pure, unadulterated, worth-a-cry sappy!

sap·py

ˈsapē/

adjective

1. 1.

   informal

   excessively sentimental; mawkish.
2. 2.

   (of a plant) containing a lot of sap.

hi, i'm in tremendous pain, nearly caving in to the claim of 9.9/10 on the idiot pain scale.

and constantly beginning, relearning my mindfulness lessons.  restarting relearning in three, two, one...

here is a portion of an entry by a CaringBridge child's mother about her son, whose prognosis is quite poor but whose attitude is awe-inspiring, but not the over-glucosed, rainbowed cotton-candy kind.  he's quite real, which makes that attitude ever more... mindful.

[i "adopt" 4 CaringBridge kids at a time, supposedly.  in actuality, i'm at 8 young ones, each a translation by their journal keeper.  most journal keepers are the mothers, and most are inspirational, themselves.  still, out of respect for the child, i sometimes read through, between, and under the lines to find him or her, and, as you have seen and shortly will again, i read photographs.]

the entry, with identities modified:

The journal picture I've included is of A and his two little brothers, ages 5 and 8.  After A finished chemo (before he spiked a fever), he had to make the long walk over to the cardiology clinic in order to get an echo and ekg.  Neither one of us wanted to make that walk for exams that were needed to close out the LEE011 study for A.  It was just salt in an already open wound.  By the time A finished the heart exams, he was feeling awful.  I asked him to let me hunt down a wheelchair (he had to go back to the oncology clinic to finish fluids) as his 5 year old brother grabbed his IV pole while his 8 year old brother offered to hold his hand.  I don't think I'll ever forget hearing A ask his 8 year old brother, "Hey Bro, can I put my arm around you to help me walk?"  A didn't wait for a wheelchair.  Instead, he slowly walked from one end of the hospital to the other with the help of two brothers who so tenderly love him.

and here is the photo she used to top her journal entry:

the journal keeper readily admits she's a pessimistic realist with a corrective heavenly guiding hand -- quite a combination, and one that i recognize.  i will admit with equal readiness that i would not trade places with her or with A, nor with A's two brothers.

however, she (and i) are working on our attitudes, sometimes with that corrective guidance, sometimes with simple mindfulness -- just sit in it and be -- -- -- -- and so it was that one of the most (personally) beautiful photos i've ever seen was snapped by daisy love merrick's mother, before her last relapse. i bet that was one sassy, swishy walk.  when renaming the photo to match my recollection patterns, i chose "daisy walks away in peace." and so she did.

okay, you tough ones.  you know who you are.  you think you are impervious to my sap, my sappiness. well, friend, gird your loins... because i know for a bona fide fact that daisy love merrick walks this earth, complete with her funky, hippy clothes, and her sassy, swishy walk, and her unique grin (involves the meteoric impact of freckles), as well as her always-remembered mother, father, and sweet brother, and scads of surfing fanatics. but she does not walk alone -- and not with wraith-like holograms of her loved ones -- no!  she walks with treebeard, the eldest of the ent species.  put that in your sap pipe and smoke it.

harrumph.

hat tip to treebeard:

sap·py

ˈsapē/

adjective

1. 1.

   informal

   excessively sentimental; mawkish.
2. 2.

   (of a plant) containing a lot of sap.

© 2013 L. Ryan

The Webcast of Daisy Merrick's Memorial

Daisy's Memorial from Reality on Vimeo.


Courtesy of the Merrick's site, Pray for Daisy.

Daisy Love Merrick's Memorial Information

ALL INFORMATION FROM THE PRAY FOR DAISY BLOG:

Daisy’s Memorial Info

Date: Saturday, February 23
Place: Reality Santa Barbara (At the Santa Barbara City College Sports Pavilion)
Time: 3 pm
Attire: See words below from Kate
Webcast: Daisy had many friends and supporters around the world for which we are so thankful. In order to honor these relationships we will be streaming her memorial live. Tune in at Pray For Daisy to watch it.


A few words from Kate:

Dear Friends…

Early Saturday morning we had the privilege of witnessing Daisy’s departure from earth to a place outside of time and space where her joy is complete: heaven.

Our darling girl gave us kisses at midnight, with lips dry from thirst and hot with fever.  Tiny and sweet, the words “that’s awesome” came from her tired body after letting us know she was having good dreams. She is safely home… Finally well.

