It Ended And I Did Not

The bed went out on a Thursday, which Verna thought was fitting, because it had come in on one.

Two men, a van, forty minutes. They were kind and they were quick and one of them said sorry for your loss without looking up, and then the room was a room again and had nothing in it.

That was fourteen months ago and it had been six years.

Everybody was very good. There were casseroles and there were cards and her daughter came for eleven days. People said you must be exhausted and they were right, and people said you can rest now and they meant it lovingly.

And Verna has not been able to explain to one living soul what actually happened, which is that it stopped and she did not.

She still wakes at ten to five. Fourteen months. She has tried everything and she still wakes at ten to five and lies there in a house where nobody needs anything.

She goes to reach for things that are not there. She caught herself in the supermarket buying the soft bread and stood in the aisle for a while.

And the part she would never say out loud, because of how it would sound and because it is not what it sounds like: the six years were terrible and she would do them again tomorrow, and what she has now is worse, and she does not have a word for what she has now because grief is not quite it and everybody has already used that word up on her.

The fire did not go out when the fire went out.

There is nobody left to care for and she is still burning, and everyone she knows has quietly moved her into the past tense of a hard thing.

You may know this porch.

Maybe your six years were four, or nineteen. Maybe it was a parent, a husband, a child who needed more than a child should. And it ended, and everybody exhaled, and you did not.

What I am not going to say to you

Let me clear this porch first, because a good many people have sat in that other chair over fourteen months.

I am not going to tell you God gave you those six years for a reason. I do not believe that and I will not say it, and if somebody has said it to you then they were wrong and you may put it down.

I am not going to ask you what you learned. That question, asked of a woman who is still waking at ten to five, is a small cruelty in a nice coat, and you owe nobody an answer.

I am not going to tell you it was beautiful, or that caring is its own reward, or any of the things people say that are true enough at a distance and unbearable up close.

And I am not going to tell you when this stops. I do not know. Nobody does, and the ones who give you a number have not been where you are.

I have got one thing, and it is short, and it is not a small thing.

The strangest sentence in Isaiah

There is a verse in Isaiah that I have never got over, and I think it is for you.

In all their affliction he was afflicted.Isaiah 63:9

Sit with the grammar of it.

Not: He saw their affliction. Not: He had compassion on their affliction, which He also did and which is elsewhere in the same verse. In all their affliction he was afflicted.

He was in it. Not observing it from a safe distance with a sympathetic expression. The same word is used of Him that is used of them, and the sentence puts Him inside the thing rather than beside it.

And He was afflicted in it with you and He is not standing outside it now. The written word puts Him inside the affliction using the same word, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my paragraph who makes that reach a woman lying awake at ten to five in a house where nothing needs her.

And He has not moved you into the past tense. The word says he knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are dust, and the Spirit is the one who keeps a person present tense when everybody around them has finished the sentence.

Six years and fourteen months

Now let me say something about the fourteen months, because I do not think anybody has.

Everybody counted the six years. Nobody is counting these.

The six years had a shape. There were tasks and there were times and there was a person, and terrible as it was, a person in that position knows what today is for. Fourteen months of waking at ten to five in an empty house has no shape at all, and nobody brings a casserole for it, and there is no word for it that has not already been spent.

That is not you failing to recover. That is a different fire, and it started the day the first one stopped, and nobody was told about it including you.

And He is in this one and not only in the one people could see. The word says the LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, and it does not specify which break, and the Spirit is the one who makes that cover a supermarket aisle and a soft loaf.

And nothing about this is on you to fix. The word says cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee, and the Spirit is the one who does the sustaining rather than requiring you to find the energy for it.