Did you ever run with leaves: a wild race born of wind and liberated foliage? It’s a race, but more than that it’s really an invitation to partnership and farewell. Racing with the leaves was not about finishing first; rather it was about a romp enjoyed in the midst of a transition being celebrated. It was playing with a friend before that friend was called away home.
It happened in fall’s own autumn when the leaves turned dry. They had long lost their color, becoming curled and britt...
Did you ever run with leaves: a wild race born of wind and liberated foliage? It’s a race, but more than that it’s really an invitation to partnership and farewell. Racing with the leaves was not about finishing first; rather it was about a romp enjoyed in the midst of a transition being celebrated. It was playing with a friend before that friend was called away home.
It happened in fall’s own autumn when the leaves turned dry. They had long lost their color, becoming curled and brittle; gnarled sometimes like hands beset with arthritis. Winter’s impending snows skirted the horizon and teased the forecast. It was something like the last hurrah before fall slipped away. As a kid, it was an invitation to play one more time; to playfully challenge the remnant of leaves that had yet to sleep.
It most often began in the street as a brisk winter wind dove and spun from graying skies; slipping just centimeters over the asphalt. The myriad leaves strewn about seemed to grab hold for one final thrill, hitching a ride for one more bit of hilarity and fun. They raced, spun and tumbled down the road, at points catching themselves in winter’s eddies and spinning in perfect circles as if caught in a delirious waltz. Pooled in some sort of scripted conglomeration, they would suddenly burst forward amass to continue their pell-mell race down the road.
For a kid, it was all too inviting. It was play and farewell all in one. You had to race; to run in some sort of camaraderie or you felt that you were somehow betraying fall and being brutish about its departure.
And so we raced. It was playful enough until winter blew a briskly firm wind that sent jovial leaves bounding past us at a pace we could not match. Left behind in a deluge of wildness, we would pull up and stop; breathlessly watching the leaves hurl themselves down the street and into the bosom of winter. It was more than just leaves. Rather it was bidding a season farewell; watching it roil and dance down the street, turning back and waving goodbye as they went. Fall was drawing out of reach, leaving us behind to wait for the next season.
Breathless and aching, it was a bittersweet moment; those times when you don’t want to lose what you have while you’re simultaneously looking forward to what’s coming. It was about wanting to hold all things at all times, not in the sense of seasons for seasons don’t hold; rather they give and then take. We want all the accumulated good of life to be constantly present, rather than a good thing having to leave in order to make room for another good.
Kids don’t understand goodbyes. I saw it all as kind of circular; that whatever I was losing would come back. Fall would come again. We’d race again. The hello and goodbye of this season would happen again and again. It did not embrace loss as permanent so it was easier to let go knowing it was eventually coming back. Kids don’t understand that sometimes things leave forever; that finality has a non-negotiable terminus where an end is indisputably an end often without apology or explanation. But,I didn’t know that. Fall was drawing out of reach only to return on the backside of next year’s calendar. And so we waved goodbye to fall and ran wildly into winter.
Drawing Out of Reach in Adulthood
It wound in stilled wonderment past the sturdy walls of the hospice and around the pond, mystically inviting grieving passerby’s to a soulful stroll. Brushing the edge of a dense forest caught in the early stages of releasing falls blaze, the brick path offered those on its gentle concourse the opportunity to brush the edge of their own existence as well. Death does that, and a hospice is a place for death.
The path was an artistic fusion of decorative bricks laid out in relentless mosaics. It was ever changing and always beautiful. Gracefully worn at the edges and framed in slight strings of emerald moss, the path was a brick menagerie aged and gentle. It wound around the entire pond, encircling the waters with a gentle but slightly distance embrace.
It had known the footsteps of many whose strides were made heavy with pending loss. Tears had mottled its surface. Sobs had run in rivulets deep into its crevices. The lamenting of lives lost and opportunities squandered had drawn the brickwork tight. Grief and celebration held simultaneously had prompted wonderment; the path often attempting to understand the contradiction. It had aged indeed, but with the sturdy mantel of wisdom and the tender softness of a rare empathy. It didn’t dominant but invited the passerby with muted whispers to a curious walk along the edge of life and death.
That Thin Line
The first of falls leaves had begun to litter the path by the time my brother and I walked it. They wanted to race, but their invitation was more than we could heed. The invitation to frolic and farewell was the same, but I had no heart for it. Fall would be back. My mother would not. Fall drew out of reach every year only to return. As a kid, I didn’t understand that sometimes things leave forever; that finality has a non-negotiable terminus where an end is indisputably an end often without apology or explanation. Mom’s departure would be permanent, without apology or adequate explanation.
