May 18, 2011

Remembering Maggie

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Her picture is on the mantelpiece at my house, taken at an age younger than I ever knew her, but the eyes and the smile are the same.

Maggie.

A short, vivid woman who taught first graders for decades before becoming an elementary school principal, Maggie was my grandmother’s best friend. One a single school teacher and the other a widowed church worker, they went everywhere together. Although she needed a cushion to see over the dashboard, Maggie drove.

And when my grandmother became a grandmother, which is to say when my parents adopted me, Maggie felt excitement just as great as anyone who was legally part of the family.  For the first few years, she struggled to claim an identity in relationship to me. She wanted to be a grandmother, too, to be that connected. There are cards in the scrapbook my mother kept; she signed them:

Lovingly,
your ‘Step,’
 Maggie
Somewhere along the way, someone called her my godmother, and that’s what stuck.
When my mother came to see me at college, to tell me Maggie had died, I remember it felt like a physical injury. I didn’t know a life without her. Even after I outgrew sitting on her lap and playing with the gold chain she so often wore, Maggie was the person who I could run to when the rest of the world was unfair.  Diminished by a hazily diagnosed medical condition, she became a ridiculously tiny figure in a nursing home bed. Disease took her, and I am 50 now, and 71 seems too young to die, even if she didn’t seem young to me then.
When I say she haunted me, I don’t mean to suggest that I believe in ghosts, or that she appeared in a supernatural fashion.
What I mean is that she remained uncannily close to me for many years after her death. I dreamed her, often, and woke feeling I had been with her again. I thought of what she would have done or said on a holiday or a birthday. I missed her. I wished she could have seen my children. She only needed five more years to meet the first one. But it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like that.
Now, because she was not only a first grade teacher but also a Methodist Sunday School teacher from the time she was a young girl, Maggie would have been the first to assure me that this life is not the end. I believe that Maggie is part of the cloud of witnesses, the gathering of the saints beyond our sight. But she is also part of me, the part I feared had broken when the bad news crashed into my heart on a cold, grey day long ago.
Her love for me, shown with kindness and humor for the twenty years we shared our lives, became part of my love for my children. Her passion for sharing the word of God with children informed my realization of a calling to ministry. And the winsome twinkle in her eye, the thing she lost at the end, comes back to me in memory and reminds me that you can be faithful without being self-righteous.
My internal injury healed. It took time, but it got better. It took time, and remembering Maggie.

(I’m using this reflection at an annual Service of Remembrance at a local funeral home tonight.)
Filed Under: Grief, Personal History ·
Apr 6, 2011

Jesus Wept

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I talked with a friend today about this week’s gospel lesson, the story of the death and raising of Lazarus. At my church we’ll see it presented as a drama. My friend mentioned that the story is about grief, which it is, but then we began to think of other things it’s about, which is funny work to be doing when I’m not preaching at all.

  • It’s about a family’s terrible loss. 
  • It’s about the fears of the disciples. 
  • It’s about the future “Doubting” Thomas offering to go anywhere with Jesus. 
  • It’s about Martha, and more to the point, someone other than Peter saying who Jesus is: the Messiah, the Son of God. 
  • It’s about friendship. 
  • It’s about politics, in the sense that there will be repercussions with the authorities, for Jesus *and* Lazarus. 
  • It’s about a miracle, a thing that cannot possibly true, but is.
  • And, yes, it’s about grief, God’s human grief, but it never lets us forget he’s not just human, does it? Most of us can’t change things just because we’re sad.

So, why is Jesus crying? He knows he’s going to bring Lazarus back, right? Is it because he had to put his friend through death to prove his power? Are they tears of regret? Or is it  a sadness that he can’t bring things to a head without a move so drastic and dramatic?

I love this story, for Martha’s bluntness and Mary’s emotion, and the turmoil of the disciples. I also love it for the astonishment of a dead person rising to answer the call of Jesus. I’m not a literalist about anything in the Bible, but usually by the time the Fifth Sunday of Lent rolls around in Year A, I’m willing to believe Lazarus died and Jesus called him out of the tomb to live again. Maybe it calls to things that have been entombed in me, waiting to come out like Lazarus. I can’t explain it rationally. I simply feel it, perhaps because the family feels so real to me that I could weep with them, too. Like Jesus.

