burying my brother

On Saturday, December 15, 2012, ten days before Christmas, my family and I buried my brother.  I had been contemplating more and more as I got older what it was going to be like to have to lose my parents.  I was not thinking that I might lose my brother before that.

I received the call from my sister while I was standing outside of the bank with my husband...just standing there in the parking lot about to get in the car and the call came.  He was gone.  He had fallen after dinner, maybe his heart, I don't know, but he was gone, she said.  I wailed, "No! No! No!", but it didn't make any difference.  I clung to the phone that night crying and listening to my parents and my sister crying...we hung on the phone and cried together, several thousand miles apart.

We flew to Texas the next day and by that night I was wrapping my arms around my little mother saying, "I'm sorry...I'm sorry, Mom...I'm so sorry!"  What else is there to say?  The next four days were filled with decisions and planning, sometimes heartlessly demanding.  My mother never looked as small as she did the day I saw her standing in a room full of caskets, nodding her head at one, pain etched across her face in silence, tears running down her cheeks.

I stood at the podium in the chapel, unable to stop shaking, unable to steady my voice, barely able to read the words on my pieces of paper.  All so surreal.  I saw his body and knew it was him, but asked myself silently, "Is it really him?  Why do his hands look so old?"

We buried him on my parents' land, there near the road, there where Mom could watch over him and know that there would be no more suffering, just the absence that we will all have to live with and the loss of all that could have been.  The next morning while it was still dark, I walked outside wearing Mom's winter coat that she has hanging by the back door.  I stood there by the mound of dirt and told him I was sorry and late that afternoon Mom and I planted bluebonnet seeds across the soil and watered them hoping they will come to life in the spring.

You never know what's coming.  One of the hardest things about life is keeping an open, receptive heart when you know full well that tomorrow could bring the shock of loss or betrayal or death...with no second chances.  I've lost my brother.  I know where he is...he is on the other side of that river and I will see him again one day, but today...he is gone and there is a grief that fills that emptiness. 

so stop pretending and tell the truth

You know how when someone is talking to you and they're working from behind a facade and you can sense the pretending?  You know how you feel when they tell you things that you know for a fact are not true and they're trying to paint a different picture?  Maybe they're embarrassed and so they won't get real about stuff.  Maybe they're arrogant and won't face the truth about themselves or others or things in general.  Maybe they're inviting you to their house for an evening and you know they're involved in a pyramid scheme and just want to get you on board with their efforts to make themselves some money.  They come across like the salesperson that knocks on your door in the evening when you're tired from working all day and they force you to be rude because they just won't take no for an answer.  They're not really talking to you, they're trying to make you do something.

I think God probably feels the same feelings a lot.  Sometimes I think He's listening to us and thinking, "You know, just stop the talk and just tell me the truth."  God isn't offended by our honesty, no matter how virulent.  It's what He wants.  So stop the pretending and tell the truth.

in the canned vegetable aisle

I was on a cleaning binge recently.  I had started early in the morning and the more I cleaned the better I felt.  I can be really losing it emotionally and sometimes the fastest cure is cleaning the bathrooms and mopping the kitchen floor.  So I was cleaning and couldn't stop, even though Ruben and I had planned to run some errands.  Just a little more, I kept telling him. 

Finally, we left on our errands and at our first stop, I caught sight of an old friend across the store.  We had been friends over a decade before and had drifted apart, our lives going in very different directions.  We hadn't talked in years.  Besides that, she had been struggling in her marriage back then and I had tried to encourage her in it, but it had been me that ended up divorced, and I had never known what she thought of me after that.  I wasn't sure I wanted to find out now and so I hid in the canned vegetable aisle.

But a few minutes later, I came around a corner and nearly ran into her and when I said her name, she looked up and seemed genuinely glad to see me.  After exchanging brief generic greetings, I found out that she lived overseas now and that she was actually flying back the next day and only happened to be in the store looking for some last minute items before she finished packing for the flight.  I asked her how she was...how are you really, I asked.  She looked back at me as if to see if I really meant it and then the tears filled her eyes and she began to pour it out.  I stood there feeling like I was on holy ground...be quiet, I thought, this is grief and great hardship.   She described the barreness in her marriage, that she didn't think she could last more than a few more months, she spoke of the tremendous difficulties of her day-to-day life in another country and culture.  She told me she was a failure.

Whatever I have imagined that people have thought of me because of my divorce, one thing I discovered that I had not anticipated was that there was a great mercy...even for me.  I touched my friend's arm and told her that I had worried about what she thought of me because my marriage failed, that I felt like a failure too, but that I had discovered that there is a great, great mercy for those of us who fail.  There is mercy for you, too, I told her.  Lots and lots of mercy to make up for all the failures and sorrows and grief.  She asked me if I would pray for her whenever she came to mind.  She asked me to remember her email address and if I ever felt prompted to write her, it would be greatly appreciated she said.  I knew she had to go, she had a trip to pack for and a plane to catch.  So we hugged and said good bye and she was gone.

As we drove away, I told Ruben what had happened while I stood in the canned vegetable aisle.  I told him that it seemed to me to be a divine encounter.  There was a reason why I was driven to keep cleaning and cleaning this morning.  There was a ten-minute window in time when two lives living on two different continents would bump into each other in a store and an appointment was being orchestrated, an appointment where failures could be spoken out and mercy shared to cover them.  May God bless my friend, wherever she is right now.