Making Marriage Work

When I'm in a business setting, it's easy to recognize some common courtesies like being on time and calling to reset people's expectations on my performance. At home it's somehow really easy to forget to do those things. This morning I went to help Julie with her yard sale and it took longer than Alicia and I originally anticipated. I didn't properly call Alicia and let her know about these changes and as a result she felt sort of trampled. This was compounded later in the day when another obligation took me out of the home and she was left once again to take care of everything else while I was away.

Tonight we spoke openly about this and were able to express ourselves and come to greater understanding. It took over an hour with plenty of silent spaces of time but finally we resolved it and learned a bit more about each other in the process. At the end, we knelt in prayer expressing gratitude for our marriage and asking for help to overcome weaknesses and trials. There was a deep feeling on unity and love in that prayer.

This evening is an example of why I love Alicia and am lucky to be married to her. She is (1) open with her feedback and (2) committed to resolving issues and not letting them fester. I hurt her today but she was willing to talk it through - even when talking was very hard to do against the thick silence. Alicia has been so supportive and forgiving of me. She's committed to making marriage work and I am thankful for her patience in being married to imperfection. I love her and will strive to be as kind to her as she deserves.

Late Night Hospital Conversation with Dad

I stayed awake at Dad's side through the early morning hours and during that time, I was able to talk to him a bit. It turned out to be a great conversation which I recorded in part below:

There was silence in the room for a while and then I asked, "How serious do you think this is?"

"Very serious," he responded slowly.

"How are you feeling?"

"Appalled. The [disabiling effects of serious medical conditions that] I’ve seen in others is going to happen to me now."

I didn't know how to respond to this so I stayed in silence for several minutes. Then asked, "You seem to intentionally divert attention from yourself to others. Why?"

"I’m sincerely interested in other people," he spoke slowly enough that I could capture every word. "I think one of the best ways to love God’s children is to show interest in them. And you show interest in them by remembering what’s going on in people’s lives and ask questions about that."

This reminded me of how he asked about Alicia as soon as I saw him yesterday. "Did you do that when you were a teacher?"

"Yes. I tried to have the same attitude The easiest way to love them was to know what life was like for them. Know what kinds of problems they had in their homes."

"Was your teacher of the year award a result of this approach with the kids?"

"The teacher who put forward my name as the parent of one of the children I helped. Mr. Tuttle."

Another few minutes of silence then he asked, "How do you think that Julie relies on you?"

I talked about how she asks me for advice, how I get the sense that she watches me and my life.

"It’s obvious that she’s relied on you quite heavily. Whenever she’d e-mail asking for advice, your e-mail was always right on and perceptive. She’s really a wonderful person. I admire her. As I admire you."

Finally Enjoying Parades

I don't know if this is just a Utah thing but nearly every town around here has some kind of summertime weekend celebration. Frequently, they'll attach "Days" on the end of some term that has some significance to the town and they'll have a baby contest, beauty pagent, parade, and even a rodeo if the cowboy per capita warrants it. Thus, we get "Strawberry Days", "Iron Days", "Pony Express Days", and even "Onion days." Tonight, we attended one of these celebrations in Orem and watched an evening parade with Dad, Susan, Dave, Jen and family, Jennifer and family, and Julie and family.

I've never been much of a parade guy. I remember my Mom dragging the kids out for as many parades as she could take us to. Most of the time, when I think about parades, I think about boredom, tired feet from walking blocks and blocks to parade routes, and blistering heat from watching float after float in July head for four hours (Not an exaggeration. The Provo summertime parade is 4 hours.) but I very much enjoyed this tonight (aside from my lower back hurting after standing with Ben in arms or on my shoulders for the whole time). Most of the enjoyment came from watching my kids enjoy the parade. About every second float threw candy out at the crowds and my kids loaded up on the sweet stuff. Each of them had something they really enjoyed this evening. Ben is getting into a smiley stage so he enjoyed seeing the faces of the family giving him the attention he's always so thirsty for at home. Claire saw some Disney princesses (actors from a local theater group) and loved that. She also loved seeing all the beauty queens from the various towns. Jace said his favorite part was the police cars and fire trucks. Ethan and Emily loved it when Uncle Dave gave them rides on his motorcycle in the Church parking lot.

