A Room With A View

There's a beautiful view from my bedroom at night. 

Lucy's room is just across the hall from my own.  Before bed (when little brother cooperates with early slumber) we both do our reading and writing.  Sometimes we smile or wave or wink at each other.  

Lots of you ask about her,  wondering how she's been doing and what she's been feeling. 

Yesterday evening before dinner, she and Spud clamored for a movie.  Spencer wanted The Rescuers but Lucy wanted the hour long home video I compiled for her one-year-old birthday.

"Baby Lucy show!!  Baby Lucy show!" she begged.  I hesitated.  She has always loved that little film (exclusively about her, and me, and Wes) but we haven't watched it for months.  I didn't think I could handle it, and tried to dodge.  "Well, honey, Spencer asked first...."  But Lucy knows our (loose) family rules and countered, "Mom, it's Sunday!" 

Recognizing her superior stand and thinking it would likely be hard just for me, I put it on.  We watched and laughed and loved seeing all those photos and clips of Wes and I so smitten with our baby girl.  Spud offered a few admirable, "cute Lucy baby!" comments before falling asleep on one side of me (I patted his bottom and promised to make a video of him someday, too).  On the other side of me, Lucy watched as intently and as delightedly as always.  It wasn't until about 30 minutes in that I looked  over and saw silent tears coursing down her little red face.  I drew her close to me and we cried and cried together. 

We don't share many moments like that.  Lucy talks about her dad often, but the conversations and comments are generally happy and light hearted.   It was good to cry together.  To acknowledge the pain that is a result of great love. 

I remember one night last spring, several weeks before Wes died, he was watching Lucy have a bath. Those were difficult days.  I was never sure how she was feeling - she didn't say much to me.  But that night, alone with Dad (her bath buddy since birth), her thoughts came out in a rush.  I listened tenderly from the adjoining room.

"One time in the winter," she said to Wes, "I had a hurt.  Just like you. It's no fun to have hurts!  I wish bad things only happened in dreams.  I wish only good things happened in real life."

It was around that time that I started rereading my old copy of Emily of New Moon by L. M. Montgomery, the first of three books about a little girl who loses her beloved father to death.  Someday Lucy will read the series, I'm sure.  She'll love Emily's cats, and she'll love her poems and all of her adventures.  And I know she'll love the conversation Emily had with her daddy, just before he died. 

  "I want you to be brave.  You musn't be afraid of anything, Emily.  Death isn't terrible.  The universe is full of love - and spring comes everywhere - and in death you open and shut a door.  There are beautiful things on the other side of the door..."

  "I wish you - could take me right through the door with you," whispered Emily. 

  "After a little while you won't wish that...Life has something for you - I feel it.  Go forward to meet it fearlessly, dear.  I know you don't feel like that just now - but you will remember my words by and by."

  "I feel just now," said Emily, who couldn't bear to hide anything from Father, "that I don't like God any more."

  "Douglas Starr laughed - the laugh Emily liked best...She felt his arms tightening round her.

  "Yes, you do, honey.  You can't help liking God.  He is Love itself, you know..."

Through our tears last night we talked about Wes.  We talked about Love.  We looked at the twinkling Christmas colors outside our window and we talked about Light.  In the end, there was a good feeling in our hearts.  When we ate dinner, and for the rest of the evening, Lucy was sincerely happy and kind and obedient.  I marveled (for the millionth time!) at the fruit of the Spirit, "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith."

Our day ended in the way it usually does.



With a little reading.  And a little writing.  And a lot of prayer. 

"You can't help liking God. He is Love itself, you know...

Emily didn't know exactly what Father meant.  But all at once she found that she wasn't afraid any longer - and the bitterness had gone out of her sorrow, and the unbearable pain out of her heart.  She felt as if love was all about her and around her, breathed out from some great, invisible, hovering Tenderness. 
 

One couldn't be afraid or bitter where love was - and love was everywhere.  Father was going through the door - no, he was going to lift a curtain - she liked that thought better, because a curtain wasn't as hard and fast as a door...He would be there...never very far away from her.  She could bear anything if she could only feel that Father wasn't very far away from her - just beyond that wavering curtain."