Watermelon

Watermelon. It's a feel-good food, evoking memories of long summer days, juice spilling from your chin onto your shirt, weekends at the lake, picnics, the Fourth of July and seed-spitting contests.

I was slicing a watermelon today, and another kind of memory came to mind.

A couple of years ago, when my friend Diane was gravely ill with cancer and staying in the hospital, she was craving watermelon. At this point, she was only receiving nourishment intravenously or by sipping a little bit of liquid. Her daughter, the same age as my Katie, and her daughter's father worked hard to find watermelon in early spring so that they could freeze the juice and make watermelon popsicles for her. It was quite a feat, and I know her daughter felt so good to be able to do that for her mother.

I remember being so sad when the realization hit me: "She has actually eaten her last meal? She will never chew any food again? No, this is it. She will never enjoy watermelon or any other food again." I was overcome with grief that she was slipping away, having one worldly delight after another taken from her. And now it was food, one of our most basic needs and pleasures. We take food for granted, we grouse about it, critique it, yammer about it, praise it, obsess about it. We focus our social events around food. Some of our dearest family memories revolve around the sharing of food and then the passing of the recipes to our children.

To never taste food again--It seemed such a cruel thing to live through before passing. It was hard to watch her body slowly trickle away when she always generated so much so much life and energy. She was one of the most enthusiastic people I've ever known.

So when I sink my teeth into a triangle of watermelon now, I think of Diane, and for a moment, I re-live the grief of the watermelon moment. But then I remember that the best way I can move on and still cherish her is to live in the moment the way she did, to really appreciate and enjoy things. Don't get me wrong; she made plans like everyone else. But she had a wonderful ability to be in the moment, to be "into" whomever she was conversing with, to be "into" whatever activity we were doing (such as Girls Group day at the lake) or to be "into" whatever we were enjoying, like rich holiday foods or refreshing watermelon.

Since that time, I have never taken a piece of juicy watermelon for granted again. The bigger lessons for me throughout the journey with Diane are too numerous to go into here, but the smaller ones are meaningful, too.

Like how to really appreciate a red, sweet bite of summer. Diane, I love and miss you!

Monday Morning, You're Never Going to Look Quite the Same

Monday Morning, you're never going to look quite the same.

I'm in my last week of work, due to a restructuring of my job that entails a plethora of additional responsibilities in not enough time to do them and a time commitment I cannot make in the evenings and weekends.

I have loved this job for 9 years, gone to church there since my son was 6 months old, and he is now 23. So you can imagine, I have some strong feelings about this, 99.9% not good feelings.

However, I'm going to try to look at the bright side as often as possible. And one of those bright sides is: Monday mornings. No rush to get up, no pressure to get back at projects for the week, and most of all NO meetings!

Eventually, I think Monday mornings will be busy outside the home again. But for now, it's one last time in to clean up files, pitch stuff I've needed to for a long time and prepare docs for the next person who sits in my chair.

Sigh.

I hope they find someone who loved that job and ministry like I did, but between you and me and the world (all two who read this blog, and my own mom is not in those two) I doubt they will.

OK, time for a cup of coffee, time to put on a professional face and attitude and go to work. For the last time, on a Monday morning.

For Kelsey

Last year, I wrote about these girls having a rare (11 people in the world) genetic immune deficiency disease (Dock 8) and how my church sponsored the Be The Match event to try to find stem cell donors.

I'm sad to say that the eldest, Kelsey (right) passed away this afternoon at 5:17pm.

Heavy, heavy heart, but she is with Jesus. I know this because she was with him every day while she was here on earth these short years, so this relationship just continues now in a different dimension than we can understand. It's not that big of a jump for Kelsey. Her speech was peppered with references to him, she literally danced for him, and she pointed others to him with a mega-watt smile. He was her all in all, and now she is completely healed, forever. Not one more hour of sickness for Kelsey. Not one minute more of suffering.

One of my best memories of Kelsey is that when she was little and enrolled in a Praise Dance program with my daughter Katie, Kelsey's mom, Tammy, asked me to give Kelsey a ride home, and I agreed. About halfway to my house, I realized I had forgotten Kelsey at church. I never drove so fast back to church or prayed so hard while I was driving as I did to retrieve her, which is saying a lot for me. Upon my arrival, she was fine, greeted me with her little cheerful smile and chatted all the way home. Bless her heart.

My heart is heavy, laden with grief, yes, but also heavy with the rich gifts she shared with us all.

She will be missed. And she has the most amazing parents on the face of the earth. Much love to them.