Posted on by Julie Deziel

The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow

Joni Mitchell sings “Rows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air, and feather canyons everywhere. I looked at clouds that way.” I am not a fan of Joni’s music, I will immediateIy change the channel for I am one that needs the right song for the moment I am in. The other day though, I saw the YouTube video of this song with Joni singing mind you at age 78 and having to relearn so much following a brain aneurism a few years back, “Both Sides Now” at a Rhode Island Folk fest just this year. It brought me straight to tears.

Who as a child did not lay on their backs in the cool grass on a warm summer day and look for characters in the clouds; might it be a dog, a person laughing. Dreams are spoken and wishes held tight while looking. Just as fast as the clouds can change the illusions in the sky they can become just plain ugly. They bring the rain, the snow and a darker day.

Two years ago today I was in the throes of grief through losing a father, grandfather, my husband’s brother and my husband’s sister’s significant other in a years time. The cloud cover was heavy like the weight of a large quilt. It was almost comforting to lay under that blanket and the darkness of the clouds. As each death descended upon us it was much more comforting to just lay there with no break in the clouds. Little did we know one of the hardest deaths was very near. With little time to truly grieve, our daughter’s husband peacefully passed away in his sleep. Overwhelming, incredibly sad, stunning, leave you breathless and extremely painful. You grieve for the son lost, your grandchild’s realization daddy is gone forever and he will never know him as we did. The most difficult though was watching my own child grieve, hurt, in despair and not being able to make any of it better. The quilt never felt as heavy as it did that night, the next week…for months and now nearly two years. My child was simply sad and there was absolutely nothing I could do to fix it. Grief hung on my shoulders like a shawl. I could only walk through her cues as she began to heal but we know that can be an indeterminate period of time but it seemed like the clouds simply were ever in the way.

The picture attached is one from a race night and while sitting at my son’s pit spot about a week after my son-in- law‘s death I found absolute beauty in the clouds. I saw love, peace and a feeling of “this will be better one day.” Having been consumed with all the sadness and grief I thought I could never pull out from under I found that time allows us to grow into the new normal and that there is love before death and loss but also the same after. Just like the clouds can be ever changing so is life. I still find there are days that I need to throw the quilt off and allow the clouds to break. As Joni sings, “I’ve looked at life from both sides now. From win and lose and still somehow it’s life’s illusions I recall. I really don’t know life. I really don’t know life at all.” Just that life is difficult, with loss but the sun will peek through the clouds when they are darkest. That’s what I know about life.

Feel free to embrace Joni Mitchell in her reprisal to singing and giving truly giving us a gift in her song, “Both asides Now.”

https://youtu.be/4aqGjaFDTxQ
Posted on by Julie Deziel

Home Is Where The Heart Is

How many times have you answered the question, “What is your address?” Or have you typed it in on a form to have something shipped to you or filled it in on your human resource paperwork? This is your place, your landing spot, your place of comfort mixed in with a little chaos. This is home. Most people can say they have lived in at least two places in their life. One would be where they grew up and then the home they lived in as an adult. Some can say they have experienced many places across the world as home. Have you ever wanted to go back to that one place that you first called home, to relive those memories.

My first “home” memory is a two-story white house with a front porch and two detached garages. It had a big yard and we played with the neighborhood kids every day. I shared a bedroom across from my parent’s bedroom. There was a big old piano in the dining room that I took many years of piano lessons on. We always sat around the large dining room table after Sunday church and had chicken. I have often driven past it and wondered how much has changed since we moved out in 1977. I would love to take a walk through it and remember the back door slamming and stand at the bedroom window and look over the back yard and remember the laughter playing “Annie-Annie-Over” and “Kiss or Kill.”

Not every home has only good memories though for whatever reason. Taking a walk through a home once lived can flood a person with so many feelings. As you run your hand along the bannister you might ignite the feeling of a first love as you readied for prom. Maybe seeing your name in concrete reminds you of the demise of your parent’s marriage and how that laid groundwork for feelings of abandonment as you grew up. Would the owners of that house now allow you in even if you promised you’d leave? That you promised you would not take anything but the memories that you found along the way.

