Editor’s Note: George Merrill passed away in the late hours of Easton Sunday yesterday.

We made a significant decision on Monday. I was admitted to the hospice program. This decision was not made without mixed feelings.

I could enjoy all their services at home––and could drop the program any time I wished. There is one caveat: I would have to surrender all present medical interventions designed to cure or sustain my life. The trade-off is I’d be offered a variety of services and individual support comforts for the symptoms plaguing a declining body. Our decision came perhaps more abruptly than I may have wished.

Several months after my diagnosis last April, it became clear that the chemotherapy would not work to stop the disease process. I entered a regiment of supportive medical interventions with various antibiotics and other meds including weekly infusions of blood and platelets. Since December, this regimen kept me functional and feeling reasonably good.

Last week my energy level dropped lower than my socks. I slept a lot. I didn’t write for four days, unprecedented for me. I was not able to make it to blood tests at the hematologist’s office because I simply had no energy for stairs, getting into car and traveling to Easton. The handwriting was on the wall.

It was a good decision, but not without a feeling kicked up when we made the commitment. I thought as though for nine months I had been running a marathon – running for my life. I knew there was a finish line up yonder somewhere but how far and how long would it take to cross it remained vague. A silly thought really, since the finish line has never been established for anyone, and in this kind of marathon I basically run until I drop.

This decision to elect hospice was with the tacit understanding this was the final lap, no turning back. You go to die but with all kinds of services that can turn the agonies of physical and psycho spiritual dying into a merciful process. People may decide to get off the program with no questions asked. I think generally, though, the understanding by signing on is a commitment to the whole nine yards. I would now run without any of the life sustaining measures and finish the race just as I am. A variety of professional services are available to us 24/7.

I had two feelings the moment we made the decision. I felt as if I were a child again. I had been riding my bike with training wheels. Now they were removed, and I was asked to pedal without any medical safety net that I enjoyed over the last nine months. This was a “look, no hands, Mom,” and maybe to stretch the metaphor shamelessly, Mom could not do anything to dictate my course anymore. If I got hurt along the way, hospice, like mom, was nearby to help and comfort when the inevitable falls occur.

I do feel lost as if in a strange neighborhood and my senses are going to high alert, anxious to find some familiar bearing.
A friend once said to me that he was not afraid of dying just he didn’t want to sign up for it, as if his signature was going to make anything happen. Acknowledging we’re on the last lap awakens a feeling of inexorability.

I believe I have shared my thoughts about mortality as honestly as I was able at the time. Looking back, I was not always able.

It was made clear to me when I got my diagnosis I was not going to be cured. I was pretty sure I had embraced that reality as best I could.

If you are anything like I am, my experience with doctors is twofold: I bring my complaint to the physician to be cured and I expect 90% of the time he/she assists in making that happen. One positive visit reinforces the next so I grow confident that doctors can restore broken bodies. When doctors can’t, a new mindset gets mobilized. If a doctor can’t, who can?

Years ago, I had a car mechanic who looked just like Fonzie (of TV repute). He issued pencils to all his customers with the inscription: ‘If I can’t fix it, junk it.’ A scary thought when it comes to my own body. How long can I remain kindly disposed to this body if nobody can fix it? It’s not uncommon to see along our country roads, a small family plot where kin our interred in the same yard and old junks just sitting there. Out of mind, maybe, but not out of sight.

My wife had an uncle whom I idolized. He was a tall, stately looking man with a craggy face, suntanned from years on the water. He had been naval officer during the Normandy invasion. He radiated a masculine charm. It was hard not to listen when he spoke at the table. His voice was mellifluous. We were having dinner with him one evening when he was in his 80’s. He rose from the table stumbled slightly, and his handsome face turned dark with self-contempt. He said, “What an appalling spectacle.” I never forgot the incident.

I assume that our uncle was not ready to accept the limitations that age was imposing upon him. He resented, even loathed, how he’d become as he clung to his image from the past.

I’m not sure who said freedom is living within limits, but I like the thought. I am now living in cramped psychic quarters, limited physical access, a world reduced dramatically while running the last lap, to an uncertain finish.

