Far from home

Life is full and rich and beautiful.

And so entirely overwhelming.  And too big.  

I wept with Hatice this morning as we fought to keep our composure talking to each other on FaceTime.  Josh was able to get home in time from work before she left the house to help her answer the computer and then headed back in to finish the things he'd left undone.

  OH to squeeze her and kiss those precious cheeks.  
She told me how she goes through the day at our house desperately wishing we were there - she hears the boys calling for her.  She sees us sitting eating lunch on our back deck, and hears the boy's laughter.  She imagines us sitting at the counter drinking coffee and laughing hysterically together.  She takes the boys to the park in her mind.  She rides to the gate in our van and squeezes us goodbye knowing it will be 3 whole days before we see each other again and how that feels like too much sometimes.  Now it's been over 2 months and we ache to be together again.  She is my Turkish mama.  It feels wrong to be apart.

I told her I was folding boy's clothes last night from the boxes Josh has been sending.  I pulled my pillow out that he'd tucked into a kitchen trash bag - that was the straw.  I rested my head back on the seat of the couch I was sitting up against and cried a hard gut cry for a good long while.  The smell of the trash bag reminded me of her.  Strange.  I know.  The smell of the pillow was home.  The smell of the clothes and the toys and the entire contents of the box was the smell of home.  Josh.  Her.  Slow life.  Stability.  Normalcy.  Togetherness.  Routine.  
She told me, "no, no cry.  Heart after hurt maybe.  No cry."  She doesn't want to upset me - she's worried that it will effect my heart and the PVCs that have started back up.  I reassured her they aren't bad - not as bad as before, but she insists I don't cry.  "No stres" (stress in Turkish sounds like our English word, "citrus")  She taps her shoulder and cringes, indicating "citrus" hurts her - it physically hurts her shoulder.  It hurts my heart, and my head and makes the Meniere's disease worse.   She knows that and begs me to shut my computer and stop crying.  We held each other, virtually, and cried.  Hard.

Sweet Jesus, I KNOW you are in control.  Sweet Father, you are sovereign.  You knew all this would come to be.  

It just hurts.so.badly.  

There was just no closure.

I just want to go home.