Daddy's Home

I am on my way to Livermore, KY, to bury my daddy.  I had the privilege of being with him as he slipped the bonds of this earth.  My brother, my step-sister, and I waited with baited breath to see if he took his.   There were 3, then one last gasp.  I felt the warmth drain slowly from his face after that.  I think I was desperate to feel his departure.  I searched for a physical feeling of him as he left this world.  I think, too, I desperately want to feel the presence of the One who was taking him home.

It never happened.

In fact, it was all very normal.  It was more like watching Daddy go to sleep than it was a spiritual moment.  I don't know if maybe he was really already gone and his body just hadn't figured it out, or if I was just to out of touch to notice it.  I WANTED to feel it.  I'm truly disillusioned by the fact that I didn't.  Everyone left the room to get the nurse.  I hugged him.  It wasn't to say goodbye.  It was to try to feel his presence before it was gone.

All my life has been focused on my guilt for the past or the hope for the future.  Someday things will be better with no more pain or sorrow.  I have never been able to grasp that, since the very nature of no pain or sorrow means having everything you want.  But we aren't promised everything we want.  It brings me to the conclusion that there will also be no desire.  To not desire means contentment and therefore, happiness...an absence of sorrow.  Being human, that was hard to wrap my head around.  It is our nature to be discontent.  Sure we have times of contentment, but the desire for more, for better, is always there.  The idea of being free from such a curse is intoxicating!  So from the day I realized this, I have lived solely for that day.

But maybe it's not real.  

I make a choice daily to believe, but, oh God forgive me, I have wasted a lifetime of hoping for it...of waiting for it, feeling guilt for it, shrugging off the weight of the present for it!  My Daddy's passing, while I am extremely grateful to have been there, has shaken me to the core.  

Other events seem to have primed me for a faith shaking.  I have always believed that the things that happen to us have purpose.  But many things over the last few years have happened with seemingly no purpose.  It's like I have cried out "Why?" into space and my voice keeps traveling without finding a receiver.  It expanded in the vastness and disappeared. 

Then for all the hope of a resolution of past hurts with Daddy leaving us...!  He never acknowledged his part.  He always blamed Mama.  He never acknowledged the pain he left us kids with. It's been long forgiven, and tears were shed each time we said goodbye, but the words were never said.  The last time I saw him, I lingered and cried myself, somehow knowing it was the last time.

In spite of the growing fear of potentially losing faith in what is supposed to be the most powerful being in the universe, I feel vey calm about Daddy leaving.  It really did seem that as we talked and visited in the room with him, he relaxed.  His breathing slowed.  We had just noted that.  Then amidst the laughter and memories, he saw that all was well and that he could go.  So he released that last tenuous hold on this realm, and left.  I still want to think of him...being young again, clad in nothing but denim overalls, and running carefree through green Kentucky fields...as being home.

Life begins after half a century

Going back to school and starting a new career completely derailed my writing.  I haven't journalled, blogged, corresponded, or anything else personally written in years!  I thought going back to school and starting a new career was my mid-life life-change, but no.  Turns out that life had other plans for me.  Nothing...NOTHING...could have prepared me for this last year.

First of all, after being fat my entire life, I am now normal.  I had somewhat prepared for this change.  I knew it was coming.  On March 26, 2015, I had bariatric surgery.  I have lost 98 lbs, gained back about 10 and seem to be stable at a 90 lb. loss.
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Next on the semi-prepared-for list was that Amanda was getting married in Oct. 2015.  Nope! That wasn't to be the next one!  Russell slipped in there and got engaged in April...with a wedding date of August 1st!  With four months to get used to that idea, we were also working on Amanda's wedding.  Both weddings were pulled off almost completely perfect and we got a trip somewhere unexpected that we had never been before...Detroit.  That's where Russell's wedding was.

Also semi-prepared for was Ryan's return from Spain.  After 18 months in Madrid, he returned home. That was the prepared-for part.  The not-prepared-for part was that he stayed.  I really figured he would go back to school.  Not that I don't love having my son around, but I really thought we were going to be empty nesters by now.

Then Julia, my baby, moved out.  This was totally unprepared for.  She didn't actually "move" out, she just disappeared.  For about two weeks, we heard nothing from her.  We finally went to see her at work.  The elephant in the room was that she had left home, but it was about a month before she would ever really talk to us other than us going to see her at work.  She has not, to this date, admitted that she moved in with her boyfriend.  But we've known all along.  It was really scary and sad at first.  Now, she is so much more loving and family minded, that we really feel it was for the best.  I just don't want her to regret what could have been.  I worry so much for her for that.

