pauses&clicks

It’s been a tough week for our Global Strike Air Force family.  Last Friday a well-loved and respected spouse at one of our bases lost her life quite suddenly.  It’s been a week of grieving. A week of being broken.

This one hit me hard.  I knew how much she loved her girls, I knew how much they loved and needed her.  In conversations with her husband  it was obvious how much he loved her, how much they loved the family they had created together.  Her death left me numb and full of questions.  It left me angry and incredibly sad.

And so I did a lot of walking this week.  I did  a lot of thinking.  I took a lot of pictures.  Somehow it helped me process the sorrow.

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In the process of the walking I remembered a conversation I had with a friend a few years ago about going into her mother’s home after she died of a stroke.  I recalled how hard it was for her to find her mother’s reading glasses lying on top of a newspaper, folded open to the crossword puzzle, partially completed.  How difficult it was for her to find her unmade bed and the clothes she had last worn, lying in the laundry basket.  How these details of the last moments of her life struck her as being so blessedly normal when her new reality was anything but.

I couldn’t help but think of the details of Holly’s life in her last few days.  Of the details her family would remember as they faced their new reality.  The pair of shoes by the bed.  The coat left on the back of a chair.  Of last words, last hugs, last embraces.

Although I’m always very visually aware of the details of my life, I resolved to be even more so this week, for the sake of a mother, wife, daughter, sister and friend to so many, who is gone way to soon.

This is the rest of my week….it was all about a lot of walking, a lot of thinking and about getting lost in the details of an ordinary life.

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And it was also about telling people that I love them.