In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Nora's bread bowl

Today we embark on a new phase in our journey of life without Nora. As of today we have lived longer without Nora than with her. Somehow it seems her life was much longer in many ways that the just over 7 months we have just waded through.

Maybe that is why I felt a strong desire to again use the little bowl we weighed her in. As I brought it from our bedroom, where it has been housed since her death, to the kitchen, where it had previously been kept and used, it felt like another one of those moments where the meaning packed in the action was hard to contain on an emotional level. It was Nora that was last cradled there.

Tonight I once again lined the bowl with cloth. But this time, I filled it with fresh homemade cornmeal rolls to serve to new students who are joining us, from various place in the United States, Afghanistan, Liberia, Sri Lanka, Uganda and Indonesia, this Spring for graduate studies in conflict transformation and peacebuilding. Somehow it just felt right! These students, many of whom I have been working with to come to the program since before Nora was even born, are symbols of hope for me. Working with them, while it opens myself up to learning about suffering in many places in our world, connects me to incredible people who are seeking to bring change where it is so badly needed. I am grateful for the way that my work enables my life to be woven in some small way to theirs.

As I sit with colleagues and hear of their work in war torn areas, I'm reminded again of yet another way in which I feel so thankful for the time Nora spent with us and the sacred, secure, precious, focused time we spent with Nora at the end of her life. As emails come in from Gaza and I read reflections from a mother, the sister of one of our former students, wondering if she was wrong to choose to have children when she has no way to protect them, I find points of connections and then realize once again the uniqueness of our journey and, in some ways, the privilege we experienced during it. This does not minimize the grief of losing a child, but I believe it lessens the trauma of it. Where would I be in my grief process if Nora died because she was denied access to medical care because of her ethnicity? If she died of malnutrition because we were not able to earn enough money to feed her what she needed to thrive? If we had been separated from her at the time of her death or if she died surrounded by hatred and anger and violence? I just don't know...

Seven months ago and a new year!

I spent the morning at home today journaling and watching our recording of Nora's memorial service. As the holiday break comes to an end and the work and school routine start up again tomorrow, I felt the need for some "all by myself" at home, while Kali and Jason connected with our church community and enjoyed the monthly potluck. It felt like choosing between two things I wanted, but deciding on the one I needed most. While I've enjoyed extended time with Kali, it has not afforded me with an outlet for tears and space for emotions that have been known to build up and then, at times, come out in less healthy ways.

The week we have just spent at home has been special in many ways. We've gotten through our "wish list" of activities just in the nick of time. Kali and I made homemade noodles last night which was a big hit with all three of us. And Curious Hiddley even got his play time in the house. Kali and I enjoyed time outside yesterday due to the very unseasonably warm weather. We spent some time in the hammock reading Ramona the Pest. The hammock often reminds me of times spent with Kali during my bed rest before Nora was born. I recall taking many deep breaths as I looked out at the mountain wondering where I would gain strength for the unknowns of the journey ahead. The deep breaths and gathering up strength for the journey is still a useful exercise.

Two evenings ago Samuel and Margaret joined us for dinner and Samuel brought his dulcimer. I snuggled up in the recliner listening while Jason accompanied him on the guitar and Kali and Margaret read stories on the futon. Samuel's playing will always remind me of Nora and of our time with her at the end of her life. It's beautiful and amazing how that music can take me right back to the hospital room where we cared for Nora just days before she died and particularly the evening that they shared with us there. In an email to my folks I shared, "That evening at UVA with them felt similar to last night - my soul felt fed, I felt close and near to my deepest feelings and my deepest desires for my life, I felt accepted and loved and close to my home, neighbors and family. All things I hope to nurture and feed and replicate in many moments of my life!"

I felt some of the same feelings today as I watched the service we had for Nora and read through the book of all those that were present with us that day. Through tears, I felt surges of gratefulness for people who have walked with us while also wondering how we nurture and invest in our community as we move forward.

This year past has been one of the messiest of my life. My feelings are not neatly packaged into easily contained portions. My responses to events, people, circumstances surprises me sometimes. Emotions are stirred up by predictable and unpredictable triggers. I am saddened by the ways my grief process has at times alienated those I love, while thankful for new and meaningful relationships that have sprung up from the surprisingly fertile soil of my grief. I haven't yet lost my tendency to like to have things laid out in a way that I can plan for, but I find that I'm more interested in growing in my ability to take life as it comes, finding the beauty in the difficulties.

As Jason and I look to the coming year, we see many things to feel excited about. We feel daunted by other challenges. We imagine our writings expanding more to include new dreams as we develop them and they begin unfolding. No doubt our grief process will be ever evolving and changing and impacting us. We may share snippets of that from time to time on this blog. We envision that being less frequent in the next 7 months than it has been in the previous.

For our faithful readers of this blog we want to be sure to clarify one thing: lack of frequent updates in this public space by no means indicates that we are "moving on" or no longer wish to talk about Nora. Nothing but that!! It means that we wish to put more emphasis and value on personal interaction with people about our journey and also long for more give and take and interaction with others about our thoughts and process and how that weaves with their own. As I journey through this experience of loss, I'm finding that my understandings of loss and grief are ever widening. I want our ways of living and being in the world without Nora to encourage others to share their experiences of grief with us. We are not yet sure of what mechanisms for sharing will be most conducive towards reaching that goal.

