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The house was dark and quiet, as it was every morning when she rose at 4:00 to spend time being before having to face the chaos of the day. Living alone was glorious. She moved through the house in the dark as easily as midday. Flipped on the light in the kitchen and squint blinked until her eyes adjusted. She filled the kettle, plugged it in, pressed the lever. There was a message on her cell—leaving for ny. Dad’s gone.
Expected and unexpected death. Had it always been like this? This looming presence of ending or loss? She was nine when her great grandmother died. It wasn’t scary or particularly sad but it was profoundly memorable and interesting then and now. It was the first time she saw death in a person. The body was laid on top of flowers on a table and she stepped up a moveable wooden stair to see her better. Now she knows that the flowers where really attached to the sides of the casket but her memory is that of the descriptions of old English kings and warriors whose bodies were laid on a funeral pyre of jewels and armor and wild flowers.
Apparently death has always been here. Always been lurking in the shadows and behind closed doors and people’s secret anguish veiled in black netting and spoken of in awkward short phrases—sorry for your loss. And, may God comfort you in your time of loss. And the hardest one for her to write but the truest, no one is ever old enough to lose your mother.
She inhaled a breath slowly, intentionally, focused on its ability to relax her shoulders and expand her chest. The water had boiled and she poured it into the cup she’d poured water into for tea for more than twenty years. She had visited her newly married sister and their newly born baby girl. To commemorate the occasion she bought this teacup that was now solidly a part of her daily routine. Her sister’s two kids were grown and off to college. Where does the time go?
She sat outside on the porch in the dark, just the amber street lamp sending an odd glow but not enough to define anything in her back garden. Such quiet and peace. What about those who are miserable. Those who are older, who see no purpose to their life? Would death be better? Would it be an answer to the misery, the perpetual depression. If it is true that there is another life beyond this one, that being “saved” means eternal life with God and returning to the presence of all who have gone before, all whom we have loved and lost and by extension who we would have loved had life overlapped, then yes, a resounding yes, this life can be counted as less than satisfactory, is lived in shadow and amber street lamps and purple flowers that pop on the stem and fall off by noon where nothing is permanent not even the same cup for twenty years, not even the dreams and goals of youth that wear thin, soiled and scuffed by necessity and the unforeseen.... Surely yes to move on is something to be planned for, expected, anticipated, like the date you count down to and pack the night before and stay awake with relishing how good it will be to be home the next day. Shouldn’t death be like that? What is death after all? What is this life? This life, here? What exactly is each of us supposed to contribute?
An invisible mocking bird pierced the stillness with his song that sounded like he said “right now, right now.” Thank God for all the living things around her who brought her focus to the joy of the moment, the peace that passes understanding. The pleasures of a cup of hot tea and birdsong. She checked the time on her cell. So bound to the time. To the moment. Right now she had to get her shower and dress for the day. Right now she had to make breakfast and gather lunch. Right now she had to make sure she had all her stuff together.
Once again it was time to leave for work. She opened the door to the garage and pressed the garage door opener, opened the trunk of the car and put her satchel in, shoes for the rain inevitable this time of year, and lunch bag. As she looked out from the garage, she saw what she saw every day and had seen every day for the past four years in this house. But suddenly everything was different. Everything held its breath for her to see reality for the first time. The dark of night was just beginning to lift a shade into that deep dark navy blue, dim street lamps cast a pale glow. She loved this quiet, calm neighborhood stretched beyond her house at the end of the cul-de-sac. Established, gated community whose houses were all similar with only a small variation, maybe four different styles. Mailboxes all the same with slight variations. She looked down the street at the series of 2x2 white posts on either side of the street with a white cross post upon which the black mail boxes sat in regimen. Suddenly she was overwhelmed with the vision of these mailboxes, these crosses that bore the names of all her neighbors; they appeared like tombstones, those white crosses that mark graves in rows in a military cemetery. Her neighbors identified on their mailboxes slept right now in their homes...superimposed in a vision, a mere foreshadowing of their imminent graves.
