Notes From A Broken Heart

It's Going to be a Bright Sunshiny Day Decades ago, Jazz great Al Jarreau recorded a  pick-me-up song  that even now I recall on especially dismal, down-in-the-doldrums-days.  "I can see clearly now the rain has gone," he sang. Not only that, he noted that all obstacles had disappeared; the dark clouds that had him down had dissipated; and forecaster that he now was, "it was going to be a bright, bright sunshiny day!"  The lyrics held such promise.   By that time, blood had  journeyed from the top of my head to my foot-tapping toes.  I'd be ready to face another day. Not any more, my heart cries out, not any more I hadn't even thought about Jarreau or that song for years.   Why would I?  I remember the times when a poem Langston Hughes wrote painted the mosaic of my life.  Writing during the Harlem Renaissance and living as bleak as mine, Hughes declared, "Life for me ain't been no crystal stair!"  I'd silently agree, with an

0617 Christmas in June I found myself head-humming a Christmas carol, “O come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant…” and wondered why that song suddenly reverberated in my spirit as I drove home  from the store on a late June.  Hmmm. I had spent the first quarter of this New Year moping, drooping, and dragging around a passel of pain,   day by inexorable day. My days had been unremarkable, no absolutely dismal ones but no spectacularly Alleluia-Thank-You-Jesus-ones, either.    First of all, since second grade, I've understood that buckets run from me; it seems I can't carry one, and certainly not multiple ones, in one.    This is what happened.  My teacher whom I lived to please, had assigned us to  memorize "The Star Spangled Banner," with the expectation that we would sing all the stanzas the following afternoon.  What a challenge! I went home and did just that. The following day, our teacher stood in front of the class and directed us through its vers

A God Assignment When I met with my Grief Therapist weeks ago, he reminded me that God gives assignments to Believers.  In fact, he explained, he talks to Our Father while in the shower and daily asks to be used in His service. God always gives my coach an assignment before the   end of the day, usually soon after he leaves home.  It sounded good to me so I began mimicking the Coach, daily asking God what He would have me do for Him.  I rarely thought about the execution of an assignment, assuming that I had done a good deed of some kind or another.  "God always answers prayers," I'd glibly remind myself at the end of the day when or if  I'd take a haphazard inventory. On this Wednesday, I felt compelled to go to the grocery store  on my way home from a counseling session.  I actually tried to talk myself out of going because my wallet was pretty slim, my coin purse was a little lighter than usual,  and I couldn't think of anything I either wanted or ne

            Even in laughter the heart may ache, and joy may end in grief.” (Proverbs 14: 13 ) So true! Too painfully true!It's hard to "Amen" it, mainly because I don't want it to be true.  Sometimes a proverb's harsh grittiness forces me to retreat like a coward before a lion.  It's too close to real life, a reminder that for too long I've hidden behind rose-colored glasses like Doris Day trying to assume a Joan Crawford.role. It feels like I'm just realizing that no one lives happily ever after.  That if I read the scripts and followed the rules, my reward would be "no surprises," or at least not ones I could not handle. I really wasn't aware of the roles I'd taken on until my Baby Daughter died without warning.  What could have prepared me? Would having read Proverbs 14: 13 have done it?  What if I had known of Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 been enough? "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heav

A Different Christmas I found it difficult, the wait, to get back to my sister’s home on Lake Michigan, Hype Park, to be exact.  Before the tragedy, I would awaken before daybreak, carefree, boil water for tea, and position myself to embrace the mind blowing expanse of the Lake.  I would sit for hours, decompressing from days, maybe months of stress. Some two years later, the terrain has changed.  The Lake’s ebb and tide predominate.   White-capped, the waters come together with a precision that reaches their zenith and segue toward shore, the water still a grayish, mauvish color that defies description, tugging silently backward to its base.  Nuances heighten a distinctive difference, not in the Lake that is older than the State through which it flows, but in me. I do not see the Lake the way I did two years ago.  Yes, the window’s vantage point differs from that year’s location, situated now on a  different floor and direction.   Yes, I heard more of the surf’s roar one

A Different Christmas I found it difficult, the wait, to get back to my sister’s home on Lake Michigan, Hype Park, to be exact.  Before the tragedy, I would awaken before daybreak, carefree, boil water for tea, and position myself to embrace the mind blowing expanse of the Lake.  I would sit for hours, decompressing from days, maybe months of stress. Some two years later, the terrain has changed.  The Lake’s ebb and tide predominate. White-capped, the waters come together with a precision that reaches their zenith and segue toward shore, the water still a grayish, mauvish color that defies description, tugging silently backward to its base.  Nuances heighten a distinctive difference, not in the Lake that is older than the State through which it flows, but in me. I do not see the Lake the way I did two years ago.  Yes, the window’s vantage point differs from that year’s location, situated now on a  different floor and direction. Yes, I heard more of the surf’s roar one fl

God Loves Me? God loves me, I’m told,  with a Love that surpasses human understanding.   Do I reflexively accept this declaration because I actually believe it, or is this merely the assertion of an impersonal, “religious” play on words to   describe a presumed relationship with God? Is He God, or is He my Father? Did He love so much that He gave His One and Only Son? To die on a cross thousands of years before I was born? Really? In fact, what do I know about love, either as a common or proper noun?   And not to get the horse before the cart, what do I know about the Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent  Father of us all? Seriously, are these questions just distractions Ireceive to duck and dodge feeling the real (and legitimate, I proclaim), rage I try to keep under control as I avoid the gut-wrenching anguish of loss, or do the answers really matter? These questions take me back to teenage years when  as a novice, fledgling writer whatever

What Now? You’ve survived the unthinkable, an act so devastating, so devious, and so far-reaching that you’d never entertained the thought or possibility that such a thing could happen to you. You’ve tried your best to shield yourself from the truth, to run from what is inescapable. You’ve closed the door on reality, and any path that may have taken you there. Yet, the truth is the truth and the truth is the light, as you’ve heard people say as long as you can remember. “The truth is the light, Baby,” your grandmother used to pronounce. You didn’t understand it then; you don’t understand it now, nor do you care. It happened, that you can’t deny. It happened. Now, what? Now you suffer! You can’t even refer to yourself in the first person, singular pronoun “I.” “ I” now identifies herself as “you,” whoever she is. That hurts too bad and you fear that level of pain is unsustainable. There’s no solace in the lyrics, “it hurts so bad.” Mostly, you’re mute. As days go by, with the

Memories I’ve been so consumed, even corroded, by my response to my daughter’s death that only today, some 14 months later, did I remember that her paternal Aunt had died a mere three weeks before she did. Irony reveals Top Ramen noodles as the trigger of the memory. Her Aunt introduced me to the little square package of dried noodles the summer she vacationed in Denver as she unpacked it from her luggage. Born in the Great State of Texas (the last frontier as far as I was concerned), she wasn’t sure that Denver, the “Roll up the sidewalks at dusk Cow Town,” would stock it. To be fair to all and put her visit in perspective, my Sister-in-Law first vacationed here in the early 1970s. Anyway. She was a wonderfully inventive cook and dubbed her first meal “ Ramen Supreme a la Ann.” The noodle dish contained a melange of spices from my pantry (since I was no slouch in the kitchen, either) and butter ( I didn’t do margarine even then), that she topped off with scallions. Lawdy, Lawdy