Son, Still We Walk, Still We Rise

Families are complex beings.

You expect to enjoy melodious music at a symphony–all dressed up in suits and ties or the latest fashion. Maybe it’s beautiful. Such music is meant to move your soul. It’s an indulgent and necessary part of our humanity.

Sometimes, the cold reality is, the violin string pops. The trumpet sounds out of tune, and the pianist quit the night before.

Some families are like that.

Today, I was moved by two thoughts: the friends and family we’ve had through everything, and my son’s soft tears over people–whom I refer to as members of my husband’s DNA–saw us, him, and his sister, Corrie, as nothing more than fire ants you have to step around to avoid.

Reasons Why

I reached a positive conclusion when my son, Hayes, hugged his father and said, “I love you,” and John, my husband and his father, replied, “You’re the son I’d always hoped for.”

Recently, John has been on the road to recovery after colon cancer treatments, which ended in August, when he was declared cancer free.

I can remember his oldest member of DNA giving us a good dressing down–should we call it–at her grandfather’s last big family event letting God, the world, and everybody know her truth, feelings, hatred, and tried convince me of a false narrative she so believed not far away from my two young children, who she just as quickly and very proudly rejected, seeing them as nothing more than Satan’s spawn.

Because to her, I was nothing more than someone who had completely destroyed her younger brothers’ happiness, a side piece, a 9 cent joyride, and home wrecker, while she never truly knew John in all the lies she’d come to believe as truths.

Yet in all she’d hoped to destroy by convincing the other three members of DNA to ignore means to not exist method in their approach to John and us, she could never look in her own reflection to battle her own demons within.

She would never allow herself to see the wife at John’s side during cancer treatment. The man, who she texted, “Never call or text me again” one day before father’s day, and a few weeks after his beloved daughter’s funeral, created a wall for a garden for the same little girl. He taught me how to dig into the dirt, and transplant around the farm.

When he tripped and broke his left femur one week ago, I stayed with him at the hospital as he went through surgery. We still smiled. I knew he felt better when he started making jokes. I saw the glow in the man, who’d given me two beautiful children–even if one flies as an angel. I saw the happiness and love that another might see as hell fire and destruction.

About one year after our daughter died, I started to completely let all of it go. There was nothing I could do about other people’s anger, hatred, and congealed hearts. All I could do was let it go.

And, I can hear Corrie say, “Mommy, be like Elsa. Sing … Mommy, please sing it.”

To hold on to such anger will only destroy. It burns energy, and not in the way we want. Anger cannot sustain us.

So I did something.

I forgave the oldest member of John’s DNA and the others. I forgave them for how they spoke, ignored and treated our two innocent children. I had to forgive them in order to start on the path to forgive myself for Corrie’s death because I still blamed myself for her tumor not being discovered earlier.

I forgave because I still had a son to raise.

I forgave them the moment I started taking an ax into the dirt, and taking the shovel to dig out dirt enough in which to put my latest plants for Corrie. Last year, I was on a lilies’ kick, and I felt the need to plant lilies everywhere. This year, I’m feeling it will be lots of lavender. I was able to think differently–not about something we lost or never had. I thought about what needed to be planted and when, or what I need to check.

I forgave because you cannot live with any sort of peace or contentment until you let it go.

The Only Reason

The only reason I thought of the individuals in question today is because our son came to me with a question. I’d made a promise to my husband, and I kept it. I said, “You will have to ask your father. I cannot answer.” It was a question about those individuals, and John shared the reasons why.

Hayes believed it was him, and somehow his fault. It’s not easy to see my 12-year-old upset over the cold actions of others, knowing that is exactly what they’d want: to inflict pain on someone innocent. My medication and Yoga practice have helped me approach situations in an unemotional way, and I told our son, as I have before: “Family doesn’t mean blood. It means being present.”

I told him as I had told those members of DNA after Corrie died: “My family set the example of love, kindness, and forgiveness.”

John said, “I don’t have time for people who got together to buy a ten dollar flower for your sister, and then they didn’t have ‘time’ to come to her funeral.”

To me, our son and daughter are worth one-million of those four individuals combined.

Hayes, who has been a great help to his father and me, since the accident; hugged his father with, “I love you.”

Then John said, “You’re the son I’d always hoped for.”

Still We Walk, Still We Rise

Families aren’t always what we’d expect. Millions of people throughout the world struggle with family for different reasons whether it’s money, different views about life, marriage or other. There are members within that unit that would love nothing more to see another destroyed.

Still we walk.

Still we rise.

I could not lie down and give up after Corrie died. I had my older child to raise.

When I miscarried two years ago, I still had to recover and rise. There was a classroom waiting on me.

After John was diagnosed with cancer, there were still plants to put into the garden.

Today, our son saw the love of family. My parents came to visit John and I, and a good school friend came to help with laundry and cooking. She kindly helped with the chicken Alfredo sauce as I folded clothes. Hayes said, “She’s family.” I said, “Yes, she is.”

I showed my friend the plans for the extension of Corrie’s garden, where I’d planted her Christmas tree, and how I’d have to learn to split the gladiolas at the root because they grew so many, so close together, and top heavy last season.

I have found family and friends in our community, in my school, and with us.

I wrote all of this for our son, so he knows there is life after darkness. There is growth after frost. There are people who love, and those who do not. It’s better to know those who do because …

You, too, son will still walk.

You, too, son will still rise.