This started out as an assignment to my 8th grade English class. It soon evolved into a reflection on my sister-in law, Karen, who passed away this weekend after a long struggle with cancer.
Sometimes I wonder why I teach what I teach. I know that I love teaching The Odyssey because I sense some eternal power that I can't adequately express in words. I know that the mix of myth, legend, and tradition has woven itself into my psyche where it rests with the serenity of an aged oak in a field by a slow moving river. I have always been indebted to Joseph Campbell who wrote the book The Power of Myth and turned me on to this hero cycle I am hammering you over the head with everyday. He taught me to reach deeper into the mystery of myth; he convinced me to shed the blinders of cynicism and science and to accept the emotional necessity of the mythological world. But there was always an acorn of doubt that sat in my gut like a seed sown by farmer distrustful of tradition--distrustful of the mistakes and myopia of what has come before me. Until this weekend, when all doubt was removed, as I lived through the death of my brother Tom's wife, Karen, and sat with him and his three young children as they--and we--journeyed through one of life's awesome horrors at the bedside of a mother, wife, and friend taken way too early from the realm of this world.
On Friday, my wife came to see me at school and took me to Concord center for lunch. She knew I was a bit out of sorts after my brother called me on Thursday night to tell me know that Karen wanted to come home from the hospital in Boston where she was admitted last week, and where she finally decided to give up her fight against cancer--the disease too deep in her for another round of radiation and chemo to hold it at bay. She wanted to die at home with her family, without the doctors, nurses, and chemicals that have kept her alive long past the time the doctors had given her to live. Denise and I drove to town and had lunch at The Cheese Shop. She held my hand as we walked through town, trying to keep me tethered in a gathering wind of uncertainty. Though I was born and raised in Concord--and have always loved the town--I found myself annoyed with everything Concord had become: stores selling overpriced and senseless trinkets, the fancy cars driven by kids and parents tethered to cell phones like emphysema patients with an oxygen tank. Denise smiled at me and told me to go get a haircut, which was not strange advice as Dennis and Jack at the Stop and Blade have been cutting my hair since I was your age, and she knew it always put me in a better frame of mind to hang out with old friends--but it was time for 7th grade football practice and I had promised my team a victory over the evil forces of coach Rouse's ragtag squad.
We pulled into Fenn (taking the new long route) and I was struck by the beauty of the campus: lower schoolers playing soccer and flag football; the upper schoolers laughing as they headed out of the dining hall, teachers going back to class and study halls and meetings, and the maintenance men blowing the cold dry leaves of fall into piles that no kid is allowed to jump in. I was reassured by the rhythm of reality it gave to me. Denise gave me a kiss goodbye, and as I stepped out of the van her phone rang. "It's your sister, Annie," she said, "Just take the phone with you, I don't need it." I laughed as she drove away, I told her it might be the last time she saw her cell phone. I've never been able to keep a cell phone more than a month. I drop them in coffee cups; I put them through the wash, or I simply lose them into the black hole that takes things we don't really need.
I flipped open the phone, but no voice answered me. I pressed different buttons thinking I missed some new feature essential to hearing the other side of the call, but, finally, I heard a small voice trying to speak in a pleading that was more air than words: "Can I come get you? Tommy just called. Karen only has a few more hours at most." I muttered and stammered my yeses through her sobs. Where was the few weeks or days we were expecting? What changed to make this happen now? How could this be happening to Karen--the most fun-filled and together person on the planet? Why my little brother who did everything right when I did everything wrong--who had spent his whole life with the girlfriend he met when he was fifteen years old teaching swimming together at summer camp--and they'd been together ever since for thirty years? And why the kids getting the same call at school, pulled out of history, math, or science to come be with their mother to help her die in peace? Annie told me to wait for my sister Eileen, who would pick me up at home in fifteen minutes.
I could see Eileen crying as she pulled in the driveway. I asked her if she wanted me to drive. She said, "No. I need to be in control of something." I laughed, "That's nothing new." We talked and laughed and cried the twenty minutes to Westford. She wondered if we should be going there--that maybe it should just be Tom and the kids and Karen's parents. I invoked the Yankee practicality of our father and pointed out that Tom would not have called us if he did not want us there. Plus, I pointed out; Tom has always been there for everything for everyone. Eileen laughed and said, "He does always say that it is better to be there when you are not wanted than to not be there when you are wanted." "And, damn, that is so true." I said, as the first explosion of grief wracked my chest. The first of what would be many.
9 Rosebud Lane and the immaculately kept house in the cul de sac looked so quiet and normal as we pulled in the driveway. I don't know what I was expecting--but I think I expected something more that hinted of the vigil being carried on within. We walked quietly in. Karen was on a bed in the living room, her mom beside her holding her hand. Tommy sat on the couch with his arms draped around Katie, Mary, and Kelly. He smiled and got up, and we all hugged. "This is what she wanted," he said. Separately Eileen and I went over and said our goodbyes. I don't remember what I said, just that it was stupid, mundane, and somehow profoundly appropriate. Karen was past being able to respond with any kind of sign, and so I just gave way to a faith that she wanted us there--but not as much as her immediate family. A few of her close friends and neighbors passed through and cried their own goodbyes in their own ways. If Karen's breathing seemed too labored, Tommy would get up and give her some more painkillers and stroke her forehead before kissing her and speaking to her like it was any other day.
