Grief and Joy

Beloved:
   
My mother’s funeral was sixteen years ago this week.  The ground was frozen. The sun was shining and I was great with child.  

    That child turns sixteen on Sunday.   She’s tall  with a swimmer-dancer-athlete body.  For the last three days she’s been sick with a terrible sinus infection.  She sleeps in my bed.   She asked for coloring books and new crayons when I went for her prescription.   I bring her juice and feel her feverish forehead.  

    I am remembering her first few weeks, when her arrival invaded my grief and  snuggling her gave substance to my loss.  I discovered the mysterious connection between grief and joy.  An experience that cannot be spoken, only lived.  I’ve lived it two weeks a year for sixteen years but today it feels especially poignant;  for her tiny illness I suppose - reminding me of her tiny self against me in the early hours before the house wakes up.  

    Was she well she wouldn’t stand for me to say such things.  She’d roll her eyes and sigh. I’d smile and she’d say, “What?”  I’d smile some more in gratitude for her health and strength of spirit, and in some anticipation of some far off day, when she aches for me and loves her kids with the very same breath.  She’ll know such things soon enough, but now she needs her juice and medicine.  

    I pray your day is filled with love given and received.  ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette