They Say It Takes A Village

It has now been two days since we marked the fourth anniversary of Heiko’s death.  I wrote to a friend this morning that I am exhaling deeply for the first time in about a month.  Christmas is over.  January 3rd is over – for yet another year.  It is not because I dislike this time of year, it is simply the intensity of it all that makes me appreciate the more pedestrian quality of life when the cycle is over. January 3rd, in particular, is a much appreciated Day of Remembrance.  It is one of the few days out  of the year that I do not suppress my sorrow, my longing, my regrets, my thoughts, my feelings, my memories, my grief.  Instead of them silently co-existing with my daily routines and interchanges, I give full expression to them. Friends and family join me in this and we mourn again together.  We re-member together.  This year I spent hours going over photographs of him.  Can you imagine – I was even able to laugh (through tears) of the one of him with spaghetti hanging out of his mouth.  I was laughing while simultaneously my heart cinched painfully at the light in his eyes.  Mischevious, intelligent, sparky and fun – it is all there on his beautiful face.  Heidi’s obvious enjoyment (and pride?) of his antics are a mirror no doubt of my own as I snapped the photo.

As we are in London this year I was not sure what we would actually do on the day.  For the past three years we have held beautiful memorials surrounded by family and friends singing songs, telling stories and walking to his grave.  In the end we chose to spend it at Kew Botanical Gardens.  There is something about deep loss and suffering that is inextricably twined with the appreciation of, and need for, beauty.  Beauty has consistently been one of the few antidotes to my broken heart and spirit.  I need to feel connection to the mystery that throbs at the centre of all things and beauty is the portal.  It is the only way I can function: for without that mystery all of this suffering would be utterly meaningless and cruel.  And I do not believe we live in a meaningless and cruel world.  Aristotle wrote: “In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous” and I agree completely.  Who can fail to be enlivened by the strange, the symmetrical, the knarled, the colourful and surprising natural world we live in?

As Don and I were out walking in Kew Gardens (where Heiko threw in a rainbow), Heidi was in Toronto marking the day in her own way.  We had recently placed a grave marker (finally, what a difficult task that is) at the cemetery and I thought she would go there but instead she chose to visit Heiko’s tree at the Humber River.  I understood her draw there; only the day before I had had a solitary walk along the Thames – moving water too has its medicinal qualities for the grieving soul.  Afterwards she wrote to us:

“Here are a few photos of my walk on the Humber today.  You’ll notice Susie’s yellow flowers at the base of the tree and the little toy knight I placed in the branches.  The tree looked healthy and strong and I also noticed the butterfly on a chain was still hanging from one of the upper branches.  It was freezing but I did have a brief walk up the river, sang a few songs and remembered many of the wonderful ways Heiko was loved.  “Who loves Heiko?” We all love Heiko! [from a little song we used to sing to him].”

I wanted the many of you who contributed to this memorial to know how much our family appreciates this tree and all it symbolizes.  It takes a village to raise a child; it takes one to bury one as well.  You were there for us and for Heiko and we will be eternally grateful.

Peace of the living waters to each of you.

LOVE,

Gabrielle

Four Years Since We Held You

A Prayer for Heiko

At the rising of the sun and at its going down

We remember you.

At the blowing of the wind and the chill of winter

We remember you.

At the opening of the buds and in the rebirth of spring

We remember you.

At the blueness of the skies and in the warmth of summer

We remember you.

At the rustling of the leaves and in the beauty of autumn

We remember you.

At the beginning of the year and when it ends

We remember you.

As long as we live, you too will live; for you are now a part of us, as we remember you.

When we are weary and in need of strength

We remember you.

When we are lost and sick at heart

We remember you.

When we have joy we crave to share

We remember you.

When we have decisions that are difficult to make

We remember you.

When we have achievements that are based on yours

We remember you.

As long as we live, you too will live; for you are now a part of us, as we remember you. (from a traditional Jewish prayer)

Our sweetest of the sweets, our little bunny, our zany and silly little boy, our captain, our riddle-maker, our chin-tickler, our drayon-slayer, our senator, our Prince of Peace, our lotus flower, our star-child, our compass, our beloved son, nephew, grand-son, cousin, brother and friend.

Sweet Impossible Blossom.

You are so loved. You are deeply missed.

Sail On. Sail On. On the River of Love Sail On.

