Words to make a day

Three Fridays ago, I popped a giant pot of popcorn on the stove, and my husband set up a mosquito net in the living room (a necessity after dark), and we all piled together under it for a family movie night. We had borrowed the movie “Babe,” this lovely Australian film about a small pig and a quiet, big-hearted farmer who discovers that the pig is a natural sheep herder. Anyone who has seen the film likely remembers the scene where the farmer is attempting to coax nourishment and spirit back into the cold, dejected pig. The farmer begins to sing, and then dance, an all-out jig in his living room, with only the barnyard animals as witnesses to his gift. The song goes like this: 

If I had words to make a day for you

I’d sing you a morning, golden and true.

I would make this day last for all time

Then fill the night deep with moonshine.

Two Fridays ago, I opened our computer to discover an email from my father, telling me that my beloved grandmother, my mother’s mother, had died peacefully in her sleep. Although the news was not unexpected—when I left in January, I said goodbye knowing it would likely be the last time—I was stunned, crushed, my whole landscape shaken, like a giant mountain had been ripped out of the ground on which I stood. I have spent time this week peering into the hole, gingerly feeling the edges, mourning deeply not only her death but also the geographical distance separating me from other family members, who will gather soon to mourn her death and celebrate her life. 

Grandmother was my namesake, the Ruth in my Naomi Ruth, and she was larger than life. She was bright and bold, a trail-blazer, a theologian, a counselor. She was a woman who took her own grief (she lost her mother when she was a child) and wielded it into a deep desire to see her loved ones stick together, and we did. Five families in three houses neighboring each other, with wood hauling and potato digging, volleyball games and Frisbee golf, ice cream suppers and family songs the threads that wove us together. Communal life is rarely easy, and at times the words spoken could be sharp and cutting, even more formidable than the large pruning shears Grandmother lugged around the property to clip stray branches and leaves. But she loved us all dearly, fiercely, fervently pointing us to Jesus and his words and his kingdom.

Grandmother was my hero. She was not perfect, but she was poised and purposeful and passionate. She loved words like I love words, and like the song the farmer sang, she could sing me a day, a week, a life made more beautiful because of her words. Grandmother never lacked for things to say, for elegant insights and honest wisdom. When I was a teenager, she told me about the beauty and holiness of sex, how the act of creation was “The one thing the devil can’t do,” while I sat clutching my Dairy Queen ice cream cone, glancing around to see who else could hear this mighty homily. When I was in college, she told me that every change brings grief, that “Life is a long series of letting go,” and we sat in a canoe and paddled quietly around the lake where our family vacationed together. Just a few months ago, as I confessed how my young children have to forgive me for my anger and frustration, she turned to me and said, “Why, you’re just giving them a good dose of humanity.” To me, her wisdom was grace. And I will miss her words.

Last Friday, I sat in a darkened sanctuary and remembered another death, the death of Jesus, the living Word, the Word made flesh, his flesh ripped open and laid bare for us. And I cried anew at the cruelty of it all—the shame, the agony, the irony of the God whose words create life choosing to be silent in the face of death. Oh God Almighty, he was your beloved son, and we are your beloved children! Where are the words to make a morning, golden and true? Where is the day to last for all time?

But as I breathed in the sweet air of the Tanzanian night, wet with rain, I thought of the mercilessness of days of nothing but sunshine. I understand that here, now, how day after day of golden mornings can be oppressive, severe, can dry up the ground and the spirit. And as much as I want to sing my beloved children golden days to last for all time, I know I will sing them suffering, too. And the world will sing them suffering, and the rain that falls in those days of darkness will be life and growth for them.

Dearest Grandmother, you who have pressed past the veil, who like the risen Christ now behold glory beyond my imagining, your suffering is over. You are together forever with the One whose death conquered death, and nothing in heaven or earth can separate you now. I miss you, but I am so glad for you. And in the deepest part of my being, I know that my tears—tears over death, over loss, over separation from people I love—these tears will also make a day for me. For such is the wisdom of God.