#60.3, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024

Historical Setting, 629 C.E. Creek House in the Vosges Mts.

         Layla has come to see her mother and she brought a kitten to give as a gift. Now Hannah is telling me it is an infant reminder that the castle fields are seeded with ancient superstitions pretending evil spirits into life. She tells me the cat is supposed to receive the illness and take it from Ana. Hannah, and Ana too, have seen this strange notion put to use too often. It is the idea that an evil or an illness is passed along to another using a particularly cursed animal for transference. [footnote]

         “So, Hannah, you think this kitten was meant as a gift of magic?”

         “Clearly, it is was a gift given to spite this surgeon’s blade. When the cancer had spread beyond the reach of my blade, some castle witch sent naïve and innocent Layla this magical, so-called, cure.”

         “And so, Hannah, what is it you fear, that it will work, or that it won’t?”

         “Papa, are you arguing with me because you just can’t let go of your ancient root where Jesus sends pigs hurdling from the cliffs to drown demons? [Mark 5:1-20] Or maybe you are clinging to your Jewish root, burdening a poor goat to carry all the sins of Israel into the wilderness for an annual ritual. [Lev. 16:20-22]”

         “Oh, fair arguments, my brilliant daughter! But we both know your mother’s opinion of this and she isn’t going to send this little kitten away to be burned up by witches just because you made a proper surgeon’s choice when you saw the spread of the cancer. I know she knew what this disease was all along. And we both know she doesn’t expect this dear little critter to be a sacrifice to give us a wish for a magical healing.”

         Now here is Layla. She’s told her mother she is bringing her a gift, but she didn’t tell her what it was. I’ve to put the little kitten back into the bird box for the grand presentation.

         To Layla I say, “She usually only gets dying flowers. Something living will be a nice gift.”

         “Thanks, Papa. I’ve been worried she won’t like it when I tell her what it is for.”

         I follow Layla and Hannah and the bird cage into the house, wishing there really was some creature that could release us from worry. 

[footnote] “transference” is well explained in Chapter III, pages 148 and following of The Golden Bough by James G. Frazer (New Jersey: Gramercy Books, 1981-reprint from 1890 edition) An interesting aside—how ancients circumnavigated scientific understanding of contagious disease and also the use of the term in classical psychology.

(Continues Tuesday, September 10)

#60.2, Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024

Historical Setting, 629 C.E. Creek House in the Vosges Mts.
 

         Hannah took the donkey cart today, over to the castle lands to see her sister and the new baby, Willinod, and now she’s returning, and with her on the cart are Layla and the baby. This is what Ana wishes for more than anymore fists of flowers to stuff in the flask. Ana’s smile alone illuminates the room with heaven and now Layla is grinning too and the little granddaughter chimes in with a baby’s giggle.

         Hannah delivers this baby and mother to Ana and she goes back out to the donkey cart. I follow.

         “If you want to stay down here and visit also, I’ll take the cart up and set the donkey to pasture.” I offer.

         “Papa, look at what Layla brought for Momma.”

         Here in the cart is one of our pigeon cages, as it is being returned to take another bird back with Layla, but there is something moving in the cage that isn’t feathered. It is a furry black kitten starring between the oaken sticks with searching green eyes — eyes nearly the size of the tiny critter’s whole face. The infant voice issues an assertive “meow” expecting its language to be clear. It is clear. I know it is saying, “I don’t belong in a bird crate.”

         I open the cage, and wrap the whole little kitten in one hand. It is soft and warm and ever so tender. Hannah seems to be rebuffing all this cuteness.

         “Don’t you like kittens, Hannah?”

         “Not this one.”

         “What is wrong with this kitten?” I ask, assuming Hannah and Layla have discovered sibling rivalry. But that isn’t the issue here.

         Hannah explains her displeasure.

         “Layla and Will have made an acquaintance of… of someone they call a practitioner, but she is a wizard of the worst kind. She works outside of known medicine, and mixes potions and speaks in spells and omens that sound to strangers of God, like prayers.”

         “Here is this innocent little kitten…” I mention.

         “It is a beast for the transference of soul and sin.”

         “Is that what you think this kitten is, Hannah?”

