Remembering

The mornings are what is hardest now. Emerging from the dreamy unconsciousness where Time and Space have no restrictions, where people and places are realities rather than memories. Awakening to birds singing their hearts out, to light creeping in past the window shades, to the sun demanding me to open my eyes. Foggy with sleep, I acquiesce and return to consciousness and live another day. And then like an unexpected slap harsh against the cheek, I remember the pain. The dull ache of sorrow and loss is terribly real and while I want to resist, it cannot be thwarted.

For years I have dreaded being jolted awake in the middle of the night by a ringing phone, knowing that any news delivered in the darkness could certainly not be good. At 5:43 am, Thursday, March 24th, the phone rang. Groping for glasses, clothes, shoes, keys, and a coat, and shell shocked with exhaustion, I fled into the darkness away from my warm house, cozy with sleeping children and climbed into our cold, unwelcoming car. At the same moment, miles away in Indianapolis, our dear friend and Lucia's godfather was standing at his family's icon corner for morning prayers, supplications of mercy being offered for my father. As I was racing out the door, driving half-blinded by the myriad of car headlights of people beginning their day and Nick was interceding for my father, the man on both our minds took his final breaths with my mother, his wife of 57 years, and his eldest daughter at his side. When I arrived at my parents' home, my mother quietly related, "He's gone." Already the hands I held every day for the past two weeks were growing cold. Gently I placed my hand behind his white t-shirted back still warm with departing life and prayed.

My father is gone. Realization of it stabs me fresh in my heart while taking out the garbage, washing dishes, picking clothes up off the floor. More pain, more ache, more tears. Gone. Really gone. A body vacant of spirit waiting to return to the earth from which the first flesh was formed by his Creator. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. Gone. No longer at home in his favorite blue chair. No longer in the hospital. No longer in the rehabilitation facility. Dead. Oh God, how I miss him. But in midst of this pain, I also find joy and peace, deep peace, the peace which passes all understanding, for in the words of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, we do not "sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so will God bring with Him those also who sleep in Jesus." (O Lord, I believe. Please help me in my unbelief.)

May your memory be eternal beloved husband of Charlene; father of Rebecca and Beth; grandfather to Joseph, Alexandra, Thomas, Russell, Elliot, and Lucia; and friend to many. May you find rest in the place where all the blessed Saints repose and where the light of God's countenance shines.

While your father is dying

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."

Happy Anniversary Wonder Twins

Three years ago today we stepped off a Korean Air airplane at O'Hare with these two in our arms. Happy Anniversary Russell Matthew Jin-pyo and Elliot Andrew Jin-seo.

 

Play Ball

 
Two
Carl Sandburg

Memory of you is ... a blue spear of flower.
I cannot remember the name of it.
Alongside a bold dripping poppy is fire and silk.
And they cover you.

Perhaps it would have been appropriate to silence that machine attached to the wall, to blot out its comedic and tragic images and incessant words oozing out of its sleek body, with a single click of my finger. At the very least, I could have curtailed the din, decreasing the volume flowing from that device to a barely audible buzz so as not to be distracted, so as not to use entertainment and news as a means to escape from the grave circumstances at hand. Undoubtedly, it would have been more dignified, more noble, more reverent, to cultivate a surrounding of quiet conducive to prayer. And in my mental handbook of "Top Ten Things To Do When Your Parent Is Dying," unplugging all media, reading psalms aloud, and praying the Jesus Prayer, are numbers one, two, and three on my list. But while Death was indeed at the door, whispering to my father on this Sunday, it was clear to me that his journey back to God was only beginning. In an effort to transport my father, mother, and I away from the sterile yet meaning to look "homey" environment around us to a familiar place in our collective Sunday afternoons past, I found on TV the sport my father loves second to God - a sport whose lackadaisical nature often lulled us into a blissful, temporarily sleep - and with my hands clutched in his feverish ones, we watched the Cubs play the Dodgers, volume turned to mass capacity. The Cubs won in ten innings. It was enough.

