Redemption
Steph's grandmother-- her dad's mother, whom we call "Bamba"-- is expected to pass away in a few hours or minutes. i'm waiting by the phone because the kids are already asleep while Steph is with her family at the hospital. It's probably not yet a week ago that we found out that she's in a far progressed stage of an aggressive form of lung cancer/ lymphoma, but until earlier today we understood that she'd potentially live another six months or so. This morning the prognosis worsened to maybe a few more days, and now to hours, minutes. She's an awfully beautiful lady, a genuinely encouraging lady; but this can't be an epitaph. Neither she nor i believe that this is the end of her. This is a story about something she was allowed finally to do.
She was married to Steph's grandfather for about 25 years. Then they divorced. i don't know most of the details surrounding that, and don't need to. He remarried relatively shortly afterward, and Bamba did not; i also don't know most of that story. However, i do know that she spent a very large amount of the last thirty or so years wallowing in some very deep viscous resentment. She's a dedicated and fairly skillful painter, and has had for as long as i've known her a large painting hung on her wall of a couple-- a man and a woman sitting side by side, very straight, very somber, the two not touching. The woman is fairly centered in the portrait and the man's head is lopped off by the boundary of the canvas. It's a kind of resentment that i can't entirely know yet (for lack of age, as far as i can tell); the kind that takes a lot of time and passion and very bad experience to breed. But a short time ago-- after she found out that her cancer was probably terminal-- he visited her in the hospital, and they talked. After thirty years of practically hating each other, they talked. And they discovered that they didn't really hate each other after all. Of course, i don't know everything they talked about--that's none of my business-- but i do know that they forgave each other. Somehow all their pet resentments and egoisms and wants and demands were allowed to quit mattering, and they forgave. i have an imagination that just getting to be at that point, just getting to have that talk probably redeemed an ocean of wasted lifetime for them both. i very strongly suspect that it did indeed.
i don't understand-- and won't, i believe, until i'm allowed to know the heart of God better--why it's required that we be facing death to attain that kind of redemption, but it seems to be. There has, it seems, to be no fight left in us, no possible threat left for us to make for even our own selves to know what our real heart is, our genuine will is, our true hope is. But (i say with a lot of fear and trembling) if death is all it costs to get to demonstrate that, to get to know and be known, then the price is not too great; the burden is indeed light, the yoke easy.
i will miss you Bamba, and i very much look forward to seeing you and hugging you on the other side of this. i love you.
--cody
She was married to Steph's grandfather for about 25 years. Then they divorced. i don't know most of the details surrounding that, and don't need to. He remarried relatively shortly afterward, and Bamba did not; i also don't know most of that story. However, i do know that she spent a very large amount of the last thirty or so years wallowing in some very deep viscous resentment. She's a dedicated and fairly skillful painter, and has had for as long as i've known her a large painting hung on her wall of a couple-- a man and a woman sitting side by side, very straight, very somber, the two not touching. The woman is fairly centered in the portrait and the man's head is lopped off by the boundary of the canvas. It's a kind of resentment that i can't entirely know yet (for lack of age, as far as i can tell); the kind that takes a lot of time and passion and very bad experience to breed. But a short time ago-- after she found out that her cancer was probably terminal-- he visited her in the hospital, and they talked. After thirty years of practically hating each other, they talked. And they discovered that they didn't really hate each other after all. Of course, i don't know everything they talked about--that's none of my business-- but i do know that they forgave each other. Somehow all their pet resentments and egoisms and wants and demands were allowed to quit mattering, and they forgave. i have an imagination that just getting to be at that point, just getting to have that talk probably redeemed an ocean of wasted lifetime for them both. i very strongly suspect that it did indeed.
i don't understand-- and won't, i believe, until i'm allowed to know the heart of God better--why it's required that we be facing death to attain that kind of redemption, but it seems to be. There has, it seems, to be no fight left in us, no possible threat left for us to make for even our own selves to know what our real heart is, our genuine will is, our true hope is. But (i say with a lot of fear and trembling) if death is all it costs to get to demonstrate that, to get to know and be known, then the price is not too great; the burden is indeed light, the yoke easy.
i will miss you Bamba, and i very much look forward to seeing you and hugging you on the other side of this. i love you.
--cody
posted by c at 12:07 AM
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