Autumn Equinox

Saturday September 22 2012 Autumn Equinox Job 40 15 "Look at Behemoth, which I made just as I made you; it eats grass like an ox. Its strength is in its loins, and its power in the muscles of its belly... Its bones are tubes of bronze, its limbs like bars of iron. It is the first of the great acts of God- only its Maker can approach it with the sword. Is this the passage William Blake had in mind when he wrote “Tyger, Tyger”? And yet this is the God who has promised us an everlasting mercy. Yet I do not know anything that is everlasting. Not even memory is everlasting. Not even dust or the terra-cotta army men buried alive in China or books, set out like little toy ships at sea, carrying a persons words and thoughts from the afterlife, making it okay to die. (A person leaves behind something--a book--an idea--a photo--a letter--a child--does that person really die when the last person who remembers them dies?) Certainly of all the things that surround me, tangible and intangible, I am the least everlasting. The bowl that holds the apples we picked last week will, under reasonable circumstances, outlive me. It may venture to a different state; be passed down to my children, end up in a thrift store. It could see the invention of silent, waste-less automobiles and the extinction of the telephone. The apples in the bowl, ripe and smelling faintly of cider, probably will not outlive me. But the branches, the seeds, the flowers fruit and stem, the entire fecundate cycle of life in that one apple true will outlive me. My tea pot, which I use every day and never thank, will almost certainly outlive me. It will never need a root canal or see the physical therapist. It will never get sleep apnea or glasses, or arthritis. I have become so uncomfortably conscience of my own mortality I am sometimes surprised to find myself still living. My mailbox, made of punched tin, will sit and sit, wordlessly ferrying out my letters and opening its mouth to receive them back. It sits now, its red flag raised like an omen--not saying a word about the contents of the letter in its mouth, holding it still between its teeth like a baby hiding candy, not sucking, not chewing. Hoping not to be found out. It will not disclose what he wrote, or didn’t write, to his brother: about losing dad, and how the family seems without a guide at the helm now, how we can’t seem to find our way to say nice things to each other like we did before. Even that letter could outlive me. But if I am not here, am not around to hear it read again, what does it matter if the letter outlives me? Does a living memory of me effect me once I am dead? Can the dead, from where they are now, see and feel for us? If they are, as NT Wright believes, not yet in the new heaven and new earth (the last and final resurrection) what can they witness of us? Or do they care to witness? Have they already forgotten this “great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us?” Will, as Marilyn Robinson suggests, this world be Troy, and all that has passed here the ballad they sing in the streets? Or will it be a something fainter than a memory, like a dream you wake from and only vaguely recall--contours, maybe, and a feeling or a color--a pattern brings back something --or a face makes you think maybe you remember--but then you put it behind you as the day broadens with its realities (make the coffee) and demands (check email), the tangible solid things at hand put this other shapeless dream out of your mind--will that be all?

on shoes and dying

But what I keep thinking about, when I have time to think, is how incredibly fast a life can be spent. You spend the first few years clearing your vision, learning about your family and surroundings. You spend the next ten years or so striving against the forces around you, making your own way, head-strong and determined. Thinking you will live forever and have all the time in world and not seeing any end in sight at all. Intoxicated by youth. So free you could almost imagine you are a bird and will take off at any moment. Then the tethers come one by one: marriage, which turns out to be more of a stake in the ground holding you to one place than a launch pad. Children, who turn out to be more stakes in the ground rather than elements of self-definition. Then you are 32, and stare death straight in the face: it is sitting in your living room with that terrible death rattle, not blinking, not even opening its eyes, as quiet and demure as a church mouse. It is not the storm or emergency or accident of your nightmares, but serene and calm as the still small voice, taking the life of your father-in-law, hour by hour, without reason or explanation. And then there it is: the huge ragged gaping hole in your family. Mother, sisters, brothers, cousins. Father still in all the pictures. And his shoes now, scattered all around the house: cowboy boots by the bedside stand (why? but I don’t have the heart to move them), Keens by the backdoor, runners too. He had some beautiful shoes--when you wore the leather ones to church Sunday and offered me the chalice I looked down and saw those shoes and could barely lift my face to receive. Joel’s shoes are in our house, but he is not. His shoes have outlived him. There is a certain amount of comfort in having these physical reminders: they are heavy and feel substantial. They still smell of Papa, and have the impression of his feet marked on their sole. Shoes are not like impersonal undershirts, that you buy in bulk and throw in the wash every day. Nor are they too personal like underwear (what do you do with someone’s underwear when they die? Bundle it up and throw it in the trash? That seems somehow thoughtless...) But they are oddly intimate: here are these shoes, waiting patiently for someone to inhabit them. When I see the old leather cowboy boots sitting so lively by the bed, I can almost see the legs and torso of that dear person too--and it hurts to have such a clear picture of someone I will never see again. Sometimes it feels like the shoes hang around as cruel reminders that Joel is gone and not coming back, and yet they--a piece of leather and rubber stitched by a machine--get to hang around for the next 50 years to watch our children grow up. I will spend the next eighteen years, Lord willing, nurturing my children. Right now that is almost all I do: schooling them during the day, music lessons at night, reading before bed, brushing hair and teeth and throwing clothes in the washer--then preparing to do it all again in the morning. They grow so slowly it seems it will always be the same--but I have learned this summer that nothing ever stays the same. Last summer I watched the kids go out in the sailboat with Joel and Lindy; I took a few pictures, it was so pretty watching the flat water and the flapping sail, the small blue boat make turns in the cove. Lindy sold the sailboat this week. And she needed to; it is good she did. But I would be lying if I didn’t say there was a pang in my heart when I heard it was gone, that tangible reminder of their dreams together, that proof that Joel was there out on the cove. And I had no idea last year--could not have imagined that would be the kids last ride with Papa. Just as I’ve learned to find my way in the world, I now see death just over the hill. It seems not far off--make it through 30’s, then middle age--my body creaking more, graying. My parents going first, then following. How am I supposed to live when it seems you can no more hang on to a moment here than you can hold water in your hand? How can I go about my days so that when I look back (in the blink of an eye) I will be pleased? Or at least resigned? I know the Westminster Catechism. And I am in no mood to argue theology. But in practical terms, what does it mean to live in such a way that when you come to die, you are ready? And are you ever ready to let go of the people you love? My grandparents, much more experienced in this, seem much more ready to let go than I am. Have they not shared this secret because it cannot be shared--it has been to learned by each person individually, and can no more be communicated than a piece of music can be parsed out and exegeted?