The path seemed to weep as only true sympathy can beget weeping, brushing aside fallen leaves as so many tears; itself declining one more romp. Something about this path seemed thick and generous with empathy, somehow knowing our pain because of the pain of so many others whose steps and pain still lingered in the crevices and cracks of its brickwork. It beckoned, inviting us to a contemplative stroll that took the mind beyond the simple hedgerows of the heart and deep into the wilderness of the soul.
Death invites us out there, beyond the comfort of life’s edge. It seems that the thin line where life and death meet is a tempestuous and fearful place. One does not cross over only to return on the backside of some calendar. Goodbyes are not followed by hellos; at least none that happen on this side of that line. There was a foreboding permanence that this line was not circular; rather it was linear, moving on to something else someplace else.
A Glimpse of Both Worlds
This precarious line calls into question so many things we prefer not to call into question. Latent feelings lying deep within some sort of emotional substrata are awakened and rise despite our desire to keep them submerged. Edging up against our own humanity is always a frightening thing. Living in the denial or ignorance that finality is final allows us to live with a sense of the eternal in a world terribly temporal.
There is that inherited bit of eternity that lies deep within us that rails against the confines of the temporal, awakening a deep sense that we were originally designed for life without limits. When limits are laid out as lines across the landscape of our lives, much like that path, we find ourselves facing something that was not meant to be, but something that is anyway.
Yet, this line is filled with a sublime richness, handing out pearls of wisdom and priceless insights that give away, in some nearly magical way some of life’s most closely guarded secrets. It is here that the dichotomy of life and death, of the finite and the infinite, of the eternal and temporal edge up to each other and eventually intersect in one place. The two sides of life merge in a rare and uncanny way, giving us vast glimpses of the whole of existence.
Somehow winding down its broad path it afforded the grieving the privilege of winding down a path not often traveled in both heart and spirit. Here the deep wood drew up shoulder to shoulder with the brick path, much as death and life draw shoulder to shoulder in such moments.
It was not a clash, but one aspect of life being fully present with the other likewise fully present; life standing side by side with death in a partnership of sorts. It was indeed the consummation of the entirety of existence, an extremely rare convergence where each inhabited a single place at a single moment. It was really not about anything waving goodbye only to say hello in the turn of some season. It was about the complete appropriateness of this finality as being the crowning touch to life. It was the need for a final exit that set the stage for a final entrance in a place where hello was in reality “welcome home,” and “goodbye” would be eternally unknown and therefore entirely absent. Something surged within me as two aspects of the same thing came together on a simple brick path that wound tight against fall’s wood.
Our Fear of the Line
I lived on the life side of that line, as far away from the line itself as possible so as to be as far from death as possible. My mother was drawing ever closer to that line, moving to cross from this side to the other. Her illness had thrust me to the edge of that demarcation, either as a means of keeping Mom from crossing over or attempting to see that the place she was heading was both prepared and fitting. I don’t know. An illness had pushed her near the line when I was in kindergarten at a tender five years of age. Thankfully, she did not cross then, although she had brushed frighteningly close.
This time the crossing was imminent. There would be no return, no coming back on the backside of the calendar. Leaves blew down the tight brick path into a pending winter. I felt no urge to bid them farewell, nor did I feel brutish and insensitive by not doing so. The farewell that I was facing supplanted any desire for any farewell ever. Yet I attempted to grasp the appropriateness of a final farewell in exchange for a forever hello.
Other loved ones had crossed over this path . . . aunt and uncles and grandparents, descending into some sort of abyss that permitted no spectators, leaving me distanced by the fear of that place. From this side, I couldn’t see what was there. Like the forest running deep and dense, death quickly drew those I loved out of sight behind veils of shadow into some place that I couldn’t see. If there was life out there, I couldn’t make it out. And if there was, could it ever possibly be as colorful as life on this side of that line? What was Mom crossing over to? Seizing the hem of a winter wind, the leaves bounded into the deep wood and cavorted out of sight.
The Known Unknown
“For I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2, American Standard Bible). Somewhere out there a place was prepared for Mom. Across that line that she was approaching lay a provision unknown to me. It was said to be spectacular; the stuff of mansions. But I wanted to see it to affirm it as being so in order to lend me some comfort. She was drawing out of reach. When you draw out of the reach of one place, you draw into the reach of another. However, I couldn’t see that other place.
I held to belief that whatever that place was, it was magnificent. Magnificence begets mystery, somehow becoming so grand that it’s too grand to be randomly disclosed. It is the stuff of privilege, holding secret its bounty until those destined for it see it for the first time. Grandeur disclosed in a sudden massive display is thrilling. I hoped that heaven was such a place. Despite the fact that I couldn’t see it past the deep wood and shadows of life, I prayed that it was out there waiting for Mom in indescribable splendor; a welcome growing in wild anticipation of her arrival from which any departure would be eternally unnecessary.
