Grieving Pat Pickens: After A Nap

 Naps work.  

I am a better husband when I nap.   Patience, compassion and generosity to our children increase after naps.  Naps avail creativity, stamina and attention to detail.  The problem with naps is that I miss things.

Reading a book or enjoying a conversation are tokens in the slot machine of napping.  Payouts are frequent as I can nap almost anywhere: a parked car, a moving vehicle, a chair or the floor.  I write after just waking up from a nap and find that I have again missed something.

Our oldest came home with McDonald’s.  It used to be a big deal for us to take the children to McDonald’s but today, she drove, spent and blessed her sibling.  I can still earn points with the children but today marked a change.  Between shoving the nap coin and collecting the jackpot of rest, I missed something.

It was worth it: they are ten dollars lighter and I am well rested.

I am rested enough to see that I have been missing more than subtle maturations in progeny.  As quickly as they grew up just a little bit today, so suddenly has introspection pounced.  Today, with no young children tugging, or meetings looming, I am able to reread the words of Kenneth Haugk:

One woman told me she had always been the caregiver in the family.  When her mother died, she was the strong one, caring for her father and supporting all her younger siblings in their grief.  A dozen years later her cat died, and she fell apart. “I loved my cat but couldn’t figure out why I was so devastated,” she said.  “Then it dawned on me -- all the feelings I was having were for my mother.  I had never allowed myself to grieve her death.  It was coming out now because I was the only one grieving and had no one else to care for.” (Journeying Through Grief: Book 1, page 11)

Twelve years ago we buried Pat Pickens but today’s nap reveals what I’ve missed.  

When we buried her, the children still wanted French fries, the congregation still wanted preaching and bill collectors still wanted payment.  Stopping to notice that I was not grieving was not an option.  Today, with teenage children ignoring me and congregational leadership behind me, I can stop and consider how much her death still hurts.  

I miss my mother.

Today, however, I have patience, compassion and generosity for myself.  Fully refreshed, I will sit with a few pictures and scraps of paper that might make me smile...or cry.  High levels of creativity, stamina and attention to detail may produce a scrapbook or poem.  No one is waiting for me; there are no children tugging.  It’s just me, in a room with permission to grieve.  My wife and our children are doing important things.

After a nap, so am I.