Category: Life

Two Deaths That Matter

On By ednafroeseIn Choices, death, Life, spirituality2 Comments

“In truth, all deaths matter. What I say is simply that these two matter to me.”

Winter scene with a partly cloudy sky. Dark evergreens throw black shadows onto the snow. It is a country scene with no sign of human habitation except for a barely discernible wooden picnic table.

            That two men died on February 16, 2024, is not, in itself, a noteworthy fact. Thousands upon thousands of men and women and children die each day on our planet earth. All those deaths are important to those around them who continue to live, and all of those lives, now ended, deserve to have their stories told. I speak of only two.

            The name of the first, Alexei Navalny, is well-known in many countries besides his native country, Russia. He was still young, only 47. Had he been free to work toward his vision, he could have accomplished much. Even so, he has galvanized supporters who continue to expose corruption and call for fairer government. His fearless return to Russia after his recovery from the poisoning attempt in 2020 has inspired admiration everywhere his story is known.   

            Navalny lived with passion and courage. He loved his country and he loved his people more. So with all the skills he had—and they were many—he condemned Putin’s oppression of his people and his selfish exploitation of his country. Regardless of the efforts to keep him from speaking out, he refused to be silenced and that cost him his life. Whatever the immediate cause of death (in the Siberian prison where he was held), which we may never know with certainty, there is no doubt at all that President Vladimir Putin of Russia wanted him dead.   

            I am not Russian and have not even heard Navalny speak in person, let alone known him in any meaningful sense of the word. Yet I grieve his death, and pray that it will not have been in vain.

Winter photo of river with frost-covered shrubs on the bank.

            The name of the second man who died on February 16, Rev. Vern Ratzlaff, is definitely less well-known. He was also much older, having already had a long and full life. His last years were spent in a care home, dependent on staff for daily needs and on friends and family for what social life he could still manage, but those are minor details.

What matters is that in his own way, he lived with a passion for truth and justice as intense as any and loved his people, his congregations, with a compassionate heart. He had a brilliant mind and was a competent religious scholar and excellent teacher. He could have been a successful academic, yet he chose otherwise. The God he worshiped had called him to preach and to live out justice and peace and love. And so he did.

            For us, he is the tall bearded man, slightly stooped, with a gentle smile, who offered us friendship and a place in his church community. In his presence, we felt encouraged, trusted, safe. He had an ability to learn from others, with an astonishing openness to spiritual perspectives that differed from his. Although raised in a conservative-minded denomination with devout adherence to a clearly outlined Christian doctrine, Vern had learned a wider ecumenical vision that he fostered in the churches that he ministered to. His friendships were wide-ranging; he was welcomed with respect in other churches, and in synagogue, temple, and mosque.  

            He had a quirky sense of humor, an ability to laugh at himself, with a boyish sense of fun. Not all introverts appreciate so-called practical jokes, but Vern could delight in the absurd and the silly. At the same time, he had an inner stillness that let others breathe and be. He loved music and sang in choirs until that was no longer possible. He and his wife were generous and hospitable, welcoming others to their home and table; guest speakers in his church were invariably invited out for lunch.

He was not perfect – no human is. There were shadows in his history, interludes that a hagiographer would gloss over. However, Vern himself would not want a hagiographer: he knew for certain that God was gracious and forgiving. He would, no doubt, ask his grieving friends to go on living according to scriptural words that he loved and taught: this is what is required of you, “to act justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

Winter photo of a river bank and a steel bridge. Shrubs are covered with hoarfrost.

Evening Light

On By ednafroeseIn Beauty, Life, memories, reflection, Sunset5 Comments

Mystery is the place where we can finger the ragged edges of what we know and begin to make peace with what we will not know. (Stephen Jenkinson)

#1

            In my part of the world, days are getting shorter. Sunset begins sooner each day, signalling not only the end of another day but the end of a season. If I wish to continue my cherished evening walks, I shall have to walk in the dark. The summer’s mellow evening light has now shifted to late afternoon, slanting in at a different angle, lower on the horizon.  

