Ale La (Go There)

Well, so a few things have changed this summer. One, I had another birthday, and two, I moved across the country. You know, not that big of a deal. I would love to tell you all about this in a much deeper and profound kind of way but I think that will have to wait for another day. Instead this will be a kind of show and tell. I tried to write in my journal the day after my birthday and this is what happened… For those who can't read indecipherable handwriting, that says "can't write date, sign of aging?"  When I told Future Husband about this, he laughed and said, “But that happens to you all the time.” Which is true, I have some kind of dyslexia that causes my brain to substitute inappropriate numbers and words into writing and conversation when I’m tired. I think that’s a thing. We will just say that it’s a thing, ok? Future Husband also laughed when I told him cheerily a day later, “Today I actually LIKE being older!” I...

I came home last night after another day of hospice work tired and worn. The emotion always seems to hit me after I leave a death, after hugging the family, after calling everyone who needs to know, and after all the paperwork has been turned in at the office. Afterwards, my thoughts take a different shape. I think about breath and the still silence in the room after it is gone, and I think about the difference that I have seen in some rooms, full of peace and tears and quiet, versus others, full of bargaining and fighting and struggle. Fear of death seems to be a part of what makes these scenes so different from each other. I had a patient once who would ask me with every visit, “What do you think about god?” She told me that she was convinced that there would not be enough space for her soul in the universe after she died, and that she didn’t think that God was big enough to hold “all the souls of the people and animals that have ever existed.” She pictured all of ...

A few years ago, when I first started working in hospice, Easter felt like it took on a deeper significance for me. I cried when I went to the Good Friday service and thought of Jesus dying a physical death like the ones that I had seen. It struck me that He knew what that felt like. Then, on Easter Sunday I wept again to think of the promise that our bodies can be made like new and death is not the end of the story. This year, the part of the Easter story that struck me the most were the days between when Jesus was crucified and when He was raised, those days that are mentioned briefly in the gospels but are not fully described. At Good Friday services in the Evangelical church people often say, “Today is Friday, but Sunday is coming.” This year it struck me that the disciples immediately after Jesus’s death did not know that “Sunday was coming.” They were just trying to function and make sense of their lives while they endured through the Saturdays- the nebulous days...

Usually when people find out that I work in hospice and at a birth center they say something like, “Wow, both ends of the spectrum. What is that like?” Either that or they start singing The Circle of Life… I haven’t figured out a complete answer to that question yet. But, it’s a little bit like this. Remember the days when you were a child swimming in the ocean and its blue infinity captured all your senses? Momma Rowe used to tell us to keep our rainbow beach umbrella in sight so that she could count our heads as we bobbled up and down in the waves and whitewater. But when we were IN the water we usually had our eyes turned out at the great never-ending horizon rather than looking back for the rainbow umbrella. Our attention was focused on the rhythm; sand beneath feet, approaching wave, duck under, power rolling over you, push off the bottom, take back your breath in the open air, shake stinging salt from your eyes to watch for another wall of water, feel the sand be...

Somedays I feel like my nickname should be “perpetual motion” but then days like today happen and I find myself sitting in the my living room, in a dark and quiet house, with the light from one candle and the chatter of far away traffic for company. I feel shaken from the Holiness of death. Not in a fearful way, but it’s as if something Big has happened, and as if the longing space in my heart just grew deeper. I feel like moving slowly and purposefully. Then I feel like tying on my minimalist shoes and finding a trail that runs a pathway under that big, clear moon that has just risen up to quiet the noisy sky. I feel like eating chocolate and drinking whisky. Or maybe I should just lay down on the wooden floor, and let silence wash over me. These moments are precious and if we “Have not Love” then all the words we speak are just noise, and all the actions we take are empty. Sometimes we must stop moving to feel and be filled. And I remember: ...