Dear Gracie

Good Advice for When Good Advice Fails You

By Sarah Condon

Dear Gracie, I’m a grown adult, married with a child, and I hate staying at my parents’ house. Their home decor is what I would call “redneck southern borderline hoarder junkyard chic.” How can I tell my parents that I don’t like visiting, because my spouse and I don’t feel comfortable sleeping at their house?

Signed, It Stinks in Here Dear Stinky, I feel like you have three options here. And I’ll leave it to you to discern which one the Lord puts on your heart.

First, you could just lie. Tell them your spouse needs the complete solitude of a Holiday Inn Express. Or perhaps go the passive aggressive route and say, “We really don’t want to bother you too much so we will be down the road enjoying the complimentary dry muffins and cantaloupe. See you at 10 a.m. Not at your house.”

The other option is abrupt honesty. Explain that you feel like their interior design is best described as “A Cry for Help.” If you really want to light a fire, bring up the fact that you will eventually inherit this monstrosity of country living chaos (this has got to be in the back of your brain, right?). People always respond well when you bring up their demise as a burden. If you choose this path, then just pull up a chair and grab a Bud Light because you, my friend, just gave yourself dinner and a show.

We will call the final option Holy Ghost Shopping Spree. Take your wife to your local Cracker Barrel, buy your parents the stuff that they love, and see if you cannot love them a little more. Something tells me that if you buy a few quilts and some stupid metal signs about fishing, then you might see firsthand the ridiculous amount of joy their decor gives them, and you might feel more comfortable with it.

Ultimately, there is no kind way to tell anyone that their house is a miserable place to be, especially the people who raised you. They will absolutely take it personally and you will immediately regret having said anything. Don’t we always regret attempting to fix anyone? It just leaves them feeling unloved and us feeling like villains. This may be an opportunity to be a quilted-cape-wearing hero.

Signed, Gracie

Dear Gracie, When I was in college, I had a friend who died in his sleep at the age of 21. I was away on a semester abroad, and I never really got to process it. Ever since then, I’ve had occasional bouts of sleep anxiety: WHAT IF I DIE IN MY SLEEP?! I hate my brain late at night. And it’s gotten worse now that I have dependents. I keep thinking about what might happen to them if I died. What can I do to overcome my weird sleep anxiety? These days, I need every ounce of sleep I can get.

Signed, Anxious Dad

Have a question for Gracie?

Email magazine@mbird.com. All queries will be kept anonymous. Dear Anxious, One morning on the way to carpool last year, my youngest child asked what would happen if we were attacked by a nuclear bomb. My husband answered, “Oh, that would never happen.”

As soon as said child got out of the car, I laid into him. “How do you know we won’t get hit by a nuclear bomb?!” And he said, “Well, if we did, then we would all be dead. So what’s the point in making her more anxious?”

This is one of the great things about dying by surprise. We generally do not know it’s happening until it’s already happened. I take a tremendous amount of comfort in that fact.

I wish I could tell you that you would never die in your sleep, but you totally could. My parents double-died in a car accident. I am one of those people that says “anything is possible,” and I do not mean that I could be president. I mean all of the bad stuff could happen. I have seen it. You have, too. And that is why you are afraid.

But here’s what personal experience has taught me: Everyone will be fine when you die. Will they be sad? Of course. Will it dramatically change the course of their lives? Absolutely. But also, they will get through it. Because loss is love by another name. And so is fear, really. Which just goes to show that you truly love your kids.

Also, you have no idea the people and resources that God will put into their lives when they do lose you. It will be completely astonishing. But of course, you sound healthy, except for this whole waking up anxious thing. So maybe get some cognitive behavioral therapy techniques. Take some melatonin.

Not one day is promised. It is all so precious. Rest up, and enjoy it.

Signed, Gracie