Eulogy for a parakeet

Well.

For the first time in 18 years, I come home to an empty house.  I thought I had entered this phase earlier this year, when the new school year started and the others didn't even start for home until I had already arrived. I didn't realize what a difference even one small parakeet can make in an empty house, not until this evening.

Countless little things jar me back to the realization, "she's gone." The noise I make unlocking and opening the front door is answered by silence instead of chirps and tiny bell ringing. Lighting my desk candles brings no rumble-flutter of disapproval (she had learned how to extinguish the flames with a well-timed flyby).  I have typed all this much without the sudden descent of avian curiosity or companionship, and I realize how much she had fit her feathers and chilly feet into a shared rhythm of sound and motion.

Pepper passed away rather abruptly. Friday after work all seemed normal: she flew down from her perch above the entertainment center to land on my head, and willingly climbed onto my hand for a ride to my desk. When I sat down she flew off squawking as usual.

Later, flying back from the mirror in the hallway to her perch, she lost altitude and ran into the cabinet doors below her perch. She fell to the floor, and seemed a bit dazed, which was unusual: she's hit that door harder and just circled off to make another approach in the past. She then sat rather wobbly on her perch and puffed up as birds do when they are cold (or sick).

So I put her in her cage with a heat lamb in one corner and moved her food and water to the cage floor where she could reach them easily. The evidence is that she ate and drank through the night or in the morning, but by mid-afternoon she was huddling close to the lamp and seemed quite dazed.  Sometime in the evening, without any sound or movement, she was gone.

Just like that, the transition arrived. Space becomes defined by absences, voids, instead of the push of fellow creatures. The household has fewer residents, and now no pets.

I am suddenly tremendously grateful that we had as much as we did. My life has been richer for their presence.

Something's missing, something's found

Life seems strange nowadays.  In cold rational figures, 20% of our family is missing: one-fifth, one out of five.  The daily pattern has the same rythm, sunrise to sunset and beyond, but the resonance has changed.

I ponder this, and it occurs to me that this is yet another way that marriage and family show  facet of God to us.  The strange gap within me at the departure of a child is somehow reflective of what God feels as His children grow and move forward in their lives.  Our children grow up and grow out of the family home, and both the parents and children feel the absence of each other. No matter that the separation is natural, is a good in itself as it allows each to grow further into the person God made us to be. There is a hole inside the parent, and the child feels a chill as she is now exposed to the world.

I struggle to describe this reality, and it remains a mystery.  Only God truly knows how I feel now, and He has the same experience as every one of His children goes out into the world, a world with dangers and delights that only He is completely aware of.

And He has also been the child, our Lord Jesus. God chose to separate the Word from the Trinity and become Man. He was born, grew, left home. All these things, God experienced as a human Child and then a Man. Jesus walked the world away from His home, walked among people and in places and into danger, finally even death.

As I think on this, I realize that the emptiness within me is now a place where God can reach further into my soul, bringing me closer to Him and His understanding of the world. The hole is still there, but the edges have been gilt.

Why can't Mommy write?

To start with, "Mommy" is usually the title that a mother has when her kids are very young, with free moments snatched in between snacks and baths and meals and bedtime, between booboos and tantrums.  Mommy can't write because Mommy has trouble getting more that 24 characters down onto a page over a two week period.

"Mom" is the title I currently carry. My youngest kids are sophomores (yes, twins, which is another reason Mommy can't write) and my oldest is now in college. Mom now has great swathes of free time, spreading like a blanket of fog over San Francisco in the summer, lasting for days and only occasionally being blown away by the inland breeze of motherhood.

I seem to have entered that time of life I expected to occur last year, the year everything was supposed to change. But it didn't. The expected changes didn't arrive. Instead everyone worked through the same year as the previous one, only concentrated. Distilled. Freshman year for the twins was almost a repeat of their older sister's freshman year - a joyful romp with moments of incredible angst. Senior year repeated half the joys and all the trauma of junior year, with more intensity. My role continued in "listen, and make dinner" mode with a dash of personal misery thrown in, yet even the misery repeated the pattern from a few years ago. "Ok, guess I had mistaken expectations," said I to myself. No-one else really pays attention to me if they can help it.

And now, BOOM, after having lulled myself into expectations of doldrums, the weather has changed. College has happened at last and the dominant personality relocated to a different climate zone. The twins have drifted into different social patterns, and teacher-Dad has less pushing him to leave school at the earliest moment. My role is still to listen and make dinner, but the listening is much less frequent, and as soon as they serve themselves dinner they retreat back into their bedrooms, the twins to do homework and teacher-Dad to nap.

So I have more time alone, to myself. Mornings can provide 90 minutes of reflection, if I wake up as they depart. And after work I can have as much as three hours to myself, even more if I make dinner as soon as I get home so they can get their food and separate into their personal spaces immediately.

