Lent, Loss, and the Coming of Spring

On the first day of Greek Orthodox Lent, halfway through the Lent that most of the Christian world observes, I woke early to drive my eldest daughter back to the town, 1 1/2 hours away, where she currently lives. We left before dawn, and I felt happy: we are both morning people, and I was anticipating a good, deep conversation to end her visit home, followed by 1.5 hours to myself to sing or shout or talk to the Great Love or listen to a podcast or my favorite tunes. Getting 1.5 hours to myself is unheard of in this phase in my life; I couldn't wait.  

Instead, 15 minutes into the drive, the wind kicked up, and small, then large, balls of icy snow began to crash relentlessly into the windshield, splattering like paint. The roads turned icy, and I began to slide across the center line. I slowed down. My daughter, oblivious, told a joke. When I said I would need to concentrate, she could tell by my voice that she needed to check out to preserve her own sanity: she fell immediately asleep.

I clutched the wheel, drove slowly. It's mid-March, for God's sake, I thought to myself, though of course by now I ought to know what March in Minnesota means. We were maybe 20 miles from her place when I realized I needed to stop, badly--it couldn't wait. I pulled into the first gas station I saw, despite the fact that its logo was a giant, feathered, red face. Well, I thought, I don't have a choice. I limped to the door, wishing I'd stopped earlier or hadn't drank quite so much coffee. There were maybe seven people inside, unmasked, all standing in a small, tight circle and laughing just inside the door. As I opened the door, I saw a handwritten sign declaring the station a "free zone" from the "pandemic nonsense."  I wanted to turn around, but this was an emergency. I used the bathroom and quickly fled, the men pausing to shake their heads at my masked face (or perhaps at the fact that I didn't buy anything in return for using the bathroom). I held my breath so I wouldn't cry.

After hugging my daughter in a hurried goodbye--at this point I was going to be late for work--I began the slow, harrowing drive back. The roads were even icier now, and a fog that had decided to lie down, thick and stubborn, across the prairie. 

No problem, I thought. I know these roads by heart. I'll just keep driving slowly. Except suddenly I saw a stop sign in a place that had never before had a stop sign, and I slid through it, narrowly missing a passing car. 

That's when I realized I had made a wrong turn. It was too dangerous to pull over to consult google maps, so I just kept driving, noting that the road was curvier and narrower than the one I usually take to get back home. 

Eventually, through sheer luck and a sudden lucid memory of having been at a particular corner several years before, I found my way. I had turned too early, was on a parallel country road to the two-lane highway I usually take. I made my way back to the (much less icy) main road and drove the last half hour with relative ease.

And then, I was thrown into work meetings that took me all the way to lunchtime, when I was expected at the local pharmacy to get my vaccine. The day had been so busy that I didn't have time to feel anything about it. I drove across town and walked into the most chaotic, crowded space I'd encountered in over a year. Instinctively, I held my breath. Then released it, and breathed in. I could do this. 

I did my best to keep my distance, but it was nearly impossible. I texted the people who were supposed to be in my next two meetings--I hadn't expected to have to wait. There had been strict instructions to arrive no more than 10 minutes early. 

Eventually, the vaccine in my arm, I hurried home, got through the rest of my work meetings, then grabbed a mask and jumped into our car for daycare pick up. I absentmindedly turned on the radio, surprised to encounter a story about gay marriage. Pope Francis had announced that the Catholic Church cannot "bless sin." I listened but felt nothing in particular--of course, my hope that somehow this pope would shift the church was not founded in reality, which was no real surprise. 

I'd spent most of my life grappling with the reality that the church in which I was raised--Orthodox--would never embrace my whole self, that I could never raise my children in that church. I'd worked through that loss. Or so I thought.

The evening wore on: supper, then more foster care trainings with my spouse. 

And then, mercifully, it was time for sleep. 

Except my body never quite settled into sleep. My dreams were chaotic. I kept trying to get to some unnamed place where beloved ones were waiting for me, the fog thickening each time I got close. Then I was in the backyard of my childhood home, running from a bull that had inexplicably shown up. Each time I got close to taming the bull, the neighbor kid would ride rapidly around the yard in circles on his bike, an evil laugh echoing, and the bull would get angry all over again. Then I was trying to log onto a meeting but kept entering the wrong rooms, rooms where hateful people shouted I wasn't welcome, where Black Lives Matter signs and rainbow flags were being burned on the screen. 

Then I was in my house, in 2021, but nothing was the same: I didn't have a spouse. Or kids. I was alone, and I was writing in my journal how I could never marry, how my feelings were a sin, how my father would never be able to accept it.

That was the dream that finally woke me. I was terrified. After a quick lap around the house, I became convinced that everyone--human, canine, feline, and yes, even the fish--were still breathing (do fish breathe? Well, I digress). I checked my phone; the beloveds from my family of origin who are sick were still breathing, too; I assumed, anyway. I would have a message if not. (It turned out this was correct). 

