Thursday, May 12, 2005
5-11-5
I have always responded to sorrow with numbness. I lost all of my grandparents in childhood, one by one, as they slipped away due to illnesses brought on by lives of hard work and poverty. I never cried.
Death feels to me like a vacuum, like the air around me is sucked away a little bit and all the colors lose a shade of their intensity. I sense the absence, but I don't cry. I pause during the day like an animal that senses a presence. I think I have forgotten something. The world feels slightly different, but somehow not different enough. Not as different as it should feel.
I think that it ought to be raining, that maybe I would cry if it rained.
Then, this morning I find myself writing an email to a friend. I write: "She has a brain tumor. She has been really sick for a long time." I pause. No, that's wrong. I backspace, click delete over the "s" and type "d".
"She had a brain tumor."
The finality hits me and I cringe under the weight. Click. Delete. Has becomes Had.
She no longer has a brain tumor, and she is no longer really sick. She has been healed, which was all of our prayer all along.
And although the thought of her, whole and full of joy at the feet of her Lord, makes me smile; there is still the empty space she left behind. If you listen, you can hear her missing from our world.
Lauren White, Lily's Godmother, and the most gentle, humble, faithful woman I've ever known, lost her long battle with cancer yesterday morning. She was only a few years older than I am. Please pray for her husband James and her parents, Bob and Angie.
Death feels to me like a vacuum, like the air around me is sucked away a little bit and all the colors lose a shade of their intensity. I sense the absence, but I don't cry. I pause during the day like an animal that senses a presence. I think I have forgotten something. The world feels slightly different, but somehow not different enough. Not as different as it should feel.
I think that it ought to be raining, that maybe I would cry if it rained.
Then, this morning I find myself writing an email to a friend. I write: "She has a brain tumor. She has been really sick for a long time." I pause. No, that's wrong. I backspace, click delete over the "s" and type "d".
"She had a brain tumor."
The finality hits me and I cringe under the weight. Click. Delete. Has becomes Had.
She no longer has a brain tumor, and she is no longer really sick. She has been healed, which was all of our prayer all along.
And although the thought of her, whole and full of joy at the feet of her Lord, makes me smile; there is still the empty space she left behind. If you listen, you can hear her missing from our world.
Lauren White, Lily's Godmother, and the most gentle, humble, faithful woman I've ever known, lost her long battle with cancer yesterday morning. She was only a few years older than I am. Please pray for her husband James and her parents, Bob and Angie.
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