Blessing in the loss

Her mother hovers near death, so light now she floats six inches above the bed while nestled small and frail so deeply in the sheets.

I am blessed, asked to sit in this room, asked to bring strong arms from which grief can be released. Blessed, trying to anticipate small needs, driving small errands, a presence to offer balance, solid with no weight.

Blessed, in this watching, to see here great beauty.

Two weeks since she fell and shattered bones in hip and neck, a week since she lost consciousness. Four adult children attend with children of their own, a great grandchild due in a month visits via the womb.

"Perhaps mom hangs on to meet her great granddaughter," someone says.

"I think it would be better if mom meets her before she is born," says daughter-soon-to-be-grandmother with a smile but not joking, the quickness of her response and the love in this room offers another chance to laugh.

With laughter and warmth they share stories of childhoods where Gaga played her important role, memories brought out and burnished like holiday silver.

So many meals for so many as her own children searched for channels into adulthood, moved back home sometimes with their own kids until fully fledged and swimming on their own. There are many stories.

Running through it all is the common theme: "She made each of us feel like her favorite."

A grandson reads a book, his grandmother had read it to him, he cannot continue for tears that flow from love and loss. His father sits at mother's bedside, head resting on one arm, his eyes to the floor while she looks to other vistas.

He caresses his mother's brow for a long, long time. There is is no measurement for this waiting. He cries, one of his sisters puts her hand on the back of his neck.

The mourning is as natural and accepted the laughter, as the need to go out and get fresh air, to go home for a shower. We attend in shifts. Tears, laughter, errands, waiting, nurses come in every two hours with an opiate to ease her pain.

Until the end each dose eased her breathing for a while, but then seemed to have little effect at all.

A grandson in the Air Force flew home from Arizona, he and his brother stand at her bedside, eyes bright to her. They just stand, holding her hand, no tears, no drama, peace emanates from them. In another world they wore robes and traveled by horse or mule, they are timeless.

Rebel son of rebel dad, long hair creeping from under cap, but pride earned and voice direct to her even as she cannot hear, the love she poured into him pours back to her, from pitcher to cup to pitcher.

The words "I love you" bring from her a smile. They are the words spoken in this room most often.

An Army Sergeant brings his family home from Texas to be here for the services, and uses his leave to be part of this, to help as he can. Soldiers, aviators abound in this family, tough men who do not flinch from their own weeping.

They attend, ageless youth. Baby blankets she made for them, satin edging worn away by their tiny fingers, return to the foot of her bed, warming her now and them now again.

"What will I do, her love was so important to me," asks a granddaughter, a professional pilot, overwhelmed in this moment by her helplessness.

"I just don't want to let go of her hand," responds her mother, who for years absorbed the pain of her mother's uncertain shuffle to flowers in the garden, worn by years of a long transition.

Daughters together here and now, their tears flow to her in one stream through it all.

Then, a smile, another story, one stands to go to her bed, to hold her cool hands, to feel her feet to be sure they are warm enough as circulation slows.

Over the last days and nights her breath slows, becomes uneven, long pauses cause everyone to stop, to listen, then she gasps as the body's need of oxygen overwhelms her soul's desire to flee, the breathing is ragged in her throat, softened only by sponged drops of water.

"There is a door," she said when she still had a few words left to share, "but I don't know how to go through it."

"Daddy waits and will show you the way, your papa waits and will guide you," her children reply to her stillness. "All those who have passed through will be there."

Finally, early in the morning her breathing slows even more and grows even more shallow, then just stops. This struggle is over, surrounded by loved ones through it all, not one moment of this departure did she spend alone in this room.

Such a blessing to be here.

Father’s Day letters

On Father’s Day I decided to send a couple of letters to each of my daughters. They will be dated on the twins 15th birthday, 2008.

They are to be opened in 2018, and 2028. I don’t know yet how to hold and send, but there is time to figure that out.

