I can think of that is more horrid to me. How one can be loved, honored, celebrated, doted on, and then be both privately and publicly shunned, with a refusal to join together for professional help, as if the years of a mother’s love, sacrifice, cheering, believing, helping, and putting her own aspirations on hold, are of no value anymore? One's mind and heart simply do not know what to do with that.

There are times that I just need my mom.

Back in 1991, my “simple” surgery healing took a wrong turn. I was taken to the ER, where they determined there was “nothing wrong” with me and sent me away. I arrived back home at about 1 a.m., and because I didn’t know what to do or how I could live one more minute with the most excruciating pain I’ve ever known, I called Mom. She arrived, came to my bed sporting her colorful and soft shirt, and her trademark scent of Victoria’s Secret Strawberry Champagne lotion, and she wrapped me in her arms as she cried with me. She too didn’t know what could be done, but she joined me in my absolute misery and let me know I was loved.

That “there’s nothing wrong” pain turned into a three week hospital stay filled with morphine, no food, an NG tube, CT and ultrasound scans, diarrhea, a grapefruit-sized abscess, a wide and winding incision with staples, antibiotics that made me vomit and nearly split my incision, a colostomy and mucous fistula, an allergy to morphine that resulted in me watching horses gallop past my third story window, and an all-out battle to stay on this side of the veil. My doctor remarked that he nearly lost me and that I was "too damn skinny." Through it all, Mom was there. Although there was an empty bed in the room, no one was allowed to sleep on it, so she commandeered a cardiac chair, brought blankets and her pillow, and slept near my side because it was dangerous and frightening when I couldn’t always get the help I needed during the night. When I told her that I didn’t know if I was going to make it, she cried and told me I would. I had two young children that we both thought needed their mom. (That is now debatable!)

Over these years, my family has loved to gather, to celebrate and honor one another for birthdays or other holidays, or truthfully, just for the heck of it. We enjoyed one another’s company and, at least in my estimation, we were part of a web of interconnected humans that would go to battle for one another. We prayed and we played. We showed up when there was a crisis and all helped in the ways we could. We loved hard.

How then can something so beautiful turn into something so sour that the unity is gone? For nearly three years now, there have been no all-family gatherings. Faith and devotion have changed in ways I never saw coming. There are those that choose not to wish me a Happy Mother’s Day, or happy any-other-day. The contrast is glaring. The reality is excruciating. The sadness is palpable.

Mom, I really need a hug.

I am left with my faith in a loving Father, who understands my broken heart, who hears my wails in the night, my pleas for help, and who sends me kind and loving friends and family to keep me going when I’m uncertain that I can. He reassures me that all is not lost, even if it appears that it is. He knows my mother-heart, the heart that would cause me to run in front of a freight train to save my children, the heart that fought so very hard through two life-threatening illnesses because she did not want to leave her children motherless, the heart that has never before known so much agony and pain. He understands and He freely offers His healing balm.

He tells me that I am His and He has the biggest and best family of them all.

Life Changes in a Rapidly Changing World

It's been years since I've had a blog, and I accidentally let my website domain lapse, but the writer part of me is begging for a voice with all that is happening in our/my world. So here I am, with a fresh start.

It has been a crazy few months in this world of ours, with the global pandemic of COVID-19. Businesses closed everywhere you turn, few cars were on the roads, people kept to their own domiciles in order to not spread the germs of this sometimes deadly virus, and many deaths throughout the world. I was constantly out and about because I work in hospice, so my job has continued through it all. I have loved driving the freeways with hardly any cars on them, any time of the day! That has been a treat.

That's the serious state of the world right now, and likewise, there are serious issues taking place in my personal life. The combination of the oddity of the world around me, along with my own mountainous struggles, is a doozy!

I have been cautious about sharing widely all that has happened. We had some very intense difficulties in our family nearly three years ago. Since that time, there hasn't been peace amongst some family members. What happened then has had everything to do with what is happening now, effectively causing smaller issues to become giant problems. A magnifying glass, a spotlight effect is what it feels like to me.

Although my husband and I love each other, and have loved each other for more than 44 years, we have mutually arrived at the conclusion that we can no longer be spouses under these circumstances, circumstances that are not related to sin. Although this seems sudden to most everyone who has known us, it is something that we have had to weigh out for several years. The particular circumstances of our difficulties have made it challenging to go for professional help. Although there may be things we'd wish for, and would like to demand out of others, sometimes we have to accept that others have their agency and we cannot force the things we feel are best and right. I am getting well practiced at "letting things be."

