People wanna say, God, they wanna say that you’re cruel.
But if Cassie could sing, she’d say it’s not true because you’re good.
If Cassie could sing, than she’d sing in her own coffee shop,
She’d sing from the pyramids or from an Irish mountain top.
If Cassie could sing, she’d sing of these journeys, the ones you put in her heart to do.
One of the hardest parts of loss is seeing things finish without the person you started them with. But that shouldn’t mean despair for us. The fact that godly plans do eventually pan out should only give us hope moving forward. A certain friend’s wedding reminded me how.
Cass would say over and over in so many ways, “People need structure!” “People need routine!” I’m trying hard to carry this bit of wisdom into my first year without her. And in more ways than one, it might be the most healing thing I’ve done.
Cass and I talked about moving a lot… maybe as a kind of coping mechanism when life got stressful for her. But as eager as I was to be moved out and for everything to be changed, I didn’t really want to do the moving or the changing. So when the time finally came, I found another couple coping mechanisms: one was pretty terrible, the other pretty fantastic.
So apparently the “holiday blues” are a thing. I was hopeful I could escape it. But since I got caught up anyways, I realized I needed someone to save me from this new kind of grief.
Cassie’s always wanted to see a sky lantern festival. Though she never got to, I had the chance to light a lantern for her, letting it go while the world around me sang Hallelujah.
Cassie loved the sunshine. She also hated the dark. As I explored both beaches and caves in Mexico, I could only think of the way the Light of the World dealt with darkness—by embracing that darkness and loving despite it.
I spent the last couple weeks thinking of responses to the question, “How have you been blessed since Cassie’s passing?” Now with a court date approaching, I had 48 hours to respond to, “How have you been hurt since Cassie’s passing?” So in the course of a couple days, I had to think of what to say that would reflect both Cassie’s love of justice and her love for mercy and grace. I don’t know that there is an easy way to do that. But I tried to as best I could in my victim impact statement…
Our pineapple plant had a lot of memories tied up in it. Including the life of the pineapple plants it had come from. The last pineapple harvest, we didn’t celebrate as much as we planned. So Cassie promised we would make a huge celebration out of the next harvest–Pineapple Day! It turns out, Pineapple Day was just the made-up holiday I needed as I approach the actual holidays.
She wanted to climb to the top of the pyramids and to see things leftover from a world forgotten. Egypt was just a little too far for her. She told me a number of times she would settle for the pyramids in Mexico. So, I knew exactly what I wanted to do in while in the Yucatan! While I wandered about the monuments the Maya left behind, I couldn’t help but wonder about the monuments my wife left behind.
When I lost Cassie, I lost the feeling of being known by someone. Losing that leads to unexpected feelings of loneliness that I can’t quite express to other people. It can be isolating and overwhelming. Whenever Cassie would feel overwhelmed, she would look at me and say, “Let’s just run away to Mexico.” So when that feeling blindsided me last week, I decided to run away… to Mexico.