Life as a Ferry

Sunday afternoon, so much loving support flowed from Bryan, Rockwall, and elsewhere as we memorialized my mother, Miriam Irons, in services at First Christian Church in Bryan. For a Sunday afternoon, it was an amazing turnout. My daughter, Ami, and my neice, Bethany McQuerry, lifted us all with song On Eagle's Wings at the beginning of the service and we just stayed there. My mother was, among other things, an practical advocate for those on the margins of society, an ecological guerilla in her personal efforts to recycle EVERYTHING. God made no junk in her opinion, human or otherwise. She was adventurer as well. She loved meeting new people and trying new things and found something valuable in every new experience. Mom's adventurous spirit is something I'm trying to reclaim in myself during this summer Sabbatical.

I debated long and hard about whether to continue with the next phase of my Sabbatical plans after the services for my mother. As with any death, there is a plethora of minutia to deal with in addition to the mental and emotional work of grief. In the end, in part because of mother's sense of adventure and because my sisters were such great help with the details, I decided to proceed with my seminar in Wisconsin. Dog tired and emotionally drained, I was ill-prepared for the grief attack that knocked me off my feet. To navigate one's way to Washington Island, one has to take a ferry. I knew that. It didn't help. There, on the ferry in the middle of Lake Michigan, the ferry proved to be the perfect manifestation of what I was feeling with the death of my mother: lost, in between, no ground on which to stand, nowhere to move, and left to the movement of the water. I decided that grieving is a long period of living life as a ferry. The nice thing is that one eventually gets to shore and to solid ground again. I'm thankful that I have the grace of God and the cloud of Jesus' disciples surrounding me with their care to help me move to shore.