It was a great way to spend a summer evening.

The Best Graduation Ceremony

I'm not much of a fan of the typical graduation ceremony. When there are hundreds of graduates - each with a need for a moment of spotlight, the event seems to seep from the moment into the expanses of space and time. Think spinning clocks and hour glasses spinning into a very slow vortex.

So, Alicia came up with something much, much better for my graduation with my MBA. We invited the family over for a dinner at the house, she laid out a red carpet our of house blankets and prepared a black garbage bag as my gown and a cardboard cutout painted black for my cap (with a yarn tassle) and I walked to the music of pomp and circumstance through my kitchen and then accepted my diploma from my five-year-old boy who read it to me (with help from his mother) before handing it over. Then we ate food and one of the most glorious cakes I've ever eaten.

Absolutely perfect.

Ghost Taffy

The other night I had this dream where I lived out a whole day knowing that I was going to die very soon. I visited my dying mother (fictional Mom obviously since my real Mom has already died), mended broken relationships, and spend the day of my dream in a reflective state. Then I returned home in the evening. I walked into a room with a table filled with stuff in bags and boxes. Suddenly a feeling came over me that today was the day I would die. I immediately called Alicia.

"This is really going to happen," is all I said.

Immediately, she was with me hugging me from behind. The flood of emotion came though and in the midst of that, I saw on the table in a bag a bunch of left over halloween themed taffy. I love sweets and if something good is placed before me and I have any room in my stomach, I'll eat it. So I reached out to grab a ghost taffy.

Then I realized how unimportant this taffy was. I realized that I didn't really need it. In the midst of thinking of so many weighty matters, I was suddenly uninterested in this impulse. My hand stopped over the bag and retracted. Then I woke up.

Obviously the whole dream was emotional but the part that stuck with me was the taffy.  I was dying within hours, my wife was hugging me and needed a great amount of comforting and still my vision and focus was on a small piece of taffy.

As I tossed in bed for the next hour, I remembered a talk given in Church last Sunday. The speaker talked about putting eternal matters first and everything else in life (all the ghost taffy in the world) will find it's proper place. When I got out of bed, I decided to live the day as if it were my last and see what kind of ghost taffy I could avoid. As a result, I spent much of the day with people, my sister at her divorce mediation, the people on my team in talking to them about their work and coaching on issue resolution, playing with my kids, and then spending time talking with Alicia. It would have made a great last day on earth but, luckily, it wasn't.

Mom's Birthday Dinner

One of my favorite pictures of Mom from the 80s.

Mom's birthday is this Thursday. She's been gone for 9 months now and my sister Julie had a great idea of celebrating her birthday in her honor at her favorite restaurant - Brick Oven Pizza in Provo. Now that I think about it, I suppose it's kind of an odd thing to celebrate a birthday for someone who has died but that thought was far from my mind as we were eating together as a family. Instead we were thinking and talking about each other's lives: Jen's absolute passion about being a science teacher (she was wearing a button on her bag that said "I'm a science teacher. What's your superpower?" and her admitting tonight that she makes up songs with science terms as lyrics to help her students learn.), Julie's pending divorce and the proposed terms of the legal contract, Tam's adventures of coming to my work at the alcohol averse Church inadvertently wearing an alcoholic beverage t-shirt she got from her work, Dave's crazy graveyard working schedule and my finishing of the MBA.

In fact, we didn't even talk about Mom until the very end of the meal. With a good amount of laugher, some expressions of condolences for Tam's job situation and Julie's divorce situation, and healthy doses of Hawaiian pizza (Mom's favorite as long as it doesn't have almonds on it) behind us, we raised our mugs over our circular table and toasted Mom.

