It all seemed so possible (do dreams imitate life, or preempt it?): a faceless, nameless doctor in a pallor room shatters my orb into a cascade of shards. All it took was the detached utterance of the “c” word. Cancer. But he offers no “can.” As I reel, he blandly says I have had it for a long time, said that now there was really nothing to be done but to wrap up the last of the living.
Gasping, grasping, I try to surface from the suffocating words, emerge up into our reality with four scone washed walls and a white matelasse bedspread. But there was no up, only more. More of this wide-eyed recounting to my brother, my father, my husband. Like a recurring jail-break, I battle through to consciousness several times during the night. Only to have some hand reach out and drag me back into this relentless nightmare, this terror mirroring a vivid realmare.
Come morning, l lay in bed for what seems a long, long time before the knowing courses through my veins, cold and blue with fear: it was but a moon mirage. There had been no doctor, no definitive expiry date slapped onto this pounding heart.
But I ponder over porridge what hadn’t been a figment of brain waves: the end of here will come. Guaranteed. Some will have a doctor’s warning. Some won’t. I may or may not.
I switch over the laundry, pull a recipe out of the cupboard for our noon meal’s main dish, wipe off the counters. But I am visibly, deeply rattled, upended. I can’t quite shake the dream, like a smell I can’t scrub off, an odor seeping down into my pores.
Malakai tromps in, boots still on, zipper not done up, with a chestful of mail. Between flyers of a grand opening for a new flooring store in town and a sale on tires, a letter from recently widowed father-in-law, God allowing cancer to usher his half-century bride into eternity this past summer. In his careful script, he pens words that cut back, exposing:
“Thinking on the beginning of this year, who is called to come Home? Is it me, Lord? May I be ready, or we, whoever.”
Whoever. Ready.
Without warning, watery emotion wells. But how did he know that this would be my heart weather today?
Yet he doesn’t answer my question: how does one live ready, always? Yes, ultimately, only Jesus. Yes, certainly, this premature dying to self, birthing into the cross-life, the grace cocoon before emerging into the forever celestial life. Without this Jesus, no, there is no ready. But how to live in the waiting cocoon before the forever begins?
In my reality-saturated dream, I gasped for more time, frantic for more time. More time for what?
Then an email. A seventeen year old diagnosed with cancer. Her mother asks, “Any words?”
I stumble away from the screen. I have no words. I am groping today for the answers. How do we live ready to die? How do we live so no regrets weigh us down when we cross the finish line…whenever it comes?
And I think, while I fold towels, stack the linen closets, order the sheets: Whoever. Ready. Why do we think life is the sum of the grand experiences, the big events… and overlook the gentle picking up of the everyday moments, and the gazing on the preciousness of the simple?
In the end, I hazard a guess that our joy will be in collecting the happiness of living the everyday well, in gathering the memories of common (and yet painfully rare) loving. For therein is the God of the universe.
I think of all the things I might miss: traveling the heights of Asia on a bike, diving the blues of island seas, sitting under the Sequoias in a warm spring rain. Are these places that must be known, seen, experienced before one is ready? Ready to go Home? (A few weeks ago, I sat beside a woman while we were both having our hair cut, and in her hands were thoughts on pages under the title “1000 Places to See before you Die. ” Is that it? Are there physical places on this spinning rock, third mass from the sun, that simply must be seen before we cease to breathe within time, before we inhale eternity?) Why? To say that we have had reason to bow low? To say that we have seen beauty? To say that we have been arrested by wonder? Can’t that happen when you hold your mother’s hand? Or cup the wet face of a heart-pierced friend and feel love surge? Or witness the slow unfurling of the blushed petals of an apple blossom?
Perhaps we generally stumble about so blind that we must be affronted with overwhelming magnificence for our blurry soul sight to recognize the slightest grandeur. The same magnificence that casts its shadow across our everydays. But we never look around, up, to see it, appreciate it, know it.
I swish toilets and accept it: I don’t need more time to breathe so that I may visit more locales on the planet. Then more time for what? The joy I haven’t yet lived? Or simply for the love I haven’t yet given…or received? Couldn’t I do that now? Begin now, love and joy. For it is true: relationship is the only reality in the entire cosmos, and the essence of all of value, worth. Relationship defines our now and our eternity. For love is all there is. And it will last for eternity. Then, if that is it, how do I love more, know more joy, make this life fearless of death?
And the face of Jesus flashes. Jesus faced with his own termination date, with an expiry of left than 12 hours. What does he do?
“After he took bread, gave thanks, and broke it and gave it to them….”
In the original language, “he gave thanks” reads “eucharisteo.” That’s what Jesus did in the end. He gave thanks. Eucharisteo.
The root word of “eucharisteo” is “charis” meaning “grace.” He took the bread, and saw it as gift. He took it and knew it to be grace. He took it, the gift and the grace, and gave thanks. Like I can take up today, this moment, now. And I too can see it as gift, as grace…. And give thanks.
But there is more. “Charis”—grace—roots not only “eucharisteo” but also the Greek word “chara,” meaning “joy.” The three words, grace, thanksgiving, joy, braid. Jesus gives thanks, and knows what we yearn for, joy. In the grace, in the thanksgiving, joy erupts, swells, carries. Grace (charis)—God’s generous benevolence-- roots thanksgiving (eucharistia) that yields joy (chara). How can we know joy before we know thanksgiving?
And then Jesus breaks self and gives. When we take it all as grace, when we give thanks, and taste what fills: joy, we too break ourselves, and we give…. And so fill again with joy. Isaiah confirms it:
"And if you give yourself to the hungry, and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in the darkness and your gloom will become like theHow can we know joy without love? Love, not the tingling play of chemicals, but authentic love that decides, acts, gives, pours out. In this loving we meet God who is love, and in His presence is fullness of joy.
midday” (58:10).
Is this how we live so we are ready to die? I gather more laundry and think, yes, we live simply (powerfully) the same way Jesus lived and died. I swirl the word around inside like a rich drink warming all of me inside. Eucharisteo.
Grace. “Charis.” Seeing the common like bread and drink as pure grace, unmerited gifts from a He who can do nothing but give.
Thanksgiving. “Eucharisteo.” Giving thanks for the grandeur , the God-grace, of the miraculously mundane everyday.
Joy. “Chara.” And so grace nourishes thanksgiving, and we swell with joy, sweet, exuberant. A joy that fills us so that we break ourselves open and pour out, giving, giving, giving. Like Jesus, breaking bread and body, in sacrificial love. And thus more joy surges hot and alive through this mortal body. All for the joy set before us.
No, I don’t have any words, Mama of child with cancer. No words, plural.
Just one word. A word for me, you, we, whoever. A word to make one ready. A word for fearless, full living. And dying.
Eucharisteo.
We live it, do it, in remembrance of Him.
Lord? How can I live eucharisteo today? To see all as grace. To Give Thanks in all things. To Taste, deeply, Joy. Break and give again. Show me how to live the Eucharistic life. As You did.
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