Thinking, that's All: In Which I Write My Heart Out

All week {um fall long?}, I feel like I've been writing for everyone else.

And that's left me here in these quiet moments too exhausted to write much of what's been on my heart and mind despite there being a flood of thoughts and emotions.

Writing here in this space has been a lot like taking a bucket to an overflowing river, trying to reduce the flooding one bucketful at a time; by the time I get back from emptying one bucket, the river has again spilled beyond its flooded banks and I'm just dipping into a tiny bit of it, carrying it away.

This week, especially, has been one of these overflowing weeks.

I said goodbye to my grandpa just days before he slipped from this side of eternity into the next ... and days before my late father {his son's} birthday, which is always hard because I think of how old he would be and what he's missed with the boys and what my boys have missed of him.

This weekend, we'll say a proper farewell, but I'm positive it won't hold a candle to spending an hour with him Sunday, talking to him, holding his warm hand, praying with him and voicing my appreciation for him while he was still conscious enough to hear and understand and respond.

I grieve for the loss of such a great patriarch; but I find joy in the hope that he's with his Creator ... and my dad and my grandma {his wife} experiencing fullness in the reunions. I give thanks for having had 29 years with him and for having the chance to say so and say goodbye.

I woke up this morning to my eyes washed with streaks of red across the white, and I wished that I didn't wear my heart so visibly on the outside.

It's hard to explain a week like this to the people who read the heart in your eyes, a week so wrapped up and bound in not only my own sticky grief and gratitude but that of others who are hurting or weighed down by the heaviness of life.

Selah.

No one knows exactly what that translates to but its splashed across the pages of the Psalms. Some say it means to give pregnant pause and reflect; others ponder that it means that with an infusion of praise. 

I feel like my life is a Psalm this week.

I've cried out to my God through tears of sadness, praise:

"I love you, O Lord, my strength.
The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge.
He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.
I call to the Lord, who is worthy of praise, and I am saved from my enemies." 

Psalm 18: 1-3 

And joy.

"You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance. Selah." 

Psalm 32

Strange thing is how one can cry tears of grief and yet sing songs of praise all within almost the same breath.

Today was my 90-day check up with my crazy-smart holistic doctor and E's eight-week check up.

Though I knew the report would likely be good because I've been feeling so.much.better these past few weeks especially, I couldn't help but let tears spill onto my cheeks when she told us both my and E's candida infections were cleared up.

After more than a year and a half of both E and I battling that infection and all of the imbalances produced during other less effective treatments and the infection itself, our bodies have been cleared of it.

Cleared. Healed.

All I could say was thank you to her for her help

thank you to God for giving her such insight into the body

and allowing our paths to cross and linger

and

Selah.

Tonight, I'm done carrying buckets of overflow.

I'm just going to wade and cry and sing and praise.

Selah.

Just Write / 5 for 5: Words

We started the morning with sunshine, warm and perfectly pouring itself on our skin.

I had plans to continue basking in the honey-amber sunlight spreading across my body, quietly mark the two-year anniversary of my dad's death.

But I couldn't.

I couldn't let the day pass silently, unwritten and unfolded.

I couldn't help but tattoo in printed fashion how the sunshine is a glorious contrast to the sunshine I remember of two years ago today.

How not even full force rays could warm my skin from the cold, whipping wind outside the chilled grays and pinks of hospital beds and waiting rooms.

How that day was positively the coldest late-April day I could ever remember.

How I was glad for its chill so I could wrap numb myself up and wrap myself into some sort of blanket-cocoon and hibernate away what must have been a bad fading winter dream.

How it gave me a reason to keep frozen what unfolded that tumultuous week, to keep solid and packed away all these sour-sweet memories of life with him.

How I needed today's sunshine to be different than the kind that flooded that day.

And how I needed it to thaw my memories, warm the emotions that have been slowly defrosting during the past two years so it could all freely been lived and flow like sap dripping from from hard maple trunks amid the heat after a long, hard winter freeze.

I just couldn't let it pass.

I just had to let the words dripdropdrip out of my thawing fingers, thawing heart.

