Preston normally writes over at see Prestonblog where he writes about art and faith and about writing (because he does a lot of that).
I met Preston through my dear friend Anna who organised for the three of us to have an amazingly fun dinner (you see, the three of us - we like to cook, eat good food, and talk about our blogs). Since then, Preston's writing has made me laugh, has made me cry, has made me think. I hope you get the same joy out of reading his words.
I don’t cry at funerals.
I feel that it’s important to inform
you of that upfront. The rest of this would be an exercise in a kind
of cheap sentimentality if I did not.
I cry in other circumstances: moments
of joy, ordinary graces, when the Host is lifted during the
Eucharist, when films end with impossibly true endings—either for
the better or the worse. I weep for the sad things, I weep for the
sad, but funerals have never moved me to tears. Sometimes before,
sometimes after, but not during.
A fistful of dirt upon the coffin. A
lily dropped into void. My face offers nothing but solemn
recognition, an awareness that something has been lost, but I know
then only the smudgness of it, not the something of it.
It is, ultimately, an exercise in
self-preservation.
II
My grandmother wore black for weeks
after my grandfather died.
I’m not sure many people noticed. It
was an old custom, the mark of the widow, the mark of the grieved,
but it didn’t translate.
Would you like to try this perfume?
Perhaps entice some man?
That was in a mall once, I think but a
few months after. I think she had stopped wearing black by then. I
think the sales girl who asked meant nothing of offense. I think
these things over and over as my grandmother tells me the story and
fights not to weep over it again.
I think I should know what to do in
this moment, but I can offer nothing beyond what I think is but an
empty bowl, outstretched, to catch her words and hold them for a time
as my own.
III
And what they have stammered ever
since
are fragments
of your ancient name.
Rilke, to God, on the fracturing
unwholeness of death.
IV
I am a Christian, so I believe in the
resurrection of the dead.
I say that as preface to this other bit
I want to focus on, which is not about resurrection but the question
of before, or, rather, the question of endurance. The question of
during.
In the Gospel of St. John, when Mary
and Martha mourn the loss of their brother Lazarus, we glimpse the
culture of the day. Their mourning is not in isolation or in measured
moments, but with a community around them. Their home, full of those
who mourn along side them, who sit and listen, speak nothing, allow
grief to be a palpable thing, something that sits in the space with
them, speaks to them, threatens, perhaps, to overtake them.
There is the moment when Martha rises
to meet Jesus far off, to demand why He did not come sooner, to
confront. And this is the image that resonates, the image I think of
before I think I am a Christian, so I believe in the resurrection
of the dead.
When Martha goes to meet Jesus,
everyone who was with her follows. They say nothing, from what we can
tell, but they follow all the same. Where her grief takes her, they
go. The question of duration. Grief observed, not cast aside.
V
What am I trying to say here?
I am trying, in fragment, to suggest
something about how we understand death. Modern culture has insisted
that we grieve in haste, that we leave the infirm in their pain until
they are numb enough to sit in our alleged peacefulness once more.
Here, my bias is showing, I grant. But
what I am saying is this: perhaps we need to be a collective people
when grief comes. Perhaps, when I can’t cry at funerals, I can cry
in the before and after because tears are needed in those moments,
too. Perhaps.
And what they have stammered ever
since
are fragments
of your ancient name.
Rilke.
I keep turning it over.
I keep hurtling it up to the vaulted
heavens, wondering if it should reach the throne of God.
As I sit, here, beside the one now
having lost. As I weep in the before, the after, and ponder this
strange place of during.
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