Our decision to join the hospice program occurred at the beginning of Holy Week. This is Christianity’s time of somber reflection on suffering and death, and what this means for the relationship between our humanity and God’s divinity. In Christian liturgy, Christ’s resurrection is the center of the celebration. In one way of looking at it, Holy Week is the “last lap,” and Jesus Resurrection is the finish line. I did not think of this consciously at the time, but on reflection I think it’s one more instance how the great dramas in religious spirituality become templates for the way we live our lives daily.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality including The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

 

Of late I’ve been bored and restless, self-absorbed. I feel as if I’ve become a drag.

I take my psychic vitals ten times a day along with fretting about every ache and pain I feel as though any of them could be harbingers of my impending doom. Truth be told, my health – except for an almost defunct immune system – leaves me reasonably comfortable and functional.

Learning of my diagnosis was deeply disturbing. Eventually, despite the bad news, it had a perverse way of terrifying me while simultaneously arousing my curiosity. I decided to investigate the experience of facing my mortality by keeping my moods and thoughts clearly in my mind’s eye, like catching fireflies in a jar to see what made them glow.

I’d obsess about my emotional reactions, looking at them from every conceivable angle to see if any contained a story to tell about the state of my union. This requires no small measure of self-absorption.

Recently I’ve grown bored, restless. I fear that I must be becoming a real drag. This was a new feeling. It bothered me, as if the challenge in facing my mortality, was a mundane and banal affair, not the terrifying adventure I’d been considering it. As vulnerable as I might feel, I still found energy and considerable solace in writing about how the illness was affecting me and those I loved.

I felt stuck. I’d said it all. My interior life seemed fogged, and the world around me lusterless, the way depression can make me feel. I know about depression but when this feeling struck, it sounded a more nuanced timbre. Was my body running down? Was my spirit dry and parched? Had I spent all my fuel? The mood left me feeling bored, restless and dissatisfied.

Prayer is often the royal route many take who feel caught in these kind of conundrums, but I must confess, there are times when just talking to myself and praying can seem indistinguishable. In both instances the results are the same, which is to say, no results. Nothing new comes up and I’m no closer to understanding or accepting what’s happening to me than before. I believe in prayer but in my experience in praying seems more effectual when I can just surrender the matter and not work so hard to make it come out even. In this instance, the boredom became too invasive. I couldn’t leave it alone. It was taking me over. I needed help.

If there is one thing that this experience of living into dying has taught me thus far, it’s this: If I feel troubled, and even after exploring the matter exhaustively in my own mind, I find I must talk about it with someone else, anyone but me. A good listener is usually someone who just listens –– right now I do better with someone who also talks back to me. What they say may not turn out to be all that sage. Nevertheless, the very act of my opening up matters of my heart to another person who will listen, get them to mix it up with me, has proven helpful. I suspect it’s the act of reaching out to others that’s the real issue, the thing that’s required, and not so much the contents of my complaint.

The ‘Collect for Purity’ appearing in the ‘Book of Common Prayer’ makes one point eloquently: “Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid.” God knows my whole story long before I open my mouth. Spiritual guides encourage us to share our burdens with others. I’m convinced God likes us working together when we’re lost. Teams do what individuals can’t.

My medical regimen requires that I have blood drawn twice weekly. One day the nurse asked offhandedly how I was. I said fine. She went to get a couple of things and when she returned, I said, “You know, I lied, I feel lousy.” She asked if she could do anything to help. I said yes. I told her of my oppressive feelings of boredom, how debilitating and demoralizing I found them and how empty my days were becoming.

I thought she might not have any idea what I was talking about. To the contrary, she looked at me for a minute and she said easily, “Oh, you’re talking about the monotony.” I had not thought to use the word monotony but it captured even more vividly something of what I was feeling. We tossed the ball back-and-forth and she went on to say how many of her patients, particularly with diseases like mine, live limited and monotonous lives. Many illnesses involve frequent medical visitations which define the term of one’s life.  Many treatments offered are palliative rather than restorative interventions so that for some, it sets up a kind of “Sisyphus” syndrome. I push the rock up the hill several times a week only to watch it roll down and then start the next week pushing it back up. While the interventions sustain my life, they lack closure, one of those powerful needs we all have –– I certainly have––the feeling that for the time we spend, there’s something to show for it. Sustaining life is no small thing, but it doesn’t bring the sense of closure the way assurances of a cure can or that even death does. If I can’t get closure, what then? It feels as though I’m in limbo.