Bigger Picture Moments: Sparkly

He bounds, all feet beneath a four-year-old body, out of the classroom with a huge grin spread thick across his dusting of freckles like peanut butter smeared heavy across a satisfied mouth.

An invitation to mommy night at preschool in his hand and a new song about being a mom bursting from his lips means we are counting down the days to our date night like we do Advent before Christmas.

****

"You'll need to wear a really really reaaaaaly fancy dress, mom," he says the afternoon before our big date night. "This is a serious date."

We pick out one together; luckily, he selects the black wrap dress that still fits and is gracious to fall naturally around an ever-changing body.

He then scurries to his room to dress himself in his best: his tuxedo with a white tie {NOT the red one tonight, daddy} and his fire boots.

A picture or five and we're off.

We don't want to be late.

"And, mommy, I'll carry your sparkly shoes," he says as I slip on warm wool socks and boots over nylons. "Your hands are too full."

****

He shows me his world in live, bright colors -- a world I only see glimpses of through his crafts and papers, his selective conversation and peeks during school drop off and pick up.



I marvel at my handsome, animated date, who still longs to holds my hand and presses his small fingers in between my own.



He gifts me his full attention and drinks up my undivided gaze and nodding smiles.

My heart sparkle-shimmers in adoration for the boy who made me a mother and a star of royalty for an evening.

As he shows me his magic shrinker tool, I glimpse his fire boots and my mind flutters back to a different date, long ago, years removed where I felt much like I do here in this classroom -- then a princess holding a much-larger-than-my-own hand, standing in the safe shadows of a taller, stockier, older version of my son at the fireman's picnic.



There is a blinkflutterblinkblink of my eyes and I see him moving and leading me to another space to unravel and explore together.

The night is a mixture of giggles and soaking up moments that will soon enough pass.

We end with the little ones singing us The Mom Song, and he asks me to take a picture.

I flip on the record switch but can barely keep him in focus through the lens of my phone because I'm simply too focused on capturing through my own eyes this boy -- live, in vivid, animated color -- burn here and now into my forever-memory.

The song ends and he collapses into my arms. I breathe in his soft scent and roll around in the newness of memories made, him and I together.



I whisper gratitude to God for a lost memory recovered of my late father, the man my young eyes saw as king, simply just another gift from the boy who has deemed me queen for an hour {and maybe queen of his heart, if I can manage such fortune, for a few more years}.

As my son picks up my sparkly shoes at night's end, I, too, offer thanks for too-full hands and a filled-to-the-brim heart.

 

Each Thursday {Friday for me this week!}, we come together to share the harvest of intentional living by capturing a glimmer of the bigger picture through a simple moment.  


Share a picture, words, creation or list; just come to the table with thanksgiving in your heart. 

Live.
Reflect on the blessings that were apparent to you this week.

Capture.
Harvest them!

Share.
Link up your gleaned moment this week at Sarah's. Please be sure to link to your post, not your blog. Your post must link back here or have our button in your post or the link will be deleted.

Encourage.
Visit at least the person linked before you and encourage her in this journey we call life.

Everyday Life: Sometimes birthdays don't need cake

I thought about baking a cake this afternoon and singing happy birthday to him at dinner just to help keep a part of him alive

He, my dad, would have been 58 today.

But, I thought, that just might confuse the boys more than anything.

The cake, really, would have been only a sugary symbol of a man's life we celebrate almost daily here in our house when we talk about being brave {"like Papa Brian when he was a firefighter, mom"} or being responsible {like Papa Brian, right, mom?} or being a silly goose {like Papa Brian when he was little, E} or making the fotch {I make Papa Brian's face, don't I mom?!}.

Because really, truly

all it takes is one good look at G's smile

or watching G eat a popsicle when it's 45 degrees outside

or a glance in the mirror at my copper-penny hair

or watching E's absolute determination while playing

to realize my dad's spirit, in this house, at least,

remains alive and well.

But, still, we sure do miss you, dad.

