The Epitaph

I begin this with a sigh of resignation because writing appears to be an inescapable portal of discovery for me.

This all started yesterday.  I was helping a friend edit a small instructional pamphlet and it occurred to me how very much I liked doing that sort of thing.  Then today, I stumbled on a blog by Amy Welborn about how she dealt with the sudden death of her husband.  As I read it, I could feel the pain of my own loss spilled out in her words and I remembered the remarkable power writing has had in my life.

   I had placed my mother in the arms of God last year, after her surrender to cancer, and live in the house where she died.  It is a little house, but there are rooms I try to keep out of because it seems to me the ghost of her suffering image rises there,  Suddenly, as I dust or straighten things, I am reminded of sitting in the easy chair next to her bed as she lay in a coma, listening to her breathe,  Sometimes, the breaths would pause and my own breath would pause, too, coupled with the odd arrow prayer,"Please, God.  One more. Just one more."  Then she would sigh, and I would relax as the gentle breath reestablished itself.  She was still with me.

All that ended in mid-January last year.  I had left her side to talk to my son, when I heard an awful rasping noise.  I ran back to her room.  She was breathing agonally and finally sighed one last time and was gone from me.  There would be no more breaths. God had finally said,"No, child," to me. 

I cry as I write this. I hear people say "Let it go."  But how can I ever let go someone so entwined in my heart?  In the last year, I have become all the more cognizant of the people I have lost:  friends that have moved away or that I have moved away from; my father, now dead for over thirty years, but whom I seem to mourning for afresh;  finally,  Fr. Dick, the priest who had gently guided me to God five years back, succumbing a couple of years ago and also now with Him whom he loved.  I look, too, at the people around me still: my husband, David,  my friends and family, my parish, and Father James, my priest now.  I love them all, and they, too are entwined in that same heart that is still so pained.  I am told not to be too attached but the choices seem to me to be either "Do not love."  or "Abandon yourself to love and pain and loss."  It is a choice all of us make, I suppose.  It is not often I discuss this, even with my dearest friend, Diane, but as I relish my weekly latte with her, I think of how precious each moment is and how wonderful each dear face that God given me to love.  Once I heard a homily, and the priest asked, "What do you want your epitaph to say?"  In spite of the pain and the tears, I think I want mine to say, "She loved.".