My brief conversation with the nurse that day didn’t solve my problem with boredom and monotony. What it did do was to reaffirm something valuable I already knew but had forgotten: that if I’m having a bad day, and I’m feeling lousy, and I’m bored and restless, and I’m feeling in limbo, I let someone know; I get them talking with me even if I may seem like a drag. It may not alter circumstances, but it can reveal them in a new light. A fresh perspective can be a game changer.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality including The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

I learned recently that it was doubtful that continuing medical treatment would prolong my life. It was hard to hear but no surprise.

My wife, Jo, and I have made a deliberate project of tending my illness and preparing for my death. Time seems shorter. The great grief is upon us. We are in the remaining stages of embracing the reality that upcoming bumps in the road present.

 Many of you who have read my columns have commented on how helpful you’ve found them. I’m pleased about that. I’ve written only what I have experienced in the hope that by candidly sharing some of what’s happened to us and the thoughts I’ve had about it, this might be of help to others who grapple, not only with mortality, but those myriad losses that plague us through life. Reading the posted comments has kept my spirit buoyed at a time when it goes up and down like a yoyo.

I have no advice to give. I say that because this whole business has been a first for me and I can’t say I know that much. Well, some, I guess. My work with others as a priest, therapist, and spiritual guide, even as a hospice chaplain has informed me some. However, that was with others. There’s a huge difference between knowing about something and understanding it for yourself. As I live into dying, I understand life more clearly, particularly love, the power of human and divine presence, and the blessing of community.

I’ve been both delighted and surprised about discovering more of my heart in the process. It’s been a good heart for the most part, but like the Grinch, three sizes too small. My spiritual heart has kept me going for 87 plus years. I’ve related to my spiritual heart more as a casual but dependable acquaintance rather than an intimate friend, a friend much too selective in his openness. In the spiritual life, an enlarged heart is the only way to go; absolutely guaranteed to keep the spirit vibrant and resilient while maintaining the soul in peak condition; my heart stays in top form when it’s curious about others, wanting only the best for them, having others gently on my mind including some whom I really don’t like . . . that’s been one of the perks of this stage in my life. 

Giving up old claims is like traveling without baggage. Death makes it clear that I’m always welcome but can’t bring anything with me. Just as I am; those are the house rules.

I’ve experienced love in its several iterations and enjoyed them all. I imagine most of us are launched into the experience of love by our first romantic relationships. They are lovely. In young love, never will the sky seem as blue, the clouds so white and the flowers so vibrant. Definitely a great way to get started but, unfortunately, romantic love is notoriously fragile. But of course, we have to start somewhere.

Most of us love our parents but we really don’t know them. Mine spoke little of how they felt or thought about relatives, friends or even the state of the world. So much of what I remember is mostly circumstantial. I never recall they ever revealed any curiosity or discussed what they felt even about the political affairs of the time when we were about to enter WWII. This is why I feel so passionately about letting my children know how I feel about my life in general and specifically my present situation. I want to go out with them knowing more than they may want to. Better that way than knowing too little. I noticed that when my parents were long gone I slowly understood them better through memories I assembled like scattered pieces of a jig saw puzzle. It was hard work.  Strangely I grew to love them more deeply than I did when I knew them only through the eyes of my needs. This maturation of love, like wine, reaches its best bouquet with time.

 I say I love certain things and I do; the pleasures of darkroom photography or sailing, the smell of pines, watching dipper ducks that vanish under and then reappear on top of the water, writing essays and a good martini ice cold with two olives.

As time grows shorter, I’m more acutely aware of the presence in the many people of my life who, by their presence, have sated my spiritual hungers. I’d put it this way: I’ve dealt with others kindly. I know I had a need to be a good guy. The hint of posturing lingered doggedly in my relationships. I don’t need that anymore. I understand love and presence, not as an exchange of needs or being mutually entertaining, but as the universal tissue of our human and divine connection. I know the pleasure offered and received by being there as others have been there for me. Love is wanting everything good for people who come into my presence, even some I’ve never seen. This describes love as I’ve come to know it. 

When I consider love now in reflection, I understand it differently. Maybe not love as necessarily a tender feeling –– although that may often be there –– but as a deepening appreciation of the presence that another brings to my life. Their presence makes me feel safe and releases a kind of a soft energy in my soul, as if being infused with ambient light glowing somewhere in the core of my being. This presence communicates to me what Julian of Norwich, the Christian mystic once wrote centuries ago when she said that it was given to her to understand that “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” 

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

My wife, Jo, and I had an interview the other morning with a representative from Talbot Hospice. I am still functional. I have most of my wits about me, well, except perhaps when, on that morning, I took out forks to eat our breakfast of soft-boiled eggs. In looking back, I think I was unconsciously edgy about our impending discussion. The choice of forks may have actually been revealing the heart of what we were about that morning. We were all about grief, good grief, but great grief; my fears were keeping my feelings a short distance from myself.