Amanda's wedding was on another big change date-my 50th birthday.  I was really afraid of that number, but it hasn't been as bad as I thought.  Losing weight has helped with that.  I can actually DO more now than I could 5 years ago.  I can RUN!  Not for long mind you, but that I can do it at all is a miracle!  Haven't been able to since...my early 20's probably!

Okay, now for the biggest, most life-altering, completely unexpected event of my entire life so far.  Not that it is the most important, but the biggest thing that was not expected or planned for.  We sold my family home.

Now this may not seem like much to most people.  People move all the time.  What makes this such a huge deal is that people don't live in the house they were born and raised in anymore.  Family homes have not been a thing for over a hundred years.

My mom designed and built this home.  They broke ground in Feb. 1963 and moved in later that year.  I was born in 1965 and up until I was an adult, never lived anywhere else.  Everything in my life that shaped me, both good and bad, took place at that address. I walked home from school to THAT house. My dad left home from THAT house.  My first car was parked in THAT driveway,  My first boyfriend, my graduation...Shane and I got married IN THAT HOUSE!  My brother's family lived there for a while after the oil bust in the 80's forced them out of their home in Louisiana.  My nephew was actually born IN that house.  We moved back in in 1998 and bought it from my mother in 2001. My kids mostly grew up there!  Every anchor event of my life, with the exception of the births of 4 of my children, happened in THAT HOUSE!

I always dreamed of selling that house, moving to the country, and building our dream home, but that was always some far off, distant dream.  There were no plans for it at all.  I had never even really considered what it would feel like to give it up.  It turns out that it was traumatic at the least.  It very nearly ended our marriage (it may still).

It didn't help that all this took place over Christmas.  That only made it sadder.

Right after Amanda's wedding, we decided to start getting some prices on fixing the place up.  We weren't ready to start yet, but we wanted to get an idea of how big of a chunk it was going to take.  The house was in desperate shape.  We had had an ice dam earlier in the year that caused water damage.  The insurance paid for new floors and walls in the damaged rooms.  Oh my, the floors were beautiful!!!  All of a sudden, we both KNEW what was possible with the house and wanted to get started on updates as soon as possible!  Money was going to be an issue.  We were figuring that it would be $100K at LEAST!  So we wanted to find out for sure.

Meanwhile, I had taken up horseback riding.  I was driving to Springfield for lessons and would just pray and plead for God to either remove the desire to be in the country, or make a way for it to happen.  Well, He made it happen.  Or so I thought.

The first guy we had come to give an estimate was a window guy.  We figured it would save us money by stopping the heat loss so it would be the best first step.  He was trying to upsell, but not hard, so I asked, "Do we really want to spend extra if we may end up selling?"  The idea was always in the back of our minds to eventually move out.  Remember, I wanted to be out in the country and build our dream home.  Shane just hated the lack of closets and having a big yard full of trees that was hard to mow.

The guy said, "Wait a minute.  You're wanting to sell?"  For a moment, I thought I had said something wrong and he was going to raise the price or say he couldn't do it or something.  Instead he asked how much we were wanting for it.  Without hesitation, I threw out $180K as is.  I had talked to a realtor friend about it for years thinking maybe it would be best to sell as it and walk away from the money pit.  We never were really sure it would bring 180 as it was, but we would need at least that to get another place.  What happened next, happened so fast that I am not sure if I will ever be able to look back without regret.

The window guy started looking around.  He got up and walked back into the room we had just been in.  He was looking at problems and potentials, not windows.  He said, "I'm interested."  Shane walked him back through briefly and he left saying he would call later.  We were sure that was the end of it.

The next day, the guy's partner called and asked if he and his wife could see the house.  He said we didn't have to worry about cleaning up or anything.  I was at work, but Shane met with them.  They made an official offer 3 days after we started talking to them about windows.  He offered us what we asked.  Of course they plan to flip it.

Now this is where the regret comes in.  I am the dreamer of houses in our family.  I pour over house plans and real estate listings.  I always have.  I plan down to the cabinet hardware what I want in my house.  I had been praying for God to find a way to get us into the country.

Turns out, Shane had his own ideas.

