Wherein a profound tragedy brings me out of blogging re retirement ( warning: explicit lyrics, not necessarily appropriate for all audiences. In other words lock up your children and south'n belles before reading this.)
Fuck Christmas.
Now I know it doesn't sound good - especially the rude juxtaposition of the birth of our Lord up against what many consider one of the top three un-jesus-y words in the english language. But bear with me if you will, for the sake of raw honesty. When I plumb the depths of this rotten life as rotten as it seems when your babies are somewhere across the country with someone with whom you no longer have congress because of how horrible he is...when I let out my lead weight to see just how abysmal the death of my sister's husband must be for her...when I think of my dear friend Jenni's sister Kelly and my brother Ben taken from us on the same day, though years apart...fuck sounds not only accurate but pretty cussin appropriate. Sometimes it just seems like christmastime is out to fuck you over and in response it seems only appropriate to give it right back.
This year I was fully prepared to boycott Christmas in a blur of wine and depressing streaming Netflix.
I flew my kids out to California to spend the lion's share of Christmas break with their father. I rented a car and went to my girlfriend's house and settled in for what promised to be an uneventful long winter's nap.
A few days earlier I had attended a workshop on Surviving the Holidays amidst separation and divorce. One of the suggested methods for dressing up the dreary holiday season was getting outside of yourself and helping others. I put that in my back pocket and thought "yeah why not? I could go to a soup kitchen or something and help that way..." I never dreamed my service would be called upon in the manner in which it was about to be.
Just over a day after I arrived in California, I received a phone call from my little sister. I jocundly asked her "what up yo" and received in response unintelligible mumbles swathed in sobs, that upon reflection I was eventually able to interpret as the report that her husband was dead.
Shock. Disbelief. Some sort of attempt to unhear what I had just heard. Then the tidal wave of sadness for her washed over me and, milliseconds or years later-I don't know-as it receded the adrenaline left by the shock steeled my mind into action. My body followed. I instructed my sister to do two very important things: call my sister(this story may get confusing for some
Of you as there are six sisters) in Florida and get close to Jesus.
I spent the next two hours contacting the other six of our living siblings...we were 9 but for over 20 years have only been 8 since the death of my youngest brother just on the other side of christmas
In 1989...so 8 minus the two of us most recently on the phone with eachother makes 6. I did the math just as much as a fact check for myself as an attempt to
Clear up any confusion on
Your end.
I spoke with them all, let them in on the tragic news and discussed the impossible sadness of it all to varying extents with each. In the middle of all that I managed to call my ex and ask him to bring the kids home to me as I had to fly immediately back to be with the lately widowed Abigail. He agreed. Southwest worked to change my flight amidst a bit of technical difficultly- but you really musnt complain about the only airline that charges you neither bag fees nor change fees.
Deep beneath the din of busyness and roar of grief tilting at lunacy I heard a cello, low and sweet, with a subtle vibrato. And it hummed to me of peace. And I felt the peace pass through me and over me and buoy me over the noise. And the voice of God seemed to say "this is the service I require of you: to mourn with those who mourn and to take care of the widows and fatherless." And there for that moment, without a second thought about my much needed (in my own estimation) rest and relaxation I was filled with joy to be in the unique position that I was : sans bebes so that I could
Entirely focus on being the support that Abby needed.
It may be too soon for her to hear this, and it may even be gauche for me to write it so soon, but, He has already given me in an instant beauty for ashes and joy in the midst of mourning. It is a paradox which, were I able to, I would better explain. But in order to understand you have to have been there in the pitch black of midnight, out on a limb, completely lost, in the wilderness of understanding and yet knowing like you never have before, and you swear you never will again, the brightly brilliant blinding
Light of truth. It is there that you find the choice of humanity from the very first has been to inextricably link pain and comfort, sadness and joy. The road we have individually and corporately chosen to travel has intertwined these in our desperate self attempt to have it all...to make ourselves whole...to satisfy our longing curiosity. That is the road He so Graciously and Gracefully met us on and walks along with us and as we walk He does what we never could have, in fact we never even imagined that it was this wholeness, oneness that we really wanted all along. It is an unending and ever-unfolding mystery full of delight and wonder-oh that I had the words to tell.
If you are still enough you may hear it as I tell it. The symphony He built around the discord of a violent death and the potential cacophony of so many loose canons beset upon every shore of the island of aloneness on which Abby, our heroine, stood-and from where I observed it appeared she felt utterly alone.
Wendy drove 6 hours without hesitation. I arrived 24 hours later in tandem with Jen and her youngest baby. Thomas and Mai flew quite literally across the world, pregnant with toddlers in tow (and SARS too, but we will blame that on the travelers from parts unknown arriving at the adjacent gate.) Wendy-b flew in as much needed succor on a flight that had not existed prior to the need for her in Tampa. Christa and Dave accompanied by dad whose lymphoma had just returned. And John and two of his children.
There were minor disagreements, more like personalities getting the best of us due to physical and emotional exhaustion. They blew over like a summer rain replaced moments later by a warm breeze with sunshine in its wings.
It began with a loud crash and silence broken by a note. A long single plaintive wail and soon it was joined by tens hundreds thousands? Who can know? But like a scene out of the Silmarillion, the song grew and changed and became more beautiful. Flowers and letters and baskets and caskets. Poems and words and thoughts unspoken. Hugs and kisses and kindness expressed by people who would rather be mean in their everyday lives. Songs of men and women and their mournful sobs as well, mixed with prayers and questions without any answers. Can you hear it, can you see it? It was nothing short of a miracle.
And there I was in the Middle of it. Miriam to Abby's Moses. I held her up and hugged her and laughed and cried with her. And I prayed for her. I asked the God who with a word created light out of nothing to give Abby the tangible, emotional, physical expression of His love she so desired. I asked
him to put in her relentless faith to pursue Him in the face of despair and as Brennan manning so eloquently put it "ruthless trust" to follow Him into the dark, knowing that there is yet light in this world and the peace that passes understanding to rest in the truth that even if she can't He will. He does. He has.
I find myself now suspended somewhere between heaven and earth. My attachment to this world via the body and its wanton desires, the needs I think I have and those carnal things which we crave drag me down like so much gravity pulling me toward a minefield of consequence and its crapshoot of results. Simultaneously the "unbearable lightness" of eternity calls me and draws me in the gentlest of ways along a gossamer thread toward the singularity of endlessly heavy gravity and infinitely invisible unknowingness that my mortality is not ready to grasp.
