J 3

I hammered up the stairs and peeked in 

The Blanket stretched over him carefully tucked in all the right places to cover his feet, his shoulders like skin 

He opened his eyes and whispered my name 

"I'm trying to take a nap," he said then, smiling 

I reached down, took in the scent of bonfire

The morning was spent brush in hand carrying all of the tree to the fire 

My mother complained of cramped feet, 

My father ladeled tomatoe soup into two bowls 

My little brother is still a child trying to climb out 

Somewhere it became stunted

Someone put him back down 

He is still small yet the skin wrapped around his organs is almost 28 years old. 

How did this happen? 

I kissed him on the cheek and whispered "I just wanted to say hi" and I left just as quickly 

Just enough that he knows I'm still here 

Not too much to smother him 

... 

This is the way to press through things 

This is research and art and 

The bookends to all the events 

This is a collection of tears 

They are shoved 

With salt sprinkled delicacy into this space 

Can you feel what I feel? 

Slow down

Walk shoulder to shoulder with me as if this is the only way you know how to walk 

We can carry it all this way 

We can carry each other this way 

Memories

We were in front of the mirror 

Hannah was in the dressing room with lace at her ankles and dresses hanging on ever surface 

"Benny says that..." 

she caught herself just like that, mid swing and sharply changed her sentence 

"Benny used to say..." pause  "that I say all kinds of words wrong like "strawl" instead of straw 

It was a memory, tiny nugget of gold that we all sort of recognized 

She sat there 

Satisfied with this memory as if somehow 

It brought him into this room 

Husband

Sometimes you need legs 

That are not your own 

To hold you up 

J2

He lay there 

Crooked like a fetus 

The blankets attached with nail and hammer to cover the windows 

So he could sleep

And so he could think 

His eyes were always large like mine and today they were large and afraid 

Everyone always told him wow what a pretty child you are and so when we were young I told him we were the same him and I 

Bonded in a way 

And It was true 

There was something about his mind that I always understood 

I counseled him for hours when he was six or seven sitting in the crook of the armchair next to me 

Unable to process my words because he couldn't process his thoughts 

... 

You forget sometimes 

That you're needed 

You plug your calendar full of things 

When he is alone 

In his bedroom 

Every single morning 

With no one to talk to

Alone with his thoughts 

He told me once 

That when I leave

It is depressing 

And so now 

I've whittled the list down even more 

(It keeps getting smaller) 

For fear of missing him.

Of missing out. 

Of not being there when someone with the same blood

Is asking. 

I shut them all up

It was thought through 

Intentional 

And also impulsive (if that's possible)

It's not that I wanted them to know. 

I just wanted them to believe 

He is not the youngest child 

Frivolous in his decision making. 

J

I think the devil has always been on the quest to crowd out his little mind 

I remember the OCD even at an early age

The tears

The mouth that would not speak for fear of saying the wrong line 

The devil

For some reason

Had his eye on you

 Deceptive and eager to

pack the cerebrum with lies

The pesky thief I hate you 

I watch J press his palm to his forehead 

"I just want to be free from these thoughts" his forehead bent and eyes filled with tears 

As he lay there 

Motionless

Hollow

And then he tells me every skeleton

The ones that hang wearing fear

The things he's kept trapped between his rob cage and lungs because he was afraid to put them into the air 

And I pray under my breath as I climb the stairs and lay down on the floor next to him 

"Give me words" 

... 

It is my mission to take some of the load 

To wear it

For him

So he doesn't have to bear it all 

In the same way Jesus took all of mine 

Let me have a little of your fear

Until you can see clear enough 

To let Jesus have yours too. 

Benny Boes

I found a thin place yesterday, the thin space between heaven and earth when it feels as if earth is just barely separate from that place. When God is in the room. When you can feel Him so present, like He is breathing right behind you onto your neck, and goosebumps traveling up and down your spine. Some spaces are like that, you know. 

I've been thinking a lot about death. I know, I know, morbid and dark... but I prefer to not think about it this way. I pray that I think of it more so that when I could choose to be sharp or pointed with my husband (& my God knows I'm good at being sharp and pointed with my husband... about the boxers on the floor or the salsas and dips left out all night).... I pray I think about death more so that when I want to be cross I can look at his face and instead see that this moment, this breath of air, this time frame with him is a gift... and I want to use it to love him because I won't have him forever. 

