I am enroute to Tucson, where my uncle Jack Markham will be buried on Saturday. He was the middle of my mother's three younger brothers, and sort of the family black sheep - which means really, he was only a little gray, but I suspect he was my mother's favorite and when she called on Thanksgiving to tell me he had died, I could tell she was badly shaken.
Both of her remaining brothers, though younger than she is, have bad dementia, and I realized that she's kind of on her own when it comes to mourning Jack. He was married (fourth marriage, third wife - he married one twice), but even though my parents visited regularly, I don't think Mom and Mary Ann ever warmed up to each other, and I'm sure we'll be out of the inner family loop. So I decided to head out west myself, so that Mom has someone to drink and cry with. My father doesn't do emotion, and I just hated the thought of Mom being by herself in all of this.
USAir has wifi, and it's a long flight, and I figured at least I could accomplish something besides playing suduku on my Blackberry and trying to figure out lattice energy problems for chemistry. I'm going to get back to Providence late Sunday night, set the alarm for six and head right back out for another funeral.
Back in seminary, I had a great friend named James, who was erudite and witty and generous and a wonderful dancer. We would dress up and go swing dancing at clubs in Boston, and he'd have wine and cheese parties and everything would be lovely. For the first few years of our ordained life we stayed in touch. I was in New Jersey and he was on Long Island and we visited, and hosted dinner parties and went to the weddings of friends together. He had a partner for awhile, and I met Gerry and we got married fast, and then moved to New Hampshire and I lost touch with James for a long time.
James died Monday - hardly more than a month after being diagnosed with colon cancer. He was rector of a lovely place in Maine, and his funeral will be at the cathedral in Portland on Monday morning. I can hardly believe it - none of us can. Monday, phones were ringing all over the country as my tight seminary class shared the news.
You know, it's just too much loss. I'm beginning to be afraid that some part of me is simply going to shut down, or turn off. Looking for a pair of nail clippers today, I finally opened one of the drawers in Gerry's bedside table - something I've avoided doing, and the grief and loss rose up like a cloud. The drawer was full of his peculiar paraphernalia. He loved handkerchiefs, and clip on sunglasses, and those Croaker things that hold your glasses on when you exercise. A couple of pen knifes, a stack of old birthday and anniversary cards (he hated throwing anything away), and then a bag full of all the stuff he'd used to ease the symptoms of the plague that killed him. Spray for dry mouth, band aids for the peeling skin on his fingers, inhalers, ointment - it made me realize again just how uncomfortable he must have been for months and months - discomfort he never complained about because he didn't want to upset me.
Oh sweet blessed Jesus, I miss him. And I'm sad for James, and for my Uncle Jack - and for my own parents who are well into their 80s and can't possibly live forever. There's just nothing that makes this better - a colleague of mine said on her own blog earlier today, marking the anniversary of the death of her daughter, that grief doesn't get better - you just learn to live with it, to navigate with it as your constant companion. And I think that must be true.
I am hoping that Gerry, and James and Uncle Jack are in that place where there is no pain or grief, but life everlasting. I hope there IS such a place. I will stand with the living one more time as we bury the dead - I guess in the end, that's the most of any of us can do.
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