Over the course of the last several weeks, as it became apparent to me that my dad was not really going to get better, I began to hastily scrawl with a piece of purple chalk a list of things my boys emulate from my father. My boys are tiny and my mind desperately limited and I don't want them to relegate this man, who up until his illness stole him from them a few months back spent at least one day a week in our home, to a flimsy apparition rather than a man of flesh and blood. And so I asked my three sons to help me chronicle what reminds them of Grandpa. "Ski lift ride," said Thomas as he slid his finger down Lucia's nose, saying "I love you a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck," and "playing Trouble and Shut the Box"; "Two hands" when using a cup, big squeezes affectionately known as "Ooh ooh loves," and that "he read me Frog and Toad," stated Russell; "how Grandpa prays," folding hands and bowing head, how "Grandpa says 'OK'" with his fingers and how he "pats you on the back" when giving hugs, chimed in Elliot. And on a chalkboard crowded with this week's dinner menu, an ever increasing grocery list, as well as reminders of things to do, my father's story continues.

Tonight I was able to grant a bit of respite to my mother who has admirably kept a constant vigil at my father's side these last three months. I was moved by their kiss good-bye to one another, their urges to the other "to get some rest," their speaking words which we know in our hearts may not be true, because for my father, there very well may not be a tomorrow. With my mother's absence, I was able to spend an hour alone with my dad. I spooned the only substance he truly desires, orange sherbet, into is mouth, firmly insisting that he also attempt some sips of broth and bites of slippery red jello, wiping his mouth with an over-sized towel resembling a bib wrapped around his neck, holding a cup when he needed a drink of water.  And it was an honor. With several guests stopping in, my father's day had been tiresome and noisy. Now he desired quiet. "Turn off the television," and "shut the door a bit," he whispered. And I complied, holding his hand, sitting in a dimly lit room, and praying over and over again, for me, for him, for us, and for all those grieving and suffering throughout this world, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."  And it was enough.

Poetry Wednesday

Lenten Thoughts from Nouwen

"'Being in the world without being of the world.' These words summarize well the way Jesus speaks of the spiritual life. It is a life in which we are totally transformed by the Spirit of love, yet it is a life in which everything seems to remain the same. To live a spiritual life does not mean that we must leave our families, give up our jobs, or change our ways of working; it does not mean that we have to withdraw from social or political activities, or lose interest in literature and art; it does not require severe forms of asceticism or long hours of prayer. Changes such as these may in fact grow out of our spiritual life, and for some people radical decisions may be necessary. But the spiritual life can be lived in many ways as there are people. What is new is that we have moved from the many things to the kingdom of God. What is new is that we are set free from the compulsions of our world and have set our hearts on the only necessary thing. What is new is that we no longer experience the many things, people, and events as endless causes for worry, but begin to experience them as the rich variety of ways in which God makes his presence known to us." -Henri Nouwen from Show Me The Way: Readings For Each Day Of Lent


And from my dear friend Molly, these encouraging words. http://mollysabourin.typepad.com/molly-sabourin/2011/03/there-is-no-better-place.html

Out of His Wee Mouth

I wondered what all the spelling questions would result in. And then Thomas handed me this prayer. Be still my heart. A peaceful and joyful Lent to you all.

Basic Bread

"The dough rose high in the warm wooden bowl with the life of the land and the air bursting forth. Then the woman pressed the dough and began again, kneading and singing while she worked. The smell of the dough and the wood in the fire filled that simple space with a holy grace." -from Jane G. Meyer's The Woman and the Wheat

Lately I have had the itch to make bread, and I cannot pinpoint an exact explanation as to why. There is, I suppose, the pragmatic answer, that baking our family's bread would save us money since the bread I buy is close to $3.50 a loaf (a chunk of change for not acquiescing to high frutcose corn syrup, as well as a host of ingredients I cannot pronounce). And though I would be remiss if I did not wish to decrease our grocery bill, my craving, I believe, stems from something else; something that is perhaps more fundamental to real living: Peace. While engaged in the work of making bread, even in the midst of being surrounded by children who refuse to do anything but attach themselves to my elbows and then insist upon decorating the counter and floor with flour and water, something holy is transpiring. For the feel of my hands immersed within the dough, knocking it back and forth, forming its shape, working to create something wholly unique (as well as delicious), temporarily eases the chaos around me, as well as the disquiet within, yielding a deep sense of stillness and rest, if only for a moment. So when given a rainy Friday with countless hours and really nothing to do, why not bake some bread? 