         “That is its purpose as a gift for Momma.  When my blade failed to rescue Momma these neighbors, dabbling in magic, said the cancer is the work of the evil one. Momma doesn’t like us to speak of devils, I know.”

(Continues tomorrow)

#60.1, Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2024

Historical Setting, 629 C.E. Creek House in the Vosges Mts.

Ana seems well on this new day, though the dread of her diagnosis is a heavy weight on her and all of us who love her.

         Mater Doe named Ana in spoken prayers, so those who came to worship at the secular church in the woods shared in the prayers and they know of the fears and assume we nurture hopes. Neighbors with courage enough to visit the sick stop by the Creek Cottage to see her smiling and welcoming as always, though the scurry to serve tea to guests is handled by me just now. Harvest season is a busy time anyway, so a continuous line of visitors at our door is both a blessing and a curse. She always chooses to call visitors blessings and welcomes them.

         The water flask for flowers on the table is stuffed with stems. Everyone who comes by brings a handful of fresh flowers crowded together with the lavender stems I so foolishly delivered to the surgery when they needed violet leaves.  But I have to say, the lavender has lasted through the healing of her wound and the fragrance hasn’t faded.

         She laughs when we are alone, “Laz, it looks as though every blossom on the creek path has been picked clean just to fill my vase.”

         “Yes, the goats and the geese are surely missing these late summer blossoms.”

         More thoughtfully she answers, “I don’t think people always care that critters appreciate beauty too so they just go snatching up every daisy they see, just to make me a bouquet.”

         “Do you really think the critters see what is beautiful?”

         “Of course, they do. If you lift your eyes from the beauty of the sun setting behind the hills on any evening and gaze at the horses in the pasture, every eye is on the extravagant display of sky colors, even though they are only beasts.”

         “Horses know things.”

         “I noticed a sheep once, gazing at a rainbow.”

         “I don’t think God gave beauty to people alone. I think all of life becomes enwrapped in it. People claim it as ours alone, since claiming things is what humankind do best.”

         There is another knock at the door and more neighbors come with more fistfuls of flowers.

         I refill the boiling pot on the hearth which still has the dregs of chamomile flowers and mint leaves to make our tea.

(Continues tomorrow)

#59.13, Thursday, August 29, 2024

Historical Setting, 629 C.E. farm in the Vosges Mts.
 

         The blade was put to Ana’s breast and nothing good came of it. But at least we know the shape of our desperate prayers. She’s been resting and is easily healing from that little wound by the blade now. None of us who loves her will heal easily from this grief in knowing what is to come. She will die a slow and painful death. We speak of it as a long good-bye. The long part is a goodness for those of us who love her. The death is the universal nature of each mortal being of Creation. Let it be our blessed failing not to look for endings.

         Family is knocking at our door, not just walking in as usual. Do they think we are newlyweds and they might catch us intimate? They do catch us intimate, but not in that way. I’m glad for the warning to rinse away my tears before I open the door.

         Haberd has a pot of supper for us, hot and wafting delicious. I carry it to the cold hearthstone, that we may dip bowls from it.

         He explains, “Hannah said you would want this, so the women prepared extra from our supper, for you.”

         “Tell them we are grateful. Can you stay and have this with us?”

         I prepare the bowls. Haberd is trying not to look at his mother in bed. She speaks to him, “Tell Hannah and your wife that this is lovely and we appreciate it. Please stay and share it with us.”

         “No, I can’t stay. Ann came down with me and she’s waiting outside. She really wants to see her grandmama but I told her not to bother you at this time.”

         “Bother me?” Ana turns herself toward the door and I adjust her pillows. “Have Ann come in and eat with us also.”

         I tidy the room to assure the child will see nothing of blades or needles to pierce her remembrances of her grandmother, while Haberd takes a few minutes outside with her before she is welcomed in. I’m sure he is warning the child that her grandmama is pale and suffering, so little Ann won’t be frightened by the sight of her.

         Now, in come Ann and Haberd.

         “Grandmama!  You are so beautiful!  I thought you would be different now, but you are just the same, and so beautiful!” [personal note]

         Children see things.

