The Many Thoughts of Wanda Kidd

As we head into this Advent season, I am awash with the burden of living. I have struggled to think about what I am waiting for.  As my family members began to die in quick succession over the last six years, I found myself becoming more and more numb. Holidays had no shape or purpose.  There was little joy in the season or anything else. I tried, oh goodness, I tried. I laughed like always, but there was little joy.

Sometimes I looked in the mirror or looked at pictures taken during that time and I saw such deep sadness in my eyes, that it made me wonder who that person was. When I heard myself talk, I thought I sounded the same, but when I look back, I can see the carnage I inflicted on people who I shut out, cut-down or cut-off and it grieves me down to my now thawing soul. If you were one of those people I am so sorry.

I had lunch with one of those people yesterday. We have been friends for 45 years. We were in each other’s weddings and as her husband said, we shared many end of the month meals in our early days of marriage. She too has experienced her own personal pain and loss and has lived to share her hope.  As each loss mounted for me, she continued to call and check on me, but I was not interested in her concern. To be really honest I was not interested in much. I knew I was hurting her, but I could not seem to muster the energy or will to care about other people’s pain beyond the moment.

But I have been slowly emerging from this mantle of grief.  My sabbatical helped, but I think just time and the relentless prayers of those who cared have carved out a new way of living for me.

Yesterday while we were talking, I told a story about my sister when spontaneous and authentic tears sprung to my eyes and ran down my cheeks.  That might not seem significant or momentous to you, but those were my first unforced tears on this whole journey.

I was dry as a bone. I had to pick out songs for every member of my family that made me cry, so that when the pain built up and I needed some relief, I could play that song and it would trigger tears. For Daddy, it was “The Lily of the Valley.” For Mama, “The Far Side Banks of Jordan,” Amy, “You Can’t Make Old Friends,” and for my brother it was the Spencer Davis Group’s, “Gimme Some Lovin”, because we danced to it at the skating rink in Mebane just before he had the accident that crippled him for life when he was seventeen.

But yesterday I cried and it startled me.  I looked at my friend and in amazement said, “I just cried. I have not done that in six years.”  She said, “I Know, I did not know how to help you, put I just kept praying.”

Thanks be to God for Advent. The mystery of advent could be that we do not know what we are waiting for, but it is a gift that comes to us when we most need it and hopefully we will see it and receive it when it arrives, but I am pretty sure it will keep coming until we do. Who knows, I just might make it out of this life ALIVE.