All Souls Day (Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed) ‘23
In February of this year I took you to the emergency room. You were in septic shock. The doctors never figured out why. You brushed up against the sting of death and had experiences lying in your bed next to me in the ICU that I was oblivious to. Some were comforting, some mysterious, some not comforting.
When we first arrived at the ER, we had two kiddos with us. I knew it was serious; you could barely walk with abdominal pain. But I didn’t realize death was so close. When we first arrived at the hospital, while you were lying on the E.R. bed near the veil (oblivious to me), the kids were antsy so I left the room and took them to the vending machine.
Before this experience, I had romanticized death. In my imagination, I saw us old and very ready with months, maybe years to prepare for the transition, hearts full with a brimming, courageously lived long life behind us. But, is this how it really happens? In the midst of the ordinary, while you wonder what your kids will have for dinner, your partner slips away? While the kids just want to go somewhere more fun, their mom’s mortality quivers in the night on a knife’s edge; a common occurrence of a life, like going to the grocery store, or getting your hair cut. And you come back from the vending machine to your partner’s lifeless body like Rebecca in the TV show “This is Us?”
Beloved of my life,
the warmth of your skin in the morning
as we lie in bed
and as the slanting sun breaks through a small opening in the window curtain
will always be ordinary but never old.
The smooth movements of your body
and the way your lips feel against my own smile and my own tears
will always be ordinary but never old.
I wish I could say that I sensed the air in the room change or that I heard angels whisper as we lived in the ICU for some days. But I was just reading my book and underlining interesting passages as you lay next to me thinking, “so this is how it feels to die.” Even then I hadn’t yet heard the word “sepsis” or “death” or anything that might put me on more of an edge than I already was. The hospital staff, apparently, thought it better to not bombard me with dooming information in the context of an emergency. Reality always seemed to be catching up to me a day or two later when we were there. But I wished they would have told me everything.
Beloved of my life,
I wish they would have told me everything,
for what am I when I’m oblivious to your suffering?
Do we all die alone?
Was it only yours to bear anyway?
Could I have held your face as the darkness crept in
and whispered over and over, “Do not be afraid?”
Is our connection not for this very hope?
Or does the ordinary sweep us away with its indifference to meaning, synthesis, connection?
Do we hope more for each moment than is possible?
We are fighting again. There is a wound in me bleeding and terrified. Beneath my accusations and judgments all I want is to feel your soft skin in the morning and the curve of your lips on my face and the whisper of your voice saying “I'm here.”
I want you to bend around my need. You want to live fully and joyously as your own. I want that, too. But an anxious lurch from the depths of my gut strangles the ventricles of my beating heart: “If I loosen my grip, will you still be here? Or will you love a life without me?”
Is our connection to each other forged in the fires of our terrors? In the end, can either of us say, “I’m here” when the darkness coming to claim our lives settles in? Do we live in the ordinary perched in each other’s arms, only to be yanked away the moment we need it the most? Do we live in oblivion to our “knife’s edges?”
Beloved of my life
I have hope
that when I’m able to touch the softness of your warm body in the slanted-sun-mornings
I won’t use you to ease my pain
but I will trust that every bit of love you’ve freely offered will remain with me forever and will come to me out of the depths of my own being.
And I have hope
that when you’re unable to touch the softness of my voice at the hour of reckoning you will trust that it has always remained and that it is there in the quiet of your heart.
I have hope that our ordinary life together will be more than enough.
These moments might be ordinary, but they are never old. In their midst we die. But in their midst we also live and move and feel connected and make love and take out the trash and find ways to live with our own pain and find ways to live with each other’s pain.
All souls beyond the veil who have ever touched us or who we have ever touched will find us here in these ordinary days.
Shannon and I are leading a marriage retreat, “Sacred Partnership” in Atlanta in February of 2024!
‘Sacred Partnership’ explores the contemplative dimensions, joys, and demands of committed romantic partnerships in a weekend retreat setting. Taking Ignatius’ Principle and Foundation from his Spiritual Exercises as a guide, the retreat will explore topics such as interdependency and codependency, the life-death-resurrection cycles of partnerships, and approaching conflict with curiosity. There will be plenty of time for both individual and couples processing. All genders and partnerships are welcomed.
Register and check out the venue here.
Feel free to respond and let me know how things are for you. I really do enjoy keeping up with you.
Blessings