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...

Grandma Penny is not my Grandma. But she is grandmother to several of my dear friends and great-grandmother to baby Lester, who calls me Tia, so that makes me feel as though we are related. On a deeper level, Grandma Penny is also a kind of spiritual grandmother. She and her husband led a Bible study that my parents went to when they were young, and so many of my memories of going to church growing up have her in the background with her hands raised and head bowed. We love so many of the same people, and, for so long, I have watched her love the same God. Last November we were at baby Lester’s first birthday party, and there were many conversations swirling through the air. I had just come from the kitchen with my plate of food and sat down in a likely, out-of-the-way corner of the room. I was ready to eat quietly and watch all the people for a little bit when Grandma Penny suddenly reached across the inches of blue carpet that separated us and put her hand on my knee. “How ...

A thought hit me right before I started my evening “wind down” ritual of reading words and warm water. I sat in my room thinking of the way that we carry people, the weight that we commit to, and long term love and friendship. The thought was an image, a story and a realization all in one. It is an image of friends lowering a man on a stretcher through the ceiling down to the sandaled and dusty feet of a teacher, the room tense and quiet as all held their breath at the audacity, and then the murmuring quickly rippling out into the crowd outside- This. It is a story of a man paralyzed and unable to carry himself, carried by his friends only to find that there were too many people gathered around for him to be seen.   It is a story of the friends who said, “but wait,” and then brought him to the roof, and then dug through the ceiling, and then lowered him down expectant. And it is the story of Jesus- who saw “their faith” and lifted the weight of darkness and inner turmoil...