One Year Gone By

Parts of an old pier in the Hudson River

Yesterday I was remembering one year ago. Learning of the loss of Bridget. I had spent all that summer being simultaneously awed by her faith while furious at her diagnosis - terminal cancer. It wasn't fair and it didn't make sense and I hated it. I couldn't understand it. I still can't.

Yesterday I was remembering August 12th, 2008 specifically, but the events of that entire summer are never far from my mind. Bridget & her family left behind are never far from my mind. There is usually at least one song every Sunday in church that makes me think of her, chokes me up, makes it hard to breathe. I pass people on the street that look (kinda) like her, and that steals my breath for a second, too.

And as I consider how microscopically small my feelings of loss look in comparison to the grief of Bridget's family, I marvel at them - their faith and hope and love which have carried them through this past year without her. I marvel at her husband - whose loss, whose grief, whose pain I can't begin to fathom - who still counts blessings, who can sign emails with "Blessed by God" in spite of it all. I admired Bridget like crazy for the way she died. I admire Steve like crazy for the way he is living.

I stood near the river last night, looking at the piers jutting into the water, looking at Jersey's lights beyond, looking at gravel on the ground and clouds in the sky. And wondering why I get to see these things and Bridget doesn't.

It doesn't make sense. I hate it. I don't understand it.

Of course I do realize that Bridget is currently surrounded by a light so much more immensely beautiful than the nighttime lights of New Jersey. So much more immensely beautiful that I can't comprehend it. I can't understand it.

But the abstract idea of it does help me breathe just a little easier.

Just Yesterday Morning

For Bridget

After I read the news, I sat on my bed and heard the clangs and calls of the construction site across the street. But they couldn’t alter my conviction that suddenly the world had become very quiet. Quiet and flat. I imagined the spreading web of mourners on this morning – pictured my friends around the country reading the news. Thoughts of their sadness added to my own.

I got James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” stuck in my head; somehow it seemed inappropriate and this annoyed me. So I listened to Hanneke’s version of “It is Well with My Soul” which seemed more appropriate but also made me cry harder.

Those two words – “Bridget died…” – had a finality that was difficult to swallow, absorb. So this is really it? This is how it ends?

I have hated that you were going through this, even as I felt so privileged to have a window on your journey. I admired the strength of your faith so much it nearly hurt. Sometimes I wished it would actually hurt, I wished I could do something to help shoulder the burden, if not entirely eradicate it. I hated the feeling of helplessness, knowing this situation was beyond my control.

But as I wished it away, I was also so thankful for the humbling, inspiring example you set in the midst of it. Bridget, you made me think about heaven. Not for a passing second, but several nail-biting months. And not in dusty theological terms, but with a high-stakes urgency. If it’s all on the line, do I really trust? Do I really believe?

I am so proud to have known you, if only for a little while, proud to say “She came to one of my Oscar parties.” I think of the last time we met, when Diesel and I crossed your path in the Common one Sunday. When I try to remember you, the most immediate thing I recall is your smile.

And there, there is some comfort – in the realization that that smile – expansive and joyful in this life – was only a shadow of the smile that you’re smiling now & forever. I struggle to remember, and to believe, that what feels like finality on my side is the beginning of eternity for you, as your joy is now complete.

Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.

Both, At Once

The Reservoir at dusk

My Hebrew teacher is telling me about a friend of hers - a guy she went to college with - who has been battling cancer for nearly 10 years. She just found out that he's coming home soon from the NYU hospital, hospice has been called, the battle is ending.

She is shaken up about it, as one would expect. I know that feeling - the sadness coupled with helplessness. I have no words of wisdom, but we sit and shake our heads and frown about it for awhile.

Then she asks if I read the Sunday Style section (and I have to admit that I'm a spotty Times reader at best), because there was a big announcement recently for a wedding she will be attending. She shows me the invitation that arrived in the mail: it's the fanciest, poshest one I've ever seen.  Etchings, embossing - the thing is a work of art.

As I pick up each piece of it, feeling the weight of expensive paper between my fingers, she points out the list of wedding events. The rehearsal dinner at Per Se (say what!? holy canape!), the morning ceremony, the evening dinner downtown, the next morning's good-bye brunch. The dress code is listed below each event, and it is not casual.

"I'll have to buy a new cocktail dress for this thing," she says. "My friend is dying of cancer, and I have to go dress shopping. I mean...you know?"

I do. I tell her how, when a friend was diagnosed with cancer four years ago, it was about this time of year. I had needed to buy some seasonally-appropriate shoes for work, so I stopped at a shoe store on the way home from work that evening.  But I couldn't shop.  I just stood there, staring at the displays, thinking, "This is dumb. This is so dumb. I need to buy shoes, but Bridget will never need to buy shoes again. How can I be buying shoes at a time like this?  But I need to buy shoes. This is dumb."

The thing about death is that life doesn't stop for it. It often feels like it should, but it doesn't. There are still happy weddings to attend, there are new seasons that won't be held up. It's a weird disconnect, a troubling tension to navigate.

"Joy and tears," my teacher sighs, "Well, what are we gonna do?  Let's read the bible."

And so we do, as that's our purpose for gathering each week. We pick through two chapters of Isaiah, teasing out the English meaning from the Hebrew letters on the page. We start with Isaiah 55 (a personal fave) and end with chapter 56. We read beautiful imagery about renewal, and it's mixed in with stark prophecy about the sorry state of things. Good and bad, hope and destruction, flip-flopping within chapters.  And though we look for it - there's no easy resolution to be found.  Sometimes it's just both, at once.