Irony Becomes Her

Markers

Today marks a year since my gentle grandma slipped away from us to a world where fireworks would seem downright dull.

A week from today it will be half a year since her only son, my father, followed.

I can only attempt to picture what it means that they shed all brokenness, all sorrow, all separation, all misunderstanding, all fear, all goodbyes, all disappointment, all confusion, all resentment and all shame. They simply are what they were made to be, and they see as they ought to see.

For those of us still living in a world characterized by those things they left behind, living without them is sailing rough seas. As might be expected, the unconditional love and fanship I had from my grandma and my dad have only become more valuable to me as I find what it's like to live in this broken world with "less" of that (I put that in quotation marks because love and fanship cannot be quantified -- and because I still have far "more" than I deserve). I grieve for my own loss in their absence, not theirs.

But their love and fanship also were tainted by the world they were in -- expressed and seen through a glass darkly. They must not be mistaken for the real things they foreshadow.

I'm sure on these "marker" days both Dad and Grandma, in word and deed, would see fit to remind me of these famous parting words:

"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)

posted by Lynn @ 3:02 AM