I want the girls to remember, then, the details of today that will otherwise fade. Through their father’s eyes, his joy and worry winding like rivulets down through time, contained within the banks of their lives.

A recall of their wonder and laughter at the smooth-skinned tiny rubber boa snake that was wrapped around a stick, thinking it was hidden because it had stuck its head in a crack. My hope that there was a life lesson there. When I showed them that he thought he was safe in a cave, with most of him outside, they laughed out loud.

When the girls open those letters decades from now, I want to give them a fresher memory about who they were. Hopefully this will give them a better understanding of who they have become.

Will they remember the effort to carry a mattress from one room to the other when their best friend came for a sleep-over? That effort may be important in a future when they think they are too tired to get off the couch.

If we are all at any moment the summation of who we have been, today is a too thin slice of time. We stack these slices, our fears and our joys, days and nights banding like alternating colors, and after a while the pile becomes so high that we can’t go back and see with clarity this day, a day that was unremarkable except for the fact that it was the present then, with fewer bumps and scars and tools and certificates pasted to the outside.

At some point in their future I want the past to come alive. I want to count the number of holes we put in the wall playing darts when we missed the whole board. I want them to remember that some dart holes in the wall were absolutely fine at one point in their lives, that fear of consequence was not the only principal of living.

I imagine them opening the envelopes like they were letters from a friend. But instead of some far away place, the letters were posted from a far away hour, not distant in miles or memory but enveloping them now, whenever that is, tying us together in the timelessness of love.

“No Country for Old Men”

There are many characters in “No Country for Old Men.” Among the most potent is the State of Texas.

This is an intense movie about evil. It is unrelenting. It grinds away at the viewer as evil grinds away at good men. It is a story of struggle, much death, and no reward.

The Devil himself may walk the streets, obeying a code of morality that finds no value in humanity, that finds threads of causation leading to death as meaningful as those leading to any individual.

The angels are tired, and ready to retire. The world has changed, Texas has changed, there are too many drugs and there is too much money and there a man’s courage, even his goodness, is simply not enough. There is no salvation.

No one could have made this film from the Cormack McCarthy book besides the Cohn brothers, Joel and Ethan. Think “Fargo.” But worse. Or better, depending on how you feel about their work.

There are many outstanding performances in this film. The weariness of Tommy Lee Jones as Sheriff Tom Bell makes your bones ache. Javier Bardhem is soulless as Anton Chigurh, a satanic figure who, under McCarthy’s pen and the Cohn brother’s craft, refutes the idea that evil is randomly uncaring but actually targets the good.

Josh Brolin, as protagonist Llewelyn Moss (hero is the wrong word, wrong concept) gives much false hope for an ending in which we could find comfort. Woody Harrelson does his typical work as a bad man we could like, but is insufficient, both in the role and as the character he plays.

There is randomness in this film, call it heads or tails, but within that there is the intent to destroy and there are no scales to bring balance between a good act and an evil one.

Listen to the dialogue. Listen to McCarthy’s words spoken by Jones, by Ellis (Barry Corbin). Those words tell a tale of desperation, of futility, of nobility ground into dust by the Devil himself acting on a people who have lost both the ability to believe and reason to fear.

And look at Texas. It is the stage for this malevolent drama, and no place could have provided a better backdrop. Empty highways, cheap motels, sour coffee in dirty diners.

This is a film, like “The Departed,” that makes no apology, pulls no punch. It is harsh. It is also outstanding art. It is a phenomenally good movie at a time when we need good films.

When the lights came up in the theater, the woman in the row in front of me was incredulous, unsettled. “That’s it?” she asked.

“You wanted more?” I replied, exhausted after slightly more than two hours of mayhem and death. “I actually had quite enough.”

“But I wanted a different ending. I want some closure,” she lamented.

It’s not there. Not in the film, and not in the script, maybe not for any of us.

Go see “No country for Old Men.” Expect to be moved, not entertained.