{Comments are closed on this post. But, still, thanks for being here.}

Thinking, that's all: On this day, I can't help but think of him

When I finally heard his deep south-side Chicago-accented voice via phone ten years ago today, my body shook with tears as I breathed an audible sigh of relief into the speaker.

He finally called me from his post at the fire station {or hospital? can I even remember that minute detail}, sadness enveloped in his voice as he spoke about the brothers, the sister lost their lives while responding to the World Trade Center attacks.

There was an ache in his words I'd never heard before, a crack in his normally composed voice that made me realize that while my firefighter father didn't die that day, a piece of his heart surely did.

****
I grew up with fears of losing my father to the thick smoke and billowing flames of a burning building. Scenes from Backdraft were etched into my six-year-old brain, and I'd begged and pleaded with him to do a different job more times than I could remember.

My father, the stoic, old-school Italian he was, would hug his little girl and simply explain that being a firefighter was his job, his calling, his passion, his duty.

It was as much a part of him as every thick wave of black hair on his head.

I never questioned him again, and I knew bravery was required by even those of us who simply prayed for their loved ones to emerge from overnight-shift shadows unscathed, every-day heroes.

****

He sported an NYFD baseball hat the last time I saw him alive and well, his large, Italian body unbound to a hospital bed, free to live and enjoy the freedoms he so loved about our country.

We'd talked about that day for some reason -- that blue-skyed perfectly sunny day in September of 2001 -- during his last visit to my house.

He wore it on his sleeve even eight years later -- the horror and terror and pain rendered on his serviceman heart from both the assault on our homeland and on his brotherhood. His voice cracked as he spoke about wives who lost firefighter husbands and children who lost fathers and mothers and fathers who lost sons at the call of duty.

But duty calls, and we respond, he'd said.

Respond they surely had, many with their lives.

****

This anniversary of September 11 brims with more emotion than most any other day of the year in the wake of unexpectedly losing him.

Because this day -- it was his day, in so many more ways than the anniversary of my father's death will ever be or the day of his birth ever could stand up to.

Because this day?

This day is about responding amid the shadows of uncertainty and horror to the deep need of your neighbor, a stranger, nonetheless, but still a neighbor.

This day is about putting aside the well being of self and trudging through shaking ground in response to cries for help.

This day is about taking evil by the throat and not letting it claim any more than it already has.

It's about service and duty and love.

So I can't help, as I remember, as I honor the brave responders, but to also remember, honor him.

Everyday Life: There are no coincidences

Three hundred and sixty five days.

They've passed ever so slowly and also, almost, in the span of one fleeting heartbeat.

My dad, strong and stoic, stubborn and yet easy going, slipped out of this world and into eternity one year ago today.

Today.

The day my heart song sings of a Risen Savior.

Today.

The day my feverish toddler snuggles in the crook of my arm while John and G. glorify a living King at our church.

Today.

The day hazy Sunday light illuminates sun-saturated daffodils, a reminder that winter fades into distant memory as soon as warmth emerges from its gray, that new life shoots up out of the damp, barren soils of the Earth.



There are no coincidences here, now.

The small boy too sick for church nursery but healthy enough for a stroll around our part of God's greened-up Earth.



The sunlight after days of rain and clouds.

The flowers standing tall after a long, harsh winter.

The celebration of Joy Risen on the anniversary of my father's death.

I see with opened eyes, today -- this anniversary, this Easter Sunday, this day of spring revived -- Luke's narrative of an empty tomb.

I am Mary, standing at the edge of an empty tomb, eyes fixated on what is missing rather than on what has been given.

I am Peter, running as fast as my feet will carry to the rumored barren cave, racing to find what my ears have once heard but heart has yet to grasp.

I am Thomas, who missed the message first hand, filled with doubting questions, longing to see with my very eyes the promise of resurrection and redemption.

But I am also Mary, who believes the heavenly hosts' good news.

And I am also Peter, who cries out to his risen King.

And I am also Thomas, who has placed his finger in the nail holes of hands too Holy to have been bound to my sin forever, and who has believed.

There were no coincidences there, then either.

The reality is that Good Friday happened.

