Blended Families

In today’s society, the term “blended family” is understood to mean a combination of two individuals and their children. Andy and I had a blended family. We had the whole yours, mine, ours situation. We each came into our relationship with children from a previous marriage. We eventually had one together. We were also in the process of adopting his biological granddaughter when he passed. I continued with that adoption. In that sense, my little family is blended.

Now, I can say that my little family is also blended in another way. We are a combination of who we were before Andy died, and who we’ve become since then. We are past memories and traditions combined with new steps and adventures. We are a tear at a remembered moment, and a laugh at new fondness. We are a bittersweet blend of “Remember that time…” and “What’s next”.

They say that whenever you lose someone, everything changes. And it does. How you eat dinner changes. How you do Friday date night. How you take care of the chickens and the house and the cars. Christmas and Thanksgiving. The annual trip to Branson to ride the Polar Express. All these things change. They become a blend of memories of when he went with us and the new memories we make now. He usually only worked Monday through Thursday, so Friday was when he usually would go to the feed store or do things around the coops, or cruise around our little yard in his oversized Spartan mower. That left Saturday for a Gun Show, or Chicken Swap, or other adventures. I still can’t go to a gun show or a chicken swap. Sometimes the “before” is still too raw for “now”.

Now, I squeeze in coop chores with daily chores throughout the week. I pick up chicken feed on Thursday on the way to pick up the girls. I clean the aquariums on a Saturday. I sold the big mower because it was just too big for my yard, so I skim over the front yard on an evening during the week with the push mower, and tackle the back yard on a weekend that I’m not cleaning the aquariums. I contract out repairs that I can’t do, whether because of lack of knowledge or lack of time, and tackle the ones that I can. I still insist on taking the girls on dinner date on Friday evening. I’ve probably given Olive Garden and 5 Below way too much money, but it’s time spent together, and we have learned just how valuable that is.

I grew up in Louisiana and our culture is well-known for its cooking. Two of the most well-known seasoning blends are Tony’s and Slap Ya Mama. They are their own combinations of savory and spicy to compliment whatever you happen to be cooking. Some seasoning blends have a little brown sugar combined with cayenne pepper. The sweet compliments the heat. I love to put chili sauce on fruits like cantaloupe and mangoes and cucumbers because the spicy goes so well with the sweet fruit. What does this have to do with Blended Families? Life is a combination of sweet, salty, bitter, savory, tear-soaked, and laughter-sprinkled. If you have the right combination, the tears can compliment the happy memories, and happy memories can elevate the tear-soaked moments. It can definitely be difficult to find the right combination, but it is there. It’s in the moments where you can feel them, when a memory evokes a watery smile, or a laugh, or an imitated phrase.

The bittersweetness of life is captured in the moments when we’re able to look back on experiences with those who have passed and find hope in new ones. Each time I find myself in these unique circumstances, where memories linger and merge with new encounters, I’m filled with a sense of faith I didn’t know before . With it comes a swell of emotion that sometimes includes tears of joy and tears of sadness, both for the past and for the future. This is how we honor him, and reminds us that though he has moved on, his spirit still lives here within everything we experience around us, in those precious minutes.