Letting go of sunlight each evening is a ritual practice for letting go of much else in life. Whether it happens abruptly as the sun drops behind a mountain, or in a lingering blaze of warm colors (as is common on the prairies where the sky goes on forever), sunset blends awe with melancholy. This one day is almost over and cannot be retrieved, reminding us that our lives too will end. Yet the beauty of the sun’s disappearance is so varied, so evanescent, and so necessary—how could the earth and all its inhabitants continue to live without daily darkness and rest?—that we are cleansed by astonishment.  

The very word life shouts out promise, potential, opportunity, breath, vibrancy. Life has drive and will and force. It continues its changes forever. That which does not change, that does not obey the principle of death and resurrection into a new form, will die most certainly and finally, declaring its essence to be not-life.

The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more lifeless it tends to be.

(Alan Watts)

Sunset has to do with time and change. Celebration and loss, all at once. So we cling to the loveliness, even as we rejoice at the prospect of rest. We gaze at the dance of color and watch the earth around us take off its robes of light, giving way to starlight and moonlight. Who would have it otherwise?

#2

            These days, I’m asking myself how to let go and what might need to be let go. A friend is losing independence, giving up the tasks of caring for herself (when will that be my lot?). Another friendship seems lost entirely as we walk different paths now (shall I stop trying to maintain what was?). The pandemic has taken away both political innocence and a certain social ease (can I find hope again in realistic possibilities?).

 Some once-loved books have ceased to matter; they will be “remaindered” (to use a publisher’s phrase) and turned into something else that can be made with recycled paper. I’m not sure that the memories I will also have to relinquish can be recycled as usefully. There are no cemeteries for books, and photographs of my library end up looking like artifacts of interior decorating. 

Certain shelves of said library remind me that what seemed wise to me once upon a time is now folly, much as teens might look back on their favorite crib toys with a sheepish smile. Not all beliefs continue to sustain, necessary as they may once have been. Circumstances have changed. I have changed. I am now embarrassed to admit that I once had a copy of Total Woman and read it mostly without irony, although I might have felt twinges of critical thinking over the worst of its excesses. As the sun sets on some days, the ending is entirely welcome.

#3

There is a reason that photographers, amateur and professional, have probably all indulged in sunset phases. Melancholy and awe are addictive, yet essential to our humanness. We know very well the flutters of possibility within a new love, and the throbbing ache of a lost love. Regret and satisfaction. Is that reading too much into the result of light passing through more of the atmosphere and hence being scattered by additional particles?

My struggle for words is at an end. Let sunset photos finish this reflection. Each one was taken in a different place and hence calls up different memories, different feelings. I leave them untitled except for numbers, and I invite you, my readers, to let me know which one(s) call to your heart.  

#4
#5
#6
#7
#8
#9
#10

A Feast of Losses

On By ednafroeseIn Beauty, death, family, Grief, Life1 Comment

In memory of two women friends

            It would be a happier task to consider my current summer feast of gains: a wonderfully productive garden, thanks to abundant June rains; a week of splendiferous camping with family in the Rockies for the first time since 2019; more socializing in our backyard than we’ve had since before the pandemic began; long bike rides along river trails alternating with walks in the neighbourhood where we can admire creatively designed front yards and check out all the little libraries with surprising finds. It’s been a good summer already, only halfway through July.

Photo of bright red paintbrush flowers next to a dead tree.

            But underneath the sheer pleasures of being able to watch dances in the park again and pick up ice cream at favourite places is the awareness of a veritable feast of losses, to use Stanley Kunitz’s poignant phrase in “The Layers.” I’m not speaking here of the temporary loss of privileges such as easy socialization, concerts, and parades, not to mention unlimited shopping and dining out, or, more seriously, a secure income. What’s in my heart is the weight of the tenuous balance between life and death, which seems these days to have dipped closer to death.

