Siloam
Lay these tears
over each other.
Let them roll
and fall on down
like a five year old.
May they collect
and form a pool of Siloam
while we wait for angels to stir.
Lay these tears
over each other.
Let them magnify
our crippled hearts
in the reflection.
May Jesus help
us into the salt water
of our own weeping.
Really? …Yup. I just returned from a day and a half of getting doused with like minded introverts. Writers. The 2102 Breathe Writer’s conference reminded me again that any story worth paying attention to has conflict in it. In fact, no conflict, no story. While listening to plot points and points of view I found a pointed question on the fringe of it. It started as a whisper. “You are disappointed with me aren’t you?” We asked the question simultaneously. The finger pointing ensued in the middle of a Christian writer’s conference between God and me.
Talk about conflict. Yes, I was disappointed with God. I reminded God about when I made a delivery a few weeks back and I looked up and said, “It’s not your fault.” I didn’t blame God then and yet I slouched and pouted through the first few sessions of “Breathe.” I grumbled under my breath. Leave me alone. I don’t want to talk about it. Why can’t we just go our separate ways? I’ll just hide behind this gift of writing you gave me and I will go back to talking about you. You know; that non-engaged talking head thing that Christians have a knack for. I will sip on glasses of whine in the privacy of my own privacy and when the headache wears off mid-mourning I will prostitute this writing thing again. I will use this gift as a pontificate pacifier and suck on it.
“Really?”
“No,” I said, “Maybe I’ll just hang up the keyboard.”
“Are you really trying to manipulate me? That saddens me, but it is your choice. That is why it is a gift. I gave it to you, no strings attached. Whether you write or not I haven’t changed my mind about you.”
I was afraid to ask God what was on his mind concerning me. It was 2:00a.m. and a friend suggested getting my Bible out. So I sat on the toilet, lid down, and headed for the Psalms. Psalm 42 always comes to my mind first. The ultimate answer of 42 from the movie The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy had some sway I suppose. But I didn’t feel like a deer panting after God. So I jumped back a few Psalms.
“Take a deep breath, God; calm down—
don’t be so hasty with your punishing rod.
Your sharp-pointed arrows of rebuke draw blood;
my backside smarts from your caning.
I’ve lost twenty pounds in two months
because of your accusation.
my bones are brittle as dry sticks
because of my sin.
I’m swamped by my bad behavior,
collapsed under gunnysacks of guilt.
The cuts in my flesh stink and grow maggots
because I’ve lived so badly.
And now I’m flat on my face
feeling sorry for myself morning to night.
All my insides are on fire,
my body is a wreck.
I’m on my last legs; I’ve had it—
my life is a vomit of groans.
Lord, my longings are sitting in plain sight,
my groans an old story to you.
My heart’s about to break;
I’m a burned-out case.
Cataracts blind me to God and good;
Psalm 38 The Message
I swallowed the words like dry wine over a parched tongue. Out of my arid soul poured tears. First a pat pat like raindrops on sun baked asphalt, with steam rising above each landing. Then the deluge unleashed, with stifled groans because my bunk mate was sleeping. It was a good wail which took a good while. Sitting on top of the toilet lid my system was flushed. I felt like God was sitting next to me on the side of the tub rubbing my back and crying too. Jesus wept.
There was a full day of conference left and with the cataracts removed, the eyes of my heart were open to see God again.
It started with a devotional by Elizabeth Stickney which was sprinkled throughout with poetry. Words sifted down to their essence handed to me just the way I like them. God was on the give. He always is, but I was graced again to receive with a grateful heart.
Elizabeth ended with one of my favorite movie quotes. It was from the movie Chariots of Fire. Before she uttered a word I knew exactly what the words would be and my heart started weeping again.
Eric Liddell’s sister was concerned that his passion for running would take him away from God’s calling to the mission field. He answered her concern.
“God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast, and when I run I feel his pleasure.”
I bought Elizabeth Stickney’s book which she co-authored with Gary D. Schmidt
entitled Acceptable Words, Prayers for the Writer. She signed it with the words “So that when you write you will feel God’s pleasure.”
God let me know throughout the rest of the day how he felt about me. God wasn’t disappointed with me. My friends weren’t either. They told me I am a writer, and I will continue to run with that.
What about you? Do you have a passion or a dream which if you pursued you would find God’s pleasure in?
I misplaced my rose colored glasses.
The world is in a hand basket on its way somewhere.
The world is all that it is cracked up to be.
Cracks, cracks, cracks, and the humans are racing
to tape and mud and sand and prime.
He’s got the whole world in his hands
and I wonder if it is getting a little too heavy.
God so loved that an only Son came
to carry the weight on his shoulders.
It broke both of their backs along with their hearts.
At times all I can see is from Solomon’s perspective.
Oh, I am not wise. I am not even that smart.
