Death Doesn't Leave.

Morning begins with me sleeping in. With seeing eight o'clock on the stand next to my bed. Morning begins with a pot of decaf coffee, with Trader Joes pumpkin pancakes slathered with peanut butter and doused with suryp. Morning begins with me, thinking, lingering, hurting, wondering.

Mourning begins with the phone call. Mourning begins with the plans of that day. Mourning begins with the images of faces. Mourning begins with funeral plans to be made.

Mourning begins, but does it end?

A favorite author of mine, Ann Voskamp, writes oracles about life and grace and thanksgiving and love. But homily of her book prefaces her sisters death: a slow motion of events, years before the her stories take place, as if a way of setting the stage for all else she knows.

I hear the same prelude in my voice, beginning or finishing half my sentences with "before my mom died" as if all identity is locked in that one moment, that one defining phrase, that one clinching statement. As if life existed before, and then since. But something in the pattern of it, the knowing of it, changed during the hinge.

And I wonder, does mourning end? Morning turns to day, turns to night, turns to faithfulness renewed (Lamentations 3:22-24). But mourning lingers on like wanton toddler, dragging from its mothers cloak.

I feel it in my chest; I know it in my heart. It is in the depletion of energy, the quickness of anger, the rushed tears. Its the unidentified slump, the fog clouded brain, the pushing to perservere. My desire to embrace every day, to live like summer sun, collides with this strain and I cannot figure out how to make it go away. Death has become a part of me. It lingers on. it doesn't leave. I don't understand. I want to be the woman I once was. The energy I once knew. The advocate I once became.

But now, I feel those in glimpses, instead of patterns. The weight of mourning a sheeth over renewal. Desire gives way to apathy, and I look for a place to hide. I used to protest social justice, design programs to recycle, be excessive in class instruction, and advocate fair trade. But my heart nows gives way to survival, my endurance exasperated by the midpoint of day.

I wish I could be those things again. I wish I could see that power in me. But death and trial and teaching, has knocked it all out of me.

Morning turns to day. Winter turns to spring. Loss turned to living. But death's sting doesn't leave.