[Continuing from our previous book announcement, we here present a second excerpt from our forthcoming message in a bottle And All Eternity Shook, wherein a young missionary comes home after two years in Puerto Rico only to find his mother on her deathbed, and so wrestles with his God in mighty prayer…]
Chapter III
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (My God!) my God
-Gerard Manley Hopkins
And now opens the impossible task before me: I must express the inexpressible, the “unspeakable gift”, the peace surpassing understanding, the groanings beyond utterance, what words cannot capture, cannot represent, cannot feel, cannot touch, neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.
No matter. I am willing. I am ready. I am free.
Slowly, deliberately, I begin:
Dear Father in Heaven
Querido Padre Celestial
I kneel before you this afternoon
to beg the life of my mother…
And I started straight enough, but thoughts are never stationary things but ever shifting, and so no sooner did the words begin to pour forth from my silent lips than my memories intruded, until my thoughts became scattered and sifting—
—
Then the phone rang, rudely interrupting my sacrosanct Saturday-morning rites of crashing on the couch to empty my mind before the empty flicker of the emptier channels until I achieved a sort of Zen-like teenage disassociation from the demands of school, life, the world and the Universe—
— I begin father in heaven for I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord which am but dust and ashes by acknowledging that all things are before thee and that thou dost possess all wisdom knowledge grace truth and power that thy thoughts are higher than our thoughts and your words higher than our words even as the heavens are higher than the earth and I recognize and confess and repent of my sins and ignorance and presumption before the awful throne of the almighty—
and now that we have acknowledged all that and have that out of the way—
— Still I answered the phone, as I became vaguely aware that there were no other adults around. To my…not surprise, but curiosity, Dad was calling. He and Mom were at St. Peters Memorial, he said.
He says strange words: Mom is sick.
Appendicitis.
— And on the first day, I stepped out our apartment (a sort of mother-in-law suite in someone’s backyard, where we also hung out our clothes to dry), pushing a red Raleigh into the blinding sunlight and heavy humidity I would soon come to know so intimately but still hadn’t yet, and already the sweat was starting to settle onto my upper lip and beneath my starched collar and trickle down the back of my under-shirt. My first companion and trainer, a slight young Minnesotan with a nasally voice named Elder Stevens often confused for younger than I and whose shyness I still mistook for hostility, ventured only the encouraging words of, “You put a part in your hair? Really?”
— —and yes yes I confess that many and more have suffered far more than she, far more than I, that literally billions suffer far more than she and I ever will—in the sweatshops, the shanty-towns, the garbage heaps, the open-sewers, the mass-graves, the most brutal dictatorships, appalling poverty and war-torn destruction, that in this fallen world the cries and cares of some first world child are laughably nay offensively slight compared to the collected groans and pains of humanity before the omnipresent eye of the almighty—
—
That sounds like it hurts. Appendicitis. I felt bad for Mom, I’m sure it’s painful like nothing I know—yet for some reason Dad felt the constant need to keep me continually updated, at precise half-hour intervals, like we were on a schedule or something, like her life was threatened or something. And though I always muted the television when he called and matched the near-whisper of his voice with a somber tone of my own, my immediate thought was always, Dad, you know as well as I that Mom’s stronger than both of us, she’ll be fine, she’s always fine, in fact worry more about yourself, you could lay off the red meat yourself you know you won’t live forever—
— “Well, yeah,” I replied, “Aren’t we supposed to?”
“Psh, good luck,” he said, snapping on his own bike-helmet, while a thick dishrag dangling from the back-pocket of his slacks hinted at the immense perspiration to come. I gazed around quickly and thought: There are palm trees. There are street signs in Spanish. There are concrete homes with flat roofs, painted bright colors. There are Christmas lights in the hot sun. There are F-14s flying bombing runs over Isla de Vieques on the horizon. I am no longer home. I am not dreaming.
I am here. This is happening.
— —and again I know I believe I confess the resurrection of our lord and savior and that the promise to the righteous is that their passing from this vale of tears shall taste sweet and a moment of fear and trembling and then all is clear—
— But then, maybe Dad was calling me not for my sake or even hers but his own, to feel less alone as he wrestled the HMO; despite her intense pain, they wanted to move her to an in-system hospital clear up in Olympia (I silently filed this one away for another “damn the man” rant for later).
— We biked and knocked doors all day long and I soon learned why no one in the Caribbean wears slacks and white-shirts and ties all day even though we did—
—
—nevertheless I will weary the unjust judge I will wear down the Most Just judge of the universe yea verily we will go till you must either strike me dead to end the monotony against thy infinite patience or grant me the life of my mother—
— As his calls continued into the afternoon, Dad’s voice perceptibly modulated from frustration to relief, as not only he but the doctors began to win the wrestle with the HMO who, after letting Mom suffer sufficiently for the sin of inconveniencing the Provider, at last relented: the emergency appendectomy would be performed that day at St. Peter’s.