Our decision to consult with hospice arose from an earlier discussion about where I might wish to die. There are practical realities for my spouse if I were to die at home. I eagerly welcomed the consultation . . . or so I thought.

Many years ago, I served as the chaplain to Talbot Hospice. I’d noticed then how people who were terminally ill enlisted hospice only at the eleventh hour. The services would have been appropriate earlier. I remember wondering why people waited so long. I understand the resistance much better now.

It’s all about great grief, little griefs and good grief.

I think there are great griefs, like death and dying. There are little griefs like losing something apparently inconsequential to which we’d become attached. Good grief are all the griefs we ‘ve known and have found ways to acknowledge and embrace.

About ten years ago, I went on a tear to declutter my house – beginning with my closets. I had kept a Harris Tweed sport jacket I bought at a rummage sale in 1960. I loved it. By 1975 I had gained so much weight I couldn’t get into it. Still, all those years it hung in my closet. There was no way I was going to ever slim down enough to wear it. I wasn’t aware at the time how I was behaving. All I thought was ‘Oh, I need to get rid of this, someday,’ and closed the closet door until years later when I launched into another decluttering campaign and took it to a rummage sale. By then I was beginning to feel how much it had meant to me. My behavior was telling me how attached I’d become to something as seemingly inconsequential as an old sport jacket.

I’ve always associated the pain of loss with life’s great griefs, like death, or significant diminishments and traumas of all kinds. Grief comes in all shapes and forms as do the feeling the pain grief engenders. Nobody likes how it feels. In fact, we hate it. We have ways of blocking it, like unwanted robocalls.

However, at the same time in all of us, there is an accumulation of ‘little griefs’ which lie latent, unrealized and never acknowledged. Then the ‘big one’ comes. And at such moments my knee jerk reaction is to suppress it. The ‘big one’ strikes a deep chord, however, which, like a tuning fork sends out powerful vibrations disturbing the tines of those accumulated smaller losses, activating them. The pain gets exacerbated.

I’ve found that there are times when I successfully avoid feeling the pain. I know it’s there reverberating through my heart because I’m afraid to give voice to it because “I’ll lose it.” In cases like that, ‘losing it’ is the best thing that can happen. After experiencing its acute phase, there will continue to aftershocks –– losing it off and on for things as silly as not being able to get the top off a jar of pickles or finding a pencil. After allowing myself to lose it, my heart settles down enough so it can more easily embrace the pain.

As I was mulling over this the other day, I thought of the dust kitties in the difficult-to-access corners of the den that seem to suddenly appear. I may not have consciously noticed the kitties, but they did not just appear; they represented months of gathering dust, like the hundreds of small losses slowly accumulating just outside of my awareness, building up in the corner of my heart.

I was not aware, before I had begun intentionally attending my own grief, of how denying grief over the years had distanced me, not only from myself but from those closest to me. My inability to find ways to access my own interior life had also kept me from being close to others. This is not a call for anyone to become a ‘touchy feely’, but say how important it is to know what’s really going on in the heart.

I’ve noticed a growing intimacy with my wife, children and grandchildren, but also with those people with whom, over the years, I’ve shared cordial but distant relationships. As I learn to grieve more skillfully, I’ve found freedom to speak more easily of my inner life. Some relationships that were cordial become closer.

The visit from the hospice representative was helpful. For me it was more than just an informational visit for which I considered myself fully prepared. The curveball was how I’d grown acutely aware that I was, in a manner of speaking, beginning to acknowledge that the tweed jacket that I knew and loved would never fit me again as it once did, like my life, as I’d once known it, would never be the same and had to be surrendered.

I suspect now that my bringing out forks for our boiled eggs betrayed that while I welcomed the hospice representative at one level, I was really somewhere else, still trying to hold back some of the fears I had of actively entering into the world of escalating diminishments that I would soon have to face.

