I held the box of bandaids in my hand, turned it over, and shouted up to my daughter, “I’m down here, in the laundry room, sorting through stuff!” Next was a roll of bandages, a quaint tin with q-tips, and at the bottom of the pile, nail polish remover and swabs. This stack of toiletries had sat quietly on the floor of the laundry room inside a cardboard crate for months. It was time to go through it.
When my aunt died, a whirlwind sweep of cancer, we had spent the time it takes to lovingly go through her beautiful apartment, her meticulously curated books, her stylish wardrobe. My extended family had boxed favorite items to ship back with her daughter, donated furniture to a younger friend, selected a scarf for each niece.
In a last sweep of her bathroom closet, my cousin had given me this stack of sensible items to use again, the hair binders, the nail polish, the brand-new toothbrushes, all things she wouldn’t take back to Florida. Just the evidence of everyday life. I had carted it all home, resolved to put it away, and set it down in the basement instead.
I hadn’t set it on the laundry room floor because I didn’t want it. I hadn’t set it there to sort out what to keep and what to toss. I hadn’t set it there because there was no room in my bathroom closet. I had set it there because I wasn’t ready.
I wasn’t ready for my aunt to die, and I wasn’t ready to just casually pass out a bandaid with fairies on it to my daughter, clearly a purchase for her own granddaughters, something bought with love as she waited for their visits to Minnesota, evidence of her love for them. To absorb them into our household was to forget their little story, and in a way, to forget her.
But on Ash Wednesday/St. Valentine’s Day, I sat down to the task I had shied away from. I went through her things, her normal, drug-store purchases. I stacked some in my bathroom. I tucked some away for the kids’ bathroom. I put the bandaids in the drawer where our toddler loved to pilfer and rummage. I said goodbye in a different way, a deeper way, to a woman who had lived down the street for as long as I could remember.
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We know this: death comes for us all.
We know that.
And the surprise of death is that in it are many details. The funeral, an obvious one. But the dissemination of belongings, a bit more of a hidden one. The intricacies of relationships rediscovered by co-grieving. The disappointment when a temporary closeness of the like dissolves. The feeling of unending permanence, much much more hidden ones.
And that’s a lot of what Ash Wednesday presses into our foreheads with a smudge of ash: you’re gonna die! remember your death! you are dust and to dust you shall return!
But what I remembered after I set the huge stained cardboard tray out the back door to go and be recycled, after my every remaining detail of my aunt’s day-to-day was out of sight, was the life-right-now part.
Yes, I believe in the resurrection and a life eternal. But sometimes I get pretty caught up in what’s the next life like? And if you live with kids, they as every iteration under the sun about who’s wearing what in Heaven and how hot Hell is and where is Purgatory.
I have no control over much of anything, especially not what happens after all of this. I only have the next choice in front of me. How I respond to the gutting surprise of an email. How I respond to the disregulated child. How I respond to the pain of a relationship that’s folded and unfolded differently than I had hoped. How I respond to the mildewy clothing in the washer. And how I respond to God’s voice.
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Our circumstances often happen around, upon, or to us. Our free will, that slippery owley thing, is what we do next. If God is love, then every choice can be made through Him and with Him and in Him. I respond love to the email, the child, the wound, the unpleasantness. I sense God’s voice in the stillness as the quiet drawing me to more quiet. And I respond to Love with love.
We’ve all heard that one Scripture verse at a wedding. “Love is patient, love is kind ….” So I need to be reminded of the whole list:
Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful;
it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way;
it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. // 1 Corinthians 4-13
Speech and knowledge will dissolve. Even of what remains, faith and hope—the greatest of even these is love.
So while death comes for us, life awaits us. Life lived infused by and animated by and directed by love. A perpetual invitation. Will I accept it? I’m trying. Rather, I’m asking Jesus to do it for me.
Love,
Nell
As I get older and more friends and loved ones die, thoughts of death and how short life is are often in my mind. I realize how little time I really have left. I am now 76 and my older brother died at 77. Gulp! I have kind of weird thoughts like I hope a few people will come to my funeral! (You will, right?)Seriously, I am counting on the Lord's mercy because I know much is lacking in my efforts toward sainthood (you know what I mean?)Too long of a comment but know I consider you a friend and hold you and your family in my heart and prayers.
Such a beautiful reflection on life, death, and love. Thank you for sharing!