"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me." (Psalm 23:4)
In the past
couple months Life has had me glancing at the shadows in that valley we all
begin walking through the day we are born. The shadows have taken recognizable
form of late, along with that feeling of having far more years behind me than
ahead.
It is a
growing realization not of fear, nor unease, even as it is a bittersweet,
decreasingly vague recognition.
In May
2018, it was the too-soon demise of a lifelong career in journalism, scythed by
economic imperatives of a newspaper industry on its knees. About half of the
staff eventually accompanied me out the door, a sort of death,
professionally. I endured the cycle of grief in my own fashion -- sort of in
reverse . . . internally forced acceptance, but inevitably spattered by the
sense of loss, anger, depression.
"Closure" took months, and if I am honest years to process.
But that
was nothing. In 2019, I lost both my parents to dementia. It was not
unexpected, and they were both in their 90s. Still, their "golden
years" were anything but; along with the grief there was relief the ordeal
-- theirs and, ignobly my own -- was over.
Last year,
two beloved aunts passed, as well as an uncle I considered something of a
second father. A couple weeks ago, my father-in-law, his long battle with
cancer and pain over, died in hospice care.
Live long
enough, and the circle of mortality closes around you, slowly, like a lazy but
persistent, patient fog.
Finally,
you are confronted with the perils of aging, and medical surprises. First, it
was learning the artificial heart valve I received 11 years ago was wearing
out; it will have to be replaced at some point in the near future. I'm a good
candidate for the procedure, whether the same open-heart operation I had the
first time, or an arterial insertion of an implant, a far-less invasive
prospect.
But it
won't be the heart problem that puts me on a University of Utah Medical Center
operating table this coming Thursday. That will be brain surgery to remove a
meningioma pressuring my optic nerve. While believed to be benign, it has grown
incrementally since being discovered by an MRI; not life-threatening, but
eventually my eyesight could be at risk.
Headaches,
double vision, and brief but increasing bouts of vertigo have born witness to
what that second MRI confirmed some weeks ago.
As the
neurosurgeon told me. removing my cranial interloper is a highly successful
procedure. A few days in hospital, then home to recover for a few weeks.
In a
follow-up this week on the heart issue, my cardiologist assured me the valve
replacement was not an immediate need, and we can revisit that after I recover
from the brain surgery. So, that was good news.
"What
you need to understand is that both of these things are readily treatable. You
have many years to look forward to," he said with a smile and pat
on my shoulder.
And, I do
believe he is right. I am at peace, and my Eastern Orthodox Christian faith is
a comfort that I am, have been and always will be, in God's hands. (As are
we all).
The point,
and I know I have taken way too long to get to it, is that Life -- perhaps
especially in one's sixth and seventh decades -- has a way of spotlighting
those mile markers along the path through the valley of the shadows.
We need to
be aware of death, not with fear, but with sober acceptance that it comes to
professions, loved ones, and us. And, as I've contemplated this of late, I am
not ignorant of the all-too-human tendency to see the deaths of our loved ones,
even ourselves, as somehow an especially grievous wound on the Cosmos.
It is not
entirely a sort of spiritual narcissism to feel thus. Still, when it comes to
the grave, we often lack perspective. Tens of thousands of Turkish and Syrian
innocents died in the recent earthquakes; tens of millions have been sacrificed
on the altars of Nazism, Communism, and in endless wars large and small.
Suffering
is humanity's common currency, not the dollar or Euro, Yuan or Yen.
And in a
matter of degrees of suffering, how many of us -- too often outraged at the
vagaries of our mortal existence in a society where shelter, food, comfort,
medical care, and mindless entertainment are considered our due -- dare to
compare our sufferings to the myriads of those who perish horribly who so
rarely enter our thoughts?
It
shouldn't, then, be a matter of "Why me?" Really, it is "Why not
me?"
For me, my
faith has become not the expectation of divine rescue from trials and
tribulations, but rather the expectation and belief that we are truly never
alone -- and that life's detours and pain can, however unbidden or unwelcome,
birth a sort of wisdom, deeper compassion, and banishment of mortal fear.
St. John Chrysostom put
it this way:
"What is dying? Just what it
is to put off a garment. For the body is about the soul as a garment; and after
laying this aside for a short time by means of death, we shall resume it again
with more splendor."
In
the meantime, we live. We love. We comfort. We judge ourselves harshly, even as
we forgive liberally.
Whether I have weeks, months, years or decades ahead, I want to live this
way. That is my prayer -- borrowed from St. Philaret of Moscow and
posted on the wall of my home office:
"O Lord, grant me to greet the coming day
in peace. Help me in all things to rely upon Your holy will. In every hour of
the day reveal Your will to me.
"Bless my dealings with all who surround me. Teach me to treat all that
comes to me throughout the day with peace of soul and with firm conviction that
Your will governs all. In all my deeds and words guide my thoughts and
feelings.
"In unforeseen events let me not forget
that all are sent by You. Teach me to act firmly and wisely, without
embittering and embarrassing others.
"Give me strength to bear the fatigue of
the coming day with all that it shall bring. Direct my will, teach me to pray.
Pray You Yourself in me."
______________
UPDATE: Going into my fourth week since the operation, my recovery is steady and on its own schedule. Swelling along a much-larger-than-expected incision (running from the crown of my skull across to my right ear area and down to my ear lobe) was significant until the last few days, and is now all but gone. So far, the headaches, vision and vertigo symptoms are gone, and the moments of memory gaps -- in verbal expression, but not written, oddly enough -- have diminished sharply. --BM