I am slowly owning up to the fact that this step into my future is scary; by convening the meeting, I’d made a more conscious declaration that I would soon be surrendering the life I knew and in which I had been deeply invested.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

My wife, Jo, is a jigsaw puzzle aficionado. Every Christmas she receives at least one. Some contain a formidable number of pieces, 2000 in one instance. She appears to begin working puzzles from the outside; assembling pieces that have straight edges and are easier to identify. Then, having created a frame, she works toward the center, those pieces having uneven configurations, many looking almost alike, harder to tell where they fit.

In a general way, she works the puzzle from its periphery inward and towards the center. Completing a puzzle is very satisfying but it is a hit and miss affair.

Right now, I am working on a puzzle, but not a jigsaw puzzle; I’m the puzzle. I’m working this puzzle from my center to my periphery, from my heart out into my circumstances. I’m puzzling whether I have the heart and the strength to face what my future will demand of me. Will my center hold and get me through? Can I find where all the required pieces needed will fit?

Where to find what it takes, the missing piece that will offer me some closure to what remains puzzling and uncertain; how to face diminishments and death wisely? I have an inkling that this piece exists somewhere within me but I’m anxious that when I need it most, I won’t be able to find it.

I am taking a second look at my past experiences. I’m looking for that piece somewhere lodged in my own history. If I could find it I’m sure it would help guide and strengthen me as I confront my future.

My problem is that I often don’t recognize what I’m looking at and can’t see what’s there, the whole picture. Invariably it will take me at least a second look to fully comprehend what I’d seen first time around.

As a seminarian, I studied Christian and Jewish scripture. They are rich narratives of people contending with themselves, wondering about God and engaging the trials their lives are visiting on them. The parables and stories are both instructive and inspiring, but often subtle, the way what often matters most in life is always elusive to the naked eye. It takes deliberate looking, a conscious awareness and a bit of luck or providence to find.

I studied biblical narratives the first time in 1956, and like a dutiful student, I understood enough of what I studied to get passing grades. In my circumstances now, I think about revisiting those narratives looking for something I’d missed initially. As I see it now, I looking for the things that matter.

A favorite biblical story of mine is the Feeding of the Four Thousand or the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes. The story is more than a miracle. Miracles are dramatic exceptions, somebody else’s good fortune but not everyone’s. This is a story about finding the resources within us we didn’t know we had. It’s a message all of us can access. Or, in the narrative, Jesus speaks to a crowd of four thousand people gathered in a wilderness place to hear him. By the time Jesus he’d finished speaking, it was getting dark, the crowd was fatigued and hungry and any food available was miles away.

Jesus told his disciples, “I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry, or they may collapse on the way.

His disciples answered: “Where could we get enough bread in this remote place to feed such a crowd?”

“How many loaves do you have?” Jesus responded.

“Seven,” they replied.

Not a lot when you consider the size of the crowd.

In short, the disciples were being asked to do something they thought beyond their abilities. They grew anxious and overwhelmed. Still, they did as Jesus wished. The miracle I see it in this story isn’t about all the food that finally showed up to feed everyone, but how Jesus addresses the disciples doubts of not being able to deliver, not having enough. He asks them only what they have at that moment: “How many loaves do you have?” He asks them to trust that they will have enough. And somehow, they made it work and fed everyone.

My ‘second look’ at Mark’s account of this story revealed something very different from what I’d originally understood. The story offers an inspiring possibility for everyone. Deep within me, lies the hidden strength needed to meet challenges I fear will overwhelm me. I think that’s a common concern.

Where my wife and I are in at this junction of our lives, I find the message credible and encouraging. Being a caregiver for long periods, I feel Jo has to carry most of the burden, in the practical realm but also emotionally. I’m always scrambling in my mind for what I might contribute in helping her; I can never think of enough. This is my problem, as it turns out. I’m not an easy receiver.

One of the amusing ironies of the epic story is how the disciples fretted so about being unable to meet the challenge of feeding the crowd; once they had at it, they even wound up with leftovers. Getting started is often where things stall.

At the end of the day, the problem is often less about abundance, it is how much. It’s more in believing that what may be required of me I already have. And then, too, little goes a long way.

I’ll hear Jo complain sometimes how after having put an entire puzzle together she finds that a piece is missing. It’s frustrating. We assume the piece must have fallen to the floor. We search under the table. It’s nowhere to be seen.

After a while, and quite accidently, one of us sees the piece lying alongside a table leg. It was there all the while, right under foot . . . just out of sight.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

 

At a youth led church service once, a teenage boy was assigned the reading preceding the offertory: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” He was very nervous and said instead: “It’s better to receive than to give.”

