As a child I often attached strange significance to dates, perhaps because of their relationship with numbers, the computations of which have always come easily to me. My grandmother died on July 23; my aunt the following year on February 24. My grandmother had died after being diagnosed with a brain tumor, and while her battle did not last long, we at least had some kind of warning. My aunt died unexpectedly and suddenly, in a car accident, on a Tuesday morning, on her way to work. The trauma of these two losses affected me deeply, and one of the ways I responded was to fear who might die next and when it would happen. They were my mother’s mother and sister, and so in my 11-year-old mind it seemed clear that my mother would be the next to die. My aunt had died 7 months and 1 day after my grandmother, so perhaps my mother would die 8 months and 1 day after my aunt. Where this mathematical rationality came from, I can’t tell you. But as October 25 approached that year, I was filled with dread.
It may not be surprising, then, that dates have continued to burn themselves in my memory, despite my best efforts to detach myself from their meaning. But we are restricted by time, and the only way we can sometimes find footing is to place ourselves in time, and look back at past times, and think of what might come in future times.
July 15 is a day written in sorrow.
Five years ago, in the middle of June, my husband was told that his job at our church would end on July 15. It meant our last paycheck. At the time, we thought it might mean the end of his dream to graduate from seminary–if we couldn’t feed our children, how could we pay for classes?
July 15 came and went, and God provided.
Two years ago, I woke up on July 15 and had no special awareness of the day. But mid-morning my husband called with news, bad news–the memory of which still makes me sick to my stomach as I tried to process what he was saying and what it would mean.
That one day changed so much for our family. It affected our church, our livelihood, our community, our mental health, and our future. I think even into old age, I will think of my life as forever divided in two, marked with July 15.
That July 15 did eventually end, although it felt like it never would.
Last year, July 15 opened like a wound and threatened to swallow me. It had been a year of healing and recovery, but the memories of that time the year before were as fresh as they had ever been. And yet, with a certain sweetness, July 15 also marked my husband’s last day as a team member at a fast food restaurant owned by a friend. It was sweet because that job had been offered to him as an act of generosity, mercy in the dead of winter when we had money in savings but no regular income. It was sweet because the only reason that job was ending was because he had been offered another job, a job that was to start at the beginning of August, a job that he had felt called to all along.
I’ve seen July 15 coming this summer, and my thoughts have not been without grief, but the grief has a home now somewhere within me, somewhere where I am at peace with it. It doesn’t surprise me like it once did. Overwhelming the grief is contentment. Contentment that the Lord had good plans for us after July 15, 2015, even if we couldn’t see them at the time. For today to be an ordinary day, a Saturday spent watching cartoons with the boys, drinking an extra cup of coffee after a night up with a newborn, a big Southern breakfast with dear friends, catching up on laundry, is a gift.
grafo zoe // write life 