A Reluctance to be Sad

 My decision to attend seminary came loaded with sadness. Granted, not the sadness of tragedy but real sadness, nevertheless. My years of teaching and listening to women stacked to such a rewarding height that those habits seemed impervious to change. School meant capping that stack, leaving what I truly loved doing. Leaving people with whom I loved being and working. Saying “no” to harmful things is hard, but saying “no” to something good in order to say “yes” to another good or something better? Terrible! Dione, a Bible study coworker who knew me well, wrote to me about this in the midst of my vacillations about seminary.

 

      Now to address the question of whether the Lord is moving you out . . .When a person thinks he has an interest in mountain climbing, he begins on a small scale (home Bible studies). [The parenthesis was hers. Dione always makes sure I understand things.] 

      There’s a rock south of Point Mugu that is a beginner rock for climbers to learn on. It doesn’t take much time or investment. If our climber has a natural talent . . . he’ll equip himself better—sharpen his skills with experience on more challenging mountains, and get better climbing equipment (study and $$ in books). If this mountain climber continues to have a unique capability for climbing, then as circumstances permit, he will invest a great deal of his life in climbing.

      By this time he has a lot to offer. There comes the day he is asked to join an exposition on Mt. Everest. He has been asked because he has established a reputation of being very capable. Will he decline? How can he continue his present work and accept? What painful thinking.

      . . .By accepting the Everest exposition, however, he will be weighted with more awesome responsibilities. There will be sacrifices, dangers & failures mixed in with the triumphs. And, definitely a longing for what he has left. But—he’s been selected.

 

Dione helped me decide to climb a personal Everest. I got lost in tears over goodbyes and well-wishing. I also got lost on the freeway coming home from Pasadena after my day of seminary registration. Freeway #5 will not carry a traveler where #118 will, regardless of intentions. Magic Mountain’s Great Colossus provided a massive clue that I was nowhere near the Oxnard Plain or the Camarillo Ranch. David still shakes his head when I attempt to explain my route home through Valencia, Fillmore, and Grimes Canyon rather than the San Fernando Valley. Actually, the experience was a great metaphor for my feelings of that day. Lost. Separated from this, not yet connected to that. Between things, and sad, and reluctant to be so.

 

But, I made it home, then started school. From the first day, the first hour, the first autumn smell of fertilizer on the campus quad, the first successful return home, I loved it. I managed well. I was sailing along, healing from separations and thriving on the good diet being fed my mind and my soul.

 

Then came the spring of 1984. With my first year nearly completed, I returned home from a day of class, grabbed the mail from the box on my way down the drive and stepped into our kitchen reading. Suddenly, I slid my back along the refrigerator door, dropping to the floor with a letter in my hand. David stood wondering what my grandmother wrote that hurt me so, that made me so obviously sad. I began reading her letter joyously, as I usually did. Then I came to this,

      

      I enjoyed your letter so much. Reading about all of the studying you are doing, my heart rejoiced for I could remember all of the times where I would have loved a classroom.

Before I go farther let me say again, ‘I love you Darling,’ but when I got to the part where you had the question, ‘Why?’ [Why I am so fortunate to go to seminary, I had posed]

 

At first I thought, ‘Of course—we love to learn.’ Then there came this picture to my mind—a busy little wife and mother—cooking up something for a neighbor who was ill—studying for a large Bible study for women—speaking at retreats—Mother/Daughter luncheons—answering the phone and helping someone in a problem—being close and on an understanding level—you did it, it seemed to me, perfectly. Gave yourself.

Now, in a higher level, an unlearned one like me would not have the audacity to seek you, you would never understand my problems. 

 

You took all of this time and labor to satisfy yourself. Do you suppose you could be satisfied to be available for just ‘down-to-earth’ problems, encouraging someone to try harder to be a better wife, or an understanding mother to a child or teenager?

 

Wish I could have a good visit with you, love, Granny

 

“Dear God,” I cried and crumpled to the floor. “How can Granny say this? She is among the dearest of all people to me. Doesn’t she know me better than that?”

 

Granny’s letter broke my heart. My gentle Granny, whose death this year saddened me profoundly, preferred my old, familiar habits. They were admirable, safe; she was sure of them. What on earth would I do with an education she felt belonged to men anyway—a graduate degree in theology. Would this make my meals better? Was school distracting me too thoroughly from doing good things for others? Would I grow smug? Would it separate us somehow? Many people will resist changes that we make, even people who love us. Or, especially people who love us?

