Amado, in Paradisum

‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, nor has the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him.’ (1 Corinthians 2:9)

 

I had no words. Kneeling at the casket of my friend, Amado, words failed me.

Words usually come easily. Most often, I don’t have to fight to find them. Sometimes, they come and transport my earth-bound heart to a wondrous space where all that exists is the Love God is, and I am there, inside, enveloped by Love, and everything else melts into insignificance.

But not here, not on my knees, not as my hands rested on the dead-cold stiffness of ‘Mado’s thick hands, product of the mortician’s art and the inevitable inevitability that we all know is coming and are never ready to face.

I tried, but tripped over myself every time I tried to say the old words—words I know well, words that flowed like a fountain of life in other moments, no matter how extreme. I wanted to walk my friend to heaven’s door and let him go, knowing all is well even though nothing is right. But each time I tried, the syllables tumbled and stumbled over each other and fell to the floor, cold as death.

‘Rest eternal, grant him, O Lord’ 

‘May light perpetual shine upon him.’

‘Receive him into the fullness of your love with all the beloved who have gone before.’

Any of the old words would have been enough to quiet my soul. I have spoken them hundreds of times, and hundreds of times peace flooded my heart and soothed the souls of those being left behind. The words took me … and so many others … to a place where Love was undeniably real and filled with the promise beyond every other promise, the hope beyond every other hope, the life for which our souls long but barely taste on this side of the veil.

But there was no flow. No peace. No consolation. The old phrases tangled and twisted around each other in an amorphous mass, my heart cold as ‘Mado’s dead hands, once strong, both of us there, he in his casket and me on my knees, both of us clothed in our incapacity, arrayed in the nakedness of our undeniable humanity.

Amado 42 and me 71, our roles might well have been reversed, or so I whispered to him as I knelt, aching for the one thing I cannot live without—light, the light of eternity warming my soul with the assurance of the Love who is, and was, and always will be, the Love who is the living and the dead and the risen again, the Love who smiles on the death of the saints and draws them into the eternal embrace we know only in our most graced moments.

Wanting this, but feeling none of it, I let go of the words that have long consoled my heart, the words that failed me, or I them, as I knelt before the form of my friend who was no longer there.

The old words gone, I conjured the image that closes my morning prayer every day, without exception. “Keep calling to me,” I pray. ‘Keep calling until I stand with all the saints and angels and holy ones around your throne, chanting ‘yes’ to all you are and all you have done.’

At this, the image returns. A great crowd. Dad is there, so is Eilert and Magdalena, Fred and Max, who used to bring me vegetables and Bob who lived down the street when I was a boy. Grandma is there, Dixie’s grandma, too. And Rod, dear Rod, like ‘Mado leaving us so soon; 41 years, 42? What’s that? The blink of an eye. But they are there and others too many to name, and so many others whom I cannot name, all of them gathered before a great throne of love, consumed with joy and light wrapping them into the One who is Light.

And now, ‘Mado, I see you there, brother. Go on. Go ahead. Don’t look back. Walk into the Light for which we long. And greet my friends, won’t you? There are a few who may admit to knowing me. And tell them, thanks. And thank you, too, my friend. Just … thank you. Sorry words failed me the other day. I know it doesn’t much matter now, except to me because I didn’t get to say, didn’t know how to say what my heart needed to say.  But later, I thought of this. They are not my words, far more beautiful than any I can produce. Still, I give them to you now, and offer them to the Great Love who loved us from the beginning and always will.

May the angels lead you into paradise; may the martyrs greet you at your arrival and lead you into the holy city, Jerusalem. May the choir of angels greet you and, like Lazarus, who once was a poor man, may you have eternal rest.

 

David L. Miller