I think he was on to something. It’s harder to receive than to give.

A few days ago, I received a letter from a friend. She and a few other friends of ours had been involved in a series of zoom conversations. They are frequently frank and open. As I recall the conversation that day, I had been speaking of some aspects of my adolescence which I regretted. I had been a difficult teenager often causing my mother grief. I was a terrible student and had disappointed her. A rebellious teenager is to a single mom what salt is to an open wound. There may have been a note of self-flagellation which had crept into my voice although I had not intended it.

After I’d said this, Sally, a good friend, offered a comment about my more endearing qualities. I am not sure precisely what she said they were –– a significant factor in itself, as I think about it –– except I was aware she was being affectionate and kind. I realized after the fact that I had minimized her gesture of reaching out to me by saying something cutesy like, “Would somebody write my mother and tell her that.”

Several days afterward I received a letter from Sally. Inside was a card in which she attached a post-it note which read:

“George, after receiving a compliment on our Wednesday zoom conversation you said “Would somebody write my mother and tell her that.” I opened the card; in fact, Sally had written a letter to my mother. It read:

“Dear Mrs. Merrill: That son of yours, George–– well, he done good. You and Mr. Merrill must be very proud. Thank you for sharing him with us.”

Sally’s note was a twinkle-in-the-eye and deftly handled way by which she communicated her fondness and, even more significantly, how she’d heard in my story regrets and some unfinished business that even I was not aware of at that moment. She’d basically reached out to me in a simple gift of affirmation, “I heard you. I want you to know that.”

What surprises me is how instinctively I deflected her offering. I did it with a smart aleck, throw away quip, meant in good humor. Now I know I wasn’t being playful. I was warding off my discomfort. At a time in my life when I feel the need for the caring of others, I can get uneasy about it when it’s offered. I have problems receiving.

I’ve arrived at a stage in my life when I am increasingly dependent –– even needy (I hate even writing that word ‘needy’) in a way I hadn’t been before. Doing routine things I’d never given a second thought to, are now either too difficult physically or even dangerous. Like so many of my fellow Americans, my life is now organized around the avoidance of infections and in my case, managing other aspects of an illness.

The upshot of all this is the realization that I’ve become more dependent generally, and particularly on Jo, my wife. Fortunately, the infrastructure of the marriage is sound enough to bear the freight but still, the weight of my need falls mostly on Jo.

By nature, Jo’s a nurturer, a natural giver so the shifting marital landscape is not as much of a hardship as it might be for someone like myself whose personality is not nearly so happily endowed.

But this has created an unjust situation. It is not –– as you might expect –– that Jo is feeling overburdened by my increasing infirmities –– she regrets them, of course –– but the problem is that I’m the one beginning to resent my neediness. Even the thought of them can disturb me. When I need help, and Jo graciously offers, or even anticipates my need, rather than feeling grateful, I can feel piqued. It’s only another reminder of how bumbling I’ve become.

I’m working hard on my attitude these days.

My real challenge is in finding ways to be easier just receiving what others freely give.

As I ruminate about this, I confess a sneaking suspicion I have that my ego is a more serious infirmity than any physical and mental diminishments challenging me. I’ve suspected this before. In fact, I remember, once in my imaginations, serving my ego divorce papers. The issue was incompatibility. The case drags on because I can’t produce hard evidence that we were ever all that incompatible. The case drags on.

I’ve recently entertained the thought that after my heart stops beating, and my brain is stone dead, and even my nails and hair come to a complete shutdown, my ego will still be somewhere in the background raging that this is totally unacceptable and a grievous insult. I do believe that, in this final act of our temporal existence we call death, the ego is always the last to pack it in.

My ego keeps insisting that the role of giver is more noble, prestigious, (it even cites scriptures) than any receiver’s. My ego assures me that despite my flagging abilities that I am still in control of things, the master of my fate. I know my ego is a crock. Still, if I’m down, it can snooker me. Paradoxically, after having received a little love, some caring, the ego stops bugging me.

For those of us blessed enough to do either, it’s just as good to receive as it is to give.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

Yesterday was my last Christmas. For any number of reasons, there are millions of people worldwide who can make the same claim. There is really nothing new or distinctive in such a statement except perhaps for the persons making it. For me, the matter gets more complicated, or at least it feels that way.