Jesus Wept, by James Tissot
Filed Under: Grief, John 11:1-45, Lent 5A, Preaching ·
Feb 12, 2011

Writing, wistfully

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It’s 9 o’clock on Saturday morning, and I’m thinking of Sam. In the waning weeks of his life, we spent Saturday mornings tucked up on my couch together, while I worked on a sermon. He was at the TV end of things, with his head on the arm of the couch, and after the Today Show ended, he gave me a baleful look when some show about car-racing dogs began.

I changed the channel. He preferred that PBS show about dinosaurs on trains, I kid you not. He watched it peacefully while I got some work done, and then we went to the Farmer’s Market.

I miss him.

I’m learning new routines for Saturday mornings. I hope someday I’ll have a sermon-writing partner again. And I’m clear that any new dog to come along, of any age, will be different. But I’m thinking of Sam, and how he licked the oatmeal bowl and encouraged me at a very difficult time in his life and mine, turning his soft eyes toward me with love.

Filed Under: A Dog's Life, Grief, Writing ·
Dec 18, 2010

PussPuss

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Our Puss Puss In a stack of cages at the Animal Refuge League, on the second row from the bottom, which was just about eye level for a five-and-a-half-year-old boy, there was a little cat. She had white legs and a white face and undercarriage, but the top of her head and her back and her tail were brown tiger-colored. Little Snowman, on a hunt for the right cat, picked her out after serious deliberations. We brought her home the next day, along with an older grey cat chosen by Young #1 Son. 

And so we began our lives at the beginning of my single motherhood, a young mom, with three kids and two cats, the grey man cat Nicky and frail little PussPuss, who required several weeks of antibiotics and hand-feeding, deep care from Snowman and his mama. Very Little Light Princess, the same age as the little kitty, somehow got the idea that you made a cat meow by pulling on her tail. As soon as Puss felt better, VLLP learned otherwise.

We've been together for a long time. PussPuss was the pilot cat, the one following us up and down the block when we went for a walk, waiting for us at the corner if we went to the 7-11 or walked the children to elementary school, willing to sit on a neighbor's front steps while we sold Girl Scout cookies or wrapping paper or stopped in for a short visit. 

She loved to be outside, and for many years had a regular route around the neighborhood, one that made her well-known. She left enough collars under neighbors' shrubs that we gave up trying to make her wear one. It was only in the past few winters that she decided snow was too much for her and spent the winter almost entirely inside.

She found the dogs worrisome as a duo, but came to love Sam after Molly's death. 

Puss dirt bath She maintained a meticulous appearance, all that white fur shining, and a big part of that was rolling in the dirt, something we could never understand.

After we got her strong and healthy back in 1996, she was never sick a day in her life, though she clearly grieved for other animals who passed through our household. When she seemed low after Sam's death, I did not immediately suspect physical illness, but a couple of weeks ago at her check-up, the vet found a mass. A couple of days ago, she really sank, and yesterday we had to bid her farewell. 

15-and-a-half is young for a person and oldish for a cat, especially a cat who started life as a sickly stray. It's a hard loss for us because it's one more on top of others, and because Puss had a sort of independent character that gave way to being more affectionate in the last couple of years. She sat in laps and slept with LP. And on her last visit to the vet, even though we didn't realize it would be the last, she came out of the carrier and nuzzled me lovingly. 

My only consolation, after having our last old cat wander off never to be found, is in knowing we gave her a quiet end.

Farewell, PussPuss, faithful pilot cat. We love you.

Filed Under: Cats, Grief · Tagged:
Nov 11, 2010

Too soon

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Berner wag Kind people are thinking of us when they learn of dogs who need a loving home. One was a Bernese, the other a Saint Bernard. (Seriously? As if a Bernese weren't a big enough dog for two little girls, no matter how mighty we are in spirit.) We would love another Bernese when the time is right, and I am grateful to be part of a breed club with an outstanding rescue program and to know the people who screen and foster those dogs. People who love a particular breed will understand how the one you know so well is particularly winsome and suits you better than any other ever could and leave a gap, in this case very large, that can only be filled with one silhouette.

