Spring 2022
Though this newsletter is a year late, I’ve thought of you often and planned to connect earlier. I tried several times but could not summon the will to continue. I’d run short of inspiration.
My husband Bill, who was diagnosed with terminal interstitial lung disease three years ago, was recently admitted to hospice. Lent is almost over. It’s been a time when the cross has intersected with our lives.
I’ve been practicing Lectio Divina: meditating on the daily gospel readings that take us with Jesus on his final journey to Jerusalem. He knows he will suffer a horrendous death when he arrives, yet he never turns back, never ceases to minister to those who crowd around him seeking hope and healing.
Helplessness besets
me as I watch Bill struggle to breathe and know I cannot help him. I want to deny
what lies ahead, just as the disciples tried to do with Jesus. Death in
Jerusalem could not possibly lie in wait for him they insisted.
In her book The
Grace in Dying, Kathleen D. Singh: quotes Dr. Kubler-Ross as saying “death
is a highly creative force. The highest spiritual values of life can originate
from the thought and study of death.”
On reading the
above words, I was struck with the knowledge that Bill and I have, in this
experience of hospice, the opportunity to achieve spiritual transcendence. Now,
rather than fear I feel hope and gratitude that we have this time to prepare
for separation.
I hope all
goes well with you. That you and your loved ones have negotiated Covid with
courage, and that you greet Easter with joy.
Fondly,
Beryl
PS My email
account has grown unwieldy again. So that I might keep friends in a separate
account, please change my email address from: bsbissell@icloud.com to bsbissell@boreal.org.