None of my other attempts at making a piece of writing have worked properly this week. I shall have to write the only thing I have in my body. In my whole being I can only think, “Don’t tell me to feel better! Don’t comfort me! Do. Not. Sympathize! YOU are not HIM.”

I have become a very small child, stuck with the grandparents for the weekend. Shunted off, it feels like. I didn’t think I’d mind (as a little girl, I mean) because this is what people do, right? They go on adventures. They do the next big deal thing for big kids. They strike off on their own. (Surrounded by those who love her so fiercely, the child is on her own.)

It hits some time around bedtime. (Bedtime is a small “falling asleep,” and probably not the last one, but it’s practice. Children know this even before they have words for it.) The poor little girl is comfortless. No hug, no stories, no songs will do. The tears will not stop, and so she decides to be brave. But I’m not a child.

I am Mary and Martha, and Lazarus has died. “She poured out her heart to him, wailing her lament. Wailing her lament.”

Some clever Bible teacher said once – can’t remember who or when – that it would be good if we could remember that the things in the Bible didn’t happen in a book. They happened in real people. In real lives. In lives where real people wait their lament.

And today I will go and visit him as always on Saturdays. Today I will take hair cutting scissors, mostly to please the person who cares for him. Really, he doesn’t care if his hair is long. It used to be. We are children of the 70s, after all. But I’ll cut his hair today. (Will it be the last time?) I’ll take my checkbook and pay my portion of his care. (Which of these will be the last such payment, I wonder?) I’ll talk cheerfully and quietly to him. (Why do caretakers feel the need to speak so loudly? He’s got Parkinson’s. He’s not deaf.) I’ll probably read some more Jeeves and Wooster to him, if he has the strength to stay awake for it. And then, with my tears building a pressure greater than that of the whole Columbia River behind the dam, I’ll leave the house quietly and go to my car without haste, and pull away from that block, and then pull over.

Wailing my lament.