******

(Don wrote about Heiko today too – http://donwillms.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/memories-of-summer-days/)

To life Kate! To Life!

A very good friend of mine is in treatment for cancer.  Her body, already scarred from surgery to excise the ‘emperor of all maladies’, is injected with chemotherapy drugs regularly; her life as mother and wife upended with the discovery of a lump.  This is my same friend who turned up at the hospital very close to this time nearly four years ago while Heiko was an outpatient and receiving his weekly dose of chemo.  She brought him pizza (which he ate) and made him laugh.  I remember her visit in particular because she had ‘just dropped by’ and because she didn’t appear to be scandalized by his tiny, scarred and sored body or by the sadness and fear that hid in the corners of the room.  Her robust laugh and vigour found a place on his little bed and she breathed life into us – making that one hospital visit so much better than if she hadn’t come.

In an email recently she wrote: “Yes, I am going through a lot. But I am very present in every moment given to me – and will work to make it all count, good, bad ugly, and fantastic. It is my fate. And I would not change it.”

I was really struck by her words knowing as I do the dark valley she has gone through to get to this place of wisdom, this place of rest.  It has not been without some angry fistfuls of dirt being hurled in the air.

I relate.  I relate.  How many times have I arched my back and raised my own fists in the air? How many times fallen to my knees?

Last time I wrote for Sweet Impossible Blossom I found myself using rivers as metaphor to explain my experience of life since we lost Heiko. Rivers seem to have become the central image of a lot of my writing.  I suppose it is because I have a very distinct feeling that life really is a river, not a river of water obviously, but a continuous flow of energy that is ever-moving, ever- drawing us onwards.   What the current brings us is experience –  neither good nor bad – it itself is neutral. It is we that pass judgement on it – resist it if it hurts, embrace it if it nourishes.  What I have been learning is that resistance to Heiko’s death (and other losses) always brings pain and suffering.  Surrender to it – brings peace and rest.  We have no choice in what happens to us but we always have sovereignty over our response.  Do our choices bring life? Or death? Not just for ourselves but for others we are in relationship with – near and far, known and unknown, human and animal, plant and stone.

I am “lucky” in some senses.  As my friend Janis once said to me “you now have a ‘star-child’ to guide your way.” And I completely agree with her.  Heiko is always with me and every good thing that happens is because of him – my ‘star-child’.  I love and trust him (and the mystery to which he now belongs) so implicitly that I now wait patiently in expectation for what may come next.  It is not that my life is now going to be a series of good times.  It is more that I know that I will be given the love and support I need to go through whatever happens.  There is a well of love (a root, as Catherine M. wrote so eloquently in her comment last time) at the heart of the world.  Heiko points me to it.  Kate has found it too it seems.

Take this experience for example: Last year, a few days before Christmas, I was walking down the street in Bloor West Village.  I was deep in a haze of sorrow, tears literally welling up in my eyes as I made my way home past the children all bundled up in their wagons and Christmas without Heiko just days away. Ahead, I could see a canvasser.  As I walked past, the young man approached me and asked: “Do you have a child in your life that you love?” It was such an intimate question, addressing as it did what was most central in my mind that I stopped. “Save the Children needs people like you to care for children who don’t have anyone to love them.” I felt a soft stirring deep inside.  Heiko was behind this encounter.  I said I would think about it. The young man was gracious and kind with my indecision.  I went home, did my research  (it was helpful, it must be noted, that I knew the Director of the Canadian chapter of the organization as a man of deep integrity) and signed up as a regular contributor.  It is now my main charity.

“Where is this going?” you might be tempted to ask.  Well, it so happens that two days ago I was out in the streets of London looking for a cobbler to repair my boots. The move to London from The Netherlands hasn’t been so easy and I was in a bit of a dispirited mood.  We were in a very lovely part of town called Primrose Hill trying to find the address of the cobbler.  As we walked I noticed a thrift shop for Save the Children.  We continued passed it focused as we were on finding the repair shop.  After walking the length of the street and not finding it we decided to turn around and try again.  This time, as we went past the thrift store (which I now noticed was called Mary’s Living and Giving Shop) I felt this little stirring.  “Let’s go in here,” I said uncharacteristically as I am not normally a thrift shop goer, catching the words on the sandwich board outside “Desperately needing volunteers” as we did. And with little more than that I am now their latest recruit.  I don’t like clothing shopping, I hate selling things and I have no retail experience but somehow I know this is exactly what I should be doing.   I trust the river of life now.  At the best of times I even open myself to it.  It helps that I have such a beautiful star to guide me.