There are a lot of ways it's too soon, and others in which it feels like too big a gap already. We ought to be fixing a dog's dinner at a certain time, or his breakfast, or refilling her water dish. 

It turns out that the walking schedule of an older dog who thought 20 minutes or so around Greyberry Woods in the morning and another 20 around the neighborhood in the afternoon was perfect was also perfect for the little joints in my feet affected by Rheumatoid Arthritis. 30 minutes at a time is just bearable. 35 minutes at once is a little too much. 

But it's too soon. We have other adjustments to make, LP and I, and I have things to figure out, like a new, one wage-earner budget. 

I really hope Molly and Sam aren't the only two dogs ever to be part of my life, but I can't say the way is clear. Not yet.  It's just too soon.

Filed Under: Bearnaise Sauce Dogs, Grief, My New Reality · Tagged:
Nov 4, 2010

Time to Grieve

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Cats 001 A friend shared this quote from Alban's magazine, Congregations:

"We must support those who are grieving and give them sufficient time to grieve. To shortchange grief is to rush people to a false sense of acceptance which diminishes their ability to accept the reality and finality of the loss and blocks their capacity to attach anew."

We have two cats, Puss Puss and Baby, both 15 years old, just like LP. (Yes, I am living with three 15-year-old girls now.)
 
Baby, once a mighty mouse huntress, is The Cat Who Lives Upstairs, and who resents anyone else's demands on my time and space. She had a lot to put up with when Sam started sleeping with us, even though I have a ridiculously large bed for one person. Sam took up as much space as he could, and I did not mind a bit. Every night I would lie there with my hand placed gently on the closest part of him, aware of his breathing and his restlessness and for some time each night, his peaceful rest. Baby would circle my head, warily, eventually finding a place to land, away from Sam. But on the last few nights of his life, she got as close to him as she could. Now she is downstairs far more than she has been in years, and I'm not sure she's pleased about it.

Cats 003 Puss Puss is our Cat Who Patrols the Neighborhood. She also has exhibited grief for other pets in our family who died. I remember after Pepper, the best big kitten ever, was hit by a car in 1998, Puss Puss went into a decline. When Molly left us, Puss Puss seemed to be physically sick, but the vet could find nothing wrong. And this week she is grieving again, seems depressed, and shows little interest in going outside. She's spending the day curled up in a corner of the couch, though this evening she's made a move to use my Kindle as a pillow.

We're all like this: unsettled, unhappy, uncertain. I turn down the street and sigh for Sam. At 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. I want to fix his dinner. Even in my office, new though it is, I'm wistful thinking of the days he was lying on the floor next to me. 

I'm taking my time with it.

Filed Under: Bearnaise Sauce Dogs, Cats, Grief · Tagged:
Aug 26, 2010

To cry

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East End Beach  I took Sam to the beach Tuesday night. The tide was low, the sky heavy and grey, but there was no rain. The city felt like a woman who wants to cry but can't find the privacy to let go. 

We met a woman with a big, black dog, a Black Russian Terrier, bigger than Sam. She wanted to talk, not just because our dogs were both big — that happens a lot — but because she used to have two Greater Swiss Mountain Dogs, the even larger though short-haired Swiss dogs that resemble Bernese. She wanted to talk about those dogs, how it broke her heart when they were gone. They don't live any longer than Bernese, I guess. She marveled at Sam's age, his apparent good health, now mostly thanks to an expensive series of Adequan injections he's been getting for arthritis in his elbows and a wrist since early June. She wanted to drink in his tri-colored coat and the gentle expression in his big, brown eyes, so sweet they brought tears to hers. 

She loves her new dog, but it's not the same. She couldn't bear to have the same dogs again, she said, because it "would have killed" her to lose them. 

I told her about Molly, about the the heart-quaking experience of having her put to sleep because she was in so much pain. Then I told her Sam and I needed to walk down the beach, because my heart felt like the sky, close to bursting with things lost. 

I hate to cry. People who know me well know this. Maybe it's because there were times in my 30s that I thought I would never stop crying. Maybe it's because I hate the feeling of losing control. Maybe it's because my mother taught me to keep things inside. Maybe it's just the type of person I am. I don't want to cry at the beach on a Tuesday evening, talking to a stranger, even about dogs. I want to walk down the beach and clear my head. 

