My dad died thirteen years ago. I was privileged to be with him at the time of his death, although the circumstances were not what either of us would have chosen.  We met for lunch in downtown Chicago (not an unusual event) and after our meal he asked me if I wanted some dessert.

Then he died.

My memory of the event is disorganized, dissociative. I remember facing my father directly across the table as he died.  But this isn’t how it happened.  I know I was sitting off to his side. I know this because I remember turning to one of our dining companions and told her to call 911, even as another friend tended to my dad.

(A psychiatrist once told me that my psyche has deliberately scrambled this memory in order to protect me from further trauma. This makes sense. )

He died because his heart stopped.  He sat there, breathing, but his open eyes didn’t see me. The sudden, incomprehending fury of a toddler welled up in me: I needed my daddy, and he was there, but he wasn’t paying me any attention.

Then, as the reality of the situation began to take hold, as the baby-rage passed, denial took its place. I fell to my knees beside my chair, and hit my head, repeatedly, against it, in an attempt to wake up from what was surely a nightmare. Each time my head knocked into the arm of the chair, I experienced some relief, feeling myself “waking up” from this horror.

(Waking up from the horror, to the horror. No matter how hard I tried, I could not undream it.)

My mind left my body. I actually saw it go, irregular blotches of red and green and purple and yellow tethered  to my head by only a thin silver cord. I had the choice of going insane at that moment. I could have anesthetized myself against the pain by simply losing my mind. Or I could keep my sanity and suffer mightily.

(I chose the latter.)

I grabbed the silver cord. I yanked it hard, and the pieces of my mind returned to my head, though I grimly noted that they didn’t settle back in quite the same arrangement as before.

(This discombobulation was proven when I stood up and asked a busboy if he was a doctor.)

The restaurant managers had got my father onto the floor and administered CPR. My knowledge of human biology was scanty, but I concluded that if they were getting some blood to his brain, he might still hear me. I called out to him, again and again, telling him that I loved him. The restaurant hostess quickly hustled me away. I was causing a scene.

I sat in a large chair in the lobby and sipped from a glass of ice water. When the paramedics arrived, I calmly rose to meet them, informing them of my father’s medical history. From then on I was calm, cool, collected, and sane. Everyone was frantically trying to save my father’s life, but I had seen it leave his eyes. I was resigned. (Though, at the hospital, when the ER doctor gave me the “we did all we could” speech, I still almost fainted.)

Later that day, as family and friends gathered, my godfather embraced me and said the strangest thing: “Now’s the time for growing up.”.  I didn’t get it. I was living and working independently . I was twenty-six years old. What more “growing up” did I have to do?

(A lot, as it turned out, and I sure as hell didn’t do a very good job of it.)

As time passed,  I began to heal and to be able to function. But it was a struggle. Despite my putting the worst of the grief behind me, I still desperately needed to find a reason for what had happened. My compartmentalized, orderly world had crashed around me. I had long believed that purpose and order could only be explained by the existence of God. But what purpose and order was there in what had happened to my father and myself? Where was God? What was God?

Since my own, personal, world had fallen into chaos and meaninglessness, I began groping blindly to regain order and purpose (never mind God).  I spent over a decade in this quest, looking for “signs” and systems and people that might bestow my life and soul with  meaning and purpose. I had a more than a few triumphs and joys, but mostly I failed miserably.

This quote, attributed to James Hillman, perhaps best describes my condition:

“He who has lost his soul will be finding God anywhere, up above and down below, in here and out there, he will cling to every straw of love blown past his doorway as he stands waiting for a sign.”

This went on for years.

To an extent, it continues.

I know now that the mark of an adult is graciously accepting (you don’t have to like it) the fact that things are not the way we think they ought to be.  It is the understanding (again, you don’t have to like it) that one’s own agenda has no real significance in the greater scheme of things.  It is no longer demanding that reality (you still don’t have to like it) serve one’s personal desires.