But Sunday.

Sunday came.

And it etched hope on the weariest of hearts.

Then.

And now.

"Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in spring-time." Martin Luther

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Bigger Picture Moment: My Consolation Prize

Every Thursday, we share the harvest of intentional living by capturing a glimpse of the bigger picture through a simple moment.

Want to join us? Simply capture your moment in whatever fashion speaks to you. Grab the Bigger Picture, Simple Moments button {code to the right}. Link your piece. And then encourage the two {or more} people who linked their moments.

After linking, you might find your moment shared at our community site for Bigger Picture Blogs.

Live. Capture. Share. Encourage.

That's the essence of Bigger Picture, Simple Moments; we're looking forward to walking together in intentional living this week.

****
At his funeral, long faces, downcast eyes, quivering lips promised it would get easier.

A few weeks.

A few months.

A few years.

That time would heal my heart.

That memories of my father's large, olive-complected hands, deep, calm voice would bring smiles instead of tears when I gazed upon a picture of his young, proud face beaming, strong frame standing tall, dressed finely in his firemen's best, his fatherly hands resting atop my tall eight-year-old shoulders, our coppery penny locks and soft caramel eyes accenting each other neatly.

They tried to tell me that time would ease the heart-sinking feeling induced by dusting picture frames amid the dim spring sunlight sauntering through my dining room windows.

That the open-chest wound would feel more like a finger nicked by a knife.

Maybe there's some truth to these smattering of promises that I have yet to find and pick up, inhale and breathe in so deep, internalize.

But so far.

So far -- time?

Time hasn't actually made it easier.

Time simply has made it more real.

Less fragmented,

less I-just-woke-up-from-a-bad-dream,

less alternate universe

less really-that's-not-going-to-be-his-voice-on-the-other-end-of-the-line.

But not easier.

At least, not after the span of nearly a year, after 360 round days of swallowing

over and over

and over and over again

my new reality of life without my dad.

Easier.

Maybe not ever.

But real.

Real has the possibility of being a suitable consolation prize after the days tick by and easy never does come knocking on the heart's door.

In loving memory of my earthly captain, Brian W. Filippi.

Everyday Life: On a Sunday

Sunday.

Sundays are always the hardest.

It was the day of the week I could nearly time the exact minute of my dad's phone calls.

The conversations, mostly one-sided and driven by my natural conversationist ways, were usually brief.

Sometimes I'd feel slightly adjatated that he didn't have much to say; rather, he just listened, adding to the mix his hmms, mmms, deep-toned yuuups and occasional chuckles of laughter.

But he always told me he loved me at the end of the call.

Always.

And what better words could I have lingered on than those?

What more important words could I have asked for from a man who was not a conversationalist by nature?

Sundays.

I find myself lost in more thoughts, memories and feelings on Sundays that silence my normal dialogues.

I retreat to places of laughter and places of deep regret.

Places of love and places of anger.

Places I've never before wandered and places I know like the back of my father's large, olive-complected hands.

The milestones happen on Sundays.

The six-month anniversary of his death.

The first Father's Day where I found myself feeling fatherless.

Today. His 57th birthday. Sunday.

I wait for the day to turn into a darker, dreary one, typical of late November.

I wait, snuggled in my father's cushy rose-shaded recliner near the Christmas tree as G. hangs up my his grandpa's old ornaments and long to sit in the glow of its lights.



I want the sky somehow to know, to reflect what I'm feeling.

I want God to set the mood for my mourning.

But it's sunny today, his birthday, this 28th day of November, this Sunday.

Because my Heavenly Father, He knows this is better than what I so want.

He knows this heart that longs for warmth, the glow of the sun in dreary midwestern winter skies.

So I'm taking this sunny Sunday as a love letter straight from the hands of my eternal Father.

I'm taking its warmth as a strong, loving arm around my shoulder during a day I celebrate and mourn and miss the earthly one I loved and knew for 27 years and will assuredly love and remember for another 57 or so.

I will choose to bask in its warmth.