A personal message to my Munro cousins: In an ancient time, when I was four years old going on five, I have a vague recollection, reinforced by stories told, that at the time our own grandmother was suffering from a painful cancer I was allowed a brief visit to her bedside. I expected to see the horror everyone spoke of, but instead, I saw my same grandmother there, radiant and beautiful, smiling, and receiving me lovingly. I told her she was beautiful. The parents and uncle and aunts said “I lied tactfully at the right time.” But really, I spoke the truth and I spoke for all of us who continue to know her in spirit even to this day even though she is long gone from earth.

(Continues Tuesday, September 3, 2024)

#long good-bye, #death, #intimate moments, #beauty of life, #grief, #grandmother,

#59.12, Wednesday, August 28, 2024

Historical Setting, 629 C.E. farm in the Vosges Mts.

         I want to grieve. Ana wants to talk about Hannah’s new love, Vizsla.     “He is nearly as talented as Hannah with surgery. Together they did the best that could be done”

         Ana knows my grief for her in this illness and that grief is tainted with a need to blame. And I want to blame Vizsla.  He is the only new thing in my life that I don’t like. Now Ana is offering no fear, only her clear-headed medical advice. She sounds more like physician than patient.

         “Laz, there are some things we don’t know the cause for. People have pondered this one forever. It’s named after the crab because in times when medicine was done by metaphor this looked like a crab. That was what Hannah and Vizsla saw in the surgery.  When the blade was put to it, it had the tentacles of a sea creature. At least we know what it is.  The medical book says it is an imbalance of the black bile.[Footnote] We can’t blame Vizsla, or evil, or devils, or God. And anyway, blaming doesn’t make it better.”

         “Is this something you will have to learn to live with?” That was my most hopeful question.

         “No, Laz.”

         My tears are contagious. Now we are both sobbing together.

         “This bad news is really not a secret from our children and those we love. They probably have a guess. But now it is a faceable fact.”

         Ana says, “When the children come to see me off, we will need to be the strength for them, Laz. We will seem resolute and fearless, together, now.”

         “How can I do that?”             

         “Laz, I need you to see me off into my death without losing sight of all of our beautiful life. You have to do that.  You can do that, I know.”

         “I can only do whatever can be done that you won’t lose sight of life. I would just keep you forever and ever if I could. But Ana, I have no advice at all to offer of the life beyond the death. In my strange way of earthly life and life again, I’ve never been beyond death. I don’t know if there are angels there. Maybe it is the same spiritual oneness with one another in the big universe of love we already know. Ana, we will always know one another as we do now in the spirit of our love.”

         “Let’s keep that our promise, Laz.”

         “I always savor the love.”

[Footnote] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism retrieved 7-17-24

(Continues tomorrow)

#59.11, Tuesday, August 27, 2024

Historical Setting, 629 C.E. farm in the Vosges Mts.
 

         These things that Ana keeps on her shelf of precious things speak of our family at different ages. The value in them is in the ‘once was,’ and not the ‘someday, maybe’ of it. Simon’s ashroot harp that Brandell also learned his music with sits here just as Brandell left it when he traveled off to Constantinople. He left it behind because he intended to give up his music for the art, then when he arrived in that city, he found a builder of the kithara, used as a harp by the Greeks, so now his music flows new again. Isn’t that how it is with each of these old treasures?  They are the story of how we are new people always and again. Already the hands of the grandchildren no longer fit into the fingermarks of the child making the vase, and all of us speak with new words and phrases beyond the writing in the study pages we keep as books.

         Holding onto what was once can be seen either as a view of how far we have come or as grief for the once-it-was-better-than this. It all depends how we see from the place we are. And now, grief obsesses, though I still hear Ana’s breath in this silence. Grief hides in a place near love. Grief belongs to the universe, so we don’t own it, even though we may claim it. Love also belongs to the universe. Love is the universe. We live in love in the way a fish lives in the sea.

         Dear God, in all my prayers and psalm singing I always ask for you to stay close to me and to the ones I love, as though the distance was yours to cause. This distance is my own nature which fails to notice I am already swimming in holy love. Help me notice the beauty in this love even through this is a difficult time.  Amen.

         And now Ana is waking and all we can imagine is vulnerability and mortality that always was there, but never noticed.

         “How are you feeling, Ana? Can I get you anything? Are you warm enough? Do you want a sip of water, or some of this tea Hannah has made for you?”

