Grief

The seed of grief whispers that I must water it, but the endless deluge of "Mom! Mom! Mom!" turns that corner of my heart into a desert. I look forward to an adoration hour where I will have silence, and another child gets sick and needs to be whisked off to the doctor. Motherhood is a relentless succession of corporal works of mercy that preclude selfishness, including grief. Having banished the grace-growers to the basement, I sit here and grief is overwhelmed by anger at the injustice of the vocation to which I eagerly chose to sacrifice myself. It will pass, but not before I snap at a child who pops her head around the corner to ask for something for which she knows the answer will be, "no," turning her into a self-pitying puddle.

Oh Heidi. I sit here in the mystery of how your greatest joy was attained only by leaving us in tatters. I hate it. I hate it. Tears, at last. Tears of hot anger that we remain here picking up the pieces you left behind, while you're basking in the glory of the Beatific Vision. 

Kevin found it helpful to read C.S. Lewi's book, A Grief Observed. I ran to another book by Lewis, Till We Have Faces. It's the story of two sisters, the beautiful sister is sacrificed to the gods and the ugly one must live her life bereft and angry though visited by her sister who claims that not only does she live, but is inexplicably happy. It hits close. Much too close. 

Within days of Heidi's funeral, I grabbed my copy off the shelf, having not opened it for nearly two decades, and reread the final chapters which I knew contained the complaint against the gods. 

Do you think we mortals will find you gods easier to bear if you're beautiful? I tell you that if that's true we'll find you a thousand times worse. For then (I know what beauty does) you'll lure and entice. You'll leave us nothing; nothing that's worth our keeping or your taking. Those we love best - whoever's most worth loving - those are the very ones you'll pick out. Oh, I can see it happening, age after age, and growing worse and worse the more you reveal your beauty: the son turning his back on the mother and the bride on her groom, stolen away by this everlasting calling, calling, calling of the gods. Taken where we can't follow. 

 ...Oh, you'll say you took her away into bliss and joy such as I could never have given her, and I ought to have been glad for it for her sake. Why? What should I care for some horrible, new happiness which I hadn't given her and which separated her from me?  ...You stole her to make her happy, did you? Why, every wheedling, smiling, cat foot rogue who lures away another man's wife or slave or dog might say the same... She was mine. Mine. Do you not know what the word means? Mine!

"Enough," said the judge.

There was utter silence all around me. And now for the first I knew what I had been doing...There was given to me a certainty that this, at last, was my real voice.

"Are you answered?" he said.    

 "Yes," said I. 

The complaint was the answer. To have heard myself making it was to be answered. ...I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?

Her complaint is mine. The difference is that I know the Love to whom Heidi is now united, and I can, to some degree, be happy for her, but it doesn't lessen the wretchedness of our life without her.

Through January, I could not stomach listening to any music aside from selections from Scripture and prayers. That has now passed and in the past few days I've found consolation in listening to a local musician, Luke Spehar. I hope he's getting paid for all the songs I'm streaming on my amazon echo. The one on repeat today is The Song of Esther, below. Other songs of his I've repeated recently are, To Saint Michael, The Champion, and Be Still.