Follow The Dog

Back in seminary, reading family systems theory and applying it to congregational life with all the eagerness of someone with a lot of heart and little experience, I remember coming across an idea that went something like this: in times of big transition, like death, doors that have been previously closed can loosen on their hinges and swing open. 

Since then, this concept has come to mean a variety of things for me, each of which has proven true in my personal and professional life. 

Death - the literal actual physical death of a person or a loved one, the death of a dream or an expectation, the end of a relationship with a person or a place or a community - death can be a hinge moment in our lives, in our relationships, in our spiritual lives. Death in any of its forms can be like WD-40 on the hinges of a seized up door - an unwanted lubricant in places we may have been just fine with how it was and not really interested in a new how it can or will be. 

I’m noticing this easing of those stuck places since the death of my beloved friend and mentor and of my father. I didn’t want these deaths, and I don’t want this grief, but I do want to pay attention, and where it feels right, to put a little push on those doors. 

There’s the obvious lifting (or total removal) of the ceiling between me and my own mortality - with no more parents or grandparents above me in my family of birth and my family of choice - it’s clear that I am getting older and that the span of the life I have left to live is shortening in ways that feel more significant all the time. There’s a deepening of my own love of this life - of cherishing it - this Monday moment when I’m still in my pajamas on a rainy summer day with the dogs at my feet and my kids home from camp and off from school in the last summer when Henry will be a high-schooler and Kate a middle-schooler. There’s the teen-aging of my children - and it’s not just their physical aging, but their aging in maturity - as they know now what it is to love and to lose their family members, too. It’s their growing awareness that their choices matter and that they (not just we, as their parents) are directing the path of their own lives. 

There’s a longing I feel to understand my dead beloveds more fully. To know more about their lives even though I asked them all the questions I could imagine as they approached their deaths. It turns out I have more questions, so many more questions. And while I have research and some of their own writing and a few family members to turn to for answers - what I have most is my own imagination. I have the stories I am writing now with the puzzle pieces of facts and a whole lot of space in between to make meaning and insert their thoughts and feelings that I’ll never know for sure. I long to understand the why behind their choices, to know what made them change course at particular points in their lives - and not the big generalities, like “it was time for a change” or “I’d been thinking about it for a long time” - but what were the specific situations, the trigger turning points that made them say no, this is enough, or yes, I can imagine something better, something different, and I’m going for it whatever the cost? And what was the cost, and what was the reward - in their words, not mine? What does it look like now, with more of the story unfolded, and legacy to consider?

I feel the softening heart of compassion growing, and the need to judge slipping away. An ever present knowledge that I, too, will be judged (and am always being judged) on my actions and inactions, my strengths and weaknesses, the places I shine and the ones where I miss the mark. Age and an increasing awareness of the lives of others keeps teaching me that the standards I held for myself and others as a younger person are an aspiration more than a real possibility, the living out of these closely held principles more complex in the actual living than in my imagination. With this understanding, my compassion for myself and others grows and judgment decreases, even as I hold on to the ideals that have stirred my heart for years. 

I’m curious how my heart will grow, how my understandings will shift, and what relationships with the living and the dead might continue to loosen on their hinges. For now, I’m following the lead of my wise and wonderful dog who, when faced with the prospect of a slightly open door, approaches cautiously - putting a paw or her nose into the narrow opening just a little bit, then jumps back, waiting and watching, checking for danger and seeing what happens before she does it again - nudging the door open just a little bit more. Nudge a little, back up, check everything out, and nudge again. Do it as many times as you need to before darting through that door - never knowing when it might swing shut again.