So Much Sky

An excerpt from my empty nest essay, appearing in the latest issue of "Under the Sun" literary journal.  

 

The note appears hooked to the knob of my front door, a warning. The emerald ash borer disease has ravaged the hundred-year-old stately ash trees lining our road, and our city has decided to take them all down. The forty trees that spread their canopies over the length of six blocks like cupped protective hands will be removed as a permanent solution to cure the infestation. The city offers a plan to replace the trees in the spring with saplings, but how do you replace a tree that took a hundred years or more to grow its roots down deep while sending branches toward the heavens?  And saplings come with no guarantee of surviving even one brutal Chicago winter with its hostile winds and temperatures.

Gusty autumn winds have already stripped the trees bare. I stare at the silhouetted branches most days as I come and go, as I stand in the living room holding a warm cup of tea, watching neighbors walk their dogs. The demise of the trees creates grief as I prepare to say goodbye to their shade that protects me while I read in the yard, goodbye to the whispers I hear through my open window on windy days, the haunting call of leaves brushing together like two hands meeting in applause.

Then one day as I study the silhouette of the trees against a gray November sky, I see something settled into the meeting place of several branches, many dark and dense objects cupped in those tree limbs. Empty nests—and lots of them. In the warmer weather, a city-sized community lives just above our heads, hidden from sight. Maybe former birds' nests or squirrel's nests, but all that matters in my mind is the picture of these shelters once formed by a mother to protect her young and prepare them for life, built with twigs and leaves and probably even a few gum wrappers – whatever it takes. CONTINUE READING HERE

        

Well-Acquainted with Grief

“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop on the heart until, against our will, in our own despair, comes wisdom from the awful grace of God.”   ~ Aeschylus

I collect certain people. Pack them into life’s travel bag, looking them up at the first sign of hardship and pain. I speed dial them in search of the comfort brought by their voices and presence.

These are my friends who are well-acquainted with grief.

 Grief tumbles off the page when I look at the assaults on their lives. Suicide of a parent. The death of a brother to AIDS.  Brain tumor in a grandson. Painful marriages and divorces. Emotional, physical and sexual abuse. Tragic death of a child. Painful betrayal by trusted people. But they have taken pain captive, these strong ones, looked it straight in the eyes, and gifted others with hard won comfort because grief talks to grief.

I seek out members of this tribe during my own seasons of struggle.

They display strength in the worst moments of life while remaining gentle and empathetic enough to respond to the pain they see in the rest of us. The hard moments leave a mark, but that mark isn’t named bitterness, or self-pity, or cold-heartedness.

Not everyone manages this feat.

One friend opened her farmhouse to strangers over the past year. The family of a man suffering from a brain aneurysm needed a place to stay while he received treatment in a nearby hospital far from their home. My friend soothed this frightened and hurting family, hosting them for two weeks during their season of turmoil, introducing them to horses, goats, chickens, and a paddle boat on the pond. Wonderful distractions from the worry.  

The visit would not end well.

The young mom would find herself an unexpected widow, and her children would find themselves fatherless. My friend offered all she had – her kindness and prayers and her home situated away from the sterile hospital environment. They fed the animals, paddle-boated on the pond, romped through the fields.

It’s messy to step into someone else’s loss. Words fail us, coming slowly. We feel awkward, unsure. But a person well-acquainted with grief knows what the hurting long to hear.

 Nearly 50 years ago when Martin Luther King was assassinated, riots erupted throughout the country. But one man, well-acquainted with grief himself, calmed an Indianapolis crowd in a poor section of the city. The crowd waited to hear Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, but they hadn’t heard yet about King’s assassination. Kennedy shared the news with them, connecting to the crowd by referencing his own pain experienced after the death of his brother, President John F. Kennedy. Then he recited one of his favorite poems:

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.  ~ Aeschylus

Many other American cities burned that night after King was killed. But calm descended on Indianapolis. Kennedy's grief spoke to their grief, helping to usher in calm.

Eventually we all experience loss and grief. No one gets out of this life without scars. Some lives just seem more battered than others. But I love these battered people with all their beautiful wounds and scars and wide-open hearts that have eyes to see and ears to hear the sometimes unspoken pain in others.

“A man of sorrows, well-acquainted with grief.” My favorite description of the Incarnate God, unflinching in the face of hardship and death.  These folks emulate Him.

Changing the Endings

At lunch recently a co-worker shared that growing up, her father owned a funeral home in a small Tennessee town; she and her siblings were all part of the business. They had a dark comedic side that they brought to the work, like getting a chuckle when their favorite flower arrangement arrived complete with a phone and the caption “Jesus called and so and so answered.”

My own father died a few years ago and one of the greatest griefs came in the form of an empty parking lot. The funeral home hired parking lot attendants to squeeze in all the cars as if we were showing up at a mega-church with a parking lot ministry on a Sunday morning. But at my father’s funeral, there were no more than a half dozen cars outside the funeral home. He had alienated everyone in his life, including his family.

When I look at my writing, I realize I’m a bit obsessed with funerals. They seem to appear regularly in my work. In my novel Try Again Farm, the main characters have an odd and darkly humorous hobby: they enjoy boosting the funeral attendance at the funerals of all the lonelies out there. “And there are more than you realize,” says Mabel in the story. They look up obituaries in the newspaper and recall those people who had little to no one in their life and they attend that person’s funeral. I wonder where that idea came from?

Over Christmas we went to see the movie Saving Mr. Banks, the story of Disney trying to adapt Mary Poppins to the screen, all to the dismay of PL Travers, the author of the book. Spoiler alert here:  Mrs. Travers (a pseudonym) recreated the character of Mr. Banks to represent her drunk father, but the screenplay adapters were struggling to see her vision for the story and for this important character. Ultimately, Mrs. Travers admits to wanting to redeem her father, the man she knew to be so much more than just the compilation of all his failures. I know how Mrs. Travers felt. Unconsciously, I see myself doing the same thing in my writing.

Such is the beauty of writing. Like in Saving Mr. Banks, writers can adjust reality to erase and revise what is ugly and painful. We can make the dad help fix the kite as in the movie, or we can send kind old ladies to boost the crowd in the funeral home, to honor people who often lived without honor in their lives. Such power to change the outcome of painful stories of reality and ease the world’s pain with imagination and words.