We sat and talked and told stories. Sometimes we laughed, and sometimes we cried. We took turns sitting by her. The local parish priest came by and performed last rites. He was old and Dorchester Irish and amazing. We held hands and prayed the familiar prayers drilled into us in our youth. Karen's own faith was always strong and simple and infinitely more real and unswayed by the foolish intellectual doubts of my own journey. I wasn't sure if I gave myself completely to God or if God took me into himself, or if Karen opened a door for me that I have been holding shut. But there was a peace in that room like I have never felt before. Denise and our oldest daughter, Kaleigh, came shortly after. I worried about Kaleigh, but, at the same time, I knew she had to be there--and I knew Denise needed to be there, too. And I know I needed her.
It felt strange to order Chinese takeout, but we did, and it seemed totally natural, and it was a fine meal. Shortly after supper, as we sat on the couches in the living room, I saw Kelly, Karen and Tom's oldest daughter, stand up and go to her mother's side. Karen was suddenly awake. The family gathered around Karen as we left the room. They were all at her side: children, husband, parents and brother--everything anyone needs. Karen was ready to go. They were there to help her let go and to let go themselves. And then she was gone, and Karen--and all of us--were reborn onto a different world, a world equally more rich and meaningful than the world that carried us to that moment. In the background, James Taylor was singing "Secret of Life." It just happened to be playing. It just happened to be Karen's favorite song.
Brother and sisters, Denise and Kaleigh, Kelly's boyfriend Mark, and Beth--who is as much sister as friend--sat in the front parlor. Kaleigh stood at the window, her shoulders heaving. Mark seemed alone and confused. I went up to him and said, "It is really, really good and important that you are here." He nodded quickly, holding back tears, tears that I knew he shouldn't hold back. But we do sometimes, and we learn in our own ways. I held Denise in the way that only wife and husband, and friends and lovers can hold each other. Sometimes we closed our eyes and shook our heads slowly. Other times we whispered practical assurances. "It's better this way." This is what Karen wanted." "Do you think we should go back in?" No one of us knew what to do, but we did anyway.
At a certain point, unmarked by knowing, we made our way back to the living room into the heart of the unimaginable grief, into a new world blessed and forsaken by pure and sustained love. It was a new world and a new way of living blessed by the sacrament of Karen's life and carried forth by the bonds of a hopeful and prayerful family. In the hugs and tears there was more unsaid than said, and in that way everything was spoken. In the unspeakable sadness there was an incredible beauty in knowing there is life after death, both for the loved one who has left and for those who still love and live on in the inheritance of life--the knowing mystery that sustains us and brings us closer to the eternal God. I watched Kaleigh standing in the kitchen, utterly alone and unsure what to do. I watched as Mary, her fifteen-year-old cousin and best friend, saw her aloneness and slipped away from her father's arms to go over and give Kaleigh the long hug they both needed. Kelly found Mark, and we all found each other in our own ways, in our own times, and, in the slow dance of loveand respect, we sowed the seed of tomorrow.
A couple of tomorrows have come and gone. Nothing is any easier, but everything is just as important. Karen has scores of friends, all of who need a way to share their grief and sorrow. It is inspiring and amazing how much Tom realizes that Karen is more than just his family's loss, but a loss that is spread over a lifetime of friendships made and never broken by a woman who seemingly did everything for everyone--and always did it right. I went down to the Strop and Blade thinking maybe I would feel better. Tom has been a regular there for forty years himself. I cried while Jack cut my hair--and Jack cried, too, though he only knew Karen from thirty years of Tom's stories. I did feel better. I walked through the town and loved everything and everyone I saw because I knew there was nothing special that separated me from anything or anyone.
We are born to live and to be grieved over when we die, and the only just measure of a life is the bounty of love we harvest from death. For all of us who knew her, Karen's life is the song we will sing through the ages; for Katie, Mary, and Kelly she left a treasure of memories and guidance that they will draw from in the hardest of times--which I know will be many and lonely; for Karen's parents I can only imagine that it is the relative brevity of time before they join her that brings them solace. Tom knows he was given the gift of a marriage and a friendship as real and enduring as any the world has ever seen, and he has three daughters left to raise alone in a home full of love, but I can only wonder at the darkness he must feel. I am not sure what he truly needs. I can only try to be like my little brother, and be there when I am not wanted, and hope that I am there when I am wanted.
What does this have to do with reading The Odyssey? Maybe I hope that we read The Odyssey because it shows us that there is no way around the tragedies of life, but there is a way through. Every culture has its epic poems and songs that in some way or another chronicle a heroic struggle to find meaning and hope--and a way to approach and live life--that shows us (if we learn to live in metaphor) that life is always an overcoming of adversity. Tom and his family are on their journey home after the hardest battle that life can throw at a person. It is a hero's journey and they are all heroes. There will still be tests; there will still be monsters to slay, but there will always be helpers, too. And there is tradition to help them. And there will always be Karen's life and the shared experience of her death to sustain them. The world lost a beautiful person while our lives have won new meaning.
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