#21, May 28, 2015, Peeling Apart

This is the next in a series of excerpts from my journal, written during the last year of Dave's life.

 

It’s 6:30AM and the sun is shining completely over the horizon and content with its temporary command of both horizons. 

I’ve been trying to think what’s different. Old people are fond of saying that they still feel young inside, like they were 20 still, and full of hope and as agile as if every possibility still offered itself. That’s true. I still think that if I tried hard enough, I could bench press 200 pounds again, or do an hour’s worth of vigorous aerobics, or make love all night, or fly. But I can’t. I can’t and am not used to the inability.

Soul and body are beginning to part. The body fails—not my flesh, but memory and quickness—but everything that matters remains the same. It’s supposed to. It has to. That’s the part meant to peel itself off eventually and return to eternity.

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#20, May 24, 2015, Striding

This is the next in a series of excerpts from my journal, written during the last year of Dave's life.

 I’m starting to get a sense of what’s different. It’s not just getting old and it’s not just tending to an ever-weakening Dave with all the accompanying sadness. It’s making decisions, taking independent-feeling steps that, for the first time, do not lead from one man to another, not even from one person to another. I am not striving, but striding. Not wanting to have, but wanting to be. I feel, at least today, strong and stable—less cowed, less cornered. I think I’m learning now, nearer the end of my life, how to live it.

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#23, June 5, 2015, Doing Nothing

This is the next in the series of transcriptions from my journal, written during the last year of Dave's life.

I took one of the cats to the vet the other day—his hair is falling out in great hunks leaving bald patches of pink skin. He both thyroid and kidney disease. The vet just shrugged her shoulders. The diseases exist in a kind of mutual stasis—treating one would accelerate the other. Do nothing, she said. There is no good way to prolong or ease his life now.

And I thought of Dave.

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#19, May 18, 2015, How Great Thou Art

This is the next in a series of excerpts from my journal, written during the last year of Dave's life.

  

This is what’s bothering me—I am not happy and don’t know how to be. Dave is dying—I saw it yesterday when he wasn’t strong enough to make himself some toast—and I am bound to him as he does so. There’s nothing to be done about this other than to do it for however long it takes. Nothing in this is happy—not the doing of it and not what comes at the end.

But there is something else in the middle of it—something that does not die and can make me happy. I am alive—we are alive—in Christ. 

As I write this, I see the sun as it brings its first full glow above an expectant horizon. The day’s turning is constant. God still upholds the same world He created and saved. I have messed up everybody and everything, but God holds it all fast within the grasp of the only sure hand there is. 

This is more than Good News, more than a purely spiritual saving. This is the fiber of life. It is breathing. It is smiling and crying. It is holding and being held. It is the very assurance I’ve been waiting for so desperately. This is the declaration of and confidence, absolute confidence, in a love that won’t fall short. Not ever. 

It is terrible, you know. But it has to be that way, because it is the only love that fully acknowledges the horrible shortcomings of the beloved—me. The cross knows what I am and loves anyway, and in the only way possible. How can I not be happy knowing that? What danger can any part of this living throw up in the face of it? This is why I am safe in Christ. 

You, sweet God, have defeated not only death, but every danger that threatens my soul. My body is already breaking down, but You are holding me up. Every smile, every pure laugh I have ever known has been in expectation of this one—the only one not leaning on intelligence or strength or circumstances of any kind, but on the magnificence of creation itself, and the plan, and provision ordained for men and women before it ever came to be. 

And it is all because You are great beyond comprehension, able beyond understanding, and loving every single moment. 

I don’t deserve it, but You don’t care.

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