Pain and death at Christmas

My lesbian friends are visiting parents this year - together. And, the pain is often great. One family insists that they sleep in separate rooms, another has twin beds for them, and one family says they aren't comfortable with their staying in the home. Most can't afford lodging elsewhere; so they sleep apart (and what are you going to do in your parents home except sleep, especially when you know the disapproving parents are next door or just down the hallway, or worse in the room underneath you?). Some don't go at all even though their parents are aging; some try to find room with accepting cousins or aunts. Some try to make the journey in one day. Those with children have it hardest. What do you say to a young child who wants to visit Grandma and Grandpa?

On Tuesday, a friend is burying her brother who died of colon cancer. She will be holding tight to her mother who says, "This isn't how it's supposed to be." He leaves two young children.

A memorial service will be held for one who took his own life - a choice he made because the pain of living became too great. We can speculate about causes: Vietnam, lack of family support, alcoholism, drug use, purposelessness.

So, as we prepare for the ritual birth of the Christ child, the baby who was God and human, life goes on with all of the pain, the deaths, the natural disasters as usual...except with a little more of all of it - the joy as well as the sad.

God came to earth to be with us - Immanuel - God with us - God did not come to take away the pain or the death or the joy or the desire. God came to teach us how to choose life. For life is breath and God's first act was to breathe upon the emptiness and chaos. Ruah in Hebrew.

I quote from a poem I learned long ago about friendship: "take what is worth keeping and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away." May God with you be the breath of life that helps you sift the pain and the joy, keep what is worth keeping and with steadfast love and compassion blow the rest away.

Death

On Wednesday a friend in another city died after a long effort with cancer, but we couldn't find out any information until Saturday. Go, Annie, Go!!

On Sunday, an online friend committed suicide and left us a note on his private blog. May he find peace and acceptance.

Tomorrow is my mother's 91st birthday; I hope she's enjoying it in heaven; she didn't enjoy a lot in her lifetime.

I've been re-membering the people in my life who have died during this Lent. I don't want their memories to die for me. Some are pleasant; some are not. But, none deserve to be forgotten.

The bootlegger's son who taught me to shoot a bow; he died in a car accident shortly after we graduated from high school.

Kaffee, who prompted me to try for a loan for divinity school and helped me through the process - encouraging me all the way - from breast cancer a year later.

Alison, who was my pal in divinity school - the cigarettes eventually got her through metastasized cancer.

Tim, my next door neighbor in divinity school, who died of AIDS and left his walking cane by my door.

Chelsea, the organist at my wedding, who also died of AIDS and was ashamed to tell.

Bill, my godson, who was older than me, but called me "Mom" because I sponsored him for confirmation, a Vietnam vet who died of illnesses contracted there.

Debbie, a church friend, who let me walk her "helping dog" after the church service and became a special friend.

Bill, who put me on the road to good sobriety, good counseling, good medical help, and offered me his vulnerability in seeing his dark side - of prostate cancer.

David, my brother, who died needlessly in an accident on a oil line repair barge in the Gulf when I was 16 years and two weeks old.

Marty, my nephew, deaf after a baby illness, who committed suicide at age 34.

Sue, my sister-in-law, who tormented me through young adulthood and became my sister in the process - in an operation to repair a stomach ulcer.

Martha, a patient in the Alzheimer's Unit in Wallingford, CT, where I did my CPE - she forgot how to eat and I sat with her for two weeks.

Dixie, an elementary school buddy, whose mental illness finally caused her to end her life.

Aunt Clyde, who loved me and was ashamed to tell me that she had sclerosis of the liver because she didn't want me to think she drank - she did when she was young but not for many years.

My first husband's niece who died at birth because both her parents had used many drugs and she was born with a partial head.

The child who was buried in a pasture in a shoebox, wrapped in a new baby blanket that my Mom bought for the family.

Untimely deaths. Yet, one by one, I remember all that I can and hold them to the light, knowing that they live.

Monday is therapy day

Thanks to all those who have continued to leave encouraging comments and send emails. Today is a good day with therapy at 3 pm today. I am hoping to keep it contained, but emotions spill out throughout the week and realizations of the reality of situations long past. So, I am hoping for direction, hope, light, and recognition. That's a lot to hope for, but I'm optimistic.

Had a note this morning that a best friend and running buddy from about 25 years ago has died. Sad. We had lost contact, but I had heard that she was happy. I hope she heard the same about me. She was a delightful sprite who brought much sunlight and laughter into my life.

One day we were cleaning my apartment in preparation for a party that night. She suddenly realized that she was cleaning with only one hand; the other arm was full of my beloved poodle Sarge - we called him a sack of potatoes. He would just drape himself around your arm, in your lap, on your shoulder, and, often as with Ginni, you'd never know he was there. Sarge loved us all and so did Ginni. May light perpetual shine upon her. I'll try to find a picture of her as the sprite I knew.