Coming In for a Landing (Lisa)

I am lying awake again, again, again, listening hard for the sound of you to drift me back to sleep. You take me to your bedside all those years before you actually died. On that particular day, you came so very close to leaving us. Even with all the supports of ventilation and oxygen, your blood pressure dropped and heart slowed. The doctors gently prepared me for the end that was coming and my mind just went blank.

I never left you when you stayed in the hospital. Dad held down the home front and never missed his daily jaunts to be with you but in this moment, I stood alone with you. The rush of medical team hushed, doors shut to your room and the quiet reverent acknowledgement that a life was ending was palpable. I knew this day was coming but I stood stunned. None of my well-rehearsed, memorized prayers would do. What came instead was a silence that filled me from within. I knew God was close at hand and it felt like a hug from the inside out.

Hours later, you once again willed yourself back to us. As the exhausting emotional drama lifted, I stepped outside into the fresh air to give my head and heart a moment. My gut wrestled, knowing it wouldn’t be long now, and for the first time in my life, I began to talk to you as if you were already gone from this world.

My drained body pulled me to the walking trail around the pond, just across the street from the hospital. Dragging along I sobbed, ButClaire, how will I hear your voice? You, who never spoke, how will I hear you? A flock of honking geese joined in behind me, a growing cacophony with every step. I thought, Will you be the geese? No, that would be Dad, who spoke plenty in his lifetime and who was now speaking to me once again in this loving way though little did I notice!

I wondered, could you be the quiet space in between the honks, but the sky was so crowded with sound I could barely hear any in-between. With head down, fists stuffed in pockets, eyes filled with tears, the loud birds descended right over my head and with that came the sudden, quiet sound of you.

Standing still, I looked up in wonder at the white soft down feathers of underbellies so close I could almost touch. All the loud honking and flapping stopped as they made ready to land on the still waters before me. I could actually hear their winged bodies cutting through the air, an air unseen, yet present all around me and there, right then and there, I found you. You are in that soft sound of cutting air. You are air.

This is where we will meet. You will be one with God and He is all around us like air so thick you can cut it, hear it, see it, if you are really looking, listening. I can distract myself with so much honking, talking, flapping about when all I really need to do is quiet my wings, be silent and focus solely on my landing. How am I doing Lord? Claire?

At the pond’s edge, You spoke to me, balancing one foot here, the other there, Be still and know that God is present. I am present. Is that why you willed yourself back to the land of the living for one more day and then another and another for weeks and many more months to come? Truly you lived in this straddled existence for the remainder of your life.

Is that the lesson you wanted to teach me Claire? You, who practiced stillness and quiet for most of your life? I am your student. I am eager to learn. I will look for you in the soft hush sounds, in wings cutting though air, in soft landings. You are softness. You are air. You are as close as my next breath. I breathe you in. Amen to this land of the living, for one more day and then another and another for weeks and many more months to come. Amen