Seasons of Change

Seasons of Change
By Lois

Great things are achieved because of change. The word implies there is to be a difference from what was a pattern already established. In many cases the change is something greatly desired and many people are willing to agree to make the change happen. Change of this nature is indeed wanted.

What about change that comes unwanted or unprepared for. Any great change in a family for instance, can wreak havoc on the whole dynamics of the group. While change is a normal natural part of our everyday world, that doesn’t mean it’s not a painful thing, and many times the atmosphere is charged and celebrating is done to move forward the change that is desired by an individual. However, for each one that makes a thing of need for themselves in order to be where they need to be in their journey in life, there sits behind them an entire family with each member holding emotions over the simplest thing sometimes because all places held within the family has just shifted into a different place within the group.

One of the most drastic changes to come to a family is death. Death is fear based for many because it causes each one to look at their own mortality. Death is devastating to a family as a whole. A person who was there one moment can be gone in a twinkling of an eye. Life leaves the body, and people who love this person are stricken with grief. Life moves at a crawl for the family left to try to understand what has just happened to their beloved and they have no choice but to begin the shifting within the family and especially with in the home of the deceased. I know this from first hand experience. I walked through the horror of my husband walking happily out the kitchen door to do his night shift as a police officer of our small neighborhood, to finding out over the phone that he had been killed suddenly by a drunk driver. He was out doing his job one moment, and dead the next. He was thirty years old.

My husband’s death caused a ripple effect through out his huge extended family. My own home was very different now. I was twenty-seven years old as the badge of widow hood was pinned onto my chest. My role as wife stopped abruptly as I too was shot into a role I was not prepared for, nor did I want that role. I instantly became the head of the house, the single person to made all decisions, and to be both father and mother to our two little girls. At age five and seven, each child applied their knowledge in different ways as they tried to understand that Daddy was dead. This was change at it’s greatest for me and my children while every other member of his family felt the shifting within it’s body as one of their members was now gone. Each person in my family needed to grieve for our family as well as adjust to the differences in how our little family operated. Each friend of my husbands had to carry on as if this was a natural normal thing. This change carried with it pain and sorrow. The family continues to be effected by this change in our lives forty years later.

Another kind of change that comes to people usually uninvited, is illness. Illness can be something non life threatening to an individual, running the whole gamut to death as we have all seen or heard of someone we know who has everything from birth defects, to deadly cancers that a cure is not there for. What ever the illness, it’s complications brings change to the individual and, for the family members who need to aid this individual during this time. As long as you live in the environment of someone who is suffering a chronic illness, or dying from a disease, all family members lives are indeed effected. In my own life time, as a child of about five to the age of fifteen, I understood what Parkinson’s was like and each of my siblings, and above all, our mother’s life was greatly changed, hindered from moving forward through that ten year period. It was as if people in our small country neighborhood kept at a different pace than we did. Children played, parent’s drove cars and trucks taking them into a different life style than our family knew. As children, this change that came to our home, arrived when our father was thirty years old. Slowly the dynamics took a different course, as we settled into what would be our lives for most of our growing up years. We learned how to be little nurses, aiding our father by rubbing his arms and hands, his feet and legs to remove the severe cramping of the muscles. Although we were children, we often took night time shifts along with our mother. Change for our mother came in so many ways. She was responsible for everything. She ran the farm, canning food to feed us through the winters in those Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia. She sewed our clothes in order to be able to put clothing on our backs. She managed a family of six children, as we managed to help her with our survival. This change was one of the worst one could have needed to get through, or so we thought, but change was coming big time for us. The oldest child, our sixteen year old brother drowned in a local lake, again in the proverbial twinkling of an eye. He was there one moment sharing home made blueberry cobbler, and the next moment, or so it seemed, our mother was screaming “No” as the news of this change was given to her.

Change comes to a family when a new baby is born. A happy occasion that can move other children into new roles as the new brother or sister is accepted within the family. A marriage of a family member brings change as a new couple is formed, and new blood is introduced into a family. Hopefully, these changes bring much happiness, but more often, it brings a lot of stress. New babies cry and demand a lot of attention. A new bride or groom has to be learned over from scratch. Often the new family member is different than the person known only slightly before a ring was slipped onto the finger.

My own family is in the middle of change. The change is creeping in through various means. My own life is ageing, but far worse to me is the ageing of my husband. You see, he is fifteen years older than I, so while I age, he is farther down the line, with different needs now. New hips, hearing aids, and a lot of help from the medical community. This change brings me full circle and I worry that change will make me a widow once more. I don’t want to feel that pain of loss again.

Change brings loss in different ways. Our grand daughter just signed up with Uncle Sam. We all feel emotions that we didn’t expect to feel as this time of leaving draws near. For our grand daughter, this is an exciting time. A time for spreading her wings and flying away from the nest. We all want this for her. We are all in agreement on that. But for each of us who are older than she, we know from life’s experiences what kind of change this will bring to the whole entire family. We will wish her well and say “God Speed”.

Life would be very stagnant without some change. It would be less painful without drastic changes. There doesn’t seem to be any way to put controls on change. It is required of each of us to arm ourselves with knowledge so that we may at least have the tools we need, along with the ability to take as much charge of change as possible. Nothing stands still for very long. As sure as the sun rises each morning, one can be certain that what is comfortable and understandable today will be a whole different story on the tomorrow, all because of Change.