I must have been 11 or 12 years old when my buddy and I got up in front of our church family and sang “A Song for Mama” by Boyz II Men. He was and still is a natural musician with a great voice and a knack for learning any instrument. I, on the other hand, was not and still can’t. But I played the drums and saxophone in church and, at least this one time, even sang a song. I did it because it made my momma happy.
I thought about this song today and gave it a quick play on Spotify, and I tried to take myself back to that moment when we sang it at church. I saw my mom sitting at the piano and his mom sitting at the organ; their faces lit up, and they were proud of the young men their sons were turning into. We could have never known that day that some 30 years later, they would both be gone. If I had known, I would have sung her more songs. As many as she wanted.
My mom would be 62 years old tomorrow and spending most of her time telling everyone about how her oldest grandchild would be graduating high school soon. Or how her youngest is full of sass and spirit. She would be at every football, basketball, or baseball game she could attend. Every cheerleading competition or band recital. She’d find ways to show them how much they mean to her in their own way. And if I’m being candid here, it pisses me off that she got cheated out of so much. Or maybe I’m selfish and upset that she got ripped away from us too soon.
Time is supposed to heal all wounds, and it may eventually. Some days it happens more than others, but I think about her daily. 95% of the time, those thoughts make me smile or even put me at ease, but that other 5% is brutal, man. When I see someone’s silhouette and mistake it for hers. When I hear a laugh that sounds like her laugh. When someone mentions seeing her in my kids. Those days the grief holds on and doesn’t let go.
“I’ll never go a day without my mama.” That’s a line from the song I took issue with after listening to it. I’ve gone many days without her now. She won’t be at the table during holidays or taking pictures in the background. She won’t be bringing me a drink out of the blue or calling to see how my day at work went. I can’t listen to her play the piano or seek her advice when I’m in a bind.
But, dadgum it, she lives on. She lives on in me and my children and the memories that live rent-free in my head. The photos come to life, and the home videos tell new stories. She lives on in this blog and the stories I tell my kids, and hopefully, they’ll recant to theirs. She’ll forever keep that special place in my heart and soul, and her sweet voice will always ring in my head.
I write these things out and throw them in the wind for 2 reasons. For one, it helps me clear my mind when things get all jammed up in there and must be purged. And secondly, I want this to be accessible to someone who might be going through a similar situation and not know how to deal with it. Maybe my words can comfort them or get them through the day. Almost everyone has had to deal with loss at some point. But that doesn’t mean it is ever easy.
Happy birthday in Heaven, Mom. I’m doing my best down here, I promise. Love you always!
This Christmas, some people will sit around the TV and watch sports while talking about how nice it is to have a break from work. But others will be going into the new year hoping to get a call back from one of places they left their resume. And some will be patrolling streets, fighting fires, working the counter at a gas station, pulling a double shift at the hospital, or making sure we keep the electricity turned on.
This Christmas, some people will be surrounded by loving family in a home filled with joy, laughter, and excitement. But some people will be sitting all alone with no one to enjoy it with. Or on the open highway because they can’t stand the feeling of an empty house. Some wives will be sitting next to abusive husbands, trying their best to hide their pain from everyone else. Some men will be watching their cheating wives pass presents around for the kids, wondering how long they can hold on to a marriage that’s failing.
This Christmas, some people will pick up their grandkids or play football with their cousins. But some people won’t be able to pick themselves up out of their wheelchairs. And others will have just received horrible news about an inoperable tumor. Some people will be spending their Christmas day hooked up to ventilators or IV drips, and others will stare at the walls in a nursing home, praying they had family to come visit them.
This Christmas, some parents will take pictures with their infant as they soak in the experience of a child’s first Christmas. But others will be mourning the first holiday season without their child. Some will know that this might be the last Christmas with an aging parent or loved one, while others will have to muddle through the season with a fresh loss hanging heavy over their heart. Chairs that have been filled for years will be empty and many familiar faces will be permanently absent.
This Christmas, most of us will have access to a warm house, running water, electricity, and edible food. But many others won’t have any of these things. Some parents will endure fatigue, hunger, and their own well-being just to put a smile on their childrens’ faces, even if only for a moment. And some won’t have the means to even be able to that.
This Christmas, some will slow down and take stock of all the blessings present in their lives. And others won’t realize what they have until they don’t have it anymore. And since we will never truly know the full situation of our neighbors or strangers we may encounter, a little bit of empathy can go a long way.
