Biking to the afterlife

Biking to the afterlife

Shiny expensive black car with suspicious tinted windows and sleek chrome accents is pulled up next to the curb. The body is mirror clean in this season when most vehicles still have a salt film on them. Driver standing near it keeps an alert watch because someone important expects a ride. It's just not yet their time.

People walk around dressed in green and, already at 4 pm, putting down pints of beer while singing jolly songs out of tune. Vestiges of green dye linger in the river. A brass band can be heard echoing through the canyon of down town Chicago.

It's sixty degrees and I've caught a chill wind. I'm cold, frozen from the inside out with bad news. A great woman, a patient woman, is gone from this world. I keep moving while this knowledge sinks its insidious fingers into my bones. I'm on the prowl, looking for a coat or some blanket of numbness that might pretend to protect me. Half a dozen cupcakes piled high with frosting? Playing with strangers in a dark bar? There's always the Vosges store. I can still use chocolate, right?

But no, I have no effective shield. Only now and now and now stretches in all directions. And now I answer phone calls and make arrangements. Now I head to the next appointment. Now I contain myself at work with a sober face. Now I look down at the happy color of my purple dress that felt right at 6 am but suddenly seems so incongruous with the day.

Reverend Erica was the most patient person I have ever met. I've sat in meetings watching her continually exhibit grace and gentleness to people who, by my estimation, seriously deserved a slap upside the head. I sat there stuck in self pity (that's the word I use for it now) while she patiently brought the many sides of confusion back to an understanding of next steps and solutions. I see why she did that. She truly believed in the presence of Christ in each and every person. Some folks had it buried pretty deep - so deep that not even they themselves knew of its existence. But she saw it and she always spoke to that as the reality within each person. Sooner or later she would tease it out.

Unless she didn't. I'm sure there were days. But pretty few people ever saw them. I never saw it, that's for sure. But she had doubts. And what explanation to you give your church when cancer cells invade the body? You could say it was the revenge of many years of gummy bears, junk food and take out. But something was welcoming that non-nutritious stuff into her being. Some part that was ready to complete its mission and was quite unwilling to age. Sure, it feels too soon to me. It feels to me like I've been deprived of that vitality, humor and grace far far too prematurely. But make no mistake about it. No one, NO ONE, leaves before the perfect time.

Still, I'm pissed.

It's about 24 hours after I first got the news when I feel the ice crack. It's a sharp snap in the center of my chest. A painful tear in the frozen river lets loose the dangerous flow from underneath. I'm sitting at my desk. I'm working. I can't stop sobbing. There's no stopping it. It won't respond to logic. Here comes the water, washing off eye makeup and professional composure. Reaching deep into my gut it wipes all the images of her smiling face across my insides, scrubbing all the fond, unspoken expectations loose. I'd have wanted her there on my important days yet to come. I would have wanted to share successes and happiness with her. I would have wanted to be closer. Did she know I loved her? Like a bystander some part of my mind stands at the riverbank pointing at the scene in awe. "Wow, look at that! That must be grief! Fascinating!"

I've been about as functional as I can be for one day. Two wheels and I'm out of here in a blaze of bike grease. Absent of a steel cage on me vehicle, I don't miss the chirping of birds as they attempt to wake the trees up. The scent of thawing earth fills the air like heady perfume. Here and there tiny green fingers poke through mud. The first bulb flowers rising. It almost seems indecent, so much life waking up, on today of all days which would seem, on the outside, to be about decay.

But of course. Why would you choose anything but to drink in the life of the day? Who should tell the birds to be silent because you're sad? Why would you waste the sight of a blue sky on thinking about bills? Why would one ignore the view, the terrain, to prefer some irritating mental conversation with someone who isn't there? Look at that jogger in her dayglo leggings and hot pink striped jacket - why - she's the miraculous product of billions of years of evolution. Why would you waste time hating that person when this life, this smell, these colors, are so sweet and we have just a moment to drink them before we're gone? Why would you not drink the chocolate milk? Why would you waste a moment thinking about your thighs when there is a genuine spirit in each person to be touched? Why would you wait by the phone for HIM to call when there is a world full of stories to be heard? Why would you not paint the painting? Why would you not show the love?

I screech to a halt. Busses sail past. Cars wait with blinkers on. Pedestrians step guardedly into the crosswalk. Look at us. Look at us now.