Into Another Intensity

Grammie 1924-2009

My grandma, Alice Dubour, died on February 21, 2009. A week later, I was in Massachusetts celebrating her life with the rest of my family. I knelt beside her still body, wondering where she was; seeing her there, but still wondering. I touched the skin of her arm. It was important to me to make contact, whatever help that might be for understanding what death even is. I thought of Nonno too. But that’s an older, different story.

These were the words I spoke, at the service, to Grammie, to my family, to myself, to God.

I’ll remember Grammie well – with very fond memories of bunk beds, of $5 and an old photo every month or so, the many Grammie-isms, and lots and lots of ben-gay… I can still smell that ben-gay.

Now, we grew up geographically apart. And yet, we were together. Not just on visits. Speicifically, she always used to tell me, at the end of every phone call, “I’ve got you on my shoulder: one of you [me and my brother] on each side.” Back in December, she reminded me for the last time. And since then, and especially in the past few weeks, I’ve come to understand this in a new way. All of us stand on shoulders – of those that go before us.

This family, with the faith we share in the triune God, it was passed on. Given. We received it from our parents. And in so receiving, we stood on their shoulders. And so in this way, she’s got us all on her shoulders. Just as she also is on another’s shoulder; as all of us are on the shoulder of Christ.

And this is our great and only hope that she passed on to us:

We are dust, enlivened and sustained by God.
But His coming to us proves our worth.
And one day we shall all be changed. We shall be raised in Christ as we were buried in Christ. Death is swallowed up in His victory, no more to sting.
He makes all things new; He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.

T.S. Elliot encourages us:

We must be still and still moving into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters of the petrel and the porpoise
In my end is my beginning

As a point of interest, the same priest that married my parents, baptized me almost exactly 26 years ago, and my brother 23 years ago, officiated my grandmother’s funeral. He left pretty much right away. I’d have liked to say hi, or thank you.