Kate alludes to fate in her email to me, and to a hard-won but rapturous YES to her life.  I am inspired by her courage (and her humour which I am sorrily lacking I realize) and like her am also trying to make the most of what is left of my life.  I still struggle with deep pockets of depression but on clearer days I have a profound sense that we are all being held tightly by a deep love and that in a mysterious but very real way Heiko’s short life was a gift that I (we) are still receiving.

To life, Kate, to life!

 

 

Christmas Tide in London

Today we went to see the lighting of the Norwegian Christmas Tree in Trafalgar Square.  It was a rainy, dark evening and Don and I had been working in the British Library all day. “Maybe we should skip it?” I asked, realizing that in addition to bad weather we were running late.  But, we kept on going along with the mass of commuters burrowing down the stairs at St. Pancras tube station emerging at Leicester Square in time for a sprint down Charing Cross Road where more crowds of people were already lining the steps of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church for a better view.  With the thick depth of people circled around the Square it was really only possible to see the upper half of the tall but sleek tree and umbrellas blocked most of that too.  Our late position at the fringes of the crowd however gave us perfect views of the white and red robed choir as it sang its way from the Church to the Square. We parted like the red sea to let them through.

The speeches began.  First, the Lord Mayor of Westminster, who had travelled to Norway to select the tree that stood before us relayed the 65 year tradition that brought the tree to London: “Since the end of WWII Norway has shipped a mature spruce tree to Londoners as a token of friendship and gratitude for Britain’s assistance from 1940 to 1945.” “It is all the more poignant this year,” said the Norwegian Ambassador, who spoke next, “because of the immediate support we received from Britain after the more recent shooting tragedy in Utøya.”“You were among the first to respond,” said the Ambassador, pausing with emotion, “and we are very grateful to you for that.”

Then, with characteristic British restraint (i.e. no fireworks or celebrity power as might be expected in North America), the lights were switched on and the tree was transformed into the symbol of the coming Christmas tide.  “Oooh!” replied the contented crowd in unison.  National anthems were sung and more carols.  I started to sing along:  “Hark the herald angels sing glory to the newborn king…” The Norwegian blocking my view (I knew so because of his hearty rendition of their anthem earlier) must have heard me and said: “Here, you can take my place” giving me a perfect sight-line to the dignitaries and the choir.  But as we continued to sing, my voice started to catch in my throat, fading to a whisper.  Something about the human voice in song, the community of sound, the beauty of the language of the carol, the glory raised up in the trumpets caught me up.  I felt almost dizzy with a kind of vertigo as my heart remembered before I did that carols are no longer harbingers of joy, they, by their very sweetness now foretell an unbearable sadness, a cruel loss.  My son. My only son, Heiko, just 4 and a half years old, would die not a week after Christmas in 2008 of acute myeloid leukemia.

Four years have past and three Christmases.  I have tried different approaches to the Christmas season each year, but each time I pull courage from my friends and family to remain in relationship with them and with the world even when powerful forces of grief draw me downward and away.

But life has a current that is ever moving, ever changing, ever renewing even when death has come for a child.

This year it has brought me to London, England.  Today, to a ceremony to celebrate and honour the bravery and kindness of one nation to another, at a tree lighting that symbolizes that together we can overcome tragedy, that love is stronger than death, that compassion is the most powerful response to hatred.  And as I looked at the beautiful tree bedecked with tiny white lights I released the grip of fear in my throat and allowed the painful beauty, the over-flowing extravagance, the light of Grace to gather me in and joined my voice to the current of voices swirling brightly around me.  How can we keep from singing?

How Can I Keep from Singing by Eva Cassidy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmblB9JT0Uo

My life goes on in endless song

above earth’s lamentations,

I hear the real, though far-off hymn

that hails a new creation.

Through all the tumult and the strife

I hear it’s music ringing,

It sounds an echo in my soul.

How can I keep from singing?

Oh though the tempest loudly roars,

I hear the truth, it liveth.

Oh though the darkness ’round me close,

Songs in the night it giveth.

No storm can shake my inmost calm,

While to that rock I’m clinging.

Since love is lord of heaven and earth

How can I keep from singing?

