Tuesdays with Mari (Wednesday this time)

Every Tuesday I go to a home two blocks from our church and visit with Mari Evans for an hour. Mari is a neighbor, a poet, a musician, a composer, a mother, a daughter, a writer and many, many other things. She has written two new books just published this year. Both are excellent. One is entitled "I'm Late" and is about teen pregnancy. The book is aimed at teens and pre-teens. It is a very accessible book and it has questions at the end that are expertly written for young people. She also published a collection of essays entitled "Clarity as Concept." The writing in the essays is incredible. Her first couple of essays offer reflections on her growing up and the world around her that are truly astonishing -- I often laughed out loud -- and also was stunned into silence at the vividness of her reflection and its insight on the world then and now. She also has an essay on how democracy isn't all it's cracked up to be if you are in the minority. Very thoughtful.

But today the topic was grief. Her own at the death of her beloved son Derek from cancer two weeks before Easter. She has just returned from his apartment in Denver which she had cleared out with her grandson. The apartment building is home to many struggling with the same health issues Derek did. Mari wanted to make sure that Derek's food and other things would be shared with all the residents. She talked with the super and he told her that if she laid out his food and other items on a table in the basement they would be available to all. So she did that. But before she did that a neighbor stopped by. He asked if he could have a couple of things and she allowed him to take a couple of the things he asked for. She then sent her grandson on several trips to the basement. Toward the end of the time she discovered that the fellow she had given things to had diverted her grandson to his apartment where he had taken almost everything else. She was furious and she confronted the man and took back the things that her grandson had dropped there.

Mari asked me if I found this type of greed common. I told her that in my experience it was not common, but it was not unknown. We talked about the results of the elections the day before and how a well known (and long serving) representative to the state congress was defeated in the primary by a candidate who is in favor of public flogging. While this may seem a bit shocking -- once you noticed that the candidate who was defeated (the incumbent) had been one of the leading forces behind a push (which succeeded) to ensure that all state legislators (with a certain, very minimal number of years in service) would have lifetime health care for themselves and their families insured -- while so many in our state are left with inadequate and shrinking quality health care (especially for the poorest). Now that's greed on an even more massive scale.

There is no such thing as having too much. Individual greed seems to be the American Way.

I thought back on my own mother's death back in January of 2003 and how disorienting the last few years have been. There have been many times that I will forget for a moment that she has died and hoped and expected to see her walk in the room. As Mari talked about her struggle with grief and what an odd and difficult path it is, I certainly could agree. But even with that we both have good memories, buried way back there perhaps, of my mother's and her son's good presence in our lives.

Greed may be good in this day and age...but grief is such a deeper gift. To act with greed one has to be cut off from one's feelings, one's loved ones, and one's fellow citizens. But to experience grief is exactly the opposite experience. It is to know the pain of the loss that one has felt and know that there is no way to re-fill that. And yet to also know that this loss comes (mostly) out of gratitude for our shared lives together. Greed comes out of emptiness. Grief comes from fulness and abundance. They couldn't be more different.