Today is the 2nd anniversary of my husband Anthony’s death. It hasn’t gotten much easier. Oh, the mind-numbing grief has waned, but I haven’t gotten used to him being gone. No way. Does that ever happen I wonder? Just last week while in New Jersey presenting at a women’s conference, I had the overwhelming urge to call him and share with him about the events of the day. ZING!

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My landscaping was ravaged by the last frost that hit the Tampa Bay area. I’ve done nothing about it, fearful that we might get one last blast.

Everything outside my windows looks dead. Brown and decaying. It is sad, though somehow strangely right, to have things dead-looking during Lent. It seems liturgically correct.  

For me personally, the sad exterior of my home and the liturgical season are more than “strangely right.” They are fitting. And perfectly match the landscape of my heart.

The past five Lents have been particularly poignant for me and have settled into my being like another self. Five years ago, during Lent, my son, Simon, was killed in a vehicular accident not long after he returned to the States from Iraq.  Two Lents ago, my husband, Anthony, was in the last days of his life. Brain cancer. He succumbed to a coma on Easter Sunday morning and died three days later. 

The lens of life turned brown then, like the shrubbery outside of my home. 

And every Ash Wednesday, without a conscious thought to the past, brown comes back and paints the inner recesses of my heart in somber tones. 

It’s a funny thing about those shrubs, though. They don’t tell the whole story. My limited vision sees only brown, but another color is working its way through them. Green.

Lent doesn’t tell the whole story either. New life is coming. Resurrection.

And my heart’s landscape is short-lived, too. Blossoms are on the horizon. Hope.

On my son’s grave marker is the passage Revelation 21:5 — “Behold, I make all things new.” And so He does. My God takes brown and makes it shimmer with gold. 

Easter is coming.

I had just gotten to baggage claim after arriving in Orange, CA. I turned on my cell phone to see that a voice message was waiting for me. The name and number said, “Michael Dubruiel.” A smile came to my face as Mike has been a long time friend. Editor of two of my books, and acquisitions editor for another, Mike and I have spent many long hours on the phone together. Most recently, Mike was appointed Director of Evangelization for the Diocese of Birmingham.

When I listened to the voice message, however, my smile instantly dissipated. It was Mike’s wife’s voice I heard, well-known author and blogger, Amy Welborn. I heard what she was saying and yet it couldn’t register in my mind. I pressed the button and listened again, and then quickly called her. When I spoke to her in person, Amy confirmed what I feared I had heard: Mike was gone. He collapsed at the gym the morning before. Just barely 50 and with no apparent physical problems.

Amy’s blog has it all there for you, including the last article he wrote for publication in the Birmingham diocesan paper. Something worth reading, to be sure. Amy’s blog address is www.amywelborn.wordpress.com.

I have experienced the death of loved ones twice now — one tragically and unexpectedly, one planned for and anticipated. The surreal experience of it all — the shock and disbelief, the numbing reality, the misery and sorrow — are almost impossible to communicate. And yet, for those of us with faith, we know God is present with us, and somehow mysteriously interacting with us in the midst of it all.

I know you will pray for Amy, for the four children left behind, and for the repose of Mike’s soul. He would be pleased, I know, if we kept our eyes on Jesus, lived each moment in the grace of the present moment, and did all we could to bring the Faith to others. Mike was/is an evangelizer. He lived it in word and deed. Let us do the same.

May you rest in peace, Mike. And God bless you, Amy and children. We are praying for you.

I just don’t like it — putting away Christmas, I mean. I must be the last person in our neighborhood to take down the tree, pack up the ornaments, and put away the garland and wreaths. I’ve pondered what it is I dislike about it, and it clearly is much more than the work of it all. It’s seems deeper than that. Certainly the memories of Christmas “play forward” as they say, so it can’t be that either. What is it? What could it be? Read the rest…