I have refrained from giving details of her suffering over the last few weeks, as it was immense.  Out of respect for her dignity and loveliness we have been keeping these painful moments sacred.

Thank you for your partnership in loving our girl. Please know we are broken hearted for ourselves but so happy for Daisy, who is with Jesus in paradise able to run and eat and play with abandon. We believe that wholeheartedly, and as they say in Narnia, she is going further up! And further in!  She left the Shadowlands for a place more real in every sense.

Please join us as we celebrate the strong, kind, brave, goofy, thoughtful, amazing girl we call Daisy Love. Please wear what you feel best in; sandy feet and boardshorts, tutu and snorkel mask, or the prettiest dress in your closet. Wear black only if you must, but I’m wearing what Daisy would like most.  On her last night on earth, she requested we watch “The Hobbit” (70’s version) and dress like hobbits.  If ever there was a girl confident in her own skin, it was her.  Among her favorite ensembles are animal ears of all kinds, astronaut, flightsuit, monster, pirate, dinosaur, Indian, mermaid, bear, cowgirl, fireman and explorer.

Feel free to laugh and cry and hug. There is no single way to grieve. And while we miss her on earth, we will pick up where we left off when I have the privilege of going to where she is, in the presence of God where there is fullness of joy.

My final request to all who read this blog: love. Love your babies, your husbands, mothers, sisters. Love each day like it’s your last. All you mamas out there, you have been entrusted with the precious gift of a human life who depends on you. Enjoy your gift. Breathe in the scent of your child’s hair, breath. Let them cook with you and make a mess of the kitchen. Play hide and seek with them, build sand castles with them, take them on picnics, read to them!  Listen to them, value and respect them, never shame them.  Your words they will carry with them their whole life and you have the power to give them wings or stunt their growth. Motherhood can be tough but it’s worth it. It can be exhausting, boring, tedious, but never for long. You blink and they’re grown. It has been my honor and privilege to love Daisy these last 8 years. I’m thankful for every minute; the joyful and the terrible alike.

“I know The Lord is always with me. I will not be shaken, for He is right beside me. No wonder my heart is glad, and I rejoice. My body rests in safety. For you will not leave my soul among the dead or allow your holy one to rot in the grave. You will show me the way of life, granting me the joy of your presence and the pleasures of living with you forever.” (Psalm 16:8-11 NLT)

Good-bye, Sweet Freckle-Faced Daisy Love...

  uploaded to YouTube by ForTheMerricks·February 16, 2013

Britt and Kate Merrick did the best of jobs in trying to prepare all who had fallen in love with
their family, all who admire their lust for life, and their willingness to go to the ends of the earth, both in desperation and in hope.  We loved the wise parents, all the more so when wisdom failed them and they put one foot in front of the other, out of necessity and faith, combined.  We loved Isaiah for hanging on to Daisy on top of camels, in the oceans and seas, and for his watchful eye and gracious heart.

And we loved Daisy, standing in perfect first position at the end of her hospital bed, shoulders back, chin up, left arm on the barre of the bed's footboard, right hand gracefully extended -- with a foley catheter bag looped over the wrist -- a perfect Degas dancer's face imprinted on her own impish one.  We loved her surfing, clinging wet and happy to her father, and hovering around the tan legs of her mom, who took more pictures and videos than she was in.  Kate and Britt took their family on that final, desperate trip to Israel, Britt gave his cells for cancer vaccines, they tried new things, and in their trying made cures for others so much more probable in the future -- immunological advances, ways to shore up the body to fight.  Daisy, Isaiah, Kate, and Britt went where Jesus walked.  Daisy, like every tourist, I imagine, tried to walk on water.

I don't know these people.

Britt is the founder of a church movement, a pastor, born into one of the greatest surfing dynasties in the world.  He still calls himself a surf board shaper. Kate is private, but what has gravitated to her is of such wonder that you know she is wonderful, herself.  Isaiah is a young man, and inasmuch as I have been trained to read pictures as well as words (ut pictura poesis), I know he is a young man of gravitas -- with as much capacity for silliness as the next kid.

I did not know Daisy.

But anyone could see the emergence of her freckles over time, not just with the Israeli and Californian suns, but with the power of the pallor that cancer brought beneath them. She was funny, bright, lucky, blessed, but I think she pitied us all, somehow, too.  Or tired of us, is more like it.  She was practically a Foundation before she'd even died, the organization upholding her family was that organized.  (I was heartened at how the Merricks and their family and friends, though, closed ranks in these final months, at how they cherished and controlled their precious privacy.  I was glad and relieved to be a proper outsider.)

