We Dying Immortals

A few months ago, my boss took everyone in the office out for drinks to celebrate a new big client that one of the lawyers had just signed on.  We cheerfully paraded out of the office at 4:30, ready to drink to the occasion.  The evening sun sparkled through the tall bar windows on my glass of rum and coke as we swathed ourselves in a haze of laughter at the corner of the bar.  A few stools down the other legal receptionist, a middle-aged Southern blonde, politely declined the appetizers because her husband was already at home cooking dinner for her.  One of the lawyers joked that her husband was trying to get her in the mood; she replied with a smile and quickness, "He doesn't have to work that hard to get me in the mood."  We all laughed.

That laughter has gone.

At the beginning of October, she called off work one Thursday.  She had taken her husband to the hospital the previous night with severe abdominal pain, and the doctors couldn't identify the cause.  After several tests, he was diagnosed with 2 forms of cancer, one of them very advanced.  She texted our office paralegal the following Thursday when their doctor suggested hospice.  She wanted to get a second opinion, but they never got the chance - they were informed that Saturday that he had only days to live.  When I came into work the following Tuesday, one of my coworkers gently informed me that he had passed away on Sunday.  10 days.  10 days between fine and gone.  I couldn't taste my food the rest of the day.

The funeral was that same Tuesday night, and everyone in the office went.  We took up three rows of the too-narrow chairs; my knees banged against Dave's on the one side and one of the lawyer's on the other.  And the body of a man I had only met once in my life at a summer work cookout was in a powder-blue casket at the front of the room; I had a clear view of his face for the whole sermon.  I felt awkward and helpless.

I brought no tissues with me.  I sat dryly through the slideshow, the stories, and the service.  I heard one of the lawyers' wives sniffling a few chairs away as the pastor spoke.  We all rose after the service ended, and through the arms and coats I could see that little Southern blonde walk straight to the casket, followed by her adult son.  I watched her bend over his face, her curls falling over her shoulder as she kissed his forehead and said many soft and broken things to him.  My insides wrenched.  I should not have been able to see that.  And the tears came then.

I clasped Dave's hand tight as we crossed the damp parking lot of the funeral home, still feeling that ill helplessness.  I found myself touching him and looking at him more that night, instinctively seeking to imprint his details on my mind.  I wanted to count the freckles on his shoulders because I had been reminded that my time to look at them is shockingly short.

Yet my eyes can see so little.  All I've seen is passing, a fleeting projection.  My eyes tell me that since I can no longer see her husband, since he is no longer manifested in the body of that shy-smiling man, that he is gone and done.  But my eyes are liars.  We humans are too grand and immense for our own bodies; and how little we know of it, both for ourselves and others.  

"I'm bigger than my body gives me credit for," John Mayer crooned.  That's true.

Decades ago, C.S. Lewis wrote:

"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendours."

I cling to that truth now with my face briefly lifted to the ignored inevitability of loss.  I love, therefore I have much to lose.  But all those I love are more than I can know, creatures transcending the physical world I live in with them.  In losing the mortal form of one I am reminded of the immortality of others; that fills me with very real terror, and acute pangs of hope.

So I laugh loudly and count Dave's freckles again.