Not a straight line...

"The shortest distance between two points 

is always under construction."

- Rebecca McClanahan

The ‘in boxes’ were color-coded and labeled.  One red…the other green.  The red box was for her mail and the green for her daughter’s.  Instead of just tossing the mail on the table, this would make it easier to separate when it arrived so that nothing was lost.  A small, but helpful solution, I thought.  I had not realized Nancy could no longer read.

It is a curious thing the way the liquid chemistry of our mind works.  We think of ourselves as…well…as creatures of rational thought, able to reason through life’s small problems.  When one is focused on problem solving and causation, reality often slips unnoticed into the back seat.  It never occurred to me that she couldn’t read.

Time…what is that?

My sister has now been gone for a year and nearly three months.  I still have moments of searching for the reason.  Alzheimer’s – Really??

Initially, the impact of her loss came in waves…BIG waves of sorrow…denial… anger…frustration…doubt…all of it – ALL of it!  Finally acceptance and a return to the safety of faith and neurons filled with impressions, stories, and feelings constructed to make comfortable and sacred the memory of this irreplaceable human being.  These feelings are not unique to me. They are the common experience for all of us who have faced loss, as we were once again reminded last month at the death of my mother-in-law.

Over time, things begin to settle down and seem to return to normal.  We come to grips with the reality that this person, so influential in our lives, is simply no longer there.  

Then a thought or memory or sound or smell or touch or sight enters that most mysterious of places – our consciousness – and we find ourselves no longer in a calm pond, but in a raging ocean of raw immediacy…the feelings bursting through the surface yet once again.  Anyone who has loved and lost knows, with the sharpness of a surgeon’s scalpel, this is the truth!

Perception, the great unknown…

Life is not a straight line.  While true, entrance from ‘stage right’ is the way it begins for all…and generally upstage.  It is further true that as one makes their way across that stage, there are lots of props, actors, and impromptu activities that take place.  I like to think of the journey as musical theater, containing not just dialogue, but moments of soaring music that reach into and touch the soul. Yet no matter what the events, either in the lives of the great (downstage) or the small (those remaining upstage), exiting ‘stage left’ awaits everyone once they have experienced their cosmic ‘vapor of fame.’

Skipping stones…

When I was a youngster, my dad taught me how to skip stones across the surface of the water.  The pebble had to be just right.  I can remember him gazing along the shore for just the exact piece.  Flat, but not too flat…round, but not a perfect circle – “You need to cradle it between your pointer finger and thumb,” he would say.  “Now, cock your arm back and throw the stone sideways at a very low angle to the water, and see how many times it skips across the water before it sinks.”

“…see how many times it skips across the water before it sinks.”  That would be the point wouldn’t it?

Yeah, skipping stones…that is a little more like life.  We move in a moderately straightforward timeline from the ignorance of the unknown at birth, to the realization of the infinitely unknown at death.

Each time we interact with the medium of life, however, just like those stones…concentric circles emerge radiating 360 degrees…in every direction. They continue to move in ever increasing rings until they bump into something that changes their direction – sometimes making their way back. 

It is kind of like this…our life force; words and actions do not occur in a vacuum, but intermingle with the ripples of other skipping stones, each of which has hopped across the surface of the pond until their force is spent and they quietly slip below the surface of the water.  They are unknown to those who did not see the throw, and forgotten by the thrower, except for those special ones…the record setters…the ones that shot plain and true across the surface of the water as though pushed by an unseen force of the gods.

In the hands of the master stone skipper, how many skips do we get, and each time we touch the water, how many influences of the concentric circles from all those other skipping stones do we experience?  The possibilities of interaction are incomprehensible…and yet they are rippling every moment of every day.

It’s those unexpected returning ripples I’m talking about when the come back from the folk I have loved - now gone from my presence. 

In and out boxes…

I was just passing through the store and walked by the office supply section.  There was a model desk with a computer, keyboard and two organizers stacked to the side – one labeled ‘In Box,’ and the other ‘Out Box.’ 

In an instant I was transported to my sister’s kitchen two years or so before her death.  I had been wondering how we might find a simple way to organize the incoming mail, so it was off to the store to pick up a couple of organizing trays…the brightly colored ones seemed a perfect solution. 

She also thought it was a great idea.  “Yes,” she said, “I think this will work.”  Five weeks later when I returned, one tray was missing and the other one was piled high with a lot of things, the least of which was the mail.  When I asked her about it, she didn’t know what I was talking about.  Yeah, “…I had not realized Nancy could no longer read.”  I had not realized the concentric intersecting circles of our lives, were no longer interconnecting…her stone no longer skipping…a kind of suspended animation, waiting…waiting to slip beneath the surface…

I stopped for a moment or two in the store by that office furniture.  I was startled and overcome with intense grief at the loss of my sister, which seemed in the swiftness of that moment as real as it had been in the early days of her passing.  This lasted the briefest of instants and was replaced by a rapid series of images – stories really and thoughts about how wonderful it had been to have played with her for so many years.

The music in the ‘final act’ of her life was discordant, but that could not take away the soaring orchestral score that had filled the majority of her journey. 

In the end, while startled at the speed and intensity of feeling, I was grateful for the moment.  The ‘master skipper’ had done well with her.  She had had principle parts in the play of her life and the lives of others in meaningful ways….selfishly and most importantly – mine.

- ted