In the midst of life...

In the Book of Common Prayer – repository of some of the most soul-shattering prose this side of Blake – there’s a passage that came to me tonight after returning home from Thing Two’s dance recital.  

In the midst of life we are in death;

of whom may we seek for succor,

but of thee, O Lord,

who for our sins art justly displeased?

This is from The Burial of the Dead, Rite One, and is spoken at the committal. 

That first line is what popped into my head.

In the midst of life, we are in death…

Except, I think, that’s exactly ass-backwards.  

When my mother was diagnosed with Stage IV metastatic lung cancer early last year – this is a woman with no risk factors, no family history – it was a shock, to say the least.  She fought, she raged, she found the best oncologist in the lower 48, she ate no refined sugar for a year, and in the end – for it is the end, now – the disease does what it is genetically programmed to do, and takes over.

Not just her body, but her life, her husband’s life, my life, my children’s, and many others as well.  

But we have life where she, very shortly, will not. 

And that life goes on.  Parallel to the bedside vigil runs a dance recital.  And lacrosse practice and a gifted and talented arts residency and mastering a new Mozart piano sonata (Thing Two) and a job crewing on a schooner and student leadership council and the national qualifiers for fencing (Thing One) and wilderness first responder recertification (Himself) and a massive promotion at work (me) and homework, school dances, standardized testing, the spring play, band and chorus concerts, sleepovers and birthday parties, mulching the flowerbeds, housework, laundry, refinancing the house, scheduling physicals and car inspections and rabies shots and getting the sailboat ready for the season. 

In the midst of death, we are in life.  

That sounds – well, not exactly cheery, but much less morbid, doesn’t it?  

Wherefore my heart is glad, and my spirit rejoiceth;

my flesh also shall rest in hope.