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Sixteen years ago, we met: a mature sweet gum tree shading the front of my new bungalow with rich green foliage. It had survived the city’s removal of a large limb, its wound long healed.
Months passed, before spotting a solitary yellow leaf laying on the grass, its stem dormant, announcing the change. I looked up. Still largely green, occasional bi-colored leaves hung on the branches. The surprise was unfurling like swirls of colorful cloths shown at auction: scarlets, lime greens, buttery yellows, and thievery browns.
For several weeks, the show continued until its demise: mounds of faded shriveled leaves strewn around the yard, later raked and bagged for the city’s yard waste pick-up. Stripped from my natural beauty, I grieved. It would be a long wait for its return.
As years passed, the sweet gum tree continued prospering, with more bags of gum balls lined at the curb for the city’s pick-up.
Then, the disruption began: 2021’s violent rain storms wrenched two large branches from the trunk leaving large swaths of exposed wood. Its woundedness remained with us until three weeks ago, when another large limb crashed to the street, with nothing precipitating this loss. The sweet gum tree was ailing and the arborist’s response was to take it down. A red cord, now circling the trunk, will enable the crew to identify it.
The analogy between the ailing sweet gum tree all that lives, including ourselves, is obvious, but our spirits continue on.
We wait for the inevitable.
It was 2:45 P. M., the world has abruptly changed its perspective: sky shimmers with dark lightening, droplets engorge themselves as they coalesce and careen down drains, and thunder like tom-toms echo across valleys to neighboring tribes: some explosively loud. A siren wails. Distress weeps. Rivers of mud obliterate trails. Where are we?
Such images implode my world when suddenly swamped by grief, seemingly unrelated to the humdrum task of scraping remnants of baked cheese from casserole bowls in the sink. The heaviness—unannounced, undesirable, unwanted—trounces my psyche rendering me numb and staring into space until the heaviness begins to dissipate. I want to cry, the sadness is so trenchant, but the tears remain locked within doorless-rooms.
It is 3:25 P. M. Only the severity of winds, rain, thunder and lightening lessen against the slate-gray sky. Like the remnants of the baked-on cheese, it takes work to remove them. Like prayer, steel-wool helps. More sirens pierce the afternoon’s emerging stillness. And then it is over—until the next untenable intrusion.
Yet with repeated cleansing, the deeper purification.
I still remember the massive bells tolling from the towers of the St. Louis Cathedral as the remains of my paternal grandparents were rolled through massive doors into the sanctuary for the Requiem Mass. Oatmeal skies, hundreds of mourners in black, long lines of police escort, soggy handkerchiefs—incised their dread upon my psyche. It was my first funeral.
Yesterday’s wake at Donnelly’s was another first, with Mother at my side commenting in hushed tones. It was 1947. It felt more like a cocktail party, similar to ones hosted by our parents in the living room.
Over the years, the culture of death and burial seeped into my experience: family, extended family members, friends, teachers, classmates, co-workers, my former husband, my AA buddies, neighbors, other dignitaries. I learned both Gregorian chant and English for the liturgies and appropriate behavior around the grieving.
But these “time-outs” from the ordinary were for others. Never, until now, did I consider my mortality—always imagined my transition would be quick like several members of our family. This is not the case.
With my denial decomposing like a minstrel’s tasseled-red jacket in an abandoned wardrobe, I’m slowly learning to befriend the death of my body; only then will it bring surcease to the pesky symptoms hampering my breathing and wasting my body.
I had believed that completing my final arrangements and studying the theology, psychology, and physiology of dying and death would give me a leg up when my time came around, but this is not the case. Expert materials abound on these subjects, but none describe the experience of death itself.
So, prayer for deeper surrender to Creator God twits the terror from death’s edges. This is working out … and the St. Louis Cathedral still stands, though now a Basilica.
Heart Whisperings 