“Well, so how is your husband?” asked a friend I hadn’t seen in awhile.
Taken off-guard, I stammered, “He died. He’s dead. He got very sick quite suddenly and he passed away. Eight months ago today.”
But as I’ve had time to rethink it, I want another chance to answer, this time more accurately. Jack didn’t pass away. He didn’t.
The real answer is that he is very much alive and doing better than he has ever done. He’s seeing with eyes that don’t need bifocals. His lungs are emphysema free. His spinal cord is not infected. His mind is clear. His heart is strong. Forget the inhaler, the vitamins, the blood pressure meds. He is perfectly well, perfectly perfect. And I bet his hands don’t have any new splinters in them, either.
Where he is is likewise perfect. It’s perfectly perfect. Jack is seeing with his own eyes what he had only read about before December 1.
As Steven Curtis Chapman put it in his 2009 Beauty Will Rise CD,
See—it’s everything you said that it would be
and even better than you would believe
There are times I leave my here and now tasks of cooking chicken and writing bills and stand, lost in thought, wondering, What do you see, babe? What do you see right now? I feel like my face is pressed hard against the glass of the candy store and all I want to do is see, as he does, all the brilliance without obstruction.
I think of it like this: for a few years I saw pictures and heard stories about the home my friend has on an island of Greece, but one year I got to go for myself. She’d made all the arrangements — stocked the fridge, made the beds, purchased the ticket. All I had to do was come. Get on the plane(s) and ferry and taxi and come. And one day, I did.
Jack and others saw me go. I got on the plane(s) and ferry and taxi, traveling out of their sight, further and further until my feet touched the soil of Skiathos, and my eyes saw for themselves what I had only seen in photos before. The sky and water really were as blue as you see them in calendars. The Greek yogurt and honey and black coffee served at the cafe a stone’s throw from the Aegean tasted so good it was as if I had never had Greek yogurt and honey and coffee before — this was really how it should have tasted all along.
During that visit, I would write emails home from the internet cafe, trying to do justice to my experience. I’d describe the goats being herded past our home, the tiny bakeries with sesame bread rings and baklava piled high, the afternoon coffee, driving a high winding road to an ancient monastery, sipping homemade bayberry cognac, witnessing a memorial service, picking olives, bartering with merchants, receiving hospitality — but no matter how I tried, I never felt the description matched the experience. My actual discoveries on this adventure were far more layered and substantial and engaging than my words could convey. And though I eventually returned with a full camera and suitcase of presents — a Greek bearing gifts, if you will — I still felt that the only way to really understand was to go personally.
Which brings me back to the question my friend jolted me with this morning. I’ve decided, when asked, I’m going to say that Jack has never been better. He’s not passed away. He’s passed on, he’s arrived Home. He’s perfect. Perfectly perfect, that’s how he’s doing.