The masked man below made his own little loaf and proceeded to gobble it up within minutes of pulling it from the oven.

"The smel of new breade is comfortable to the heade and to the herte.' -Anonymous, From

Notes from a Country Kitchen as quoted in one of my favorite cook books by Evelyn Birge Vitz, 

A Continual Feast

The Business of Living

It was nearly 7:30 pm when me and my squeaky, raisin and mitten infested van pulled into the nearly deserted Aldi parking lot Monday night. I had known grocery shopping was on the agenda for the evening, but I had exited the house quickly so as not to be late for a 5:00 dinner. Now, hours later, I was unsure if I had the necessary quarter for the cart and my reusable bags were most definitely at home. Within minutes I found myself wandering through the aisles like a rat in a maze, conjuring up the week's meals as I hastened along, picking up the items on my mental check-list. I felt a certain amount of disconnect as I smiled at the young man at the check out counter, thanking him for his gracious compliment of how nicely I lined up my purchases on the conveyor belt. Only thirty minutes earlier I had been seated in a cramped room next to my father, holding his hand, as he lay in a hospital bed, my mother, resolute in her new role as nurse, beside me. Together we attempted to coax a palate not desirous of food to take one more bite of what, I must admit, appeared to be unappetizing mashed potatoes, and a body suffering from dehydration to take one more drink of Ensure.

Last Sunday, as my family and I stood in church while visiting friends in Indiana, my father was hospitalized for the second time in less than three months, a mere three weeks since his release from a local rehab facility. While picking up groceries and tossing them in the cart, consumed with the mundane demands of ordinary living, I longed for a respite, a moment to pause and consider the pregnancy of the situation at hand. But life has a way, for good or ill, of undeniably thrusting itself forward. And despite my father's illness, I must submit to my present limitations, for there are four tiny tummies to be filled, bottoms to be wiped, clothes to be laundered, and tears to be soothed; my children need their mother.

In December 1969, Dorothy Day wrote a column titled, "The Business of Living," which advocated, according to Amanda W. Daloisio in the most recent publication of The Catholic Worker, that "the business of living was not an escape from the suffering of the world but a call to address it by doing the daily work of life with a deeper spirit of mindfulness." "What did the women do after the Crucifixion?" queried Day. "They prepared the spices, purchased the linen clothes for burial, kept the Sabbath, and hastened to the tomb on Sunday morning."  For, Day continues, "no matter what catastrophe has occurred or hangs overhead" a woman" has to go on with the business of living." 

After reading Jenny's post and realizing that we too owned John O'Donohue's Anam Cara, I soon discovered a lovely prayer for the hearth. This prayer, which I am offering for this week's Poetry Wednesday, has embedded itself within my morning prayers. Typically, I clutch at the book, not in a state of reverence, but amidst the chaos of our kitchen, a child straddled upon a hip while others clutch at my legs, a series of demands and grievances arising in cacophony while I whisper the words, pleading for help from the Irish saint Brigid and those women of my blood unknown to me, departed and separated from me by but a thin veil. "Keep me from harm, from ignorance, from heartlessness," I pray. Guide my hands throughout this ordinary day, reminding me to do all my work with love.

Caitlin Matthews

Brighid of the Mantle, encompass us.

Lady of the Lambs protect us,

Keeper of the Hearth, kindle us,

Beneath your mantle, gather us

And restore us to memory.

Mothers of our mother,

Fore mothers strong.

Guide our hands in yours,

Remind us how

To kindle the hearth.

To keep it bright,

To preserve the flame,

Your hands upon ours,

Our hands within yours,

To kindle the light,

Both day and night.

The mantle of Brighid about us,

The memory of Brighid within us,

The protection of Brighid keeping us

From harm, from ignorance, from heartlessness,

This day and night,

From dawn till dark,

From dark till dawn.