Strength and Beauty

Long ago, when I was working as a chemotherapy nurse, I remember walking in an infusion room and pulling the curtain back. As my hand swept the curtain open, I found my patient’s long six foot and slender body curled up in a fetal ball in the too short recliner, weeping quietly. I had never seen her let her guard down like this before. I took a deep breath in and found myself on the floor, eye to eye with her. We had the most beautiful and quiet exchange, almost wordless. Fear, anger and deep sadness made known and held by another. I was honored in that moment to sit with her on the floor, honored to be let in to her process of raging against breast cancer and the war it was waging on her small children, her husband, her life, honored to be allowed to carry her burden with her. Today, this same patient is losing her life to this battle and she is doing it with courage and the best way she knows how.

Long ago, I remember visiting a patient of mine who had been admitted to the ICU with severe bleeding. Her husband had found blood all over the kitchen floor with a trail to where he found his wife weak and exhausted in the other room. I sat low to the ground at eye level of her hospital bed, holding her hand tightly and talking quietly. It started off with stoic-talk and typical Amerian how-are-you-talk and I gradually turned the corner of the conversation to the obvious: her imminent death. In that moment, I looked her steady in the eyes and asked her to have courage, to accept what was happening to her body. She fought back with the strength of a wounded lion saying, “It’s not in me to quit!” I understood. I know what it is like to be a woman of deep strength, perseverance, tenacity and a strong will to fight and survive and succumb to my own death of sorts. She dug her heels in, not giving in to death; it was going to be on her terms. In those moments of actually looking death in the face and acknowledging it as true and real and quickly approaching lent her courage. We were able to hand each other courage, exchange strength and simply be present to the reality of her life coming to an end. That led me to share with her all she has meant to me and she did the same. She asked me what death is like and I shared my small picture and window of what I have observed death to be like. She nodded and took deep breaths in. In the end, I was able to say goodbye with dignity and honor and love. I left that room with a wrenched heart and joy oozing at the profound exchanges I just had with another human being.

When saying goodbye, I need a strong sense of connectedness. It means a great deal to me to have these exchanges where we face what is true, acknowledge what once was and move forward into what is new. As I look back over the past few years, I have not been able to say goodbye to the many things I have lost the way I have been able to say goodbye to my dying cancer patients. And it leaves me feeling unsettled and the grief sticks to me like burrs after walking through the woods.

I didn’t get to say goodbye to the Martens’. I didn’t get to say goodbye to life as an independent woman without children. I didn’t get to say goodbye to my dear friends. I didn’t get to say goodbye to my church. I didn’t get to say goodbye to my women’s group I held so dear. It seems death came suddenly and without warning. It seems I was not prepared and have been socked in the stomach by too many losses in such a short amount of time. It has helped me, even just a little, to realize how important goodbyes are to me, and why.

I miss you Martens’. I miss family meals around the long, extended table in the pink dining room with blue glass being back lit in the windows by the setting sun. I miss resting with you in the ethereal light being cast from above by little lanterns of red oil. I miss our family reunions. I miss lunch after church at Thai Suk Dee and fighting over crab rangoon, Brendan having to plunge his spoon in to everyone’s dish to sample. I miss the freedom I had as a woman without children. I miss being able to have all the space in the world to do what I want to do when I want to do it. I miss doing ministry and being a person of influence in the larger church. I miss you, Evanston Vineyard. I miss worshiping with you. I miss seeing the acts of God’s Kingdom happening all around us. I miss the stories of wonder. I miss you, Kharisma. I miss sharing my story and hearing yours. I miss being known, the good, the gritty and the hurting. I miss having a community of woman that coach me in being a better mother, a better woman. I miss your prayer ministry in my life.

I long to be able to say goodbye to all of you in a way that helps me feel connected to you before letting go. For I must let go and move into the new–a place of abundant space for God’s creative provision and surprise.

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I was walking through the woods last evening around dusk. As I walked, I was quiet. My inner world settling in around me and at the same time given permission to surface and be examined. I have been listening to a story by Elizabeth Berg. I have read a few of her books and find them to be cathartic; her words speaking to me like a kindred spirit. I sense that she is acquainted with grief. All of her books I have read have ribbons of grief in them. This one I am listening to currently was stirring my inner world. There are a few lines and images that have caught my attention.