So, why do I not write?

Welcome back

Wow, I haven't posted anything in six months. I can't really identify any particular reason; things to write about are plentiful, and I have not lacked for time. But that inner voice has been silent.

Trying to review those months brings a sense of oppression, a sense that there is an outside influence at work but that I stand too close in time to identify the source.  It seems simplistic to point to the dire world situation as either the cause of a depression, or the evidence of Evil at work and the approaching end of the world. I know at times I felt all of this.

But another possibility exists, the hopeful perspective, gained from experience and a considerable distance in time.  I have both when I think of my youth and young adulthood.  I had no idea how I made the choices I did, I simply reacted to one crises after another. Situations caught me unaware and unprepared. My memory of those years is that they were deeply infused with insecurity and general fear. Good things happened, which I greeted with relief, but I felt always that something terrible would happen next. How did I survive?

I find the answer expressed in scripture, particularly the 23rd Psalm and the image in the Gospels of the Good Shepherd and the one lost sheep. All the depictions of that show Jesus as the Shepherd carrying the no-longer-lost lamb. But I imagine what happened before that moment: the one sheep, alone instead of with the dozens of companions in the flock; in the wilderness, night coming, nothing familiar, nothing comforting, an environment it is completely unprepared for.

I think of the shepherds I've seen (mostly on TV). And I think of the sheep dogs that work with them. The Good Shepherd might well have his trained herd dogs, who follow the scent of the wandering sheep.

When those dogs locate the missing sheep, they might find it approaching danger - perhaps a cliff. The dogs would rush forward, come between the sheep and the danger, barking, perhaps nipping, to drive it back towards safety.

And now the sheep's perspective: out in the wild, unknown smells and sounds, sudden movements glimpsed to the side, behind a bush or rock, every step moving into a new uncertainty. The sun sets, twilight grows. And suddenly from nowhere, a growling threatening fanged menace confronts it. A monster! The sheep jumps and runs away from it, stumbling blind with fear, staggering on until suddenly, He is there and somehow the world is safe.

Sheep are not smart. Nor was I. I look back on my earlier years and believe now that my guardian angel was hard at work, the Lord's sheep dog, and that He wanted me not only to be safe, but to be found, and brought back Home. I don't imagine I am there yet, but at least He is by my side, with His rod and His staff.

Can I help?

Today I heard someone answering a question about temporal punishment for sin, in the course of which they mentioned the concept of "offering up" one's own sufferings, specifically in the context of uniting oneself to the sufferings of Jesus on the Cross for the salvation of mankind.  I remembered discussing the same thing with my children when they learned about this in Religious Ed.  The question is, if God became man in order to offer the perfect sacrifice for our sins, how is it there could be anything lacking in what He suffered? and therefore of what value is our own suffering when we offer it up?

The answer I provided is this:  Imagine Jesus carrying His cross.  Although it is a grievous struggle for him he is able to carry the burden.  Yet if you were there, and went up to Him and said, "Please, may I help You," even though he is able to carry the burden alone, wouldn't He feel grateful and accept?  Not because he needed your help in order to finish the task, but because your offer itself gave comfort.

The world is not perfect, and human nature is still flawed, and so we will continue to experience suffering of one kind or another. It is a given part of human life. We must not ever just roll over and give up, but when we do encounter this inevitable aspect of human life, which in itself is a moral evil, we can say "I am going to experience this anyway, so here, Lord, let me walk with You and keep You company along this road a while."

I can't make everything better for you, but I can keep you company if that is the only thing I have to offer.

Liturgical Hours, family style

I thought this year I'd be able to keep a monastic prayer schedule, roughly following the traditional Liturgy of the Hours: Office of Readings at dawn followed by Morning Prayer before work, then Evening Prayer after work, and Compline at bedtime, because the family would be out of the house before 6am and return home well past dinner.  Things haven't worked out that way, and I have the blessing of my family much more than I anticipated.  So where then is the cloister?

My "Office of Readings" at dawn includes checking the weather, brushing and braiding someone's hair, listening to the anticipations of the day's classes.  Morning Prayer is a fervent "Thank you Lord!" for the blessing of having such moments, and thoughts of praise for the beauty of the world as I walk to the train during the sunrise.

Evening Prayer comes as I leave work, walking from the office across the wide lawns to the street and up to the train station, and continues as I walk to the house as the sun sets.  Life's rythm picks up speed as I walk in the door, change from my work clothes and start preparing dinner.  When everyone arrives home I hear reports of the day's activities, almost a collective Examination of Consciouse, and we have dinner together before spreading out through the house for homework.

I do read Compline many nights, and try to have us all read it together; after years of saying bedtime prayers with each child it seem appropriate to do something together.  So before the first person goes to bed (usually me), we gather together again for Bedtime Prayers, then say good night.

It isn't what I expected, but it certainly is appreciated!