When we moved from the place I first called home to the second place I called home before I moved as an adult was a large three-story home on a little lake way off the road. Good memories were made there and sad memories sprinkled in along the way. Nearly 30 years after I left home I was able to call it home again with my husband as we had the opportunity to purchase it. It is still a large old three-story home that we have made our own and we have made our own memories but I am blessed to be able to reminisce with my old memories.

I have learned though from my first home to my hopefully last home it was not the lumber, the paint, how many bedrooms or what neighborhood it stood in but more of who was inside; who made those memories. It was the heart of the place that made it home; the laughter, the family. Each of those memories had a part of building who I am. When I leave our home for the last time as Miranda Lambert sings in her song, “The House That Built Me,” I “won’t take nothin’ but a memory from the house that built me.”

https://youtu.be/DQYNM6SjD_o

Posted on by Julie Deziel

Always Our Hero

What is the definition of a hero? Merriam-Webster has a few of them. One is a “person admired for achievements and noble qualities.” Geoff would fall into this category. All his years as a firefighter automatically put him into that category which he entered into in his teens and would often practice with his cousin Tommy. Tommy reflected on these moments at the funeral. “I always thought it was the coolest thing to be saved by my own cousin time and time again. He was my own superhero.” From Burlington Northern Santa Fe all the way to the Senate floor he was a hero during the train derailment near Casselton, ND in 2013. To me though he was more than a hero, he was a son.

August 12, 2020. 365 days ago. 8760 hours ago. 525,600 seconds ago when my phone rang as my husband and I had settled on the couch for the evening. It was my daughter and she told me, “Geoff’s dead.” Only my straight-to-the-point Adair would lay it out that way. In the nano-second following I thought, “What did Geoff do to piss her off?” But it was nothing that Geoff did to upset her. Our Geoff was gone for real. I was up off that couch and saying we had to go to Adair. I made it to the dining room and I literally fell to the floor in utter shock, horror, loss, disbelief, and heart-breaking pain for my baby girl and grandson. I could not get up from the floor, Mike literally had to pick me up off the floor. “This is not happening. This is a dream. Please wake me up from this gut-wrenching pain I am feeling for all three of them.”

Just eight days prior I sat in their backyard and we visited for hours in which we figured out all of life’s problems, gossiped and watched what we at the time believed to be real dead birds hanging from the water tower (which we found out later they were not real) and of course Isak provided much entertainment. The days that followed Geoff’s death showed me a community filled with love for their friend, their family member, their co-worker, their hero and planning the most appropriate celebration of life they felt he deserved. I also saw those same people project so much love on Geoff’s favorite little guy and surround the love of his life with strength, love and a ton of food. The visitation and service that was put together was beautiful. They knocked it out of the park…literally! It was held at the baseball diamonds on a summer day filled with much sun and love. They honored their hero well.

I can see the hero everyone else sees but Geoff is my hero for a different reason. There is another definition for hero that to me fits him to a tee; an object of extreme admiration and devotion. Geoff loved my daughter with all he had. He gave his all to his little family and provided for them. He was her biggest supporter and together they could weather any storm. He fits that definition in the way he admired what they had and the devotion he had to their love and relationship. The love they shared was one-in-a-million and I was blessed to have him as a son-in-law, although I kept him in my heart as one as my own.

It is difficult to understand why things happen the way they do. I believe we all would agree there is no way Geoff would have chosen this journey for his Adair and Isak but he would be incredibly proud of the strength she has had over the last year and will walk with her through her life. We most definitely know he is watching his buddy grow into the goofy, compassionate, friendly mama’s big boy (he will tell you he’s not a baby) who looks like him more and more every day. The only answer I can give myself is that heaven must have needed a hero and although we wish Geoff was not the one picked we know they got the best. As the song by JoDee Messina (attached to this post) goes, “I guess Heaven was needing a hero. Somebody just like you, Brave enough to stand up for what you believe and follow it through. When I try to make it make sense in my mind the only conclusion I come to is that Heaven was needing a hero like you.”