Needless to say, my world has caved in. I now move through each day with a broken heart. It is simply impossible to not feel brokenhearted when the person you have loved the most in the whole wide world is no longer your daily companion. He lives several miles away now, and has for several months, and when we made the decision to separate, it felt sudden and unbelievable to me. Although we communicate frequently and see one another almost daily because of our pups, and we behave amicably, there's no getting around the fact that everything is very different. I cannot type those words without a flood of tears; tears are my daily companions. Never ever, not even for a moment, before all of this happened, did I have any thought at all about divorce. It was not part of our vocabulary, even if we were very, very upset with one another. Soon, though, it will be our reality.

Although everything I have said so far is not "news" for me, obviously, I am learning that the few people I have shared it with find themselves in a state of shock. I know! I have been dealing with shock myself for about three months. I have learned to visit hospice patients while in a state of shock, to go through an earthquake for a double load of shock, to try to function alone in my home while in a state of shock. It is shocking.

More than anything, I am sharing here because I've learned a few new things and have had other truths reinforced. I am eternally grateful for the friends that have been propping me up as I sink into yet another hole. Although I know for an absolute certainty, that when someone says, "If you need to talk, give me a call," they are very sincere in doing so, very sincere; yet doing exactly that, making the call, is a very difficult thing for someone who is hurting, who is battling circumstance-induced depression (or other causes), because the very nature of depression prevents one from actually doing the simple things that would be helpful. It is a conundrum.

Something that I find the most helpful is when someone says to me, "Let's get together. What are some dates/times that will work for you?" or, "If you feel like talking, I'd love to talk. Can I call you sometime this evening?" rather than the open-ended invitation, "Give me a call if you need to talk," which requires the action to be instigated by me. None of us like to feel "needy," or to prove to others that we are, simply by responding to that invitation, even if the truth is that we are very needy! Getting it into gear to call or try to set up the get-together can often be too much. I have said the same things myself to friends in struggle. I am now becoming hyper-aware of how I approach my offers of friendship and help. It is so frustrating to feel this bit of depression that prevents me from doing anything that makes me feel better! 

May I humbly suggest that we re-think how we offer our help to others? It really can make a world of difference!

I am grateful for all of my friends, near and far. I am also so thankful for those who remember to keep in touch with me, who sometimes don't take no for an answer, but do so without plowing over the top of me. I am not who I once was. I am in the fire and it is burning right up next to my soul. A life change like this is huge any time it happens. It is particularly challenging to face during the pandemic when I cannot be with my loved ones or friends. We have all taken seriously the "stay home, stay safe" challenge. Zoom is nice, but it is no substitute for a hug, for presence. As a hospice chaplain, that is also very true. I told my boss the other day, "I just want to hold my patients' hands and stare into their souls." I can't do that for hardly anyone right now, but for my heart, it is what matters most.

This is a wild, painful ride. So far, here are some of the things I've learned along my journey:

1.   Life can be very full of surprises, not all of them fun.
2.   If you're unhappy with someone's behavior, talk to them about it with love in your heart. Don't let it fester and come out like a shotgun blast. The damage can be vast and lasting.
3.   Love people. Look for what is good and forgive what is challenging. We are all here learning together. Remember that "when people know better, they do better." Sometimes they don't know better, even if we think they should.
4.   Pay attention to what your childhood traumas and generational issues are and how they may be wreaking havoc in your adult life relationships. Seek professional help.
5.   Be kind. Be tender. Be patient.
6.   Let God whisper to you words of understanding about your situation that help you find peace, and help you take another step when you don't know if you can.
7.   Be thankful for your friends and family members who love you no matter what.
8.   Notice and acknowledge the small victories, the subtle shifts, and the big and small miracles. Heaven is nearby.
9.  Have no shame. Shame never benefits anyone; it is a tool of the devil to make you feel worthless. We can feel bad for things we've done that hurt another or even hurt ourselves, but that does not make us bad. 
10. Be grateful. Gratitude is a magnet for more good. Have faith. Pray often. Then hang on for all you're worth. 

We all have our challenges. We all wonder if we'll make it through. Many of us look to the heavens and wonder if God is paying attention. I have learned that He is. He allows us our learning without interference though, and if we aren't careful and prayerful, we may think we're being ignored. I know that we are not being ignored, we are being loved as we pass through the painful experiences that He knew we would have. He provides angels on both sides of the veil to encourage us, minister to us, love us.

And when everything else seems to fall, God is there to catch us. He is good all of the time.