Frozen
January 21st, 2008
Musings
It’s snowing here today. I woke up to six inches of white covering the landscape, softening its angles, blurring its lines. More snow is falling, down and sideways, blown by frigid air.
Today, we’re staying in. It’s a holiday, and my husband and kids are home. Seven of the nine of us are sick. We’ll drink Lemon Zinger herbal tea and eat saltines. We’ll sip ginger ale and eat Campbell’s chicken noodle soup. We’ll watch movies, curled up on the couches with our blankets, and be glad we’re not out in the cold. Maybe if we weren’t sick we’d pull on our gloves and hats and boots and build a family of snowmen in our backyard. There’s enough snow to make nine, one for each of us, a frozen version of our family. Or maybe we’d grab our snow saucers and head for the park with the big hill, where dozens of kids are probably gathered right now, bright-colored caps making streaks of color as they fly down the slope, gasping and laughing. Before we did that, though, we’d put on our suits and dresses and heavy coats and head for church, van wheels sliding on the ice, for the funeral.
Harrison was nineteen, maybe twenty. Very handsome. Quick, strong, vibrant–until leukemia sapped life from the very marrow of his bones. They gave him new marrow, liquid hope. But it was not enough.
My kids prayed for him, fasted for him. They didn’t really know him, but they knew his mother, and they knew cancer was something serious enough to go hungry for. Saturday night, right after family prayer, I told them he had died. I didn’t want to. They were already weak, feverish, vulnerable. But they needed to know.
“I prayed for him,” Christine said. “I thought he would get better.”
It was a risk, involving my kids in Harrison’s illness. From the start I wondered how it would end, and what I would say if it ended in death. And there are things to say to Christine–that her prayers were pure, and loving, and good. That her prayers helped comfort him.
There are things to say to Harrison’s parents, too. That their son was pure, and loving, and good. That we will do all we can to comfort them. Hundreds of people are gathering, even as I type, even as the pan of potato casserole for the wake browns in my oven, to comfort them.
Even so, they must stand in the frigid air today, and commit their son’s cold body to the earth. Nobody can save them from that. And afterward, all the people surrounding them will join them for a meal, breaking bread together in shared loss, and then get in their cars and go home, to their own lives. They’ll sit on the couch and turn on the TV, curled up in a blanket. Or they’ll pull out their sleds and snowballing gloves. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It will not do Harrison any good for his neighbors to live less.
But his parents will live less, for a time. And they will live differently, for the rest of their days.
It’s snowing here today.