Posted on by Julie Deziel

The Window

“The soul can speak through the eyes,
and kiss with a look.”

-Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer-

A simple edited picture of me. When I first looked at it I thought it was a rather cool picture and my eyes really stood out. But I looked a little deeper into them and they spoke volumes to me. I would believe that many have heard the saying “eyes are the window to the soul.” I have learned in life that the soul is what leaves our body when we die but is also the spirit and essence of a person and is composed by all the mental abilities: reason, character, feeling, memory, perception and thinking. It is a book of who we are physically and spiritually.

When I was younger as we drove along the neighborhood streets I loved to imagine beyond the windows of a home in the evening picturing the lives of those inside. Do they live the Beaver Cleaver world? Do they have every toy and electronic under the Christmas tree to ensure that Santa requests were fulfilled. I still ponder the lives on a quiet drive through a neighborhood thinking who is there and what secrets are hidden behind their windows. Is there financial struggle or is their a lonely spouse following the loss of their beloved spouse through death. If we could take a walk up to the window to see further inside we could understand the narrative of their lives.

We each have a story no doubt. We are born and grow up and go through school with some being a jock and popular and some, like me, a wallflower who centered on music. My narration follows that same path throughout my adult life. I have remained the quiet and shy gal who loves with her whole heart those who I have let into my life. Through EMS work I have seen the joy of life entering life and seen the sadness of life leave a body. I have seen horrific scenes that are imprinted within my memory bank. As I progressed into 911 dispatching I no longer have to “see” but now “hear” the scenes, the horror of family discord, the devastating sadness of the realization that one’s loved one will no longer look at them, speak to them or spend another moment with them. Each one lays within my soul and travels with me along the highways and byways of my life. Be it a friend or a tragedy that encompass a memory of what is held inside they each are seen in my eye; my truth, my emotions, my fear, my happiness, my intensity, and my sorrow.

We as a family have traveled the grief road over the past year and a half in losing five family members but especially in the last five months our eyes hurt, our eyes are tired. My soul is exhausted and torn. Strength and faith are shook to their core and there is an overwhelming feeling of going under. I know I have the strength of our Lord who holds my heart and soul in his hands and will hold my tears and will dry my eyes. For now the windows to my soul are tinged a little red and swollen but they still remain intriguingly beautiful, not just because of their blue color but because of the words they hold within and everything the soul knows and continues to thirst for.

Posted on by Julie Deziel

A Hard Season

*click on song below to play while you read*

The perfect home for the long awaited season. My husband has enjoyed deer hunting since he was a young child. He has passed on his passion to his oldest son who is passing it on to his sons. For many in our neck of woods it is a tradition that is planned meticulously for months. Lists made, food planned, the perfect spot picked out, and the stand put up. The hours of sitting and waiting for the perfect “one” and the talk of the big ones that got away. The season will go on for approximately two weeks and the venison will be packed in the freezer and those lucky enough to get the trophy buck will have it hung on the wall much to the chagrin of the spouse.

I have watched my extremely strong, independent daughter build the life she wanted with the perfect fit for her. They shared twelve years together with most of them laughing and cementing the strong marital bond that many would be jealous of. They brought their long-awaited son home and the perfect home was laid out with the three of them. Their little home was set…until tragedy stuck like a bullet cursing through the fall air on opening deer hunting.

We as parents take our children through maybe trials in life; potty training, that scary first day of kindergarten, first loves followed by the first breakups. We kiss their ownies, love them through the long nights of high fevers, chase the monsters out of the bedroom and hours of horrendous homework. We are there to make it all better no matter what. What do you though as a parent who cannot make your children better when major tragedy hits? How do you fix it for your child whose grief is so heavy?

I have entered that long, hard season with her. The loss of her husband is the one horror that cannot be chased out of the room. I have no kisses to make this pain go away. I sit here at a complete loss. I feel as if my hands are tied behind my back. I am at a complete loss because I cannot mother away her pain. My baby hurts immensely and my instinct is to run immediately every day to her and just rock her and make it better. I can sit with her and wait with her but her love will not return. Her love will not be anticipated for supper at the end of the day. His stories will not be shared anymore. Her trophy hangs on the wall never aging, always young.