We have both taken the plunge and joined up with Facebook. You can find us there and we may occasionally post pictures in that space. We don't envision that being a place where we invest large amounts of time or share in depth about our lives. While we have had to hone our online communication skills somewhat over the past year and a half, we look forward to working more at what seems to potentially be a soon lost art of face-to-face communication.

I hope that this blog will continue to be helpful for persons who land upon it. We want the focus of it to continue to be a tribute to Nora's life, the love that we shared with her and the ways her life has impacted and continues to impact ours.

Annual letter written to family and friends January 1, 2009:

I, Jason, am sitting here in front of the woodstove in our living room while outside the bitter air methodically extracts the heat from every object with which it comes into contact, and I’m thankful I am now on this side of the wall. I am attempting to write a letter to you which will give you a taste of the way our family experienced the year 2008. I feel as if I’ve bitten off a little more than I can chew.

What dominates our memories for 2008 is the life and death of our daughter/sister Nora Lynne. She lived a short, challenging, beautiful life in a mysterious body, and leaves us all wondering at the ways she affected us, and wondering what our brief encounter with her can tell us about meaning, mystery, loss, and love; about our places in the universe, about our places in our families and communities. On June 4--seven months after her arrival--she had to let go of life, and now seven more months have almost elapsed. I find it hard to accept that we have nearly lived as long without her as we did with her. I utterly fail to fully comprehend the experience. Indeed, one of the things I learned from the experience is that full comprehension is unattainable, whereas exercising presence in the flowing moment brings my intellect (limitations notwithstanding) to bear on the situation, while allowing me to live peacefully with the circumstances as they unfold.

We are grateful for the tremendous feeling of support we were able to carry with us through the whole journey. What can we say but that we wish every family encountering the kind of challenge we have faced could have access to such personal and practical resources as we have had through our family, neighborhood, workplace, medical, and spiritual communities.

Seven months have gone by quickly, but not because there was nothing going on. It was startling for us to notice how rapidly the pace of activities seemed to want to return to “normal” after Nora’s death. In a sense, this was part of our healing. It doesn’t work most of the time to just sit around and grieve, although there are those moments when that’s exactly what we need to do, and we have not made adequate space for that. What seems to have happened mostly is that we have picked up and carried on with our lives, not knowing if that was actually possible, and sort of grieving, loving, laughing, and growing our way into the next day, each day, until all of a sudden we find that it’s today.

Important throughout our process has been expressing ourselves in writing, for ourselves, each other and for our community. Many of you received our updates along the way.

This autumn Janelle and I participated in a retreat by the Initiative for Pediatric Palliative Care, where we were included as “parent faculty,” sharing our experience with Nora and the health care system with health care providers in a mutual learning situation. It was a solidly good experience, and has whetted our appetite for allowing Nora’s life to have a positive impact on families’ interaction with the health care system. We also were invited to use a sermon time at our congregation (Shalom Mennonite) to share our family’s story, and found that to be a challenging and rewarding process. Many have encouraged us to continue the writing, and/or to pursue some kind of publishing related to our journey. We remain open to this possibility, but as yet have taken no action towards that end (aside from my having a poem published in the American Journal of Medical Genetics soon to come out…go figure that my first, perhaps only, published work would be a poem in a scientific journal), and are unsure as to if we will, or how we might, proceed.

To mention specific ways in which we’ve been spending our time, I’ll start with myself. I keep busy with a combination of non-monetary activities (six days/week) and some paying work as a general to-do list shortener at Hickory Hill Farm, home of Samuel and Margaret Johnson, whose property lies adjacent to ours. Non-monetary activities have included the continued construction and development of our home and homestead, (which has recently included my first foray into table making), combing thrift stores for admittedly non-essential durable goods, full-duty daytime parenting (and light housekeeping) two days per week, shared-duty daytime, evening, and nighttime parenting most of the rest of the time, volunteering at Kali’s school ½ day/week, visiting with friends, neighbors, and family, some gardening (paltry this year due to circumstances), and reading late at night when everyone else is asleep:

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (re-read)
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (re-read)
Toni Morrison’s Paradise (re-read)
William Stafford’s Even in Quiet Places (poetry)
Back issues of The Door Magazine.
*Roberta Gilbert’s Extraordinary Relationships (on family systems theory)
*Donald J Meyer’s Uncommon Fathers: Reflections on Raising a Child with a Disability
Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder
Richard Deats’ How to Keep Laughing (Even When You’ve Considered All the Facts)

On the Docket (I am always on the lookout for a new read, especially good novels, funny stuff, smart stuff, essays, and poetry. Suggestions are welcome!):

Ted Kooser’s Delights and Shadows (poetry)
Lewis Turco’s The Book of Forms (poetry writing handbook)
David James Duncan’s The Brothers K (to re-read)
Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (to re-read)

*The only books Janelle managed to read, and even those were a challenge to find time for AND stay awake through.

