Life and death (or more life)

It seemed incongruent to be sitting at my grandmother's side, watching her die, and feeling my unborn baby wriggle enthusiastically with the sheer force of life.  He's big enough now that I feel every little shift--every subtle readjustment of position and every deliberate kick and stretch.  This little person in me is as alive as any of us could imagine, and he feels so real, just beneath the surface of my abdomen.

My grandmother struggled to breathe.  She struggled to look and to hear.  It was a great effort to talk.  She couldn't eat or drink, and she couldn't soothe her own simple discomforts.  I kept thinking about how awful it is to be stuck in bed, and worse, tethered to machines with tape everywhere, skin parched, dry throat, and she just had to bear it.  Her death took longer than laboring, and yet she was moving on to greater life.

What a shocking promise that is:  "I am the resurrection and the life."  He didn't just exist, or just come to us, or just become human, or just suffer and die for our offenses.  He gave us the miracle of Easter, too, which is a totally unlooked-for gift.  A gift of the greatest kind, too, because while it seems that my baby is more living than my grandmother, she certainly is more living than any of us here.

In Mass yesterday I marveled at the two things: the promise of fullness of life, and the idea of my grandmother fully living again.  More alive than she ever was.  For sure, I thought, she's busy up in heaven.  Her knees aren't bothering her.  Her hands aren't stiff.  She's probably reorganizing and tidying up whatever abode my grandfather has.  She's serving up Sunday dinner for all, happy, light, energized . . . that's some gift and one amazing call to hope.

In the days before she left us, she got to feel this little one kick and squirm.  She won't hold him, but I know she'll be watching down on us when he comes into the world and then throughout his life.  Maybe she'll even come to welcome us all when it is our time to leave this place of work.

It's odd to think that this life--the one we see, feel, hear and touch--this one is the shadow and the dream. The real life--the one we don't know yet--is the one we were always meant to live.  This whole earthly life is only a passing, no more than labor or death.  May God give us the grace to hold on to Him until we come before Him.