grief

Never did say good-bye

/ Beth Merrill Neel / 1 Comment

What happens when we don’t get a chance to say goodbye?  Do we live with a sense of unfinished-ness?  Or do we move on and squish the unresolved stuff into that deep well in the gut where it gurgles and festers but never sees the light of day?

There are so many unfinished goodbyes.  A beloved, a friend, an acquaintance dies suddenly and there is no way to ask him for his cobbler recipe or to thank her for bailing you out that time.  A couple divorces, and friends must choose a side, and in-laws are cut off.  I know of two  (and there are more) congregations where the pastor was summarily dismissed, there one Sunday and gone the next, and parishioners who were for and against that person never had the opportunity to say things like “I never liked you but you showed up when you needed to” or “that sermon you preached on the woman at the well turned me around.”

A hospital chaplain used to admonish pastors and interns and everybody to keep our goodbyes current.  What happens when we don’t, when we lose the opportunity to get in a last, good word?  Sometimes it’s a mess, when we don’t say goodbye.  Sometimes we cling like shrinkwrap to the next best person.  Sometimes we grieve everywhere but the place we most need to.  Sometimes we wander lost, the way my cat did when his littermate died suddenly; he roamed the house, mewing and looking around, so sad and confused.  Bereft too, I would say.

I once served a congregation whose previous pastor had been let go suddenly, with no going away party.  I served there part-time for seven months, but when I left, they threw me the biggest shindig you can imagine.  I was bowled over; my husband reminded me that really, the party was as much for the previous pastor as it was for me.  Interim pastors learn that sort of thing, but I wish my predecessor could have been there too, since 90% of the party was for him.  (I did keep and still treasure the quilt they made for me.)

Our word goodbye derives from a 14th century word meaning “God be with ye.”  There is hope in that – though I didn’t get to say goodbye, I choose to believe that I and the one I miss are with God.  But one last hug would have been nice.goodbye

Triduum

/ Beth Merrill Neel / Leave a comment

WAFT

They say that smell is the last sense to go.

And if

the last thing I could smell before I died was freshly baked bread

I might say that I would die a happy woman.

The smell changes, from the spongy-saucy tang of yeast

to something whole and warm and comforting

butter and honey only make it all the more sublime, swooped

on while almost too hot to touch.

Bread of life

ACHE

I don’t really want to think about Good Friday this year.

too much death of late –

Children and teachers at an elementary school.  Two beloved parishioners.  A college roommate.  Two infants.

Enough, I say.  Enough of you, death.  Get you gone, go away, don’t come back, leave the people I love alone.

That is the point, of course.

Death comes and takes us all away.

We scour the empty places

but they remain unfilled.

WAIT

Manet’s two angels captured it, adorned in their cobalt blue wings;

one dressed in the color of dried blood, weeping.

The other, in burnt orange, hair lifted by an unseen breeze,

waiting

watching the horizon for

Life.

Waiting for the eggs to cook so we can dye them.

Waiting for the child to go to sleep so we can prepare her easter basket.

Waiting for that last burst of inspiration for the sermon.

Waiting for Easter to come.

Waiting for God to do the work of God.

Waiting with

impatience and

hope and

a sense of the familiar.

Manet's Dead Christ with Angels

Manet’s Dead Christ with Angels

The Sympathy Card

/ Beth Merrill Neel / 3 Comments

sympathy cardEveryone knows that the best place to buy greeting cards is at the car wash.  Don’t ask me why, but as I stand there waiting for Sherwood Forester to get all sparkly and clean, I browse the card carousel like there’s no tomorrow.

Here’s the thing: the car wash has birthday cards, thank you cards, you’re a great friend cards, wedding cards, engagement cards, thinking of you cards, congratulations on your divorce cards, but no sympathy cards.  And that’s a problem, because I am in need of some good sympathy cards.

Only once in my life have a found a great sympathy card, at an independent bookstore in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.  The wife of a work colleague had been diagnosed with a brain tumor, and we found a card with a magnet attached that read “Oh sh*t” (except there was an “i” where the “*” is.)  Evidently she loved it, and kept the magnet on her fridge until the day she succumbed to that cancer.