When tyrants tremble in their fear

And hear their death knell ringing,

When friends rejoice both far and near

How can I keep from singing?

No storm can shake my inmost calm,

While to that rock I’m clinging.

Since love is lord of heaven and earth

How can I keep from singing?

My life goes on in endless song

Above earth’s lamentations,

I hear the real, though far-off hymn

How can I keep from singing?

Lord, how can I keep from singing?

Oh, how can I keep from singing?

Photo By Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Love, great love

Hello again,

As I write this it is 7:45 a.m. and the sun is just coming up here.  I am sitting in our living room and with the floor to ceiling windows that line the outer wall I have a front row seat to the growing spectacle of the burning rosy pink clouds as the sun makes it ritual assent.  It backlights the trees and their still-leaved forms are like patterns of lace against the pale palette.  Oh how I will miss this place! We have been here three months and at first I couldn’t settle down – the house was too big, the garden too unruly.  But now, it is like I have fallen in love with every tree, every shrub, every sweet little red-breasted bird that twitters on the branch. Our upcoming move to London heightens the passion! In just two days we will take a ferry and then a train to our new home.   What a change that will be!  Here in Geijsteren (where we live almost rent free courtesy of Henri Nouwen’s brother Laurent) we have, and this isn’t too much of an exagerration, a manor.  We have a large fireplace, an expansive cobblestone driveway, three bathrooms, four bedrooms and an enormous garden made complete with a French style pond with orange and black fish glinting every so often on the surface.  In London, we found what we could afford.  A small house-sit in the leafy residential neighbourhood of North Finchley, a  tiny little “nest” as my sister Christine puts it.  We’ll perch there for six months.  Don will volunteer in Tanzania for part of that time and for the first time in nearly 10 years I will live alone.

But I am getting ahead of myself.  What happened with Miek and Ernst? Or perhaps more importantly between Don and I? How did we resolve the impasse? Well, we talked. And we talked and talked.  It became immediately apparent that I had painted too stark a picture of our differing positions the other day. Don agreed with me that the time had come to tell Miek and Ernst.  His reservation expressed in a more theoretical way earlier in the month, was letting ourselves be defined by our tragedy.  In talking to him, I realized that it was not HIM that was holding me back from telling Miek and Ernst – it was ME! In talking together I untangled a little bit of why I was enjoying our friendship with Miek and Ernst.  It was precisely because they weren’t defining me as the grieving mother.  These three months have given me the beautiful freedom to explore who I am now without being (unconsciously) labelled by others as “grieving mother” or “victim of catastrophic tragedy.”  In talking to Don I also uncovered another emotion at play: shame.  Why, oh why, would I feel shame about losing Heiko? It does not make any real sense but it is something I contend with.  One mother on my street once blurted to me: “Gabrielle, whenever I see you, I get afraid. Just seeing you reminds me of my own children’s vulnerability”.  She meant well.  She is a kind and very compassionate woman (she brought her boys to play with Heiko when he was just released from the hospital for instance).  She uttered something that is in the air though: in part, I represent “the worst that can happen”.

I know, I know well that this is not who I am in my entirety and that as well as fear when people see me, they feel compassion.  This I know deeply.  And yet, these three months have been so wonderful because no one know me and “my story”.  I am not defined by it.  I feel very blessed indeed by this gift of time and space to re-discover who I am.  There is a fine line to be walked as I go forward nearly four years after his death.  How do I integrate Heiko in my life now – not what I have lost but what I have gained, not his absence but his presence, not resentment but wakefulness, not closed heart but open, loving heart?

Even so, all that freedom is not worth anything if we do not have deep connections with friends and we both agreed it was time to tell Miek and Ernst.  We emailed them and suggested we bike to their house (a few towns away – we don’t have a car) for a coffee.  They didn’t get back to us but we thought we’d take our chances.  Ernst we knew was home and Miek was shopping in the morning but we thought she’d be back by the time we got there.  On the way over we discussed what we wanted to say. “We want to convey that we value their friendship and trust them,” said Don. “I will tell Ernst about ‘One Voice’ and how it seemed like a sign that the time had come to tell them about Heiko.” We rang the door bell.  Ernst answered the door and immediately I knew he had been sleeping.  Oh dear.  But, as ever he welcomed us heartily and set about making us coffee.  Miek was still shopping.  Don and I looked at each other: “Do we still talk to him?” Yes, we agreed. I started to feel my heart pounding and my palms getting sticky.  “Ernst, there is something we want to tell you…” He sat still for a long time, leaning forward with his head down.  When he looked up he had tears in his eyes. “We are so sorry,” he said.  For though Miek wasn’t there she was.

