As I sit and wait for Spring

“How can we live without our lives?  How will we know it’s us without our past?”

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

The snow is still deep in these parts this week, another 6 inches fell last week, but the spring sunshine is trying its best to generate the warmth to melt the banks and piles of white, and they are receding, and slowly is fine – no one wants a flood this year – too much drama and too much excitement when all we want is Spring.

We are tired of heavy clothes and warm boots, we long for sandals and bare skin, and we know if we are patient we will get our wishes, but we don’t know how long we’ll have to wait, or when we’ll finally know it has arrived.  So we wait and hope for something better.

You only get a week like mine once in your life – the passing of your mother and the ritual that brings with it – and I think that’s a good thing.  Even if you think you’re ready for the end, the actual reality of looking over and down that steep edge can change you, startle you, confuse you at times, while you comfort and console and try and make sense out of the most natural of consequences.

Society doesn’t prepare it’s citizens for this.  The subject is taboo in most circles and certainly the schools aren’t discussing the inevitable with young minds – that’s the Church’s job they’ll say – but with the dwindling numbers in the pews each week, there aren’t as many young minds pondering the fates as maybe there should be. 

Death and Life are joined ends of the same fragile thread, you can’t have one without the other, and depending on your beliefs, one leads to the other, mere reflections across a moment of silence. Understanding and comprehending the end of a life is not a simple thing, and it requires care and delicacy and honesty and room for thought and questions – it’s the perfect subject for a family talk – if only every family could be open and quiet and understanding when they needed to be and expressive and supportive and patient and kind as the members of the collective worked it out for themselves.

It will always be a mystery, until such time as one of us returns to tell about the experience – but I haven’t met anyone yet who’s had that journey – so a mystery it shall remain I suppose.  Though we can get, if we try and if we honestly want to, a better understanding of the reality of the end of a life by looking at those left behind, and by examining the process through which they attempt to accept the finality.

We each grieve differently and for different ends – some to finally remove the denial, others to allow the departed to go freely in peace, and some to prove to themselves that they really are living.  Some cry and are overcome by emotion, comforted by those around them; others mourn in silence and in quiet contemplation, watching and waiting for the lessons to be absorbed, and others rail at the thought of change and of new beginnings, just wanting one more day.

The rituals serve to allow those near to comfort each other and spend time remembering, looking back, reliving the life that was, while surrounded by the larger community that offers its support and love through accepted ways – food, drink, an offer of help in whatever way needed, flowers, cards, and warm embraces.  Slowly the outside world is allowed in.  The planning and necessary preparations for the ceremony and service are rooted in tradition but fluid enough to allow modern speed and convenience with the details, and those details help with the acceptance a little more each day.

Until finally the time arrives and collectively family, friends, community come together again in celebration and in mourning; in remembrance and in contemplation, all seeking redemption and understanding and peace.  The body is laid to rest and the soul is set free, the ultimate liberation for the departed.

Steinbeck asked “How can we live without our lives? How will we know it’s us without our past?”  The question posed at the thought of leaving everything behind to start again, bringing only the most necessary of possessions on the journey to a new life.  How does one live without those things, those tangible memories of who we once were and what we once had?  Can we ever really move on from our past?  Is it not deeply woven into the fabric of our souls?

I wondered about all this while looking at old pictures in dad’s house, assembling the slideshow for mom’s funeral, the family gathered together to share the task and talk and reminisce about her life and our memories of her – and photographs instantly take you back to different times, and they unleash a flood of memories.

There I am a boy of maybe 3, standing outside the passenger-side door of the old blue Pontiac, my hair a golden blonde lit by the afternoon sun at my grandpa and grandma’s, my teddy bear tucked under my arm – my constant companion – though here he looks like I never knew him, newer and plumper and still has both eyes intact – and that’s my dad’s cousin Craig standing beside me, red-headed boy about my age – the youngest cousin by far of that generation, and we’re both dressed in button-down shirts and dress pants – must have just returned from church and hadn’t changed…

Here I am now on the kitchen table of the old house, 70’s paisley wall-paper behind me, I’m about 5, school-aged and hair now more dusty than golden and I’m wearing pajamas – looks like mom made this pair – super heroes on a white background, navy blue elasticized cuffs, and I’m sitting on the table looking tired and worn at the camera, my face and body covered from head to toe in measles – the story gets repeated often – so often I know the words before I see the whole image – “…couldn’t place a dime anywhere without touching or covering a bump…”

Here’s one of all of us – looks like Christmas at someone’s house – a gathering of family and we’re scrunched together on the sofa – all six of us – 4 kids in the middle, mom and dad smiling happy smiles at either end, and we look ragged and happy too and God I remember that sweater Roger is wearing…

You can become defined by your past if you let it, or you can let it be what it was – a moment in time – and you can leave it there and move forward without being trapped by the situations and awkward decisions and horrible fashions.  You can take the important parts with you and leave the rest behind – you can if you want, and most of us should.  Steinbeck need not fear – we will know who we are without it all as long as we have each other – that’s all that matters.

It’s not what we have that defines us, it’s how we live and how we treat each other that reveals our true nature and our character.  The memories and objects of our past helped create the circumstances that tested us and moved us, and made us react – they helped us grow – but we needn’t carry them forward along with us – we already have them where they matter most.  It’s what’s inside that counts and what you show outside that makes a life.  It’s the people you allow in and keep there; it’s the ways in which you do the things only you can do, that’s your life, that’s where you live it – not in some grand outward example for everyone else to see – no, that’s the shallow trappings of ego and vanity needing to be fulfilled – not the true, natural essence of who you are…

And so patiently we wait. 

For Spring and for warmer days ahead, waiting but not knowing how or when it will arrive, but ready for when it most certainly does.  And we will live while we wait and one day we will leave the memories and photographs behind for others to hold and examine to wonder and ponder who we were and what it all means, and if we’ve done it right they will know – we will have told them, showed them, taught them who we were and how we lived and they will be comforted in that knowledge, and we can take that next step across knowing we’ve done our part.