The open hand

The landscape of mourning has changed in this time of pandemic, and yet it somehow remains the same. Those times I have encountered death it has been the most silent place — where speech ends and the only thing that remains is the heart wrung down to its core: love, and loss. Every single time, I knew I did not grieve alone despite the silence. So, too, now.

My uncle — my mother’s cousin — died several days ago. For those who do not know me or my family — especially people here in Australia, where one’s life is not quite as enmeshed and entangled with one’s family as it is in my home country — it may not seem like such a profound loss; were you close has been a common question. I want to tell them that it doesn’t matter, that a loss in one’s family is the same as losing a part of you, because you all belong to the same body, one that’s knit together by blood, and by more than blood — by history and the lives and sacrifices of all the people who went before you. I end up not answering the question; I end up saying, because it is true, I loved him, and will miss him very much.

Today I attended (via Zoom) a memorial service for my uncle. Several of his friends spoke of their fondest memories of him; it was an intensely emotional experience, seeing new layers of this person I had grown up seeing at family gatherings, finding in him not just uncle or relative or family member, but also fellow human being, who loved and struggled and failed just as much as I did. As much as anyone does, in the end.

I did not know my uncle as well as the others who spoke at his memorial service, but I can still remember. The distinctive smile — part mischief, part glee, wholly joy — he wore every time I saw him at family gatherings. The delight he took in his music. The way he launched into conversation: with the ebullience that emerges from a desire to help, a desire to give. When I think of him I remember his laughter — the cascade from chuckling and giggling to full-blown, boisterous sound — and his generosity. That last one, most of all.

It’s not easy being generous in this kind of world. It was especially difficult in my uncle’s circumstances, in the career he chose, in the path he walked over the years. Yet what I heard repeated over and over today — what I have seen of him in our family — was the way he gave, the constancy of his generosity. I did not know him well enough to know if he ever hesitated or doubted; there’s a generational divide that doesn’t allow elders to show weakness or failing in front of the younger generation. I do know that he gave of himself even when it was hard and thankless work. I know that he gave the truly precious things, much more than money or other currencies of capitalism — he gave of his time and his energy; he gave of his ideals and his desire to see his profession uplifted from the brokenness to which it had succumbed; he gave of his love, and he continued to do so with a steadfast persistence that hurts my heart to imagine — it is so immense, it goes so deep.

Towards the end of the service my uncle’s daughter asked if anyone wanted to speak. I stumbled my way through a message for my cousins: you’re not alone, we’re here for you. What remains after loss? What can you say to fill a void left by an irreplaceable person’s departure? There’s nothing you can really say. It is not enough; it never will be. But perhaps that’s okay. Perhaps, knowing this, you do it anyway.

You reach out. You open your hand.

I keep thinking of the lines, some of my very favourites from the Bible:

βλέπομεν γὰρ ἄρτι δι᾽ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι, τότε δὲ πρόσωπον πρὸς πρόσωπον: ἄρτι γινώσκω ἐκ μέρους, τότε δὲ ἐπιγνώσομαι καθὼς καὶ ἐπεγνώσθην.

Through a glass, darkly— it just echoes, doesn’t it. That struggle to see truly, to understand and know fully, completely; to grasp the whole of it, instead of reaching for shadows.

And then, thinking of my uncle, I’m heartened by what follows:

νυνὶ δὲ μένει πίστις, ἐλπίς, ἀγάπη, τὰ τρία ταῦτα· μείζων δὲ τούτων ἡ ἀγάπη.

“…But the greatest of these is love.”

Vale, Tito Obet. Until we meet again.

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