It’s common enough to hear people say offhandedly, ‘of course, we’ll die someday.’ It’s unlikely that you or I will ever hear someone say ‘I have a couple of months’ in the same casual way. The confidence with which we might make such a declaration decreases exponentially as its proximity increases. It’s just the way we are. And then when any collective matter becomes a personal reality, it intensifies its emotional import and assumes a power over us that it never had before.

My mortality is both a collective reality, that is, it belongs to all human beings, and it’s also an individual one. It’s a chapter in our story that each of us will engage personally. From my experience, being told I have just so much time left devastated me, but particularly I recall feeling desperately lonely. At first, I thought this an odd reaction considering the matter at hand. If human beings have anything in common at all, it certainly would be the mortality that we all share. Shouldn’t that mitigate some of the loneliness?

So why should I have this lonely feeling when I’m preparing to do what we’re all doing, albeit at different times? Even as I write this, people are dying in voluminous numbers during this pandemic. The numbers alone should offer some of the comforts of camaraderie, the kind of emotional support shared experiences, even painful ones, often afford us.

I wonder now, whether the same issue that plagues many of us today, as we engage our lives during this time of Covid and now the Omicron variant, also haunts us when we must face mortality. I’m thinking of those forces keeping us from being close to each other, either physically or emotionally especially when we need one another the most. For persons with leukemia and others living with mal-functioning immune systems, the pandemic experience becomes a similar one –– the world we inhabited, once welcoming, turns dangerous. Life can be a lonely business.

One of the peculiarities of the present epidemic is how it turns people that we love the most into potential danger; the easy give-and-take between friends and family has been replaced by anxiety and caution. Being close physically, particularly touching each other are the basic means for any expression of love and friendship. What had once been normative social behavior, has become risky, and in some cases, lethal. The distances between us have widened as never before. That’s a lonely business, too.

This came home to me recently as I was having coffee with a friend. He has been suffering with cancer for at least three years and is still in active treatment. While he has no assigned timeline, his future remains very uncertain. He has walked for a long time through the valley of the shadow of death. I asked him when or if he prays, what concern does the prayer address particularly.

“Courage,” he replied in a heartbeat.

While we were talking it over, he reached for his wrist. He removed a rubber-like wrist band and tossed it to me. It was yellow (ironically). The word courage had been written over it. I don’t know whether he intended me to keep it or not. I instinctively placed it on my wrist as we talked as if it were my own. Having forgotten it was there. When I left his house, I found I was still wearing it.

We talked at some length. We explored the experience of feeling sustained and about the loneliness as well. He was especially clear about having come to recognize how the people in his life –– ‘connections’ as he put it –– have sustained his courage. He is increasingly aware how these people are there and the importance in his life in knowing they care. That changes suffering’s equation dramatically.

As I thought about it, I imagined myself as one of the threads woven into the small, beautiful oriental rug that always lies at the foot of my chair. The stunning complexities of its design (and strength, I’d add) result from countless threads, many different, that the weaver has incorporated in its design. In short, whether living or dying, you and I are never alone because each one of us is but one thread in an entire tapestry.

I also recalled the story of the onion. It’s substantially a product of layers, one wrapped around the other. In my lifetime, the people who have influenced me and who influence me now, are like those layers; they constitute as much a part of the whole person that I am in the process of evolving, as the small core that has always existed at my center.

An incidental intelligence regarding onions: “Onions form the bedrock of our cooking –– cooked onions give dishes a rich and a subtle sweetness — you don’t always know onions are in the dish, but if they weren’t, you’d definitely miss them.”

I’d like to mention here how deeply grateful Jo and I are for those friends and readers who have let us know they have wrapped their hearts around us during our present walk. You have taken time in various ways to let us know we are not alone. It’s helped soften the loneliness.

If you were not there, we’d definitely miss you.

NB: I wear the bracelet all the time.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

For seven months I have been living with the medical possibility I might not be here this Thanksgiving. I’m happy to announce that I am here and had what Mr. Rogers described as “a wonderful day in the neighborhood.” It was just the two of us, Jo and me.

Showing up is the first order of business for just about anything. It felt good to show up, or more succinctly, to be able to show up.

We put together the most un-pilgrim like Thanksgiving imaginable. Our goal, since this Thanksgiving was so unique––I’d describe it as a ‘freebee’ ––- was to arrange the day so as to make for good eating but be as effortless as possible since none of the kids would be here to help. Cooking turkeys, albeit a hallowed rite of any American Thanksgiving, I think is a pain.