I have sympathy cards to send – to the family I never met of the friend who died; to the best friend of the friend who died; to my husband’s sister-in-law who lost her dad; to the widow of a former minister colleague in Milwaukee.  Now some of those folks will be happy and comforted by a card with a beach sunset, or a bird flying against the sun, or a weeping willow.  But in my own grief, I want to find a card with a Jolly Roger flag that reads “I am so sorry you are going through hell right now, and I wish I could be with you but I think you have to get through this hell without me because, to be truthful, the thought of experiencing a loss like that terrifies me.  I’d rather walk the plank.”  I might even throw in a good “aarrrrrrr.”

But Hallmark doesn’t make those cards.

And even once I find the card, then I have to figure out what to write.  You have my deepest sympathy.  You and your family are in my prayers.  For the non-religious, I hold you in my heart.  And here’s the other thing: there are words we’re not supposed to use in our notes, so “It totally sucks that your beloved died” becomes “The passing of your loved one is a grief beyond comprehension” or something else poorly written like that.  Euphemisms play a big part in the sympathy card.

In seminary and in hospital chaplaincy training we were taught to use the words “die”, “death”, “dead”, and neither to beat around the bush nor hem and haw at the gates of the underworld.  As a pastor, I feel differently about that, and sort of decide in the moment which word I am going to use – “died”, or “went to God”?  “It sucks”, or “I can’t imagine your pain”?

Part of the problem is that I am a word person, and sometimes words don’t work.  Sometimes they do – Mary Oliver’s poem “When Death Comes” comes to mind, as do the lyrics to that great old hymn “I’ll Fly Away.”  But the words that I grasp for, in talking with someone or in writing the card, don’t come.  I am not a poet, nor a lyricist.  I’m a human being who will herself die one day, who is terrified of losing the people she loves, who really can’t make a 100% claim about the afterlife.

I guess, in the end, I’ll look for some blank cards with a beautiful picture, hoping the beauty might ease the soul.  I’ll write something truthful and gentle, and I’ll keep it brief.  I’ll put a stamp on the envelopes and put them in the mailbox.   Then I’ll tell my beloveds that it’s time for dinner, and in making dinner, and saying grace, and telling stories about our day, I’ll  let go of the worry of losing them for just a little bit, and hold fast to them in the time that I have.

jolly roger

More chocolate; thank you

/ Beth Merrill Neel / Leave a comment
The gifts of tulip and chocolate.

The gifts of tulip and chocolate.

It’s always a bit unsettling when things converge; it makes it all the more possible that there is a divine force guiding us – or so I choose to believe.

If you’ve read some of my previous posts, you’ll know that 1) I invited people to eat chocolate every day for Lent as a reminder of God’s sweetness to us, and 2) that an old friend of mine was killed suddenly.  To have put the invitation out on the first thing, and now to be wrestling with the second thing has made for an interesting juxtaposition for me.  How do I contemplate the sweetness of God in the midst of sorrow and grief?

Truth be told, because of the nature of this pastoring thing, I may be one half-inch further along on the whole theodicy thing (why a loving God allows suffering.) I don’t have any answers, but I am slightly less uncomfortable with the mystery of it all.  And so the story that follows is not an answer in any way, nor does ease the chafing of points 1 and 2, but it’s a story and it has helped me.

So, as I’ve written previously, my college friend Martha died last Friday.  We lived together in a suite of ten our sophomore year, and in the days that have followed since the news of her death, we ten have been trying to get in touch with each other.  On Monday I had a call from one of the other women from that suite, a friend who was an engineering major in college (I majored in art history), a friend who was a gifted athlete (it was all I could do to get the simple box step down in my forays into musical theatre.)  We lived together but lived very different lives.  We had not stayed in touch.  Until Monday.

Monday she calls me at the church; she lives in Portland, can she stop by for a visit?  It was fantastic, and again I was so thrilled to see how this friend from my early adulthood had grown into this fabulous, generous, beautiful woman who gave up engineering and runs a non-profit that gives books to children.

And here’s the thing: she brought me chocolate and tulips, because, as she said, that’s what Martha would have done.  This old friend who had become a stranger to me is a friend once more, and the angel bearing chocolate – a sweet salve for my achy heart.

May there be chocolate-bearing angels for you today.