When my father died, I first raged against him for not being where I needed him to be. Then I turned my rage both outward (onto God and just about everything else) as well as inward (onto myself for not being able to offer myself the kind of control necessary to make sense of my existence). None of this served any good purpose. None of it made any difference in what was real. None of it made my life easier or happier. Instead of giving my life purpose and order, my childish groping kept me in chaos: I didn’t like it, but (I thought) it was easier to be there than to be an adult.

Then was the time for growing up.

Now is the time for growing up.

Its been time for growing up for quite some time now.

Maybe I’m finally ready.

This post is part of the September Syncroblog on maturity. Check out the posts listed below for other takes on this month’s topic!

Phil Wyman at Square No More with “Is Maturity Really What I Want?”
Lainie Petersen at Headspace with “Watching Daddy Die”
Kathy Escobar at The Carnival in My Head with “what’s inside the bunny?”
John Smulo at JohnSmulo.com
Erin Word at Decompressing Faith with “Long-Wearing Nail Polish and Other Stories”
Beth Patterson at The Virtual Teahouse with “the future is ours to see: crumbling like a mountain”
Bryan Riley at Charis Shalom with “Still Complaining?”
Alan Knox at The Assembling of the Church with “Maturity and Education”
KW Leslie at The Evening of Kent with “Putting spiritual infants in charge”
Bethany Stedman at Coffee Klatch with “Moving Towards True Being: The Long Process of Maturity”
Adam Gonnerman at Igneous Quill with “Old Enough to Follow Christ?”
Joe Miller at More Than Cake with “Intentional Relationships for Maturity”
Jonathan Brink at JonathanBrink.com with “I Won’t Sin”
Susan Barnes at A Booklook with “Growing Up”
Tracy Simmons at The Best Parts with “Knowing Him Who is From the Beginning”
Joseph Speranzella at A Tic in the Mind’s Eye with “Spiritual Maturity And The Examination of Conscience”
Sally Coleman at Eternal Echoes with “vulnerable maturity”
Liz Dyer at Grace Rules with “What I Wish The Church Knew About Spiritual Maturity”
Cobus van Wyngaard at My Contemplations with “post-enlightenment Christians in an unenlightened South Africa”
Steve Hayes at Khanya with “Adult Content”
Ryan Peter at Ryan Peter Blogs and Stuff with “The Foundation For Ministry and Leading”
Kai Schraml at Kaiblogy with “Mature Virtue”
Nic Paton at Sound and Silence with “Inclusion and maturity”
Lew Ayotte at The Pursuit with “Maturity and Preaching“

READERS: The post below is a part of October’s Synchroblog (details of the Synchroblog are at the bottom of this post). It deals with a sensitive subject matter, namely death and the disposition of the body after life ends. If you have recently lost someone, or are very sensitive, you may not wish to read it.]

The day after my father’s sudden and very unexpected death, I found myself standing in the middle of a “casket showroom”, trying to pick out a suitable receptacle for Dad’s body. (Previous to that day, I hadn’t even known that casket showrooms existed: I’d thought that caskets were chosen from a catalog or brochure.) Despite my crushing grief, I could barely keep from giggling: The place looked like a car dealership, except the new occupants of these “vehicles” wouldn’t be driving them off the lot.

I learned a lot that day: I learned that the Social Security death benefit wouldn’t even cover the cost of a floral arrangement. I learned that wooden caskets are much more expensive than metal (and that a wooden casket could cost more than a whole living room set). I learned that one needed to purchase a separate (and expensive) vault to surround the casket. I learned that extra was extra, nothing was free, nothing was cheap, and that this is considered the proper way to send off one’s dead.

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Several months later, I happened upon a television expose of shady funeral home practices. Much to my dismay, I learned that the “protective” effects of caskets, vaults, sealing, etc, are an illusion. In fact, as one expert put it, such protection only served to make decomposition much more “slimy”: Instead of the body dehydrating quickly (ashes to ashes, dust to dust), it would rot and fester over a much longer period of time. We spend thousands of dollars to embalm and seal up a body while it is above ground, while never considering the fermenting sludge that we’ve cooked up below.
The irony in trying to prevent the worms from “playing pinochle” in Granny’s snout (resulting in Granny looking like a Dawn of The Dead extra for longer than she ought) is pretty obvious. But there is also another irony: We may abhor the natural process of decomposition most of the time, but then at Halloween we celebrate it. We dress as corpses in varying states of decay and we stand in line at midnight for the premier of the latest Romero remake.

