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October 20, 2004
7/23
It is perhaps odd to name a poem with a fraction. At the time of its writing, though, this fraction struck me with great force. It had been 7 years since my mother had died, and I was 23. And, in one of those thousands of moments in which a sense of loss pierces the present, I realized, in some weird mathematics of grief and healing, that each year an ever greater fraction of my life would have been lived without my mother. The fraction now stands at 18/34. The following is from AFE.
7/23
a sabbath cycle sets this year, Mom
and me 23
that means that come this time in a year
a third of my life will have gone by without you
and slowly it goes on,
the gradual slide to accept as commonplace
the thought that chilled with horror my cozy childhood heart;
me alive without you
and till God moves His hand it will go on
in countless moments of joy and pain
the sun and rain will weather me without you
o God, please let the mantle fall
of one who loved you well
and let me live like her
as she sought to live like you
and pierce and punctuate
the busy fabric of my life
with memory
One of the earliest discipleship choices that sunk into my youthful mind was the call to love God above all else. How could I possibly love God more than Mommy and Daddy I wondered, feeling a little guilty about it all. In the mind of a child there is no more real love than the love of parents. It was their loving arms that were there to enfold us in warmth, to shut out night-time fears. It was them we clung to, burying our hot, tear-stained faces in their necks, when the world had hurt us. It is not surprising then that loving an invisible God more than tangible, warm-lapped parents can be difficult for a child.
God, I think, is not concerned. It is He after all who created both parents and children and crafted into their love the metaphor of His love toward all people. His love is the source and pattern for all parental love and of which any earthly love is but a reflection. As we grow we come to see this in its fullness and come to know and love our Heavenly Parent above all else.
The death of parent in late youth, though, still brings on those old suffocating fears. How will life ever be the same without Mom? How could it be the same? The answer is that it will never be the same. But, surprisingly, as time passes, grief and memories quietly eddy into the still backwaters of the soul and life settles again to placid existence, rippled only by the common worries of living. Until one day we think, "How? How, could I forget so easily? How can I be living with such a big piece of me missing?" And then comes the fervent cry for God to the move the waters of the soul, and swirl into life those beautiful divine metaphors of love and service embodied in Mom, and fill my heart with memories.
Ache for Eternity | By jackdas | 9:03 AM
