I am simply shocked at my current state. After the memorial service for my mother on Friday, a friend from high school came up to greet me. I was touched at his willingness to spend time attending this service, and to be there, as he put it, simply to support me. He asked, “How ARE you doing?” And I quickly said truth: “Not well at all.”
The first was the fact that I spent so much time with my mother in the five weeks between the huge series of strokes that originally felled her on August 13, and her death on September 18. I was never able to get off the roller coaster where I was being yanked back and forth from hope to despair. All this was compounded by lack of sleep, and by the recognition that I did have medical power of attorney and did have to make decisions about this that were indeed life and death decisions and those decisions were made with a major lack of a more comprehensive understanding of how much damage the strokes did cause.
In the two weeks that we had her home under hospice care, I spent part of every day but two with her, and did not leave at all for the last five days. I watched her die, inch by inch. I saw the essence of her just disappear. I have sat by the bedside of many, many dying people over the years, and especially in this last year. I’ve grieved with their families. Those experiences served me well, and gave me some strength to do what was important for my mother. But they also mean that I walked into my own situation with a short supply of energy and emotional resources. I walked out completely empty. That is indeed the first big thing.
But the second big thing I think is much more important. I suddenly feel anchorless. I don’t mean in the eternal, cosmic sense. I am more aware than ever of the abiding presence of God. I don’t need to cling to that. It clings to me. I am in no sense abandoned. But I have lost my anchor to place. My mother and dad are both dead now. My children have all moved far, far away. Bonds to place, to geography, to a house built by my parents where family activities for that last 25 years all happened have snapped like aged and overstretched rubber bands.
I personally don’t own a house. For the last twelve years, we’ve lived in five different places, parsonages owned by churches, or in a townhouse we rented when a parsonage was not available. I really, really enjoy living in Krum. But I’m part of an itinerant clergy covenant. I’m a sojourner here, serving at the wish and under the appointment of a Bishop. The tenuous nature of my ties here hit me hard right now.
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