So Ive done several posts on thoughts but not much on real life. Steph and I always used to do updates on just what was happening with us. They weren’t the most exciting but they kept everyone in the loop. I have in mind a serious post to come and also some more light hearted material. But for tonight, Id just like to update everyone like we always used to.

 

School is going wonderfully. The students at EC have been truly wonderful and supportive. So has the staff and administration. I am not saying this just because they all read this. I am saying because it is true. I am so lucky to be able to do what I do every day. Not every day is easy but the reward is worth it. Some of the most incredible support over the last few months has come because of where I teach. The bands are coming along well and some exciting things are on the horizon.

 

Ive been spending time with friends and family and that has been my emergency flotation device. My family and a handful of people are such key components of how well I am doing. Im also lucky to get to help my mom with her Show Choir. Like my band students they are a great group of students and a blast to work with. Its also a chance to do things with my family that are also in the music world I love.

 

Big things coming up in the next few months:

-East Clinton will be putting on Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat on March 1 and 2. Over the years I have come to truly look forward to the musical production. It’s a really unique atmosphere of so many people working together on such a big thing. Very much looking forward to that.

-Our band will be headed to district contest in March

-I am doing a Florida trip with the band over spring break. This is one of my favorite parts of my job. Traveling to Disney with a busload of parents and students its like a little family on wheels and I am very much looking forward to it.

 

The nearest thing however is a trip to Houston. I haven’t seen Dr. B and the folks at Anderson since late summer. Im planning to head down and bring some closure to that end of things. I want to just say hi, maybe talk a little and just see those people who were so important to us over the years. I also want to thank them for always working to find new ways to fight. I know our battle would have lasted 7 months and not 7 years if not for those doctors and nurses and that hospital. That’s a fact.

 

And I am doing ok. I am healing slowly. It is hard not to look over my shoulder. Sometimes emotions overwhelm me but I can look forward to the coming months and years with an optimism and I have things to look forward to. And theres the full circle. I have things to look forward to because of my family, my friends and my job that is less a job than a passion that I am blessed to be able to live. Another strong feeling I have is a need to kick start making a difference. But I need help. I’d like to see an event happen this year to raise funds for the Sarcoma Foundation grant in Stephanie’s name. Can you help? I am basically asking for volunteers to help create this and feedback on what we can get rolling. For those my area I can facilitate a place to meet. I am also working on getting some online discussion started…if you haven’t already, head over the Sarcoma Foundation of America Ohio Chapter page on Facebook and like it! If you would like to be a part of creating and organizing an event in 2013 please contact me on Facebook or via email: sammminge@gmail.com

 

Looking forward to seeing how we can all Live Give Love together!

 

Peace,

Sammy

January 21, 2013           

 

Posted from Home.

 

Day 40 in Life 2.0 If you follow me on Facebook you know I have been posting with a day count. Its something I’m doing for me as part of my own healing. It is a count of days since Stephanie’s funeral, but for me it is not a “days since”. I am not looking over my shoulder in that regard. It is a count of days forward and of days achieved. It is a healing count; a tally of accomplishment I am doing for me. And I don’t work the days in from her passing to the services. That was a time of limbo for me. Those days might as well not count in the final total of my life, save for some things that I wrote and posted that were not only healing for me but, it would seem, for many of you as well. I consider the day after the funeral the start of Life 2.0 and here I am 40 days in.

 

I was thinking of what to write on this weekend. I had a great Friday at school, enjoyed a long but rewarding day with my mom and dad on the road with show choir and woke to a beautiful sunrise yesterday. I enjoyed church, more family time and have been surrounded with the best friends and family a person could wish for. But last night it hit me. Like a sack of bricks. I was on my way home early in the evening and then to the gym. And somewhere in between my parent’s and home it was like a nasty wave washed over me. It was almost a physical pain. As I’ve said, being home alone isn’t weird. It wasn’t her absence from the house it was her absence in general. Like a vast hole. And I couldn’t shake it. I went to the gym. Couldn’t shake it. Came home, changed, couldn’t shake it. Finally, after a night by the fire watching a favorite movie and once again having wonderful friends who constantly talk me down from the ledge a phone call away, I began to feel like I was balancing out again. Im not sure what brought it on but I think it may have simultaneously been a rough night and a night of healing. I sit here now feeling much better. I am once again looking forward and ready for a thousand tomorrows. The sun is coming through the windows, snow occasionally falling and a cold wind blowing. More frozen days are ahead but the sun peeking through the clouds and the green of the plants in my living room remind me that spring and warm days outside are ahead. I couldn’t be more ready. I feel a summer of LIVING coming on and the warmth of the summer sun in my mind warms my heart too.

 

40 day periods turn up frequently in the Bible. The Hebrews wandered the desert for 40 years. Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness leaving us with 40 days of Lent. And Noah and his floating petting zoo were on a sea cruise after 40 days of rain. So here I am after my own 40 days. While obviously the pain and sadness are not gone, I am winning the battle. I think Im winning by a long shot. The sadness has its times. Sometimes I just need to let it out…sort of an emotional dialysis. It is inevitable that there will be days where I am drawn back to the final month…and there is a sadness that will come with that. But more and more I am drawn to happier times. To the smile, to the spark, to the Stephanie who was beautiful inside and out. I am drawn to the master teacher who’s greatest lesson was the one she taught us all for 7 years: That dark days and fear will come. They occur in this world. But we are not bound by them nor do we need to be broken by them. LIFE IS A CHOICE! You can choose sorrow, pity and solitude. Or you can choose joy, thankfulness, giving of yourself and openness. I know she wanted to know that I would be ok if she wasn’t here. I think she can be at ease. I woke this morning and had a sense of  “I’m going to be OK.” That was what she wanted when she was here. She told me as much.