— But I also detected something more: a new and unfamiliar fear I’d never heard before in Dad’s normally stoic and monotone voice, which I suddenly found far more interesting than any details of the surgery. Maybe he was afraid he’d taken her for granted for too long all these years, and now during a routine surgery he’d lose her and pay that price, I don’t know. And though his fears were certainly not unfounded—heaven knows I’d surely taken her too much for granted as we all do, and freely admitted losing Mom would be terrible, catastrophic, even—yet I also knew that Mom was strong.
— And there he lay.
Here near the end of my first day, after knocking doors all over that jungled hill overlooking coastal Humacao, a portly Puerto Rican man lay sweaty and shirtless on his bed, sick with fever. Elder Stevens timidly offered to make manifest the power of Godliness by administering a Priesthood blessing of healing. The family in turn told him to help himself and returned to their dinner and telenovelas.
— Elder Stevens pulled a vial of consecrated olive oil from his backpack and then had the bright idea to have me perform the first part of the blessing and he the second. I fidgeted with the quickly scribbled note he handed me containing the wording for how to pronounce a Priesthood Blessing in Spanish, half the words of which I didn’t even recognize yet—
— —and I confess that all my most righteous acts are less than the dust of the earth yeah if I dedicated every breath to the service of the Lord it would still be but ashes on the altar but it is all burnt upon the altar now, isn’t it—isn’t it—now grant me the life of my Mother—
— And I was right, of course: the doctors were all very professional and the surgery went very smoothly and she was a model patient, and she would only require a few days rest in a hospital bed and then she could return home from this small ordeal (a break—a vacation really) and continue on with the great pageant of life. When I drove over with my brother the next day, I fancied I saw a new light in Mom’s face—like she’d been chastened ever so slightly, humbled a bit, reproved for her long and quiet melancholy, but in a good way, like the way only children are chastened, and was grateful to feel young again even just once more.
— “Hey, ya gotta learn sometime,” Elder Stevens shrugged awkwardly, and so, while sweating in the late-November evening heat, I placed a drop of olive oil on the man’s bald spot. I felt the grease smudge on my fingertips and resisted the urge to rub it on my pants already damp with sweat. Haltingly, awkwardly, I placed my hands on his damp head, and my tongue stumbled, for I’d never blessed a man before, let alone in a foreign tongue. I only had to say about a dozen words, but Elder Stevens still had to prompt me twice.
He then added his own hands to the man’s head to seal the blessing. He pronounced words I don’t remember and didn’t understand—in fact all I remember was the humidity and my whole back-side was soaked from a whole day’s worth of sweat and I couldn’t wait for a shower and I missed my home’s shower and my feet blistered, and the coquis and crickets sang in distracting swarms outside and my hands were sweating on this man’s sweating head and the already familiar smell of arroz y habichuela wafted in from the kitchen and my face was sweating too, oh after only a day I was already sick and tired of sweating all the time and couldn’t imagine another 22 months of this, I could even taste the salt in the sweat on my upper lip—
—Oh God I can taste it still—
— —and yes as the Psalm says our lives are as grass, but even the grass breaks through the cement and the pavement and the unfinished housing projects and the abandoned naval bases and the ancient spanish fortresses and tonight I too will break through the pavement of the will of god and you don’t know how far I’ll go and grant me the life of my mother—
Within a few days she walked out of the hospital of her own accord, we were all relieved, and we justly ascribed the glory to God. Because Mom gets sick, but then Mom gets better, we live, we learn, we grow, and grow closer together, and grow up, and grow old, and we keep on growing in an eternal progression from all eternity to all eternity—
— A day later we visited the man’s house again to find him healthy, walking around like he presumably always had, but though the family never expressed any outward hostility exactly or disbelief or even indifference towards us, they simply never kept a single other appointment.
And in retrospect, why would they? Maybe his fever broke because he took an ibuprofen and got a good night’s sleep, and we were just there, and he got better in spite of us; or perhaps they’d assumed God was always there caring for him, in spite of us; or maybe for them nothing is sacred, or maybe everything’s sacred, or there’s no real difference between the two, for the Holy Spirit of God was at all times as present in their lives as the salt in the sweat on the edge of our lips, though I sometimes wanted to corner them all just one last time and ask did you ever let yourself wonder, if maybe—
— —and all the brilliant stars that lighten the black sky three full shades in the campo far from the lights of San Juan and the neverending sea that surrounds us blurs the horizon in the humidity till the two blues become indistinguishable in an eternal blending all this will I lay down and sacrifice or did I spend my two years on nothing—or was it the nothingness itself—just give me the life of my Mother—
— But hospitals run routine biopsies on all extracted tissue post op, and not without reason: Found among the extracted appendix samples was evidence of malignant growth.