         “It’s alright, Laz. I’m just glad you’re here.”

         I move the stool to the bedside, and brush her hair from her face, and take her hand.

         “You know, Laz….”

(Continues tomorrow)

#59.10, Thursday, August 22, 2024

Historical Setting, 629 C.E. farm in the Vosges Mts.

         While Ana sleeps, I keep watch and I am remembering the times of our lives looking at this shelf of precious things Ana keeps.  Now I see that Ana keeps a love letter I wrote to her while I was observing silence with the monks at Annegray before there was Luxeuil. I should read it over remembering how I expected our love should be kept secret from the monks, now maybe it should be secret from the grandchildren too.  I read it again for things I wouldn’t want read by others.

         No, it doesn’t have secrets from children, just from monks. I went to the monastery for Lenten prayers before we were blessed into marriage, but it was no use because my thoughts of Ana were leaping and dancing delighted, through any possible somber remembrances of Holy ritual before I could turn my prayers of gratitude over into the required seasonal sorrows of Lent. Just now, I could easily say those grieving Lenten prayers properly. But then, there I was, praying without ceasing with the monks, side-by-side with my deepest memories of Jesus, my friend. I know he would have appreciated my inattention to solemn prayers just for the sake of love. All of the many varieties of love were the theme of Jesus’s everything. He wouldn’t have required my sorrow at his death when I, myself, am the earthly sign that it isn’t a forever death. But the monks require the sorrow and the tears, and just now, I am really glad they do. My spirit aligns with the those who are grieving this day. When I wrote this letter my hopes were that Ana and I could live together forever. Now those same hopes are this sadness.

         Dear God, I should find gratitude for all these old hopes fulfilled, but right now that giddy gratitude seems as misplaced as the required sorrow was on the day I wrote this letter. I am grateful, but not joyful.

         And here is the ash-root harp Simon and I made for him that terrible summer. He wanted to fill the hole in the music that my absence had left at the church. Then it was his absence from us that left the deepest hole in our hearts. Simon’s book is here on the shelf as well.  It speaks in his voice of the child’s goodness. Ana and I still grieve for him.

         Then his harp kept newer songs because Brandell learned his own music on this harp.

(Continues Tuesday, August 27, 2024)

#59.9, Wednesday, August 21, 2024

Historical Setting, 629 C.E. farm in the Vosges Mts.

         I find myself pacing, worrying, contemplating emptiness while Ana sleeps here.

         Here in our house by the hearth is Ana’s shelf of precious things. It is where she keeps the icon Greg brought as a gift – the treasure that sent Brandell off to find the master of this craft and learn about the pigments. He came home with the art-master’s daughter for his bride, so this object has taken him more places than anyone would suppose.

         Some things here are shaped into gifts by the hands of our grandchildren.  These beeswax candles Ana uses to read by after dark, shaped into columns around wicks by tiny fingers. And here a raw clay vase and a little bowl are pressed from creek clay, still poked like a pattern with little fingerprints. They hold precious remnants of seasons past: dried flowers and lavender stalks in the vase, and a small collection of bird feathers and dragon fly wings to give bones to dreams of soaring.

         Something resembling a bookshelf has all of our collections of parchments bound in bows of wool that are known to this family as books. Some are tied up pages of our own thoughts and writings.

      And here among these “books” are pages remembered of Ana’s teacher, Eve’s, medical book. This book was the healing lessons for generations from Eve’s own teacher who took her in as a young child after the first round of a plague, unknown in that time, left Eve and her brother orphans. In Eve’s generation she took in Ana — little Anatase – who had been given over to a Pagan tribe by Christians, because she seemed possessed with a demon observed by illiterate people when a girl child seems to be learning to read.  She was named for a useless blue stone mined in these mountains. She learned the warmth of family with Eve and when I found that child again, she was nearly a woman, in the care of the monks of Annegray known then by the name of Ana. [Footnote]

         Ana’s own little clay flutes are here. The one with the five holes is the one she plays now, sometimes she plays with our harps and the singing at the church. And she still has this little flute she learned to play as a child’s toy. It was hearing that music, the few practice notes on that flute, which was my first awareness of the child Anatase — inquisitive and wise for a small child.

