If Only
I enjoyed this from Real Live Preacher a few weeks back. Captured for posterity.
When a person dies, there is a sudden collapse of all that they knew. The complex and fragile framework of their worldview, which is a unique thing in all the universe, drops to the ground like the contents of a pricked water balloon. The depth of that loss is incomprehensible.
What is left after death are ghost-like shreds of your personality that live in the memories of those who knew you. Some warped version of you exists in the stories and the sorrow. And then those stories fade. The last to go are the memories of the one who loved you the most. Those memories are twisted and contorted into comforting shapes that he or she clings to for comfort. And then your beloved dies, and you are lost along with everything else that disappears in that terrible event.
After that is only what the children remember. It’s not much when compared to the fullness of a life. And when those children die, there is only a name or maybe a faint memory on someone’s family tree.
On a day and in a moment that no one knows, the last memory of you winks out of existence with the death of the last person who knew your name. And then it is as if you never lived. You join the ranks of the billions of humans who have walked this planet, living and loving and dying. Some were saints who lived and loved and died well. Others not so much. Some were scoundrels. All are forgotten.
It seems to me that the whole world would collapse if I were to die. How could things go on? How could the world continue without my worldview propping it up, explaining it, and giving it a purpose?
I look at the people around me, my friends and acquaintances. I cannot know them. They are walking mysteries. What they flash on their billboard faces or what words are released from their inner pravda is all that I can know. For a brief moment I want to know everyone. I want to see the world with everyone’s eyes. For one, brief, god-wish moment. And then I settle back into reality. After all, I’ve come to love your billboard and your pravda. You take what you can get, right?
But there is one desire I have that cannot be sated. It cannot be satisfied, and it will not go away. It is a terrible loneliness to look into the eyes of the one you love and understand that you will never truly know her. You may know her better than anyone ever will, but you cannot know her. Her eyes are the windows of a strange, two-legged vessel that walks this earth for its alloted time. You stumble alongside her for years, but you may do nothing more than look into those eyes and hear again her best attempts to explain what goes on in her heart.
My wife’s chocolate brown eyes look like they were transplanted from her father’s face. She honors him by carrying those eyes for one more generation. The pure singleness of their color and the way she looks at you with no shame makes you know that you can trust her. You think she must be a gentle soul. These are things that anyone can know.
When I look into her eyes I bring something more to the experience. I know her life and her history and her ways. I remember her young heart, the one she had when we met at college. I remember her bouncing ponytail and purple pants. I remember her fears and joys as a young woman in seminary. I have seen her give birth three times and watched those children nurse at her breasts. I know her fierce integrity and her unwillingness to give up her innocence, which she holds just as fiercely. I know that she is what we call, “a good person.” She wants goodness in the world. Truly wants it for herself and others. I know these things about her. I know more about Jeanene Atkinson than anyone else in the world ever will.
I have watched her age slowly over the years, softening, the skin around her eyes sagging a bit. The eyes themselves have not changed at all. Eyes are timeless in that way.
And now, God help me, she has a small pair of reading glasses that she shakes open sometimes and perches upon her nose. If I pull up a chair beside her I can watch her eyes darting back and forth, missing nothing in the fine print. Nothing but the truth will do for her, no matter how hard that truth may be. No skimming the words and wishing. Then she turns and her chin drops and her brown eyes look at me over the tops of those glasses. In that moment all the things I know about her press themselves together and try to force their way into my heart all at once. The cuteness of it. Adorable. Precious. Beyond words. It hurts.
I want to stand at attention, draw my sword, and say, “I would die for you, my lady.” I want to run circles around the couch with my arms out like airplane wings, shouting “Look at me. I love you more than anyone ever did.” I want to pull those eyes close, and everyone go away. Go away! How dare you be here. How dare the earth and time hold anything but this moment. And I think this moment is owed to us, that the world should stop and there be nothing for as long as we need there to be nothing. And if time moves on and those eyes return to that paper, I feel that I’ve lost something which, in truth, I never had. And it’s the saddest, loneliest thing to know it.
God, I wish I could get behind those eyes. Settle into the driver’s seat and connect the wires to little electrode pads all over my body. I want to feel her woman heart. I want to know what it means to be her. What does this woman feel and think? More importantly, how does she feel and think? Could I take the knowledge all at once? Would I shiver, hold the sides of my head, and burst into tears? Does it take a long time to learn how to live with a woman’s heart?
I can only imagine.
For now, there will be nothing but those eyes lifting above her glasses and the coy smile she has because she knows what those glasses do to me. For now, only her face with its thousands of movements that I parse and struggle to translate. For now, only language, which is such a crude instrument. Words are rusty, jagged, pig-iron tongs fumbling for purchase in the liquid silk of her soul.
