While your father is dying, you rearrange the furniture in his living room, pushing his familiar blue La-Z-Boy recliner from its prominent position and replacing it with a white-sheeted hospital bed. You express your gratitude to a compassionate nursing home staff and return your father to the home in which he has lived for over forty-five years. Your husband bears the bulk of your father's weight as he helps him from the car to the piece of furniture from which he will never move again. His homecoming is more subdued than the time before, marked by an atmosphere of solemnity. There are no "get well wishes" offered, no encouragement to eat more in order to get stronger, no talk of therapy, for this is not what you have been called to do. Your sole purpose is to tenderly pamper your father like a mother cares for her infant. You place cold cloths upon his feverish head, rub lotion on his dry flesh, hold his hand and remain constantly near to calm any fears that he is alone, unwanted, unloved. You become intimate strangers with hospice nurses with names like Teresa and Pam, for you know they will be the first to console you when your father's final hour on this earth can no longer be delayed.
You open the door of your parent's home and discover a moustached man donning a hat from a local grocery store. He hands you a cardboard box filled with baked chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, and bread purchased by a long-time family friend. Unable to hide the tears swelling up in your eyes as you thank this nameless deliverer and utter "How kind," you are overcome again by the generosity of those who love you. Your tears become more frequent, less controlled, manifesting themselves at unexpected times like when you catch a glimpse of your older sister crying in the arms of your mother, when your husband leans down and promises your father that he will see him tomorrow, or when your children kiss their grandfather good-bye. You order a wooden casket crafted and blessed by local Trappist monks and bearing a cross engraved with your father's name, Raymond Edward Swanson. You meet with a funeral director and begin to make arrangements. You pick out a blue sport coat in which to bury your father and have it dry-cleaned. You cling to Christ's words, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."
You take advantage of the few hours of rest while at home and in silence and with a cup of coffee, launch into a massive deep cleaning, and try to come to peace. You move furniture off rugs, vacuum, scrub hardwood floors on your hands and knees, the stink of vinegar saturating your fingers and hands. You pry crusted food off of your dining room chairs and pause as you clean the armed chair, your father's chair. You grieve his absence from your family table but remain grateful for all the times he was present. You revel in warm air, flinging wide open windows, delighting in a bird's song. You scramble to the park with your children, bringing home pine cones and ever-green branches. You stop to consider a hearty group of white petaled flowers telling your children the yellow middle is a belly button. Your eldest son tickles it and his siblings laugh. You set your children by your father's side and he smiles. You sing songs taught to you by your own mother and now taught to your children by you, "Love, love, love, that's what it's all about..." Your sister joins in because, of course, she knows it too.
You stare at the cross bearing Christ's broken body hanging on your bedroom wall. You imagine the God-Man with oxygen tubes thrust into His nostrils; plastic rubbing raw the skin on his ears; a catheter hanging limply at His side; cancer noiselessly consuming His flesh from the inside out. You so recently heard Him whimper, "I thirst," and dabbed his mouth with a wet sponge. You truly know that He is the Man of Sorrows, who has borne our griefs and iniquities, and that ultimately it is He who grants rest.
You continually return to a slightly torn, haphazardly hung copy of St. John Chrysostom's Paschal Homily cemented by a firetruck magnet on your refrigerator: "He that was taken by death has annihilated it! He descended into Hades and took Hades captive! He embittered it when it tasted His flesh...It was embittered, for it was abolished! It was embittered, for it was mocked! It was embittered, for it was purged! It was embittered, for it was despoiled! It was embittered for it was bound in chains! It took a body and, face to face, met God! It took earth and encountered heaven! It took what it saw but crumbled before what it had not seen! 'O death where is thy sting? O Hades, where is thy victory?'" And while in four weeks time, on that Feast of Feasts, you will resoundingly cry out, "Christ is Risen!" you now whisper these words and take comfort.
You stand freezing in the basement of a defunct school which now serves as the location of an Orthodox mission. You move forward to receive the bread made by hands you know, bread now mysteriously transformed into something wholly Other. You place the red cloth under your chin and hear the priest speak the words, "The handmaiden of God Elizabeth partakes..." You open wide your mouth like a dying man, like your father, desperate to receive the life-giving nourishment spooned into your mouth by another and say, "Amen." You are anointed with myrrh and return back to your father's side skin fragrant and shining with it. You hold fast to your faith that even in these last moments God is still continuing a good work in the broken body of the man lying at your side. And while you cannot even begin to fathom the depths of this loss so imminent, you cling to the truth that "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature"- nothing - "shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
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19 comments:
Yes.
My dear sister in Christ, my continued love and prayers. Am going to light a candle for you your father and family at my icon of Christ now...
I am praying for you and your family, Beth.
Amen, amen.
Oh Beth, weeping for you. Rejoicing for your dad who will soon be with Christ.
love to you.
Love to all of you...
peace and love to all of you, Beth.
Oh Beth. How I love you and your family.
Hi Beth,
I recently found your blog and really love reading your updates. I am very sorrowful to read todays. I know the pain of watching your father died. I watched mine die just a few weeks ago and there are just no words.
”When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
I will pray for you and your family. May God's peace be with you.
Oh Beth...
So powerful, eloquent, heart wrenching ... beautiful.
I am aching to be there with you. I am crying with you and your family. I am praying for your father.
I love you.
m
Oh, Beth, my heart is breaking for you and your family. Love to you all.
Beth -
So beautiful, eloquent, heart-breaking.
Our love and hugs to you and your family.
Thank you for taking me on your journey. I appreciate you so much!
Love and huge, huge hugs,
~Michelle
Wow, Beth - thank you for writing this beautiful post so that we can better understand and love your precious family this day. We lit candles and incense and prayed for you all this evening. So much love Swanson and Johnson families.
I do not know you but I know your pain. I found you by way of Molly's blog. I will be praying for you, your family and your dad. May God give you comfort.
Beth - May God bring your father rest and you and your family comfort in His endless love. Your reflection, so honest, is achingly lovely and courageous. May we all be as blessed as your father, as you surround and love him as he approaches that curtain between this life and the next.
Absolutely beautiful and heartbreaking...may you and your family feel God's peace in these moments.
Love,
Jen
I have been thinking and praying for you a lot these last few days, and will continue to do so.
My prayers, Beth. It's been 3 years and a month with my own father. And I remember the waiting beforehand.
Oh Beth...my heart and prayers go out to you....
I cried as I read your words - honest, loving, humble words. My prayers are for you, your sister, your mother and your family.
Beth,
Your words struck a chord with me since I lost my Dad to suicide in 2007. We have been and continue to keep your family in our evening prayers.
May his memory be eternal.
Love in Christ,
Frank Dancer
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