Ashes to Ashes: Death and Dogs and Children and Jesus

Ash Wednesday is always complicated. Matt and I both love church, you know, but we have six children, to be stupidly obvious. So any extra service, especially at times like 7am and 7pm, are fraught and take juggling and planning ahead and choices about what can be attempted and not bothered with. But this year we discovered that having an 11 year old and one that’s almost ten and all six of every age reliably independent and self sufficient, is a new and charming place to be. As we meandered through the vast expanse of the day it seemed that we had turned into a new and easier path, though, because we have a four year old, a path still fraught and filled with stones.

The early service this year consisted of me leaving breakfast set out and Elphine in charge. I walked back into the kitchen an hour and a half later to all the children drinking tea and chatting pleasantly. Then the piano teacher arrived and the day went on. It was amazing. No deciding not to go. No waking the children up and hauling them over in their pjs because I desperately want to go but they’re all still sleeping. No leaving a couple of them in front of Stupid Why and taking the ones that would trash everything. Just them sleeping and then having regular breakfast and me going to church. It was eerie and weird.

Then in the evening, for the first time in a long time, or ever, the children all sat in the congregation while Matt and I kept the service moving along. Elphine had the little girls in the very back. Gladys and Romulus sat with a friend. Alouicious sat by himself. It was all very calm. Well, Matt went back and inhibited the little girls during the sermon so that I could focus on my text and not on the two of them marching up and down in the pew. But I thought, as we knelt for Psalm 51, ‘wow, this is amazing. I never thought this would happen.’ The standard Ash Wednesday location for me for the last ten years is either dancing around in the back holding a weeping baby, pacing back and forth after a stubborn toddler, or, and believe me, the most fun, running swiftly and silently out of church holding a child covered in vomit and then desperately disinfecting the pew during communion in hopes that no one will see, smell or even think of such a thing, and then afterwards trying to act like it’s no big deal, when it is a huge terrible foul deal. Oh, and there was the time I woke up at 5am to the shock that I would be delivering the sermon written by Matt because he couldn’t possibly get out of bed without terrible consequences. There’s just something about this day of the year that invites exhaustion, trauma and drama.

So there I was, kneeling and thinking, ‘I can’t believe we’re all here sitting in our own places and it’s all so calm’, and I hear Elphine begin to say ‘shshsh’ over and over and over again, and then the faint mosquito tones of Marigold hissing “wait wait wait wait.” By that point we were all covered in ash. Elphine had herded them forward, pushing and pulling and generally bossing. Then psalm 51. Then the hissing and whispering. Mid way through the litany the hissing became full throated talking and gasping. Then, mercifully, the peace. Elphine brought them up and handed them to me. “I’m sorry,” she said, “Marigold asked me why we had to have ashes all over us and I told her that she was going to die. Sorry.”

Marigold’s little face wore a powerful and angry pout. I stuck her and baby Elspeth on the acolytes’ pew and set the altar and then left Matt to turn his own pages. I wedged myself in between them and kept Elspeth from smacking the cruets with her fat fist and trying to pick up the lid of the bread box and drop it heavily and loudly. Meanwhile Marigold hissed, “wait wait wait why did Ashy have to die on the cross and when are we coming back to this town?” Hmmm, where to begin. So much confusion. So little time. “Shsh,” I said, “we can talk in just a minute.” She buried her head in my lap and stuck her lip out.
The problem is, Marigold is four, and every four year old I’ve spent any amount of time with is death obsessed. Elphine, at age four, got her hands on a terrible book called Why do Mosquitos Buzz in People’s Ears and for months the only thing she knew how to say, or really to wail, was “Why did the baby owl have to die?” I nearly burned the book, which I am basically against but I think I settled on just losing it forever. This death of obsession isn’t bad. It’s just fraught. In the atrium, Marigold every Sunday is breathless and flapping. “Jesus died on the cross” she mutters all the time, “his body was broken, they took his body down, he isn’t dead and more, Jesus died on the cross” she circles through it over and over. At dinner, whatever the conversation, she stands up and shouts, “his body was broken, his blood flowed down!”

So on Wednesday she was faced with the very confusing idea that the ash was really the same as her dog, Ash, who will die and so will she. “Well,” I said, “the ash is the sign of dying, but it’s Jesus’ death. He died so you won’t have to.” She looked appalled. “He died for me?”

Yes he did. He died for you. And for others. And it is confusing and appalling, but good. So round one is done. Soon, round two, Holy Week. And believe me, there are a great many stones to climb over when that rolls around.

Picture of the dog, Ash, whose name we perhaps should have considered more carefully.