I will choose to celebrate my dad today, cry when I need to and then remember something beautiful about the father who raised me and the Father who created me.

And I will know I'm neither fatherless nor Fatherless.

On a Sunday.

This Sunday.

Every Sunday.

I find it oddly comforting and ironic that my favorite band has a song called On a Sunday, and it very fitting for today.



*My 365 project will be up tomorrow, a day later than normal, lest you think I've forgotten. I'm just busy remembering other things today.*

Bigger Picture Moments: Nursing me back to life

Welcome to Bigger Picture Moments, a place where we step back and take in life. There are moments where we're so caught up in it all, the hectic mind boggling pace of the day. We encourage you to take this opportunity to take a moment and view the Bigger Picture. Whatever that means to you. A moment where you recognized the role your faith plays in your every day life. A moment where you take note of motherhood and the importance of what you are doing. A moment that made you stop and smell breathe in the bigness of it all. The hugeness that is life and the small moments adding up to one huge Bigger Picture.

We hope you'll join us. Take a few moments. Think about your week, and pour however little or much onto a page. Then share. Tell us your moment. Link up this week at Sarah's, grab our button, and share your Bigger Picture Moment. And while you're at it, share the love and check out at least one other participant's moment.


Next week, Melissa will be hosting Bigger Picture Moments. Keep an open mind and heart throughout the week and come back to participate again or for the first time! All are welcome!

I scoop my crawling baby into my arms, cradling his head full of coppery dark hair in the crook of my arm as he signs for milk while making little coughing noises in anticipation of our our nursing session.

Sadly, he's the only one looking forward to it, desiring the time he spends nestled in my arms, at my breast, me nursing him to nourishment and calm.

I'm busy. I'm scrambling around the house throwing things inside our suitcase as warm salty tears escape my eyes.

I'd gotten a call from my sister just 30 minutes before; she'd told me our dad's surgery didn't go as well as the doctors hoped. One specialist said our dad had a 50 percent shot of making it.

I try to swallow the other option, telling myself percentages cannot measure endurance or stubbornness. And certainly our dad had exhibited both in his personal life and professional career. As a captain of his south suburban fire department, I rationalize that he'd been in really hot situations in the past, and he'd always come out on the other side of the flames and billowing smoke. Certainly it'd be like all the other times, I said. Certainly, he'd pull through from an emergency surgery to remove a bowel obstruction.

Baby E. grasps the top of my shirt as he latches on to nurse. His cornflower blue eyes, wide as saucers begin to slowly narrow as the milk starts flowing. The continuous rhythm of suck, suck, suck, swallow, breathe, coo, suck, suck, suck, swallow, breathe, coo becomes the constant sound in my ears in place of my wildly thumping heart, panicky thoughts and rationalizations.

His chubby little hand begins stroking my chest just below my neck, slow, steady, gentle brushes against my skin, bringing my breathing to a slower, steadier rhythm in place of short, gasping breathes. My body sinks into the couch.

My pulse slows as his nursing does ... the rush of the let down has passed and a steady, trickling flow replaces it. Little slivers of blue peak out through drowsy eyelids.

And even though I was in a rush just moments prior, I now want him to nurse just a little longer ... gently sweep his fingers over my skin just a few more times ... I want the peace to last just a little longer. I linger, my half-sleeping, half-nursing baby still cuddled in my arms, wishing I didn't have to move him. I carry him to his car seat, quietly, gingerly strap him in, a new calm washed over my body as we drive to the hospital.

*****
It's moment by the moment, his doctors say.

His kidneys are failing.

His liver is failing.

My dad is fading quickly, but for some reason he's hanging on. His heart is beating strong.

It won't let go. Here's that determination, that characteristic stubbornness at play.

I grip my father's large, olive-complected hands and try to say everything I need to say. But I cannot get everything out through the tears. I finally have to leave his room, escape to the waiting room.

It's been a long week, filled with uncertainty. I've sat in more waiting room chairs than I can count, my heart constantly torn between two places -- his hospital bed and the home that's housing my boys.