 

My count will continue to the one year mark. Not for any reason other than I want it to. I want to mark it as accomplishments in living. There will be another anniversary. December 5 of this year will come. And on that day we will glance up in reflection at a physical presence no longer with us. But more than that I want to invite you to look to that day with me as a day to celebrate a life lived fully and abundantly so much so that a nearly tangible inspiration still lives within us, even as she dances in the light. I’d like to see a coming together that day. We can make it happen. We can make a day where we all Live Give and Love together. Share this. Pass it on. Tell the story. On a day when we celebrate a man who preached love over hate, lets share the legacy of a woman who lived a life of grace, hope and love over fear and bitterness.

 

Peace,
Sammy

January 12, 2013

11am from Home

 

Its exactly one month in for Life 2.0 as I type this. One month ago we all gathered at the church. We cried, laughed and held each other as we celebrated Stephanie’s life. Its dates like this where the reality hits me. Most days, honestly seem like any other day. I’ve talked of an empty feeling but during a busy week even that can take a back burner. I was asked this week if I was living in the house. I jokingly replied “well of course; it would be weird if I started living in my neighbor’s house.” But the reality is living in the house, just me and the cat…its not weird. It became normal. In fact normal for 7 years often looked like this:

Me and the cat by ourselves in the house for a week or two.

Then either A) go to texas for a few days, or B) Steph comes home for a few days/weeks.

Finish Cancer treatment/Steph come home

Adjust to living like actual people again

Cancer comes back

Repeat from beginning.

So being here and living by myself; its not that odd. In a way its helped the last month along. The absence of Steph’s physical presence is something I had to become used to in January  2006 when I came home from Texas the first time. Its days like today where I am reminded it is more. It hits when I leave school each day. That was when I always called her. I push the call button in the car and almost tell it to dial her daily. Things happen at school or out and about that I think “oh wait till I tell Steph”. That’s the odd part. Because can’t.  Im sure, as I’ve been told by friends wiser in this process than me, that the 5^th of every month will hit me all the way until December. I don’t doubt it. Each time I visit the cemetery it is surreal. It doesn’t seem possible that Im actually standing there and that the memorial wreath actually has her name on it. But it is real.

 

And yet, as I have said so often, hope is also real. Love is also real and a joyful life in the aftermath of this is real.

 

Those things are the glue that is putting me back together. People tell me about strength I display. Friends, this strength is reciprocal. I don’t think I am creating it. It is being given to me. By you, by God and yes, I think by Steph. A friend told me I show the same tenacity and spirit she did, almost like I inherited it. Ill buy that and I am honored to do that. I will live this like we lived cancer, as I’ve said. Take the phone issue. Is it sad when I want to call her and can’t? Duh. Of course it is. And it also makes me laugh. Let’s be for real, if I could tell her face to face about that, we’d make some horrible joke about it and turn it into a game. If the door to the next life swung both ways and we got a once a month chat, there would absolutely be a running bet as to who almost dialed the other more that month. And we’d laugh about it and the one who kept trying to dial the phone the most wouldn’t live it down. Little moments like that are why I choose joy over despair. Just like we both did for 7 years. Its ok to smile. Its ok to cry. But it is not ok to stay in neutral. There’s work to do and a life to live. And there is the love of family and friends to sustain all of us and for us to share.

 

Do you notice we throw the word hate around far more than the word love? Why as people are we so drawn to the negative? We gravitate to sorrow, pain and conflict. But what is that getting us? Count today how many times you say or you hear someone say “I hate that/him/her” versus “I love you/him/her/that”. Hate and sadness are easy. They don’t take any effort. You don’t have to give to hate. You take. Love is a challenge. I lived with a very simplistic view of love for much of my life. Saying I loved my friends seemed hokey. Do you ever tell a friend you love them? Do you mean it? Steph did. I learned that from her. She had always been like that. My sister said one time “Steph was cool BEFORE cancer too.” Its true. It redefined us and how we viewed things but she’s always been that dynamic loving person. Our trials though, really clarified everything and allowed us to see the bigger picture.

 

So today, one month after “Ill see you later”, Im throwing down a challenge to all of us, myself included.

Love.

Replace negativity and bitterness and despair with love. I felt shattered and broken after she passed. Like a glass doll dropped from a building. My family and friends were then like a great toymaker with an endless supply of love to use as super glue.

 

“Tests come to all believers. The Christian’s overcoming faith is shown in not indulging in self-pity and fear. The Christian is called to act on faith, to wait in joyous trust. God is going to reveal Himself in a new way in this trial, and some enduring blessing will result from it.”

 

That is from Stephs Facebook in November. I leave you with that to hold close and to find your path to joy.

Get your super glue. We have a life ahead to Live Give Love!

 

Peace,
Sammy