Silence

The leaves are falling to the ground right along with the rain on this wet New Year’s Sunday morning. My favorite kind of day, and it’s supposed to be like this until tomorrow. Maybe. It’s like this right now and I’m here to enjoy it. That always needs to be good enough. What’s here. Right now. Fleeting as “now” is.

Katy’s huge ash trees are in various stages of undress as I stand here, gazing across her pasture. The big one off my patio has lost nearly every leaf thanks to recent storms. The granddaddy of them all, which shelters the kids’ rope swing and trampoline, seems more modest, perhaps prolonging it’s own personal “fall” until February when the new 2023 crop of determined sprouts pushes the old out of the way so they can strut their stuff.

At the back of the pasture, another giant stands totally barren. The normally camouflaged treehouse where Will plays with his cousins is perched among the expansive arms of this third, darkened ash. A vagrant yellow leaf wouldn’t dare hang around this old man where he hovers protectively above children’s playgrounds and a nearly empty chicken coop. I’ve never heard of a haunted ash tree, but this one may have posed for the artistic pen of Tim Burton.

Listening to the raindrops fall while I hold my hot mug of cocoa, a long-ago memory surfaces, as they do so often now. A couple of newlyweds of maybe two years, Rob and I lived in the land of rainstorms where his family set down their own roots generations ago. He loved the rain just as much as I, but there was never enough of it. And because of that, we owned an audio recording of thunderstorms that I played any time I needed to create the cozy setting which has always brought me comfort.

There are so many things, unfortunately, that Grief stirs up in my mind now, and the domino effect is always staggering. For example, there is a massive silence that encapsulates my home, emphasizing how much I miss the sound of my husband’s wonderful voice and, on days like this one, even the chaotic noise of televised football games. They were always coupled with the scent I still associate with Rob—his beloved cup of coffee. Out of the blue, triggered by things I can’t recall later, there are frequent reminders of the life we built together and how loved he made me feel. Like the stealthy way he used to walk up behind me and wrap his arms around me. And, just like that, overwhelmed by the memory and what I've lost, I nearly crumble to the floor in aching sorrow.

How do you go on when half of you has been amputated?

There’s another silence that has appeared, nearly in sync with Rob’s absence, and it feels like absence, too. The silence of God.

This one is the most difficult element in the journey of Grief, for it is a journey. A “slog” my counselor reminds me. I had hoped that Rob and I would continue to beat the odds in a culture where nearly half of all marriages fail, by reaching that golden anniversary goal and sailing past it “to infinity and beyond.” Or at least until we both had contracted dementia and simply didn’t recognize each other anymore. We were well on our way. But we were not in control. It makes me wonder who really is. Which is the stuff of theological debates between people who have no idea either.

Until I lived here, in the Land Of No Answers, I had theories, too, about who is really in control. I had opinions about God’s will. Definitions for faith. Explanations for the broken hearted, believing that my uninjured heart could lend clarity and clear up all confusion. Now, while I have experience, I still have no answers. All I have is silence.

I think it’s safe to say that God rarely explains Himself. Perhaps there is a sort of pirate’s map out there somewhere detailing my life’s journey where ‘X’ marks the spot and a treasure trove of revelation is buried. But we all know how difficult it is to interpret something like that, drawn up as they usually are by a less than artistic hand, with all the important details either written in code or ripped away by hostile opponents who got to it first.

That may be the first time anyone has ever compared God to a pirate. No offense intended. I’m just trying to figure out why we can only hold onto this moment’s falling rain and are unable to prevent it from escaping from between our fingers.

Silence. The silence of God. C.S. Lewis wrote about it in his private journals, later published under a pseudonym and entitled, "A Grief Observed.”

“When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be—or so it feels—welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?”

If life were actually a Greek production with every act orchestrated, this would be the cue for Job’s Friends, his comforters, to slip in from stage left, detailing to one of the most brilliant minds and Christian apologists of all time why it was necessary for his beloved wife, Joy, to die and leave him brokenhearted, while they themselves exited stage right and continued their journey home to a dinner table set for two.

Even God doesn’t explain why He is so often silent in our pain.

The closest we can come, although I am neither an apologist or a Bible scholar but only an actor in that Greek production, is to listen to the words of Jesus, struggling to breathe, while hanging on a Roman cross, “Why have You forsaken me?”

Because that’s what it feels like when your world has been shattered. Perhaps the concussion has temporarily deafened us. The blinding pain leaves us in the dark begging for any light. The sense of isolation is suffocating, for no one else will ever feel what you feel in your worst moment. It’s impossible, no matter how hard they may try. Your feelings belong to you. And even Jesus felt, in His worst moment, like He had been abandoned by His God.

But He wasn’t. Because “God was in Christ Jesus reconciling the world to Himself.” His Father was there, the Comforter Holy Spirit was there, the three of them, God in One, all suffered together on that cross.

It only felt to Jesus like He was alone. Which is suffering enough.

Across the pasture, taking in the expanse of that stand-in tree for Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas, a black bird hangs onto a barren branch, somehow uncaring that there are no leaves there to protect it from the rain. It seems to me while I ponder this view that, in the long of winter, a tree loses its purpose. It offers no shade. No umbrella canopy for lesser creatures. No barrier from the sun’s intensity. No shelter for the weary.

And yet.

The bird disagrees. Despite the other trees in my daughter’s back pasture with their varying degrees of leafdom, this blackbird chooses to perch in what could be misinterpreted as a dead and useless tree. Is the question whether the grackle prefers a high spot unencumbered by the interference of foliage? Can its enemies be located faster when the view is unhampered?

Or maybe the point is that a majestic tree, stripped of its vibrancy, is merely resting. The roots still run deep, nurtured by good soil and frequent rain. But it is not green. Instead, it is waiting. Pausing in the silence of unseen growth. Fully aware of the hope that spring will come.

And with it, life.