Sam trotted along behind me, faithfully. Molly would never have done this. You could never be out with Molly off the leash and not be keeping a sharp eye on her. If she could have figured a way to flag down a ship or climb aboard someone's sailboat for a trip around Casco Bay, I'm sure she would have, and the people she met would have found her an absolutely charming companion. 

But Sam trots along behind, keeps an eye on me, to be sure I don't founder.

I have the luxury of a place to go with my private woes. I can close the blinds. I can tuck up on my big bed, and I can even pull the curtains around it if I like. Because it's on the north side of the house, it's easy to make it dark, to hide and feel safe from the view of the world, from anyone who might judge me or rank my reasons for being weepy as less than valid.

Even still, I hate to cry.

She caught my eye as we drove home from the beach, headed down the hill on Congress Street toward town. We had passed the light by the cemetery, and I saw a woman sitting on the bottom step outside the door to a shop, I think, crying. Her face was red, her expression one of misery. I only had a moment to look, as my car moved slowly down the block. She had long, brown hair, may have been in her late twenties or early thirties. Something was wrong with the picture, so I glanced at the road then back to her. Her denim shorts were in the wrong place, I thought, she had them pulled down closer to her knees, and before I could think another thought about why she might be uncovering herself (drugs? alcohol? mental illness? all three?), I saw the stream of urine.

She had no privacy, no privy, beyond those public steps.

And that makes me want to cry, too.

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

(Picture found at Reality Times, taken on East End Beach in July, 2006.)

Filed Under: Bearnaise Sauce Dogs, Grief, Living in This World, Seen in Town · Tagged:
Mar 20, 2010

A blank page

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Paper I've been staring at a blank page all week when it comes to writing about something that didn't impact me directly but did impact part of my extended family, in particular my nephew who is 13 years old and suffered a terrible loss when his best friend jumped off a bridge, killing himself.

Usually when I'm troubled, I find a way to tell the story, typing the words at my laptop, watching them appear on the screen. 

Writing, I work things out.

When it's too hard, or too complicated, or too inexplicable, I write it down, and in the writing, things happen.

This is probably why the story of this week sat like a rock, because I prayed so differently, without words, for once. I have a lot of words! But this did not have, not readily. 

Maybe it helps when I know the role I'm supposed to play–the role guides me to what I'm supposed to say or do? Is "supposed" as bad a word as "should?"

This week all I could do was love inarticulately, from a distance.

It did not feel wonderful.

But it was prayer. It was. Maybe the best prayers I've prayed, personally, in a long time. My heart felt hot, a glowing, pulsing rock, full of love and sadness, not a burden to lay down but a trust to carry.

A trust to carry.

So when I say they have been in my thoughts and prayers–my nephew, my niece, their mother–I as much mean they have been my thoughts, they have been my heart prayers.

(I'm grateful to Jan at Yearning for God for the post that inspired an exercise we did at Soul Spa this morning, and to all who inspired her in the first place. It was entitled "A Blank Page is Prayer." This morning I gave blank paper to the Soul Spa attendees, and part of this post is what I wrote on that page.)

Filed Under: Grief, Prayer, Writing · Tagged: , ,
Oct 10, 2009

One of Us

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For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our
weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we
are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so
that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:15-16, NRSV)

If God had a name what would it be?

And would you call it to his face?

If you were faced with Him in all His glory

What would you ask if you had just one question?

(Eric Bazilian, as recorded by Joan Osborne, "One of Us")

I believe I was in seminary before I heard the things I sort of knew described in this way: Jesus was fully divine and fully human.

That may seem surprising, but really, it's one of those concepts you spend a lot of time talking about in seminary and hardly ever trouble to unpack in church. A lot of what we "know" about Jesus comes not so much through teaching of scripture but through the singing of hymns and the repetition of whatever rituals have meaning in a particular tradition.

Some churches default to the divinity of Jesus, while it's probably more typical in progressive churches to focus on his wisdom and his kindness and his inclusion of the marginalized. The latter is fine for devising some life guidelines, but there are times when life frankly sucks and we enter the abyss of grief or the closet of despair or even the breezeway between identities. Some times in our lives defy guidelines, even the simple ones about loving God and neighbor. Some times in our lives center on questions: Why this? Why now? Why me?