 

Sad? Yes. Well we may be when we make changes. But immobilized when we ought to be moving? Not possible for people who choose to be real. We are reluctant to be sad, but leaving often causes it. It may sound odd to the ear, but the heart needs to hear it: Be authentically sad.

 

We feel sad when we are affected by grief, sorrow, loss, or unhappiness. Sadness is not anger or blame or denial turned inward. Depression may be, but sadness is not. Often we confuse these reactions. Consequently, our ability to handle any of them properly is also confused. Sadness needs courage, reason, and time, but not correction.

 

Sadness arises from leaving things, places, situations, but never so profoundly as wen we leave people. Or when people leave us. Never is there a greater need for deliberateness than in these cases. I have written about Linda, about our friendship. Now I want to talk about her leaving. My journal will do much of this work. It is still hard, and I am still reluctant to be sad. 

 

Monday, July 2, 1990

      Linda sleeps fitfully and tensely in her private room [Her] hyper-sensitivity to sound is what I recognize as a new phenomenon since my last visit. What good fortune that I brought along a set of Bach tapes: Saint John Passion, Sonatas, Partitas, Concertos. This is, today, her music of choice.

 

I entered a week of setbacks and warnings of her battle’s end. Stronger drugs, aborted attempts at rescuing. Procedures, radiation, hookups, shunts, and valves—all failing. The work Linda and I did together concerned conquering anxiety, meeting and managing pain, arranging pillows, rubbing a swollen body, and maintaining a quiet, darkened room. 

 

Wednesday, July 4th

      “So, do you know what today is?” I asked coming into her room.

      “Yes. It is the day the Lord made. And, it is the Fourth of July.”

      “So are you going to rejoice in it?” I asked.

      “I am. I plan to eat some food, take a little walk out of this room, wash my hair.”

 

We did manage a short walk. I managed to stand by as a chest tube was removed and an incision leak was fixed. Oxygen was ordered round the clock; her sluggish blood, I learned, was shunting. Dilaudid, though increased, was self-administered now and no longer sent her on a drunk. That Wednesday, organized and fastidious Linda needed her routine defined and written down. We deliberately named her routine: “No Routine.”

 

Her work was to accept the unexpected, to roll with what could not be controlled, to manage what she could—like how much water I should add to properly cover the chipped ice. I never got it right and she let me know. 

 

Saturday, July 7th

      What a day this has been. Very difficult for me. Last night I gathered the letters that I have written to Linda since 1965. She has kept them all. So many memories on those pages. Today Lin chooses to talk about her dying. Today is my day to cry, and cry . . . How can sorrow mix so easily with so much love?

 

We have two goals: 1) for her to get better enough to go home for a while and 2) to prepare well for death if she cannot rally.

      The week of July 1-8 blurs. I spent some nights and every day at the hospital. I pushed pillows under the yet ample buttocks, under swelling legs and feet. I gently rubbed a swollen belly and aching shoulders while Lin and I talked, talked, talked—of cancer, of what measure of hope, of things to tell people, things to do, her funeral, her personal things; her fears, her hopes, but mostly her very present distress. 

 

By week’s end breathing is harder. Oxygen is constant, pain is in her left shoulder . . . Dark circles lay quietly under Linda’s eyes. She speaks with difficulty. Her throat feels constricted. Her body is so swollen. Her eyes roll when they close. She dreams nonsense.

 

Sunday, July 8

      We had a remarkable Sunday afternoon. She was energized for a long period of time . . . two hours? Later, I think maybe she is going to get better.

      . . . Marvelous conversation, tears together (she decides to let herself cry). 

      “The medication will keep me from crying too much,” she says confidently.

      “Barbara, I’m going to take a short little nap. Then, before you leave me today, I want you to bless me. Will you do that?”

 

I would be leaving her that night, to fly to my home the following morning. Not for the last time, I told myself. In a couple of weeks I would be speaking in Estes Park and before and after my commitment there I planned to spend time with her. Linda, I think, knew better.

