Tonight, an emotional mess of a mother going to work full-time, a woman who is starting a new career, a wife newly sharing the financial burden of household … this night … a frail and tired individual wearisome with bills to pay and a moving date near approaching … Tonight, I cried amongst strangers and friends for a woman who for years has served as a vacant memory, and became real to me in a very sacred moment.
For those unaware, my father’s sister, Bonita, died many years ago. A homeless woman on the streets of Baltimore, she succumbed to AIDS just as my father and his brother and sister –in-law and nephew were on a plane to see her a final time. A “pleasantly plump” woman, I remember as a child my fascination with her emaciating weight-loss, visiting her in some sort of halfway house; curiosity still sits with me as I remember trying to guard my stare towards the odd and menacing growths in and around her mouth.
I did not know her well. I occasioned her at several holidays, before we moved off to Colorado, and before she disappeared for what I recall was five, or maybe six, years. Never very “smart”, and part of a generation that knew little to nothing about learning disabilities or mental illness, she grew weary of an adult life that included several failed marriages, and a bank account controlled by her mother. So, she “ran away”, well past forty years-old. By what my family still knows to be an act of a loving and merciful Savior, she received a message in some soup kitchen, or what have you, that she must call her mother at such-and-such a number. This message was given to her by none of us; we had no idea where she was or if she was alive.
Bonnie was able to connect with all of us again before her death and, thank God, before her mother’s (how gracious a Savior to give her daughter back to her before calling my grandmother home). As the years passed and the death of one aunt and one grandmother settled, I would learn of the deaths of my two cousins, Craig and Scott. Craig was murdered. He was followed in death just over a year later, by his brother; Scott killed himself, in anguish over his brother’s death. Bonnie became part of a rote storyline of the tragedy which was my father’s family. A vacant memory.
And then, there was this evening. A woman from a wonderful organization, named The Gathering Place, came to speak with my philanthropy class. As she began the expected discussion of individual donors, corporate giving and special events, I nodded my head in interest. Suddenly, there it was: the phrase to break all phrases, the words to shatter nearly twenty years of a simple story about a simple woman, who died of a very complicated disease, “At The Gathering Place, we want everyone to know that they are loved and accepted as exactly who they are right when they get there …”
Crippling. Tears. Tears of a death I had not noticed in years. Tears of a story I’ve been comfortable repeating. Tears of an acknowledgeable memory. Tears for what was now, in a single moment, my aunt. Tears for what was, oh God, my father’s sister; I am an adult who knows now what it would be to lose my brother, whom I hold so dearly. Tears for what was now my grandmother’s daughter; I am now a mother who knows that it doesn’t matter if I die before Mady, the knowledge of her fate would be pain enough. Tears for what was a childhood friend, a cousin, a co-worker … a tenant in someone’s halfway house … another patient, gone.
Tears, perhaps, because suddenly all those hurting and alone this evening became someone’s sister, someone’s child, someone’s friend, someone’s somebody, and most reverently … they are the children of the Abba, Father, Anointed and Merciful One. May I make no excuses for the times I do not uphold and uplift them, comfort them and cater to them, or fail to fall to my face in prayer for them, because – let me not be mistaken – as an heir of the Kingdom of Christ, they are my concern.
My Dear Brothers and Sisters, how I plead with you with words that cannot chase the number of my tears and my cries for the lowly. How I beg of you to turn away from whatever additions you hold in your life that cause another to go without. I serve The One who speaks sternly to us about serving the orphans, the widows, the prisoners, those who are poor and weary. And yet we bring to Him great castles and spectaculars of our fascination, as though idols in the name of serving Him are not idols at all.
Father, what have we done? That I sit in classrooms of those who claim no allegiance, but who, by Your Mercy, serve the ones You love, while we argue over where to build. That one bleeds and another dies while we gather jovially around our bread and wine. That we drown the pleas of, “My God, My God, why hath Thou forsaken me?” with our hymns and hands in the air. Your purpose is so clear, Lord. GO AND SERVE. Your call is so clear, Lord. WHEN YOU HAVE GIVEN UNTO THE LEAST OF THESE. Your vision is so simple, Lord. FOR THE FIRST SHALL BE LAST.
You are King of those who will never reign O Lord; help us to see.
Many tears may God allow us to shed today, tomorrow, and until the day He comes, in the name of those who have been forgotten, but for whom we have remembrance.
JNACK
