1,461 Days

As I have written about grieving the loss of Amy, a theme has emerged. It is of the struggle to find balance. It is the tug between darkness and light – fog and clarity; the conflict between focusing on the past, the present, or the future; and the challenge of holding conflicting emotions in the same space. 

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In many ways, it seems like it was only yesterday that Amy died. The memory of that 5:30 a.m. phone call often elbows its way into my consciousness. It is particularly vivid when I’m on my front porch on cool, fall mornings as the stars give way to a rising sun. But, as intense and familiar as those memories can be, it wasn’t yesterday – it was 1,461 days ago - four years.  The question that always accompanies those memories is the one I felt in that moment – now what?

 

Much has been written about the stages of grief. Writers offer that grief is a process or a journey or a path or one of countless metaphors we use to try to make sense of something that defies comprehension. I have also used and overused those metaphors to help myself understand the discordant and chaotic nature of the grief process. Some of those descriptions come close, but all fall short of capturing my experience.

I could hardly move beyond the emptiness during those first months and years. I recently read a piece in which someone made the distinction between being lonely and being alone. Their description of being alone involved choice and emotional agency. That isn’t the case in death.  My grief has been a synonymous entanglement of loneliness and being alone. Both of those can occur in crowded spaces filled with friends and family. I’m still bushwhacked by those emotions that appear with a breathtaking intensity.  Yet, as jarring as they can be, I’m discovering that they seem to come less often. 

Hindsight offers a glimpse of how grief continues to amplify my emotional responses. A poignant song can activate a flood of tears. I seem more attuned to other people’s emotional states and find myself absorbing their feelings. Amy’s death opened a portal that allows me to feel and live life at a much deeper level.

These days, I find myself grieving less about what was lost and focusing more on what could have been. I envision Amy as a doting grandmother. I can close my eyes and see her on the top bleacher of a gym or stadium, recording Liam’s basketball and football games. I can almost hear her voice on those videos, shouting encouragement and arguing calls made by the referees. I know how much she would enjoy helping plan a wedding or a shower with her family. I find myself thinking of the trips we dreamed of but that never took place. 

“Life goes on.” It is an overused cliche that has brought me no comfort over the past years. Yet, there is truth in that statement. There were days and months after Amy’s death when her memory consumed me. Now, I catch myself looking past her photographs. A pang of immense, indescribable guilt always follows those oversights. I don’t cry as often at the cemetery when I place new flowers on her headstone. Oddly, the harder I try to cling to those old emotions, the faster they seem to melt away.  New friends have entered my life, and our family continually reshapes itself through births and marriages with people who never knew Amy.  And someday, the “what could have beens” will fade further into the background. Those are the realities I grieve today.

Because of those emerging realities, I’ve spent much of the past months pondering how to measure whether a life matters. Scripture offers that “… you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14 ESV). Given that we are simply a blip on the continuum of eternity, what lasting impact can we possibly have on the world around us?  

Amy showed me how it’s done.  When she cuddled a baby in the church nursery, it was a tactile way of communicating to that child that this is a place where you will be nourished and loved unconditionally long after I’m gone. Her daily check-ins with her sisters reinforced the reality that regardless of circumstances, they were a family that sticks together. Amy’s quilting was a tangible demonstration of how she viewed relationships and life – a plethora of incongruent patterns and colors that can be stitched together with intention to make something with lasting beauty.

It warms my heart when someone says, “I was just thinking about Amy.”  It reminds me that Amy’s life had impact. The ripples of her existence and the relationships she sustained will outlive her memory. My world went dark the day she died. But now I more fully recognize that pieces of Amy continue to be reflected in her family and friends.  Those pieces live on in me.  Nowadays, instead of darkness, I recognize that the world, my world, is brighter because Amy was, and continues to be, a part of it.

I miss her…

The Legacy of Jim Tom

I was a wildlife officer in Graham County in the late 1980s. During those early days of my career, I spent many days lost. Sometimes in those pre-GPS/cellphone days I was physically lost. I was often given directions that included colloquial descriptions that I couldn’t decipher. Other times I was lost in the sense that I didn’t know what I was doing. The game law seemed straight forward while sitting in a classroom in Chapel Hill, but out in the field I discovered that was lots of gray area between those poles of black and white. More than anything, I felt lost and adrift because I didn’t know anyone.

But during those first few years, I met some fascinating folks. Most were ordinary people who had experienced extraordinary lives. I recall a woman who taught school in a logging camp. She rode a narrow-gauge train to the camp where her classroom was in a railroad car. An old logger told me of skidding logs from the deep in the Smokies with a team of steers before Fontana Lake was flooded. Or the quiet Cherokee man who fought the war behind the war in southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. One of the more colorful characters I came to know was Jim Tom Hedrick. 

In those early days, my sergeant, Travis Whitson, spent a considerable amount of time with me. He showed me around the county, introducing me to people and giving me the lowdown on the various folks we encountered. After running into Jim Tom, Travis shared that while Jim Tom had many challenges, he was a mechanical genius. He was a skilled unlicensed electrician. Travis added that the rumor was that Jim Tom was the first person in the county to use propane to fire a liquor still.

