Reassigned

I remember when I was a Sophomore in High School adjusting to the school district having reassigned high school students from Victory to Franklin High School. I had gone to Victory from fifth grade through my Freshman year after moving there from four years at North Star Elementary in another village where our family had lived until my Dad had been reassigned to different churches. I had such great friends there at Victory and then the districts merged and we had to go by bus 25 miles each way because there was a bridge out along the way. 50 miles each day on the bus with friends from my old school and then thrust into the mix of students from Franklin High School. It wasn’t my choice. I was reassigned.

Then in the middle of my Junior year of High School, after only being there for a year and a half, my Dad was reassigned from one church he pastored to another, from a village to a town. We only moved a half dozen miles or so but it was a different school district, Grove City, and once again I was displaced. It was my third high school and I was with people I didn’t know at all. It wasn’t my choice. I had been reassigned schools because my Dad was reassigned jobs.

In the middle of the year, I had to adjust. I really had no choice but to make the best of it and so I tried to fit in. Fortunately, there were some really kind people at that school who took me in and befriended me as I befriended them. Many of them had been in school together since they were just young children. They knew each other well but some of them, that’s all I needed, some of them were the kindest and the best people to me. I had had such good friends before in my other schools and fortunately, I found some more friends in this new place.

I survived and even thrived in this new school with a new band to play trumpet in, a chorus to sing in, and friends who took a chance on befriending the new guy. I look back on those days with fondness and am so thankful that a time in my life that could have been so lonely, wasn’t.

Perhaps times of change like that when my Dad was reassigned or my school was reassigned prepared me for the life I have lived. Looking back I have been through a lot of changes, lived a lot of places, packed and unpacked a lot of boxes, and experienced both heartache and joy. Reassigned. Following where God sends. Where God leads me I will follow. 

It’s good you know to go when God says go. I’m in no way perfect and so many times in my life I have done less than my best, less than what I knew and know God wanted and wants. But still, I go. Again. And again.

Reassigned.

A Rich Life: So much loss in life. But now...I'm kind of OK

I was just a kid when my Grandpa died. I knew I would miss him but what I “missed” in all of it was that he was my mom’s dad. She would miss him greatly. I missed all of that, but I was just a kid. But still, how did I not see that my Mom was without her Daddy? I missed so many things when I was a child. Most of them aren’t even a part of my memories. I don’t recall much from those years.

Just thinking more about Grandpa though, I guess part of the process for people was that he had cancer and had really suffered. I didn’t know much about that at the time of course. I hadn’t seen him at his worst. I really was pretty pathetic, wasn’t I? I missed even the simple thing of seeing someone I loved in pain. But I did love him. He was a good man, a good Grandpa. And then he was gone.

Then here is the craziest thing of all, well maybe not the craziest because that surely came later, but about a decade after Grandpa died my mom got sick and I saw her in the hospital. She was supposed to get better so I left and drove home for a job interview. I took the drive, went for the interview, for a job I didn’t get by the way, and then got a phone call. My Mom had died.

She wasn’t supposed to. She wasn’t that sick. She was supposed to get better. She was. They told me that. I wouldn’t have left her otherwise. I would have stayed at the hospital to be with her every moment that I could, to hold her hand and tell her that I loved her. I love you, Mommy.

Then the whirlwind of viewings and funerals and all those people who wanted to tell me how sorry they were. But then they went home to their complete families and happy lives and I was on my own, Mom was gone.

My life changed when she died. My family changed. The hurt and pain and loss inside stayed with me as I knew that this could happen again. I wasn’t going to let it, not again. I wasn’t going to let anyone else in that might leave me. She wasn’t supposed to do that, to leave me. She was supposed to always be with me. That’s what Moms are supposed to do, at least not for a long long time until she got very old. But she was gone.

I went on with my life doing the best I could. Actually, I had a pretty good life finally. I still missed her like crazy but little by little I thought I was over it, the pain, not her. But inside I knew that was a lie. I wasn’t over her death.

It was about a decade and a half after Mom’s death that I got a call that my sister had died in a car accident. Instant death on an icy road. She was way too young to be dead, even younger than my Mom had been. I was so mad. So very mad. I couldn’t believe it. How could this have happened to her? You would think that I would have learned but again it seemed like it was all about me. I was so upset but she had children and it must have been so much worse for them. 

I think when something like this happens there is no need to compare your pain with someone else. We all had pain. We all had losses. But they lost their Mom. I knew what that was like.

But here’s the crazy thing. Somewhere in the grieving for my sister, I realized that the grief for my Mom was less than it had been. Crazy, right? How could that be? I would have thought that the grief that I was still bearing for the loss of my Mom combined with what I experienced in my sister’s death would have doubled what I felt. But it didn’t.

I don’t know why. I have no idea. But when my sister died, and in the middle of my grief for her, I accepted my Mom’s death. Life was just going to be like that I guess. One pain doesn’t wipe out another but sometimes it exposes what has already diminished and you just didn’t realize it.

It wasn’t a good thing that my sister died. I’ll never figure that one out. I guess it’s not my business to figure it out. But I am so grateful to have known her for so many years.

And my Mom? Who could have guessed that the only way to ease her leaving me was to have another one I loved to leave me. To see it wasn’t all about me perhaps.

Now Mom’s with Grandpa and my sister is with them both. I’m still here and still missing them and you know what? I’m Ok. 

Well, kind of OK.