Kindness From a Distance

“My life itself, and the best heart of it, thanks you for this great care.”

William Shakespeare — Henry VIII, Act I, Scene 2

I received a thing of beauty.

A reader, whose name I will not disclose here, wrote me an email that I have read and reread several times. The care with which the letter was composed is palpable; the sweet spirit of the sender is unmistakable.

Just when things are quiet and bruised, the light peeks over the heat-withered pastures and becomes again that source of beauty to which I have looked since my first day. This letter is light to me.

~ S.K. Orr

Dear Mr. Orr,

Many thanks for your blog, and especially your recent post. I, too, have been kicking my way toward the surface of a somber lake. I’ve been struggling these last few days, until I read your line about your joy and light heart, wondering what’s wrong with you. It reminded me of how I felt at my grandmother’s deathbed a few months ago, and showed me the key out of this.

Let me tell you about Grandma.

Grandma devoted her whole life to children. Born during the depression, she was the eldest of seven, and had to drop out of school after 8th grade to take care of the younger siblings so that her mother could work. Her baby sister died in her care. They had all known from the baby’s birth that she would die very young of an inoperable heart defect. Still, the trauma seared itself on Grandma’s brain, and she suffered horrific nightmares every night for the rest of her life. I know, because I often spent the night with her, and she was forever sitting bolt upright in bed and screaming. Yet by morning it would be blessedly forgotten, and I’d awake to the sound of her gently turning the pages of her big white bible.

My grandparents met in her late teens when my grandfather had business with her father. He popped into the kitchen for something, where she was singing at the top of her voice, and embarrassed to turn around and find that she wasn’t alone. Grandma had a beautiful, big, grand singing voice, joyful yet gilded with a bittersweet melancholy from her early grief. She was a self-taught musician on several instruments, and song welled up in her as irrepressibly as it did in the pet birds she kept. They married and their love blossomed into the ten children they had always hoped for. She raised them with all the care and diligence with which she had raised her siblings, and when they were grown, she raised six of us grandchildren while our mothers worked.

My childhood was enchanted. Not perfect, but enchanted. This was at a time when many parents (including my own) didn’t mind letting the kids raise themselves in front of the TV, and later, the internet. We grandchildren ran free on her 40 acres during summer, and before and after school. I developed my God-given intuition from my grandma’s knee, and I’m convinced that if more people had enchanted childhoods and remembered the words of their wise grandmothers, the birdemic wouldn’t have happened. Grandma wasn’t perfect – she could be quite controlling, and her guilt trips were out of this world. Our relationship grew strained. Nevertheless, now that I have children of my own, I’m determined to give to them what Grandma gave to me.

When I got the call two days after Easter that she was dying, she hadn’t recognized me in years, due to advanced dementia. I was told that she was completely unresponsive and wouldn’t even know I was there. It was a terribly inconvenient time, and I hemmed and hawed about what to do. My wonderful husband told me that whatever I needed, he would make it happen, and so we packed some bags, loaded the kids into the car, and drove 14 hours through the night so that I could hold her hand one last time.

Grandma, the woman who lovingly raised more than 20 children, had been locked down, alone, in her nursing home for over a year, tended by faceless people and treated as a biohazard. I can hardly grasp the evil of the situation. Even when her children were given opportunities to visit, they often didn’t take them, for fear of catching the birdemic. My own mother had callously said several times, “That person’s not my mother, anyway,” simply because grandma looked different and didn’t recognize people anymore.

I didn’t know what to expect when I opened the door to her room at the nursing home, but when my eyes fell on her wasted and obviously dying body, with all the accompanying sights and smells and noises, I found myself exclaiming, in front of everyone, “Oh, look at her! I’m so glad I came! I’m so happy!” Grandma was indeed mostly unresponsive, but only mostly. She couldn’t move her face or even her eyes, but, as an aunt pointed out she could still communicate by wiggling her toes. My aunt announced my presence, and Grandma politely wiggled her toes. She knew who I was; after years of dementia, God gave her this final gift of knowing and remembering those who came to say good-bye.

We were given a moment alone together. I told her I loved her, and she wiggled her toes again. Then I said, “Grandma, just follow Jesus. Follow Jesus through death and into Life Everlasting.” Much to my amazement, she began enthusiastically pumping her feet! We had quite a pleasant conversation of sorts, about heaven and who she would meet there. Grandma knew exactly where she was going and Who she would see, and being just a few weeks away from turning 90, was more than ready. How could I not be happy for her? Of course I’m sad that she is gone. The world will never be the same without her individual love and creativity. Sometimes I think my heart will burst from the memories, yet I’m supremely confidant that the Golden Thread of her life has been resurrected into heaven.

I spent the next three days in and out of the nursing home, feeling positively buoyant, and wondering what the hell was wrong with me. As I looked around the room at what I could see of everyone’s faces behind their masks, I mostly, with an exception or two, just saw deep fear. Fear of death. Fear of suffering. Fear of whatever The News says to be afraid of. Grandma did her best to raise her children right, yet many of my aunts are, to put it charitably, about as lovely as the co-workers you have described on your blog. A couple of them even decided to do their best to take me down a peg or two, for no reason whatsoever. And though I tend to be easily wounded, I wasn’t bothered by their antics. I just felt sorry for them, because that behavior is not compatible with the kingdom of heaven.

And here I was, happy. Because Grandma and I shared a great secret. We both understood the Good News! The grandest secret ever, yet open to anyone, at any moment, if only they will repent and see it. Grandma died shortly after my family arrived back home, a week after Easter, yet few of my relatives made the connection of death and Easter and resurrection and the Good News. They were just running scared. And now three months later, those same ones squabbling over the inheritance.

So thank-you, Mr. Orr, for reminding me of how to be light and joyful in the face of death and The System. My husband and I are young, with little children. I really don’t know what will become of us. Your blog post really made me feel light and joyful again, like I was when Grandma met Jesus. Please say a prayer for [name redacted]. I always look forward to your posts.

Yours,

[Redacted}

My dear, dear friend — and you are my friend — I am so grateful for this page of lectio divina, this holy reading, with which you gifted me. I have begun to pray for you and for those you asked me to pray for, and will continue to do so. Tonight I gazed up at my crucifix in the dancing light of a candle and felt my heart full of gratitude, gratitude for your letter, for your Grandma’s life, for the presence of people like you in this world, the children of light who stand out in these dark and wicked hours.

Let me say again, thank you. Thank you. And may our Heavenly Father bless you and your young family, may the Saints pray for you and bless you, may the blessed Virgin Mary intercede for you with love and power, and may Christ the Lord give you His peace and protection. And His courage.

Per Christum Dominum Nostrum,

Amen.

~ S.K. Orr