Every year Ive made it a habit to pray this verse "teach me to count my days." It's one of my favorite passages, and it's followed with "remind me that my days are numbered, how fleeting my life is... my entire lifetime is just a moment to you, at best, each of us is but a breath. We are merely moving shadows, and all our busy rushing ends in nothing. We heap up wealth, not knowing how to spend it. And so Lord, where do I put my hope? My only hope is in you." (Psalm 39 NLT) 

Yesterday we celebrated a mans life. His name was Benny Boes. They carried his body (he is somewhere else, watching us? Dancing? His brain, tumorless) in a long cedar colored casket, and every one stood. There were hands laid on the wood of the frame. Ever face was wet. Cal was clinging to his mother as she stood bravely at the front watching her husband carried past her. 

"You don't know how much the music/band needs a drummer until the drummer isn't there"... it was something like that anyway. Words of Isaiah Kallman. 

What will this world be like without the drum of Benny Boes? 

It was a perfect day. The leaves were falling, the sun stretching his long arms through the church windows and across the aisles of Benny's loved ones. Coldplay filled every single crevice of the church with the words of "fix you," as they carried him in... the same song Elise walked down the aisle too, in this same space where she vowed "in sickness and in health." The last six months she fought for love just as he instructed us today. 

The place was full with Liverpool & tigers jerseys, and more people than I thought I'd know. I didn't know Benny, but the people he influenced, lived daily with, showed me the person that Benny was. 

"Be yourself. Live urgently, fight for love," Benny left us with these life instructions and Elise carried them into the room and into our hearts with an unwavering voice of confidence and strength. 

Elise encouraged everyone today to "come as they are" because Benny would want all of us to be ourselves, with bravery. Benny's mother in law wore jeans. Josiah and Hannah, full of water on their faces wore two shirts that still smelled like Benny. 

& Friends and family said goodbye to Benny, while the boys choir sang in Latin, while everyone raised Bennys favorite beer singing his favorite song, it felt like something electric was closing... the waving, the weeping, the chandeliers hanging, there were so much beauty in this goodbye that I don't think the impact Benny made on people's lives will ever wilt. 

It left me wondering what I'm doing here. This space, this tiny life I get to live "each of us is but a breath." I want Benny's life and testimony to change me. 

"Saints touch and transform people's lives wherever they are" the pastor said, wiping his nose from his own tears. And I could see that Benny had done this well, so well with his life.

Hospitals

I hate hospitals 

Their shiny floors

And intolerable beeping

The maze of drs and nurses who are in and out and around

The oil paintings strung up by nails that suggest this to be a happy place 

We walk to room 5022

I see his feet

Rubber gray socks

Lyle.

2.

Mom reaches over during lunch

(They have taken him away for more tests and ultrasounds, checking the messages of his heart and the size of his spleen) 

I tried to leave once 

With the excuse of all I had to get done 

My head spinning 

My eyes raw with holding everything in 

The message on my lips bright and positive 

Lies. 

Mom reaches over for me during lunch

The cafeteria is buzzing 

And wipes at my forehead

I ask her what she is wiping away 

She tells me lines

Worry lines

That have built their way into my skin

3.

Dr Brenner 

Was a quiet man with words that were solid and understandable 

He spoke slowly

It is so we can hear him through the bramble of long delicate words that mean illness and life or death

He gives us good news with some hesitancy 

Not too much good news 

Enough to keep us positive 

Not enough that we can call him a 

Liar.

Grandpa was in good spirits, 

His thigh exposed by the sheet, 

The white loose undies showing just barely on his hip

They hang loose in the buttocks

As they lead him here and there 

He doesn't even think of it

He thinks of how he plans to live longer 

And the French toast he ate this morning

And the pot roast on its way 

When he talks he puts both arms above his head

We can see the tubes and the IV and the oxygen machine

The bruises that suggested 

"Something is wrong in here" 

Our bodies are wonderful companions 

They are with us through all of this 

Life

4. 

Life is marked with so much pain

I see it in all of the halls

In the way the nurses carry Pelicans in their voices 

A large body of things they don't say 

Life is also marked with so much beauty

And I will find it during all of this. 

Death is in threes she says

When life is swollen with death and pregnant with hangnails and cancer of the brain 

We fight back 

Raise a glass to lives gone past 

The wrinkled hands and the unresponsive voices that used to pray loud and clear and lead like harvest leads winter

We war on with hospitality and bright hot bread 

Make song 

Move our feet to the rhythm left in the world 

Until the glad day 

When we are all home 

Sweet

Sweet

Home

-finding the thin places 

Benny.

There is a silence in the statement. 

"He just died." 

What can we make of it, and what is there to do now? Our lives are crusts of eternity.