A little perspective

Today, I attended a reception for the family of a friend who died two days before Christmas. Ann was one of the gentlest, funniest, most beautiful people ever to walk the planet. She leaves a great husband, and two children the same ages as my two youngest. It's a little surreal, to have this happen during the holidays, while life is already so intense. My parents are visiting, my kids are all in overdrive, our house is full of noise and joy. Needless to say, the church where I work has also had plenty going on for Christmas. I feel like my time for reflection on Ann's passing has been preempted. And I don't want that to happen -- it's just too important. Her life helps keep my life in perspective.

It's not just that a particular friend, a beautiful person, is now gone. Ann is the first of four friends dealing with long-term illnesses who are likely to lose their lives or their spouses soon. All are people who should be in the prime of their lives, most with children still in school. This has given me opportunities to have meaningful conversations with people going through the most difficult transitions in their lives. I feel deeply blessed to know them, and to be able to offer whatever support I can. I'm all the more grateful for my own life, and determined not to waste it or take a minute for granted. I had my encounter with cancer six years ago, and I got lucky.

Ann's death also keeps me working through my faith, as a context for everything. It's deeply personal, and hard to explain, and I respect everyone's right to come to their own conclusions. Faith, for me, gives integrity to life and relationship and loss, and redeems the human condition. Faith helps me value experiences I would not choose, and to act with wisdom or strength I do not have. Sometimes, faith is just that thing I know that makes me get out of bed in the morning, when it would be so much safer to stay under the covers and hide. I have complete faith in the One who created all of us, who loves all of us, and who blesses us through each other. That One loves Ann, too, even if their relationship took a different shape. I'm glad. It makes her my sister.

On a separate note, I went to buy a mezzuzah today as a housewarming gift for an Episcopal priest and her husband. I realize that probably sounds all kinds of strange, but it makes perfect sense to us. (I verified in advance that she would use it if I bought it. It turns out her husband's mother was Jewish, so it was even more welcome than I'd hoped.) We have a mezzuzah on our front door, although the scroll is handwritten, in English. Today, in the lovely Judaica shop where I bought my friend's mezzuzah, the woman assisting me apologized that they only had scrolls printed by machine, not handwritten by a rabbi. I wonder what she would have thought if she'd known it was going to a Christian home. Pleased, confused, or disturbed? I hope she would see it as a connection. I love my mezzuzah -- it reminds me whose house I really live in.

It's tough to think coherently through the noise in my house. A floor-scrubbing robot is wandering around my kitchen, my father is explaining how to fix everything (whether it really needs fixing or not), and two children are stomping Dance/Dance/Revolution (which they spent the last day playing at their best friends' house). I just put on my teenage son's lawn-mowing earguards, like those airport ground crews wear -- my mom is sitting on the couch laughing so hard tears are running down her face. I really should offer them to her.