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Claire, my dining room table, church

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Today Claire came home from work and we sat at the table for awhile.  Oh boy, if my dining room table could talk......there are more memories soaked into this table that I can recount, and more tears and bursts of laughter than I can ever remember.  There are more lists and memos and plans etched into it that I could ever save...... She is making her lists for moving to college.  It's true that she is only moving a couple hundred feet away to the college in our town, but she is still moving out.  She is taking all of the things she uses every day and she is setting up a life in a dorm on a college campus with a new roommate and a whole new world.  In 4 days we will move her out.  It is so weird.  It is the weirdest thing ever.  Adding children to our home is not weird at all.  Figuring out how to send them out is.  I'm less sad and more....conflicted, maybe.   I am so excited for her.  Moving to college is probab...
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a good-bye letter

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32 years and a few days ago, my uncle Todd had a car accident.  It was just days after his wedding and my last memory, before the accident, was dancing with him at his wedding.  I was one of the bridesmaids, just 17 years old....and though he was "uncle" he was more like big brother, just 5 years older than me.  In the accident, he was thrown from his car and paralyzed from the neck down.  He has spent 32 years in a wheelchair. This week, he has been planning a trip.  It is a very important trip.  It is his trip.....home.  To Jesus.  The paralysis first took his legs and years later, his arms, then his ability to eat and later, to breathe without a ventilator and trach.  In spite of every loss, his love for life and for relationships was strong.  He wanted to live and to enjoy the sunshine, and his wife, and their life together......until recently when it became clear that he wasn't really living anymore but mostly dying.  His lu...
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a look at Father's Day

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 Father's Day weekend is here.  It's a hard one for me.  It always has been, actually.  My dad and I were not close when I was growing up but in the last few years we came to a place of mutual understanding and respect....and then he got really sick really fast and now he is gone.       This is my first Father's day without a father.  I've talked to my older kids this week and mentioned Father's day.  They asked "are we doing anything?"  My answer was something like, well, I don't know.  I don't have a dad anymore so I don't really feel like it's my job to plan something for Father's Day.      I wish I could tell my kids we were going to my dad's to visit and grill and hang out at the lake for the day.  I wish I could go shopping at the local greenhouse and buy something landscape-ish that he would like, or go to the bakery and get a bag full of Dutch treats.....that's what I have done the last few years for...
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