Fall is here, and with it comes the clichés of starting over, shedding baggage, and embracing change. I usually shudder when I see something like that, yet here I am, clutching the moment and coming to realizations that are a long time in the making. Maybe there actually is something unique to the archetypical, long-standing arrangement between the 4 seasons.
For as long as I can remember, I have always felt like an analytical person. I usually perform best in structured environments where I know what to expect. If A, then B. Give me a checklist and what you expect from me, and you can almost bet I’ll produce. I really liked Math in school—once you figure out how to do it, you can always arrive at the correct answer.
I realized a trend recently in my life. It seems as though I like the challenge of trying to figure out a way to apply structure and rigidity to things that don’t usually fit inside of a box. I tried this with the car business. No two people are the same, and no two car deals play out the same, either. I tried to eliminate all of the variables and create a process that worked the same every time. This isn’t a new thing in the industry, but I think I did it pretty well, and it was definitely my favorite aspect of the business.
I tried to do the same thing in my marriage. If I do this, this, and this, then surely that, that, and that will follow. It’s an excellent way to keep things predictable and stable for a short bit of time, but I don’t think that strategy would work in any marriage over the long haul.
This year I have had to let go quite a bit—more than any other year to date. And, like most other things I have encountered in life, I subconsciously tried to deal with it from a scientific, or analytical, frame of mind. What I’ve learned is that letting go is no science at all. It is the art of all arts.
I never will forget a conversation I had with my dad while my mom was dying. We were near the end of her stint in a long-term rehab center, and I was frustrated because no one was giving me answers. I tried to get the doctor to call me for days and kept getting the run around from the nurses. Dad had mentioned something about them recommending hospice care, and the tone of his voice made me realize that he had seen the writing on the wall. This was the first time I had considered that my mom could die and probably was dying. He later told me something along the lines of, “I was wondering when you were going to accept that she was dying.”
That only began the process of letting go of mom. I had spent months watching her health decline but always believed something would change and she would end up being okay. I always thought she would walk again. When we moved her to hospice, I had to change my whole frame of mind. A friend at work suggested that I “release her.” That I tell her that it’s okay for her to leave. So, I did.
The night before she died, I kissed her on her forehead and told her how much I loved her. I brought the kids in one by one to say goodbye. I prayed with her and played her favorite song on the phone. She knew about the problems I was having in my marriage, so I assured her that whatever happened, I would be fine. I let her go. And then she died the following day.
There was no scientific way to get there—just some advice from a good friend and a leap of faith. Letting her go lifted an emotional burden off my shoulders and I’m convinced it helped mom let go of her earthly body. It helped her end her suffering and enabled me to start the grieving process.
I felt like I had done everything on the checklist the right way. I thought I had killed all the baby dragons before they became big enough to come to burn down our home. I had sacrificed some happiness, emotional health, and a whole lot of time in exchange for stability and security. The only problem was I didn’t ask for any help when I made the checklist, and she had one of her own that I wasn’t taking care of.
My analytical mind had told me that if I kept battling forward, eventually, the dam would break. Every time someone looking in from the outside told me that I needed to be done, it fueled me to keep trying that much harder. The harder I pushed, the further away from the prize I found myself. In the scientific world, force x speed = power. But in the realm of emotions, force x speed = distance created.
I fought for a long time, too, man. I fought so much that I’m pretty sure I actually lost focus of what I was fighting for. I held on to principles, memories, and images of what I had envisioned for my life. I battled and battled because I felt like the kids deserved for us to be together. If I had gotten what I wanted, odds are we wouldn’t have been able to make it work anyway. Regardless, I fought hard—even though it was too late. At some point, I realized that I was only fighting for the sake of fighting. And the moment that crossed my mind, I let go.
I don’t regret fighting. I can live with what happened, and the experiences learned will make me such a better partner the next time around. I left it all on the court, and even after the buzzer sounded, I stayed around and kept shooting. I was still there after the lights went out and the crowd emptied the building. It sharpened my skills and made me better, but eventually, you have to jump back into a new game.
For 38 years, I viewed “letting go” as if I were hanging from the side of a cliff, and to “let go” would mean a plummet straight toward the ground. Letting go is hard, and if you look at it through that lens, it is also scary and intimidating—free falling to your imminent death.