In those moments, I'm glad I know that Jesus asked a question, too, about where God was at the crucial moment. I'm glad I know he felt the letdown of his friends' abandonment. I'm glad I know he got angry. I'm glad I know he made a mistake. And this doesn't begin to touch on the embodied experience, not really, of hunger and thirst and desire and tired feet and fear of death and boredom with the chronic complaining of others.

It comforts me to know that a person I think of as having been part of God and one of us became connected fully to God again, able to share the experience of being human. To me this says that the Cosmic Fund of love and goodness and creativity and justice contains our human perspectives and embraces our human flaws with the knowing of having lived those things and more. And while it may not fix what ails us, it's better than being alone.

Well, I believe it is. And this is what I want to know about God. I don't want to argue about what it means for Jesus to be without sin. I want to embrace the idea that beyond what we see, there is more, and in that More is an understanding of our humanity, and a love for it and for us, flaws and all.

Filed Under: Grief, Ministry, Writing · Tagged: , ,
Oct 7, 2009

My complaint is bitter

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Job in Despair (Thinking about Proper 23B, especially Job.)

Then Job answered:
"Today also my complaint is bitter; his hand is heavy despite my groaning.
Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his dwelling!
I would lay my case before him, and fill my mouth with arguments.
I would learn what he would answer me, and understand what he would say to me.
Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power? No; but he would give heed to me.
There an upright person could reason with him, and I should be acquitted forever by my judge. (Job 23:1-7, NRSV)

Sometimes life feels like a heavy load, doesn't it?

In the life of a church, many things can be going well while at the same time those who know carry in their hearts the ill, the depressed, the fragile elderly. Pastors become privy to stories of emotional hurt and personal injustice played out on the small stages of family life. We understand why it's important for the Bible to contain laments and questions about why God lets human life unfold complete with random occurrences and terrible losses unrelated to the goodness of those who live through them.

What we hope we'll find in a faith community is a safe space in the midst of trials, a home for the heart and the spirit in times of questioning or despair as well as rejoicing. 

But in many churches, we're too invested in appearances to make room for grief. It makes us uncomfortable. We want to see a sad person recover, because after all we are a people of the Resurrection Hope!

I spent many years being sad in my 30s. From 1992 to 1997 I lost a baby, my mother, my father and my marriage. I lost my identity, for I was certainly, emphatically never going to be a person who divorced. I questioned my calling: could God make use of a person with my life story? All these bad things happened after I declared I had a call to ministry. Were they discouragements? Proof I was not doing the right thing?

I would have appreciated a chance to talk with God, to ask a few questions, to lay my case before the One I by that time thought of as neither male nor female and not personified enough for an actual dialogue, but that did not make me want the opportunity any less.

Later, as I finally finished the theological education I had straggled through in my thirties, I wrote a paper about Job, a big paper exploring a brief passage. I sat at this same kitchen table and developed my ideas and diagrammed the poetry and delved into the scholarly thought. I remember sitting up late, not feeling well, trying to finish, aware of the chaos of my life in that last semester of seminary, trying to figure out what would come next.

I have my own sadness still; you surely have yours. Some days it pierces and other days it gnaws, and some days it merely occupies the smallest corner of my consciousness. When I feel the deep sadness, my own or yours, I go to that place where Job lived. I want to know why, and I feel overwhelmed by the distance between God and me. I feel that God ought to be more involved; I reinvent Her in my own image. Surely I would straighten out that problem, wouldn't I? Surely I would prevent that tragic death? 

Clearly, I desire an Administrative God.

This afternoon I came home hoping to dash out and walk Sam in between
rain showers, but as soon as I came in the door, the wind picked up and
the rain began to pour and I heard the rumble of thunder, looked out
the window to see the flash of lightning. We waited through the short
but enthusiastic storm, and then I took the eager dog around the
neighborhood. We saw branches down, and just a few blocks over power
lines on the ground, under the mislaid top of a tree. On the right
hand, we observed chaos, but on the left? A rainbow, beautiful, the whole arc visible.

Somehow if feels like God taking heed to us.

Filed Under: Church Life, Grief, Job · Tagged: ,
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