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

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

I Have Mail

I love the holiday season. I can spend all day sitting admiring my Christmas tree all decorated and soaking in the smell of Christmas wafting from the oven. One of my favorites of the season though is checking the mailbox and finding out that I have mail and it includes those special envelopes from friends and family wishing our household a “Merry Christmas”..

I work in an environment that does not bring much good news. Those that reach out on 911 do not do so to let us know they have a new grandchild or they won at bingo or they are getting company over the holiday season. They unfortunately call on their worst day no matter what time of year.

This year has seemed to be a different year in the center. Communities being in lock down brought struggles that families were not familiar with which brought out more violence, more juvenile issues and substance abuse. As the crisis has continued to drag on and continued lock downs, be it schools or businesses, it has has wreaked havoc mentally and financially on many. The tentacles reach throughout on the crisis lines, mental health providers, emergency rooms, and our 911 lines.

It seems as if death has enveloped me lately. Recently I was involved in 3 CPR in progress calls within a 24 hour period. Over this past weekend there were 2 unattended deaths in 12 hours. There are many ambulance call for services and later an obituary is viewed in the local newspapers. It may or may not be related to the medical crisis sweeping across the United States. It could be due to an internal struggle they have or an undiagnosed medical issue or simply old age took over their tired body. I turn on the National news and there is the never ending broadcast of doom and gloom and the out of sight crescendo of death due to CoVid-19 and no matter where a person goes to on social media you cannot simply will not escape it. It is suffocating. It is almost as if I can actually feel the death as a formidable item. It is exhausting and overwhelming most days.

Tomorrow though I will walk through the locked doors of the 911 doors and prepare to take the calls of another individual who is having their worst day; short of breath, high fever, or a young wife finding their husband laying lifeless on the floor. I will do my job. I will check my mailbox on my way out of the driveway in hopes that it will present me with a little joy; an envelope filled with a peaceful scene or a goofy Christmas scene but both sending love with the pictures of the family and signatures of season greetings. I will FEEL alive and hopeful…for now.

I pray you are enveloped in much love and peace this holiday season.

Posted on by Julie Deziel

Where Do the Tracks Lead To?

I can bet there are many people that see a train heading down the tracks or when they are holding you up at a crossing imagining, “Where is that train going?” “Where do those tracks lead to?” or “What does life at the end of tracks really like?”

I no longer will look at a BNSF train in the same way again. I would always look for our son-in-law engineer Geoff on every BNSF train I came across. I saw him a few times in his years with Burlington Northern. I was incredibly proud that my “son” took on the title of engineer. It was cool as a kid to think of “driving” a train. Lucky Geoff actually achieved that cool experience. Now knowing I will not get a chance to catch his grin or just a glimpse of his hat in the engine of the train is simply heartbreaking. Hearing his two-year-old son Isak get excited every time he hears a train when it goes through Larimore is heartwarming but then heartbreaking in the same breath. Daddy will not take his son to the train and show it off. All he has now are the keys to the train from his dad.

These tracks this morning were breathtaking with the sun shining on them. I sat there for a bit and took in the beauty of some simple metal. The clouds and sun mixed above them and they all met off in the horizon. Where was the point they met on the horizon? Was it as peaceful there as it was as I sat and soaked in the beauty of that moment along the road?

My hope is that wherever your tracks are taking you in life today you are finding peace, joy, and something simply breathtaking. As we have learned in the past month in losing Geoff you simply do not know what life is going to throw your way but you have a choice; run from it or run to it. From this point we know our lives will never be the same but we also know we will all be brave. We will find that peace and joy on the tracks of our lives.

Posted on by Julie Deziel

A Chance Meeting


October 12, 1995 was a sunny fall morning.  It started as any other morning.  The children headed off to school on the bus and Paul and I hopped in the car for school; “Seatbelts, Norman, seatbelts.” Who could imagine that a mile and a half down the road there would be a chance meeting between three people?  How would I know that in just a few minutes life as I know it would change in a chance meeting of a Honda Accord and a farm truck?  A chance meeting that would bring me to so many different realms within myself and beyond in my life.

How many times in life have we each forgotten something and had to run back into the house or took a wrong turn?  It could simply be that life is just so busy that we cannot get it together or maybe just maybe, if we are one to believe in it, it could be “divine intervention.” When that meeting of those two vehicles occurred, those three people met, what happened that morning bringing them to meet at that exact moment.  As the driver went around the truck and checked it out, if he would have went around one more time our car would have been through the intersection and would have moved through the day as any other day.  The truck driver would have continued on with his day and would not have had to live with memories of the accident from that day forward.  What are the chances that we were to meet that day?  Did God lay it out specifically the way it happened so I could have a chance to see what lies ahead?

I was blessed to not remember the accident.  What I do remember is driving down the road with my son and talking and singing with him and then waking up laying up across the seats of the car with him patting me on the head saying, “Mommy, Mommy.” Between that time I experienced another realm of life.  I was given an opportunity to know what’s beyond the stars; what is beyond the end of our lives.  I was not given the 90 minutes in heaven or given a chance to have all the unknowns answered.  As I now sit next to my fireplace and feel the warmth from it, it cannot even begin to warm me as much as that moment did.  The warmth I felt can only be described as being hugged from the inside out.  I did not see a light at the end of a tunnel.  I did observe a color though; a magnificent yellow.  There is only one word for it…indescribable. I have spent 21 years searching for that color in paint palettes, magazines, pictures, and in the sky.  I have simply come to the conclusion that it will not be found until I reach heaven.  I did not speak or see anyone but felt the presence of another; a loved one.  I felt them touching my shoulder in such a the manner to lead me back to my life.  What I felt though was a feeling of no regret.  I had no desire to return to my life on earth; that that present was where I wanted to stay.  The overwhelming sense of calm and peace is continually sought still today and so anticipated.

Our chance meeting was not by chance.  Even though the accident brought significant amounts of pain, many surgeries, a scarred body and having to give up a job I loved it enabled to enter a branch in my career path that still allows me to aid others just not in the way I was doing it.  I lost my independence for a period of time but in a roundabout way I gained strength and self-worth.  Most importantly the question of “is there life after death?” was answered that strengthened my faith more intensely that allows me to reach for it when it feigns at low points in my life.

A chance meeting?  I think not but more of a gift; a gift from above.