Easter

Today we went to church. Brass instruments, flowers at the altar, a choir that spilled over the edges of the platform. Daddy stuck his name tag to your shoe (the gold shoe, with tiny star cutouts) and you spent much of the service trying to remove it. You babbled during the alleluias and leaned forward attentively during the children's sermon. The sky was an even, bright blue, the grass newly green. 62 degrees.

Elsewhere, Grandma Dorothy and her sisters and her father gathered around Momo and Momo took her last breath. I do not know the details yet and I will never know exactly what her loss will mean to each member of her family. The part of me that loves a parallel narrative hoped that maybe Momo would breathe her last breath yesterday. That way, Dorothy and her sisters and her father could have gone to church today together, could have been surrounded by brass instruments and flowers and a choir that spilled over the edges of the platform. They could have been reminded that death never has the last word, they could have been filled with life and hope and promise. Momo's death today reminds me that our bodies are finite, that no amount of belief will resurrect our flesh, that in spite of great love and faith we will all die someday. God does not save our bodies from that.

But that limit, that ending, is a gift too, Thiz. When, just after dinner, Daddy propped you against the ottoman and you stood, for the first time, on your own two feet, when you looked at us and laughed (on your own two feet, for the first time), I was filled with great joy. A great joy made greater by the presence of death standing close by.