Something Bigger
Photo/Robin Griffin.
By Robin Griffin
My aunt Sissy, an atheist, used to say that Christian hell did not exist, that we were already in hell. Waking up to another day of COVID-19, smoke, BLM protests, police violence, wars, natural disasters, and deadly mass shootings, I can see her point, but I can’t stop praying. As a member of a Lutheran church, a Unitarian church, and a Buddhist temple, I am covering all of my bases. I start each day with a Jewish prayer of thanks, the Lord’s prayer, St. Francis’s prayer, and a Buddhist prayer, and I end each day with my childhood prayer, “Now I lay me down to sleep.” I add a “watch over” list of friends in need and end with a list of things I’m grateful for. I’m not sure who or what is listening, and I’m not sure it really matters. It comforts me even though sometimes it seems like things are just getting worse.
I’m not afraid of death, but I don’t want to die. Not being so young anymore, I am well aware of my limited lifetime. I wear my mask when I go out to protect myself and others who, like me, don’t want to die. I stay home most of the time, visiting one friend weekly who lost her husband at the height of the pandemic. She fixes lunches that five-star chefs would envy and serves them outside: tender pork medallions in gravy or sea bass in a butter sauce. Even her smoky bean soup is far from ordinary. God is in her food. Sitting six feet apart, we eat her homemade bread and desserts that expand our waists, complaining about how hard it is not to gain weight at our ages.
We talk about life and loss and the absurdity of it all. We both want to believe in something, but she is more atheist than a believer in God and I am a little more than agnostic. I don’t believe in the God I learned as a child at a Baptist church, but I’m not ready to let go of the idea of a loving, creative energy. When my friend’s mother died, she mentioned that she wished she believed in something, but being a scientist, a chemist, it was difficult for her to believe in something she couldn’t see. Later, she said, “But I’m not so sure. Maybe there is something we don’t understand.” It is hard to be in this life and not believe in something bigger, especially now.
I feel closest to something bigger when I am hiking in the woods with a friend or two, but I have not done that this summer because of the pandemic. I want to stay virus-free for myself, for my son who lives with me, and for my friend who grieves her husband. Friends who are still hiking tell me the trails can be crowded and not everyone wears a mask or gives space. Sometimes the trails are too narrow to have a six-foot separation. I miss the butterscotch scent of the Jeffrey pines, the singing waters of a brook, and a cool rock to sit on.
Instead of hiking, before the smoke from the California fires saturated the air, I took walks around my neighborhood in areas where the majority of people do not walk. I could still enjoy the surprises of nature: a landscaped yard with blooming Shasta daisies, lavender, and daylilies; a hawk flying over with a mouse in his beak; coyotes running past me on the other side of the street.
When the smoke came, I turned to YouTube videos of hikes in Washington and Canadian forests with pink, yellow, and red flowers blooming on one side of the path and a river rolling by on the other. I walked circles around the living room and dining room, watching the video and listening to the song of birds, the crunch of twigs, and the scrape of boots on dirt and rocks. Sometimes, I stopped, mesmerized at the beauty, forgetting to move, and feeling something bigger.
In 2014, about two months before my 91-year-old mother died from stomach and liver cancer, she called me for a chat. She’d been suffering from a bad cough and had trouble sleeping. She had to get up multiple times in the night to relieve herself.
“I have something to tell you, but you’ll probably think I’m crazy,” she said. The night before, two faceless men in robes with rope belts appeared to her by her bed. They told her not to be afraid and they helped her to the bathroom and back to bed. Then, they tucked her in like a baby and told her that everything would be alright. She slept soundly the whole night.
I asked her if she thought it was a dream. She said it was not a dream. Maybe it was a hallucination, but it was not a dream. She said she could still feel being tucked into her bed, the comfort of their hands, the deep sleep she had not had in years.
We concluded that she must have had a visitation from angels. I felt like it was a message to both of us, whether hallucination or not. A few weeks later, after we heard the cancer diagnosis, I was home taking care of her until she passed. Whenever she felt scared, I reminded her of the angels. On her last day, holding her hand, I told her, “Go with the angels, Mom.”
Aunt Sissy may have been right about living in hell here on earth, but I know she also found her own patches of heaven in this life. In these days of COVID-19, political unrest, and natural disasters, I remind myself of all that my relatives lived through—their own wars, pandemics, and natural disasters—and still, they expressed their joy in life with loud, earth-shaking belly laughs. I think of all the beauty I have seen and experienced in this world. I think of all the people I love who inspire me to be a better person, and I think of those angels and of how little I know.
Photo/Robin Griffin.
Robin Griffin teaches English at Truckee Meadows Community College. She has published in several publications, including Sierra Nevada Review and Defenestration. She writes to stay sane.
Thank you for visiting Humanities Heart to Heart, a program of Nevada Humanities. Any views or opinions represented in posts or content on the Humanities Heart to Heart webpage are personal and belong solely to the author or contributor and do not represent those of Nevada Humanities, its staff, or any donor, partner, or affiliated organization, unless explicitly stated. At no time are these posts understood to promote particular political, religious, or ideological points of view; advocate for a particular program or social or political action; or support specific public policies or legislation on behalf of Nevada Humanities, its staff, any donor, partner, or affiliated organization. Omissions, errors, or mistakes are entirely unintentional. Nevada Humanities makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on these posts or found by following any link embedded in these posts. Nevada Humanities reserves the right to alter, update, or remove content on the Humanities Heart to Heart webpage at any time.