My heart is racing, my eyes are brimming with tears, my muscles shrink and tense. As I stumble to the waiting room, I know I need to pump milk for baby E.

I settle in the chair. I have to close my eyes, pretend my baby is really in my arms until the milk flows. And as it quickly begins to plop into the bottle, my baby gifts me with a calm, though he's miles and miles away. It's enough to return to my dad's bed side and finish laying my heart out to him, all while still hoping he pulls through.

****
My cell phone rings when we're minutes away from my mother's house, minutes away from my boys after spending a long day at the hospital. All I hear is crying and gasps of breathe in between my cousin's words ... He's gone.

My husband pushes the gas pedal, accelarates, and when we arrive at my mom's, I rush into the house and scoop up my baby.

He smiles, coos and signs for milk while nuzzling his head into my soft flesh. I cry heavy tears as he latches on, but again find solace in the rhythmic suck, suck, suck, swallow, breathe, coo, suck, suck, suck, swallow, breathe, coo, suck, suck, suck, swallow, breathe, coo .... suck .... suck ... suck ... swallow ... breathe .... coo.

****
It's been a long two months since I've last heard my father's voice, live, over the phone or in person. Grief hits me in tsunami-style waves ... unexpected, towering, unbelievable in strength.

I see a little girl place her small hand in her father's large hand while at the park. My heart sinks into my stomach as I smile back tears. Three-year-old G. is playing on the swings and baby E. is happily playing near my feet, eating dandelions and trying to pick individual blades of grass.

He begins quickly crawling to my feet as the grief hits my heart square in fresh scar tissue. He climbs up my legs, saying "ma ma ma ma ma" and signs milk with his free hand as he steadies his weight on his chubby feet.

I scoop my crawling baby into my arms, cradle his head full of coppery dark hair in the crook of my arm as he continues to sign for milk, making little coughing noises in anticipation of our our nursing session.

But this time, we're both looking forward to it, desiring the time he spends nestled in my arms, nursing me back to life.

Life Lessons: He would be her daddy

This is a really special guest post from my sister, Jillian, written the night after we spent the morning trying to help clean out my dad's basement.

Before I was his, he had a life. He had only one daughter, one family.

Then there was me.

I always had felt out of place when standing beside my father's side of the family. I think the way I felt was unavoidable -- I didn't necessarily feel unwanted, just different. I was so very different from everyone; I had light brown hair and blue eyes, and I was tall, all of which was very different from my Italian relatives. Although I knew my dad's family loved me, there was always that part of me that felt left out.

Well, until today.

One simple thing can make you feel special. Just one.

My sister and I had the opportunity to look through my father's stuff today, pick and choose what we wanted, keep part of him with us that was material.

We found pictures, writings, and odd and ends.

And I found two wallets.

I was overjoyed -- one for my sister, and one for me. I chose the wallet I kept for a specific reason; I was in it. I was 15 months old to be exact(as my age was written in my sister's handwriting on the back of the picture).

I was so happy my dad carried and kept a picture of me. It didn't even matter when he had the wallet. At first, I didn't even care how old it was -- until I saw papers in his wallet, at least. Receipts. There was about 20 of them, each repeating the year: 1991.

I thought to myself that it didn't make sense. Because my dad wasn't "my dad" until I was 3 year old, you see. And I didn't turn three until 1992.

I began to put two and two together.

He thought of me as his long before he called me his daughter --long before I called him daddy.

I was always his daughter. Always.

He used to tell me that, but it means the world to me just to see a picture of me at 15 months old in his wallet in 1991 before I officially ever could call him daddy.
My dad considered me his daughter before I even muttered the word.
I always thought I chose him to be my dad just by calling him my father.

But no. He chose me. He chose to love me and love me he did.

He loved me until he couldn't love me anymore.

I believe the day I was born he loved me, not just because I was his {biological} daughter's sister but because one day he would become the most important man in this little girl's life.

I miss my dad.

It takes a special man to adopt a child for whom he doesn't have any obligation. It takes a really big heart and a really big love. My dad loved my sister just as he loved me. I learned a lot about love and family beyond blood through their relationship.