Now and Then and Forever

If I hadn't been propped up in bed I would have fallen to my knees. It was just one line. One bright yellow highlighted line on page 366 of a 367 page book. Taken by surprise, I stopped breathing for a moment and then I cried torrents of tears, a pent up river of emotion that carried me to an earlier time-- not too long ago by calendar standards, just a few years, but eons to me because the earlier time contained a familiar figure, now gone-- my mother.

It seems so long ago now. She went through so much in her final days, the last months bringing one episode of physical misery after another as her health deteriorated. It has been good to put it behind us, her suffering, our anguish, and move ahead into an uncertain future, as futures always seem when a mother is no where in sight. Mothers anchor us, keep us afloat, hold together the family even when they are grieving the loss of fathers. The family ship still sailed with her at the helm, weakened by loss but continuing to find the calm ports to dock. Unfailingly she would point out the many blessings we had, offering gratitude for each new day and appreciation for the smallest things.

"How sweet of you!" she said when I gave her the books. She was staying with me, for the last time as it turned out, and just home after an unexpected emergency hospital stay. I thought a couple books would occupy her ever sharp and always inquisitive mind as she rested and got her strength back. She had only finished one of them before my sister arrived to escort her home on the plane, so she took the other, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, home with her to read later. Only weeks before she entered the hospital for the surgery that would be her undoing she told me on one of our nightly telephone conversations that she had finished the novel and was so very moved by the story. You must read it, she insisted. "I will", I said, "I promise."

In short order life became a blur of plane rides back and forth, hospitals, doctors, medications, and an increasing air of apprehension. I remember an evening in her living room,  the sun was setting and neither one of us rose to turn on the lights. Our conversation had turned to the unthinkable, to the topic we all so strenuously avoid while still drawing breath, as if abstinence from the subject would keep it at bay. She wasn't afraid of death, she said. She was afraid of living in a shell of a body kept alive by tubes and breathing machines.  She asked an assurance from me that I wouldn't let that happen and I gave it, not knowing my brother and sister and I, in less than a month's time, would stand together in front of the doctor in the critical care unit to keep that promise. She wondered aloud about what it would be like to die, what would happen, would she somehow be able to communicate with us after passing over? In great awe we contemplated this final mysterious journey and then, anxious to return to the precious time we were afforded now we savored bowls of ice cream together. This rich and sweet indulgence was not exactly on the approved foods list given the precarious state of her health, and we giggled like kids, giddy with the thrill of doing something forbidden.

 Three months after we lost her, we finally summoned the energy to take care of the house and it was then I saw the book sitting on her reading table. Remembering her insistence that I read it, I picked it up and slipped it into my suitcase to take home. Time passed, the novel lived on a pile of books I intended to read someday until that someday came last week, almost three years to the day after my mother had turned the last page and wept. A Thousand Splendid Suns  is a haunting, heart wrenching story set in war torn Afghanistan. It is the story of two women who endure unspeakable hardship and form a bond of love that transcends the death of the elder of the two. My mother had highlighted one line, only one, in the whole book:

 "Mariam is in Laila's own heart, where she shines with the bursting radiance of a thousand suns."

In a sudden rushing blur of time it was as if I was sitting beside my mother, watching her as she highlighted the passage, as she smiled, knowing that one day I would read it and realize it was her way of reaching through time to hug me, to hug all of us who loved her, once more. I was remembering all the times in the intervening years I spoke of my mother as now living in my heart, my older daughter emotionally sharing that she felt her grandmother now lived within her, countless family members making similar statements. Time stood still for me and contained every moment past and yet to be. And it was all about love. All of it, all of it was about love.

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The full paragraph from which the above line was excerpted:

"When they first came back to Kabul, it distressed Laila that she didn't know where the Taliban had buried Mariam. She wished she could visit Mariam's grave, to sit with her awhile, leave a flower or two. But Laila sees now that it doesn't matter. Mariam is never very far. She is here, in these walls they've repainted, in the trees they've planted, in the blankets that keep the children warm, in these pillows and books and pencils. She is in the children's laughter. She is in the verses Aziza recites and in the prayers she mutters when she bows westward. But, mostly, Mariam is in Laila's own heart, where she shines with the bursting radiance of a thousand suns."

Reverence in Flight

Arriving at the gate for a recent flight to Seattle, my husband and I were surprised to see all the passengers in the boarding area standing facing the floor to ceiling windows which afforded a view of the tarmac. When we inquired, we were told a fallen Marine was being carried home on our plane. We joined the crowd and gazed through the window as all the ground personnel in their orange fluorescent safety vests assembled below to pay their respects. There was a surreal silence in the waiting area, normally bustling with folks coming and going, announcements of arrivals and departures and chatter of the passengers.  A flag drapped baggage cart drove up with the remains of the Marine in a large heavy box marked "Handle with Extreme Care". The escorting Marine saluted and ground personnel stood with hands over their hearts as the box went up the luggage conveyor and disappeared into the cargo hold. Up in the boarding area, we all stood quietly, respectfully, many of us with tears streaming down our cheeks.

When we boarded the plane, a hold up in the line had me waiting beside the seated Marine escort who was staring straight ahead. I looked at him, he glanced my way and we exchanged barely imperceptable nods-- miniscule enough to accommodate the enormity of the reason for this emotional acknowledgment. There were other military people on board and I overheard one of them say the young fallen Marine was twenty years old. Twenty.

Our flight was three and a half hours, enough time for people to turn their thoughts back to vacation plans or business agendas, but there seemed to be a palpable difference in the energy on the plane. To me personally it felt as though we were all connected -- connected to each other, to the young man below us, to the grieving family awaiting their loved one, to other Marines and service personnel in far off places. The blatant presence of human suffering, it seemed, had awakened us to our commonality.

After touching down in Seattle, our pilot, his voice full of emotion, made a brief announcement and asked us to remain seated as the Marine was taken off the plane. The entire plane was quiet as the passengers watched the ceremony below--  there were seven or eight Marines and the assembled ground personnel, but also, now, a mother and a father who had come to take their child home. 

Overwhelming Truths

I read an article this past week about the devastation and loss in Haiti due to the earthquake there earlier this year. Apparently, many of those who perished were young, educated people who worked in government or the private sector, or were going to university and had made the choice to stay in their home country of Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world, instead of opting to emigrate to greener pastures abroad as did so many of their contemporaries. Many of Haiti's best and brightest young people lost their lives that fateful day, and the terrible sadness of that loss compounds when one considers the far reaching implications of this for Haiti as a nation, facing overwhelming odds as it seeks to rebuild amid the horrendous rubble.

Contemplating this scenario and the idea, in general, of recovery from any devastating disaster, whether that be a natural disaster or a personal one, I thought about the very natural tendency of human beings to become overwhelmed, how that state of anxiety is generated and how it actually impedes the process of recovery by reducing the energy available for the work that needs to be done. It comes down to our propensity for resisting what has happened and our habit of spinning out of control in our thoughts, which have a life of their own and can drown us in an ocean of despair. It becomes very important, then, to notice this mental phenomenon and understand how we sabotage ourselves, and our efforts to move on, at every turn. We look at our lives and think it shouldn't be this way and so we are, in effect, at war with what is, which is an incredible exercise in futility. What our lives are, they are. Cultivating non-resistance, then, could only have life enhancing consequences.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, "The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn." Each day, instead of being at war with what is, we could mindfully devote all of our energies to attending to whatever is in front of us at the moment, one thing at a time, one by one by one, with devotion and love and steadfastness, which qualities, in themselves, promote true joy of being.