she would adjust and find meaning in her loss—meaning and then acceptance and then joy—and we all wanted this because, let’s face it, it’s soinspiring and such a relief when people find a way to bear the unbearable, when you can organize things so that a small miracle appears to have taken place and that love has once again turned out to be bigger than fear and death and blindness. But this woman would have none of it. She went into a deep depression and eventually left the church. The elders took communion to her in the afternoon on the first Sunday of the month—homemade bread and grape juice for the sacrament, and some bread to toast later—but she wouldn’t be part of our community anymore. It must have been too annoying to have everyone trying to manipulate her into being a better sport than she was capable of being. I always thought that was heroic of her: it speaks of such integrity to refuse to pretend that you’re doing well just to help other people deal with the fact that sometimes we face an impossible loss.
Still, on Ash Wednesday I sang, of faith and love, of repentance. We ripped cloth rags in half to symbolize our repentance, our willingness to tear up the old pattern and await the new; we dipped our own fingers in ash and daubed it on our foreheads. I prayed for the stamina to bear mystery and stillness. I prayed for Sam to be able to trust me and for me to be able to trust me again, too.
When I got home, Sam was already asleep. Brian had put him to bed. I wanted to wake him up and tell him that it was okay that he wouldn’t be who I tried to get him to be, that it was okay that he didn’t cooperate with me all the time—that ashes don’t, old people don’t, so why should little boys? But I let him alone. He was in my bed when I woke up the next morning, over to the left, flat and still as a shaft of light. I watched him sleep. His mouth was open. Just the last few weeks, he had grown two huge front teeth, big and white as Chiclets. He was snoring loudly for such a small boy.
I thought again about that photo of the Mennonites. In the faces of those fifteen children, reflected on their dining room table, you could see the fragile ferocity of their bond: it looked like a big wind could come and blow away this field of people on the shiny polished table. And the light shining around them where they stood was so evanescent you felt that if the reflections were to go, the children would be gone, too.
More than anything else on earth, I do not want Sam ever to blow away, but you know what? He will. His ashes will stick to the fingers of someone who loves him. Maybe his ashes will blow that person into a place where things do not come outright, where things cannot be boxed up or spackled back together, but where somehow that person can see, with whatever joy can be mustered, the four or five new leaves on the formerly barren tree.
“Mom?” he called out suddenly in his sleep.
“Yes,” I whispered, “here I am,” and he slung his arm toward the sound of my voice, out across my shoulders.
This Dog’s Life
H aving a good dog is the closest some of us are ever going to come to knowing the direct love of a mother or God, so it’s no wonder it knocked the stuffing out of me and Sam when Sadie died. I promised Sam we’d get another puppy someday, but secretly decided not to ever get another dog. I didn’t want to hurt that much again, if I could possibly avoid it. And I didn’t want my child’s heart and life to break like that again. But you don’t always get what you want; you get what you get. This is a real problem for me. You want to protect your child from pain, and what you get instead is life, and grace. And while theologians insist that grace is freely given, the truth is thatsometimes you pay through the nose. And you can’t pay your child’s way.
We should never have gotten a dog to begin with—they all die. I know this sounds sort of negative and bitter, but it happens
Still, on Ash Wednesday I sang, of faith and love, of repentance. We ripped cloth rags in half to symbolize our repentance, our willingness to tear up the old pattern and await the new; we dipped our own fingers in ash and daubed it on our foreheads. I prayed for the stamina to bear mystery and stillness. I prayed for Sam to be able to trust me and for me to be able to trust me again, too.
When I got home, Sam was already asleep. Brian had put him to bed. I wanted to wake him up and tell him that it was okay that he wouldn’t be who I tried to get him to be, that it was okay that he didn’t cooperate with me all the time—that ashes don’t, old people don’t, so why should little boys? But I let him alone. He was in my bed when I woke up the next morning, over to the left, flat and still as a shaft of light. I watched him sleep. His mouth was open. Just the last few weeks, he had grown two huge front teeth, big and white as Chiclets. He was snoring loudly for such a small boy.
I thought again about that photo of the Mennonites. In the faces of those fifteen children, reflected on their dining room table, you could see the fragile ferocity of their bond: it looked like a big wind could come and blow away this field of people on the shiny polished table. And the light shining around them where they stood was so evanescent you felt that if the reflections were to go, the children would be gone, too.
More than anything else on earth, I do not want Sam ever to blow away, but you know what? He will. His ashes will stick to the fingers of someone who loves him. Maybe his ashes will blow that person into a place where things do not come outright, where things cannot be boxed up or spackled back together, but where somehow that person can see, with whatever joy can be mustered, the four or five new leaves on the formerly barren tree.
“Mom?” he called out suddenly in his sleep.
“Yes,” I whispered, “here I am,” and he slung his arm toward the sound of my voice, out across my shoulders.
This Dog’s Life
H aving a good dog is the closest some of us are ever going to come to knowing the direct love of a mother or God, so it’s no wonder it knocked the stuffing out of me and Sam when Sadie died. I promised Sam we’d get another puppy someday, but secretly decided not to ever get another dog. I didn’t want to hurt that much again, if I could possibly avoid it. And I didn’t want my child’s heart and life to break like that again. But you don’t always get what you want; you get what you get. This is a real problem for me. You want to protect your child from pain, and what you get instead is life, and grace. And while theologians insist that grace is freely given, the truth is thatsometimes you pay through the nose. And you can’t pay your child’s way.
We should never have gotten a dog to begin with—they all die. I know this sounds sort of negative and bitter, but it happens
Similar Books