We bought two huge fillet mignons. We may have just as well put up our mortgage such was their cost, but this was an auspicious occasion. We had Graul’s prepared potatoes, string bean casserole and other typical Thanksgiving viands left over from the prior Sunday before Thanksgiving. Then, my son, Craig, and his wife, Brenda, had been with us for dinner. It was precious time.

On Thanksgiving Day, we grilled the fillets, reheated leftovers and we enjoyed an elegant and no hassle dinner. We wanted to be as available to each other and not tied to the kitchen. The fillets were so tender they became virtually soluble with only the slightest pressure from our forks.

It’s a risky business buying store-bought apple pie. A store-bought pie can be like purchasing a Rolex from a vendor on a city street corner. What you sees is not what you gets. The pie was displayed well in a clear plastic container, in the way jeweler’s present their choice diamonds in glass casings. I was amazed but the pie was “of the first water” as jewelers call their best diamonds. It tasted just fine, much cheaper than diamonds and far less than the fillets.

Popping a piece of pie in the microwave for forty seconds, then daubing either vanilla ice cream or whipped cream on top, the pie was awesomely delectable and when I had my first forkful I felt as if I had died and gone to heaven, not a metaphor I use lightly these days.

During the day we made and received calls from various kids and kin. We held a Zoom conversation with one of our families and told stories. Each year I tell a Thanksgiving favorite about my confrontation with two monstrous turkeys while walking in my driveway. “Five feet tall, no less, I tell them.” The grandchildren, of course know I’m full of it, but they think it’s a hoot to have Peepa, as I’m called, recite this challenging moment of my life. They shake their heads incredulously, check cell phones, and for a moment look as if they almost believe it but soon roll their eyes and groan as if in pain. They giggle, too.

Thanksgiving is the time of recollection when we celebrate the day but also recall significant moments of our past. The day often turns out to be a confluence of our past, present and future.

As I grew older, I gave up sailing, a lifelong love. It required too much of me. When I was first taken ill seven months ago, I had little energy to do other things I loved doing before. Fortunately writing was sedentary and I soon got back to it. Gradually my energy returned.

I’d been active in doing darkroom photography for most of my life. I loved everything about it, as I did writing. My energy suffered and I abandoned photography for a while. Then, on this last Thanksgiving Day, I decided it was time to return to the darkroom again and print photographs. I’d been thinking of one negative I was especially fond of. The printed photograph of it appears above in the essay.

I wondered why this particular one? I had hundreds of others I also liked.

My son, Craig, never enjoyed sailing much but preferred sports. When he was young didn’t sail with me, anxious that he might miss practices or games. I understood this but had always wished that he and I might share this particular love of mine. He surprised me one day and asked if I would take him and his friend for an overnight on the boat. I was thrilled. We planned the trip. I knew that bringing a friend sweetened the pot for him, and even though it might ‘dilute’ that special time I’d always wanted with him, I’d happily take what I could get.

We sailed from Middle River to Fairlee Creek here on the Shore and anchored for the night. We swam off the boat, cooked on the galley stove and slept under the stars. In the early morning while the mist was still suspended over the water, we weighed anchor to sail back to Middle River on a gentle southerly breeze. He obviously had fun as did his friend. I was ecstatic. I also knew this excursion would probably be the last. He was a passionate athlete, deeply invested in sports and was being pulled more and more in that direction.

I suspected there was some kind of a subtle resonance between how I felt on this the wonderfully satisfying Thanksgiving Jo and I were having, and the photograph I was printing that documented the adventure I once enjoyed with my son years ago. The sail with Craig was the last one we made together. Would this Thanksgiving also be the last for Jo and me?

For us, Thanksgiving Day had an undertone of melancholy which reflected a sense that we knew that our lives as we’d known them were being conditioned by a deadline.

This undercurrent went unspoken, but the sense of a finality was there. The pleasures of the day kept such dark musings sufficiently distant so I can say ––– and I know Jo would –– that it was a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

I know perfectly well that everything that ‘is,’ is impermanent. I cannot seem to get my heart on the same page as my head. Best to live Thanksgiving Day as just that, Thanksgiving Day. There is a time for everything under the sun including a time for just showing up and being thankful for having shown up.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.