Through a Glass Darkly

The Bustle in a House

The Morning after Death

Is solemnest of industries

Enacted opon Earth –

The Sweeping up the Heart

And putting Love away

We shall not want to use again

Until Eternity – Emily Dickinson (Poetry Foundation) His father sat near the coffin, nearer than anyone else stood; his father did not look at its contents, only stealing sidelong glances now and then between bits of absent conversation.

Later when we talked, he gave me a hug; the corners of his lips curved up. His eyes, red-rimmed, did not.

I hadn't known the son, only the parents, but it occurred to me as I entered the funeral home that I had stood in this hallway far too many times, signing the guestbook in memory of children.

************************

Teaching death is strange when young people have yet to experience much of life.

Most children do not see that death's curse will insinuate itself into their own lives, but to avoid its discussion is to deny the rhythm of life itself.

For writers, haunted by the end of this life and curious about the next, the discussion of death is unavoidable.

************************

Years ago the process of finishing a life was more intimate; the body was washed and prepared for burial by sorrowing loved ones; when the time came, the body was tenderly dressed, placed in a homemade coffin, perhaps painted white as Emily Dickinson’s which was carried out over bright early spring flowers to a resting place not far from where she had spent most of her life.

It takes daily discipline to live mindfully in the shadow of Time.

Many times have I labored at a gym over some machine that asks, “Do you want this machine to read "Time Elapsed" or "Time Remaining”?”

That deliberate choice transfers to daily life.

*****************************

No mortal sense whatsoever can be made when Death arrives at 16 or 17 or 18; many adults shudder at the thought of being held eternally accountable for the foolishness of youth.

My voice, my facile tongue, becomes thick on such occasions; I cannot think what to say, in comfort or sorrow or elegy.

To stand as witness is all.

That day I held in my hand a card that read "In Memoriam."

Gently cheerful eyes smiled tentatively from the flat paper; it appeared to me he had been beautiful, both in body and spirit, a person whose presence enlivens the room with the sparkle of laughter and joie de vie.

What to say. What to say.

************************

We talked about it at the gym: why and how and the sadness of it all.

The retired fellows at the Y brightened my day; I was infatuated with their breezy teasing and animated discussion of all things.

No one quarreled, so once I was surprised to hear one of them cheerfully joke about the illness of his buddy’s wife.

Retirement equalizes the disparity in income and prominence; those who enter it vigorously tend to stay that way, seeing this part of life as simply another adventure.

I confess I was half in love with George, almost older than my father, because he so intelligently and kindly discussed literature and politics and religion and art films; these were treasures for my eager and precocious mind.

That delight was sealed when I discovered that George had begun taking piano lessons the day he retired.

Tom, on the other hand, was rather more solemn; a retired pediatrician, he was measured of speech. I had been his daughter's teacher years ago.

I chattered as we worked side by side on the reclining cycles, the appeal of which grew in direct response to the challenges of arthritic limbs.

I mentioned the funeral to Tom, interested in his medical knowledge.

I forgot the story he had told me about his own son—that day his son had been found.

When someone departs unexpectedly, particularly before Time can taint or cure them, it is more difficult to sweep the heart.

But now and then into every nook and cranny of the heart tumbles a ball of dust, along with a startling memory which fades with each passing hour.

That I had stumbled into familiar and uncomfortable territory unsettled me, yet it took a while to realize that, at this point in Tom's life, it was only uncomfortable for me, the listener.

Sweeping up his heart meant that he needed to talk about his "boy" (the man who had died would forever remain "my boy") because if he did not, then it would be as if his boy had never lived.

"In Memoriam"--to my gym buddy Tom--meant a peaceful acceptance of loss, a quiet acknowledgement that life would never again be as it was the day before his boy was found.

From that day forward, only his father would age.

**************************

I hadn't seen her in several years, so she delighted me when she tiptoed in her stockinged feet to my driveway where I was pulling weeds.

One of the old fellows at the gym knew her, had told me that her husband had died quite some time ago.

Our talk was pleasant; recently retired, she was happily gadding about town lazily for the first time in her life.

When she mentioned her husband's final heart attack, she was glad, she said, that the warning he had had years ago had inclined him to retire early.

After that, he played golf whenever he wanted, owning each day and its sunshine as if were his last.

Only expected to live a few years, he had far exceeded that and those years had been the happiest of their long lives together.

For these reasons, when he died she had chosen to be neither sad nor remorseful. Alone now in her house, she puttered, fixing this or that.

For years, she said, she had hated the tile in the foyer, its color chosen decades ago by a previous owner. She thought about changing it for years.

She realized one day (she laughed as she said this) that she had no one to convince but herself--no one to argue about cost or color or waste of energy.

What had been “we” was now simply I.

I'm free to do as I please, she said, smiling again.

***********************

Much of life can be spent thoughtlessly, but, once in a while, the cold breath of Eternity brushes the cheek.

We are reminded of Time Remaining.

Those who have entered Eternity, young or old, now know the secrets over which many great philosophers have puzzled for centuries; we who remain have only to wait because, one day, we too will know.

Those who are born with Eternity reflected in the mind's eye are weighted but, one day, they grow to understand the gift they have been given.

Others rarely even consider Eternity.

Time Remaining or Time Elapsed is counted by candles on a cake, sometimes even with the false festivity of black balloons.

At the gym, the light touch of a finger changes the view from one to the other.

If only it were so with the mind. ******************* The moon-she hides in daylight Encaustic on board