Can't Make This Stuff Up!

by Susannah B. Lewis

  A few years ago, I wrote a short story that took place in the South in the 1950s. It was about forbidden love between a poor girl and the rich boy across town. Sweet Caroline, in her hand-me-down dresses, wanted only to be accepted by John Williams’s prominent family. I read that story to my mama, and when I looked over at her, her cheeks were damp with tears.

  “Mama, what is it? Are you all right?”

  “You’re a fabulous storyteller, Susannah,” she said. “You have a gift. What you’ve written there—that’s art.”

  What my mother had done—what my grandmothers and great aunts had done when they were sitting in rocking chairs recounting memories and embellishing them along the way—was art. It was a gift.

  James 1:17 says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above.” I thanked God for it.

  While staying at home with two children under the age of four, I started a blog called Write, Rinse, Repeat. I thought that was a really clever name because I wrote, and I rinsed recycled Similac from bibs and couches and the dog, and I did it all over again. Every. Single. Day.

  As my children napped, I logged on to my blog and wrote about daily life as a stay-at-home mother. I wrote about the mundane. I penned humorous tales about trips to the grocery store, the piles of laundry, and the song “Elmo’s Potty Time” relentlessly running through my mind when I rested my head on my pillow at the end of a long day. I’m pretty sure Mama and my sister, Carmen, were the only two souls who read my blog posts, but I wasn’t writing to gain popularity. I was writing because it was freeing to craft words about the fun of parenting and even the frustration of not having adult conversation.

  I self-published several novels and short stories. I won some writing contests and was assigned a column for the local newspaper. And I loved every moment of it. I loved being stopped in Target to talk about the characters in my books as if they were real people. I still wasn’t writing for popularity, but it was incredibly surreal that I finally had a platform and my words had an impact on strangers. I was grateful I’d made people feel something, just as I’d set out to do after I read The Trouble with Tuck so many years ago.

  As I went through my mother’s belongings in the weeks after she passed away, I found a copy of a novel she’d been working on for nearly a decade. She never finished it, but I read the words in her beautiful penmanship and thought, This will live on forever. That’s the beautiful thing about stories. Long after we’re gone, the stories last. They are passed down from generation to generation. They are spoken around campfires and on front porches and as a mother strokes her daughter’s hair. They are imperishable.

  Then my precious mama died. I was so consumed by grief I couldn’t bear to write anything humorous. And that’s what I was known for—I had been called the “modern-day Erma Bombeck.” People visited my blog for a daily laugh. I did not want to disappoint my followers, but I had to write what I was feeling.

  So I wrote about my mama’s death. The words were real and raw, and I had no idea how many people they would resonate with, but I didn’t care. I had to release the pain, so I wrote nearly every day. I wrote as the movers hauled my mother’s baby grand piano out of her living room, and as I soaked in the silence of what was once a loud, lively home. I wrote about the denial, the regret, the longing, the void. My fingers rapidly pounded on my keyboard, and tears streamed from my eyes. I left my torn heart on that computer screen.

  As the comments and emails poured in, I learned grief is a universal language. Because we live in a fallen world, everyone has experienced pain, longing, and despair. God comforted my broken heart, and then it was as if He put His hand on mine and we wrote words of encouragement and hope together. I understood what Peter said in 1 Peter 4:10, “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.”

  And this was God’s perfect plan from the beginning. Isaiah 25:1 says, “LORD, you are my God; I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done wonderful things, things planned long ago.”

  Things planned long ago.

  When my mother told me the stories about fairies and farmers and sweet Betsy, as I read a book about a blind dog, as my platform grew, God knew all along one day my words would have purpose and comfort others. He had it all planned out.

  I look back on the events in my life—the happiness and sadness and loss and redemption and restoration—and it’s like a book. God is writing the story of my life. He’s writing the story of your life. And just like any great read, there has to be plot development. There has to be a test for the testimony. Things have to happen or it would be a snooze fest, wouldn’t it? Sometimes the story leaves us crying. Or on the edge of our seats. Or laughing. Or peeing our pants. Or wondering what is going to happen next. But the characters always have purpose.

