Age Shall Not Weary Her

Late last week, Etta, a woman a little older than me, that I worked alongside a few years back, passed away into the eternal rest. She had suffered, and fought, with Hep C, and long bouts of liver and kidney complications. Her command of English was never strong enough for me to fully get the gist of the nature of her illness, and she ended up in intensive care last week, where her body finally ceased to support her. She had come to Australia from Africa, looking for a better life, and with no family here, the small circle of friends that she had formed during her short time in this country will celebrate the passing of her life later this week.

I had to compartmentalise letting this news sink in, with a weekend that was jam packed with things that 'had' to be done, and so I've spent the night here tonight, playing Joni Mitchell, and softly walking around in slow circles, thinking, praying and wondering at it all.

In the past nine months since I turned 34, it seems as though there have been more grave illnesses and deaths in the small social circle that I call my own than there had in all of the 33 years proceeding my birthday. It's meant that I've clawed my way a little more firmly out of the pains and quirks of my own illness, and it's meant that I've deepened my appreciation for this finite fleeting thing that we call one human life.

It's opened my eyes to how little I know about the people who're around me - often I'm finding out more about the person through the eulogy than I had ever had the chance to understand through three years of morning tea water-cooler conversation, while jogging together around a netball court, or through being a 'friend of the family'. Once upon a time these would have been people in my village that I had intimately known, and grown up with from birth. Now, with disposable jobs and marriages and locations in different countries, with our firm sense that it's only 'Now' that matters, these whole human lives gets squeezed into the finite moments that we spend with each other, before we're off in a different direction in life once more.

Out of all this, I seem to have become short-term dependent upon Latin Mass. It's via this liturgy that I find parallel to some of the Bardo Thodol practices, calling the rememberance of and requesting the blessing of grace for the departed, as well as for those who're ill and in need of help. We ask for a place of comfort, light and peace for them all. Three times through this Mass do we bring forth the soon long since forgotten presence of the departed, to our minds, and hold them there, in memory of the path that they have lain before us, with the intent to cherish and care for what they have left behind.

I've called my connection to this Mass 'biological' before, but maybe a closer word is 'organic'. The Tridentine Mass was written in a time where life was, perforce, lived in a far more organic way. The death of people around us would have been an everyday, accepted and understood implication of living our own lives. As I've watched loved ones come to terms with the loss of people that we'd never thought we'd be living without, I'm inspired to push my own life back onto a much more organic path.

A path that cherishes the moments I spend with every person I'm blessed to cross paths with, a path that is not so obsessed with the detail that I miss the grace of those who are present, a path that is hopefully lined with a bit of forethought about the fact that I may never, ever, get to speak to every one of these people, like ever, again. It sheds a new light on asking 'how ya doin?' for sure.

Memento etiam, Domine, famulorum famularumque tuarum qui nos praecesserunt cum signo fidei, et dormiunt in somno pacis. Ipsis, Domine, et omnibus in Christo quiescentibus, locum refrigerii, lucis et pacis, ut indulgeas, deprecamur. Per eudem Christum Dominum Nostrum.