Leslie

 

 

August 9, 2021

 

Greetings from a brother,

 “Who would want to live a life where you didn’t love someone so much that you didn’t grieve their loss?”  Tom Skaff. 

 The world spins, and it spins among other planets, and they all spin in orbits and the galaxies spin in sensual whorls, and the universe curves in wider swaths into whatever is beyond.  And in all of that, my sister Leslie slowly moved to the edge of the inexorable motion and held for an eternal moment, and then she let go.  And the momentum of her life sent her into some new place.

 On Thursday, Leslie quietly let out her last breath, and with it, became something new.   She has not ended, she has changed.  And we, complicated and simple things left behind, changed with her.

 It takes a unique courage to know what will end your life.  Most of us will never face that knowledge.  We will only be vaguely aware, perhaps, that one day we will walk through a door to something else.  Maybe it will be some sudden thing no one could anticipate, or any combination of human experiences that may lead to a slow slide to a quiet end. 

 My sister Leslie knew with a certainty what would cause her last breath, and she watched it unfold in front of her.  She approached that uncompromising promise with grace and dignity and a beauty that held even to the last day.  Even writing these words, now blurred in the prism of tears, I am in awe of her strength.

 Some months ago, I was talking with Leslie on the phone and for reasons I didn’t know I read to her from a book I have called ‘One Long River of Song’.  Brian Doyle wrote of a nun he met once who said: “No one beats cancer, cancer is a dance partner you don’t want and don’t like, but you have to dance, and either you die, or the cancer fades back into the darkness at the other end of the ballroom.”

 Even as I shared the words, I felt terrible, as if I were telling her some other bad news she didn’t already know.  But she did.  Cancer is rarely beaten; it is to be endured.  It has no purpose other than to destroy, and yet humans, my sister prime among those, turn that purpose into something filled with hope and patience and perhaps the best of what we are created for.

 Not many weeks ago, I sat in the shade of bamboo trees and held my sister’s hands and we talked and listened, and in that spinning together of us, and of her soul’s mate, Bill, we suspended time.  We set aside the incessant change, the incorruptible procession of us, and just learned what humans always want to know.  That we matter, that we are loved, that we will be remembered.  That if life goes on without us, it’s not without us.

 We invited God to join us and He was present, but remained quiet, and didn’t take questions.  I think we were given the space to ask and answer and wonder and be afraid and seek possible, and that’s what He wants us to ache for.   

 Some day if you ask me, I will tell you about that afternoon, an impossible stretch of time, given Leslie’s condition.  I have a rich life, and a history of experience that is filled with variety and adventure and remarkable moments.  But, my friend, that piece of living we had in those few hours, is matched by rare few companions.

 Among the things we talked about were the mysteries of life, including the ultimate mystery; what happens when the struggle ends and we greet the cloud of witnesses, when we take whatever steps we are given to reach forever and after.   There are so many beliefs, so many philosophies, so many stories about what to expect, each as meaningful as the next, as meaningful as what the Avett Brothers said:

‘Will I join with the ocean blue?
Or run into a savior true?
And shake hands laughing
And walk through the night, straight to the light
Holding the love I've known in my life
And no hard feelings’

 My faith tells me that what waits for us beyond the door of our life is more wondrous than Leslie or I could imagine.  That makes me smile, because Leslie knows now, and because my sister wouldn’t need ‘wondrous’.  She only wants to see those she loves who wait there.  She hopes for a place where she can sit with God in the warm shade of bamboo and feel the ease of a conversation with someone who loves her.  She only wants to see our lives here unfold, and that we are all right even as we miss her.

 There is no escaping grief, and still I want to ease the pain for those who can’t bear it.  Someone told me a long time ago, I wish I could say who it was, that when someone leaves us, they also create ways to stay with us: “Look for signs of them.”  Meaning, small ways to know they are there, watching our lives, part of us in a new way.  There, in the smile of her sister, there in the love of her husband, there in the mannerisms her children took from her.  Perhaps in the clacking of bamboo in the wind, or the sigh of wind chimes.  Perhaps in the sunflowers that stood for her brave dance with an unwanted partner.

 I am told that we have in our bloodstreams the dust from stars which last shone a bazillion years ago.  That matter never ends, it only changes, and by extension, changed us.  We would not be exactly what we are had these supernovas not shone so brilliantly.

 This truth fits perfectly with my sister Leslie’s life.  In the sliver of time she was here she changed everyone with her light.  Each of us, her husband, her children, her brothers and sisters, her nearly infinite choir of friends, now share Leslie in our bloodstream.  It is such a privilege to carry her with us, to show her our lives in the days given to us here.  It is a joy to feel her in this way that cannot ever, ever end.  And if we want to look for signs of her, we need only look for the glimmer in the eyes of those who love her, that vast galaxy of other stars shining with her brilliance.

 

 Hope this finds you looking for Leslie,

 

David

 

 

 

Copyright © 2021 David Smith