  When I write fiction, I am in control of the story. I never fear for my characters. I never think, Well, I’m going to allow her to go through some things, and I sure hope she perseveres! No, I already know how the story ends. I’m bigger than the protagonist’s problems. I can squash the antagonist with one word. I’m the author. I’m in control.

  Just as God is the Author of our stories—of our lives.

  Embrace that. Embrace your purpose and trust the Author.

  And you know what else I’ve discovered? God not only writes our story, He rinses us of our sins. He writes. He rinses us white. He writes. He rinses. And repeats.

  CHAPTER 2

  Cry So Hard You Laugh

  It was Christmas morning, 1989.

  My mother sat on the arm of our corduroy couch in her bathrobe stained with dollops of Clairol natural blonde hair color. She yawned and sipped from her coffee mug while I raved over my new Who Framed Roger Rabbit VHS tape. My brother and sister, ages twenty-three and twenty, no longer enamored with opening gifts at the butt-crack of dawn, still slept in their beds.

  My dad searched beneath the tree for Mama’s gift. He finally handed her a present he’d purchased the night before, concealed not by paper sporting trees or snowflakes or Santa, but rather the sack from the store. My daddy always did things at the last minute, but he managed to get them done.

  “Merry Christmas!” He handed her the plastic bag with a knot tied at the top.

  My mother sarcastically remarked at the lovely wrapping paper while she put her mug on the coffee table and tucked her bouncy, blonde Farrah Fawcett hair behind her ear. The plastic made a loud crinkling sound as she pulled out a ladies’ electric razor and examined it closely.

  “It’s an Epilady!” my dad exclaimed. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Billy Brown, but it’s not even in a box.” The device’s long cord dropped to the floor.

  “I know, Susan Ann, but it was the only one they had. It’s the display model,” he answered.

  “Oh . . . thanks!” She continued to eye the pastel purple razor. “But it’s got hair in it.”

  The steam from Mama’s hot cup of coffee mixed with the smoke of my dad’s Vantage cigarette in the ashtray as she held the used razor. Daddy turned as red as the tinsel on our tree when he realized what a terrible (and disgusting) Christmas present it had turned out to be.

  I know all those vivid details because that moment was being recorded. When I dig out the antique VCR and watch the VHS tape of Christmas 1989, I see my pudgy eight-year-old body sitting on the living room floor in a New Kids on the Block T-shirt, soaking in the banter between my parents. I chuckle when my mother rants that every woman who walked through our local Service Merchandise in 1989 had touched that electric machete to her leg.

  My mother and father had a tumultuous marriage at times, but they stuck it out for thirteen years. I truly believe if my father hadn’t passed away suddenly when I was eleven years old, they would have continued to do so. Despite their frequent arguments over my father spending way too many hours at the country club bar, there was love between them. They d
rove each other crazy, but they were crazy in love.

  Daddy was the disciplinarian, the one who told me to keep my eye on the ball, the one who spoiled me relentlessly, the one who provided the income to keep me in new Sam and Libby flats and Hypercolor T-shirts. He was the one who said he’d be in the trunk with a shotgun on my first date, the one who made me feel safe.

  And when Daddy died, Mama mourned the love of her life, and yet she made his passing all about me—the fatherless child.

  Mama tried to discipline me without caving to my pleas and promises. She poorly attempted to throw a curveball while I laughed. She went from being a stay-at-home mother to working crappy jobs for little pay. My mother paced the house alone and prayed for my safety during my rebellious years. My mother questioned the goofy perverted boys who showed up on the front door step. My mother made me feel safe in a world where daddies suddenly die and leave their children all alone.