 

      “I will,” I say and I sit, thinking, while she sleeps. Before I leave, with her hands in both of mine, I say through my tears something like this,

      ‘Dearest Linda, I bless you . . . with the gathering up of all our years of love, mingled and preserved for us, forever. May God bless you with a crossing to Eternal Life that bursts with Spring. A gift to you after your hard winter of suffering. With my hands, my eyes, my ears, my voice, and thoughts, I bless you, Linda Houser. I send with you, my heart.

 

I lay against her bed quietly crying with her hands in mine. She put her head back on her pillow, smiled, and cried. She said again for the how many hundredth time? “My dear, dear friend, how I love you . . .”

      

I do not remember that there was an actual goodbye. I rubbed her feet until she slept. I do remember walking out of the hospital into rain. I was so thankful for it. Rain never fails but to comfort me. I drove to her home through it and early the next morning, left my friend. “For the last time?”asks my journal. Leaving was not in the plan we laid for our friendship.

 

Leaving life was not what Linda would have chosen for her forty-ninth year. It was a sadness she was reluctant to embrace. But when it became clear that no choices remained, she grabbed it and made leaving a deliberate act. Linda finished life by leaving well.

 

I could write forever a list of reasons against her absence. But when there was no choice but to be finished with friendship here, we worked to leave it with deliberateness. 

 

Thursday, July 12

      Linda’s son, Jon Shannon, called this morning. “Mom has taken a turn for the worse and the doctors say she probably won’t make it through the day.”

 

This is the Thursday I bought Shasta daises and planted them in my yard. This is the day I said for the first time, “Linda has died.” This is the day I wrote,

 

      For once I understand a meaningless moment. She did not die at night; she did not die alone. But she died. Impossible. How long will it take to believe this? I don’t need to cry very much, not yet, at least. So much has already been cried through with Linda. Our facing her death has been done quite thoroughly, together, in that hospital. With laughter, tears, fear, and courage. With gifts of words, gifts of tangible things, with tasks done together for the sake of her body and mind. With questions and affirmations for her spirit.

 

I flew to Denver one more time that July to “do her service,” as Linda said I would. In the eulogy I confessed, 

      That I don’t feel like a celebrant. I am admittedly absorbed more in my loss than in her newfound release. I can’t ‘picture’ her in Heaven. I’m not completely convinced there are Bing Cherries there [another story, another time] . . .I’d rather have her here . . . even though she and I agreed to prefer the quality of our friendship to a greater number of years, I admit, I am not yet ready to celebrate.

 

I quoted Saint Augustine who wrote in his Confessions,

      “The grief I felt for the loss of my friend had struck . . .into my inmost heart . . . I wondered that he should die and I remain alive, for I was his second half. Like the poet who called his friend, ‘the half of his soul.’”

 

How I wish I could report that I “did” that service because I am so wonderful or mature. A lack of such perfection took no more time to appear than it takes an endodontist to finish a root canal. “Doing” that service fulfilled my commitment to Linda and then offered me immediate opportunity to face some work due my character. From my point of view, Linda jumped out of the blocks before the whistle blew, she got a head start on maximizing character, she leapt early to the place where it all began in the beginning. But, I stand here on earth where imperfection remains and my contribution to it is sometimes powerful, sometimes self-serving or ugly, or thoughtless. I have plenty of authenticating work to do. 

 

Following Linda’s service I moved through the conversations of lingering family and friends. “The measure of Barbara Pine got defined,”says my journal, when a skinny, dark-eyed woman placed her hands on my shoulders, allowed maudlin tears to spill on her cheeks and through her words. 

      “Oh, thank you for what you said today.”I instantly resented her tone. “It expressed so perfectly OUR love for OURLinda.”

 

I wanted to punch her in the nose, says my journal. Anger shot form my gut to my brain shouting inwardly, “I do not share an ‘OUR’ Linda. My words today expressed MY love, thank you very much.” I didn’t say those things but I felt them. I was hurt, and I was testy at that particular moment. I finally gained enough control to excuse myself, to leave her long-playing, saccharine memories to the ears of others. I did not leave her well.

 

I am glad, however, to report that Linda and I left friendship deliberately and quite well. We were reluctant to; it made us sad. But sad is a feeling appropriate to many forms of leaving. The good news? Sadness does not require correcting. 

 

COMING UP: Chapter Seven CONCLUSION