Odyssey of Hope

© 2014 Mary Elizabeth Burgess. All rights reserved.

Cover credit: Spring Daffodils by Suk Shuglie

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 01/07/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4918-4154-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-4153-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-4156-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013922430

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Book 1 Fairy Tales

Book 2 Who Am I Anyway?

Book 3 Journeys

Book 4 Struck Dumb

Book 5 Aftermath

Book 6 This is Paradise?

To Pastor Carl Frederick

who, whenever crisis struck, said,

You’re going to write about this,

and

In memory of Inez Long,

pastor’s wife, teacher, writer,

but most of all, mentor.

PREFACE

Losses always provoke growth, just as the loss of summer eventually provokes the root or bulb to shoot forth in April.

The early loss of my father; the losses of Jim, my beloved only sibling, and of my precious mother to Alzheimer’s Disease (which began while I was still in my thirties), and first marriage at almost the same time; the loss of my witty and amazingly loving second husband Keith, turned me, at times, inward. A year after Keith’s death, my firstborn son’s death all but struck me dumb.

Yet not always waiting for April, God prompted me to turn outward, for that is where healing ultimately occurs.

As I wrote, spoke out, led loss groups, or reached out in other, more personal ways, I learned we all are on odysseys of hope. The best we can do is pray for Holy Encounters, whether it is with Chris at the pool who still suffers great pain from severe burns sustained many years ago, the frightened seven-year old in the orthopedist’s waiting room wearing a big 59 on his sweatshirt, or the plumber who reveals his despair from the loss of his two-year old son to a car accident in front of his house ten years ago.

In such Holy Encounters, we listen to the other person’s pain—listen, just listen—and let God’s holy word breathe through us to speak words of comfort and healing to a fellow sufferer. Such holy moments prove that to be alive is to be blessed.

Sooner or later suffering comes to us all. We may indeed ask, Why?

But then we need to ask also, Why is there beauty?

Why is there redemption?

Why does the daffodil bloom every April?

As the folk song says, the answer is blowin’ in the wind, in the breath of God. It’s spelled H-O-P-E.

"For now we see through a glass, darkly . . . ."

A Life in Metaphor

I am a tapestry, full of knots and snarls,

twists and curlicues,

its warp and woof

(nature interwoven with nurture)

a pattern of beauty woven into

a grand design foreordained

and breathed into life

by the Master Pattern Maker.

Breathe on me,

breath of God.

I am a patchwork comforter

of persons, places, experiences,

stuffed with thoughts and feelings,

worries and fears,

realities and fantasies,

a crazy quilt I am warmed beneath.

Breathe on me,

breath of God.

I am a detective story, partly solved,

a jigsaw puzzle, partly finished.

A symphony of andantes and allegros,

largos and scherzos, rests and fermatas

tempered by moderato.

A pastel drawing, etched and sketched,

streaked and smudged

with soft and harsh colors alike,

waiting for the final layer of fixative.

Breathe on me,

breath of God.

I am a pharmacy with arsenal

of vitamins and minerals,

inhalers and capsules, salves and braces,

elixirs to soothe the creaks

and unloose the pain.

Breathe on me,

breath of God.

I am a kaleidoscope

of mirrors and rough-cut gems

forged in a white-hot crucible

arranged into patterns ever shifting,

a Pandora’s box of secrets,

patterns and secrets contained within a whole.

Breathe on me,

breath of God.

I am but one of many riders

on Spaceship Earth,

a blob of protoplasm,

an exquisite blend

of chemicals and electrical circuitry,

flamed to life by a Divine Spark.

Breathe on me,

breath of God.

I am all these things and more,

a sinner-prisoner, freed by God,

a mosaic of suffering and healing,

one of the Father’s own,

a living, breathing miracle.

Breathe on me,

breath of God.

Rabbi David Volpe writes that, Sooner or later everyone becomes an expert on grief. Loss is no stranger to me, but I have yet to feel I am an expert on grieving.

