Clouds of Mourning, Sunbreaks of Grace

My wife received the call on Monday afternoon.

It was the Monday of a busy finals week for me, but the day had gone well. My department had met for our traditional finals week lunch, sharing Mexican food and stories and laughter. The scheduled all-morning Faculty Senate meeting had mercifully been canceled, allowing me to make some additional progress on my grading. If my luck held, I thought, I might be able to get all my papers graded before my final exams. Maybe, just maybe, I could grade those finals by commencement on Saturday when I could begin enjoying my four-week break early.

Then the call that changed everything came.

It was Janet's brother. He said the staff at the assisted living facility had been concerned about their dad. Monte's speech was slurred, and he seemed listless, struggling even to sit upright in his chair. Mark had taken him to Mercy Hospital emergency room, and they began the evaluation. Hospice had been called and would be there the next morning.

I remembered the calls I had received about my parents. Though they were some years ago, I could recall clearly the circumstances and the setting when each call came. When my brother said, "we've talked to hospice and they said you should come."

When you live 2000 miles away, those calls initiate not only a flurry of activity but lots of anxiety. Will I get there on time? Will I get there, stay for a week when nothing changes, then have to return?

The next day we got the second call. We learned Monte had been sleeping a lot since entering the hospital. The hospice people were saying it could be days, it could be two weeks. This information was not very helpful, but as we talked about what to do, it became clear that Janet needed to get there ASAP.  We changed our reservations from Saturday to the next day, Wednesday. I immediately began making arrangements with work study students and colleagues to proctor my finals scheduled for the next couple of days. We started packing, rescheduling appointments.

Then the third call came. Janet was in our bedroom when she got the news from her brother that her dad had passed--peacefully, thank God--but also much more quickly than any of us had expected. He would have been 93 on his January birthday, had lived a long, full life. The last year and a half since his stroke had been hard. Janet tried to take comfort in the fact that her dad was no longer weak and struggling.

The next 24 hours brought a flurry of activity interspersed with tears and hugs. We asked our youngest son, Garrison, to go with us if he could get off work, and he said he could. Before we knew it, we were in the back of an airporter van, beginning the trip south.

In my experience, saying goodbye to a parent is one of the hardest things on earth. For me, this was the third time: first my mom, then my dad, and now, Janet's dad. No matter the age or circumstances, when it comes, it seems an event of enormous proportion. It's not an eventuality most of us prepare for because we think, contrary to reason, that our parents will always be there for us. And unlike mourning the death of a friend, when it's a parent, there's that sense of responsibility, the feeling that the mantle is being passed on to us--and we realize there's no way we are ready to take on that role.

Grief is a fickle emotion. It comes in waves and it arrives at unexpected moments. I can remember when my mom died, my dad had asked me to call several old friends who were out of town and tell them about her death and inform them about the memorial service. I was doing fine until I was on the phone with Barbara, one of Mom's good friends. In the middle of telling her about the time and date of the service, I broke down and cried, blubbering, unable to continue talking.

When I returned from Kansas and began the spring semester at the small college where I taught, I thought getting back to work would help. I would be fine, I told myself. I've had a week to grieve; now it's time to get on with life. But I was mistaken. At a college of 350, you know everyone and everyone knows you. Students are friends, as are fellow faculty members. So I couldn't walk across the courtyard to my classes without having conversations, and each conversation brought back the loss of my mom to the top of my consciousness, unearthing feelings I didn't even know existed. I realized that grief does not contain itself in a week or two week's break. It continues coming in waves and according to its own rhythms.

