Death in the summertime
A quick note on my disgust for this season and a eulogy for my sister, Loey
I hate summer. There is something about it that has become oppressive. The heat for one. I have no tolerance for it anymore, and it seems to be getting worse here in Pittsburgh. I don’t have little kids to get me to the pool, and I have no gumption to go on my own.
Another thing I’m realizing contributes to this overall feeling of oppression is that people, at least our family’s people, tend to die in the summer. Brian’s mom, Brian’s dad, Brian’s Aunt Marianna, our nephew, Evan. Isn’t that enough for me to feel this way?
It is already enough, but I’m not done yet. My sister died at the beginning of the month after a Stage IV breast cancer diagnosis a little over two years ago. This one’s a doozy. This one has floored me. Therefore, I am embracing my feelings of hatred for summertime all the more. I hate summer. I think I always will now. I’m fine with it.
But Loey loved the summer. It’s a time for gardening and going to the beach, two of her favorite things, so I’ll try not to harp on my negative feelings too much. I’ll find air conditioning, and I’ll go climbing indoors and work through my emotions on the wall, using my body to ease my soul. Okay, not completely floored, since I’m climbing the walls.
I don’t usually widely share something this personal, but I want to leave you with this eulogy I wrote for her and read at her memorial service just a week ago. Only a week ago….
Loey and I have been sisters since I was born. When Loey was a teenager, I’d hover around the basement near her tiny, cluttered bedroom, which sometimes she’d allow me to enter. I’d watch her transport her boom box from bedroom to bathroom to car, listening to Madonna or Duran Duran or the Beastie Boys or Aerosmith, and whatever I heard became my music too.
We didn't become sister-friends until I was 13 or 14 and she was 17 and a rising senior in high school. She got into trouble A LOT that summer and fall and was often grounded. But my parents would let her out of the house with her little sisters in tow. She at least knew she was safe with me-- I wouldn't tell on her-- though I can't vouch for Jackie at the time. Jackie was a formidable tattle-tale in those days. At some point, Loey became happy with my company even when she didn't have to settle for it. And so began our friendship.
Loey wasn’t perfect-- she was a terrific slob, she left her ice-milk glass on the piano bench which made a ring, she took long showers that used up all the hot water, and at least once got me rebuked from the pulpit in church on Sunday because of a picture she drew that made me snort loudly in the middle of Daddy's sermon. But out of the four of us-girls, she had the softest edges. She was a lover not a fighter.
Her super power as an adult became hospitality-- the houses she and Craig kept were always— shockingly— clean and tidy and open. She wanted the people around her, especially her family and friends, to feel cared for, comforted, and loved. She wanted people to be at ease. She delighted in cooking and celebrating even the small things. Very few people have the knack that she did to make a pre-dinner glass of kombucha or eating kale salad into an occasion.
Over the decades, I visited their home when I could, at first with Brian, and then with our little family, and once Seb and Oren were older, my often solo visits to her house some weekends were a special event for both Loey and me. I loved being ensconced within the Weggel family, doing ordinary family things for a day or two-- shopping for meals, cooking meals, eating meals, talking and watching TV and talking and watching TV and talking some more.
Maybe because of Loey's and my own desire to please, or because we were both “avoiders,” or because we had some special sister-mind-meld thing going on, we rarely fought. If we disagreed about something, it wasn’t worth a fight. We agreed on the most important things anyway. We shared our motherly cares and worries and delight for our kids and gave each other comfort and encouragement. We laughed, a lot.
I have no resentments or regrets that will fester now that Loey is gone— aside from that she up and died, and I wasn't ready yet. Jerk. Jackie and I had the privilege of spending parts of the last of her days with her and Craig at the hospital, and though she was mostly out of it, we were often able to say "I love you" to her and get a response or a look back. There was nothing left unsaid between us.
This was a word from the oldest of us-girls, Melissa, after hearing of Loey's death. From Psalm 30 "weeping might last for the night, but joy comes in the morning." Joy came for Loey in the morning.
Indeed there is joy for Loey in her release from suffering. I read somewhere, "Suffering ... is a badly lit corridor outside of time, a place of crushing weariness, the only thing large enough to bully you into holding the door for death." (Gail Caldwell, Let's Take the Long Way Home) Because of cancer Loey suffered a great deal in the past two years and acutely in these last few weeks, and now, thank God, there is joy and rest for her in the arms of Jesus.
We who are left here without Loey are filled with sorrow though. We are storm-tossed and uncomforted in our grief. My mornings so far come with a sharp reminder of her absence; I wake up with the feeling that something is dreadfully wrong. But I don't want to numb or escape the pain. Let me remain storm-tossed because it keeps Loey at the front of my thoughts. I’ll be ready for comfort later.
I read somewhere else, "Sorrow is noble and gracious. It enlarges the soul until the soul is capable of mourning and rejoicing simultaneously, of feeling the world's pain and hoping for the world's healing at the same time.” (Jerry Sittser, A Grace Disguised) May the sorrow of losing Loey open us up to witness and feel the sorrow of others, to weep with those who weep; and eventually, may this sorrow help us to find joy, to rejoice with those who rejoice. Loey’s passing is not the only tragedy that occurred the weekend of July 4th. The flash flooding in central Texas took a slew of lives, mostly very young, and I want to end with the words of someone who wrote from the middle of that horrible event because when I’m ready, this is what will comfort me (from “The Blanket By the River”).
“...as we find ourselves in the midst of things we cannot understand or … fathom, we trust that even as death and darkness bring us to our knees, we are not alone. God is committed to the people he made. He does not look away nor abandon us. We remind ourselves that, in love, [Jesus came] into… the deluge of sin and death — not to watch from a distance, but to be swept into it himself. And because of that, we hold fast to the promise that [death] isn’t the end of the story. A day is coming when the sea will be no more, and death will be no more, and every tear will be wiped from every eye.
And in that coming day, beneath a new heaven and new earth, we will sit again by the water … the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God. We will rest beneath the cypress trees in a natural cathedral, and there … Jesus will join us … and gather us all… He will draw us close to his bosom, as a mother soothes her child, and we will be held in the arms of the One to whom we have always belonged.”