Later that evening, our doorbell rang.  It was Miek and Ernst.  Miek said: “I just couldn’t respond to what you told Ernst in an email” and she hugged me.  I brought out my photographs of Heiko and my heart split open again, but it also was full of pride for my beautiful son.  We light a fire and as it crackled and burned we told our story. “It is not just a story about the loss of our son.” I say, “It is a story about the river of love that flowed to us as strong as a spring thaw.” “It is a story of the goodness of human beings.”    “It was a time of great suffering and of great, heart-breaking loss, but it was a time of love, compassion, and generousity.” And I was talking about you of course, our carepages community.

May our experience of love in the time of suffering be a beacon of light and hope for you in your own time of sorrow.  As much as this world breaks us, it binds us together – in love, great love.

Pax

Gabrielle

One Voice

Hello dear friends who read this blog even though I don’t post with any regularity,

I am writing today because I miss all of you.  I miss your understanding and your words and gestures of comfort.  They continue to be a real source of healing for me.  You have walked with me through the dark valley and today I seem to have hit a little gulley on the path that pulls me close to the pain of loss.  The crisis is brought on by a widening divide between Don and I about how to live Heiko’s death.  We have met some new friends here in Holland and Don does not want to talk to them about Heiko – his life, his illness or his death.  As we get closer to them I feel like we need to since,  as Heidi said last night: “That experience is so much of what makes you who you are now.”  Don wants privacy for his grief, for his love.  I want connection.  I want to remember Heiko with a community of friends who loved him.

The issue of how to proceed has come to a head because of a song.  Shortly after Heiko’s death one of you – was it Janis, Diane? Catherine M. or Jane or Katie? – introduced me to the song One Voice.  I remember listening to it over and over again, finding the message of “singing together in harmony” and “listening for the sound of one voice” very comforting.  The harmonies and simple instrumentation were like a balm to my soul.

After a long interval of not hearing it, the song came into my life again two nights ago.

We were at the house of our friends new friends, Ernst and Miek.  They are a married couple in their early 60s, both teachers and the parents of two adult boys.  We met them in a park one day while searching for a place for a drink and they kindly showed us the way. We started talking and as they say the rest is history.  We’ve been visiting with each other ever since.  And not talking about Heiko.

When people ask me if I have children I always say: “No, but Don has a son.” That gets them asking about Lang and I do not have to feel the eruption of sadness (and tears) that follows any mention of Heiko’s name.  It also means of course, that I cannot feel the joy of remembering him either. At the dinner party though the careful division we had made between before and after was breached.  Ernst said: “One of my favorite songs is One Voice by the Wailin’ Jennies”.  I was stunned.  How could he know this song, by this trio of Canadians?  He played it for us and I bit my lip and fought back tears.  The circle had come together and now Miek and Ernst were in it too – but they didn’t know it.  It was a wonderful syncroncity (the youtube video he played was of a performance in a concert hall we had just been to that day in a small Dutch town!) and one that seems to suggest that it is time to tell them about Heiko.  It is a prospect that both excites me (I get to talk about him!) and confuses me (what about Don’s stated preference for privacy) and frightens me (I will be cracked open again).

As I write this and consider this question, I am fighting a cold.  This is the fifth day and so far no signs that it is getting better.  I would suspect I am a bit run down.  It has been a very good time here but also very full.  We are four days away from moving to London after our three month stay in the hamlet of Geijsteren. It is an emotional time.  More good-byes, more new beginnings.

I guess what this is is mostly a shout out – how are you guys? What are you up to? I remember each of you who have stopped to take Heiko and me into your heart with great fondness even if I so seldom write.  I am addressing all of you – even those who read this blog that I don’t know about.  All of your compassionate hearts are important, so important.  Not just for me but for the world.

With much love for being there and listening,

Gabrielle

Packing Heiko’s things

In less than three weeks Don and I will be boarding a plane for The Netherlands, the first in a series of three month stints in locales far away.  We’ll be gone for a year – the gift of a 12 month sabbatical from my work place.  I will work on a research project and Don will blow where the wind pleases along side me on an unpaid leave of absence from teaching.