She describes a scene where the main character’s father dies and she is at the funeral with her mother and daughter. There are flowers adorning and filling the front of the room around the casket. Often, mourners are instructed to donate the money they would spend on flowers to a local charity or benevolent purpose. In this scene, Helen reflects on how she is glad they didn’t choose to do that. Having all those flowers before her speak something to her: you can’t let go of everything all at once. Isn’t that well said in concern to grief, especially early grief that still hasn’t allowed you to catch your first breath after being socked in the stomach? But I also feel that it is true for the remaining part of the grief process. You can’t let go of everything all at once.

There is a gradual process of surrendering. Pulling your hands down that are covering your eyes, resisting to look around at your new reality. You peak through your fingers and then cover your eyes again, shaking your head, this can’t be true. Over time you come to a place of being able to leave your hands down by your sides and just look, surveying the land of your loss, taking it all in. You start to walk among the debris, blown out buildings, leveled trees, and worst of all, the corpses strewn about. There is a reckoning of all that you have lost, gathering it in your arms, and holding on to it with a death grip. Not willing to let it go quite yet, or maybe never. You look down and look into the eyes of it all, squeezing tighter.

You keep walking and walking, walking a little more. People who love you, hold on to you, carry you at times, listen to you share the story, they feel the pain along with you. You walk some more, sometimes crawling, sometimes falling into a fetal position. Some days feel easier, the stuff you carry is lighter and other days, you feel like you are going to be buried alive with it on top of your chest.

At some point, you realize your head has popped above the surface of your grief and you are no longer being held under the water, drowning. You suck in a huge breath of air and feel yourself being rescued. One day at a time, you start looking into the sheave of pain you carry in your arms. You look hard at it. You name it. You cry one more time acknowledging, yes, this was a huge loss. But then you are given the grace to let it go. You lay it down. This happens over and over again until the burden you have carried is being gathered and tied on the back of the One that walks behind you.

Oh, to have the grace to look, to gaze deeply, to name it, grieve a little more and then lay it down. Oh, to have the grace to let little bits go.

The art of mending is what Elizabeth Berg describes in another of her books. And she alludes to it in this story. How does one mend? I love the word mend and what it draws to the surface for me. I see an image of a treasured wool sweater that is beginning to fall apart, holes appearing out of nowhere. The needle and yarn moving in and out, darning, until the hole is weaved closed. I see an image of an old piece of furniture, the wooden surface worn through and stained. The sander glides back and forth, removing the uneven and tainted wood fibers, making it smooth and restored…and lovely. I see an image of two friends with a history of doing life together these past twenty years learning to forgive one another and move on. I hear the words of pain and misunderstanding being exchanged from one to the other, trust replanting, and hope for friendship returning.

As I walked through the woods last evening, I felt myself taking a turn in the road of my own journey of grief. I could see a distinct shift in the texture of the path below my feet. I was turning from walking in the muddy grief that threatens to suck my goulashes deeper into the mud to the firmer sand and fine gravel path of mending. Grief and mending feel different to me.

In mending, I find myself able to trust myself (trust God) more. I remember who I am and that I haven’t been shaken, miraculously I am still standing. My perspective is renewed and I realize not all is lost. I look into the once scary, dangerous river that felt threatening to cross and say to myself, “What is the worst that can happen to me?” I hear myself whispering, “It’s going to be all right.” Fear, the kind that causes your body to brace itself, falls to the ground and is exposed for what it really is. I can feel my true self emerging from the ashes, more beautiful than before, strength billowing from me.

When mending, I can begin to see how those things I once carried weren’t all that bad. Yes, they hurt, but they have been made something beautiful of my life. And for that I am thankful. I walk through the woods on this new path singing, “He’s Jesus, beautiful bringer of God’s GREAT MERCY.”

It’ll be all right, Shanel.

Hope has a way of turning its face to me
just when I least expect it
I walk in a room
I look out a window
and something there leaves me breathless
I say to myself
it’s been a while since I felt this
but it feels like it might be hope.

I feel more permeable, like a fine silk mesh that is unable to keep out the weariness etched on the face of a woman watching her husband die slowly, the suffering of a man as he chooses to have toxic chemicals infused into his veins and radiation beams to his neck bringing on the worst sun burn inside and out that you could ever imagine, grief turned to bitterness as a woman comes to terms with her barrenness, loneliness etched into the curves of a cachexic man curled up in bed, rage and anger flashed in front of a child. I have gone from being a heavy weight tweed to a fine, almost transparent piece of antique linen. Stuff hurts more. Life feels more sharp. Images penetrate like old, rusty push pins through my aging linen of a heart.