March 30, 2013 From Home

Easter. When I was a kid it meant eggs and candy and maybe a new toy and a slightly longer church service. When I was in high school it meant an early morning since the youth did the sunrise service. In college it meant extra cash from the palm Sunday and Easter gigs. And yet somehow as I’ve gotten older the true meaning behind the holiday has become closer to my heart. It has become something important to me and that could not be more true now. I wish that it meant Steph could come back to us and stay. But she visits, in whatever way you get to let those who love you know you are ok, she does that. And the true meaning of tomorrow morning, which is very not-lost on me, is that Stephanie is not only free from cancer but dancing eternally, bathed in love and light in an existence the mind cannot comprehend. Too many of us get theologically hung up on “youre not good enough” or “don’t make God mad”. The reality of tomorrow isn’t those things but everlasting love that not even death and suffering could break. Hmmm. Sounds familiar.

As I grew up in the church I always looked to draw parallels in my life scripture. Ive done it here too. One that dawned on my today was the story laid out in Revelation of 7 years of tribulations. See the 7 years involve all manner of unpleasantries. Yet they are eventually followed (and yes I know technically im skipping some things but roll with it) by all things being made new. There is a new heaven and a new earth. All the old is washed away. Its where we get the famous quote of “and He will wipe every tear from their eyes.” Seven years of tribulations. Really? Again, sounds familiar. Those seven years seemed to try to tear us apart. But it couldn’t. Cancer couldn’t, death couldn’t and me working to live on in Life 2.0, well that won’t either. It goes back to my last post. I may be a wrinkly old grandfather one day, who knows. But if I am I will still never stop loving Stephanie and I will carry an eternal loyalty to her and her legacy. But that doesn’t mean I stop living either. I mean after all it’s Live Give Love, not sit in sorrow in a darkened room and post sad comments to Facebook all day, Give Love right?

So here I sit on the eve of Resurrection day out of our own 7 years of tribulations carrying in my heart a love that not even death and suffering could break. Am I cursed or blessed? Blessed. One of the final lines of Les Miserables is “to love another person is to see the face of God.” If that is true, then I have to admit to being blessed. Im not sugar coating and acting like Im not angry she’s gone. I am. Every day, every hour. And please let me be clear; I live right now in the aftermath. I am surrounded by the trappings of what was supposed to be our “happily ever after.” So please don’t assume that I don’t feel it. Stephanie never made a public spectacle of her pain; she brought out her spark and light. Who am I as the caretaker of that legacy if I don’t do the same? Its what she taught me to do. You simply cannot celebrate a beautiful joyful light like her by parading despair. But as I have said over and over again: I HAVE A CHOICE! And I have to rejoice for Stephanie being in my life. And tomorrow I will rejoice for my faith telling me that even though I cannot see her, she lives. My childhood pastor told a sermon once on Easter and I never forgot it. He spoke of a small boy who was made fun of during a Sunday school Easter scavenger hunt for bringing back and empty egg to represent the real meaning of Easter. After much taunting he screams “I did to do it right, the egg is empty! The tomb was empty!” Tomorrow during the service on Easter Morning, I will be there to celebrate a beautiful person…the strongest I have ever known who is now in a place where she is free. I will rejoice that I was blessed to spend so much time with her and that I carry her with me forever until we meet again. Forget the cynicism and dark musings of this world. Happiness faith and joy aren’t too cliché for me. I choose life and light. I choose to live like Steph; to live give and love like she did. Oh, and John, if you are reading this, yes I will have an empty egg with me tomorrow morning.

Peace to you all

Sammy

Saturday March 23, 2013

100 days. Might as well be 100 years. Or 100 minutes. But 100 days since “I’ll see you later.” I posted to Facebook that if I were President, expectations for my term would be set based on my first 100 days. So how would I poll? Id like to think Id do well. But really I don’t care about how I poll save with one person. If I could ask one thing Id ask her if she’s proud of me. I want to know she knows Im doing ok and that she thinks Im doing a good job. But I often write of messages in a bottle and how I feel Steph communicate with me in that way through others. And everyone tells me Im doing great and she’d be proud. I’ll take that as a big yes then.

