Friday, March 22, 2013

Threnody

"We bury you, as grain in a field, and you will spring forth in another land."

The package of oatmeal cookies at the grocery store that suddenly and unexpectedly catches my eye and brings me to tears; the phrases and songs remembered, flowing out of the mouths of my children, phrases and songs singular to you; the touch of the cylinder shaped, striped, sofa pillow, so innocent, which elicits a vision of you, weary and worn by the burden of your physical decline; you, not bitter or resentful, without complaint, resting your head while we run, dance, and circle around your tired body; the memory of your voice speaking my name; your hand, weathered and aged, tenderly held in my own in those final days of your life with us; the man that you were, simple, unassuming, witty, kind, a man worthy of imitation: You come to me in my dreams. I feel your presence. I feel your peace. How thin the veil which separates us from one another.

Threnody 
Scott Cairns
The dream is recurrent, and yes
the dream can leave me weeping,
waking with a start, confused,
and pressing my wet face hard
into the pillow.  That is to say
the dream is very bitter.

The scenes are various, the gist
unchanging: my father returns,
and we all are at once elated
that his death was apparently
an error, that he had simply
been away, a visit to the shore.

Then, increasingly, I grow
uneasy about how deeply
he has changed.  He is both frail
and distracted (or it could be
that he withholds some matter
habiting his mind), and none of us

dares speak, neither of his death nor
of his sudden, startling return.
We share other confusions as well:
He has arrived in the camper truck
he drove when I was a boy, but my wife
and children are also here to greet him,

even my son, whom he has never met.
Often, in the dream, I am the one
who first suspects he cannot stay.
I am the one who sees but cannot say
his visit will be brief.  And just
as I suspected, as I feared, I wake.

Thank you to Scott Cairns for sharing this unpublished poem and offering me the privilege to post it here. The following was written two years ago, posted two days before my father died:

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 mustached 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."


Thursday, March 14, 2013

The heart's innocent joy

There were boisterous and plenteous cheers and high-fives around the table. Punch glasses filled with juice clinked as toasts were offered to commemorate the occasion. Songs erupted and were accompanied by the accordion and the piano, as well as spontaneous outbursts of dances involving high kicks and our version of the Harlem Shuffle. Phone calls spreading the joyous news were placed to dad who was working late and Grandma Swanson. We all huddled around him and oohed and awed at the tiny tooth delicately held in his five-year-old hand, entering into his excitement, proclaiming him a "big boy." As the tooth disappeared under his pillow, we were told to sing, "Happy Birthday dear tooth." After all, it isn't every day that you lose your first tooth.


"I lost my tooth."
"Are you so surprised?"
"I am so happy."


"Will the tooth fairy give me coal?
Maybe a ball because I am medium-sized good and medium-sized bad.
Will I get it back?"


"Two-four-six-eight
who do we appreciate?"


"Russell! Russell! Yay, Russell!"

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Speak to us of Love


We who are called to be poor in spirit, to be fools for Christ, who are called to persecution and abuse- we know that this is the only calling given to us by the persecuted, abused, disdained, and humiliated Christ. And we do not only believe in the promises of blessedness to come; now, at this very moment, in the midst of this cheerless and despairing world, we already taste this blessedness whenever, with God's help and at God's command, we deny ourselves, whenever we have the strength to offer our soul for our neighbor, whenever in love we do not seek our own ends. -Mother Maria Skobtsova

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams 
as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses 
your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and
shake them in their clinging to the earth. 
 

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire,
that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you
that you may know the secrets of your heart,
and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.


But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness
and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh,
but not all of your laughter,
and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.


When you love you should not say,
"God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love,
for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.


Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook
that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart 
and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart
and a song of praise upon your lips.

from The Prophet
Kahlil Gibran