Why We Make Love After a Funeral: What to Do With Who We Are after COVID-19

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 We live in times unlike even those of us who wear many years have ever known. These last days, we find, take a grim toll on body and spirit. Many died, and many more walk wounded, broken by illness or dread, as though having abandoned hope of ever again living in peace.

We recognize the worst of sufferers by their resolute faces turned toward chaos because there is nowhere else to go. This chaos, the like of which we have never seen before in either scope or magnitude. This chaos, from which we can see little relief or solution ahead. It's a dismal landscape to wander and we feel every sad step of it. This is our post-pandemic world of shared grief, one which will never brag a declaration of victory. We will not have won, but we can survive. 

We Need a Funeral

Deaths are all like that, of course - endings and darkness, and the pains that come with them. What we need is a funeral. We need to lay these sorrows to rest and raise a headstone over them - "Here lies the COVID-19 pandemic. It killed something carefree in us all, but we survived its deceitful malice. We survived." And then, once we have done thrown exultant handfuls of dirt into the grave, raise a toast.

We need do away with dread and panic. Every death leaves survivors wondering how to find a new firm place to stand. It's how surviving is done, and it is always done while grieving. 

Actually, we already know exactly how, having gone to enough funerals during our long years of life to recognize them through song and rhythm, smell and flavor. We know how to preside over the coffin lid's close, over the scattering of ashes. We know how to walk away from the grave and lift faces toward a world still alive.

That's why we make love after a funeral. The love gives loud voice and firm action to the life that remains. It declares that no amount of death can defeat whatever life still holds for the breathing.

And When the Funeral is Over

We will never run out of threatening sorrows. Misfortune constantly lurks, but graveyards do not make nourishing homes. No one residing there thrives. We, the living, bear no fault for turning our backs to the tombs, even as we remember them.

There is no going back. What we've lost is gone forever, but if funerals perform any service at all, they let us leave sorrow and memory where they belong - behind us. They let us remember our living humanity, fully expecting to grin and grow again.

COVID-19 cannot dismantle our humanity unless we let it, unless we make our beds among the dead. If we breathe, we are meant to live, and so rediscover common ground and the joy of rebuilding. Look somebody full in the eye today. They are hurting, too. 

Jackson Harbor, August 26

 

He said last night that every morning, just after dawn, commercial fishermen returned to the harbor here, unloading their catch. Here, where the sun first crests the island’s horizon.

This is Homer’s rose-red dawn whose fingers gather pink ribbons followed by shining gold streaks. These fingers, however, do not caress. They are not gentle. Instead, a chill, stiff breeze blows surrounding trees so that they rush with it. All around, every surface is sodden with dew. Cranes arch graceful necks in the shallows, then gather and fly overhead like black arrows sent to battle. Jets leave distant, silent trails.

One car drives past.

A man walks straight and solitary on the next dock.

The sun has cleared the treetops and casts lines of fire across the water, moving so slowly as to look stationary, but constant enough to leave the horizon increasingly behind.

The earth still turns, this sun declares, full of glory every day, never hiding behind half moons or crescents. This sun has ever been the Lord of Days, but merciful. A gull calls, flies through its halo, and is not burned.

Waves break and froth against a single buoy.

Two fisherman carry coffee and bait in indiscernible white cups, set up chairs next to the dock, and cast hushed lines.

Just down the coast, land narrows to a single rocky point. There is no sand here, only rocks rounded by waves more ambitious than today’s. The lake is loud in this place, wave after wave turning turning themselves over in silver sheen and foam. The bay undulates like a dark serpent playing in new sunshine.

There will be no returning fishing boats today, but rolling waters still rock on the cradle of the earth. The sun still crested the edge of the earth right on time. We are given another day.

Revelation

The world is a whirling place -

Spinning in dizzying, constant motion,

masking with benevolent deceit its gesturing,

attempting to convince with thin perception,

firm feet floating and clear giddy heads.

But it doesn’t always work.

The world cannot help but reveal itself.

It’s the movement, of course.

The coils of a wave,

a dissipation of shadow,

the reeling of stars,

give it away.

Reflection reminds me that 50,000 tides have drawn themselves in and out,

and half as many risings and settings have defined the days of life.

Eight hundred moons have waxed and waned,

and blood flowed through half those to mark the promise of life,

fruit both born and unborn.