So here at the end of the first one hundred days I’ve learned many things. One of the biggest things I’ve learned was that how I viewed life after a loss like this before it happened was totally off. See if you haven’t been through this you may view it as something chronologically neat a tidy. For a while you are sad, maybe months, maybe years but for a while you are sad; you are “bereaved”. Then “time heals all wounds” and you are happy again. Well…..

Here’s the real deal. Both happen concurrently. There are many times I have been happy in the last 100 days. With friends, family, playing concerts, traveling, teaching, all kinds of things. I have also felt moments of great loss. There have been times where the sorrow seems unbearable or the loss to great to face or the unfairness so stark that the only way to right the ship and achieve cosmic justice is for the universe to reverse course and re-big-bang its self into a clean slate. But again; wrong. Those are the moments where I hear

Steph: “Sammy, what does that kind of thinking get you?”

Me: “Nothing”

Steph: “Ok, so why would you keep doing that to yourself?”

Me: “Cause its sad”

Steph: “Ok so youre just going to stay sad all the time? Really? I don’t want that for you. For heaven’s sake go do something fun….GOOOOO.”

See Steph always got it in a way that so many of us don’t. And that is the biggest point of this first 100 days. I will always be sad that Stephanie isn’t physically here with me. I will grieve that until the day I see her again. But I can be happy and find joy and rebuild my life at the same time. See you don’t stop grieving the loss it just becomes something you do in new ways. Its always there but you learn to live with the emotional scar tissue. I suspect Ill hear her voice and wonder what she would say or do for the rest of my life. I truly would be completely unsurprised if 50 years from now as an old man I am watching grandchildren play on Christmas morning and still pause and think “….yeah…Steph…” And that is ok to do. It is good to do.

But what is not ok to do is to sit and stay in it. Some may wonder why I try to write of optimism and hope and not of my sorrow. I choose not to parade it. Everyone knows how much I miss Stephanie. I don’t need to remind them. My support from the people I care about who surround me is the antidote to those bad days. They have Spidey-Senses as to when I need them. But I won’t sit in it. “What does that get you Sammy?” Then her tag line to every hospital visit for 7 years: “Ok, so whats the plan?”

You see that is the enduring impact of Stephanie’s legacy. She would not want a festival of sorrow. She would want a celebration of her impact. The night she passed I wrote three words: Live Give Love. Words to sum up her life and legacy and who and what she became; even beyond that I see what happened when those words took off. It was like the Phoenix rising. Stephanie left our sight but at the same time was freed from the bonds of her illness and became something greater; something more beyond the limitations of human life. I followed the three words up with the phrase “Live for Steph”. Id amend it: Live LIKE Steph. See if we, if I can live life like she lived her illness then in that we find her strength, her light and her spark. There you find the way to live each day with the urgency of knowing that in this life tomorrow isn’t promised to any of us; what do you do with the time you have? How much life can you pack into today? And if you miss that for the entrapments of pity and despair, then my friends, you have missed the greatest lesson from the greatest teacher I have ever known. Dark days will come but the skies clear. The snow melts and the grass turns green and flowers bloom again. We are not bound by illness, sorrow, sadness and were surely aren’t bound by fear. We are empowered to face each day with the urgency to live so fully that at the end of the day as we lay down to sleep we are amazed at how much we truly lived. Each day is a lifetime. What will you do?

Tomorrow is palm Sunday and begins holy week. Now I am not here to preach. I have dear friends who share my faith and dear friends who do not. I love them all. But with the start of this holy week I am reminded of the new life that I believe in and the new life that we can all see as the world blooms again. Find joy in every moment. Every day is a choice. What choices will you make? LIVE GIVE LOVE…if we live LIKE Stephanie we live for her and for ourselves.

Peace and Love to you all,

Sammy

Ok so here’s two posts that I just never got uploaded. Big one coming this weekend, so this can be the opening act!

Separation Anxiety

February 23, 2013 From Home.

Its been an interesting week to say the least. First and foremost my trip to Houston was wonderful. It was a bit of a cleansing breath as I hoped. From time with dear friends, to meeting up with the team at MD Anderson and just visiting the places we always went to (mostly restaraunts if you can believe that); it was just a good positive healing experience.