But what I’ve learned this year, I hope everyone reading this will take away with them. Sometimes, what you are holding on to isn’t as sturdy as you think. When you let go, you take a burden off what you are holding on to—like my mom and my marriage. And sometimes, that fall doesn’t always mean certain death. While you’re falling, you can see the world around you from a different perspective. New possibilities bring themselves to light. New pathways provide highways for new journeys. You meet other people who have let go as well, and you can fall together. If you embrace the fall, it can become a beautiful experience.
And maybe, if you’re lucky, you’ll even land on your feet.
I recently read a book entitled “The Comfort Crisis” by Michael Easter. You can pick it up here if you are interested. It is a phenomenal read and beautifully puts into perspective the relative ease of our current lifestyles and the somewhat shocking problems that derive from it. It is overflowing with ideas to research outside of its covers and I’m sure this won’t be the only blog post I write thanks to the abundance of interesting topics it covers. But one topic, more than anything, really resounded with me, and that was the idea of mitakpa.
Mitakpa is a Tibetan word that roughly translates to impermanence in English. When I thought about it, I realized that I was almost certain I had ever used that word and wasn’t sure if I had ever seen it come up in text or conversation. I had a feeling I knew the jest of it, but I looked up the Dictionary.com definition of it just to be sure.
noun
the fact or quality of being temporary or short-lived:
As taught by Buddhists, the idea of mitakpa is that everything born is subject to death and decay. They practice the concept by deliberately thinking about death and the dying process 3 times daily—once each in the morning, midday, and evening. You may be thinking what I was thinking when I read that. “Wow, what a miserable thing to do.” But when I learned how they expounded on that, it made a lot of sense both practically and philosophically.
They look at life as a journey towards a cliff in which everyone, inevitably, will walk off one day. It may be tomorrow, or it may be in 80 years, but one day it will happen. We have two choices regarding that cliff. We can either act like it isn’t there and be surprised when we find it, or we can acknowledge its existence and plan our course accordingly. It has real “one life to live” vibes but it hit me on a completely different level.
You can live a complete life without ever thinking about the cliff but imagine how differently you would chart your course if you made peace with the destination. I thought about who I was walking with, what we did along the way, and all the flowers I would regret not stopping and smelling on the way when I saw the cliff come into view.
I also thought about the people that chose to walk with me. Would they come to the end of their journey and wish they had walked with someone else? Was there something they wanted to stop and do along the way that I ignored while placing a higher priority on someone else? Good grief when you think about it, what an honor it would be for someone to choose to walk to the edge of that cliff with you. Am I doing everything imaginable to make their journey just as fulfilling as mine?
One great thing about youth is that, if you’re lucky, you don’t have to think about death very often. If luck continues to be on your side, you won’t have to deal with it much at all until you get older, more mature, and better capable of dealing with it properly. I was lucky on both counts but it seems as though my luck has finally caught up with me. I’ve now lost all my grandparents and recently just laid to rest my mother, who was 60.
My mom was still alive while I was reading “The Comfort Crisis,” but she wasn’t doing very well, and the thought of her potentially dying had begun to creep into my mind from time to time. I thought about her journey to the edge of the cliff and wondered if she had a fulfilling trip. I hoped she hadn’t experienced too many regrets and I prayed the time she spent with me was something that made her trip a little more enjoyable. I was also curious as to whether she could see the end or not and if she could, had she made peace with her journey? It comforts me to think that she did.
I don’t think about death 3 times a day as the monks do, but I do try to make a point to think about it from time to time. It takes me out of my comfort zone a little bit and helps keep me centered on the truly important things. I’m not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I do feel certain about one thing–life is a tremendous blessing and should be treated as such. I feel fortunate to be alive and healthy with no sign of my cliff in sight for the moment. When it finally does enter my horizon, I hope to greet it with a smile and walk off it with no regrets.
This is what I wrote out prior to giving my mother’s tribute at her funeral. I had some people ask me to share it here.
My mom was so hard-headed and steadfast that I never thought I would find myself in this situation, and I definitely didn’t think it would be this early in my life. You see, if you want to figure out the recipe for strong willed and stubborn, I’ll let you in on the secret. You take equal parts Adams and Wallace, mix them with an unshakeable Faith, dash in a few life experiences and top off with a generous portion of Stone. Disclaimer: This recipe is not recommended for beginners.
For those of you who don’t know our family’s story, let me give you some background. My biological father signed away his rights to me at an early age. God must have thought that mom needed an upgrade and she found true happiness and got remarried. When I was in second grade, that selfless and amazing man adopted me as his own and gave me his last name. Along with a real dad, I was blessed with 2 sisters, twins, and only 4 months older than me, which they remind me of often. Just as my dad treated me like one of his own, my mom treated Tanya and Tonya like they were her flesh and blood. She never called them her step daughters. To her, they were a central part of the family that just happened to come along a little later in life.