For now, what love I have to give. Faith and hope will tear you apart with the rawness of their desire. But for now remains love, which is the greatest and only-est thing we have.
rlp
When a person dies, there is a sudden collapse of all that they knew. The complex and fragile framework of their worldview, which is a unique thing in all the universe, drops to the ground like the contents of a pricked water balloon. The depth of that loss is incomprehensible.
What is left after death are ghost-like shreds of your personality that live in the memories of those who knew you. Some warped version of you exists in the stories and the sorrow. And then those stories fade. The last to go are the memories of the one who loved you the most. Those memories are twisted and contorted into comforting shapes that he or she clings to for comfort. And then your beloved dies, and you are lost along with everything else that disappears in that terrible event.
After that is only what the children remember. It’s not much when compared to the fullness of a life. And when those children die, there is only a name or maybe a faint memory on someone’s family tree.
On a day and in a moment that no one knows, the last memory of you winks out of existence with the death of the last person who knew your name. And then it is as if you never lived. You join the ranks of the billions of humans who have walked this planet, living and loving and dying. Some were saints who lived and loved and died well. Others not so much. Some were scoundrels. All are forgotten.
It seems to me that the whole world would collapse if I were to die. How could things go on? How could the world continue without my worldview propping it up, explaining it, and giving it a purpose?
I look at the people around me, my friends and acquaintances. I cannot know them. They are walking mysteries. What they flash on their billboard faces or what words are released from their inner pravda is all that I can know. For a brief moment I want to know everyone. I want to see the world with everyone’s eyes. For one, brief, god-wish moment. And then I settle back into reality. After all, I’ve come to love your billboard and your pravda. You take what you can get, right?
But there is one desire I have that cannot be sated. It cannot be satisfied, and it will not go away. It is a terrible loneliness to look into the eyes of the one you love and understand that you will never truly know her. You may know her better than anyone ever will, but you cannot know her. Her eyes are the windows of a strange, two-legged vessel that walks this earth for its alloted time. You stumble alongside her for years, but you may do nothing more than look into those eyes and hear again her best attempts to explain what goes on in her heart.
My wife’s chocolate brown eyes look like they were transplanted from her father’s face. She honors him by carrying those eyes for one more generation. The pure singleness of their color and the way she looks at you with no shame makes you know that you can trust her. You think she must be a gentle soul. These are things that anyone can know.
When I look into her eyes I bring something more to the experience. I know her life and her history and her ways. I remember her young heart, the one she had when we met at college. I remember her bouncing ponytail and purple pants. I remember her fears and joys as a young woman in seminary. I have seen her give birth three times and watched those children nurse at her breasts. I know her fierce integrity and her unwillingness to give up her innocence, which she holds just as fiercely. I know that she is what we call, “a good person.” She wants goodness in the world. Truly wants it for herself and others. I know these things about her. I know more about Jeanene Atkinson than anyone else in the world ever will.
I have watched her age slowly over the years, softening, the skin around her eyes sagging a bit. The eyes themselves have not changed at all. Eyes are timeless in that way.
And now, God help me, she has a small pair of reading glasses that she shakes open sometimes and perches upon her nose. If I pull up a chair beside her I can watch her eyes darting back and forth, missing nothing in the fine print. Nothing but the truth will do for her, no matter how hard that truth may be. No skimming the words and wishing. Then she turns and her chin drops and her brown eyes look at me over the tops of those glasses. In that moment all the things I know about her press themselves together and try to force their way into my heart all at once. The cuteness of it. Adorable. Precious. Beyond words. It hurts.
I want to stand at attention, draw my sword, and say, “I would die for you, my lady.” I want to run circles around the couch with my arms out like airplane wings, shouting “Look at me. I love you more than anyone ever did.” I want to pull those eyes close, and everyone go away. Go away! How dare you be here. How dare the earth and time hold anything but this moment. And I think this moment is owed to us, that the world should stop and there be nothing for as long as we need there to be nothing. And if time moves on and those eyes return to that paper, I feel that I’ve lost something which, in truth, I never had. And it’s the saddest, loneliest thing to know it.
God, I wish I could get behind those eyes. Settle into the driver’s seat and connect the wires to little electrode pads all over my body. I want to feel her woman heart. I want to know what it means to be her. What does this woman feel and think? More importantly, how does she feel and think? Could I take the knowledge all at once? Would I shiver, hold the sides of my head, and burst into tears? Does it take a long time to learn how to live with a woman’s heart?
I can only imagine.
For now, there will be nothing but those eyes lifting above her glasses and the coy smile she has because she knows what those glasses do to me. For now, only her face with its thousands of movements that I parse and struggle to translate. For now, only language, which is such a crude instrument. Words are rusty, jagged, pig-iron tongs fumbling for purchase in the liquid silk of her soul.
For now, what love I have to give. Faith and hope will tear you apart with the rawness of their desire. But for now remains love, which is the greatest and only-est thing we have.
rlp