  Then my mother, my beautiful, precious, hilarious mother, went to bed on the night of September 19, 2015, with her suitcase packed at the foot of her bed for her upcoming trip to visit my sister and her family at their beach house in Destin, Florida. On her nightstand, there was a glass of water, a fingernail file, and my first book that she was so incredibly proud of and raved about on Facebook nearly every day. Her white noise machine softly played the “summer night” of crickets and bullfrogs. And sometime while she slept, her soul went to be with Jesus.

  When she wouldn’t answer the door to go with her boyfriend to church the next Sunday morning, he called me and said he was worried. I was home with my sick daughter, so I called my husband, Jason, who was at church. He drove across town to check on her. I became fearful and anxious, so I grabbed my Bible and opened it to the middle where I landed on the Twenty-Third Psalm. I sat on my bed and soaked in the promise that God was my comforter.

  When Jason walked through our door about an hour later, I could see on his face that something was horribly wrong. All he could do was shake his head, his eyes clouded with tears, and say, “I’m sorry, Susannah.”

  It couldn’t be. My mother wasn’t ill. She wasn’t old and feeble. She was supposed to drive eight hours down to the beach the next day. Old, feeble ladies don’t go on long road trips to lie out on the sand and dance to Jimmy Buffett in a beachside restaurant. Jason’s face confirmed my worst nightmare.

  I fell to my knees. I didn’t cry; that’s not strong enough of a word. I wailed. My mother was dead, and I wailed.

  When you lose one parent, it’s like a comma. It slows things down. But when both of your parents are gone, it’s a period. Final. Finished. And because I’d witnessed my daddy’s death when I was eleven, I had an overwhelming fear of the period. I had often prayed God would allow me to die before my mother. That’s how deeply I wanted to avoid the pain associated with the period—with being an orphan. Because no matter the age, when both of your parents are gone, you are an orphan. Just as helpless and lost in this world as a baby left on a doorstep, without an anchor. Without any roots.

  To say I struggled with my mother’s death would be an understatement. I was in such a deep pit of despair I could not see myself ever climbing out. I knew the Lord was close to my broken heart, but I was so clouded by grief that I couldn’t adequately embrace that truth. I wanted to pick up the phone and call my mother, and I stared at her name in my phone with the overwhelming desire to press send. I wanted to hear her voice. I wanted to hear her laugh. I wanted to hear her play the piano. Mama used to pull me close to her and run her fingers through my hair and tell me, “Don’t worry about a thing, sweet girl.” That’s what I needed. I craved my mother’s presence so strongly that I couldn’t bear to think of all the years I had left to live without her.

  I think I was at the darkest point of my entire life when my sister, Carmen, and I faced the task of going through our mother’s things. Rummaging through an entire house and picking through each drawer, cabinet, and closet was not only physically draining, but emotionally draining.

  After a long week of packing and crying, I sat with my journal and wrote the following words:

  How do you let go?

  To each scrap of paper or photo or piece of clothing is attached a cherished memory. You come across placemats you’ve been looking at your entire life and have to make the painstaking decision to toss them in a donate box or keep them for another thirty years.

  You keep them, of course.

  And then you realize you’re keeping too much stuff and have no place to put it all. The apron Mama wore is a must keep—no-brainer there—along with the furniture and knickknacks and twelve Rubbermaid bins of photos and family history and her poetry and three sets of fine China and the vintage light fixture that’s been hanging over the kitchen table for decades. But what about that Tupperware from 1987 that carried her Mississippi mud cake to grandmother’s house on birthdays and holidays? It still smells like her cake batter, but do you really need another piece of her Tupperware? Your kitchen cabinets are already overflowing with her dishes.

  So you toss the yellow cake carrier into the donate box and stew over it for the next hour. Should you have kept it? Should you keep every single one of her nightgowns, too, although you’ve already put fourteen of them in a box to take home? Can you let go?

