When Have We Finally Grown up?

When have we finally grown up?

Is it going for a run on the morning of the memorial service of your favorite running partner and finding the trees of your childhood cut down? Is it when really hard experiences leave you with strategies to guard yourself in the future and a resolution to continue living life larger and happier than the given circumstances? Maybe it is when, in the midst of what feels like a broken heart, you can quiet all the mean and hurtful thoughts you want to say and instead approach the person with "forgive me." Or maybe when you finally make decisions for yourself and stick with them through think and thin, through sickness, violence, and disappointment.

Last Tuesday morning, my uncle died as twenty five friends and family gathered around the hospital room, praying and listening to his last breaths. I watched my aunt lay next to my uncle, stroking his hair, hugging his body, and kissing his face. If love is watching someone die then grace is having the love of your life die in your arms. In that hospital room, friends and family labored together in the best way they knew- through songs, readings, tears, and memories- ushering my uncle into his afterlife of paradise. Closeness and compassion within the family became tangible and we watched it grow, engulfing one member after the other while we waited. This was the first miracle.

The second miracle that day was the final smile on my uncle's face as his monitor flat lined and his last breath puffed into the world. Perhaps these miracles were my uncle's last "I love you" to everyone gathered around his bed.

Love is watching someone die.

Love is larger for me now. Maybe we have finally grown up when in spite of everything we can look at the world and its people in all its impermanence and still choose to love. In the end, I want to say it was better to have loved and lost than to never loved at all.