A Symphony of Stars

I hope when I die

I am accompanied

to heaven by a

symphony of stars

in the nighttime

of a quiet country

evening yielded up

from a winter’s day

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Written last Friday night after leaving Maxine’s house, thinking she would most likely not last the night.  Quietly she went not in the night, but near midday, surrounded by love, which is its own symphony.  Rest well, beloved.

What Happened and What I Said About It

What happened
I agreed to officiate an out-of-town wedding for the daughter of congregants and her husband-to-be who was then deployed overseas.  The date got moved from summer to February.  His return to the United States got pushed back and pushed back.  Finally home, we ended up doing the counseling bit via Skype.  The fairly predictable snow storm arrived in due course and so parents and I left a day early so as not to be stuck this side of the mountains.  Upon arrival at our hotel, forgetting that Virginia Beach is in the heart of the military-industrial complex, I was momentarily startled to see three men in military garb on balconies across the way apparently getting a bead on me (turned out they were wax figures at a local souvenir shop).  Family and friends gathered from near and far . . . stories were told . . . laughter and tears were had . . . the sun shone on the appointed day . . . nobody lost the marriage license or the rings . . . mama of the bride navigated the sand just fine with her newly accompanying cane . . . bride and groom shone like stars, as they do . . . the deed was done and all was well.

What I said
I did a wedding this weekend.

What happened
Maxine got very sick and spent many months battling leukemia, losing her struggle by inches with family and friends holding her up, she who held them up for so long, throughout.  In the last weeks, I spent more and more time at the house as those closer and closer struggled to learn the language of the dying, trying to be present when needed and to step aside when not.  We, all of us, held hands, laughed, cried, talked, whispered, ministered to, sang, and fell into silence.  And we prayed.  And she died.  And tomorrow we will observe the rituals of farewell and witness the resurrection and lay her to rest and eat a life-affirming meal together.  It will be a hard day, a necessary day, the day we bury Maxine.

What I said
Maxine died.

What happened
Maxine was dying.

What I said
I’m sorry I missed Leah’s birthday party.  Did you save me any cake?

There are so many deaths in a lifetime, so many endings . . . and but for this time in Maxine’s journey, I would not think of a wedding as a death, an ending . . . yet it is . . . an ending to one way of being even as another, more desired, way begins.  Harder to see, so it is with death . . . an ending that is yet another beginning . . . one not desired, for we were made to rejoice in this life, to cling to it, to hold fast beyond all sense or reason sometimes . . .

In a span of days, one woman stood witness to the joining of Rachel and Vince into a lifetime of shared joys and sorrows, challenges and victories . . . to treasured Leah celebrating her one-year anniversary on this earth . . . and to Maxine’s dying surrounded by all who would keep her if they but could . . . letting her go in one final act of loving kindness . . .

What happened was life.  What I said about it was life too, for so much living is captured in so few words . . . they were married . . . she died . . . happy birthday . . . 

When Shirley Died

More than twenty years ago, and more than ten years after the fact, I wrote about the death of my grandfather, Shirley Francis Pyles.  It was written at a time when his wife, my Grandma Mary still lived and I was far from being a grandmother myself.  As I look back, I realize I have for some years lived longer without Grandpa than with him.  It is a startling revelation.  For some time, a family is gathered around the bed of their dying mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, Edna Mae.  Ministering to them and coming across what I wrote back then makes me think on my own times of loss, of family gathered around a bedside.

When Shirley Died

How well I still remember Grandpa’s dying, much more than his funeral.  What a time.  Grandpa died slowly and held on to each struggling breath even at the last.  I know because I was there.  We all were: a family sleeping in hospital chairs, I on the floor outside his room.

Looking back, I’m not even sure why I was there; but at the time, I knew it was important.  Not to Grandpa – he was asleep.  That’s how I think of it, anyway.  But to Grandma and my dad, there was no question of where I would be, so there I was.

How startled I was at his funeral.  The casket was open.  The service was comforting to some, not to others, as those things always seem to go.  But at the end, it suddenly occurred to me as I saw the men from the funeral home striding up the church aisle, that the casket lid would be closed on Grandpa as we sat there and watched.  

Up to that moment in my life, I thought I was strong.  In that instant as the lid came down, however, I wanted to scream, to run, to cry out, "No!"  But I was Grandma’s girl.  I said nothing, did nothing, allowing only the pressure of my fingertips in Mom’s arm to give me away – our little secret.

Whether time brings wisdom or not, I do not know.  But I do know that I can look back and understand that Grandma needed to see the lid close, needed the finality of that good-bye.  The more I think on it, the more I think we all need such simple and final good-byes in our lives.

Every time I leave Grandma’s house, she stands at the porch, the inevitable dish rag in hand, and waves good-bye.  Even after she’s gone, that’s how I will always see her.  And as I watch the next generation grow, I picture myself as somebody’s grandma.  I wonder if my granddaughter will pause and watch me standing on the porch and waving goodbye.*


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*I have become the grandmother I imagined I would someday be.  It is a grandson, beautiful Rowen, who sees me waving now and I wonder if somehow, he sees the shadow behind me of my grandmother waving us all on.  I know I do.

Warning! Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!

Whether you understand the title tells alot about your age, as it comes from a 1960's sci fi show featuring a campy tin-can robot who alerts the boy Will Robinson to impending disaster by arm-waving (well, dryer vent hose waving, actually) and the verbal alert.  Of course, if you're a hacker, you'll also know what it means.

Yesterday the inevitable happened.  With information already in hand, I have delayed and delayed and delayed getting a new computer, even as my old lap top has gotten slower and slower and s. . .l. . . o. . . w. . . e. . . r. . .

The old gal made my decision for me.  With much alarm-bell beeping (look up "motherboard alarm codes" online if you want to know what those ominous beeps actually mean), my laptop was practically waving its arms at me -- STOP RIGHT NOW!


Of course I didn't listen.  I just kept rebooting, hoping against hope that something magical would happen within the mysterious (to me) innards of my lifeline to the outside world.  Alas, it was not to be so.
There won't be a funeral as such, but it's safe to say that the old Dell has gone the way of such creations, far too soon to suit me, but well past her MLS (median life span).  From the way those more conversant in the ways of computers tell it, I'm guessing she was about 60 in computer years (having bought her in 2005).  I should be grateful she lasted so long.  And I am, sort of.


I appreciate the incredible technological advances, the leaps forward.  But I resent, more than a little, planned obsolescence.


But even as I say that, I have to smile.  After all, aren’t we human beings planned for obsolescence from the very beginning?  Everything and everyone has a shelf life.  Maybe what I don’t like is that my own is winding down.


One of the most grace-filled things I have ever heard came from a professor at Johns-Hopkins on NPR a while back (sorry can’t remember his name and am too lazy to search out the link).  Speaking about the burden of perpetual memory, in light of things like FB pages and e-mail maintenance accounts for the dead, he reminded his listeners, me among them, that when we die, it’s out duty to exit gracefully from the stage and allow the living their turn, rather than to seek some false version of immortality by seeking to require future generations to maintain our web presence into perpetuity.


I like very much the idea of exiting from the stage gracefully.  It’s freeing, really, to allow myself to allow others to simply let me, all of me, go. 


Dylan Thomas was wrong, I think.  It is not rage that we should carry into our dark nights.  It’s gratitude.  Gratitude for the time.  Gratitude even that the time has passed.


And thus do I say a grateful good-bye to my faithful computer, even as I know that some day, those near and dear will say such farewells to me.