Everlasting Life

 
Days before she died, my cousin Marcia and I sat around her sister’s dining room table.  The meal long finished, we chatted into the evening about old times.  Perhaps it is the way karma works, but somehow the conversation came around to what people might say about each of us after we died.  We both smiled at the thought that her brother born with cerebral palsy and a speech impediment would be the one who would draw the biggest crowd to his funeral, the one about whom there would be so much to say, a testimony to George’s beautiful nature and the unwavering devotion of his parents and siblings.

I spoke with Marcia again the morning of her scheduled medical procedure, a procedure intended to clear a blocked artery.  She felt a little “off” she told me, blaming the new medicine the doctor had prescribed prior to the surgery, but I had already heard it in her voice, and I felt it too.  Something was off and it hovered.

Marcia spent most of the day in surgery after a major blood vessel exploded during the procedure.  She was delivered to intensive care in an unconscious state.  She never spoke to us again. She died in the night after hospital visitation rules had sent us all home.  Turns out Marcia drew a big crowd to her funeral. There was much to be said about her life, her significant accomplishments, and her beautiful nature.

Yesterday in the mail I received a copy of the 2009 literary journal, Alimentum, containing Marcia’s first nonfiction essay, The Proof is in the Pudding, in which she described cooking and baking to keep busy after the death of her beloved father.  She noted that she did not share the faith of those who offered condolences.  She searched for God and proof of everlasting life in the mixture that would become dough for pies.  She wrote:  “Transfiguration.  It is a miracle.  I have witnessed a miracle.  And what other comfort people derive from faith, I pour into my pie shell and begin to believe again that in the end we are transformed and we go on.  I hold the proof here in my floured hands.”

They come back to us these people we have loved. Today, I hold the proof in my hands: Alimentum, Issue Eight, Summer, 2009, pages seven through nine.