I catalog the most traumatic of losses only because several friends over the years have urged me to write the story of my life, especially after a frenetic burst of creativity from 2008 to 2010 which produced several hundred poems, a dozen short stories and dozen children’s stories, as well as 27 novels in as many months. The dearest of friends, Inez Long, also my mentor and role model—an angel in disguise—spoke frequently of the miracle of my life, saying over and over again, You have words to give. And so losses are where I must begin.

However, a list of losses is incomplete unless I catalog also the gains—the lessons, the benefits, the meaning born out of suffering—and describe the journey attendant on them as well. It seems much harder to limn a phoenix rising from the ashes of loss than to chronicle the facts of loss, but that is what I wish Odyssey of Hope to be, a beacon of hope to others.

Like many others with much tragedy and sorrow in their lives, I am amazed, not only at the number or depth of losses sustained, but at those things which have aided my survival and helped me to grow, imperfectly, in the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5: 22)

Though I have had long and intense periods of doubt regarding matters of faith, the Ground of all Being—God—did not desert me. This force was present in so many forms, even when I was unaware or did not acknowledge it. Perhaps most important of all, other people—through their words or service to me, as well, as their very example of slogging through their own lives day by day in spite of their own troubles—have been ministering angels, tending to a need, known or unknown, at a particular time and place in my journey.

Unfortunately, to catalog and honor each of them would require more time and energy than is left to me. Whenever I have been privileged to be that kind of servant and witness to others, love is returned two-fold, strength giving to strength, like two sides of a keystone arch.

I have been witness as well as participant—in worship and in fellowship groups, in spiritual retreats, in the literature of poetry and drama, the visual arts, and above all, music—in the struggle not just for survival but transcendence.

I have been blessed with the gift of the Word in Bible and Sunday School training as both student and teacher, throughout a life in the Church, though many times I was a reluctant and half-hearted and doubtful worshiper. There were years when I could have been termed a stiff-necked religious snob who sought secular writings that were more accessible to my ability to understand and in an effort to reconcile my scientific world-view with God’s Word and the ministry of the Church, all a desire to receive nourishment for my soul.

God has given me many things: curiosity and intelligence, a certain amount of creativity, and—forged out of suffering and the gift of being born into my particular family—sensitivity to and compassion for others.

The ordinary words of speech and writing, especially literature of the Jews and blacks, as well as the words of holy scripture, can touch me with their grandeur and majesty and teach meaning in pain and suffering. Likewise in the natural world, some phenomenon—a sunrise or sunset, a rainbow, rain on the window, or the startling joy in the softness of a baby’s skin or smoothness of silk—connects me, wondrously and mysteriously, to something deep within as well as something grand and holy beyond myself.

At a week-long poetry workshop I attended in July, 1996, six weeks after the death of my older son, the leader asked each of the dozen participants why we write poetry. When it was my turn to respond, the only answer I could honestly give was, I write out of need. I stand on shaky ground to call any of my words poetic.

Writing has helped to keep me grounded—when I don’t take off in flights of fancy! The writings and scribblings on a page in the darkest hour of the night help me to see something tangible in the light of day. They help me sort out and examine pieces of a puzzle, to glean sense from emotion, show progress when I review past jottings, give me a rope to hang onto in the middle of a maelstrom, and help me not only survive and ride out the storm but give hope that I might prevail over the next difficulty.

My writings have primarily been to help me survive and find meaning in my life beyond the mundane. I am reluctant to inflict the deepest of them on others, to engage others in my struggle, for they have their own tempests. Yet unless words touch the heart, they are but the sound and fury of St. Paul’s noisy gong or clanging cymbal.

To share who I am beneath the layers of masks that make up my facade, to reveal the deepest parts of my self, just may—if the words are touched by truth and a power not my own—shed light on others’ journeys. Perhaps, as they help me, these words will help others find the deeper and truer beings inside the walls they surround themselves with. Propelling my efforts is my wish that my words may help you find hope in your journey. Peace.

