Memories

As I sat down this morning to write a few reflections for the newsletter, I suddenly remembered that I had to ask Sally to take my mother’s name off the mailing list. That’s what happens when somebody dies, there are a million little details that continue to come up weeks and even months later that remind you of the death. Our loved ones all leave this world with a lot of loose ends that need to be tied-up; a lot of unfinished business. I get reminders every day. I had to think of what to do with the Christmas gifts that we bought and were never able to give her. When I saw her great grandson this week and he said something particularly cute, I almost called to tell her. That’s what it’s like—a life ends but it continues to echo for a while in a thousand little ways.

Yes, my mother used to get the church newsletter. She didn’t get it to hear about First Parish or all of what goes on here. She asked to get it so that she could read these little messages that I write to you all at the beginning of each issue. Looking through her stuff after the funeral (Yes, death brings about this greatest invasion of privacy as everything that you own is pawed through by those left behind. I must remember to be careful about what I save.) I found a file that contained twenty-five years worth of these little essays. Every one, from four different churches, was carefully preserved and set aside. It was touching to find them, to know that they meant so much to her. I wondered why and for what she saved them. To read again some day? To show them to someone? It was probably just because she couldn’t bear to throw them away.

It’s an odd feeling today, to write these words and to know that for the first time in twenty-five years, she will not receive them or read them or tuck them away for safe keeping. Another little connection broken, and yet, because she treasured these messages writing this still feels strangely connected to her. And this is, at long last, what I want to share with you here.

I’ve been rediscovering the power and the endurance of that connection between us that we call love. My rediscovery has to do with memory. For the last few years, I’ve only seen my mother two or three times a year. We lived several hundred miles apart, and she and my father were getting too old to make the trip. So two or three times a year, Maureen and I would go down to New Jersey for a two or three day visit. I almost hate to say it now but the visits were not always good. As much love as there was between us, as is sometimes the case in families, there were also lots of complications in our relationship. And during our visits those complications seemed to sometimes take center stage. I might say some wrong thing that would upset her or she would make some manipulative or passive-aggressive comment that would anger me. She could sometimes be infuriating and (for me, at least) difficult. I’m sure she found me a little prickly as well. All of the little annoyances of the moment and her aggravating idiosyncrasies would often seem to push the better feelings into the background. Some visits we just endured. Often, we felt close but sometimes not.

When I was speaking about her during the funeral service, with a tight and gigantic lump in my throat, I suddenly realized how spiritually close I felt to her at that moment. When I could think about her life as a whole; the meaning, the overwhelming love she displayed, the traumas that she overcame, the spirit of her life—all of the other stuff disappeared. All of the annoyances of the moments faded as the whole pattern of her life became more clear. I could see her that day (and now) as a whole human being—beautiful, fragile, enduring, strong, full of love and grace. I felt closer to her that day than I had in years. She was absolutely “there” for me as the tapestry of memories revealed the whole of her spirit. I said things about her (and even to her) that I so wished I had said a hundred times when she was alive.

It wasn’t that I ever left her in any doubt that I loved her (she left me no doubts on that score either); it’s just that so many little things get in the way between all of us. We allow the trivial to trump the crucial so often in so many relationships. Another way of saying it is that we allow the temporal to obscure the spiritual. At heart, almost every one of us are extraordinary spirits, spirits to be celebrated, to be loved, to be treasured. And yet, so often, we let other things get in the way; our feelings get hurt, our opinions get challenged, our tastes get offended, our little certainties get threatened, our comfort is upset. And so we let spaces open up between us—spaces that can grow into chasms if we’re not careful. And we forget how precious we are or should be to one another. Every one of our relationships are filled with failures to see the “whole” of one another, failures to grasp the beauty of one another’s spirits, failures to treasure and to comfort and to reassure one another. And we all so much need that reassurance and that comfort.

My mother is very much with me these days. Yes, I know that will fade over the months and years to come, but it has been a great gift to see her, to truly “see her,” as a whole and real and graceful spirit right here and now in my life. My God, I hope I can learn the lesson that she taught me here at the end—to treasure all those other lives that are still with me in the flesh.

I’ll ask you to forgive my little personal reverie in these words. But I hope you will find here something meaningful and that I might have reflected on some feelings that may resonate with you as well.