If you will please open your Bible to the book of Ecclesiastes (Insert preacher voice)
you will see it is not a song of Solomon.
It almost sounds like a solemn dirge though.
I think maybe Solomon, for a moment misplaced his glasses too.
All that talk about vanity and vexation.
“To everything there is a season,
a time for every purpose under heaven.”
It is under heaven alright, because the list gets heavy.
Death isn’t rosy.
Pluck is a take away.
Thou shall not kill.
We all have our breakdowns.
Even Jesus wept.
Mourn.
Casting stones.
No hugs.
Loss.
Throwing away.
Tearing, rending.
Shhhh.
Hate? Really?
War. What is it good for?
Okay, okay, those are only the dark seasons.
Did you forget that my Elton John rose colored specks is missing?
Maybe I should have my U.V. shades on anyway under all this sun;
The kind people wear to funerals dressed like men in black.
If all I see is reactive attachment why would I want a clear view, really.
If all I observe is moral breakdown and despair, reserve me a padded room.
If all I blankly stare at is dis-ease and patients while I put a compress on compassion, please forgive me.
If all I look upon are sacred hearts broken beneath a cross, go hug your mother while you can.
It’s all under the sun and it is vexing.
Faith, hope, and love are naked without sunscreen.
Without Son glasses I squint and see men walking about like trees.
She was in a thick Tupperware like container. Black. The black box. I thought of the NTSB. Was this the size of the unit found after an accident? If I were to plug it in would it give the reasons surrounding her death?
I reached to pull her out of the funeral home gift bag. There was no crinkly paper sticking out of the top. How heavy are ashes? The box was heavier than I imagined. The thought must have been the influence of too many movies. I remember scenes where ashes were dusted on gardens, into oceans, and over cliffs where particles spread in the breeze. It took both my hands to lift her.
In the end a full hug embrace helped her stand. I felt bones under her skin. Now she was contained. Were these the remnants of the skeletal frame which was once upon in time?
Marge asked me how I was “doing.”
The black box sat between us like a punctuation mark.
I asked Marge how she was “doing.”
She showed me the giraffe material. It was the spotty skin of a giraffe like the spots I counted on my mother’s arm. Her ashes would be poured into cloth skin. No Tupperware.
I thought of all the tears. It was a small room that couldn’t contain them. Now, a month later, I regret not sealing those drops in Tupperware. They have since evaporated. Oh, to pour them in over top of my mother’s remains. All our salt water sprinkled to help preserve her memory a bit longer.
“You have seen me tossing and turning through the night. You have collected all my tears and preserved them in your bottle! You have recorded every one in your book.” Psalm 56:8 The Living Bible.
“Sorrow, like the river, must be given vent lest it erode its bank.” Earl A. Grollman
It is another Monday.
Most of the out-of-towners
have gone back to their life.
My son and I watched
a blood orange sun
disappear beyond the edge
of the earth.
Near the end
it appeared bigger
and sunk faster.
It was like the death
of my mother.
At the end we stared.
We counted her
freckles and wrinkles
and the rise and fall of her chest.
At the time it seemed like eternity,
but now the memory is a short journal entry.
It is like taking out a granite tablet
and jotting down her life in a sentence.
The beauty was fleeting
and we wanted to touch it.
There was once a big moon
as big as a get-well balloon.
There was a big sun
as big as a farewell.
© Gerald Allen Barrett and parentheticallyspeakingin3d, 2012.
It is a quiet mourning. Even the words stopped their breathing. The hospice nurse kept checking her fingers. They were bluing. The fever, that was making a last ditch effort to rescue her body, broke. When I laid my hand on hers it was cooling.
My baby sister held that hand a few days ago. She and her mom agreed it was comforting and then tears. She was my mom too, but at that moment she and her were they.
“We are the you and I who were they whom we remember.” Wendell Berry
Ellen, my older sister read that aloud. It is a sentence which requires more than one reading. Its truth applies not just to Wendell’s decades love for his wife, but it applies to any long term relationship. I witnessed this truth over and over again. My siblings would all rotate around my mother’s bed and it would echo a book from younger years. “Just Me and My Mom.”
It was grace upon grace. We knew when to let another into the country chair with the cushion. We took turns to sit close enough to count the freckles on her arm. There was no positioning, no “saving a seat”, no arguing over whose turn it was to ride “shotgun”. It was grace on grace. Our mom became my mom to each of us.
Our Mom moments are tucked into the breast pocket of our hearts. No longer is there a seat close enough to catch her breath. We will “sit still” as she so often sternly said. We will sit still with each other now.
For my siblings as we process the next days, weeks, and months.
© Gerald Allen Barrett and parentheticallyspeakingin3d, 2012.
The sun yawned it’s roundness.
The cardinals sung unto the Lord,
and the stars faded into the brighter blues.
Another dark night of the soul receded.
She lies sipping on air
and rolls ice chips with her tongue.
