Love Unto Death

In celebration of New York's final entry into the new millennium with legal provision for same-sex marriages, a friend of mine sent me a copy of the sermon recently preached by the Very Rev. Peter Elliott, Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, Vancouver, celebrating the marriage of his friends Steve and David. In it, Dean Elliott said; "the greatest intimacy we can know is spiritual intimacy: and that’s the deep companionship that sustains a life long commitment. If you make a vow to accompany someone through to the end of life you are making a soul commitment. And love is the energy that sustains that commitment."

The idea of a soul commitment that involves a vow to last to the end of life is one that especially resonates with me today, although I am thinking about it in broader contexts than just marriage.

The possible extent and cost of a soul commitment was captured eloquently in a song (In Sickness And In Health) that a friend of mine included on a recent new album (highly recommended!). The song -- about the effects of an early, devastating, and fatal illness on the caretaker spouse, from the perspective of the ill spouse -- echoes with the refrain "you (we) didn't know what you signed on for when you said that you'd be mine." It asks the question; "When we said 'in sickness and in health,' although you've surely kept that promise, have you almost lost yourself?" and, "As my body betrays me, are you patiently waiting to be set free?"

For, however much we try to shelter ourselves from the reality of it, death is a part of life and we are called to participate in it -- even sometimes to linger overlong in its precincts. Although at its utmost extremity death is something we face alone, all of us are invited to share in either being ushered to that threshold by our own loved ones or in ushering others we love to that common destination.

Jan and I often joke that we must make a pact to die instantaneously in an accident that takes us both, because to either one of us the idea of losing the other -- either with the quick devastation of surprise or the slow despair of long illness -- seems too painful to contemplate (not to mention having to deal with the mess of the other's estate!). Yet we know that the odds are otherwise, and we willfully continue in this perilous and uncertain existence because that is where the heart leads.

But, the human heart leads to other commitments even more certain of leading to "love unto death" and we, as in humans everywhere, continue to step willingly onto these paths.

A few years ago, a friend whom I hadn't seen for awhile told me that the reason I hadn't seen him recently was that he had been at home dealing with chemotherapy from a cancer that had been diagnosed at about the time I had seen him last. My reaction, which I think is the reaction most of us would have, was not relief that I had missed out on being there with him but sorrow that we had not been good enough friends yet for him to call on me for support in his sickness. I immediately threw myself into the process of cementing the friendship that I had hoped from from before would grow deeper, even though, or perhaps especially because, a voice at the back of my head said that he was going to NEED my friendship later. There was no particular reason to feel that foreboding -- his cancer was supposedly in remission and the treatment had an 80% success rate; there was no reason to suspect a recurrence. And, we did go on to become best friends and to have some wonderful times before his cancer recurred. The second time around, the prognosis wasn't so good -- it had spread to his liver and remission rates were far less positive. Nevertheless, we went through 6 months of chemo and hope, all the while cementing our friendship and nourishing my growing friendship with his life-partner, parents, other friends, etc. In the end, as "best friend," I was the one who was asked to let him know that the options were all gone, that he was going to die. We were all there around him until the end, and I felt like I had jumped in at the beginning with the knowledge that this was all going to happen just as it had. He needed me and it was enough.

I faced a similar time with my mother, with her death from breast cancer, and more from the sidelines but equally painfully with my dad. I know -- if I live long enough -- that I face other times of care-taking, disease, and facing death with my dearly loved in-laws, my own generation of siblings and friends, and even with the possibility of losing some of the next generation. Each is painfully unthinkable just as is it ultimately inevitable. And, it's not just people who bring us to face-to-face with the inevitability of disease and death.

As I age, the number of pets I have loved and lost keeps growing, as has my experience of the variety of ways to participate in their suffering and to ultimately lose them. The first cat I had to put down was my beloved Sadie-cat of my post-college years. I met her loss with much trauma and angst, which unfortunately also communicated the same to her as I took her on the final trip to the vet. While no less painful, I have learned to have more compassion on the dear little ones who have loved me unto death, and now deal with that decision with their welfare utmost in my mind. But, oh the pain and loneliness when they are gone!

Each time I lose a loved one, I feel that so much of me is gone with them that I can never again be whole. In the midst of care-taking and decision-making, do I long to be set free? No. The question is, rather; "When to set free? When to finally let go?" And, although torn apart and tired, if I really look at what is left I find a bigger me than I began with.

I carry them all, all the ones whom I have loved and let go, the force of their love and the precious scars of their loss, deep inside me -- and the pressure of that love on my heart keeps it expanding outward to limits that I did not know were possible.

In the Epistle reading for today from the Lectionary (Romans 8: 12-25), the apostle Paul talks about being "set free from the bondage of decay" to await the "freedom of glory ... the redemption of our bodies." I don't believe that we need to understand this as some expectation of life after death or any miraculous resurrection. I think that there is a "redemption of the body" in meeting death and decay head-on, releasing it of its existential dread, and coming to terms with the impermanence of our own self and that of our loved ones; learning to live this ephemeral existence fully in-the-moment because of it.

Looking at things from the middle of a family member or friend's prolonged illness or ultimate death, or even in the middle of my own prolonged illnesses and frailties (as longer life has allowed me to experience), would I have "signed on" if I had known where it would take me? Perhaps not. But age and endurance have the advantage of providing distance and perspective. Today, I can say that I treasure each of these experiences and would sign on again willingly for the precious gift of sharing life AND death with everyone that I have loved and who has loved me. Far from losing myself, I have become myself by immersion in their impermanent lives and through the grace of their transcendent love.