The Abyss

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photo from the top of Mt. Baker by Josh Scholten
photo from the top of Mt. Baker by Josh Scholten

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for.
~Vladimir Nabokov from Speak Memory 

I think Nabokov had it wrong.  This is the abyss.
That's why babies howl at birth,
and why the dying so often reach
for something only they can apprehend.
At the end they don't want their hands
to be under the covers, and if you should put
your hand on theirs in a tentative gesture
of solidarity, they'll pull the hand free;
and you must honor that desire,
and let them pull it free.
~Jane Kenyon from "Reading Aloud to My Father"

We too often mistake this world, this existence,  as the only light there is,  a mere beam of illumination in the surrounding night of eternity, the only relief from overwhelming darkness.  If we stand looking up from the bottom, we might erroneously assume we are the source of the light, we are all there is.

Yet looking at this world from a different perspective, gazing down into the abyss from above, it is clear the light does not come from below –it is from beyond us.

The newborn and the dying know this.  They signal their transition into and out of this world with their hands.  An infant holds tightly to whatever their fist finds,  grasping and clinging so as not be lost to this darkness they have entered.  The dying instead loosen their grip on this world, reaching up and picking the air on their climb back to heaven.

We hold babies tightly so they won’t lose their way in the dark.  We loosen our grip on the dying to honor their reach out to the light that leads to something greater.

In the intervening years, we struggle in our blindness to climb out of the abyss to a vista of great beauty and grace.  Only then we can see, with great calm and serenity, where we are headed.

 

5 thoughts on “The Abyss”

  2. Thank you, beautiful woman, for bringing back some sad but sacred memories for me. I was present at the bedside of my much-loved grandmother and my father when they died. I noted that both had fixed their eyes on a spot in the corner of the room and that each bore bore a beautiful, calm countenance. I thought that strange. Later, I read accounts of hospice nurses who reported the same thing. I now believe that what the dying see is a light, a beacon, showing them the way home — assurance that they would be safe, to let go and to believe that there was indeed something beautiful waiting for them on the other side of the light.

    My experience with my dying paternal aunt was quite different. I rushed to the hoepital. I was the only one there with her. When I first entered the room I saw that she was thrashing about in the bed; her eyes had a wild, frightened look. I asked a nurse to lower the bedrail. I got into bed with her and took her in my arms. I began to pray the familiar rote prayers that she had prayed all her life. Then I beseeched the Holy Spirit to help her, to ease her fear and to give her the strength and courage to ‘let go.’ Within a few minutes my aunt had stopped thrashing. Her eyes were fixed on ‘something’ in the corner of the room. Her countenance was peaceful, beautiful, as she ceased breathing and followed the light into eternal life.

    What I experienced that day was an epiphany. It was a gift from the Holy Spirit — a gift that allowed me to be a conduit to help my aunt make that mysterious transition. The lasting gift from that experience is that I no longer fear death because I believe in Jesus’ prmise that He will be with us always….” He truly is the ‘Light of the World.”

    Thank you, beautiful woman, for sharing Jane Kenyon’s prophetic verse and for your most profound, practical insights into the human mysteries of birth and death..

    .

    It was as you say: the light — that is what they were seeing as they looked off into a far corner of the room. Seeing what they were seeing changed their whole countenance. I did not realize it at the time but, after reading hospice nurses’ description of the same thing I recognized it—a light, strong and clear, a beacon lighting our way back home, assuring us that we have nothing to fear. I have often imagined what is at the other side of that guiding light. It has to be the same loving Holy Spirit that has been within us all the time.

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  3. Please ignore the last paragraph here. I was editing — a very eifficult thing to do in a WordPress e-mail with Outlook Express software.
    Alice

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  4. Reblogged this on Wonder and Beauty and commented:
    “[W]e struggle in our blindness to climb out of the abyss to a vista of great beauty and grace. Only then we can see, with great calm and serenity, where we are headed.”

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  5. Alice,
    what a blessing that you were there at that moment for your aunt. There is still such a thrash that happens at life’s end in any non-hospice medical setting — we release our grip on the dying so reluctantly — that your experience is unusual indeed. We are learning how to allow birth to be a peaceful time; death deserves that same honor.

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