 

Over time I saw more and more of Jim Tom. I would often find him hanging out at Robinson’s store in the Snowbird community. Jim Tom was a talker. I don’t think he ever knew my name, so he just called me Game Warden. Many of his stories began, “Well lemme tell you Game Warden” and off he would go. I once saw him wearing a cap that proclaimed, “Jim Beam 1000 gallon club.” I asked, “Jim Tom have you drank a thousand gallons?” He thought briefly and said, “Well, lemme tell you Game Warden. Me and ______ was running still one time and got to drinking. When we came to two weeks later, they was 25 empty half gallon jars laid around us.” He thought again, obviously doing mental math. “Yea,” he added, “I’d say I’ve drunk a thousand gallons.”

Other times I would run into Jim Tom camping in his school bus. One day I pulled into his site while he was setting up on Big Snowbird Creek. He noticed me eyeing his four cases of beer on the picnic table. He raised his hand to protest my thoughts. “I know you’re thinking – that that’s a lot of beer for just me. But it ain’t that much. Afterall, I’m gonna be here for two weeks.” I stopped back by a week or so later. The beer was gone. Jim Tom said, “I see’d you up here a couple of days ago, sneaking around trying to watch me. I hollered out, ‘I see you over there in the laurel Game Warden. It’s just me Jim Tom. I ain’t a fishing or hurting nothing. Come on out.’ But you didn’t move, so I hollered again, “Come on out Game Warden. I ain’t doing nothing wrong.” But you stayed still – hunkered down in the laurel - real sneaky-like. So, finally I walked over to where you was a sitting. Turns out you was a stump.” We both laughed.

I was saddened to hear that Jim Tom died back in September. His death surfaced the thought of how easy it is to label someone or dismiss them. I visited my daughter recently and saw a miniature liquor still on her shelf. I flashed back to when Jim Tom built that still for me. He apologized for charging me for it, but he explained how much the copper cost and how long it took to build. He said that the wormy chestnut blocks were getting harder to find. It sat on my mantel for years before I passed it along to Elizabeth.

I turned the model over and written in pencil was a simple inscription “Jim Tom 1989.”

As I grow older, I spend quite a bit of time thinking about legacy. Jim Tom gained notoriety from his five-year stint on the Discovery Channel’s show, Moonshiners. I suspect there are scores of those little stills sitting around people’s homes. But are those Jim Tom’s legacy?

These thoughts have been prominent over the past months. October 8th was the third anniversary of Amy’s sudden death. November 14th was the second anniversary of my brother, Dennis’ death. And over the past weeks I have spent time cleaning out my dad’s workshops. As I have worked, I’ve considered their legacy. A more difficult question I've pondered is what am I leaving for others?

As I considered that question, I circled back to Jim Tom. There’s a notion attributed to several different people that folks do not recall what we do, they remember how we made them feel. Jim Tom left me with a host of great stories. He built two of those tiny stills for me. They are nice mementos, but that’s not his legacy piece. The thing that Jim Tom left me was a sense of connection and belonging in a place and time where I felt disconnected. That seems to be enough.

https://www.townson-smithfuneralhome.com/obituary/MarvinJimTom-Hedrick

 

Of Storms and Rainbows

It’s been three years since Amy died. Since that moment when my world was forever changed, I’ve written of my journey through grief. I’ve shared some of these thoughts publicly, but most I’ve kept private in my journal or discussed with a few close friends. We could argue my motivation for sharing. Some may say that I continue to seek sympathy as the grieving husband. Others suspect that I’m struggling to somehow keep Amy alive - living a life of denial. The more noble story is that I’m sharing what the process has been for me to help others. Quite frankly, it’s a mixture of all those and other things - a cocktail that varies from day to day.

Even after three years, my grief-driven lows can still strike with an unnerving velocity and intensity. It can be like a sudden, unexpected summer thunderstorm that rolls across the mountain, catching me far from home. A full week of sunshine that is blotted out by ominous, dark clouds as the air becomes charged with an electrical force that is more felt than seen. This tingling alarm is followed by blinding flashes of lightning, a cacophony of deafening thunder, and a flood of drenching rain. It can be overwhelming and emotionally violent. But more often these days the storm is a low, distant rumbling with a light, almost gentle, soaking shower. Some storms last for minutes. Others continue for hours. On increasingly rare occasions, they can last for days.

These emotional storms can be triggered by a song or place or gathering or any number of sensory stimuli. Some, such as birthdays or holidays, can be forecast and are anticipated. Others come upon me without warning. While both cases can be disorienting in the moment, I’ve learned that regardless of the circumstances, the clouds eventually lift, and the sun shines once again.

It’s in this middling space between the storm and sunshine that the rainbow appears.

In the weeks and months after Amy’s death, I doubted I would see the sun again. I zombie-walked through each day, unsure whether I could breathe in enough oxygen to live. But slowly, over time, my capacity to smile and laugh without guilt is returning. I realize that I still have the ability to give and accept love. In the most surreal moments, I recognize that sadness and joy; hopelessness and hope; sorrow and happiness; and loss and love can all occupy that rainbowed space between the storm and light. I’ve come to look for these metaphorical rainbows as an assurance that even the fiercest grief storms will not destroy me and that somewhere beyond those dark clouds the sun will certainly shine.

I miss Amy. Hardly a moment passes that she doesn’t come to mind. Her death is a constant reminder that life is fragile. This fragility reminds me daily to readily forgive others, to tell people I love and appreciate them, and to be kind. I’m trying to keep short accounts.

And I’ve gained a new appreciation for rainbows.