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Easter 2015, pt 1


My late mother was a brilliant woman. IQ of 186, a standardizer for the Wexler-Binet test, double major at Vassar, graduating at 20, Navy coder, double boarded in Psychiatry and Neurology. This is the biography story, the hagiography for the dead.

She died as she feared most, in a nursing home, mercifully being there only eight days before death. She was in assisted living for six long years before that, robbed of her intellect and independence by multi-infarct dementia. Her life was reduced to a single room, the possessions of a lifetime either destroyed in a fire she started, or packed in boxes, dreaded by her children for whom they were objects of fear and sadness.

For this bright woman, her favorite possession in dementia was a Raggedy Ann doll. She clutched it, stroking it, comforting the inanimate as it comforted her. As her mind deteriorated her soul shown through the overlays more- fearful, sad, regretful. The doll assuaged that. She greatly feared dying, believing she would have to see again the relatives that violently abused her as a child and teen. She died anyway, doll by her side, unresponsive  and alone.

I couldn’t bear to keep that doll after death. It was too painful. I gave it to Goodwill. It was cast aside as our fleshly bodies and lives are in death, and too often in life.

Every one of us has fears and regrets that are held privately, some overarching, some trivial, all inscribed in the concrete of memory, a lasting impact that may be far in excess of the actual event as perceived by others.

Easter has always been a surprisingly sad time for me. My memories of Easter involve frightening public situations I did not understand, that the world calls Easter egg hunts, screaming and unhappiness. Easter bunnies are one of the saddest symbols I know, a pagan fertility image, a peculiar mélange of fecund rodents, eggs, chocolate and resurrection. I can’t stand eating chocolate bunnies. It feels like cannibalism to me, a candy, child-friendly form of communion and transubstantiation. And little stuffed bunnies move me horribly, symbols of childish happiness at odds with my memories.

I do try to move past these images, but it is difficult. My wife transformed Easter for me. She loves it, and her beautiful stories of waiting under the dining table for the Easter bunny are a tender image of belief and hope I rarely feel. She made me an Easter basket when we were dating, a touching act that resonated far more than I could tell her. She makes one every year still. In that first basket was a bunny which we, in typical odd fashion, named Killer after the bunny in Monty Python’s movie.  Kim’s gift has become a happy part of married life, and her baskets, including one this morning, a silly and happy indulgence.

I don’t believe in a literal resurrection. I don’t believe in Jesus as God. But the story of Jesus’ resurrection resonates loudly for me as a symbol of a living, accessible God. If Jesus taught anything, it was that God is all around us, the Kingdom of God accessible to everyone right now. Finding that is a process, for me, of laying aside that worries of the fleshly world and confronting the fears of the soul, and trying to understand they are not real. There is no fear, or loss, or pain, or even death. The spiritual world is around us and in us all the time. And there we are loved. All the time.

For some, that spiritual reality is found in a literal belief in a God-man rising from the dead. For some, it is a Raggedy Ann doll. For some it is an old, stuffed bunny. Regardless, good for you if you find a path to God.



Ted

Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 8, 2015 at 8:39 PM

    Perhaps one of the biggest fears that assault us is the losing of "me" - which is what happened to your mother, happens to Alzheimer's patients, and happens to us all at death. The Tao Te Ching suggests that our bodies are eventually absorbed back into the one, thus neither our bodies nor our souls are our own. That makes most of us feel uncomfortable...and should make all of us consider seriously - quite seriously - what it is that we truly believe about our existence. Easter is a good time for that much needed, ongoing reflection.

    -D-

    ReplyDelete

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