Tag: Death

In Memoriam

The Truth is I can only hold onto Truth
for the length of a deep breath of
awe. A glimmer of light, ten beats of
my heart before reality fills the space
with emotions, needs, dreams,
making it difficult to savor  the
delicious freedom of Truth.

Yesterday, shrouded in the pain of absence I
searched for an answer – how to stop
an unbearable ache not found in my mind
or seared in my heart, rather embedded
in every disposition of my spirit, pulse
of my body, charge of my brain. I
knew she was not longer here.

My red and white soft furred border-collie,
with the freckles and snout of a brittany,
gifted with unending love, bearer of divine
gift to everyone who stopped long enough
to catch her eye. A single treat ensured life-
long devotion. Her life not nearly long enough.
We released her from suffering with a
great desire that she might truly run free.

Today I encountered in a fleeting moment
acceptance of her life as temporal presence,
a gift wrapped in an eternal love.
In that moment of oneness I knew
she marked my being with a love
that will never diminish, that cannot
be taken away, a gift for all eternity.

Now there abides in my reality absence
and presence, pain and healing.
The truth is that loss is only bearable
when I remember that the essence
of a life endures forever in love.

Kate

 

Love the Day

From the sky that has hung close to my world these days, a seemingly endless interchange between heavy mist, rain, and grey punctuates the end of one year and the beginning of another. The sun is a promise – according to the meteorologist, a near promise. As I sit at my desk to reflect on this day, I see through my “I spy” window a pale teal balloon bouncing up the hill, apparently deciding which way the wind blows – a dash of color against the bleakness of wet pavement. I wonder who let go of the string and was it a celebratory moment. Are they sad or happy when the balloon freely floats away? I find myself hoping that a dried twig or sharp post does not burst its bubble – at least not yet. I need the lift, the bounce. I need to love this moment as much as the anticipated rose warmth of a sunny Sunday. When I push open the front door that encloses me in silence, I hear a chorus of birdsong. Among the singers there is one who trills the notes of gladness. I want to delight in the damp as much as she does.

I ended one year and began the next reading The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs, a gift. The subtitle is “A Memoir of Living and Dying”. Thirty-seven years old, mother of two, great, great, great granddaughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Her life is immersed in family. She and her mother are living and dying together. Riggs draws on her kinship with the 19th century poet, essayist, and philosopher as the landscape of her life radically transforms. Stage one breast cancer to stage four. As her story draws to an end she muses on the paradox of friends whose lives are winding up – anticipating births, marriages, milestones- just as she is learning how to wind down. She writes to chronicle this time for her two young sons, that they will experience her love, and in the process opens up a world of understanding for readers. Rigg’s memoir gifted me with a new appreciation of what it means to love the present. She writes: “My voice: I have to love these days the same as any other…They are promises. They are the only way to walk from one night to the other.”1 And she shows the way. Riggs points to the influence of Emerson’s journals2. His passion for nature and transcendence emerges in Rigg’s sense of discovering what she refers to as the magic in the natural world, the everyday world. Riggs died February 26, 2017 just before the sun rose in the winter sky.

“Write it in your heart that every day is the best day of the year.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

1Nina Riggs, Bright Hour: Memoir of Living and Dying, p.306

2“Before I Go: A Mother’s Hopeful Words About Life in the Waning Moments”, an interview published in the Washington Post January 1, 2017,

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A Picture of Paschal Mystery

A quarter of a century has passed since a wise woman counseled me. “Pay attention to what happens in nature, as it often speaks to what is happening in your life.” A large white pine framed the house I cherished and its limbs embraced the lives of the family I loved. One sleepless, troubled night, I watched the tree silently topple, completely uprooted in the winds of a storm. That was the year of my great loss. I have spent decades observing nature, unfolding the revelation of signs and seasons, reading the messages that water, rocks, birds, flowers, mountain paths leave in place. From the time of my childhood, I have looked for signs of hope, strength, comfort, faith, and belonging, spending hours searching for a four leaf clover, or standing on the porch looking for a rainbow after the storm.  I have picked wildflowers for my mother as a sign of love, combed the shoreline at low tide for a sand dollar – the Holy Ghost shell – lying unbroken in the wet sand.

Several years ago as I climbed to the top of Stone Mountain, everything around me was alive with change. I used my camera to capture images that spoke of the great mysteries of life. Pictures often evoked wonder and creative imagination in my high school theology classes. At the center of my own faith pondering was the mystery of suffering, death, and resurrection. I had been trying to make sense of this experience since the death of my husband when I was too young and our four children too innocent to face such a devastating loss. That early spring morning on the side of the trail in layers of browned leaves, I saw the trunk of a tree, felled by a storm, a small limb creating a cross and the flower of a tulip magnolia lying in its center. Small green leafed plants had just begun to emerge. There in my path nature created an image of life’s paschal mystery, the ongoing reality of suffering, death, and resurrection. I snapped the picture and placed it into a folder of nature’s portrayals, filed but not forgotten.

This year I completed a spiritual memoir exploring my experience of discovering great love, profound loss, and new life, all the while making meaning of this mystery of suffering, death, and resurrection. Rebirthing Faith: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Resurrection can be purchased on Amazon Books. For those who experience your own search for truth and goodness in the face of suffering, I hope my story will provide a mirror for reflection. For those who continue to seek answers to the mysteries of living, I hope you too find meaning in nature’s ongoing revelation.

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