But Halloween ghouls and Hollywood zombies bear neither the stench of decay nor the rotting, but still recognizable, faces of those we love. Our fear and repulsion are real, but we are still in control: We can walk out of the theatre or close the door on the costumed trick-or-treater. We can scrub off the fake gore and put the mask away for another year. Death at Halloween has no hold over us.

Or maybe it does. While reports of children dying from eating poisoned candy (or being sacrificed by Satanists) have been proven false, our dead are still dead, even at Halloween. We might remember them by name at an All Souls service, or even wonder (hope?) if a flickering light bulb is a “sign” from a lonely ghost. But the horror of death (and death is horrible), remains untouched by the kitsch and the candy. We still know the absence of those who are beloved by us. We still know, even as we try to avoid this knowledge, the fate of those bodies that we once embraced as friends, sought refuge in as children, caressed as lovers, or cuddled as parents. Death’s power to destroy those beloved bodies is an evil so great, we can only ignore, seal, bury, embalm, costume and mythologize our anguish, even as we strive not to know it.

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As a teenaged fundamentalist, I refused to celebrate Halloween. While every other member of my family eagerly carved their pumpkins into grinning jack-o-lanterns, I dourly scraped out my pumpkin (I still liked to roast and eat the seeds.) and made a pretty “Fall arrangement” with some colorful gourds. I wouldn’t pass out Halloween candy, fearing that I would be leading costumed children down the road to perdition.

(I didn’t know death then. I had never seen one who was beloved to me slowly decline into a human shell. I had never learned that someone who I loved would never be known to me again. Death had yet to touch me in any meaningful way: I could afford to be pious.)

I know death now. I’ve watched grandparents age and their weakened bodies fail. I sat helpless at a restaurant table when my father’s heart stopped beating and his eyes stopped seeing me. I’ve answered too many phone calls bearing news of a friend’s or relative’s overdose, suicide, freak accident, or heart attack. I’ve comforted my husband as he mourned his dead mother. I’ve held a beloved pet and felt the interrupted rhythm of a last breath during the fatal injection. I’ve also changed my tune on greeting trick-or-treaters. Now, at Halloween, I put on my feathered witch’s hat, fill bowls with candy, and cheerfully answer the door when the kids come. The costumed zombies and mummies and skeletons don’t know what they are playing at, but I do, and (probably out of wistful jealousy), I’ll celebrate their innocence with them, for as long as it lasts.

Check out the other great Synchroblog posts below:
The Christians and the Pagans Meet for Samhain at Phil Wyman’s Square No More
Julie Clawson at One Hand Clapping
John Morehead at John Morehead’s Musings
Vampire Protection by Sonja Andrews
What’s So Bad About Halloween? at Igneous Quill
H-A-double-L-O-double-U-double-E-N Erin Word
Halloween….why all the madness? by Reba Baskett
Steve Hayes at Notes from the Underground
KW Leslie at The Evening of Kent
Hallmark Halloween by John Smulo
Mike Bursell at Mike’s Musings
Sam Norton at Elizaphanian
Removing Christendom from Halloween at On Earth as in Heaven
Vampires or Leeches: A conversation about making the Day of the Dead
meaningful by David Fisher
Encountering hallow-tide creatively by Sally Coleman
Kay at Chaotic Spirit
Apples and Razorblades at Johnny Beloved
Steve Hayes at Notes from the Underground
Fall Festivals and Scary Masks at The Assembling of the Church
Why Christians don’t like Zombies at Hollow Again
Peering through the negatives of mission Paul Walker
Sea Raven at Gaia Rising
Making Space for Halloween by Nic Paton
Tim Victor’s Musings