It’s About Intimacy : with the One we can count on ‘not’ to shoooosh us
Many of life’s problems and challenges have no answers, we can only live with and through them. Problems and challenges, however, can be faced and lived through with peace and resilience if people know they are not alone… pour out your sorrow, anger, despair to God and experience God’s intimate presence. William Barry, SJ
The one person in the world I adore, and know returns the favor, is my paternal grandfather, Arthur. One week before my thirteenth birthday he chokes on a chicken bone and dies. Scrubbed and dressed in my Sunday best, I sit squished between murmuring adults in a shiny black limousine sent to deliver us to “the viewing.” No one tells me what a “viewing” is so my mind is free to wander while it is crystal clear that I may not leave my seat to see what folks are doing as they take turns stopping by the gapping coffin.
The perfume of smoke and lilies hangs on the stale air. I wonder if it is meant to cover the smell of death? Dead things stink, don’t they? Eventually someone, I cannot remember who, takes my hand and tells me “It is time to say goodbye to Grandpa.”
Pinned into the blue striped suit he never fancied wearing, Grandpa looks like a statue in Madame Tussauds wax museum except, I think he is breathing. Tentatively I touch his chest. It is solid stone. I try to hold his hand. It is cold and unresponsive. This Grandpa is nothing like he really is and I can not figure out why someone put the fancy masonic ring on his finger. He does not like jewelry. When I stretch onto my toes and kiss his frigid cheek I know for certain, “Grandpa you are not here. You are not this body. Dead is not dead.”
Relieved, I return to my seat and try to explain what I know to my mother. “Grandpa is not here. He is not this waxy body so he cannot be dead.” Mother, “Debra, be quiet. You do not want to upset your Grandmother?” Shooshed to silence, I rage inside. “If there is a god I hate you for taking away the one person I know loved me. I hate you, I hate you. I hate you.”
When an endless sea of handshaking, head patting family and friends muttering clumsy comments finally subsides, after listening to the minister’s words as we watch my grandfather’s coffin be lowered into the gapping hole, after tossing a fistful of dirt onto the shiny box and enduring another ride squished in the stuffy limousine while choking on my father’s cigar smoke, finally I am alone in my room. I refuse to join what I consider an utterly aberrant party downstairs, even though (especially because?) someone brings a birthday cake for me. (What were they thinking!)
I don’t know why I wasn’t concerned with where my Grandfather was. What occupied my mind and comforted me was THAT he is. In my heart of hearts I am sure grandfather is forever and, in some way I cannot explain, tucked away in the hidden sanctuary of my heart where nothing can touch him or me.
Lying on my achingly bright canary yellow bedspread, I can almost hear Grandpa say my name, hear the jingle of his pocket change, feel his enormous arms around me. This gives me courage, makes me bold, bold enough to tell God exactly what I think of a god that takes away my precious grandfather. “I hate you, how could you? I am never going to say your name again.” I raged, I wept and finally slept because God is the only one that does not shoosh me to silence.
Words through Debra Asis, by the grace of Infinite Generativity
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William Barry, SJ’s quote is found in Sunday’s selection in An Ignatian Book of Days by Jim Manney is a series of daily reflections from the Spiritual Wisdom of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Throughout the book we hear the voices of St. Ignatius as well as many great thinkers and writers, long gone and present day, each uniquely revealing the way of finding God in all things. And that is my intention; to find God/Divine Presence/Ultimate Reality in whatever presents itself to me each day in 2024.
Each day I read, reflect and write on the selection, hoping to articulate the ways in which I come to know God/Divine Presence/Ultimate Reality via personal experience, impelled by the leading of my inner life.
INVITATION
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All words are generated by grace and the grit of a real human being,
Debra Asis writing challenge
