In the Margins: Remembering the Dead with Hope

On the day before my father died, his friend of 40 years, Tom Cooney, came to see him. Up to that time, we had let no one into his room except family, but Tom was different. He and my father were of that generation who served in World War II and saw the world with hope and possibility. They had been FBI agents together, and had married within a few months of each other, bringing their brides to the dusty streets of post-war Richland, Washington. They had both been transferred at about the same time—Tom to Los Angeles and my father to San Francisco—but had remained friends, even during this separation. And when Tom and Joan moved to San Francisco, they were my parents’ best friends again, becoming the only non-relatives to serve as godparents to one of my siblings. Yes, Cooney was special.
I was alone in the room when he arrived. My mother had gone home for a few hours of rest. I sat watching the numbers on the monitor beside his bed—watching as the O2 level slowly drifted lower. I saw Tom through the window and jumped up to welcome him, and after the smiles and the handshakes, we came to the bed together, and he spoke to my father in the old familiar way. Then, as the few minutes seemed enough, Tom leaned forward and gripped my father’s hand, squeezing it with gentle affection. And in a voice full of memory, he said, “Good-bye, old pal.”
With tears running down my face, I walked him to the door, “Thanks, Mr. Cooney.” We said nothing else. Nothing else seemed possible.

So many of us have stories like this—of the last days of someone we love, or of the days that follow a sudden death, when we see friends we had almost forgotten and remember those parts of our history that make us ache and smile at the same time. Death, with its great sense of finality and mystery, seems almost incomprehensible in the abstract, when we are in the midst of life and joy; yet, in those moments when it intrudes, it seems to envelope and disorient us, like a room of mirrors in a carnival fun-house. We feel adrift, remembering what we have not done for the one we have lost, and praying for just one more day, just one more moment, just a chance to do it right—as though there were a way ever to do it right. In this moment, we seek a hand to hold, long for another who can hear us, who will acknowledge us, who can help us believe that we are still alive.

To experiences a death like this—a death which does more than remove a person from our life, but removes a reference, a touchstone, a part of the way we see the world and ourselves—is to experience something unique. It is irreducible to the pain of any other person, though each of us may bear such pain at some time in her life. Like our very self, such loss, even though many have known its type, is always uniquely our own. And God, whose love has made each of us unique and precious, holds us in that loss, not to take away the pain, but to help us experience the life that has made such pain worth bearing.

In the month of November, the Church invites us to remember our beloved dead: invites us to enter again into the mystery of mortality, and into the promise of hope. As Christians, we are not called to avoid death, nor to avoid the mourning and sorrow that accompany it. Though we are, as St. Augustine says, “a resurrection people,” we know that it is through the pain of death by which the resurrection gains its meaning and its power. The death of Jesus—the death of each of our beloved ones—is a testimony to the way of the world. It is what the order of the world offers, the definitive act of nature’s power over our own planning and desire. But in the face of this seemingly unconquerable reality—this chaos that cancels all the order and connections we seek to create—breathes God’s Holy Spirit. With the utter gratuity of love, God undoes the power of death, supersedes this absolute law of nature, and raises to life not the People or the Nation or the Church, but Jesus, himself; and my father, himself; and your sister, herself; and every single individual, in her or his own peculiar wonder. Each and every one who is subject to death, God raises to life simply because God loves her, God loves him. This is our hope. This is our faith. This is the promise given to us by Love made flesh.

So then, in this month of November, let us acknowledge the reality of death, and let us not hide from it. For death drives away all that is venal and passing; death swallows all the old grudges and cruelties, all the arguments we hold so dear. It claims the awards in which we take such pride, and the failures we thought would overthrow us. Into the great emptiness of death, all the things of this world go down, and all that is left is hope, and faith, and love—all that is left is God, who loves us and loves those we have loved, and brings us home to one another, at last.