Miss you! XXOO

Dear Deb Whitmore,

I miss you!  It’s been a few days and a year since I last saw you. 

It was a few hours before they took you to hospice.   I wonder if you knew, you were so sleepy from the pain meds.  But you lifted your arm under my hand and mumbled.   I later wondered if I was on your bad side, and I was hurting you.  But I got to say goodbye in your ear, and hold your warm hand.   And give your awesome mom a hug.  She was nice enough to put this on your grave.  Silly, I know, but I wanted you to know.  Even though you’re not there…like I said, silly.

I cried then, and I cry today.  Don’t worry, I’m not crying over you.   I’m crying for me.   What am I going to do without you?  What are we going to do without you?

I made it a year.  A horrible, horrible year.  I was hoping you would pull some strings in heaven, so I could get a break.  Like you did for Mike.  :)Mike and Amy:)  You are going to love her, just like your kids do now.  She is an incredible “insta-mom”.  Though she’d hate to hear that.  Everyone knows her, but she doesn’t know all of us.  Yet. 

Maybe, maybe you would want me to have this pain.  It was decades of pain that sculpted your testimony.  It was that testimony I miss most.

  When I couldn’t take the pain anymore, I could call you.  Then bear it longer.

When I couldn’t “stand” and be a mom, you helping me see how to be a lie down mom. 

When I wondered how I could believe in God, when I had this horrible pain… and how could someone I love give me such horrible pain…and I told you I hated God.   Last month I hated him again.   So all I could was remember your advice.

You told me the ice cream story.  I wonder, did you ever tell that one to Mike?   How you were having a bad day, in a string of bad days.  How you were getting ready for a shower, when you started a prayer, or just a conversation with God.   You asked him that same question.  How can he be the God of Love if you had this pain?  Didn’t he know you’d be a better mom, and give more service if you were healthy?  And you weren’t the only one in pain.  All over the world, girls are hurt, wars are fought.  And Africa, those poor tiny babies in Africa.  The children who don’t even get to grow up.  How could God let them suffer and die so young?  There were so many wonderful things in this world, warm showers, birthday parties, and ice cream.  Why were their kids dying in Africa who never ever ever got to even taste ice cream before they died?  God, how could you make it up to them, when they hadn’t even had ice cream?

….Oh…the tears.   You prayed my prayer before I knew it was mine.  You searched for my answers while I hadn’t formed the question yet.  I turned to you so many times, and you would say, “Funny you would ask that, because I’ve been reading the scriptures about that a few months ago asking the very same thing”

Now I just have echo’s of your advice in my head.  And now it’s my turn to search the scriptures to find MY answer.  And it’s time for me to pray and ask, to find out how HE wants me to deal with this broken body.  And pray for peace… to know what good parts are still working enough to share.

Near the end, I got to talk to you.  You were just calling about Gabby’s birthday party.  The one you feared would be your last.   I grabbed a note book and started asking you the same questions over the years.  This time I wrote down the answers. 

Then I asked you a new question.  One I hadn’t heard (and forgotten) the answer to.

“If you could see today, if you could do things over again….if you knew the pain was there, but life would be shorter than you expected, what would you do differently?”

I don’t need to get the notebook of the shelf to remember the answer.  Have more fun NOW.  Do it NOW.  Figure out what you miss most, what you want most for your good days and wishful good years, and plan it and do it. 

If having a big party at your house is what you want, then do it.  Plan it, save your energy for it, then enjoy it.  Enjoy it all week long as you painfully recover  from the act of doing what you loved.  

Don’t wait until you feel good, or have enough good days for those fun moments with your family.   Bake with your daughters.  Play games with your sons.  Have people over for dinner.  Don’t waste the good days on cleaning, and don’t waste away waiting for the fun days to come. 

Deb, I hope you see , this time I listened.  That crazy trip to visit Grant’s family should be proof of “not waiting for the good days to come”. 

As I lay in my bed typing…lay here thinking about the mean God who let the pain come back after 4 surgeries in a year….I think of you.  And ice cream.  And those last days.  When you were in the most pain.  But you told me it was also a time you felt like the veil was so thin.  You felt closer to God last year then you ever had before.  You were at peace with your priesthood blessings, and knew that they could be finished on earth or in heaven.  You told me you would miss Mike and worried that the kids wouldn’t stay strong in the church.  You told me you didn’t have to have a body to finish the tasks set forth in your blessings. 

You already know this, but I thought you ought to know….you’re kids are doing great.  They are still strong in the church.  Alexis still gets up and bears her testimony in her endearing way.  Gabby got baptized.   I missed that, bad day, you understand.  In a blink of heaven’s eye, James will be getting the priesthood and pass the sacrament.  

Your family, your children are most cared for in this city.   You told enough of your friends that you worried for them.  And you had A LOT of friends.  I had no idea until you got sick.   I was surprised to hear about some visitors, because they weren’t even….my friends.   I was surprised to see how strong the friendships were with so many women in our ward.  I had no idea!

Thank you for being my friend.  For the being the one I could call.  For your wisdom.  For your testimony.   For your love.  And for your acceptance of who I was.  No matter what pain I felt, I knew you would never question me.  You knew what “invisible pain” felt like.  And you had felt the sometimes harsh judgment from it.    But you knew more, you knew how to cope with the judgments.    You knew how to love so many of us, no matter what we felt.

I miss you.  I love you,

XX OO

Rachel Richins

P.S.  I wish you could come back soon, or maybe for a dream, and tell me the ward gossip.  You probably know so much right now.  I promise, I’ll only use it for good.  I’ll send pretty cards and make phone calls for those who have all kinds of invisible pain.   After I get to hear some juicy stuff!