It is almost time.....

to close this blog.

I feel it.

The parts of this story that I don't mind making public are dwindling to a trickle.  The relief in being able to bear it, to know we have survived a year without him and most likely will another is a strengthening knowing.

I have a few posts I have started but never finished left in the queue.  I think I will tend to them in the next weeks or so and then find a way to consider this place sealed.

A dear friend sent me this reading in honor of the one year mark:

"Easter is a feast, and it is as the feast of freedom that it is celebrated.  For with Easter begins the laughter of the redeemed, the dance of the liberated and the creative play of fantasy.  From time immemorial Easter hymns have celebrated the victory of life by laughing at death, mocking at hell, and ridiculing the mighty ones who spread fear and terror around them.

Easter is the feast of freedom.  It makes the life which it touches a festal life.  'The risen Christ makes life a perpetual feast,' said Athanasius.  But can the whole of life really be a feast?  Even life's dark side - death, guilt, senseless suffering?  I think it can.  Once we realize that the giver of this feast is the outcast suffering, crucified Son of Man, from  Nazareth, then every 'no' is absorbed into this profound 'yes,' and is swallowed up in its victory.

Easter is at one and the same time God's protest against death, and the feast of freedom from death.  Anyone who fails to hold these two things together has failed to understand teh resurrection of the Christ who was crucified.  Resistance is the protest of those who hope, and the hope is the feast of the people who resist. "  Jurgen Moltmann

from steve's book of hours

I opened our book of hours to read this morning, this dawn before the anniversary dawn and found these words in steve's handwriting, and these phrases underlined.

"Whom have i in heaven but you?  and having you I desire nothing on earth."

I remember this prayer. writes Steve.


And then the prayer is marked:  "Pour your grace into my heart, O Lord, that I who have known the incarnation of your Son Jesus Christ, announced by an angel to the  Virgin Mary, may by his cross and passion be brought to the glory of his resurrection; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

a poem by Lynn Ungar

Picking Blackberries

What will you give for a taste
of summer's last sweetness?
This jewelled crown of thorns
rings every path and highway,

No use pretending  you
have not heard sweet tempatation
chatter through the vines - -
taste, eat

Put your hand in the thorns
and come out dripping juice,
king's purple spread from
hand to tongue.

Reach gently,
or you will find your thumb
full of thorns, and your pail
filled with unbearable tartness.

Reach gently, but reach
The sweetest berries hide
toward the inside, hidden
beneath leaves barbed like critics.

Balance, if you must, precariously,
held by will and longing form
the net of thorns.  If you want
the ripest fruit, relinquish safety.

Guard yourself only with these words:
Peril, abundance
whispered like a prayer
through purple lips.

calm distress

Many of my friends and most of my children lean towards  agnosticism much of the time.  I too have my moments of detachment from the idea of God or invisible things.  When i would rush to Steve with the latest surge of familial questioning he would simply answer, 'It's all true, Melanie, it really is.'  I knew it was for me, but Steve had the particular capacity of believing it for others too.  Maybe that is what a pastor really is, really does.

My good friend sent me this hymn this morning.
Another one for us to live by:

If death my friend and me divide,
Thou dost not, Lord, my sorrow chide,
Or frown my tears to see;
Restrained from passionate excess,
Thou bidst me mourn in calm distress
For them that rest in Thee.

I feel a strong immortal hope,
Which bears my mournful spirit up
Beneath its mountain load;
Redeemed from death, and grief, and pain,
I soon shall find my friend again
Within the arms of God.

Pass a few fleeting moments more
And death the blessing shall restore
Which death has snatched away;
For me Thou wilt the summons send,
And give me back my parted friend
In that eternal day. 



charles wesley

my mother always says....

that your children start where you end.  I already see how true this is, how much more my children are than I am, but containing seeds of things i had hoped I would be in them.  It is a huge relief.  A sense of rest follows when you see that your children can write accomplished research papers, travel the world and make meaningful friendships, endure hardship with grace and wisdom, be open to others in true relationship.

I remember when Josh and AbbyWesterhold came over on a Sunday afternoon,  early in the knowledge of cancer time.  When we crawled into bed that night after their visit Steve was just so full and animated.  He said what a relief it was that they were doing what they were doing - that a part of him could rest because Josh would be giving his life for urban renewal, which was such a huge passion of Steve's.  I later imagined how that is true of all of his closest friends, doing work or making music or caring for others in ways that Steve would if he was in their place.  I imagine his delight in hearing about it all.

Do not all of us who he loved bear seeds of ideas he loved inside of us?

Margaret has just returned from Italy, after three months away.  Mary danced last weekend, bearing a wounded toe without a hint of complaint or evidence.  Madeleine graduated from college yesterday in a picture perfect atmosphere of small college elegance.  Now we enter the week of remembering.  Loving Steve and bearing his absence is the work of every day.  He is the unseen absence that is larger than any of our presences.  But there is something mysterious in seeing the children express him in their particular loves, sadnesses, and passions.  I imagine him now, how he would be experiencing the children and their red letter moments.  And my own sense of all these things is expanded.

an observation

Men go to anger to disguise their grief.

And if you will bear it,

you will get under it,

and hear the grieving. 

(a thought found in a document....) 

nourished hope

Madeleine is graduating from college this month.

I attended an honors event for her this week - the kind of event that can be scripted, predictable and attending it can seem obligatory.  But the choir sang one piece - Donne's Twin Compasses - a signature poem in our family's reserve,
and the event became gilded and was comforting.


A VALEDICTION FORBIDDING MOURNING.
by John Donne

AS virtuous men pass mildly away, 
    And whisper to their souls to go, 
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
    "Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."                     

So let us melt, and make no noise,                                       5
    No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ;
'Twere profanation of our joys 
    To tell the laity our love. 

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ;
    Men reckon what it did, and meant ;                              10
But trepidation of the spheres, 
    Though greater far, is innocent. 

Dull sublunary lovers' love 
    —Whose soul is sense—cannot admit 
Of absence, 'cause it doth remove                                     15
    The thing which elemented it. 

But we by a love so much refined,
    That ourselves know not what it is, 
Inter-assurèd of the mind, 
    Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss.                           20

Our two souls therefore, which are one, 
    Though I must go, endure not yet 
A breach, but an expansion, 
    Like gold to aery thinness beat. 

If they be two, they are two so                                          25
    As stiff twin compasses are two ; 
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show 
    To move, but doth, if th' other do. 

And though it in the centre sit, 
    Yet, when the other far doth roam,                                30
It leans, and hearkens after it, 
    And grows erect, as that comes home. 

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
    Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,                                    35
    And makes me end where I begun.