I've heard that the test of a good leader is the quality of individuals left behind to continue on in the leader's absence. The family is in good shape. We've been though a lot and probably have much yet to endure but if Mom was aware of tonight's birthday celebration, I imagine that she was proud of her kids and hope that she felt honored.

The Magic Jar

This is the second time we've used a jar and chocolate as a tracking mechanism to keep the kids motivated towards a goal. It seems to work well for them. This time the goal was to be respectful and kind and the reward was an evening at Pirate Island - a themed pizza restaurant in Orem.

Today the kids finished the goal and filled the jar with candy so we invited Julie to join us for an evening at Pirate Island. The kids wore pirate hats, played arcade games, and enjoyed at least a few bites of their food. I enjoyed the atmosphere and I kept thinking of ways to improve it. I'd love to open a place like that someday.

Kudos to the kids for doing such a good job. We'll do the jar thing again to keep these good things going.

Jace's Shyness

Jace went to his first friend/cousin birthday party yesterday. It was his first significant social situation where he was all by himself. Luckily, it was at Julie's house celebrating Spencer's birthday so he had familiar people to interreact with. Julie reported that he was shy in a very cute kind of way. He was quiet and reserved the whole time - even so much that he didn't eat with the other kids.

When I welcomed him back into the van I asked if he had fun and he said that he did so I'm not worried about it but it'll be interesting to see how this shyness goes for him. I could see him being an introverted person but you never know...

Christmas Eve

For the past 11 years there has always been a Christensen family party on Christmas Eve. But this year, Tam and family were working on Christmas Eve and Whitley, who was visiting home from her first year in college in Nebraska, really wanted to see the family. So we moved the party to the day after Christmas. As a result, Alicia and I and our kids had Christmas Eve to ourselves and we didn't really know what to do with it!

We had a big ham dinner at home and ended up with Julie joining us. Julie had to drop off her kids at a Nance celebration that she didn't really want to attend since Richard was there, So we still did a sort of extended family thing. But this one was much more laid back.

To cap off the evening after Julie left each of the kids opened up their Christmas Eve pajamas and a Disneyland themed Candyland game. Then we talked about Jesus being the light and hope of the world before we tucked them in on the one night of the year when we allow them to sleep in our room.

Alicia's traditional Christmas Eve cookie plate.

Emily and Ethan are very excited for tomorrow. I think Jace is more excited about sleeping in our room than anything else. And Claire and Ben don/t really recognize what's in store.

I look forward to seeing how tomorrow goes.

Mom's Funeral

Tam slept over last night in preparation for the funeral this morning and in the business of the morning, I noticed that she was off on her own and silent. I went over to her and hugged her.

“I don’t know if I’m ready for today,” she said. I knew how she felt.

At the Church this morning Dave and I were there when the casket arrived. We wheeled her into the Relief Society room and opened the casket. After a quick glance, Dave said these viewings are morbid and left the room as quickly as he could. Mom looks so much better than she did a week ago. They filled in her previously sunken cheeks and face. Her hair was all done up the way she always liked it and she looked peaceful.

Julie offered a prayer then we all said final goodbyes before the casket was closed. This was a tearful point for all of us. But the day wasn’t over yet.

At the funeral service itself Dave provided a life sketch, Tam a tribute, Julie a Poem, me a video of her life and Jen a talk. A few thoughts struck me during the services:

• Dave mentioned that Mom had been gone for so long that he doesn’t believe Julie and I really knew the real Mom. Before when he’s said this, I think I’ve dismissed it. But I think he’s right. This was emphasized later in the tribute Tam offered. Tam talked about a whole bunch of Mom stuff I never saw.
• Jen gave a great talk in which she made the point of illustrating through Mom’s life the danger of judging too quickly and finding the good in people. What a wonderful point! I later put some thought to this and realized that over the past week, I’ve been seeing new parts of my Mom - good things like her faith and love.

I broke down during my video. (I wish I could post it but I used a copyrighted song and can’t post it to YouTube. I have it in my collection at home if anyone wants to see it.) Several people complimented me on the video.