This time the HMO got its way: the following Saturday Dad drove her up to Olympia Providence for further testing.
— The salt was everywhere, though—on our lips, in sea breezes from the ocean that were never very far away even in the mountains, and sometimes the salt led us to different places. In my second area of Carolina (pronounced like Catolina—the afterthought of San Juan), we were disheartened to find that Isabela, a local member of the Church who hadn’t attended in years, had missed our weekly visit. But then her neighbor informed us that she was at the hospital, visiting her own aged Mamá on her death bed.
— —and I would suffer death in the most distressing and aggravating manner for her sake and yes I know ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith but first you must give me the life of my Mother—
— It was at Olympia Providence that I first heard the C-word, so called. A rather innocuous noun really, almost pleasant to pronounce, if it weren’t for the connotations. I refuse to name it however; that word is so banal, hackneyed, maudlin, offensive in its triteness. It should’ve remained an astrology sign, or an arbitrary line of latitude, not something with any relevance to reality. I won’t say it, I won’t acknowledge it, I will banish it from my vocabulary like the dirty word it is. Like the sacred, you don’t like it there, it feels coarse, rude, impudent, too close for comfort, vulgar to intrude so privately; you’re not quite sure what to make of it, and you’re tempted to smirk and roll your eyes in hopes of shaming it out of the room though you know it will do no such thing.
Trying to be good missionaries (and not wanting to knock any more doors that night, to be honest), we took the next bus into San Juan to visit Isabela at Hospital Metropolitan. In our youthful ignorance, it didn’t even occur to us until we were on the elevator up that maybe she wouldn’t be keen to see us at all, that perhaps we were impudently imposing upon a sacred and grieving moment, and we almost turned right around in the hallway and went back down the elevator and took the bus right back home.
But fortunately, she smiled when she saw us.
— —or is it that I am leaning over my comfortable bed with my knees in the soft carpet so any claims of mine that I would suffer the most distressing and aggravating anguish can only come off as laughably ridiculous well we’ll see how far I am willing to go when I get up and go steal my Dad’s keys tonight—
— But it was ovarian, which we were assured has a very high recovery rate, and thanks to the ruptured appendix was caught while still early and operable. We were blessed, really, to have found it when we had, we proclaimed and testified. We again justly gave all thanks to God, and praised his eternal wisdom and mercy, and began preparations immediately for the surgeries and treatments that would rid her of this sickness once and for all and bring us closer as a family and help us treasure the bonds that tied us, which was clearly the blessed purpose of this sickness under God’s Almighty Plan.
— In fact, Isabela even requested we give her Mamá a blessing. I was by then far along enough in my Spanish that I could now recite the requisite words without prompt or pause.
But I still didn’t remember a word I said; all I do remember is that Isabela’s Mamá had the most serene look on her face—she shut her eyes gently, grinned widely, and clutched her blanket tight against her chin—she looked like she’d been kissed by an old lover, I hope I never forget it. Isabela’s eyes watered and she mouthed a silent “gracias” to us as we politely excused ourselves afterwards. I think we assumed or at least hoped that her Mamá would improve thereafter, but she passed away that very night—
— —that’s right I get up this instant from this ridiculous room that can no longer contain me and steal my dad’s truck like I never dared even consider while a shy teenager when I could only dream of such young rebellion, and if he meets me in the hallway and asks sadly where I am going I will stare him down with a glare that will baffle him as I brush past him march out the front door slam the car door beside me peal out of driveway and tear down the country roads at reckless freeway speeds—
— Shortly thereafter Mom received a Priesthood blessing of health and comfort from the local Bishop before she underwent that surgery; many worthy Priesthood holders (including Dad) laid their hands on her head as the voice pronounced, clearly and unmistakably, that she would overcome “this infirmity and all others.” That “all” is what stuck in our minds the most—“all” is a very big word, cosmic in scale, staggering in its implication, almost arrogant in its insinuation. You can’t just throw around an infinite word like all like that.
But they did, and they said the Spirit had prompted it, all could bear witness, and so it stood.
— So Isabela informed us the next morning.
She was watering plants in the open-air carport, humming softly, when we found her. We asked with some trepidation if she was okay; a sensitive woman, she’d been offended out of the Church by someone long gone and we’d been trying to convince her to return for months now, and now we feared she never would.