            As a friend pointed out to me, during a recent, much welcomed dinner together out of doors, it’s not only that we have experienced too many deaths but that those deaths have not been properly book-ended with supportive visits and tender farewells beforehand and immediate, supported grieving through appropriate community rituals afterward. Too many have died, seemingly alone, and many more have grieved alone. That’s loss compounded with loss. We humans were not meant to function thus.

            I belong to a church community—not a large one but it encompasses all age groups—which typically offers a funeral or memorial service of prayers, eulogies, visual memories, a sermon of comfort, carefully selected music, and a luncheon during which stories are told (with tears and laughter), and hugs aplenty are given. Just two months before the pandemic changed everything, I mourned a brother in just such a setting, surrounded not only by immediate family but cousins I hadn’t seen in a long time, friends of my brother whom I’d never met before, a church community whose internal cohesion felt familiar even though it was not my own church community. Death is never easy; loss always leaves a gaping hole, yet the ceremonies of farewell and support gave us strength to move on into continued living, holding our memories tenderly and viewing the world more attentively through tear-washed eyes.   

            But then, as the pandemic changed the world, came more painful losses, now with mourning rituals aborted, hugs absent, even personal presence too much of a risk. Alone in our home, my husband and I mourned an older friend, the kind of man whose quiet contributions made him known as a pillar of the church, a man of wisdom. It was not a surprise, hence the loss still felt like a part of the rhythms of being. But there were other deaths, too, like that of a very young friend, utterly unexpected, tragic in all ways. To watch the ceremony of mourning on a computer screen was woefully inadequate. The pain still remains sharp, the wound unhealed.  

            Other deaths were not directly my loss but belonged to friends who were close, so that their grief became mine as well, yet not properly shared. There were clean, dignified deaths; there were unbearable messy, humiliating deaths. All a part of life unfolding as it will. We humans are fragile and rarely as much in control as we imagine.   

            And then there were two women, each in her own way a mentor to me, although neither would have known that. I got to know them too late in my life to form the kind of long-lasting friendship that I would have cherished, yet even so I learned much from them and valued their presence, their gifts.

            I had grown up in a small, mostly Mennonite community, a conservative, conformist community in which women knew their place and rarely challenged those limits. These two women had grown up in similar circumstances but had not remained in their place. They had resisted limits, examined beliefs, and worked through disadvantages to become women known for their courage and for their kindness and inclusionary love.

            Through a writing group which I led, I learned something of the story of one woman, but not enough. Where had she learned her compassion? How had she lived through her own deep losses? How had she forged a deeper, more open faith than what she had been taught as a child? I may never know, although perhaps the mourning rituals, whenever they do take place, will offer belated answers. I should have asked her when I still had the opportunity.

The story of the other woman had come to me in tiny bits through offhand comments from those who knew her so much better than I did. She was a private woman, despite her eager, participatory presence in our church community. There was a self-effacing, confident groundedness about her that forestalled personal questions. I wish that I had known her much earlier. She could have taught me more about gracious acceptance and courage and tenacity. Her faith was rock solid, yet gentle. When the communal mourning service was finally held, her story was told by her only child, a son who clearly had absorbed his mother’s courage and generosity of spirit, not to mention honesty. There were many tears shed, all necessary for healing.

            If there is something that I can take from this feast of losses, it is a renewed conviction that memorial services are for the living, not the dead. If we do not have them, we feel an additional loss. Such rituals celebrate our interconnectedness. Grief is both private and not private. It is a process that we should not try to avoid or shorten or postpone unnecessarily.

A few white, yellow-centered daisies in the midst of the remains of decayed trees.

            During this summer’s blessed hiking in the mountains, I saw again the web of life and death through the beautiful new growth of things, next to and in among the dead and deteriorating. A rose is never so beautiful as when it stands next to a dead tree. A feast of losses, indeed, but then feasts are meant to be shared. They nourish, they intensify beauty, they make space for love to grow.

A few tiny wild roses in a tangle of dead branches.