Your Daily Miracle: Vocation

My dear,

 

I should have written something to read at your memorial service.  I didn’t know where to start.  I didn’t know what to say.  Martin did a bang-up job, of course.  It was really beautiful.  I hope somehow that you heard it, that you saw everyone there who loved you, who each reflected a different facet of your good life.  Listen, I didn’t speak much, but I brought flowers: two huge bouquets of roses, one red, and one red and white.  A long beautiful garland of greens, three flameless candles, since it was in a classroom, an arrangement of roses and greens and reds, four poinsettias.  Heather and Luke and Merry helped me carry them in and put them around the room.  It was beautiful.  You would have loved to be there with the flowers and everyone who loved you in this place, and even Pickle, all decked out in a red and white collar.  You would have laughed at how Pickle at her memorial rose.  Chomped right through it, apparently.  I wouldn’t let myself cry during the slideshow because I knew I had to speak, to read part of your baptismal testimony, but Elspeth sobbed all the way through and Merry cried and Bea, who doesn’t know what to do with it all, sat on my lap.  And Martin cried a little, and he is not much of a crier.  And I stood up and sang the first verse of Amazing Grace, and you would have liked that, and you would have liked lingering afterward, and you would have liked to go for Thai food afterward.  I recognized only a few faces in the crowd—how diverse and rich your life was—how it touched so many people.  You were something, girl.  I was always so proud of you. 

 

But the darkness was too much for us to bear or cure—and it was too much for you to bear—and it was too deep for us to even understand. It coexisted with your joy and your creative spirit, and I wish it could have been vanquished.  I am so sorry that it was there.  I am so sorry we couldn’t manage to touch it much, even though we tried.

 

Today is your funeral.  I won’t be there, since it’s back in Pennsylvania.  Martin read this great quote from Norman McClean’s book, about how the people we love best are the people who allude us in the end.  Your life outside of us was so full and so rich, and we didn’t know any of it, not really, even though you told us stories sometimes.  We knew you well but in the end we realized we didn’t know you as well as we thought; the people we love best allude us in the end.

 

That last week you said you were reading My Antonia.  You pulled a line from the book that I had never paid much attention to, that goes something like this, after Mr. Shermida has killed himself: “But Mr. Shermida was not a greedy or selfish man.  He was just so unhappy that he couldn’t live anymore.”  You loved that line.  You were struck by how simple and compassionate it was.  You mentioned it again on Thanksgiving, and we talked about how Willa Cather says things so simply and compassionately.  I know that is true of you.  You were not a selfish or ugly person.  You were beautiful and loving and endlessly generous.  You were just so unhappy that you could not live anymore. 

After the memorial service, I felt empty, like a sponge that is overfull, that cannot absorb anymore.  I thought I would feel release and closure.  Mostly I wanted it all undone.  I wanted you to be alive again, and the last week just a nightmare that was finally over.

On the way home I looked up at a house in Queen Anne all sparkling and warm with Christmas lights and I allowed myself to imagine, just briefly, that it was ten years later and you were up there, with your husband, maybe even with a kid, and we were going to stop to say hello and to hug you and laugh and make merry, just as we should have.  Ten years.  You could have made it ten more years and then more after that, and you would have been a powerhouse if you had been able to make it and heal.  Everyone agrees that you were brilliant, and remarkable, and funny, and honest, and full of life.  Full of joy.  It was there in you coexisting with the darkness.  I wish it had won on this side of life.  I wish it had been able to edge out the darkness.  I am not reconciled, nor perhaps will I or should I ever be.

 

I have imagined you in other places; in the train that passed on its way up the coast; in the seagull that flew alongside the ferry on our way home yesterday. I want to believe you are still travelling, sister, that you are making that trip that you planned and outlined on the map.

 

You are still becoming; of this, I have no doubt.  You are there becoming in God’s world, the world that is not so far beyond this one.  You are potting and writing poetry and helping to set and clear the table.  You are going on walks in the woods that you loved so much, and you are writing in tiny meticulous lines in your journal, about all that you are learning about yourself and the world.  I wish I could talk to you about it.  You are mysteriously and wonderfully okay, I know it.  You are free now, but I like to believe that you are still working, still nose to the grindstone, working in freedom to discover every day—or however time works there—who you are, how much you are loved.

 

But we miss you.

 

It is hard not to feel the darkness now, the darkness you left behind.  I told Elspeth that you would not want us to think of your death, but that all you were to us in life: you drinking tea with us, making wonderful things, curled up in a chair, writing and reading; working in the garden alongside us, all the quiet, lovely things you did, all the beautiful things you were.

 

So what do I say to you now, dear?  Goodbye.  I love you.  Please understand how much we loved you.  The only one who is enough is God, and we are just broken vessels.  I am sorry you were alone that last night, and I am sorry we didn’t talk more that day, that I didn’t sit beside you and stroke your hair and comfort you.  Humans love imperfectly, and that is what we are.  None of us are without regrets, though I know you would not have it so.  And I know it’s not about me, or about anyone else, but about you, and how deeply sad and ill you were.  I just wish you could have gotten better.  We believed you could.  I wish you were not gone.


A couple weeks before you died, you told me this was one of your favorite verses, from 2nd Corinthians:  So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.  For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

What is the eternal weight of glory?  And how many unseen things do you see now?  I told you, you are loved with an everlasting love.  And you are.  Rest in it now.  Find peace in it now. 

What do I say now?  I am sorry.  I love you.  I miss you.  We all miss you.  All of us.

I begin the work of reframing things.  Of thinking of you in life and not in death.  Of letting you go.  It is hard to let you go.

 

What did Amy write on your Facebook memorial?  Now go high up on that mountain, sister.  Now sing high up on that mountain.