Ten Years Ago
September 22 is a difficult day for me and my family. Ten years ago, on September 22, our son/brother James went home. I cannot describe it as anything else. While it left us with a deep sense of loss, there was a certain triumph, and a definite peace about the way James left.
I’ve been pleased to watch the notes on Facebook this year. As always, they remind me of his absence and make me miss them more, but they are also so real. There’s a tendency to make a saint (apart from being “one of the saints”) out of the person who has died. James was wonderful. I really liked him as well as loved him. But his sense of humor and his mischief are such a strong part of what I miss. When people describe him as an extraordinarily spiritual sort of young man who lived in conformity with what the world and the church demanded, I have to laugh. At first I got a little annoyed. But then the humor came to me.
I think James was very spiritual. He was a delightful young man. He could, however, stress me out. Not really that often, but he was an individual. He did things his way, and others went along with it. His most spiritual moments were when he was at the drums. In fact, he could make “drums” just about anywhere!
I’m sitting in my office at the computer where I have worked for years. I’m a creature of habit. I can look over at where he would stand when he came into my office. He insisted on knocking. I told him that I never did anything in this office that he couldn’t interrupt. He told me it just seemed right to knock. So he did. He’d come in and just stand there with his trademark little grin. In a few moments I’d give up and ask him how much he needed. That was how he told me he needed (or wanted) money.
He also had his own logic. He explained to me once that it would be better for me to give him some money he needed rather than do it in exchange for some work or other. He said he would just fail to get the work done and then I would be mad, and it would be worse all around. I asked him how often I got mad. His reply? “It could happen.” As others have pointed out to me repeatedly, James usually got what he wanted from me.
I don’t usually write anything here or on Facebook on September 22. My hard month each year is June. That’s when I found out the cancer was back. Jody was in Hungary leading a mission team. I was here with James. He had a point of pain in his back. I said (and tried to convince myself) that it might be a pulled muscle. He was, after all, in band camp. He gave me what I can only describe as a pitying look. We discussed it and decided not to wait the week or so it would take for his mother to get back from Hungary.
I ended up having to call the doctor. The paperwork went astray. One doctor had expected the other had called, but nobody had. I got to tell James the news. Then I got to figure out how to tell Jody via e-mail. Phone was not an option. All of that happened in June and that’s when I tend to remember things most.
This September, however, I was working on writing some things about our company, Energion Publications, and the two overlapped. I didn’t even realize it until early in the morning. I woke up and found Jody awake as well. I had been thinking both that our company was ten years old and that we’d released our first new book (we bought out some others when we started) a year later. That would be 2005. But suddenly I remembered that our first release was also in 2004.
That book was Daily Devotions of Ordinary People – Extraordinary God, which was a collection of Jody’s devotionals. The amazing thing is that we released that book in November. I don’t know how Jody did it. Yes, the material had been written, but she had to go over it many times as we put together that book. Her book remained our largest book for some years, though we now have a couple that match it or are slightly longer. I will get around to writing something about the last ten years as a publisher, but for now I just want to note the overlap, and the odd things time can do to our memories.
The thing I’d want to say to everyone is that there is life after loss. I can tell you today, 10 years later, that you don’t forget, that there doesn’t come a time when there is no pain. But you do learn to live and go on, and you can still accomplish what you need to accomplish. Not only that, we’re each different. One of the blessings Jody and I have experienced is not being down at the same time. The fact that I tend to remember dates less precisely, such as being a year off on when she completed her first book, also means that my moments of memory are more scattered. You can’t tell when I’m going to be thinking of James. I know Jody will be thinking of him especially as his birthday and the anniversary of his death are approaching. It’s not a time for me to be up, as in pasting on fake smiles and acting like everything is wonderful. But it does allow me to think of her and be there for her.
I’d add one more thing. Many others are remembering this September as it’s the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Ivan. We couldn’t evacuate with James, because he would not have been able to make the trip. But good friends (Tom and Sharolyn Hunt) took us in, as our double-wide under the trees was not a good place to ride out a storm. James wanted to be here, at his home, when the time came. I remember driving back up here with Tom the day after the storm. I saw so many buildings damaged or destroyed, and a couple of fine, old double-wides that looked like giants had stepped on them. When we got here, not only was our home and this office standing, the power was on. It turned out that the power was only partially on. One half of the system was out, so we had good power through about half the house, and were unable to use 220 volt appliances. But James could be where he wanted to be.
I was very thankful for that, and I’m thankful for the time we had with him. But I still miss him almost like it was yesterday.