The pallbearers (Dave, me, Mark, Alex, Richard and Steve) put Mom into the hurse and the company then travelled down to the Provo cemetery for the internment. There I said a few comments and then dedicated the grave. A few thoughts here as well:

• It has been difficult to find meaning and purpose in Mom’s captivity to illness, fear and and pain. But over the last few weeks I’ve realized that all effects of the fall can help lead us to faith in Christ. If all that Mom’s gone through leads her or any of the rest of us to faith in Christ then it’s worth it.
• Christ is the true source of healing, hope, freedom and peace. He provides not only the hope of resurrection but also the hope of meaningful life
• Mom’s grave will be a holy place of peace, healing and hope.

The local ward provided a lunch for the guests of the funeral. This turned out to be quite the celebration. Mom’s memorabilia was spread over the front of the stage and families gathered to laugh and talk and comfort and love each other. I was actually surprised at how good I felt when it was all done. I half expected to be an emotional wreck but I wasn’t. None of us were.

The family was told at several points that the funeral was perfect for Mom. I was certainly glad to hear that and judging by the way all of us kids were interacting with each other and feeling by the end of it, I think I agree.

Perhaps Mom thought so too.

Mom's Passing

Early this morning I got up to feed Ben his 2:00 am bottle and texted my sisters to see how things were going with Mom. I found out that her breathing was more labored so I stayed on standby for another few hours when Tam sent another text stating that the aid found that the pulse was unperceivable, her breathing light and her color pale. I left home and arrived at Bel Aire Assisted Living around 4:00 am.

I found Mom just as described and I held her hand, touched her cheek and hair a few times while talking a bit with Tam, Mark and Julie – who had all stayed up all night long. We looked through a few more photo albums together, listened to a bit of music and then there came a point where Mom’s breathing slowed and the feeling in the room changed. Julie had just laid down to rest in a room across the hall so Mark got her. Tam sat by the bedside and held Mom’s hand, Julie sat close by while Mark and I stood, looking on.

As Tam spoke encouragement to Mom to move on, find her Mother and not worry about us, Mom’s breathing slowed. A breath… three seconds of silence. “Thank you, Mom,” I said. Another breath… five seconds of silence. Mom blinked eyes that had remained absolutely motionless in a half-open stare for the last several hours. Another breath. Then silence. We froze in our places waiting to hear another sound from Mom and when none came, it was clear that she had gone. Color left her sunken cheeks and she became completely still.

Each of us were crying in the stillness of the room. Feeling a need to pray privately (not to mention sob), I rushed out of the home and into the night. It was 5:10 am. The stars were out and the dawning sun was just starting to outline the shadowed mountains in a deep blue and purple. No cars or people were around and the night was still. I opened my heart up to Heavenly Father in prayer as I looked up to the stars.

I thanked Father for her and expressed my faith that she would be happier now. I expressed how I would miss her and how I love her. I expressed faith and hope that judgment of her might be balanced with mercy. I don’t know what happened to my Mom and what lead her down her path through mental illness but if she had any fault in it, I pleaded for mercy on her behalf. I also asked Father if he would provide comfort and healing to those of us left behind.

I finished up my prayer, collected myself and went back inside. As we waited for Jen and Dave to show up, I watched her body slowly lose color and fullness in flesh. I touched her shoulder and was amazed at how different her body looked without the spirit in it. She was gone. And my sense of things was that the place she went to must have been really wonderful because I felt the absence of her Spirit too. She had completely moved on. And I can’t say I blame her. It must have been a huge relief to have her spirit back in full function. And to be reunited with her parents and other loved ones – including perhaps the spirit of a child she lost in a miscarriage – must have been wonderful for her.

My siblings and I shared a few more tears and then Mom’s body was taken to the mortuary. At lunch this afternoon, the whole family gathered at my house for some KFC, 7-up and a discussion about funeral arrangements. We’ll have a nice service for her next week.

I’ll miss her. I love her and I look forward to getting to know the real her that has now been released from her body. It’ll be a while yet before I can do this but at least she’s herself again and that’s one step closer to coming to know her.