Five Years Later

Five years. It’s been five years since Jonathan, my husband, passed away. I wanted to write friends and family with an update of sorts. The writer in me wants the update to be a masterpiece, the teacher in me wants to make a power point presentation. But after a long deliberation with myself, I decided a more relaxed approach was best. So, I imagine that we are sitting at a big table with coffee and chocolate cake, no ice cream, please.

The most important thing to say is that Winter and I are okay. I won’t speak for him too much. He is a grown-up now and has his own words. But I will say that we are alive and living. We are neither stuck in our loss nor are we in denial about it. We are somewhere down the road from those two places. It feels good and hopeful.

Winter is a server at a local restaurant called Little Donkey. He’s the tall handsome one with a genuine smile. Winter is also working on his music. It is really, really good. Can’t wait for the whole world to hear it.

I stay fairly busy doing things I love. I recently accepted the Worship Director position at my Church. I teach voice and piano lessons at a music academy here in Birmingham. And I write and dream in my spare time.

(sipping coffee, taking a bite of cake)

For a couple of weeks now I’ve taken time to pray and ponder about the past five years. There have been two recurring thoughts–the curiousness of time and broken pottery.

I keep seeing an image of a broken bowl. The bowl is dark blue with a sizable break down the middle with few small cracks running by its side, and there a couple of scrapes and chips around the edges. Most of the gaps are filled with the purest gold that catches light just right. The rest are still waiting but quite hopeful in the progress.

You may have heard of Kintsugi. It is the Japanese art form of repairing pottery by mending the broken areas with gold. As a philosophy, the art form treats brokenness and repair as part of an object’s history*. Rather than covering up cracks or discarding the broken pieces completely, the rejoining process adds strength and worth to the pottery.

(taking another bite of cake, then sneaking in one more mouthful)

Time is an awfully curious thing. In many ways it seems much longer than a measly five years since Jonathan’s passing—the very large crack in my bowl. His illness, in particular, feels like another life altogether. And, well, I couldn’t be more thankful for that mark of mercy. But then there are winks of time when Jonathan’s life is as fresh as an autumn breeze. The life that was imparted to us from him chimes in at precise moments making us laugh, slow down and wonder. His absence in those moments is very near.

Many things have happened in these five years that put distance between the present and our loss. New jobs, new cars, new pets, new dreams, new hopes, new decades… That’s the way it should be. The very essence of life is to move, to grow, to evolve. But the golden repairs of life take a back seat to the ever-present break during certain occasions. In the forward motion of graduations, twenty-first birthdays, and I suspect weddings and grandchildren, there is a whisper, “something is missing.”

(sipping coffee, pushing cake crumbs around my plate with a fork)

It’s easy to get caught between the tug and pull of past and present. I can obsess over the newness or fixate on the cracks of the past. Scars are not a bad place to visit, but they are non-hospitable to life itself. I’m learning there is a better view.

Stepping back lets me see how it all works together—the beauty of the whole story, the beauty of all the details. Life (moving, flowing, breathing) has a way of healing the wound while the brokenness has a way of helping me remember important things.

(just cupping the coffee mug in my hands now)

My beautiful bowl of life is graced with history and strength. The golden repairs allow me to continue. It lets me carry things like hope and dreams and even the mundane. The brokenness helps me carry those things differently than before, with a little more compassion, more wisdom, more dearly, more freely.

So, yeah, I’m doing okay.

I’m working and resting. I’m dreaming and hoping. I’m taking risks and falling on my face…

(laughing at my own joke)

Okay, okay. Sometimes I take a risk and land in a sweet place.

I am thankful for the company of faithful friends and family that surround me. Your love and care… well, I’m certain you are part of the gold substance repairing the brokenness. You are part of my history. I hope you’ll stick around for things to come.

(Pouring a fresh cup of coffee now)

*Thank you Wikipedia