Even not knowing her, even with the warnings I gave myself -- that Daisy just happened to be one of the four children with cancer that I follow and support at any given time;  that Daisy was just my happenstance -- I fell in love with her.  I will always love her.

Thank you, Kate and Britt, for sharing the journey, for the funny pictures, and the wrenching ones. Thanks even for the sermons.  Thanks for knowing science and medicine as gifts and arts from God.  Thanks for giving Daisy the freedom to have her moments of doubt.

This is what they wrote yesterday:

At 2:40am this morning our sweet Daisy went to be with Jesus. She was sleeping and in no pain.
Christ is with us as the God of all comfort. We are thankful.
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)
Daisy believed this and so do we. More than ever.
Love,
The Merricks
(At this time funeral plans are still forthcoming. Please check back this week for more info and details.)

Britt Merrick: "When Sparrows Fall": Matthew 10:28-31

To see previous posts about Daisy Love Merrick, click HERE.  For lots of info on Daisy, her family, and background to their story, visit Pray For Daisy.

This is a 55-minute long video of a sermon delivered by Britt Merrick* at one of the network of churches he founded called "Reality." This is, I believe, his home church, in Santa Barbara.  You can learn more about Reality churches and missions HERE.  They see their growth as part of a process called "church birthing," to emphasize their own emphasis on family, as a reality and as an idea.

Reality is a family of churches. Reality Carpinteria was born on September 7, 2003. Since that time we have birthed churches in Los Angeles, Stockton, and San Francisco, CA. We also have a grandchild in London, England, that was birthed from Reality LA. Our next church will be in Boston, MA and is scheduled to start in the fall of 2012. God has called Reality to be a church planting movement.  We never sought to be this, but it has become clear that this is what God is calling us to do and be, and it is something we are passionate about.

Though planting is the common metaphor for starting new churches, we prefer to call what we do church birthing. Birthing is more labor intensive and relational than the planting metaphor suggests.

Britt is on a leave of abscence from his pastoral duties and this is a sermon that he felt called to deliver to update the community about his daughter, Daisy, Daisy Love, Daisy Love Merrick.  A very cool, brave little girl who is actively dying, trying so hard to die with grace, within the love, grace, and faith of her family, whom she knows to be around her here and waiting for her in Heaven.

The Merricks took Daisy to Israel over the summer for some treatments not available in the United States -- immunotherapy, cancer vaccines, much of which involved the transfer of cells from Britt to Daisy.  They road camels.

Daisy and her brother Isaiah

They surfed and swam.  (The Merrick family is, well, a surfing dynasty.)

Daisy surfing in Israel

Matthew 10: 28-31 reads:

28 Don’t be afraid of those who kill the body but can’t kill the soul. Instead, be afraid of the one who can destroy both body and soul in hell. 29 Aren’t two sparrows sold for a small coin? But not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father knowing about it already. 30 Even the hairs of your head are all counted. 31 Don’t be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows.

I look at this picture -- among others -- every few days, when I wonder what is happening within. and to, Daisy, Daisy Love, Daisy Love Merrick, Daughter of the Surf. Freckled Little Girl of Inspiring Imagination, and I don't pray.  I prayed for Daisy once, and that -- from all I understand
about omnipotence and stuff -- ought to have been enough.  Whenever Britt or Kate call for prayer, I bow my head, think of them and their terrible pain, of Isaiah's probably anger and confusion, and always, in that dumb bowed head, see Daisy's face, which, although I know its beauty must be greatly changed, I forever see this way:

And while no prayer comes out, I try to send them love from my heart, and I imagine holding their hands -- thin, dry, damp, sweaty, clenched in a fist, open in a stroke, seeking -- scuttling hands, worrying thumbs, wavering fingers.

*******     *******     *******     *******     *******     *******

*His biography at the Reality Santa Barbara website reads:

I am the founder of Reality and the current Pastor for Preaching and Vision. This means that I do the bulk of the preaching on Sunday mornings for all three campuses, that I guide the church doctrinally, and lead the effort to discern in community (with a plurality of elders) Christ's leading for Reality. The passionate pursuit of my life is to enjoy Jesus. I love my wife Kate, my son Isaiah and my daughter Daisy. I also love surfing, guitars, motocross and books.