A grief observed: a year already

 It’s been a year since my mom died.

I can’t wrap my mind around either one, quite. Mom’s dead? For an entire year? It doesn’t feel at all believable. I talked to her just yesterday, and saw her not long before that.

A year? Without mom? Inconceivable.

A mother is one of the fundamental building blocks of life. She was there when I came squalling into the world, she was there when I suffered the indignity of my little brother moving into the room, and she was there for a thousand other triumphs and humiliations.

Mom, dead? How?

She was there to bear witness my every school concert, to watch me lose games of soccer and baseball on teams I’d been forced to join against my will. She was at the airport when I left in 1987 for a year with AFS, and she was there when I returned.

Mom saw me leave for college, and though she worried, she saw me leave for Haiti. She saw me join my life to my wife’s, and she welcomed the arrival of her first granddaughter sixteen months later.

She was a part of my life for so long, and witness to so many of its highs and so many of its lows that I still can’t wrap my mind around the idea that she’s not there anymore. Does the earth vanish? Does the sun disappear? It defies expectation.

She died on a riverboat cruise, reading a book because she couldn’t sleep. One imagines her eyes growing heavy as she begins to drift off, and she realizes the Angel of Death is standing patiently to one side.

“I’m sorry,” she says, thoughtful to the last. “I didn’t mean to keep you waiting.”

“It’s not a problem,” says the angel. “We have all the time in the world. Do you need a few more minutes to finish the chapter?”

A year.

A mother is many things in our life. A cheerleader. A coach. A voice of hope when we’ve given up. A bottomless well of love when we’ve none left for ourselves. A signpost that points us to God.

We are all rivers, and Mother is the source from which we flow. Her passing when it comes is a loss that threatens to turn us dry.

Yet here we are, a year later, and the river still flows fast, deep and full of life.

That’s how deep a mother’s love is, and always will be.

Lent: Consume

CONSUME

I was into stories about Thor long before Chris Hemsworth picked up the hammer and started wearing a cape for Marvel Studios.

The stories I knew were written in the 13th century by a man named Snorri Sturluson. In one story, Thor takes Loki on a trip to Jotunheim and Loki boasts that he can eat faster than anyone. He's soon put to the test: a wooden platter is laden with meat, and as Loki starts eating at one end, his opponent begins at the other.

They meet in the middle, but Loki loses because all he ate was the meat. His opponent ate meat, bone and platter alike, leaving nothing. It was all consumed.

Consumed.

There's something so final, so total about that word. A consuming desire is one that devours you, overthrowing wit, wisdom and any semblance of self-restraint. It brooks no distraction, permits no other recourse. It's as relentless as fire itself, and ultimately as destructive.

Years ago in church we sang a tune by Hillsong, "Inside Out," that expresses the longing that drives worship: "In my heart and my soul, Lord, I give you control. Consume me from the inside out." One can almost see the worshiper drawing closer to the Eternal Flame, until they are lit from within, and holy fire consumes them beginning in their chest and spreading outward until nothing is left but embers that soon are gone themselves.

In the end we're all consumed by something, but be comforted. The experience is only as glorious or as terrible as the consuming fire that we choose to be caught in.