  You feel like she’s there saying, “Don’t get rid of that! That was your grandmother’s mixing bowl! Are you really going to give away my favorite house shoes? I bought those at Goldsmith’s ten years ago but they still look new!”

  So you find yourself digging through the donate box for Tupperware and nightgowns and reading glasses and mixing bowls and house shoes and magnets from her refrigerator and you throw it all in your car.

  You sit in your kitchen surrounded by boxes of your mother’s makeup and spatulas and pillows and anything that still carries her scent. Suddenly you’ve inherited your deceased father’s shirts and your deceased grandmother’s kitchen towels because your mother couldn’t let go of those things either.

  You have no idea what to do with it all because these things don’t fall into the “must keep” category the way her antique armoire and photos and the dress she wore to your wedding do. These things fall into the “can’t yet let go” category.

  You can’t think about it anymore, so you shove it into closets and the attic. You’ll do something with it all later.

  Thirty years will pass and you’ll still have boxes packed with Estée Lauder powder, SpellBound perfume, crusty blush brushes, placemats, and forty-year-old house shoes.

  Cause you’ll never want to let it go.

  I wrote many similar journal entries over the course of several months. My words dripped with sorrow and longing and despair. The pages of that journal are wrinkled from my tears. I often sat over that leather book and cried so hard that snot poured out of my face like the chick on The Blair Witch Project.

  And one night, while sitting on my closet floor and overcome with sadness and craving my mother’s presence more than I could bear, I thought about that Epilady razor. I thought of that disgusting used Epilady with some stranger’s hair dangling from the blade, and I laughed. It was the strangest thing, because I was sobbing uncontrollably at the same time. I didn’t even know it was possible to do both. (And let me tell you, laughing and crying simultaneously makes a real weird noise.)

  Life is like that sometimes, though, isn’t it? We can be consumed by many different emotions, and exhausted by them all. We can be overwhelmed with sharp, jagged grief—an immeasurable void—but a pleasant memory is capable of bringing us a little joy even if only for a moment. I like to think the Lord placed that very memory on my mind at that very moment to cheer me up. Maybe, just maybe, God led my father to that used, hairy razor with me, twenty-six years later, in mind.

  We have to choose joy. The Holy Spirit has already infused us with it, but we have to reach down and grab it and utilize it. Sometimes joy is stubborn and just won’t surface, but it’s there. And we have to say, “Hey
, Joy! Get your butt over here! I need you right now! And bring your buddy Laughter with you!” And then we have to cling to it for dear life. We have to take that spark of happiness and fan the flame.

  It’s no mistake I grew up in a witty household. I think every hairy razor and possessed stray cat was placed in my path for a reason. Those recollections, along with the precious and unfailing comfort of Christ, are what continue to see me through the hard times.

  Proverbs 17:22 says, “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.” So, basically, if we don’t cheer up, we’re going to dry up. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not interested in drying up. That’s why I use moisturizer every night. And why I choose cheerfulness.

  We are called to think on what is noble, pure, and lovely (Philippians 4:8). On the good things. On brighter days. To push through the sadness and search for joy.

  Find it. Grab it. Hold on to it for dear life.

  And you might just cry so hard you laugh.

  CHAPTER 3

  Love the Ones You’re With

  When I was in high school, my principal called me to the office just to tell me the decades-old story of my sixteen-year-old daddy riding on a train from our small town of Brownsville, Tennessee, to Memphis. Daddy had the bright idea to hop on the train and ride it from one side of our small town to the other, but it picked up full speed and went on a fifty-mile journey. Like a locomotive-riding cowboy, he used his belt to strap onto a ladder on the side of the train for the long, freezing trek. When he finally arrived in Memphis, he was so cold he went into a Laundromat by the railroad tracks to get warm. He kept putting money into the dryer to heat his hands, but every time he opened the dryer door, it turned off.

  My principal loved telling me that story, but my grandfather, who had to drive down to Memphis in the middle of the night to pick up my teenaged daddy, didn’t as much.