Yet in the midst of mourning, this trip to Oklahoma and Arkansas reminded me, there are moments of grace, moments that interrupt the grief and bring joy and healing. Some are sad moments but they carry a weight of meaning that we don't often experience in our day-to-day existence. Here's some of the moments I'll remember:

• Phoning my pastor. Hearing the caring and compassion in her voice. The comfort I took from her prayer over the phone with me. Knowing that my family and I would be in the thoughts and prayers of many good people.
• Emails and hallway conversations with my colleagues at school. Their ready offers to proctor finals or help in other ways. The comfort of knowing we were not alone.
• Asking one of my classes to email their final papers rather than leaving a hard copy in my mailbox, which I would not be around to receive. (For some reason, I thought I would be able to grade papers on the trip. Silly me!) My students not only sent their papers but expressed their sorrow at my loss and made thoughtful comments about how they were praying for me and my family.
• In Oklahoma, being welcomed upon our late-night arrival to Janet's brother and sister-in-law's home where our beds were ready and when I went to the kitchen the next morning, I saw the Peter Pan crunchy peanut butter Beth had left for me. (It's my favorite brand of peanut butter, but it's hard to come by in Oregon.)
• Janet and Mark's first hug, sharing for the first time, in the flesh, the reality of their dad's departure. Mark's obvious relief that his sister was there.
• After the 6-hour drive to Arkansas, being welcomed into the farmhouse home of Janet's aunt and uncle. Sitting at their kitchen table as multiple grandfather clocks chimed the hours and minutes, writing down what I would say about Janet's dad at the chapel and graveside service the next day. 
• The country breakfast ready for us when we woke up Saturday: eggs, bacon, biscuits with homemade apple butter and jellies--with all the coffee and tea we could drink.
• Not long after that hearty breakfast, a potluck lunch for the family at the church building with fried chicken, ham, potatoes, green beans, pie because, as Janet said, the way you show love to people in these parts is by feeding them.
• The joyful, tearful reunions between Janet and her aunts and uncles and cousins.
• The shared stories by family and friends at the memorial service of their memories of Monte. One of his grandsons, a Navy man, had difficulty sharing through his tears but, more meaningful than his words perhaps was when he turned to Monte's casket and saluted his grandfather, a WWII veteran.
• The funny and poignant stories sent by our son from South Korea, which Janet read, including the story about when Pops was teaching him to ride a bike and Jackson wanted to ride barefoot and Pops told him if he did his toe would get stuck in the concrete, this being warning enough to ensure that he would never ride a bike barefoot again.
• Hearing stories about Monte as a child from his three surviving sisters including one about his teasing the girls in high school by hiding a mirror from them.
• At the graveside, hearing Taps blown by the military honor guard--complete with a cow in the field next to the cemetery mooing along.
• Watching Garrison and his two cousins serve as pallbearers, carrying their Pops on the last leg of his earthly journey.
• The mercy of a dry, sunny day for the graveside service after it had rained hard all day on Friday.
• At the close of the graveside service, Janet asking the family members to join hands and sing "Silent Night." With Christmas being a few days away, she thought singing together about peace and new birth an appropriate way to end this day of mourning and celebration for a good man--a loving son, brother, husband, father, grandfather, and great grandfather--and so we did and so it was.
• On the return trip, stopping by the Tulsa neighborhood we used to live in and seeing the house that Janet designed and had built, remembering those times when our kids were young and fed the ducks in the pond in that neighborhood.
• Back in Oklahoma, at Starbucks, having a chance meeting with some best friends from our Tulsa days. Spending an hour remembering good times with Darryl and Cathy and their four kids and our three and catching up on what all our kids were up to now. 

Each of these moments was like a sunbreak--a word I only learned when I moved from Oklahoma to the Pacific Northwest. There's not much need for the word in the Southwest where the sun shines pretty much all the time. But, in Oregon, where most any day from November to June can be cloudy and grey, it's a word that comes in handy.

When I served as academic dean at a small college in Portland, my office window looked out onto the soccer field. Most days during the spring semester, the soccer field was empty or, at best, home to a few birds. But when a sunbreak came, I could look out my window and be sure to see lots of 18-21-year-olds, throwing frisbees and footballs or just sitting on a blanket talking, reveling in the warmth of the sun.

It seems to be human nature to appreciate those events that seldom come: Like sun in winter in the Pacific Northwest. Like times when we can express our appreciation for the life of a loved one. Those times, as Shakespeare said, where we speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. Those times, like Christmas, when we can sing Silent Night and reflect on birth, and death, and love that never ends.