Reasons...

Job 17:7 Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, and all my members are as a shadow.

A Reason

As you can imagine in the depth of my grief, I search endlessly for reasons why things are the way they are. My dad was in the hospital for three weeks when he finally succumbed to COPD in the same hospital room that my grandmother had passed.

I’ve gone over the WHY’S:

Why did he die?

Why was I not there?

Why am I here (in Nebraska)?

Why didn’t I make it to the funeral?

Why didn’t my poem reach his ears?

Why, why, why?

Then I went over the reasons behind all the WHY’S. I wasn’t torturing myself I was more like self-analyzing all the reasons there are for the way things happened the way they did.

Let’s go in order:

Why did he die?

Well, he didn’t just die. For twenty years since his first heart surgery my father had sought out God. He had become closer to God in his final years, not saying he attended church or anything but in his own way he embraced his religion, what it meant to him and where he’d go in the final chapter of his existence, heaven.

My father suffered for many years with heart problems and the last few years it had gotten worse. He was a survivor of throat cancer and watched his sister succumb just this year to the deadly colon cancer (among other cancers she was hit with), and he’d watch from afar his brother-in-law fight with lung cancer.

Over this past year my dad would need more and more oxygen. It got to the point he barely made it to the car with the heavy tanks he had to carry with him. He struggled to breathe on a daily basis. Something we too often take for granted, he was relinquished to begging for more.

Why did he die? Because his heart and lungs couldn’t take it anymore. There was not enough oxygen on this planet to fill his lungs so he had to go to the place where he could breathe easy without any struggles, heaven.

Why was I not there?

It just wasn’t meant to be. I carry a smidgen of guilt but am relieved when I go over the reality of not being there. Reality, something no one wants to hear, they just want to play the point-the-finger-at-the-lousy-daughter game. Yeah, my brothers are back there in Baltimore pointing fingers and wondering what kind of daughter doesn’t make it to her own fathers funeral. I’ll tell you what kind, the kind that lives in the REAL world!

Had I had $3,000 dollars hanging out of my pocket I surely would’ve hightailed it back to Baltimore disability and all. The reality of the matter is, I don’t have $3.00 hanging out of my pocket. I have a roof over my head, I have food on my plate, the house is heated and I have a wonderful husband! Can anyone say they really want more? Then you my friend are a prisoner of a false reality. I don’t live for WANT, I live for NEED and am provided for my needs daily! I WANTED to  be back home but apparently I wasn’t NEEDED.

Let me let you in on another reality. I have two brothers that could’ve very well paid my way back there with no skin off their nose! Did I WANT them to? No! They have their cable bills, their new cars and trucks to pay for, their season tickets to football/baseball games, goodness, where would they EVER find spare cash to help their sister?

My one brother from Tennessee drove eight hours back home but allowed my mother to pay for his hotel for three nights? I forgive him for that since he is the one who paid my mother’s $150 a month garage fees to park their car for the past five or six years. My other brother is a drugee, and my sister has a rental place with her three kids living there.

Why was I not there? 

For the plain and simple reason, MONEY. Sad but true. The reality of life is, that EVERYTHING boils down to money, remember that.

Why am I here in Nebraska? 

Because a man saw a wounded soul 1400 miles away from him and just like a puppy in the middle of the road, he saw to it to rescue me from death.

Why didn’t I make it to the funeral? 

For the reasons above of why I wasn’t there in Baltimore. If you read into the picture I painted of my family, they are who they are and I am no longer a part of them; that bothers them to no measure. I’m happy with nothing (but everything) and they are miserable with everything and more.

They didn’t want me back there because they love me, they wanted me back there to relieve their conscience and so they’d have something and someone to talk about.

Why didn’t my poem reach his ears?

My sister had my last words to my dad on her phone and she was ‘going’ to read it to him but didn’t find the time. Did she read it at his funeral? No. Why? Because she was taking care of other matters that were more important than my last wish to my father.

It wasn’t meant to be. My poem finally made it to my mother via snail-mail and her words were somewhat hurtful, “I’m glad your father didn’t hear this before he died, because it was SAD!”

I’ll tuck that one under my belt.

So again I’ll ask, why am I here in Nebraska?

Because the Lord saw me worthy to be loved! To know what love IS! To feel HIM wrapped around my heart and to bless ME!

While my mother and father were the only two that truly loved me (back home), my siblings claimed to love me but I say to you, to KNOW love is to SHOW love, and in thirteen years I have not been shown love by any of my siblings.

Granted, if they read this, they’d spew that I don’t know what I’m talking about, and * I* never SHOWED THEM love. It’s a tit-for-tat game with them, a game I quit many years ago, out of LOVE for my self and my sanity.

Also granted, that if they knew I was writer, they’d read my words. They love me so well. (Yes I gave them a link to my writing but they lost it somewhere over the years.) Remember, if I’m not making MONEY, then I’m not a writer.

All my WHY’S and REASONS have been answered and now I search for PEACE in the midst of my grief. I go with faith in my hand and God in my heart and I move on to the next phase of my life. I feel the wind beneath my wings…

God bless you all!

Pss. 38: 8 I am feeble and sore broken: I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart.