Something there is …

Boundaries allow time to consider

I am not prone to cancel Sunday morning worship services, so I wait longer than some to make the decision. It is especially so when living on an invisible geographic “line,” where weather can vary significantly within only a few miles of where I live. With multiple forecasters predicting a deluge of late Winter snow followed by gusty winds producing blizzard conditions, I decided late yesterday afternoon to join the hordes of other churches in the area to cancel today’s service. But there’s always a niggling doubt in the back of my mind that perhaps it will be an easy Winter day, and I’ve made the wrong weather-related call.

One would think that in the midst of a snowy night and early morning the body would habituate itself to deeper and allow longer duration of sleep. In my case, however, that never seems to work, so I was wide awake at 4:45, my body lurching into the bathroom to get ready for the day, hours before any promise of daylight. By 5:45 I was transporting Otis through the garage as its door creakily pulled up to reveal the overnight snowfall. Otis, accustomed to dashing through the garage into the driveway to find his morning spot near the front steps, stopped suddenly.

The snow had fallen so deep that it was up to his little bearded chin. He looked at me in dismay, turned around and scampered around the garage, his stubby legs producing some long-awaited energy release. I picked up my shovel, moved some of the snow to make a path of sorts, but Otis was having none of it. The heavy snowflakes, piled one upon the other, numbering in the billions, had created a wall, a boundary which he was not going to transgress.

I gave up on pushing any more of the heavy, moisture-sopped snow (after all, that’s why I pay the monthly HOA fee, and I don’t need a heart attack), and he and I returned to the warmth and safety of the house. Flipping the light switch and finding my prayer chair, I sat for a moment, recognizing how the wall of snow was impacting my regular Sunday morning pattern. I love Sunday mornings and the usual rhythm of the day: seeing friends and members of my congregation, leading in worship, offering prayers on behalf of God’s people, celebrating the sacrament, and then in the eating lunch with my adult children or friends, followed by a relaxed afternoon. Simply beginning the week with good people surrounding me is always heartening.

As I paused to consider the contour of my new day, I heard the phrase “Something there is …” Often times I will not take time to consider fragments of thought pouring through my mind, but since my Star word is “sensitivity,” I decided to hunker down and further listen. I knew the phrase to be rather unique, because most of us don’t construct a phrase with those words in quite that way. It is a poetic rendering, but I couldn’t quite place it, so I googled and then I realized whose poetry it is: Robert Frost’s Fences Make Good Neighbors.

With his lilting New England dialect tugging at my brain (Frost sounds much like Claudia’s father, who spent his earliest years in Maine), I try to remember when I first heard the poem. It feels like it was eighth grade in Ms. Henderson’s English class. I can see her face, the style of her glasses (it was 1978), her curly red mop of hair, and her diligent efforts to entice surly junior high kids to consider the beauty of literature. What I did not fully appreciate then, I now have the life experience to treasure it.

Tomorrow is the first anniversary of Claudia’s brain collapse; a wall of separation began on that afternoon that completely changed our relationship. I don’t say it destroyed our relationship, because I have found myself in many ways as close to her now as I was then. Death does not have the power to annihilate the connection we share with those we love, but death does radically alter it.

Significant losses mean a new boundary is erected between ourself and the other person. It seems kind of like the stone wall of Frost’s reflection. His poem’s narrator captures the struggle for one impacted by the boundary, while his neighbor continues to validate what he knows: “Good fences make good neighbors.” The narrator is not so sure, suggesting that the division produced by the mended wall may hinder deeper relationship. His neighbor, however, remains convinced of the efficacy of the connection (limited as it may seem), to the final line that “good fences make good neighbors.”

I’m learning that one of the gifts of grief is the capacity to honor the wall that now separates me from fully experiencing my departed wife. My world has been changed, it is true; but my relationship with Claudia endures in a way I had never anticipated. It’s almost like I am the narrator, wondering why a fence needs to exist, and she the neighbor, reminding me with stubborn warmth, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Together we are mending the wall that now separates us, but it is a wall with porous boundaries. It is not so impenetrably constructed that I cannot see over it or around it or through it. It is a wall stacked with carefully placed stones of memory, and there is space between to catch glimpses of light, feel the occasional breeze, even hear a muted voice.

But it is still a wall, a barrier, a boundary. Grief has not cut me off from my life partner; it forces me to acknowledge the reality of separation, while allowing me the distance to make sense of a radically changed relationship. This wall will not be torn away, the stones will remain, the need to periodically mend the wall a task for the remainder of my life. This wall was not something I wanted, but it seems to provide a necessary boundary as I continue to live in the mystery of it all.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall … that wants it down.