Homecoming

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain...

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,

And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears. -Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

What I want is to mourn, to really mourn, to mourn not in a way appropriate to the mores of a society, hell bent on denying the brutality of death, but like Mordecai and the Jews of old, tearing at my clothes, heaping ashes upon my body; like Job sitting on the dunghill, scraping off my wounds with broken pieces of pottery; like the men and women surrounding the tomb of Lazarus, weeping and wailing, lamenting with their friends Mary and Martha over the death of their brother. But such public displays of mourning will not be permitted to me on this day, this day that my godfather's ashes were brought home to his final resting place. A few tears here and there, a fleeting feeling of sadness, those I will be allowed and with them I must be content as I am thrust back into my mundane tasks: picking up the toys, rubbing sunscreen on my children's backs, quelling festering tempers and negotiating peace, scouring crusty food off dishes, drying tears and soothing hurt feeling with hugs and kisses.

The scene has become all too familiar, the solemn procession of cars marked with flags donning names of funeral homes, the aged veterans standing at attention armed and waiting the order to offer up their salute, the playing of taps and the presentation of our country's flag to the wife left behind. We heard of Lazarus again on this day, Lazarus dead four days, Lazarus who most certainly would not have died had Christ been present, Lazarus, in a body rotting and pungent, wrenched out of his deathly slumber and given another chance at life. "I am the resurrection and life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live," Jesus tells Martha. And then, a question posed, "Do you believe this?" And here am I, on the cusp of 40-years-old, inwardly groaning over the weight that death brings as I offer up those most dear, my beloved family and friends, witnessing their bodies return to the earth; feeling disfigured and fragmented as I must learn to live with their physical absence, but clinging with a faith, desperate to believe that through this dying, I am being made whole. "Do you believe this?" Christ whispers to me on this steaming hot July day, "Lord I believe, help my unbelief."

This afternoon in my arms Lucia is expertly wrapped, hidden within the folds of her blankie-boo, nestled deep into the curve of my shoulder, lapsing into unconsciousness in the silent darkness as we rock back and forth, back and forth. Even this temporary solitude is interrupted by the unnerving, high-pitched wails borne out from the Sons of Thunder's bedroom. There are screams, like those of an animal attacked and wounded, screams fraught with indignation, cries of injustice. "Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me a sinner," I pray.

Into Thy hands, O Lord, we commend the soul of Thy servant Pete, and beseech Thee to grant him rest in the place of Thy rest, where all Thy blessed Saints repose, and where the light of Thy countenance shineth forever.

Photo, left to right: Pete (died January 2011) and Barb Peterson, Harold and Barb Johnson, Nancy (died January 2012) and Bob Wiklund (died August 2010), and Ray (died March 2011) and Charlene Swanson, aka my parents and never looking better.