A foot tapping and arm twitch
under linen veneer.
She, in her bed,
can’t even get up on the wrong side.
But she whispers sweet everythings
in our ears.
She sleeps in pieces
and heavenly peace will come.
Time stutters and mumbles
while we circle her.
The waiting room cools
as the mourning star moves over.
Evening vespers settle in
and we tuck her in again.
For My Mother.
© Gerald Allen Barrett and parentheticallyspeakingin3d, 2012.
“I feel so selfish.” I said it to two of my sisters outside of the assisted living home where my mother is spending her last few days of life. I was so glad to hear my oldest sister say, “Me too.”
I remembered back to when my younger brother Peter was saying a very long goodbye to his first wife. He had spent 20 years of his marriage going out on dates and such with a third wheel; cancer. They were never alone. She carried in her body an alien which reminded them constantly of the gift of life. Near the final days he said to me, “It seems like the world should be stopping.” Now I understand just a bit better what he meant. I want to pick up a New York accent and yell at all the busy people, “Hey! Stop! Can’t you see my motha is dyin’ over heeah?”
My older brother John lost his first wife years back and I remember his words at a family reunion. “Jerry, I am just so lonely.” The Bible says that because of the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ death has lost its sting (1Corinthians chapter 15). I get that, and yet that doesn’t mean it won’t hurt like a bugger. Those who hold faith in these verses and the work of Jesus will mourn, but not without hope.
So I say again, “I feel so selfish.”
There is a tree on my delivery route whose wound is slowly healing up. In the first few days of being a senior in high school, her car veered off the road and struck a tree not a quarter mile from her house. That was several years ago. The ribbons and teddy bears and flowers are long gone. Soon the bark will seal up with only a linear scar left. I see her father once in a great while with a package in hand. He looks all healed up too and yet…
“I feel so selfish.”
Within a year I watched two mothers care for their medically fragile boys. One was seven, the other younger still. The devotion of a mother is like no other on earth. Near the end of each of these short lives the mother’s exhaustion was evident. Their love was not exhausted though. Hearts were broken open and spilling all over the boys they loved.
“I feel…”
Sixty two years ago, Marilee Barrett, daughter, sister, and wife added on another essence of womanhood…mother. She never looked back. Mothers usually don’t. Ten children later she hung her heart out on the line like cloth diapers. Again and again her love ruffled in the wind of time like white linen under cobalt skies. Then, yesterday all of her children, whether there in spirit or in time and space, gathered. We all stood, kneeled, and sat around her basinet beholding her as she beheld us. My older sister wrote an e-mail that describes it so well.
“About 3 p.m., Carol (my mother’s youngest child) was with Mom, and asked to hold Mom’s hand. Mom smiled and said yes, and they both agreed that it was comforting. Carol then told her that she would be going home (to S. Carolina) tomorrow, and Carol started crying. Mom then said to her “Then we should probably get this show on the road” – which led to more tears, and then Mom started praying. “Lord, take me” – several times. At that point, several of the sibs came into the room, and we gathered around her. It was a “God-blessed” awesome moment. Here are Barb, Rob, Pat, Mary, Margaret, Jerry, and Carol (seven of my mother’s ten children) all surrounding her with love, and tears, and she says “I’m just ready for it to be done. But I don’t know how!” And she was crying. Jerry read from John 14, and then prayed with everything in his heart to God to give her mercy, to give her comfort, to give us comfort, and to help her through this transition. John, Ellen, and Pete, (my mother’s other 3 children, who were unable to be there) we know that your hearts were there with us, but oh, how I wish you could have seen the power of love happening in that moment. Not just our love for her, and her love for us, but God’s love working all the way through that room. We shared memories then, and just little tidbits of our relationship with her, and there was some levity in our conversation. But most of all, I think God worked His peace into all our hearts – which we all hope that you feel as well.”
Just before that blessed time I had finished a poem. It was for my siblings that had been gestating in my heart over the past few weeks. I was going to read it to them at a family meeting last night (which I ended up doing). The words I had written were underlined around that bed before I uttered one of them. God hovered over all of us. Every kind of tear was shed. Bitter-sweet ones, joy filled ones, sad ones, happy ones, silly ones, and pear shaped ones of love were falling like rain. Even Jesus wept. I couldn’t help but think we were in a birthing room.
Our cries separate us
as broken water.
So we draw closer,
like contractions.
We bear down in grief
and our labor pains
begin to push her
toward the light.
As she endured the pains
of childbirth, we will too.
All ten of us have come
to breathe a rhythm over her.
Oh, time will dilate
for her safe passage,
and our prayers
will carry her.
God knows when she
will birth from our womb.
For now, she floats in our love.
Suspended but for a moment.
“I feel so selfish, but not guilty.”
© Gerald Allen Barrett and parentheticallyspeakingin3d, 2012.
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