We have rented our house to a family from Paris.  Three young children and their parents will be moving and calling this place home.  Today, I asked Don to give me time alone in the house to pack what remains of Heiko’s physical presence from the four and half years he lived here with us.  I want to spend the day with Heiko, and Don, bless him, understands.

Yesterday in an email to a friend I wrote: “I will have to pack up Heiko’s toys and clothes very soon. A small selection are in the closet of his room. We can’t leave them in the house for the year. I have an antique chest that I will lovingly fill to store at my mother’s- but it will be a hard day. I will treat it as a special day and make sure to take good care of myself. I know I will feel very close to him which is what I long for but is also what causes enormous pain and suffering. I choose my moments to feel the enormity of the loss very carefully – with lots of room to feel everything and then to slowly and deliberately set it aside to continue the work of living.”

Now in the aftermath of the day I feel like I have just run a marathon, climbed Mt. Everest, pushed through my greatest fear.

I started by assembling the trunk, opening the closet (a feat unto itself), pulling out his drawings and his lock of hair.  Then I gathered the tissue paper, the special boxes and cloth bags that I might put things in.

After this I light the candles and put rose oil, the heart healer, in the aromatherapy dispenser. I sat and in a way that is now familiar, I stopped the thoughts, listened keenly and leaned into the void.  If I am patient enough, disciplined enough, loose enough, I can always find comfort there and today was no different.

Then when the time was right I got up and began the work of choosing what to keep and what to give away.  With every stuffed animal, toy car and playmobil set that I touched my heart burst open.  Tears, tears and more tears.  So many tears.

I prepared most of his toys for giving away. But I  kept his bunny suit, the moulds of his hands made shortly after he died, some clothes (his pjs!), his shoes, his baby slippers, his drawings, and the other treasures of his life with us. I chose objects and toys that were evocative of who he was and what he went through. I kept his leg casts that allowed him to walk again. I kept the toy crown that he wore – our own prince of peace.

I feel like by packing Heiko’s things with such love I have braved a new frontier of leaving the scene of his death, the mound of his grave, to dare to walk forward with his soul. And when I think of the trunk I will remember the beauty there and the love with which I chose the pieces to keep.

Now I am exhausted. It was a threshold experience.

Somehow I feel like I have exhaled and have released something large and heavy from inside me.

Drop by drop the healing continues….

My heart is full of GRATITUDE for the love of Heiko and for the infinite mystery that holds all of us so close.

Gabrielle

p.s. If anyone reading this knows a good place for Heiko’s toys (so many beautiful stuffed animals, high quality dinosaurs and other plastic animals, costumes, books, etc.) and wouldn’t mind coming to get them.  I would be deeply appreciative.  Of course, if anyone wants something for themselves or their child(ren) they are more than welcome to take something.  It would feel good to know others have a piece of his memory.

Oh, to be human

I’ve been in the kitchen for most of the morning making cinnamon rolls for Don.  As I’ve been sifting, kneading, measuring, greasing, melting and chopping CBC has been playing Bach’s St. Matthew’s passion.  I have been only peripherally been engaged in Lent this year, but the music quickly seeped into my pores and before long I was along the road with the others watching as Jesus went by on his donkey, palm leaves waving as he sat listless from dehydration and physical assaults.

The chorus, which is the voice of the people, of you and me, is mournful and tender as they describe the scene before them.  Bach has them sing softly, almost dirge like, but then it shifts to a tender melancholy like they are looking at the scene from a distance.  I hear a self-reflective compassion for themselves that echoes Jesus’ words “Forgive them Father, they do not know what they do”.  They, I, we, see it all then: the betrayal, the witnessing (and not stopping it), the weakness, the persecution, the cruelty, the killing.  The Passion story is a vivid and raw depiction of the capacity for inhumanity – that each of us has within us.

As Richard Rohr writes: “Jesus became the cosmic Scapegoat who reveals our very worst and our very best to those who will gaze on the Crucified long enough.  Jesus became what humanity hates—to tell us to stop hating, to love that which we fear, and how wrong we can be about who is good and who is bad”.

I feel a revulsive kinship with the crowd: I myself am capable of great love but also selfish, self-centred, impatient bitterness.  I have capacity for nobility and graciousness but I am also full of a cold fury at the bitter loses I have endured.

