Sunday Palms and Pauses

I have been thinking a lot about death.

It is Holy Week here. Palm Sunday.

I suppose that seems reasonable when death is taking many in the world.

And in a week comes Easter which is all about the tangle of death, crucifixion, and life reaffirmed.

I used to be afraid of death. In a way that was life-deterring. I used to have little faith.

Then I became a mother.

When I was pregnant with M, which seems a lifetime ago, my life was kind of in its bedrock and rubble. I don’t know if I have ever talked about it, but my Ex and I were told after our first set of of blood work and ultrasound, that there was a karotype showing up and while it could resolve itself, it was possible that the baby would be born with serious health issues and a life span that would be only hours or days. We discussed at that time options to go forward or to make some hard decisions in the next few weeks. The chances were high enough they had to tell

This wrecked my Ex. It put a dent in anything that would have resembled recovery. I said what I always say, “Well, it is what it is.” He found it heartless. I found it more like solace and faith.

This was when I started to realized in the hard moments in life all the ways your internal choices in a crisis matter more than the actual choice you make. The process. The process seems to be where your faith and solace and grief and joy and indignation and hurt all exist. It is a truly human thing and it the beauty of life in many ways.

They told us not to Google. My Ex did. It was a slippery, alien thing to see someone who was barely holding on fall apart more. Everytime I thought we hit the bottom there was more underneath. I understood his worry and pain and fear. I did not understand planning for something that was only a possibility.

I had a mentor at work at the time. I don’t know if she knew that’s what she was. Her kids were older, she had already divorced and found a relationship again with someone, she was successful, and she was kind, but serious. I told her I was pregnant and I had been looking for a better position because I needed better income and health care with the disaster that was my home life. Somehow she asked about the baby and I told her the news we had just gotten.

I said something like this, “I think that things work in so many ways you can’t understand except in retrospect. If all this is just for a few hours of life and that’s what we get in life then I don’t need to stop that from happening. I feel ike this is the cards and you play the hand as well as you can.” And, while my Ex did not understand not railing, or ending, or mourning or doing anything about it, but she did. We could converse on it together.

That’s when I had an inkling that some people just won’t be your people. They have no give or grace for you. My Ex, M’s Dad–is not my people. Even though I loved him once long ago. My people choose me when given the choice. It doesn’t always look the way you imagine, but they choose me in the decision. That’s the thing my Ex never can do. That’s the thing Match does again and again.

I realized this moment I was going to follow through with a baby however the path winded up was the first time in a long time my choice was mine. I made a completely selfish choice that had not a with to do with anything other than my child and myself. I did it that one time, too. Maybe that’s where the grace is. Almost twelve years ago, I decided the same for a moment. So even though Match’s Ex is not my people, she never chooses grace or give when it matters for Match or myself– I know what its like to choose selfishly once. Same, same, same.

I started a better job that was the thing that fixed my life. I waited to tell my boss, who taught me a lot of things about how to be a leader, that I was having a baby. I was months and months of being pregnant and at the point where my dress pants wouldn’t button. The extra genetic strand dissolved. Her organs looked to be developing. Her heart would beat normally and not be missing pieces. I explained that to him and he gave me a lesson that went something like this: You don’t need to explain this. Congratulations. That’s the end of it. Congratulations. The rest we can figure out and its not a problem. I’m happy for you. ” It was the first time someone had reminded me that life was a celebration at the core.

Anyway, death has been on my mind. My case with M was a blip. A nano-second of nothing. I know that’s not the case for everyone. So many of us lose our loves before they get a chance to inhale once in the world. Many of us bury our hearts before we ourselves go to rest. I got the thing that comes before pain and the loss.

In terms of my own life, well, that process, and being a mother, cleared that blanketed, heavy fear of death. It became a singular concern of leaving my child. That’s how fear of unknown became different in the process of becoming a mother. It was that I would leave them and they would be motherless.

I am now in the middle of watching four girls grow into adults that will be in the world. I realize while they need a mother, that they are also their own true human with their own true hearts. That I didn’t matter quite as much as I had given myself credit for. At the crux: They would be here and wonderful even if I wasn’t around to help. It is in them regardless of who raises them in life. That internal pieces that are me and their dad and themselves all jumbled in there and you see the pieces like blocks or bricks that make us the path of their life. They spill out some days and you get to see how there are things there that inherently are you, their other parent, and themselves. Its kind of trippy. I don’t think their path would be easier with me around the whole time, but it wouldn’t be less just because I left them too soon. And honestly, it all will seem too soon, too harsh, too sad this lifetime, yet it is the thing that happens a myriad of ways everyday.

Death is everyday like life. They walk hand and hand. We just know more about one than the other.

Palm Sunday is about a lot of things. Faith is one. Walking towards death is another. Human frailty and the ways we make each other suffer. The idea of sacrifice. The idea of justice and judgement and forgiveness. About the way paths are hard and have a certain end. It is about accepting things we don’t want to always accept.

I’m not a consistent practicer of religion– mostly because I’m not good at structure in the tradition sense. I have a hard tome getting to the pew every week. I do love going on Palm Sunday. It is the one day that the story, the scents, the words, the palms feels like church. That thing people get from worship, I don’t have all the time in a building with a cross. I have it with tiny arms around my neck in an embrace, watching the clouds in the sky, in books that stir things, and in sitting with Match some days on the couch. There is no lack of spirit in my life.

And that is where I realized when we are all looking at a lot of souls leaving, that I am not so afraid these days of any singular of blanket death. It is not in my circle of circumstance I can control. I just know its a certainty. So, I focus on what matters– the process of crisis, joy, fear, and love. I come back and back to this.

And eventually, if I give this thing I have no control over since the choice is in another set of hands, I will come to a place that is love again. In this plane or in what comes next.

This life so far is far better than I could imagine. It is so full. It does not matter the things left to do, because I have to little things that make life the best— friends, family, warmth, love, and the blessing of comfort again and again. Of doing what good I could when I could. Of being a friend over all. Of being a mom, once I knew how, in everything Ive done. Those are the things that I’ll do as long as I breathe here and they’ll be more than enough.

Were putting a piece of spring up today as we have no palms. Church looks different, but its the same place I find myself worshiping most days in small moments. It is what it is. We’ll make the best of what comes. That is the only thing we can ever really do.