Desperately Seeking Martha

/ Beth Merrill Neel / 10 Comments

No, not Stewart.

Today I learned that my friend Martha, one of my college roommates, died.  She was hit by a car in Brooklyn just yesterday, and I don’t know more than that and am not sure I will choose to find out more than that.  It is shocking, of course, when a friend from your youth dies.  She’s too young to go, and by that, I also mean that I’m too young to go.

We lived together in a suite of ten our sophomore year.  With Martha, hilarity ensued, and often.  We roomed together that one year, but not after that, and after college we lost touch.  We reconnected a few years ago at our 25th college reunion, and then on Facebook.  She blogged – “Desperately Seeking Jon Stewart” – and it was smart and funny, just like her.  She had written kind and encouraging things to me about this blog, which pales next to hers.  I was utterly delighted to discover how my college friend had grown into such a magnificent, talented, generous person.

So it’s death again, knocking at the door, IM’ing me at a most inconvenient moment.  Another untimely death at that, and the usual response: messages to other roommates around the country, missing the waste basket as I throw my soggy kleenex away, and  wishing I could take her family some tuna noodle casserole or a Hefty bag of tortilla chips to get them through when the shock wears off.  Grieving is such a patchwork – moments of utter loss, next to moments of the mundane.

I shared the news with my husband, and got about to the rest of the day.  Then dinner, then playing, then a family dance party.  Katy Perry’s “Firework” came on, and I was belted out with the divine Ms. P, and suddenly was so overwhelmed I just put my face in my hands and wept.  Yes, at Katy Perry.

I was taken back to our 15th college reunion, when two of our other roommates, Anne and Emily, and I stood out in the athletic fields watching this incredible firework show accompanied by a live band.  I remember standing there with my two dear friends, both of whom had married and had children, grateful for the blessing all these friends were to me.  As I watched the fireworks, I thought about friends who had died, their lights had burst and delighted and illumined, and then they were gone.  And now Martha is too.

We’ve started sharing memories, of course, to ward off the blow.  That might be the only good way to deal with grief – to tell the stories, the funny ones and the painful ones and the hilariously awkward ones.  For reasons I can’t remember, Martha was on crutches for a while our sophomore year, and one night sang out her lungs (for all her talents, singing was not one of them)  to “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”  One Friday night, as we thoroughly disregarded the law about the drinking age, we were walking along Nassau Street when a case carrying a Resusci-Baby fell out of an ambulance. Let just say that what unfolded was like what would happen if Eloise (the city child who lives at the Plaza) grew up and went to Princeton and found a Resusci-baby after having drunk a bit.  (We did eventually return the baby, much worse for the wear, but I swear there was a smile on its face that hadn’t been there before.  Martha had that effect on people and inanimate objects.)

After college Martha was a producer for the PBS show “Clifford the Big Red Dog.”  None of us who knew Martha was surprised by that.  She won an Emmy for writing for the PBS show “WordWorld.”  We weren’t surprised by that, either.  She married, had kids, wrote, laughed, and made orange juice come out of our noses, we laughed so hard.

So in her memory, I’m turning up the Bonnie Tyler.  And I plan to do something hilarious and outlandish this week.  I’ll keep you posted on that.  I hope it will make someone laugh, if only myself, because a little too much has hit the fan this time.

(Turn around) every now and then I get a little bit lonely and you’re never coming round

(Turn around) every now and then I get a little bit tired of listening to the sound of my tears

(Turn around) every now and then I get a little bit nervous that the best of all the years have gone by

(Turn around) every now and then I get a little bit terrified and then I see the look in your eyes

(Turn around, bright eyes) Every now and then I fall apart (Turn around, bright eyes)

Every now and then I fall apart And I need you now tonight

and I need you more than ever

And if you only hold me tight

We’ll be holding on forever

And we’ll only be making it right ’cause we’ll never be wrong

Together we can take it to the end of the line

Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time (all of the time)

I don’t know what to do and I’m always in the dark

We’re living in a powder keg and giving off sparks

I really need you tonight,

forever’s gonna start tonight

Forever’s gonna start tonight

Once upon a time I was falling in love, but now I’m only falling apart

There’s nothing I can do… a total eclipse of the heart

Rest in peace, dear friend.