I contemplated not believing in God last night (it is a choice after all isn’t it?).  Wouldn’t it be easier to think that there is nothing more than this?  That Heiko’s death was just a random event, not an event that is connected to my destiny. That I am not held up to a higher ideal of myself.  That I don’t need to keeping choosing forgiveness, goodness and self-love because Heiko’s spirit urges me to do so.  How much easier to sit on the couch and feel sorry for myself with no responsibility… But, why then, this inner urging to become whole, to transform my hurt into something good and meaningful?  I can only surmise yet again that this is the voice of God in me, the great unifier that calls us to truth.  Some bereaved create foundations and charities in their child’s name – for me, it seems that my memorial is this imperative that I cannot shake: it is to rise above my “sins”, as so piercingly depicted by the jeering crowd in the Passion story.

My sins are many when I am feeling afraid.  And betrayed.

Two thousand and eleven years have gone by since that scene on the donkey. Are we any different? Not on a geopolitical level (that is obvious) but inside each of us?  Are we more peaceful people now – again, not on the world stage, but in our own homes? When times get tough, especially then, do we act with graciousness and kindness? Or selfishly and with judgement, rash words and emotionally charged actions?

My step-father Bruce died last week, on Friday, April 8th at 3 p.m. to be exact.  My sisters and mother were with him as we had been for nine long, intense and sacred days.  As Bruce lay dying and fear gripped us (death was visiting yet again) was there not a temptation by some in my family to act on bitterness, to remember past betrayals and withhold love, to act out of fear for the self rather than the other? To be at times the bystander, at times Judas? I, myself, fought back unwelcome feelings of impatience, judgement and rocky emotions that threatened to lash out.

But there was love and grace and kindness too and Bruce died with his head covered in kisses, his palm imprinted by the shape of many hands, and veils of tears dropped on his chest like rain.  For moments, we “sinful” humans were nothing but love and Bruce, my burly, gruff, absentee, alchoholic father was stripped to his essence – sweetness, generousity and love.  “I love you girls”, he whispered with his eyes closed and his face pulled taunt by the stroke and the tumour, words never spoken before, hung like jewels in the room as we gripped his hands even harder.

In the Christian story, Christ is risen. His death is redeemed with the resurrection. This part of the Passion story gives us hope, but, what of us left here to struggle on?  Me? I experience the co-existence of good and evil inside me, each beseeching me from one minute to the next.  During Bruce’s dying, I worked hard to be a peacemaker.  While I wasn’t perfect, I was conscious of the need to be gracious, to be kind and to be patient and for the most part this is how I conducted myself. The cinnamon buns in the oven though? A little sweet gift for Don to make up for my actions that sunk me shortly after returning from Bruce’s dying.

Full of Grace one week and full of self-involved fury the next – oh to be human.

River of Love

It is Friday morning, 8:30 a.m.  Normally, I’d either have been at work for an hour, or if it was a late start day I’d be scrambling to get there.  This morning though, I find myself sitting in the kitchen staring at Heiko’s orchid.  You remember the one – I posted a photograph of it here a couple of months ago.  Before I took the photograph, I had watched it grow and bloom, petal by petal, blossom by blossom into exquisite beauty.  For months we were gifted with its delicate yet provocative presense. In March our house was overtaken by  a virile  amarylis – a scarlet beauty with eight trumpeting blooms – petals as luxurious as silk, white stamens hooded by crimson.  Heiko’s orchid waited patiently in the background as the cursing energy in the bulb released itself into glory.

Today, the amarylis is but a pair of stumpy stocks with rather plain leaves growing between.  I have moved it from the limelight as it prepares itself for a spring time transplant to the garden.

And the orchid reveals itself again – now an old woman, its graceful stem holding its fragile blossoms as if by gossamer threads.  The once thick and brilliantly white petals have withered, closing protectively, bashfully around the pink centre.  Their nodding heads as delicate as a butterfly wing or a sun-bleached sea shell.  The orchid is passing away.

As I write this my step-father Bruce is lying in a hospital bed with a brain tumour.  His once larger than life self is thinning, he legs like weathered logs on the forest floor.  When we visit he holds our hands and says “I love you girls”.  Another day he whispers “I am scared”.  Death is in the room.  In quiet moments I strain to hear what it wants to say to us, to Bruce.

