All things possible

Three weeks ago, my husband and children and I crept downstairs to sing lullabies and hymns to my dying grandfather. Our older two children were understandably a bit uncomfortable, but our small daughter was blissfully unaware of the setting, and she belted out all her favorite songs. I doubt that Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is often sung in such situations, but as the notes began, Grandfather opened one eye and then ever so slightly squeezed my hand. And as we continued to sing, his labored breathing calmed and he returned to sleep.

The next day he was gone, his anxious spirit winging home to Jesus and to his beloved wife. My grandmother left earth for heaven eight months ago, and Grandfather never recovered from that loss. He was lost without her clear directions, lost without her big visions and dreams. And suddenly it strikes me how often life requires of us a rending, how circumstances force us to be torn apart. We are finite beings and cannot occupy two places at once, be it earth and heaven, one continent and another, one room and another. I can’t breathe the smoky air of my Tanzanian neighborhood and reside at home in the United States; I can’t visit my twin sister in Maine without traveling many hours in a car or an airplane. I am bound by time and space, and this is one of mysteries of life to me: how are we to love fiercely and to hold on loosely?

All of his life, my grandfather was an enabler—he took great joy in making things possible for other people. His hard work and generosity made it possible for his children, grandchildren, and now great-grandchildren to live together on what we call “the mountain” here in south-central Pennsylvania. He bought the wooded property and cleared it; he built his house and helped with the others; he kept the furnace burning and the garden producing food. He was a doer who loved doing, and I can still see him perched upon the driver’s seat of the bright red Steiner tractor, zipping down the driveway at speeds none of us dared to match. From the seat of the Steiner, he hauled endless loads of wood, dug up hundreds of pounds of potatoes, and plowed mountains of snow. I remember one tree-felling incident, when for a long, frightening moment it seemed the falling tree was headed for the Steiner and for Grandfather. But the tree missed him, and he remained calm. “Just where I wanted it,” he said, pleased, as he always was, with a job well done. He believed that every task, no matter how small, could be done with efficiency and effectiveness, and he wasn’t afraid of telling other people the right way to do things. I remember him pausing to watch me cut the tops off a pile of strawberries, and he shook his head and said, “You don’t know how to do that, do you?” And I looked down at my nearly-completed task and thought, “Well, how did I get this far?”

But truthfully, I wouldn’t have gotten as far without him. Grandfather taught me not only the value of hard work, but also the importance of perseverance and courage. He loved to quote poetry, and it seemed no lines were more often quoted than these: one, a line from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, when Lady Macbeth says, “But screw your courage to the sticking place, and we’ll not fail!” And another, a line from old poem about a boy walking home in the dark, a boy who thinks a snow-covered guidepost is a fearsome beast: “So, calling all his courage up, he toward the monster went.”

I’ve wondered, now, if Grandfather quoted those lines for his own benefit as much as ours. Underneath his strength, he could be fearful and worried, and perhaps he “called all his courage up” many more times than I knew. By the end of his life, Grandfather appeared as anxious as that young boy, fearfully stumbling toward an unknown monster. When it arrived, death was no monster, but a mercy—surprising in its simplicity and normalcy, just a snow-covered guidepost along a well-worn path, pointing the way home. But for those of us trapped on this side of the veil, the ending of life still feels like a rending; it may be normal, but it still hurts.

Here at the beginning of Advent, I think about Jesus, the Son of God who split the heavens and came down, who wrapped himself in the cloak of humanity, who separated from his beloved Father and chose to enter into our finite and fragile existence. As his mother’s birth-pains subsided, a song rang out in the fields nearby, a chorus of angels repeating, “Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid, for I bring you good tidings of great joy that shall be for all people!" Here at the beginning of Advent, I think about you, dear Grandfather, and I am filled with joy, for you don’t have to be afraid anymore. You and Grandmother are now in the presence of Jesus, the greatest enabler of all, in whom all things are joined together… and all things are possible.