Despite the wonder of all of that, my first and most fierce intent was to stop this crossing over, oddly railing against a journey I could not stop. Sometimes life appears to carry out its plan without seeming to cast an eye towards those affected by that plan. I felt alone and invisible, lost on a gentle brick path teased by parting leaves that wound around a quiet hospice.
Drawing Away and Fading
A number of the bricks embedded along the way contained inscriptions of names and dates etched deeply into their reddish clay surfaces. Some had filled with dirt and scattered speckles of moss; the footprints of time revealed. Others were entirely fresh and sharp, being new to this gentle path. Each name represented a history likely embellished with both wonder and tragedy; a story now completed and slipping with ever increasing vagueness into a misty past. They were inscriptions . . . a handful of letters shouting out names in brick and mortar relief, leaving the world one remaining voice that would forever speak the names of those who had died in this place.
The names cascaded through my mind as torrents of people whose faces I attempted to visualize and whose lives I found myself fabricating. They were entirely unknown to me. Yet, it seemed all too appropriate to resurrect them in my mind at least, to not allow death to draw them out of reach entirely. It seemed some primitive effort to minimize the power of this line by pulling a foggy fragment of these people back across to this side.
The brick path was a curious path, made for the living by those now dead; made so that the drawing away might not result in being entirely drawn from existence itself. It was an inevitable path, one that we all walk, skirting the immortal at one time or another. Some are in front of us along this path, others are behind, and yet others refuse to walk it even though not walking it is not an option. Life on one side and death on the other.
The record of those passing across that line were etched as whispers on fired clay beneath our feet so that names and lives would not be forgotten as they drew out into the deep wood. All of these names had drawn out of reach, leaving the single footprint sketched out in a handful of letters. These bricks held their ground while falls leaves bounded over them and raced off to winter. Mom would cross this line. Her name and her life were already being etched across my heart.
The soles of our shoes scuffed the path’s surface that day. We paid little attention to the support that it laid under us and the guidance it provided us. We were adrift in a mother drawing out of reach in this place of death. It is likely that the path served the most anonymous role conceivable, being a path upon which the grief of those walking it made the path entirely obscure. Mom was becoming obscure as was the entire scope of life itself. Yet this path gave us a footing that we didn't even recognize, much as God gives us a sure footing when what is precious and sacred is being drawn out of reach.
The Onset of Grief as the Inability to Stop Loss
Grief often begins before the loss impales us. Grief finds its origins in the anticipation of loss and it deepens as we become increasingly convinced of the ruthless inevitability of the loss. At his most dire moment, Jesus uttered the plea “if it be possible, let this cup pass from me . . . “ (Matthew 26:39, American Standard Version). His grief was related to what had not yet transpired. It was ground not in the loss itself, but in anticipating the loss.
It may be that anticipation of loss is something of guesswork and speculation, being our attempts to manage or deal with a pending loss. Sometimes it seems that we attempt to visualize loss as some sort of proactive strategy so that the fury or fire or ferocity of loss itself is contained before it befalls us. Such endeavors call for great speculation, thought and a host of presumptions that frequently render the process itself in excess of the actual loss.
Likewise, it seems that grief arises from our inability to stop the loss. Our grief also appears grounded in the realization of our weakness as held against the enormity of what looms before us and our inability to coerce life into avoiding those things. It’s that we can’t stop loss. We’re powerless before this thing called life. It will forcefully move through our days, our hours and our most guarded core with no consideration for what costs its movement may incur. Often life pulls across this line and out of our reach the very things which we so desperately wish to hold onto. And mom was drawing out of our reach.
Obedience and Understanding
Are we willing to be obedient to that which we may not understand? “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9, New International Version) declares God.
It's not about understanding the movements of God and creation. It’s about finding some meaningful abandonment and embracing an entirely confident surrender to that which we can’t grasp and therefore don’t understand. We intentionally set ourselves squarely outside of ourselves, allowing ourselves to live in places we have no hope of comprehending, choosing to believe that there is no other place so grand to be. We realize that the vast majority of this thing we call life and all that makes life grand and massive and terribly exciting is out there; in a place that only God understands. And there, we are left without any understanding except that we are perfectly placed and at home more completely than anything this side of eternity.
It's impossible to find this place, much less reside there unless we trust that in God’s hands all is purposeful with a purpose whose value is far, even infinitely beyond whatever loss might be sustained. Is it a matter of fighting the pull of life or attempting to redirect the great torrents that come against us; to halt the army of departing leaves that race down the road and into winter? Or is it assuming control by the relinquishment of control? Is it seizing with a brash intentionality the belief that in the pulls, torrents and torments God has a grand purpose if we only dare to look, ask or step aside so that we can run to this place of faith, safety and utter abandonment?
