June 4 marked two years since Joy died. In a blessed life where I've had two wonderful real moms, I counted Joy as "another mother," one of a few more ladies who cared for me alongside their own children, my friends. Joy was the real mom to Amanda and Sarah, two years older and a year younger, respectively, and wife to Philip, who was in both my dad's weddings.
Joy took me to piano lessons with Amanda and Sarah for two or three years between moms, she helped me with my 4-H sewing projects, she was my Sunday School teacher who each week hand-printed our memory verse on an index card. As I grew up, with Sarah and Amanda, I joined the family moving Amanda to college at UNC, decorating the new steel building for Sarah's wedding, sneaking down to Amanda's for her surprise Golden 28th birthday. As a trifecta of legendary bakers, they hand-wrote a recipe book for my wedding shower.
Joy died young, at 62, after seven years of cancer coming and going. Christmas day fell on Sunday in 2011, and Dad, Tom, and I went into church for the service. Joy and Philip were there too, and at some point, knowing her cancer had come back for the third time, I started crying during the service. Afterwards, she gave me the hug, comforted me. When we went to Malawi in the spring of 2012, I didn't say goodbye to her because I didn't have the courage for it to be the last time. And it would have been.
If I've given up one thing for my years of travel and life abroad, and this looks to be the first year I won't have left the country since 2003, it was getting to say goodbye. Along with Joy, I was gone when my Grandma Shirley died in 2005, my Grandpa Ken in 2010, Daddo in 2012. No one has ever put guilt on me for missing the funerals, and I don't feel guilty, but I do regret.
Without the closure of the funeral and shared experience of loss with others, there's a sense of unrealism to losing someone. In perpetuity, they should be at their house when I drive up. It's exacerbated with Joy because she wasn't old yet.
I don't know how to close except in the hope of Jesus' resurrection. In the meantime, there are sometimes tears when I drive up exit 47 on my way home.
Joy took me to piano lessons with Amanda and Sarah for two or three years between moms, she helped me with my 4-H sewing projects, she was my Sunday School teacher who each week hand-printed our memory verse on an index card. As I grew up, with Sarah and Amanda, I joined the family moving Amanda to college at UNC, decorating the new steel building for Sarah's wedding, sneaking down to Amanda's for her surprise Golden 28th birthday. As a trifecta of legendary bakers, they hand-wrote a recipe book for my wedding shower.
Sam, Sarah, baby E, Joy, and Philip at my wedding
If I've given up one thing for my years of travel and life abroad, and this looks to be the first year I won't have left the country since 2003, it was getting to say goodbye. Along with Joy, I was gone when my Grandma Shirley died in 2005, my Grandpa Ken in 2010, Daddo in 2012. No one has ever put guilt on me for missing the funerals, and I don't feel guilty, but I do regret.
Without the closure of the funeral and shared experience of loss with others, there's a sense of unrealism to losing someone. In perpetuity, they should be at their house when I drive up. It's exacerbated with Joy because she wasn't old yet.
I don't know how to close except in the hope of Jesus' resurrection. In the meantime, there are sometimes tears when I drive up exit 47 on my way home.
2 comments:
Thank you for this beautiful post.
Thank you for sharing these precious sentiments. Joy was indeed a wonderful person.
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