Oh, 2015...

Good old Robert Burns.
Poet extraordinaire.

Penned a Scottish ditty.
You know it well..

Groups of revellers link arms around midnight tonight and belt various forms of it out ..

It's Auld Lang Syne.
And it's basically about how we can cast an eye back to what has been and a call to remember our old friends.
The ones we don't see.
The ones we have said goodbye to.

I said goodbye to my best friend in 2015.
I held his hand and watched him go.

Oh..  2015.

I don't know if I quite want to farewell you in a few short hours.
You, 2015... you are forever ingrained in my fibre. You are woven into my being... you are stamped on my heart.
You are the numbers that are his earthly end.

Oh, 2015...

You, 2015... you will be remembered and recalled by his sons and our future grandchildren.
Our sons will always know you... The year they witnessed their father so bravely, so courageously fight until that very last heart beat. That very last breath.
Fight for them.

On the last day of school, the boys principal reminded me of something profound.
He encouraged me to remember that 2015 was, yes..by far the toughest year I've ever experienced.
But... 2015 was also beautiful.
Stunningly beautiful.
Breathtakingly beautiful.

It was.
You were. Oh, 2015... you were horrendous and you were beautiful.

You offered us time.
Time.
Extra time.
Time in terminal waiting. But time.
Minutes and hours.
Days and weeks.
Time in the year 2015..
Time we knew was limited and fleeting.
Time we treasured.

So we grabbed you... oh 2015. We grabbed you and we treasured you.
We took the boys on the bucket list tour of theme parks.
We took a million photos.
We adored each other.
I linked my fingers into his.
I memorized his face.
I knew it was our last year.

In those minutes and hours that we... just me and him... spent together.
He prepared me.
2015 was the year he prepared me.
He told me I'd be ok.
He'd paint me a picture of my days in 2016..2017...2018.. without him.

Yes. 2015.
I'm not sure if I'm ready to say goodbye to you.
But... the one thing you've shown me consistently in these 365 days is this:
It doesn't matter if I'm ready.
You'll march on anyway.
Your days and hours.
You will march on.

You will end.
2015 will be over.

And I will sigh.
The sigh of someone who casts a glance back.
The sigh of someone who will whisper in Auld Lang Syne...
The sigh of a woman who misses her man.

And then.
I'll bring to mind the breathtaking beauty of these days.
These last days we had him.
The kindness. Oh the kindness that echoes through 2015.
I'll sigh.

And then.
Because he directed me to...
I'll bring my eyes foward.
To the coming days.
To the new that waits.
To the firsts and adventures that I will uncover in the days and hours of 2016.

So..
Goodbye 2015.
I hate you.
I love you.
I treasure you.
I rage against you.
You were our last one.
You were sweet.

Thank you.

Heaven.

There have been a multitude of claims made-
claims made by sharmans, theologians, philosophers, authors...
claims made by children who imagine and adults who wonder...

Claims about the existence of the subconscious after the act of dying.
Claims about the existence of... well.. a person... their continued reality in the absence of anything physical.

I've read the books.
I've watched the interviews.
I've wondered and imagined.

And I keep coming back to the same place.

I don't know how, or what it looks like in it's entirety..
I don't know enough to claim to be an expert.
But I do know something...
There is something that is so deeply tied into the make up of who I am, maybe of who we all are, that makes it imperative for us to lean towards this belief in an after.

An after this is done.
An after they have taken that last breath.
An after we have shrugged of the mortal.
An after we have said that final earthly goodbye.
Yes... There is a whisper soft call to believe in the after..

I believe in an after.
Many don't.
That's ok..

But I do.
I really do.

And I didn't find this belief in an after at the moment when my favourite people left this now.
There was no desperate scramble to latch hold of something nice and fuzzy that would provide me with comfort in the days and moments of my grief.

This deep seated belief in the after is not merely designed to be a pontoon for those who are exhausted in the throes of grief.
It is oh-so-much more.

We talked a lot about this after before he went there.
He was so comfortable talking about it.
He would wonder at the moment he would arrive..
He would laugh at the moment he would see her, my mother.. he would tell the boys how he would "kick Granny's butt" for so suddenly leaving us.

He would paint me a picture of what it would be like...
In his words..
In his way...

One day, months before he went there, we were driving out to the farm.
He loved to go the long way- up through the hills and along the dirt roads..
We came around a ridge and he pulled over to the side of the road.
He sat there for a while.
Quietly.
Just looking out across the little valley that was before us.
"There's going to be a road..like this..with big trees lining it. And when you come over the hill, you'll see the greenest ground. And at the bottom of the valley- that's where He's built my house.
It's going to have verandahs all around it and roses (he loved roses) all around it. And there's an entire workshop in it."
He turned to me..
"You know He was a builder right? And his dad was one too.... You never know... He might come around for a cup of tea and we'll make a table or something..."



He would paint me a picture of what it would look like...
And it was a stunning picture.
And I don't know quite how Heaven works, but I do know that Jesus promised to go and build a space for the ones would step into this after.
And I don't know quite how Heaven works..
I just know that it's real.
Like really real.
Because I can hear the whisper soft reassurance deep within me that it's there... just beyond the now, in the after.
 And today.. well. Today I can really hear it.
Today is one of those days..

Christmas is coming soon.
And Christmas is when this whole 'after' thing really became reality.
And not necessarily the Christmas we know and love, but that first Christmas.
The one where the Messiah, the perfect Lamb, moved into the neighbourhood of flesh and chaos.
That first Christmas when an eternal act of absolute adoration meant that I could access my after...
Meant that my after was now attainable.
Because a babe was born.
Because He walked the steps of this mortal toil and He knew grief and love.
Because He came to die a final death that would spell LIFE in the boldest brush strokes across the pages of mankind's history.

Yes..
Heaven touched earth in the most beautiful way the night a babe was born in a cow shed.
Yes...
I believe in Heaven.

I don't know quite how Heaven works.
I think about it a lot.
I talk to the boys about what they imagine it to be like.
Because isn't that maybe why we have an imagination..
To see a valley, with a house that holds a workshop, surrounded by a rose garden.
To see a reunion with a mum who shouldn't have left us when she did.
To see a little slip of a girl...dark curls cascading down her back as she dances and twirls and giggles in her perfection?


Yes.
I believe in an eternal, glorious after.
And I believe that it was purchased at a price.. the cost was such that it demanded perfection and sacrifice. Both something I couldn't afford and yet, it was purchased for me. By the One who holds my after, just like He holds my today.

Yes.
I believe in an after all of this, there is more.
That this is not all there is.
That there is an after that waits.

Yes.
I believe in Heaven.

Story of tears

I cried the night before the funeral.
My people had arrived en masse and songs had been recorded. I wanted voices that loved him to be the ones that sang those songs of goodbye.
Videos had been made.

Montages of him- as a boy. As he grew into a man. That moment he became mine and then the unfolding beauty of him as a dad.

So that night before the funeral,  all my people had gathered around me. Food was lovingly made and shared as strangers introduced themselves and instantly became comrades in this task of a beautiful goodbye.
My brother called me into the study to see the completed videos that would play at his funeral. And I cried.
I sobbed.
I howled.
In that room... watching that screen.
I felt the enormous weight of loss.
I asked some of my people to watch it with me.
I watched it again.
And again.
I watched it until the tears subsided and I could smile at the images.
We left the study and my dining room had filled with everyone, standing around the table. Waiting.
The songs were ready.
We listened.
And I cried.
I sobbed.
I howled.
In that room... listening to the music that would whisper all the goodbyes we wanted to say.
I was held close as I felt the enormous weight of my loss.

I'm so glad for that night.

I'm so glad that we had the opportunity to allow the heartbreak to be real and tangible.
To cling tight to each other in that moment of missing him entirely and completely.
We cried.
We sobbed.
We howled.

You see.
I needed to go to the place of deep grief that the funeral would insist on supplying.
Funerals are like that.
They are a goodbye of earthly, physical permanence.
I needed to howl the ugly type tears.
I chose to do that in my study.
I closed the door and I cried.

I guess this is the story of my tears.
They come in waves.
I try to keep them to myself.
But sometimes they are inconvenient and demanding in their release.

I made it to the traffic lights one afternoon last week. I was leaving work and the absence of him hit me hard.
And the flood gates smashed open.
I drove to our beach and staggered, in my high heels,  to the waters edge.
And I howled.
A lady walking her dog came close and asked in a concerned and, possibly slightly frightened tone, if I needed help.
No... I just need to cry.

I went to an afternoon tea this week.
It was held in the chapel at the Mater hospital and it was a beautiful remembrance time- a collective of people who had said that goodbye to family and friends were invited to come and be together in a time of remembering.
I'll be honest- it was so tough going back there. The smell.
The hallways.
They had become our final battleground.
They housed the memories of the last moments of his life.

Everything about those last days and weeks are tucked away in little corners of my mind.

Sometimes they demand an audience and I go there. I let them take centre stage and I'm suddenly remembering the way he smiled when his sons walked into the hospital room. How he didn't want to eat in those final days... Until someone delivered a tray of chocolate and caramel slice. His very favourite. I kind of love the idea that the last thing he ate was caramel slice.

My tears were shared that beautiful afternoon.
They were mine and they were ours.
It was beautiful to be in a place where a conversation with sobs was expected.

And today. 
I'm at school.
This is the story of my tears.
My inconvenient and demanding tears.

I was in an assembly.
And I heard a story about a family who suffered the loss of a husband and dad to cancer.
And it was a beautiful story.
A Christmas Story.
About giving and love.

Except it isn't a story to me.
It's my life.
My days.
My tears.

And out of nowhere.
The howling.
The sobbing.
The wail of grief.
It hit me.
Hard.

At school.

But that's ok.
I made it outside the assembly hall...
And I made it to the grass.
And I threw up my coffee.
And I wailed.
I howled.

Tears are amazing.
They are healing and wrecking and powerful.

I've tried to keep my tears to myself.
To close the door and cry.
But.
Sometimes it doesn't work.
And they demand a release.
They don't care that I'm at work.
Driving.
Cooking.
Happy.
Tired.

The story of my tears is this:
How worthwhile and wonderful my love for him is.
That they deserve these tears.

He gets to have these tears.