On Writing

Feel the leather

turn on lights

try words

hear sounds.

Chisel an idea

dive to the bottom of the well

harvest sense-seeds

from death and growth

return the incarnate to spirit

give back the gifts

shape

make music

order with feeling.

BOOK I

Fairy Tales

Your steadfast love, O Lord, endures forever.

Psalm 138: 8

The father is there during the birth cry of his second child, this one whose feet and legs are straight and bones are firm, this one a girl. To his wife whose birth pangs he witnesses and agonizes with, he declares, We’ll have no more.

She watches him swirl the soap in the mug, then dip his brush and dab the foam on his chin and cheeks. Before he makes the funny faces and strokes the foam away, he dabs dots of it on her cheeks and chin, its clean, minty smell linking them, father and daughter. He lifts her to the mirror to see her beard, and her squeals of delight bring the mother running to join this magic moment.

The child, two-and-a-half now, waits on the front porch, for that time of day when she hears his whistling and sees him swing his long leg over the porch gate, feels him swoop her up into his arms and place her on his shoulders—on top of the world! He will dance from the living room to the kitchen, ducking archways as he goes, he and the child together following the lure of delicious smells, and he will ask his wife, What’s for supper?

But as the late afternoon sunlight moves across the pattern of the porch floor’s rug, to that place and time when she will hear his chirpy whistle, breathe in his unique smell of printer’s ink, and feel him lift her into the warmth and safety of his arms, all is quiet, and his beaming face does not appear. Day after day, she waits and waits as the sunlight shifts from one spot to another, and still he does not come.

Her mother sets her out on the same porch every afternoon and waters the pots of geraniums that are throwing their cinnamon pungency into the bright sunlight. The child dips two fingers into one pot and swirls them, giggling at the wetness and smoothness of the wet earth, as the mother watches from the window. The child grows sleepy and, though she had stopped sucking her thumb, she studies her two fingers caked now with dried mud and brings them to her mouth. She does not put them in. She studies them again and again and tries to brush the mud away with her other hand. Again she brings them to her mouth but does not put them in.

Unsuccessful in removing the dirt, she finally falls asleep on her back with one arm bent and lying across her forehead (in the same position her father slept, the mother notes), the two mud-daubed fingers resting just below her mouth. For many months this is the way the child sleeps, whether in the daytime or at night.

And still he does not come.

One day, when she is three, the child asks the mother, Why don’t you wear pretty dresses anymore?

Yellow

Everyone’s favorite color is yellow,

the color of sunshine,

of clouds of daffodils in spring,

the color of centers of eggs and daisies,

the color of the last dress my father bought before he succumbed to the yellow peril inside

after calling me his Sunshine,

and Mother, keeping the light alive,

called me the same.

Is it any wonder I fell in love with one

who called me by that name?

My father’s death at age 32 when I was two provided a subtext to my life, as well as to my mother’s and my brother’s, his absence a rock-hard strata on which the three-legged stool of our triumvarate rested. Daddy’s absence spoke more loudly to me, I believe, than his presence might have. My mother clung to him in her grief, placing his picture on the walls and tables like a worshiped icon within whatever house or apartment we lived in. She spoke with both anguish and certitude of the magnitude of his love for her and his children, manifested exquisitely during those three days he lay dying, when his worries about his wife’s and children’s future kept him fighting against the raging fever of peritonitis that had resulted from a ruptured appendix.

He asked his older brother, my Uncle Ray, to look out for us, especially my brother. To my mother he agonized, What will happen to my dear little Mary?

With the fire inside raging ever more hotly, he assured Mother there was a heaven because, he said, I saw my mother. He spoke of his mother, who had died when he was 24. (The baby of his family, my Aunt Edna, was seven, the same age at which Mother had lost her mother to complications of childbirth.)

In Mother’s next visit to his bedside and following Daddy’s next vision he told her, We are forgiven. I know, because I saw Jesus. But you are holding me back from going to him.