Returning after one year

I haven’t been able to bring myself to blog since last year.

A year ago I was full of joy as Nate and Harrison made their wedding vows together.

And then five months later Harrison was dead.

He had been in fragile health since a surgery went awry three years before, and in November he took a major turn for the worse and entered into hospice.

We had three months with him in hospice: some of the most sacred and some of the most painful months I’ve ever lived through.

Somewhere in there the election happened, and in January Trump was installed in office.

I wasn’t able to reflect much on what I knew was coming with this president (we had been warning people for years about it), because I was deep in grief.

I’m still in grief: a grief that includes grief for my country, for the people being ripped out of homes and families with no regard for the law, for the earth which has even less support for its healing, for the children in Israel and Palestine (particularly Gaza), for the children killed this week while praying in the first mass of their school year here in the Twin Cities; indeed for all of the anguish, horror and suffering that is all around us.

And still my tears are mostly for my son-in-law, for my son who has endured a loss that I cannot imagine, and for all the dreams I held for him and Harrison.

This morning after mass a few of us were processing what had happened at Annunciation this week, and we ended up trying to affirm for each other that life matters, that our grief is appropriate and comes from our compassion, that God continues to breathe into this world even in the midst of horror, and that we each need to find moments of beauty in our lives.

So today I am returning to my blog, and trying very hard to remember the joy of our son’s wedding last year, the beauty of love reflected in Harrison and Nate’s eyes, and the community of friends surrounding them.