Paul wrote that “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1, New International Version). Faith is not about dissection or deductive thinking or rationalization or endeavors designed to rein the infinite into an intellectual corral where it can run itself in predictable circles. Faith is about deciding not to know. It’s not about ignorance or the lack of commitment to gain and garner knowledge. Rather, it’s about acknowledging that all knowledge will quickly collide with a grand wall which human intellect cannot scale, dismantle or burrow under. It’s acknowledging its presence and embracing, even seeking its arrival. It’s about knowing that the vast majority of life is surrender to what we can’t know and a God who we can. If we can do this, then when death comes and it moves into the shadows of the deep woods beyond our vision, we can accept it, embrace it, and in time even cheer it on.
But here lies the great defeating rub. The lynchpin upon which our thinking is either prone to lavish graciousness or unbridled hate is understanding, or lack thereof. We demand to know. Tell me about this crossing over. In light of its unfathomable permanence, explain its rationale and process to me! Show me how it fits and how it’s the better option.
“It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power” (Acts 1:7, American Standard Version). We hate that, particularly in crisis. It’s not enough. It explains nothing. It asks me to believe without hard data or fast facts that would give me a reason and platform to believe. Our lack of faith demands the infusion of information. Information shapes an explanation. And we hope that the explanation is sufficient.
It’s God’s odd, seemingly incongruent dichotomy that we grow the best when we know the least. Lack of understanding provokes faith and forces it. If we don’t understand we either seethe with rebellion, or take a radical posture of resting in a grander plan whose scope and breadth we simply cannot see or adequately apprehend. Mom was drawing out of reach and I was forced to the precipice of this decision to demand to know or let it go. I found it easy in theory but enormously taxing in reality. I wrestled with it imperfectly.
Beating Grief Equals Surrender
Is beating grief the wrestling with surrender and surrendering to surrender? Would grief not only be reduced, but possibly abolished? Surrender is largely synonymous with abandonment in the sense of abandoning our right to fear and embracing our greater right to peace. “And the peace of God, which passes all understanding” (Philippians 4:7, American Standard Version) . . . is ours if we rest in surrender rather than the terrible angst of information that is always insufficient in loss.
Surrender is a choice. As a choice, it is a privilege. We have the privilege of surrendering to God. Surrender in a relationship with God is not about defeat as we presume it to be. It is a supremely tactical move vested in wisdom and faith.
In dealing with grief, it is handing over our lives and our pain with the full acknowledgement that surrender to God means the defeat of grief. “Not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42, American Standard Version). It’s not acknowledging our inadequacy, rather it is acknowledging God’s adequacy. We move away from the need to know and move toward the need to believe. Knowing is never sufficient . . . genuinely believing always is.
Surrender is letting go to something infinitely bigger than I who sees a plan much bigger than the one I see. It’s resting in the conviction that the path unfolding before me is rich even though its escarpment and ascent seems only the stuff of pain and its glories largely obtuse. It frees me to set a course along that line between this life and the next, drawing into the lungs of my soul both halves of life as living and dying.
More profoundly, it’s embracing the fact that Jesus crossed over this line into death and then of His own accord and power came back across this same line into life again. “He . . . is risen” (Luke 24:6, American Standard Bible): three simple words that are said of no one else in all of human history. Sometimes the grandest of all events are best described in the poverty of a few simple words. In a handful of syllables it was declared that Jesus crossed back over. He did both sides of it, and He controls both sides of it. He returned on the backside of the calendar. If indeed He controls both sides of this seemingly precarious line, then the line is really of no accord.
The sun set a rapid course for a horizon tinged in the color of autumn and chilled by that October fall. The path drifted into the chilled shadows of fall; the leaves having ceased their romp. The day’s advance marked far more than the closing of a simple day. For the first time, and the last time in my life it marked the closing of my mother’s life as well. She seemed tied to this day, passing as it would pass. She was moving out of reach as was the sun and the day it defined.
Oddly, I had no alternative but to surrender. I fought the only option presented to me for an option that I did not have. A few of autumn’s leaves swirled at my feet, dancing it seemed on this line between life and death, inviting me to race. They pirouetted as some grand waltz between life and death as if this place marked celebration, seemingly understanding the permanence of Mom’s transition. The words “nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39, American Standard Version) seemed so easy for Jesus to say. The seasons seemed to grasp them. However, they were not easy, but Jesus said them anyway. I struggled to do so, for in doing so I released that which I did not hold. I stepped back. In the stepping I let go of that which I didn’t hold and I let my mother draw across that path and out of reach.
Tears once again mottled the surface of a gentle path that brushed the edge of a dense forest. The leaves raced off the edge of fall, I found myself unexplainably able to release them to the next season. Although it was fight, in the slow release I sensed a pending space to begin grieving. I cried in the fight against myself and the first thin wave of grief that the fight permitted.
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