— —where I will take every turn too fast and too hard till at last the truck skids and crashes and rolls and totals itself in a ditch beneath the evergreens, and as I emerge cut and bruised and broken-boned from the steaming wreckage I will crawl beneath the Pacific rain forest canopy in all of its Edenesque catastrophe until I am utterly alone like some pagan forebear making his offerings before the woodland spirits save that I am instead approaching the throne of the Almighty who created all—
— And not a moment too soon; the growth was more aggressive than first supposed, so the hysterectomy was moved up to July 4th.
—“E’toy bien, e’toy bien,” was all she said when we asked, “I’m fine, I’m fine.” This sensitive woman cried in front of us, freely, openly, every time we visited her, but she did not shed a single salty tear for her mother. In fact, she had the same grin as her Mother had the night before, come to think of it.
— —and kneeling down amidst the ferns and fallen leaves and touching my bloodied forehead into the moss and stone, feeling the physical pain merge with my spiritual pain, I will cry out loud like Moses on the mount, I will ascend the top of Mount Moriah myself—yes yes the real one out on Sinai, in Egypt, tonight, before the setting of the sun—
— Surgeons only perform operations on national holidays in the severest of emergencies. As we sat at a table in an empty waiting room by the cafeteria, I saw tears in Dad’s eyes for I think the first time in my life. “She told me,” he began, “That that whole day in Olympia, when she was by herself in that hospital room, that it was the longest day of her life…she felt so alone…and I wasn’t there…” and he took off his glasses to wipe his eyes. I looked down at the table—his tears made me uncomfortable, and I was ashamed that his tears made me uncomfortable.
Later, I watched the fireworks from the nurses’ station at the Seattle Virginia Mason. They exploded over Lake Union brilliantly, silently.
— Shortly thereafter, I was transferred out of San Juan, but not before Isabella came back to Church, on her own, without our prodding, without compulsory means. We even baptized her teenage son. We called it a miracle.
— —I don’t mean figuratively or metaphorically no, rather than crash dad’s car (how selfish of me) I will instead drive it straight back to Portland International and empty every last cent from my bank account and max out my meager credit limit on a ticket to Egypt itself this afternoon and fly endless hours overseas without luggage or purse or script caring not for tomorrow for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself (sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof) and get an Egyptian stamp on my passport and then march boldly into the desert sun as bright and blazing as the everlasting gaze of God—
— And night turned to morn and the surgeons emerged from hours in the OR and pronounced her healed. Even the doctors praised it a miracle—not even under the most ideal conditions they said, with the best equipment in the most skilled hands, could such an operation have gone more smoothly. In subsequent check-ups, her blood stream was cleaner and purer of carcinogens than yours or mine. These we too called miracles.
But more than a miracle, I also knew—Mom was strong.
— —and in the very white shirt I wear now, unshaven, the desert dust clinging to my worn mission shoes and suit slacks, I will walk alone across the ancient sands of Sinai newly sanctified beneath my feet burning in the sun and the covenant—
— It was on a Wednesday afternoon, scarcely two months later, when my parents dropped me off at the Missionary Training Center down in Provo, Utah. The chemo cost her her long blonde hair, but she was otherwise strong enough to fly 3 states away. A friend from the ward helped her pick out a wig. Many could not even tell she had a wig.
— —and after bribing the local Egyptian officials with my last few dollars (what is money unto the Lord) I will Mount Moriah, and fast without food or water for the duration of the travel, yea even 40 days like Moses, and with these hard calloused hands and parched throat will build an altar of stones and wrestle with you Lord like that other Jacob of old and throughout eternity now give me the life of my mother—
— Now, when we’d submitted my papers to serve a mission, we’d written down July as my ideal departure date. When the call came and gave my departure date as September, we were perplexed. But after that 4th of July surgery, we marveled, and saw, and declared once more that God was aware of us, had kept me home for Mom’s time of passion, that He had seen the end from the beginning and so we again, as ever, justly ascribed Him all praise and glory and mercy and justice.
— —actually no I will not fly to Sinai tonight—of course not, time is of the essence, I will not move at all—I will raise a new Moriah from my high school bedroom floor, I will make my bedroom a new sacred place until I experience the groanings beyond utterance, the unspeakable gift, the peace which surpasseth understanding and fills the silences where words fail to mean (for all things must fail), because I didn’t fly to the far side of the world for two years to come home just in time for her to die you hear you hear I didn’t come home to watch her die—
— “Now, don’t you worry about my long hair,” she said as she hugged me tightly goodbye, before the families exited out one door and the missionaries out the other, “It will be all grown back by the time you return…”
Her hair was the last thing on my mind at the time, I couldn’t have cared less and her vanity had often vexed and offended me, but for her sake I pretended that I did care and so I took her at her word. It gave her faith at least, and that’s what mattered most, I supposed—
— —Are you listening? Yeah, please forgive me mine unworthiness Heavenly Father because I know that thou hearest all men even the sparrow that falls in the forest but are you listening?—