Grace is a Verb

"It is good to be alive."

I did not think this as the sun sank in the sky. Although Jerry took photos, I lay in bed, achy and tired.

My friend Paula in Blacksburg once said whenever she wasn't feeling well, she practiced surrender, early and often. I've since thought as I've moved from resisting naps to relishing them that surrender through napping is highly underrated, probably a leftover from our emphasis on productivity and not "wasting" time.

Through the bedroom window, I saw what may have been the most beautiful sunset of my life yet I was aware I could not take it in. I thought of travels past to Yellowstone, Big Sur and Glacier National Park surrounded by vistas so grand yet having the sense I had a wall between me and the beautiful land.

Then without my really knowing it, the wall slowly vanished, but not by the flipping of some switch or Universal remote control. On second thought, maybe it was a remote controlled by the unseen hand of the Universe for the wall began to yield as my father began to die.

Actually it started just prior to his diagnosis. I didn't know it at the time. The Universe, my sub-conscious, call it what you will served up two scenes in my sleep as if to say, "I'm gonna help you out here." In the first my father sat at a potters wheel his hands around a vessel where he worked with clay. What made this scene most strange was he was covered in clay from head to toe. I only knew it was him, because his were the eyes looking at me from the moist brown earth. The saddest, tear-filled eyes I had ever seen looked out at me while he was encased in clay.

A few nights later, a second scene arrived. I sat alone in a nightclub, ribbon-like smoke swirled around me. On stage in a lone spotlight was a man dressed in a white suit. He sang. He sang one line "Grace is a verb" over and over again.

I laid these scenes to rest in the pages of my journal where I excavated them from time to time, turning them over in my mind. It was more like I wrestled with them off and on. These dreams haunted me in a way.

It never occurred to me to tell my father of the dream where he was covered in clay. He had had his own wall with which he lived. A revelation of the dream-sort at least from me would be met with something gruff and condescending. I had learned building walls indirectly from him. He learned the skill I suspected at a really young age to keep his own father at bay.

Walls beget walls beget walls until if one's fortunate opportunities arrive that usher in the fall.

The last time I saw my dad mobile and walking on his own was a Friday. I had just learned he was having seizures, a sign the cancer had found a path to his brain. I dropped what I was doing and went to see him and my mother. I spent the night, stayed until late morning the next day and left while he was taking a nap. My mother told me later that when he got up he asked for me. Upon learning I had returned to Nashville, he said, "Shit" or "Damn" something I was not accustomed to my father saying all that often. I've since wondered if he had something to tell me and if so what might he have said. Was I about to glimpse the man behind his wall?

The next week as he lay in bed, I sat beside him acknowledging things he had done for me or given me. As the days progressed, I sang to him, sat and held his hand. I thought I had done it all, but it wasn't until after his death that I realized I never fully let down my wall. I never completely exposed my heart with him. How is it something so simple could not be said? Fear of judgment kept me from saying, "I'm so sad" to the frail man held hostage to a bed, the man who was still my dad.

On two occasions early on, I caught him looking at me. For seconds that seemed minutes, our gaze locked, the walls were down, and his were the saddest eyes I had ever seen. I missed an opportunity to say, "I am so sad. How are you?" and instead heard myself make the most random of comments about something non-threatening like food.

Then while reading through journals months after he died, I came across the scene dream about my father's eyes. I immediately knew those two times, those were the eyes looking out from the clay, looking out at me and in real life I could only say, "Do you want anything to eat?"

I then read the second scene and realized in his last weeks, I had been getting opportunities to experience grace, grace as an action like speaking, sharing and showing my heart, grace as a verb. How could I have been so blind to the most beautiful and obvious of these opportunities?

I wonder to this day what my father would have said to me that morning if I had stayed. Then the thought crosses my mind, 'Maybe the Other Side is just another dimension of Here'
and I hear: "Open your heart in a way I did not. Love life, love nature, love people and don't hesitate to show them your heart."

That's one reason I write then share on this blog, I'm excavating my heart which for so long has felt like a rock.

The following morning after the beautiful sunset above and four years after my father's sunset, I could joyfully feel and say, "It is good to be alive" for grace wasn't a verb just as my father died. Grace is a verb offered continually each day.

How often do unseen and unknown walls keep us from taking in the beauty in nature? How often do risk and vulnerability keep us from showing one another our hearts? Imagine the shift in your life if your walls came down and grace was the verb in your journey.

-Dawn! The Good News Muse, 03/05/10