Timing

The Fourth has long been a favorite family holiday at our house, laden with happy memories and so many traditions.
I worried for half a heartbeat last year that if Wes died on the Fourth of July, all of those happy times would be somehow canceled out by grief.  But then I learned a lesson about the Lord's timetable:  It's perfect.  

Can you imagine the July 2nd silence of Wes's home hospital room being broken by Lucy's call to "Come quick!!"  I rushed to her, worried that something was wrong. 

Nothing was. 
Just a familiar Freedom Days sight.

   

We took our breakfast to the patio to watch the rest of the balloons.

It was a moment of fresh air that we all needed. 

Back in Wes's room, Spencer was non-stop chatter about the colors in the sky, anxious to tell his dad everything, and I'm sure Wes was glad to hear it all.   

Perfect timing.

Which is to say nothing about all of Wes's family having Fourth of July holiday time to come and be with us that weekend. 

Which is to say nothing of Wes's patriotic heart.  The last book he struggled to read before cancer overtook that ability was a biography of George Washington.  And I'm sure he felt honored to depart mortality the same day as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

Lucy and I talk all the time about how the Fourth of July is a day to remember the men and women who helped make our country great and our lives better.  People like George and Thomas and John, to be sure.  But also people like our dad.  And like our friend, Marva Weaver. 

The year before Wes died, we spent the morning of the Fourth at the Freedom Days parade (Wes always took a tarp and a book to Center Street around 5am, and waited for the kids and I to show up around 9am. What a good life). On our way home from the parade, still decked in our red white and blue finery, we stopped at the hospital to visit our aged and ailing friend, Marva.  She was close to death. We were all sobered by the sight of her tired, battered body.  We sang a few songs and Wes and I tried to help the children understand why Marva couldn't respond.  "But she can hear you," we assured them.    We held Marva's hand a moment before leaving, with no foresight that one year later, we'd be grateful for those preparatory images of what a dying body looks and acts like.  Before going to sleep the night before their daddy died, Lucy and Spencer sang Wes a song, the way they had sung to Marva, knowing that he could certainly hear them, even if he couldn't respond.

And what about freedom?  That watch word of Independence Day.  What about freedom from pain and limitation?  We celebrated those things for Wes last year.  Somewhere amid all of the conversation and tears and tasks on that Fourth of July, Lucy - the honest to goodness angel of the day - said in a hopeful little voice I wish I could reproduce, "Daddy doesn't have cancer anymore." 

We continue to celebrate that fact.  That freedom.  That seemingly singular good that rises above our grief.

And the grief is real.  "The end of [Wes's misery was] the coming-of-age of mine." (Lewis, A Grief Observed)  But it helped this year - and I think it always will help - to commemorate His death on a celebratory day.  On a day when there are hot air balloons and picnics and fireworks. 

Reminders of freedom.  Reminders of a dream that "sees beyond the years."

It's all meaningful. 

And if nothing else, it's all a great distraction.  Something to do besides sit home and cry =).

And that is a tender mercy indeed.  Perfect timing, if you will.

Of course, I'm still often stubborn.  "July 4, 2060 would have been better!" I try to tell Heavenly Father - try to maintain that Wes's death was, in fact, the definition of untimely.  But the Spirit keeps reminding me, regularly, that our years together might have been fewer without Heaven's intervention, and that, most importantly,

'The issue for us [me!] is trusting God enough to trust also His timing. If we can truly believe He has our welfare at heart, may we not let His plans unfold as He thinks best? The same is true with the second coming and with all those matters wherein our faith needs to include faith in the Lord's timing for us personally, not just in His overall plans and purposes.' [Neal A. Maxwell Even As I Am (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1982), 93]"

If we can truly believe He has our welfare at heart.

Even my sometimes stubborn self can't deny Heavenly Father's attentiveness.  Acknowledging  the meaningful timing and the many mercies surrounding Wes's death helps me - daily, and especially in my moments of greatest heartache - to trust that Heavenly Father is, indeed, aware and loving. 

That He must, after all, have our welfare at heart.