The season will not end after two weeks. It will last for an eternity. I will always want to make her better but I will not be able to. I will climb the mountain with her and sit beside her in silence waiting and wishing there was a way for a mommy to make it all better.

Grief is a hard season and I cannot save her. Plain.And.Simple.

Posted on by Julie Deziel · 1 Comment

Empty

This is one part of our yard; the east side of the driveway. Imagine it full of trees and overgrowth of trees and cattails near the water. Last summer and this summer my husband and a kind old man spent countless hours cutting down and hauling out the trees to bring the vision that my husband had for a clear view from the house to the lake. This is the nearly end product minus grass (next year’s project). This space at one time had a log cabin, a chicken coop with a concrete foundation and a small 1-car garage. You see no remnants. Imagine next summer this will be all green and absolutely breath-taking view out towards the lake.

For me though having grown up out here and watching them clear all the trees and weeds I watched them empty bits and pieces of my childhood life and small aspects of my parents slowly slipped away. I have told my husband, “You are tearing down my memories.” But I knew better. The memories will always be there but visually they are erased.

Having lost four family members in a years time the same principle is being played out here. They were taken away, erased away from Alzheimer’s, kidney disease, sudden medical illness and an undiagnosed cardiac condition for my 32-year-old son-in-law. Their physical presence has sadly been wiped away and so incredibly hard to face at times that it can be hard to breathe. We just cannot catch our breath being in a state of grief for so long.

Just as the land east of the driveway changed completely with my husband’s vision, my memories of playing there or jumping off the dock in the lake have not faded. So too are the memories of my loved ones who have moved on in their journey. I just have to allow myself the grace of time to take those breaths and know that as the canvas of life changes what I carry in my bank of memories will never change. My loved ones walk with me and those I love. As I will walk across the green grass next summer I will hear the laughter of a childhood many years ago as we played football in the dark with the neighbors and the sound of the wood splitter as dad prepared the wood piles for winter or the vision of my mother sitting in her lawn chair twirling her hair as she read one of many books. I will remember the crisp morning we stood as a family for the photographer and a picture from that morning sits below a lamp with a red bulb lit for my son-in-law. My view when I close my eyes is filled with images from the past that can never be wiped away with a chainsaw or a tractor. Next year as I walk across the green grass I will hear it all, I will remember it all and I will make new memories with the new view. My memory bank is not erased nor will it ever be empty and will embrace each of those memories and breath, reflect, and smile. The view is full.

Posted on by Julie Deziel · 2 Comments

A Job Well Done

My grandfather Lonny, was a farmer for many years of his life. They had many cows that they milked and tended. They put up hay, grew and combined corn and wheat. His wife cooked for her family and farmhands. His two children did the normal chores about the farm. He has seen a change from horse and 2 bottom plow to large combines in his years. When they sold the farm he become a salesman for numerous companies but his most coveted was as a Culligan Salesman having won numerous sales awards for the company. He was awarded “World’s Greatest Salesman” through them numerous times. Later in life he worked as a senior companion visiting those that were alone or needed time out of the house, he absolutely loved that job. He had to give that job up when he no longer could drive. It broke his heart to say goodbye to his clients who became his friends. He then became a receiver in the program and treasured two of his companions-Merle and Doug. He would tell anyone who he would visit to never complain about work because “one day you won’t be able to and you will wish you could.” He would say if he had his driver’s license he would still be taking the elderly out or simply enjoying a cup of coffee with them.

This man had a memory that was spot on. He was a historian of not only his life but so many other lives. It was always a treat to sit and listen to his stories. As he lay in his bed at the nursing home that became home for the last three months wondering if his days were dwindling he recounted so many aspects of his life. Four days before he died was laying in the hospital he was able to mouth all the words of the Gettysburg Address while I read it to him and then recite out loud a Longfellow poem “A Village Blacksmith” that he learned in 7th grade.