And then, I remembered it was the first day of Lent. I lay down and closed my eyes, imagining the Paraklesis services of my childhood, Fridays spent serving vegan food to the elders who came, a youth group responsibility. I remembered the 40 long days of meatless suppers. I remembered the Lazarus Saturday service, followed by the slow folding of the Palm Sunday crosses, followed by the vegan Holy Week when even items flavored with fake cheese weren't allowed (I tried, once, to convince a friend I could eat Cheetos).

I remembered how, every year, those dark days opened a space for grief: the weeping woman washing Jesus' feet with her tears; the all night vigil on Holy Thursday, sitting beside the body of Jesus on the cross; the beautiful laments of Good Friday, the carnation-laden Epitaphion.

And then, I let myself feel it. The primal childhood losses: my yiayia, my mother, my Thea Katina, my church, which I'd loved so much. All of the people who have lived with us, who left by choice or by force, since we began Petalouda House. Many of them still not OK, if there is such a thing as OK. 

The way my life might have turned out if I'd decided to do things differently, more conventionally--yes, there is grief there, too, at the privileges friends have that I will never have. I don't think about it much, but on nights like this one, the sacrifices I have made to care for my beloveds feel heavy, unfair. 

A few days earlier I'd learned that one of my Koumbaroi had passed from this life to the next--too young, I'd protested in my head, until I realized he was actually 89. I wept for him, too, and his family, and for all the lost ones in my parents' generation who are slowly slipping away: each one carrying with them memories of my parents. 

Someday, no one living will remember them.

I grieved, too, for all that might happen in the coming weeks--so many unknowns, as there always are when one commits oneself to caring for those living with trauma, but especially so this month.

I thought of Jesus in the desert, and in the garden: the Jesus who looks us square in the eye, the Jesus of suffering. The one who squared with the devil in the desert instead of slinking away, who told his disciples in the garden to stay awake, stay vigilant. 

But there is also the Jesus who said, Take my yoke and put it on you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in spirit, and you will find rest. Who touches the ear of the prison guard to heal it. Who meets Mary in the garden, walks beside her, comforts her, then sends her off to share the Resurrection joy.

Two weeks earlier, I'd told my spiritual director that I'd been having a more difficult time getting up in the morning to run, meditate, write. 

She said, "Isn't it marvelous that your body is telling you that you need to rest, and you're listening?" 

But I miss that time, I insisted. If I want time to myself, I need to claim it in those early morning hours, or I won't get it at all. I'm feeling sore from not working out. Overwhelmed. I'm feeling... 

"Maybe you need sleep even more," she responded.

That night, after weeping awhile, I changed my alarm to the very latest time I can get up without risking dog pee on the floor or a child missing school transportation. Then, I slept deeply. I had no more dreams--or, at least, they didn't poke at me with anxiety and fear, and I didn't wake certain that some terrible loss had occurred. Instead, I woke rested (and no earlier than that late alarm). 

I breathed through the morning, staying present even though I hadn't gotten my usual spiritual time. Somewhere along the way, I realized I'd not made any specific Lenten commitment. We were halfway through the Lent my current church honors, two days into the Lent of my childhood. 

So, what should I do to mark the season? I showed up to my next spiritual direction session unfocused, unmoored. I spent most of the hour listing my losses, one after another, a rapid fire pendulum, spiral, galaxy of grief. 

"How are you sleeping?" she asked me.

"I still can't wake up early," I replied. 

"Isn't it marvelous," she said again, "how our bodies know when they need rest?" 

Yes, I thought. In this liminal time between winter and spring, between the 40 days in the desert and the 40 days of Easter, when the tomb opens to take us in and hold us for awhile, but not forever: maybe it is OK to lie down. 

"I want to return to something you said earlier, something profound."

"Me?" I said comically. 

She smiled. "That there is no such thing as an ending."

"I don't remember saying that."

"But you did. Grief is cyclical, every grief connected to every other. There are no endings, only grief opening to grief. You wove the story beautifully, a tapestry, a piece of art made out of tears, made to be rent in two. But also..."

"Also, joy is cyclical." 

"Yes," she said, "Also, joy is cyclical. Yes." 

And that yes echoed into the silence of the tomb, where I had agreed to lie down for awhile. 

It echoed into the silent fear the women felt when they arrived, spices in hand, ready to touch the body that was no longer there. 

It echoed into the deep wounds Thomas touched as he declared, "My Lord and My God." 

And then the sun kicked up as suddenly as the wind had a couple days earlier when I'd made that harrowing drive across the snowy prairie. And I saw the tapestry woven from that sticky, icy snow, splattered across the windows I was facing. I became aware of where I was sitting, in the center of a sunbeam. Soon that snow would melt. Soon, it would be spring, or at least the next reprieve before spring finally showed up for good.