Is it good now, Kay? You're free.
You're free at last.
It must be great.
But it's not been good, has it Kay?
It's not been good for a long time.
It's been a long, long time since I've
been able to tell you a story, Kay.
But I know you're well now—whole.
And I know you're here with us—your spirit, sharing this
celebration of life.
So here goes, Kay. I want to tell you
a story. I want to tell you a story about you...and me..and the day
you died.
I'd not slept well that Monday night,
always waiting for the phone call that never came. It wasn't a
surprise, then, that I woke up early, before the sun. So, at 5:00
a.m. I biked to the hospital.
The sky was a turbulent, cloudy gray
and the wind was blowing wildly. I half expected the sky to break
loose and soak me before I got to your room.
You were restless, that early gray
dawn, Kay. Your lungs telling us all that the end was near. It was
brutally difficult to see you in such pain. As I held silent vigil,
I could see two Kays in that bed—the physical Kay, whose body
wanted release from the discomfort, and the restless, spiritual Kay
whose spirit was crying for release.
From your room, high above Plattsburgh,
I looked out at the emerging morning—a dawn of thickening clouds
and mighty wind. Energies outside your room were picking up speed;
energies inside your room were dwindling by the minute.
I didn't expect to see you at the end
of the day. I said goodbye, left, and biked to a nearby restaurant
and sat...trying to make sense of it all, this mystery, this
suffering, this enigma we call death.
Biking home, the morning's turbulent
energy was stronger, more furious. Rain threatened, but I knew it
wouldn't. A front was pushing through—pushing the rain, the
clouds, and you, too, I imagined, out and beyond.
You were never far from my mind, Kay,
those first few hours in school. Outside my library, the front had
passed, the sky was breaking, the day had turned from gray to blue.
Mid morning, I wasn't surprised when
John called, confirming was I knew. You'd just passed, pushed out
with the clouds into the great blue yonder.
I spent the rest of the morning in
silence, struggling with your pain, the ugliness of death.
Surprisingly, it wasn't your death that grieved me. I was happy for
your release. It was the struggled living that grieved me most.
It wasn't until later, as I wandered up
the hall, that I was finally able to connect the dots to this puzzle.
It was finals' week and our middle
school students were coming out of classes, shouting, racing. Their
young bodies were crying out to finished with this day, their exams,
this school year. Crying out for summer vacation to begin.
And then it hit me! What I was
witnessing in that school hallway was the same thing I'd witnessed
hours earlier, in your hospital room, that early, bleak, break of
day. Like these students trapped in school, your spirit was trapped
in a dying body. Both of you...these adolescents and your dying
spirit...were screaming for release.
“Get out,” your spirit was saying.
“Get out. It's time to break free. It's time to go home.”
“Get out,” these kids were saying.
“Get out. It's time to break free. It's time to go home.”
This epiphany was comforting,
liberating. And it all finally made sense.
That afternoon, Steve and I left for
Lake Placid. We all needed a break, to move on, at least for a day,
to green trees and verdant mountains...to life.
The day was a marvelous blue, early
summer-cool, fresh. There was no structure to the afternoon. We
wandered in and out of shops on Main Street. We sat by the lake to
enjoy the view. We chatted about you and the memories we had. And we
contemplated,, together, your life, your illness, your passing.
Suddenly, while sitting there, gazing
at the dwindling light, an image came to me—sudden, joyous, full of
energy. You. Running. You as a youngster running through a meadow.
Laughing. You were laughing...riotously, boundlessly—the laugh of
someone so full of life, so free—of someone having so much fun
that laughing was the only way it could be expressed.
I knew you were letting me in on a
joyous moment—you, running through the fields of heaven, free—free
at last.
The image was so real, so vivid, so
absolute that I knew you were letting me share that first, sun-filled
afternoon with God.
And so, Kay, I say goodbye. I will
hold dear the memories of long ago, before the dark years, before we
lost you in life, and now in death. Way back...
--Skiing at Whiteface and Jay Peak;
--Cinerama and Joe's Steak House;
--Drive-in movies on summer nights;
--Wonderful weekends in the
Laurentians.
I thank you, Kay, for all you did in
those earlier years.
And I thank you, too, for teaching me
to the end that death is part of life, and that all spirit longs to
go home, that in the end we all return to God.
And I thank you for allowing me the
brief image of heaven's fields and you, running free and happy. It's
good to know that you are well.
I like holding that Lake Placid image
of you—you running through summer meadows, running through the
eternal summer fields of heaven.
That's the image I will hold of
you—jubilant, happy and full of life.
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