Everyday Boy

When Death Comes

I was skimming through the pages of Garrison Keillor's second collection of poems this past week, as I lay down across from a loved one on a velvety biege couch and twilllight faded into the quiet hours of midnight, and when I was sitting alone on hard plastic chair in a crowded afternoon train bustling with strangers commuting into the city.

And coming upon this poem was like a light skirting the darkness and a stillness stopping time.  And tonight, I found myself both asking people where they were on September 11, 2001, and looking back at where I was.  And once again an awareness of death breathes life into me somehow.

When Death Comes
by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measles-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

From Good Poems For Hard Times
Selected and introduced by Garrison Keillor.

Reminders In Life & Death

What Sarah Said

...

'Cause there's no comfort in the waiting room
Just nervous pacers bracing for bad news
And then the nurse comes round and everyone will lift their heads
But I'm thinking of what Sarah said
That love is watching someone die.

...

Death Cab For Cutie, from the album Plans
Words & Music: Gibbard/Harmer

This is an album I have been listening to a lot lately... I have been reminded of life and death and everything in between this holiday. Newborns and pregnancies, sickness and deaths. Henri Nouwen reminds me:

Life is precious.  Not because it is unchangeable, like a diamond, but because it is vulnerable, like a little bird.  To love life means to love its vulnerability, asking for care, attention, guidance, and support.  Life and death are connected by vulnerability.  The newborn child and the dying elder both remind us of the preciousness of our lives.  (January 3rd)

Heavy Hearts

The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.

Joanna Macy, writer and teacher (1929- )

Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?  Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our hearts?  Can the writer renew our hope for literary forms?  Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power?  What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered?  Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love?  We still and always want waking.  We should amass half dressed in long lines like tribesmen and shake gourds at each other, to wake up; instead we watch television and miss the show. (593)

Annie Dillard, Three By Dillard (The Writing Life)

I was talking a little while ago with some friends about the difficulties each of us encounter in our different work settings; much sadness surrounding abuse, addictions, broken hearts and death.  This past week seemed especially difficult on top of the usual stories you hear at the shelter.  I found myself on the phone with a former co-worker who was reeling over the unexpected suicide of a good friend who works at another shelter, and talking with a co-worker who was looking for a reprieve between funerals as he prepared himself in having to attend a fourth one in the past couple of weeks.  My former team leader's friend was also killed in an automobile accident this past week on one of the major bridges in the city - and all of this following in the wake of my former volunteer director passing away.  Death no longer surprises me as much, but it still weighs heavy.

We had a woman come to one of our all-team meetings at work last month to speak to us about vicarious trauma, and the necessary self-care we need to be aware of - physically, psychologically, emotionally and spiritually.  She provided a checklist looking at these areas as a way to strive for balance within our work lives and workdays, in all our relationships, in play and in rest.  Paying attention to such basic things like eating regularly and healthily, exercising, spending time with friends, and taking in the necessities of nature.  Again it's the Benedictine attitude of balance that comes to mind - not too much of anything, just enough of everything.  It all reminded me of this quote I encountered at the beginning of the year:

Everyone is a house with four rooms: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.  Unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.

Rumer Godden

In Memoriam

For Ann:

e. e. cummings, american poet (1894-1962):

in time of daffodils (who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why, remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so (forgetting seem)

in time of roses (who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if, remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek (forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me, remember me

Things We Do To Vest Our Lives

...undertakings are the things we do to vest the lives we lead against the cold, the meaningless, the void, the noisy blather, and the blinding dark.  It is the voice we give to wonderment, to pain, to love and desire, anger and outrage; the words that we shape into song and prayer.

Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking

I attended the funeral of my friend's son this past week, who passed away December 1st after a courageous five year battle with cancer.  He was twenty-nine years of age.  I made the hour and a half drive from my place in Vancouver to the Salvation Army church in Chilliwack, a short undertaking of sorts, if only just to say by being there, you are not alone.  I was tired, having worked an overnight shift the night before and only having a few hours of sleep, but I was thankful for some time on the highway, to take in the passing scenery and listen to Bruce Springsteen's new album Devil's & Dust. 

It's odd how your observations change on a drive to the countryside when you're on your way to a funeral.  The signs along the roads seemed to take on new meaning: passing Ash Street, crossing Boundary Road, and following the number one highway signs marked out for Hope.  Even the weather seemed to act out the feelings and events of the day.  Sunlight and fog were playing a dance along the way.  Sun giving way to fog, giving way to sun again.  Crossing over one bridge it was as though the other side of the world was being erased.  Thick fog enveloped the bridge, the river and the horizon like a blank piece of paper, as though we were all crossing over into nothingness.  Then little by little the sun burned through again, and as I approached Chilliwack, the white-capped mountains came into crisp view behind the bustling town.

There were many people attending the funeral: lots of young people in their mid-twenties, his soccer teammates dressed in their jerseys, who at one point lined the church aisles like an honor guard; his family and friends who gave tributes in speech and pictures; his aunt who told a warm and funny anecdote of how as a kid he twice pushed her into the family pool so mischievously; and a Native Indian friend who sang two traditional Native mourning songs.  It was humbling hearing how this young man touched so many with his humor, persistence and zest for life.  Keep death daily before your eyes.  Mine?  Yours?  Death seems hard to miss these days.  The question now seems what exactly to do about it.

Pain is our mother
she makes us recognize each other.

Over The Rhine, Nobody Number One

Where is God?

I saw Clint Eastwood's movie Mystic River tonight.  It's good to see a story driven movie come out of Hollywood every now and then, although it's a dark and melancholy one.  I was impressed by Sean Penn's acting, and the movie had me both guessing and dreading endings.  However, I found parts of the movie, specifically through the ending, a bit disjointed.

Watching the movie brought me back to questions of where is God in the dark moments of life? and where is God when the innocent suffer?  I can only partially answer such questions.  I have felt the absence of God.  I have faced certain darkness in the passing of loved ones, and of loneliness and depression, and can by grace and in hindsight say, God is deeper still.  But I cannot say I have personally faced deep suffering or personal tragedy.  I have only been a distant witness.

One writer who spoke to me of the greater tragedies of life through his own experiences has been Elie Wiesel.  I read through his book Night, this past December, which chronicles his story of surviving the Holocaust.  One story in particular will always come to mind:

The SS hung two Jewish men and a boy before the assembled inhabitants of the camp. The men died quickly but the death struggle of the boy lasted half an hour. "Where is God? Where is he?" a man behind me asked. As the boy, after a long time, was still in agony on the rope, I heard the man cry again, "Where is God now?" and I heard a voice within me answer, Here he is - he is hanging here on this gallows...