Amazing Grace...

The calls are coming more and more frequently these days: my parents on the other end of the line, quietly relaying news of the positive test results and disheartening prognoses of close friends. Some are surprising: Innocent check-ups gone frighteningly awry. Spots on x-rays. People, quite simply, taken in the blink of an eye. Others, however, are less surprising: the grand finales of battles fought valiantly for years or months against crafty replicating cells that seemingly always get the upper hand. Home hospices set up in living rooms. Family members huddled around hospital bedsides. Teary-eyed goodbyes. Final breaths. Funerals.

Each call is sad. Each call a sobering reminder of my own mortality. The fragility of our existence. The human condition.

The call a couple of weeks back was more of a warning than anything. "Lorna Dyck isn't doing well," explained my mother in a pained tone. "Allan thinks she'll make it through the weekend, but he's not sure how much time she'll have after that. She's only taking ice chips now."

Ice chips...not good.

While I have known Mrs. Dyck for as long as I can remember, it has only been only over the course of the past few years, mostly via telephone updates from my parents, that I have come to know her as Lorna.

Rewind.

Having lost her leg to cancer at age 16, Mrs. Dyck was never hard to miss, moving with stealth-like ability through the halls of the church on her crutches. Although such a sight is an inexplicably interesting thing for a kid, more intriguing was the ever-present smile that graced her face from Sunday to Sunday as she went out of her way to greet you by name. Even then, I remember wondering why she was always so happy.

Over the years, as my parents and the Dyck’s became good friends, I started receiving frequent updates about their family. I listened as their two sons and one daughter grew into young adults, as my father's bond with Allan deepened into a heartfelt respect, and as my mom’s adoration for Lorna was mentioned in nearly every call. I also listened as the cancer came back, the way it had a number of times before.

Not long ago, during a visit to Winnipeg, I stopped in at the church on a Sunday morning. Weeks earlier, Mrs. Dyck had been told that this time the chemotherapy, would be strictly for the pain. Essentially, that the end was near. That morning, as the congregation belted out worship songs, Mrs. Dyck, with that same great big smile I remember from my youth, reached over the pew that separated us and gave me a hug, telling me how good it was to see me there. For the remaining 35 minutes of the service, I literally fought back the tears, my stomach muscles sore when it finally ended.

To list the many reasons why that hug, in that environment, meant so much to me would turn this blog into a novel. Let it suffice then to say this:

I have always been hyper-aware of how I am seen, how I am perceived in that building. I have done my best to play the part of the rebel, strolling in fashionably late, often in the same outfit I was in at the bar the night before. I have long looked at the people around me and judged myself unworthy, having pissed my innocence away in what I now understand has always been a blatant cry for help to to the heavens. Surrounded by those who are able to find fun in board games and clean jokes, in car rallies and cream soda; beside those who don’t find enjoyment or self-worth in self-abuse, I feel lost and alone and afraid. It is there that I see the chasm between the man I have become and the man I should be...and so I hate the place. I hate the music. I hate the walls. I hate that I hate.

Somehow, in some way, if but for a moment, Lorna’s hug bridged that gap. A single, thoughtful gesture, offered by one who had so much more to worry about, had a profound impact.

Amazing Grace how sweet the sound...

A few weeks later, I added Lorna as a friend on Facebook and thanked her. There, over a few emails back and forth, she explained that over the years, and always from a distance, she had spent much time not only praying for me, but also, as she put it “hurting and rejoicing over your journey.”

That saved a wretch like me...

I asked her a few questions about her faith, and in what would be her last response, she responded by writing about being OK with having a “simple faith.” She also wrote about having watched Allan’s mom, a woman she offered “only had her grade 9, and weakly at that...,” work her way through book after book, wrestling with complex doctrines, all in an attempt to get to know God better. “I watched how it changed her into a person who was selfless and hated when she sinned because it caused a chasm in her ability to serve and to be with her Father,” Lorna wrote. “And that was what I wanted!!! I was jealous to have that in my life. I've spent my whole life, from the time I met her, in the same way: Loving to learn of my Father, because I could. In all the years I've been studying and learning and discovering my Father, I really only feel as if I'm scratching the surface of what there is to know.”

I once was lost, but now am found...

On the morning of Sunday, January 3rd, 2010, Lorna went to meet the Father she had spent her whole life trying to get to know. My parents called to tell me the news later on that evening. But for some reason I already knew. At around 3 o’clock in the afternoon, hung over and tired, I went to my room, and had, as one of my favourite writers once put it, “a colossial-fucking-go-to-pieces,” which is something I haven’t done in years. And I prayed...asking God why he would take so many good people - so many calls - when the world is in such dire need of good people, of good stories. Silence.

Laying there, my pillow soaked with tears, I remembered something. When my grandmother passed away, the pastor explained that while our memories of her should bring a smile to our faces, they should also act as a catalyst for us to live the way that she lived, to do things the way she would have done them, to touch others the way that she had touched us.

Was blind but now I see...

In Lorna, I met someone who, despite having every reason to be bitter at her circumstances and angry at God for setting the whole blasted thing in motion in the first place, chose not to get caught up in a pity party. Rather, she chose to draw as close to Him as possible, understanding that every moment was a gift and that true beauty lies not in a body that can turn against you in the split second, but in a heart abounding in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and self control.

God, may Lorna live on not only in our memories, but in our actions. Take care of your good and faithful servant. Give her a hug for me.