Meaning and mysterium tremendum
A member of the congregation I serve died this week. It was fitting. The shadows of death linger about us this week. Like Peter, warming his hands by the blazing fire, trying to hide and catch glimpses of what Jesus suffered, I stood at the edge of the Holy Week shadows, watching for this central drama of mortality to unfold.
As I prepared my Maundy Thursday sermon, she labored to breath under the oxygen mask. When I went to visit, her husband was there, hands clasped and head bowed over the bed. His name is Paul, but the attendants call him Saint Paul. It’s fitting. From what I can tell, he spends all of his spare time taking care of her or working at the soup kitchen.
Her face was tilted, situated on the pillow in the eschewed position of those who are about to pass. I don’t know why the angle of a person’s head always tells me it’s time. But it does. She seemed content to let her neck become as pliable as an infant’s, as if she knew that she didn’t need to worry about the kinks haunting her the next day. The oxygen machine bubbled and hummed. I sat beside it, not noticing it, until Paul mentioned it, then somehow it became a roaring nuisance.
