Silence

So, I read a thing lately that said writer's block is not about anything being blocked, but about having nothing to say. I beg to differ. At least for me, lately, it hasn't been about having nothing to say, but about not knowing how to say it. Up until recently I was able to get an idea, sit down at my computer, and fifteen minutes later have a post written and ready to publish. You may or may not have noticed, but for the last month or so I haven't posted anything. Here's why.

Three weeks and one day ago, my father-in-law passed away. I wasn't sure if I was ready to, or if I even wanted to, write about it, but anything else that popped into my head seemed pointless in comparison. I had ideas, and still have several posts started and saved; one paragraph, maybe two and then blank space. One is about not doing things I don't want to do, but as I was writing that I realized that we ALL have to do things we don't want to do; like watch people we love make unhealthy choices that will ultimately lead to their early death.

Another is about how I love looking out my window at the trees in my backyard, but that before I know it winter will be here and the green leaves will be gone . Winter, and the thought of things dying made me sad.

I started one about Lily taking her first steps. Do you remember the commercial about the grandpa? He's sitting in a chair as his (presumed) daughter and grandson enter the room. The little boy is toddling along, clearly just learning to walk. The grandfather gets down on his knees to catch the boy, but then he disappears and the grandson walks right through him. The mom says "I wish grandpa was here to see this..." I'm living that commercial right now.

My father-in-law, Don, and I weren't especially close; he was a really quiet guy. But I know that he loved me. He would never have said those words, at least to me, but he did little things to show me. Once he took my car in to get the oil changed without telling me. It would have been a wonderful surprise, only he locked my keys in the car and had to call me for the spare set. He was embarrassed. I hope he believed me when I told him how thankful I was that he would even think to do something like that for me.

When I met my in-laws, over ten years ago, neither of them smoked. They had while Wade was growing up, but after Don's mother passed away from lung cancer in 1995 they both quit. Then suddenly, when I was pregnant with Sophie, their first grandchild, both of them started smoking again. Cheryl quit for good soon after, but Don didn't. For a long time I was angry that he had stopped for so long, seven years, but started up again just as he was becoming a grandfather. He tried to hide it from us, and he never smoked around our kids, but it bothered me nonetheless that he was making that choice, risking his health. He was no dummy. He knew what smoking would do to his body. We talked to him about quitting. Every once in a while he would say that he would, but he never did. We stopped asking. We decided to focus on the quality, rather than the quantity, of time we had left with him. Not knowing, of course, how little time there was.

We've had a few of those middle-of-the-night-phone-calls everyone dreads over the last few years. My mother-in-law has had trouble breathing and when the phone rings at 1:00am it's usually to let us know that she has been taken to the hospital. So when the phone rang early in the morning on August 1st we assumed she was back in the hospital. But this time it was Wade's mom on the line. Don was being admitted for stomach pain. They were talking about doing surgery later that day. She said she would call us again when she knew more. A few hours later Wade got up and drove the hour-and-a-half to spend the day with his parents. A CT scan reveled nothing seemingly wrong with Don's stomach, but showed a large mass on his right lung. Another CT scan on Monday, when both Wade and I were there, gave a clearer picture. Don's right lung was almost completely shut down. His left lung was filling with fluid. Tuesday the doctors said it was time to talk about hospice and nursing homes. They said less than six months. A meeting was scheduled for Wednesday morning, where the doctors, Cheryl and Wade would present the plan to Don. By the time Wade got down there Wednesday morning the meeting had been canceled. His dad wouldn't last the day.

We're grateful, on the one hand, that he went quickly. It's what he wanted. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, and, looking back, we can see how sick he had been. And for quite some time. He had watched his mother suffer, in and out of the hospital; in and out of pain. I believe he never said a word about his own suffering in part to avoid the hospital, but also to save us the pain of watching his decline. Wade made a comment a few days after his father had passed away that will stick with me. He said that he can see now that his dad was fighting death every day. So, I'm glad that it's not a struggle anymore. I'm relieved that he's no longer sick, no longer smoking, finally at peace.

But for those of us still here, there's a void where he is supposed to be. It happened so fast that it didn't seem real. Doesn't seem possible. I'll be looking at a picture of him and it will suddenly hit me that he's not here anymore. It honestly catches me by surprise every time. He was so quiet in life that at times it was easy to forget he was there. Now that he's not, his silence is deafening.

It's an incredible story, actually. Thanks for letting me share it with you.