It’s been a wild ride this past week, facing the next few months of major life change.  My emotions are all over the place.  I remember the grieving process from when my Dad died.  The mornings were okay, but as the day wore on, each evening as the sun set it was like hearing it again for the first time.  I have been in much the same place now.  I wake up in the morning, looking forward to a new life, a new adventure.  By the time the day is over and I have passed by familiar place where memories of the last 22 years  wash over me, I am a mess.  Poor Al.  I have explained to him that he must be compassionate, kind and patient with me during this time.  Indeed, I am  happy about the move in the morning and crying by nightfall.  Not easy for a man to “get.”

So where do the angels fit in here?  The BOHU moments?  Here are two examples.

The other night, Al and I went to bed and a relevant conversation started about the move, particularly my end-of-the-day ambivalence.  I was not in the greatest place emotionally so it was a difficult conversation to get started.  It was 11:30 at night – 1:30 a.m. in Illinois.   I could tell we would have to spend at least 15 minute just trying to get on the same wavelength.  Just then I heard the text chimes (I call them my “angel chimes” because that’s what they sound like!) on my cell phone but ignored it, figuring it was one of the boys sending me a late night something or other.  After the conversation ended, Al drifted off to sleep while I prepared for a long process of half crying, half sleeping, tossing and turning.   I decided to look at my phone to see who had texted and it was from my sister, Jan, in Illinois with three simple words.  “I love you.”  That was all.  The timing was BOHU and yet Jan and I can tell you  it’s not really surprising given our relationship over the years. Time? Space?  What time? What space?

Here’s number two.  Long ago we had friends who lived down the street, they too had three sons.  One was a year older than our eldest, one was older than that, and one was just Andy’s age.  Blake and Andy became best buds.  When I look out my window I see the “steps” they built onto the giant ancient oak (I am reminded of Silverstein’s Giving Tree  – it must wonder what happened to those two little boys who practically lived in that tree).  They moved away about ten years ago, the marriage split up.  The mother went to Colorado while the father went elsewhere in the Bay Area.  I ran into him awhile back and intended to get together, but of course…

Driving past that house the last week has been difficult.  Al and I agree that we always think of them whenever we pass that house – we had a lot of good times with them, trick-or-treating around the neighborhood, dinners together while the boys played, lots of laughs – but now it just seemed like it was one more chapter in my life here that would have to be put to sleep forever.  I don’t know where they are anymore, and made a mental note to find them on Facebook perhaps, but also knew that life moves on and our friendship would probably just have to be a memory, and now moving to Orange County, a memory without the touchstone of their house.

Yesterday I came home from work to find a young man getting out of his car in my driveway, in jeans and a collared shirt.  I wondered if Al had called in a contractor of some sort for some reason regarding the house.  As I got out of the car and gave a friendly smile that young man said “I don’t know if you remember me.”  I  stopped and looked intently at his face and then blurted out: “Phil!”  Indeed, it was the middle son, whom I hadn’t seen in ten years.  I don’t know if he expected the tearful hug he got from me!

I invited him in and sitting out on our back patio with Al, where his brother (and at times Phil as well) and my sons had played for hours, we caught up with the news on  him and the whole family. He made me laugh when he explained that his new puppy looked “just like Blake when he hadn’t showered in three days and his hair was sticking up all over the place.”  Blake spent many overnights at our house and I could still envision that sleepy-eyed kid with his morning “bad hair.”  We exchanged phone numbers and are now Facebook friends.  I await his mother’s “acceptance” of my friend request on Facebook as well.  I cannot describe my awe at God’s love for me to send such an angel visit at this time, to remind me that it is a small world, and now it is a world that allows us to find old friends so easily through the internet.  It could have been six months from now and he could have come to find us gone.  But no, he came yesterday, during one of my most difficult weeks in recent memory, to heal my aching heart.  I will be leaving much behind when we move in March, but I also will be finding much, as yesterday’s encounter taught me.