Fertile emptiness

Certain dreams linger when I wake, I, ambling through the house, empty. I wander room to room, my footsteps echoing against floors and walls, light streaming in waves through windows as if underwater, landing on nothingness.

There. The space of the couch where I stretched out, escaping the harshness of life, knowing he was there in comforting silence.

There, the dog and I scrambling on the floor like misbehaved children. There, the dining room table, the empty void filled with my words of exhaustion in caring for dad, he, listening, watery-blue eyes intent with heart.

You can’t change things. A heavy cross. Walk away.

Walk away? From caring from my father who had a stroke six years ago? Joe is concerned. He sees me shriveling away. Empty.

*****

The bowl is almost empty. I look down at the remnants of thickened peas. The other dishes of pureed orangy carrots and pudding-like chicken wait for dad. 

All dad’s food must now be liquified so he can swallow. Otherwise, he chokes. The feeding takes an hour, the metronome of seconds ticking in concentrated rhythm, hanging heavy in the room.

I am forced to slow my actions and thoughts as he lies in the bed, eyes shut. He has been in hospice in the home for eight months.

Outside, spring has blossomed in lush, fresh greens, a consoling breeze wafting the lace curtains. Sun glints off the railings of dad’s hospital bed, slants across the wooden floor, reaches my hand.

My fingers reach out as if to capture the light. They linger in a second of hope. Instead, I spoon more peas into dad’s mouth.

I wait for him to swallow. I breathe.

*******

Day after day my sister and friends and I clear out the house. Burdensome trash bags filled with Joe’s life, his identification badges from past employment, papers, sweaters, jeans. I have to stop at times, gasp in surprise as old photographs assault me with his youth, who he was, who he could have been.

Joe and I shared the house for 14 years and now I am left to ready it for sale.

On the dining room table he has a project binder, so like him, filled with goals for the coming year.

His hopes for the future hang in the air like the bits of dust that float in the sunlight, without substance.

He died in a second. He left me with a lifetime to sort through. I feel we will never empty this house, the cluttered basement and garage. But we do. I am emptied in the process.

*******

In my dreams, I am at the house again. Joe opens the front door, welcomes me. But he is dead. I know this.

Still, I enter and my heart breaks for the conversations that will never be, the laughter and love that will never find life. And in my dreams, dad is walking again, speaking fully-formed words and not babbling, and I, listening to his wisdom and counsel:

Let God take control. Get out of his way.

Now, if I could, I would tell dad the story of St. Teresa of Avila, a Carmelite of the Middle Ages. On her way to found a new monastery, she rode a donkey across a stream and fell in. She yelled at God: “If this is the way you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few of them!”

*******

Within a week’s time, three family members fall ill, some serious. I am emptied yet again, stripped to the marrow. As we grow older, the inevitability of loss looms large, waiting to swallow us whole.

I tell myself this: There is no escaping it.

Pivoting points catch us off guard, assault us with their harsh reality. The cycle of death and life gets in our face and announces itself and we can either turn away, or be bold, stare it down and listen to what it might teach us.

*******

In my dreams, I am a writer. My words are morning dew and seep gently into hearts with comfort. Or they inspire and offer the gift of hope. But how can I offer hope when I am so empty?

I must start with myself so I give myself this:

The knowledge that the strength of the Divine feminine rises up with ferocity within me. That the hardships have been like tidal waves, stripped me, but I have swum long and hard to get to the shore.

I am there now, stretched out on warm protective sand, listening in worn-out silence that yes, Joe is dead, the house is now occupied by others, dad is dying, my writing dreams are deferred.

But my soul is still strong, hearing the promise in the rhythm of life, of how the waves lap onto the shore and then empty themselves out to the expanse of sea, again and again.

Author Sue Monk Kidd writes this:

“Crisis, change, all the myriad upheavals that blister the spirit and leave us groping– they aren’t voices simply of pain but also of creativity. And if we would only listen, we might hear such times beckoning us to a season of waiting, to the place of fertile emptiness.”

I am in fertile emptiness. Listening. Breathing in, breathing out.

Waiting to be filled.