It’s unfortunate for all of you that you didn’t get to see my mom through the same lens I did. You see, we butted heads a lot. And I mean a lot. There was a time when we only saw eye to eye when we met each other going up and down on the see saw. Of course, as we get older we learn that the parents were right most of the time. And, while I know any good relationship has battle scars, I can look back and know with 100% confidence that she ALWAYS had my best interest at heart.
She never gave up on me and she always wanted me to do the right thing. And I don’t mean that loosely. Her and dad raised me in a way that to this very day if I am having a hard time making a decision, I find myself asking what mom would do. And I’m sure that will never change.
As a mother she always went above and beyond, sacrificing her time and energy for opportunities for me. She always made sure I was at all my practices and games (unless they interfered with church), and we NEVER missed church. She held down a full-time job until her back got the best of her, but that didn’t slow her down a bit. I remember in junior high she would get up early and we would go pick up Rod and Jason Lowe to go workout and shoot free throws at the gym before school started.
A few years ago on Valentine’s Day, I got a message on Facebook out of the blue from a girl who went to school with us in 2nd and 3rd grade. She was a Jehovah’s Witness and I know it much have been tough on her growing up. Her family didn’t celebrate holidays like the rest of us did and she was always left out during those activities. She told me that every Valentine’s Day she thought of us because my mom made her a special “friendship” card so that she could get something and take it home. It touched her so much that she’ll never forget it. That’s the kind of person Kim Stone was—always thinking about someone else.
And then came the grandkids. And if I was ever unsure what my mom’s purpose in life was before, when Dakota was born it became clear that she was put on this earth to be Nana. Then came Aubrey. And Keegan. Then Hayden, Jaxson, Levi, Ben and Naomi. Each one carved out their own little unique place in her heart and she cherished them more than anything else in this world. In fact, many of you were probably late for a meeting or had to miss a phone call because mom wouldn’t stop talking about them.
The last 2 years of her life were spent in a tremendous amount of physical pain. When she lost the ability to walk that physical pain was paired with sadness and heartache. Mom was an extrovert and she was energized by interactions with people. With Covid sweeping over the world and her extended stays in Little Rock, Conway, and Searcy, those cherished interactions were ripped from her life and caused her to go into a deep depression. For months she had been telling dad and I that her mom and dad had been coming to visit her. She was dreaming of Heaven and spending time with her family that had gone on before. I know she is where she needs to be and I know she’s with people that have loved her dearly, but that sure doesn’t make things any easier on us down here.
I’m forever thankful that we got her back to town in time for her to be comfortable physically and to have the opportunity for people to say goodbye. Even though she wasn’t externally responsive, I know she could feel the warmth and love on the inside. She took her last breath while she was surrounded by 3 of her classmates, and that has provided our family with a great deal of peace.
But I won’t remember my mom that way. For me, I’ll always be the little boy sitting on the church pew at 3rd and Harrison next to my grandma, watching my beautiful mother bang away on the piano keys like it was an extension of her body. I’ll remember how she would look over to me every now and then and smile so big like she was just so proud of me. I’ll watch her walk across the stage to the organ, without needing anyone or anything to help her, and I”ll close my eyes and listen to her play “When They Ring Those Golden Bells.” Then I’ll open my eyes and see the tears on the faces of the congregation and know that so many other people will remember her the same way.
When I first started selling cars almost 15 years ago, one of the first things I learned was the importance of quickly finding common ground with the customer. I found that the easiest way to do this was to figure out if we knew any of the same people. To this day, this is still one of my favorite things to do in any conversation and I highly suggest you trying it out, too.
The look on someone’s face when they do know the person you are asking about actually tells you more about the person in question than it does the person you are talking to. For a brief second you get to see that person’s natural and unfiltered opinion of the other.
In a town this size, and with a mom like mine, I got to experience this quite often. It would usually go like this: “You probably know my mom, Kim Stone.” First would come the sparkle in the eye, and then the smile would curl up on their lips, and it would usually be followed with an almost peaceful sigh and, “Oh I know your momma.”
As we move on through life and the pain slowly starts to fade maybe one day I’ll get used to people saying “I KNEW your momma.”
Yelco State of Mind 