Yet, even after all of these,

all the rhythms of this living,

this one heart still fills the world with insistent percussion.

Each day brings its own new-born light,

announcing itself as though the first ever made,

ignoring that millions like it have already gone before

and that I, myself, have witnessed so many of them.

It doesn’t matter, you see.

The turning is relentless.

A million, a thousand, or the first,

they have every one, acknowledged or not,

brought renewed miracle to the world.

Breath, brilliance;

Power, promise;

converge and distill,

unable to deny their source.

They are all the time close,

as a soft breeze stroking with welcome, familiar hands.

This world,

this grace-filled, specific, intentional gift,

opens full-face every new morning,

and all one needs to know it is to raise astonished eyes,

recognizing Joy.

Park Street at Dawn

 

Cool gray.

Clean white.

Muffled, covert blue.

Safe and spare, the house resists heartbreaking human heat, the demands of purple flesh and red blood.

Ice house, clean and clear.

It cannot long hold sway.

Even now, life’s inevitable chaos rises and memories begin to gather in corners.

Flowers poke through between stones.

New books settle on shelves, bringing wild, dangerous thoughts.

Sheets of dancing notes people the piano rack, threatening music.

We all do it.

Hoard the calm, grab up the quiet.

Pull in the drawbridge and pretend that peace is a natural state.

But you see, no saving can come where nothing is out of place.

The narrow way is only a choice when surrounded by unpredictability—orange points of pain—black chasms.

But they have not come yet.

For now, this cool fortress remains, still alive in the slow breaths of hypothermia, holding on, hoping.

We will understand its stranglehold before it’s too late.

God always burns hotter than we bargain.

Even now, the mist evaporates and the drawbridge begins to shudder.

He comes for us.

Palm Sunday

 

Much less a cloaked, handpicked donkey on a dusty road.

In two weeks, the leaves will dry to cracking, tucked behind a picture frame.

Palm Sunday.

Prim.

Spare.

Measured.

Where is the crowd?

Where the sweaty exultation?

Let Him enter the ancient doors,

The King of Glory!

Shout for joy, daughters of Jerusalem!

Instead, this rote crowd shuffles, trudges,

Singing in polite unison,

Missing the slow burn,

The threat of pregnant glory already poised at the temple veil.

Who is this King of Glory?

He is the Lord of Hosts!

Silly palms.

Too little then.

Too little now.

Praying the Mass

Preserve my life and keep me from harm, not  only so that I may enjoy it, but so that I may bear witness to your Godhead.

Teach me your good that I may do it, not to be a good human, but to be an obedient child looking always to you for wisdom.

Forgive my sins and make me white as snow, not only to save me, but to reveal what you have deposited in me for your glory.

Accept my sacrifices, not because they are worthy, but because they are all I have.

Hear my prayers, not because they are beautiful, but because words re the only way I know to describe my love.

Give me a new heart and a new spirit, not only because I need them, but so that I may use them in your service in this life and lay them at your feet in the next.

Have mercy on your church, not for its victories, but for its failures--in vain leadership, in hard-hearted exclusion, in sure, self-centered righteousness. Help the church you commissioned mold itself to your intent.

Help us be content with humility, but not satisfied with partial holiness.

Help us to face and repent of sin, but not assume sanctification outside of your specific influence.

May we always be refreshed at your table, but not forget that not only are all invited, all too are children in your sight.

I hide, safe in the shadow of your wing, at the same time warm in your shared glory.

You are greater than my heart.

Credit: Donatello's Mary Magdalen, Opera Museum, Florence, Italy
 

Elizabeth

 

No one ever reminds us you’d gotten old.

The paintings are too kind--

they’ve smoothed your skin,

covered your silver hair,

draped or forgotten your knobby bones and age spots.

I know how you felt.

Not only the erratic weariness and morning aches,

but the unbidden pants,

the huddling, cold shiver,

the squinting, the pause before each stair.

Small things, each of them,

not debilitating,

only ungentle reminders of what time had done.

Add them all to a great, tussling belly.

Urgent, with a job to do.

Bursting to begin.

While your own flesh all too often remembers its own job is nearly done.

Yes, the paintings are kind.

They ignore it all,

looking at you both with Mary’s eyes, with God’s,

and revel only in your exultation.