Janelle continues to find employment and meaning at the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding at EMU, where she is Academic Program Coordinator for the Graduate Program in Conflict Transformation. Her gifts are well appreciated there. We have both felt privileged to participate in the CJP community, which has shown their caring in helpful and touching ways this year, and which has helped us to place our family’s experiences in a broad context of the global community of which we are a part.

Janelle loves her days at home, claiming to feel fresh excitement each time she drives up our driveway. She continues to find joy in baking bread, preserving fruits and vegetables, meal preparation, etc., so the kitchen is her fortress. But she also loves to emerge from the fortress for long walks around the property and on the local roads. The challenges to which she is rising include balancing work and home, living the perspectives Nora’s life introduced to her while continuing to grieve her absence, improving family and other relationships, and parenting a really lively five-year-old.

Precious Kali is having a great time growing up, and her parents are loving it, too! Like her parents, she is proving to be a somewhat intense person, which has its merits and demerits (we should know). She has not, however, inherited from either of us our strong aversions to disapproval! While challenging at times, this probably bodes well for her in adulthood. She is turning out to have her mother’s natural, almost spooky number-processing capabilities, sometimes wanting to play “math class,” now involving simple algebra (!), before breakfast. She also loves story books, and is getting interested in the longer, chapter types. She’s starting to learn to read…far more than she will let on to her parents when they ask! Maybe she thinks that if we know her real reading skill level, we’ll stop reading to her. At Shenandoah Valley Community School/SVCS, which Kali attends 2 ½ days per week, “reading class” is voluntary (so is everything else). Kali expressed interest and has been taking part. We’re very pleased with the SVCS approach, having noticed many instances in my volunteer time there that contrast in positive ways with the conventional educational system. We’re always eager to talk about the school with anyone who’s curious (and more information can be found online at http://www.svcs.us/). We both have noticed how comfortable and welcome Kali seems to feel there.

Kali’s other interests include her gentle pet rabbit, Curious Hiddley, dressing her dolls and stuffed animals (most often in Nora’s clothing), dressing and undressing herself, imaginative play, dancing and other performance, asking questions, teasing, telling jokes, birds, babies, relatives, neighbors, the color purple, PBSKIDS.org, trash walks (picking up trash/recycling along our road), the idea of goats, and being involved with household activities.

As a family of three since Nora’s death in June, we have: vacationed in Cape Charles, hauled rocks for our new parking space, walked the roads together, planted garlic on my birthday, visited Hershey Chocolate World, and most recently commenced semi-regular family meetings.

In the coming year we will expand our homestead to once again include chickens. Janelle and I will celebrate our 10^th anniversary in May. We hope to expand our garden both in size and variety of plants. In general we intend to put significant energy into continuing to put roots down here at home, while staying connected and involved in our ever expanding community. We will continue to add to the memorial garden we have begun for Nora in front of our home, missing her as we do, and at the same time will be ever weaving the lessons her life presented to us into our daily lives.

Blessings, Jason (with input and editing by Janelle)

January 1, 2009

The sun is setting on the first day of 2009. Kali is happily whispering to herself in the front room, clothed in her tutu and an apron. Dough for bagels is rising and will soon need our attention to shape and decorate. It's been a good first day of the year and a special end to 2008, spent with close friends Mark, Wendy and 1 year old Isaac. We last spent New Year's Eve with them 5 years ago when Kali was just over 4 months old and Isaac a future dream. I remember falling asleep before midnight with Kali sacked out on my chest.

Kali has been one big ball of anticipation during the holidays this year. New Year's Eve was no exception and she was not about to find herself dozing before toasting in the New Year! In the afternoon she picked out a fancy dress she wanted to wear. When I suggested she might like to wear something more comfortable since we would just be at home, she quickly corrected me that she wanted to be fancy because, after all, we were having a party that evening. She lasted until about 1am when her eyelids could not manage to stay open any longer to read the Christmas stories she was flipping through.

She was very clear with us at midnight that she would not be toasting with wine. Instead her little wine glass had an M & M in it at one point, and a cookie at another. Her toast to the New Year was a hope that we will make macaroni and cheese more often in 2009. She wanted to know mine. Not wanting to plunge to too great a depth of thoughtfulness after her contribution I mentioned three of my hopes for 2009: that we take more family walks together, get chickens and go camping.

Today 2/3 of our family went for a walk. Jason was working for Samuel so Kali and I ventured out. For fun we took our camera along and took pictures of our first walk in 2009. It has the potential to be a fun new tradition. We each took some pictures (you can guess the photographer on each). They are online at http://picasaweb.google.com/bennerj8/NewYearSDay# with a few captions attached.

...We've savored fresh homemade bagels, Kali is once again fully dressed and we have just completed our family meeting for the evening. I shared one more resolution/goal/dream for the New Year. Sometime this year I want to have another weekend with just Kali. I would also like a long weekend with Jason sometime around our 10th anniversary in mid-May and the one year anniversary of Nora's death in early June. Connected to that, or separate, I hope to spend at least one full day in retreat alone to continue processing the events of 2007 and 2008, as well as dreaming into the future.