“You look like Nicole Kidman”
“I am sorry, what?”
“You really look like Nicole Kidman”, she said to me.
“Um, okay”, I replied.
This was said to me at the MOST inappropriate moment ever.
Absurd.
I had just finished watching both my husband and my daughter wheeled through their respective, ominous O.R. double doors.
I had just finished signing all the paperwork and waivers. I had just listened to two entire team of doctors explain to me all the risks involved, words and phrases, such as
“life-threatening”
or
“cardiac arrest”
or
“resuscitation”.
The surgery would last 13 hours – more or less.
The surgery would require removing my husband’s kidney and keeping him alive while the other team removed all of the organs and other components in my one-year-old’s belly in order to permanently re-arrange them to accommodate her daddy’s kidney.
While the two most important people in my life were in surgery, I went shopping.
Absurd.
The beauty of that day was those that came in and out of the Children’s Hospital to visit. One good family friend brought this amazing picnic basket filled with an assortment of all things decadent. Another friend came quite a distance to just sit with me. Others came by to bestow hugs, to pray with me, and a beautiful queue of Starbucks kept me alert.
At one point, however, I just needed to get OUT of that building. So, my mom, aunt and I went across the street to the most expensive shopping center in the country.
It was surreal. I remember wondering if anyone else walking past me might be experiencing a day such as I was having.
I walked up to the window of Kate Spade. I saw a non-leather purse on the clearance table.
I went in.
I bought it.
Absurd.
Tomorrow is the nine year anniversary of my Day From Hell.
And it was laden with the absurd.
It can’t help but be that way because it is the kind of day where words and actions that normally have a place to land and call home have been completely usurped by events that are as non-sensical as my daughter’s belly on that day.
And one’s perception is blurred by the lens of grief.
And for me, on that very day, the absurd was self-care found in a Kate Spade purse.
As I still carry the scars of that day, I have to tell you, tomorrow is a day of celebration around here.
We celebrate the lives of my husband and my daughter.
We celebrate the ways in which God taught us that He is all about giving us what we need right WHEN we need it.
We celebrate the irony that God uses the gut-wrenching in our lives to bring us true joy and contentment.
We celebrate two integral pieces of our community –
the kindred spirit warriors who God brings to us that say, “I, too, understand the absurd from my own life experiences”
as well as those who God gifts to us that say, “I am not sure I do understand the absurd in this way, but God has gifted me with empathy, so can I make you a decadent picnic basket?”
And next year for the 10th Anniversary?!?
Oh man, we are throwing a PAR-TAY!