Now I am home. I have to admit I felt more home in Houston. Some people don’t like to hear that because they think it means I am going to move there tomorrow or something. I wont lie, I love it there and Steph and I talked of it often as her battle wore on, but that’s not something you really do on the fly. Others see it as a sad thing that Houston feels like home. Kind of like “Oh you have so many memories there…it must be so sad for that to feel like home when your home is here.” Actually I have a lot of good memories there. Tough ones too. But see here’s the kicker: our battle brought us closer and so it created many happy memories there. We had great dinners out, trips to the beach, time with friends, even some of our time at the hospital is happy memories. Also it is just a place I like to be. Its warm, there is lots to do and it makes me happy to be in that city.

So now life back in Ohio continues. Ive been sad to be away from my friends in Texas and from the place that became a second home. If I could go again tomorrow for a trip I would. But summer and time to travel in June will be here before I know it. In the mean time there is lots to do here and friends and family to spend time with. And those are good things.

The last couple of days a sadness has hit me. Out of the blue. Just tears from nowhere. I couldn’t figure it out. I knew it was better around people but worse when I was alone. This morning I figured it out. My family and friends can fill the void left by Stephanie’s physical presence. People experience loss and move on with there lives and those that are still here can fill a physical presence. I can watch a movie with another person, I can drink coffee with another person or sit by another person in church or take a road trip with another person. And I have so many wonderful people in my life to do those things with. But nothing fills the void of WHO Stephanie was because no other person is her. I watched a show I like on HBO this morning. And I teared up. See I started to think about when she and I had watched it and the coversations we would have. I could watch that show with 1000 different people and have 1000 different conversations. None would be the same. None would be her. People go forward with life. People forge new relationships and many who are widowed re-marry in time. But no two people are the same and that is the greatest challenge. You don’t replace people. Tv’s, shower nozzles, cars; you replace those. Not people. And that is now the greatest challenge of Life 2.0. How to you fix the unfixable solution? Time. Love. Friends. Family. Faith. I think those might be some of the ingredients. Just go forward and learn to integrate Stephanie into this new life so that her joy comes through. Nothing will ever make her absence not-painful on an emotional level. It just can’t be done. But the people I hold close in my life bring their own gifts and ability to sustain me and I can hopefully do the same for them.

Resurgence

Friday March 8, 2013

Its been a few months since a posting hiatus this long. Its been an incredibly busy time and I feel the end of the school year coming on like a truck. At the same time I can see the long warm days of summer in the distance and they are coming too and with them a continued rebirth in Life 2.0.

My students performed wonderfully at district contest. I have to mention them here. It is a privilege to work with this group of young people. Many of them and their parents know the challenges from my early days at EC along with Stephanie’s story. The day of her passing was the day of our concert and they performed that night. I continue to be moved by the images from the concert that night and the support I have been shown. If you do or have ever believed that teenagers are not capable of great maturity, love, compassion and accomplishment, well its my pleasure to tell you that you are wrong. On my darkest day they told me to lean on them. And they haven’t let up since. They played beautifully last week.

That aside it has been a week of looking at life through continual new lenses. March has come in like a wintry lion and yet as we move toward the thaw coming this weekend, I can see spring on the horizon. I feel in my mind the coming of warming temperatures, the trees and grass being green once again and life taking in a breath of fresh air. I think that was a part of why my trip to Houston felt so refreshing. It is never really winter there the way it is here. 50 degrees is cold. Frost on the car is a true annoyance instead of just what happens. I need the spring and summer sun and the outdoor breeze and the changes that a summer in Life 2.0 is sure to bring along with time on the bike, vacation with the family and eventually the start of marching band – now one of my favorite parts of my job.

Its ironic: the farther I get out from Stephanie’s passing the more I seem to think about her and hear her voice in my daily life. I have often talked about feeling like I am getting messages in a bottle in a way. I will have a question on my mind that I wonder about Stephanie or about some way I am feeling. And someone just answers it. That would be perfectly not-spooky if it weren’t for one small detail: I never actually ask them the question. It just gets answered. A friend says that’s her way of communicating with me now. Ill buy that. It brings comfort. Sometimes it simply comes in the form of a song that comes across the radio. But it is there. I can hear her voice and feel her encouraging me every day. I think she’d be proud. At least I hope she would. Everyone tells me she would so maybe that’s the message in the bottle I should pay the closest attention to.