We jumped on it.  Shane worried all the time if maybe we could have gotten more.  I remind him that we had no realtor fees this way.  The biggest stupidity of it all was that I assumed this was my answer to prayer.  Immediately after signing the contract, I mean like THAT same day, we started fighting.I won't detail the next few weeks.  Just know, it was bad.  For the first time since we got married, I REALLY didn't think we would make it.  Closing day rolled around and we thought we had a way out of the contract.  They hadn't even had an appraisal yet and the contract was coming due.  No, the guy wanted the house bad.  He asked for an extension, Shane said no, so he paid cash-no appraisal was ever done.  AND we sold my family home.

The bright side is that it just happened that my mother's home, that my brother had assumed and had  been renting out, was empty just at that time.  My brother was getting ready to sell it, but had not really started on it yet.  So we had a place to go.  best of all, we wouldn't have to sign a lease.  I again assumed that this was a God thing and added it to my mental checklist that convinced me to sign the contract.  Once I believed that I was going to the country, I was hooked and didn't need much more convincing.

Well, the move isn't complete yet.  We closed the deal on Dec. 10, 2015 and moved out over Christmas break.  Russell and his new wife, hosted all of us for Christmas.  That was a lot of fun, but I still missed Christmas at home.  It is mid-February 2016 now and we are still renting from my brother.  We have a contract on a house in Gallatin and expect to close at the end of March or the first part of April.  However, we will not be in the country.  I will not get to have horses like I had dreamed.  It is a beautiful house, but it has only 1/3 of an acre. As it turns out, my dream of moving to the country was not Shane's dream.  I knew he didn't dream of being in the country, but I figured that since he didn't really dream at all, he would just go along with my dream. He'd never really objected to my dreams.  I also thought that since God was answering part of the prayer, that he would also answer the other part.  I don't think I will ever completely get over the idea that Shane entirely got his way.  All through the house search, he rejected EVERY idea I had and I ended up caving to every idea he had. I don't know if I will ever stop regretting, but at least I am starting to look forward.  For a while, it felt like not only would my marriage be destroyed, but my heart would rip out too.

Do I think God moved us?  Yes.  I don't know why and I don't understand why it had to be at the loss of my home and the cost of my dream, but I know there is a plan.  I am too dumb to discern His will for me and have missed the boat so many times, that now I just tell Him that He will have to just make it happen cause I won't catch the clues.  Well, it happened.  Not the way I had wanted, but there is a reason for it all.  I don't know what it is yet.  Maybe I never will.

It forced me to get rid of over half of what we owned.  I still mentally go through stuff and feel I have "lost" it.  I am trying to see it as "freeing" myself and letting it go, but it is a daily battle not to dwell on what is gone.  "Regret" has become a common theme for me lately.

Yet, the other side to this, something that is growing in me, is the sense of adventure.  I have cut out all that has held me back.  All that has bound me to the past is gone.  I was forced to let it go.  It was not something I would have done on my own.  Now, I can go.  If we got a job offer across the country, it wouldn't be so scary now.  If I wanted to move to another country, I could now.  I could fit what I have left in a storage facility!  Yes, there are possibilities!  Yes, God is in control!  Yes, He freed us from all that "STUFF" (remember that there were 52 years and 3 families worth of stuff in that house!).  Like being stuck in a beartrap, it hurts to have it removed, but it is the only way to start healing!

Next, we have a trip to Alaska coming up.  I can't even begin to explain what a big deal that is!  The upside to never having been anywhere, is that everywhere you go is the trip of a lifetime!  I hope that every trip I ever take will feel that way!  I also hope that there will be many to come!

The next journey that our family is taking will be one of separation.  Megan has gotten a graduate assistant-ship at Florida State and will be moving to Florida in April, right after our move if all goes well on our house.  Then in August, Russell and his new wife will be looking for jobs in another city.  She finishes her residency at Vanderbilt then and her field is one that will most likely take her elsewhere.  Amanda is having to choose at this very moment whether they will be staying in Alaska.  So while we have always had times when we were apart, this is the first time in the history of our little family that the "apart" is not followed with home.  "Home" for Shane and I, will no longer be "home" for the kids.  In every sense of the word, "home" has changed.  From now on, each child will be establishing their own little family and writing their own history.  They may come to visit, but it will no longer be "going home."

Now, there is a new house to decorate...!!!