As he had a sudden illness on Tuesday he had to make a decision in his care. He spoke with his doctor and myself and being of sound, EXTREMELY sound mind he chose to do nothing and move towards comfort care knowing that he may only have hours. He had goals, plans, and recipes to cook in the very near future. He was hoping to move to assisted living from the nursing home in February. He had a new blanket he was saving for when he went home, be it his own home or assisted living. Simply, there were many things ahead for the soon-to-be 100-year-old man.

How does anyone take in the words that life will soon be over for them and move forward to acceptance? As the granddaughter to watch the struggle I must say was simply heartbreaking. I needed him to be at peace. I needed him to be comfortable. I needed him to feel loved. He set the pace, the tone, and the rules. He had total charge of his death as he did his whole life. What an incredible honor of be able to give him that. So in his time we reminisced and he put his affairs all in order. We planned how to carry out his wishes after death. We cried a lot about what was to come and most importantly we laughed. I heard stories I never heard before. I saw spark in his eyes when he talked about my grandmother and dancing with her. He was sorry he would not celebrate his 100th birthday on February 21st but looked forward to celebrating with his wife and friends but more than anything he was waiting for Mary, his daughter, to come get him. He knew she would come.

While I waited from Tuesday morning for him on his terms to leave this earth to join Mary to walk into eternity I stayed by his side. He asked to never be alone. He was always there for me in my life and I would honor him at the end of his by sitting and holding his hand, talking in his ear, playing country music in his ear, or rubbing his legs until he took his last quiet breath holding a can a beer the staff had placed for him just the way he wanted. I walked him outside with the funeral home at 0115 into the crisp air wishing I could wrap him in his coat where 6 days prior him and I walked out to the car to go on an outing and he pulled his coat a little tighter around him in the cold. I was sad for me, oh so sad, but I was so happy for him. He had completed his job and made it home with his new blanket and seeing all those that loved him immensely and the one person he truly was excited to see again was his mother who he had not seen for 95 years. He did it. He did it his way, in his time, his way and very peaceful. Job well done.

So, Boppy through all your hard work and losses you had in life, the times of loneliness, the times of joy and laughter and through the last 5 days of your most wonderful life and as I promised you “I am happy for you”, “I will not forget your memories” and “We will be okay” I will live your rule in life…just have to take it as it comes.

Alonzo Benbo 2/21/1920 – 2/8/2020 Until I see you again. Dolly

Posted on by Julie Deziel

Silent Night

Ten years ago December 24 we gathered at our home following a cantata I directed at a local church. The house was filled with most of our children, my parents, my brother and a sister, significant others, nieces and nephews, and 2 grandchildren. You get the picture. It was certainly a little crazy with the house filled with much laughter and conversation. Wrapping paper strewn all over the floor and kids anticipating their next present with glee.

Move forward five years and the Christmas tradition continues at my home but looks so much different. My sisters and brother have taken their children and created their own traditions. My mother is no longer alive to celebrate one of her favorite holidays. Mike and I have added to the number of our grandchildren which now totals five. Our children have brought their significant others into our fold. Our celebration remains loud. My heart is content with the noise and chaos.

As the years have moved on we have been blessed with more grandchildren and seen our children bring new love into their lives and seen them lose in the love game. We are aging gracefully and with that we see our children doing the same within their families. They are taking on new traditions and the need to ensure that all sides of families receive time with grandparents, aunts and uncles or whoever it may be. So the silence is beginning to creep into our home more and more each year.

Silence is golden they say…but we are not yet in our “golden” years I hope?! So for now I willing or unwillingly have to find my way through the quiet of the holiday and a small gathering here and there of some family and experience the giggles of a small child opening a gift and soak in their little eyes glistening with anticipation and remember a Christmas not so long ago when the bright colored Christmas paper covered the floor and us as adults could not carry on a conversation due to the excited children playing with their newly acquired gifts.

Silent night, holy night. All is bright, all is calm…I guess I was not quite ready for the calm and silence quite so soon.