[Footnote]Dear readers, to follow this story is not necessary to go back, but Ana’s life story is told in blogs #19 (April 2021) and on. and stories of Eve begin in blogs #2 (November 2019)

(Continues tomorrow)

#59.8, Tuesday, August 20, 2024

Historical Setting, 629 C.E. farm in the Vosges Mts.

         “She’s sleeping.  We talked. I know. I don’t understand it, but I know what you know.”

         “I’m sorry Papa. I’ve seen this before. Momma knows this thing also. Vizsla and I didn’t agree. But Momma told us what to do.”

         Vizsla speaks, also in a whisper, “As a surgeon, trained for battle wounds I would want to take my blade and sever every evil root, seen or hidden, known or imagined until there was no more of the possibility of that root spreading, likely taking the whole life of her. And then I could say we had done all we could…”

         Hannah told me of Ana’s own answer to Vizsla’s plan, “Momma knows this longing for the power to rescue despite the life of the patient. She told us before we even cut her breast how she wanted this decision to be made.

         “the nuns already did all they could, and they did nothing at all with the blade.” She said at first, she blamed them, even though she also knew they knew there was nothing they could do. “Instead, their prayers gave me back this time with all of you. It is a vacant wish that this could be fixed with the blade. It is a prayer answered with love, that we can belong to one another for a day more or forever.”

         “And then” Hannah explains, “we proceeded to cut a pebble from that same breast that nurtured me and my brothers and sister, but it wasn’t a simple thing we just could fix. Vizsla did the stitching back. I couldn’t see to do that through my own tears.”

         So, we will cherish this precious time of belonging for however many days or months there are.

         Isn’t it one day more or forever that gives each of us our own mortality? Each day is precious and cherished, which is a perception of knowing our earthly finitude.  Some of us live long and lonely grasping for the thread of love left in our longings. We wish away earthly endings, and yet, we always must find them.

         Hannah and Vizsla go now, to spend their night together as the young lovers as Ana as I were once.

         In summer’s dusk I sit by the cold and darkened hearthstone listening to her sleeping breath. My prayer is always gratitude for her breath even in this anxious grasp to hold onto this most tangible moment.

(Continues tomorrow)

#59.7, Thursday, August 15, 2024

Historical Setting, 629 C.E. farm in the Vosges Mts.

         Ana asked me to hold her hand.

         “Laz, I know you are worried and hurting and I only thought if you were asked to pray for someone else who was in grief, you would just get beyond yourself. I didn’t know he was just going to walk in and you would have to deal with him so directly.”

         “I know this frustration. It is a prayer thing.  And it is exactly the prayer thing that weighs most heavily on me just now.”

         “A prayer thing?” she asks.

         “It’s not anything keeping me from prayer, or allowing me to pretend I am praying when I am not.  It is that thing that is the most disconcerting about prayer, that God answers in God’s way, and it isn’t always an answer I’m willing to accept. It is just that sometimes the answer comes in asking me to do an uncomfortable thing.”

         Ana is confused, “So you don’t really want God to be with Vizsla in his grief?”

         “I didn’t want Vizsla’s grief to be my responsibility. I wanted to cast it off onto God. But more than that, the matter here is that God knows, whether or not I speak it aloud. Even if I ponder it wordless in the depths of my love, you know, and I know it is my prayer over and over again that you won’t have to go through a terrible thing here with this pebble in your breast.  I know what everyone isn’t saying, and I know what I don’t want said. And even God isn’t answering that prayer according to my wishes.”

         Ana answers as a matter of fact, “We know now it isn’t a pebble or a pea, Laz. It is a whole root of something terrible. We have to acknowledge that reality, to say it to one another, to do with it whatever is asked of us.”

         I don’t want to hear Ana’s voice tell me this.  I want to be the one who knows just what to do and fixes this thing. We say nothing more.

         Now Ana is sleeping. This deep and peaceful quietude, dark and terrible, but also, she is promising a gift of time we have for sharing more in life. I spread her beautiful flow of pure white hair onto the pillow and spread the blanket to keep the night draft from her shoulders.

         Hannah and Vizsla come in quietly, together, holding hands, hollowed and drained by their own work here and their own tears.

(Continues Tuesday, August 20, 2024)