On another visit Don and I were staying at my sister’s cabin in between hospital visits.  Don was out for a walk and I was washing up from breakfast.  Out the window I saw a woman emerging from the path through the forest.  Rosie, the neighbour – a woman in her sixties with fine blond hair and a round face blushed from the morning wind, large, black rainboots squishing through the early March mud.  I open the door and her beautiful face breaks into a smile.  “Hi Rosie!,” I say and we begin to talk.  “How is your step-father?” she asks.  “He’s dying.” I say.  “My 18 year old cat is dying” she replies.  We both exchange condolences. “It is a process,” she continues.  “First he stopped eating, now he is not getting up.”

I think a lot about the wisdom of understanding death as a process.  A movement from one state of being to another.  A threshold crossing.  How much we want it to be different – this ultimate vulnerablity – to lose or to be lost.

“I am scared,” Bruce says and his sons and daughters gathered around his bed look at each other in panic.  What can we say that will calm his fear?  Words are muttered but hands instinctively touch him.  “We are too,” we seem to say as flesh touches flesh.

Now though, in the quiet of the morning, I know there is nothing to be afraid of.  There is a river that runs through all our lives, we are the river, we sail on the river.  It is a river of Love and it holds you and it holds me.  It holds Bruce and Rosie’s beloved cat.  It holds my friend who recovers from a mascetomy and my friend who courageously ran from an abusive husband.  It holds Emily who has a terminal illness and has been bed-ridden for most more than half of her eighteen years.  It holds each and every one of us.  It holds Heiko who is just further up the river, a spirit of joy and freedom calling us to the same.

A necessary falling

This morning my friend will go to a hospital and have a mascetomy.  Last night I got the news that my step-father who has been in the hospital for six weeks because of a stroke actually has a brain tumour.  Nuclear reactors in Japan are being rigged up with steel rails to hold their toxic innards from blowing apart.  At work there are home-grown toxins that are leaching into my psyche making me wish I could put up yellow-tape and a sign that reads “Do not Enter Sign – Danger”.  And all the while I walk through life side-by-side with my spirit child.  Loss and Grace my constant companions.

My sleep has become disturbed.  I have had my first real panic attack – a startling experience of my lungs shrivelling with an imagined fear.  My breathe became shallow and my chest squeezed in on itself, compressing the terror that turns by a dark alchemy had turned into a corrosive chemical running in my veins.

This too is part of the experience of losing Heiko.  Three years and a few months on from that terrible night of his death and the world has not stopped.  I continue to be shocked by the appalling vulnerability of the human race – but why?  Has there ever been a time when illness, death, natural disasters and political warfare has not been part of the landscape?  It is happiness that baffles me now.  Intact families, 50th wedding anniversaries, vacations, and retirement plans these are the things of real wonder.

I feel like the wizened old woman sitting on the side of the road.  “Ah life” she says in one breathe.  “Ah death”, she says in another.  But then fear, nay terror, grows up inside me like an awful snake and I literally tremble at the spectre of death that I see all around me.

I am being called to cross the threshold again, again and again – the threshold from fear to love.  It is as though I will be brought to fire over and over until the dross of superficial living is burned away.  Deep is calling deep.

Below is a quote from Richard Rohr, a fransican monk, that I have been reading lately.  He is talking here about how each of us is on a journey to becoming fully human.  Paradoxically this means getting smaller, not bigger.  When I feel fear it is my resistance to this reality.  I have miscalculated something important – growing up is not about getting more stable, it is about stripping away.  To become fully human we must let go of everything, even and especially the illusion of the separate self.  I must get to work now but here is what he writes:

When you think you have arrived, soon you will have to face your smallness.  You will have to admit that you have miscalculated something important.  You’ve taken yourself much too seriously, or you were simply wrong.  This back-and-forth of grace and sin is the living dynamic of the spiritual journey.  In the fourth century, St. Gregory of Nyssa said that “sin is a refusal to keep growing up.”  This necessary falling becomes the trapdoor through which you can finally get out of yourself—and through which God can get further in. The economy of merit is static, small, and self-serving, searching for temporary gains.  But grace is a dynamic movement, led by God and disconnected from apparent success.  To move from one to the other is the first necessary conversion, then grace will lead you from there.  I promise you that. Adapted from On the Threshold of Transformation, p. 253, day 244. Used without permission of Loyola Press.

Gabrielle