My friend Tracy sent me a new book, Riding with the Blue Moth. Written by William Hancock, it is a chronology of his journey through grief after losing his son Will in the plane crash that killed the OSU ten. His host, if you will, is a cross continental bike ride from Huntington Beach, California to Tyree Island in Georgia. Tracy and her husband, Shelby, heard Mr. Hancock speak and had him sign our copy of the book for us. I finished the book on our trip copying lines from the prose or snapping pictures of the pages that carried so much of his story, I have thanked Tracy so many times; I told her the words ring insincere to me - but as I finished the book she sent me this afternoon, I found one of Hancock's sentences that said it all.
"Angels don't need thanking. They are repaid when we pass the kindness along to others."
During our first year without Taylor- I didn't cry for days, sometimes weeks. Then, sometimes with great warning and other times like a flash flood, I would burst into tears and cry for hours.
When I was a young teen, my family camped near Estes Park in Colorado. There had been a flood from a broken dam at Lawn Lake upstream in the Rockies and thousands of years of silt, sand, and tiny pieces of volcanic rock and granite as well as millions of gallons of water descended upon an unsuspecting valley and town below. What remained in the flat meadows of the mountain valley were lakes of coarse sand or an alluvial fan that can still be seen today. We stopped the car that summer and explored, instantly running onto the sand.
When I stepped on the sand, water oozed up. As air within the sand displaced, the soft sand bubbled with the remnants of the water trapped in the flood's scar.
Life presses against me each day this year in the same way, and the remnants of grief's flood leak from my face- every day. I cry every day this year.
Hancock writes about the blue moth of grief that follows him across the country. At first he is trying to out run it, lose it, console it or watch it die against the windshield of a big semi. By the end of the trip, he realizes the blue moth of grief is a part of him as he learns to sit with it. It was validating to read those lines as I have often concluded that grief sometimes just needs to be invited to sit with me.
We flew home from California today, my boys and I. My shoulders and Joey's rest more broadly than the narrow plane seats allow, but I still sat between these two boys, these two men who each hold protective stations at the doors of my heart. My right shoulder fits gently behind Joey's left shoulder and I hook my arm into the crook of his elbow so I am anchored next to him in my seat. Half way to Phoenix, Wade adjusted his sleepy position placing his pillow on my left shoulder. I reached across his six foot three plus frame so my entire arm could support his nodding head. A warming numb began to travel down my shoulder to my fingertips as sleep heavied his sweet head. And I welcomed it. Moments later I read these lines from Hancock:
"...the bike wheel.......the wheel is supported by flimsy spikes and gets its muscle from the spikes as they pull toward the center. That force, from pulling together, gives the bike wheel its strength. Somehow, many people had managed to overlook that simple technique in life: pulling together creates a strength far greater than what each of us could muster individually."
I closed my eyes as more of the flood seeped down my cheeks. Connected.
Pulled together.
Supported.
We are. I loved the metaphor; I loved the warmth of the men on either side of me, and I was immediately thankful for the community of supporters, those I know and those I don't know, who have been the spokes that have pulled us toward them.
Hancock's book ends after he places his front bicycle tire in the waves of the Atlantic Ocean, and he gives a few pages to the idea of acceptance and the years that have passed since the plane crash. I remember thinking about his words and acknowledging that I'm just not there yet. Much like the verses in Hebrews and Corinthians about faith and things that cannot be seen, Hancock pens this thought:
"The root of inner peace is accepting what you don't know."
There is so much about our daughter's death that haunts me - I am left to sort that which is mine because I am hanging onto it and that which lingers just because she was stolen. That's the work that lies ahead of me.
Thankful for Tracy, for the book, Riding with the Blue Moth, and for her heart. If you do something kind this week, I'd consider it a favor if you whispered her daughter's name, Kasey, as you did it.
"Angels don't need thanking. They are repaid when we pass the kindness along to others."
#golighttheworld #RemembertheTen
#KNW