Our daughter Kelsey died suddenly on June 1st 2012, in a bike-bus accident in Boston. She fell getting on her bike, just as a bus passed by on a busy street. No one’s fault. I was paralyzed by the suddenness of her death and yearned for a moment in which I might have a glimpse or a glimmer beyond the absolute finality and ending of her life. My usual tools and backpack of ideas and beliefs were far from adequate.
But, a month after her death, mystery took me by surprise. We were in Portland, at Barb’s brothers house. Early in the morning I awoke, could not get back to sleep, and went down to the family room to read. Sitting quietly, I closed my eyes for a moment and began to hear music, as if seven great symphony orchestras were performing, choirs singing, and an organ playing with depths more sonorous than I could ever imagine. I saw Kelsey, seated next to a figure who brought me immense comfort and solace. This experience brought me a momentary sense of peace, calm, and understanding.
We had been stunned by an abrupt phone call from a Boston detective, telling us of Kelsey’s death–and by the succeeding rituals required of us: going to Kelsey’s apartment and to the funeral home, gathering with friends and faculty from her graduate program at Boston College, packing and sending her remaining belongings back to Seattle, picking up her ashes and sobbing in the sanctuary of a nearby UCC church.
As a pastor, I had been at many bedsides as life gently left. I grieved with family and friends, created memorial services, and shared in burials and the scattering of ashes. But Kelsey’s memorial service was a totally different kind of experience for me. I remember two moments especially from that service: Jessie, describing how Kels would sniffle a bit, cough a little, and suggest that perhaps she should not continue the sleepover with the group of neighborhood girls, that she should return home to take care of her “cold.”
I wanted her back. I wanted her home.
The second moment was when Katie, Kelsey’s roommate from Barnard and with whom she had explored neighborhood after neighborhood in New York City, said to the gathered mourners, “The day after graduation we walked from Barnard to the tip of Manhattan and back and then laughed and talked all that night. We said good-bye to each other the next day, promising we would be together again. Six months later, we were back in New York and sharing an apartment.”
Oh, how I hoped, somewhere deep in my being, that would be true for us, that six months from now we, too, would be together again with Kelsey.
Bereft is a tenderness word for devastating loss. It suggests, as in weaving, threads that create a continuing fabric. Me, I could see no way ahead. Kelsey’s death led nowhere. All I could do was reweave the past from my own memories and the stories shared by others and build an inner remembrance to treasure and turn to for solace.
Two months after Kelsey died, we traveled to the Swinomish tribal center to meet with Dobie Tom, a Lummi, tribal shaman. I had been adamantly and angrily opposed to going—”I don’t need a damned shaman”—but finally agreed. We entered an oval gathering space with tiered benches surrounding an open floor. Sitting in the center, with Dobie chanting as his son drummed, I found myself lifted into the heavens, to a small, old wooden gate and a path that led to a great open hall, a space without walls or ceiling. And from all directions flowed humanity, immensely diverse and from throughout history. And there, again, I saw Kelsey. She was engaged in lively conversation, fully absorbed, her spirited and loving self. As the drumming and chanting slowly came to a stop, I returned to this world, and Dobie shared his sense of our experience.
Our life involves two spiritual realities, I understood him to say. One is an abiding spirit that never ceases to be present and to hold us. The other is a personal guiding spirit. From this soul guide, we may become separated, especially in times of trauma, loss, and death. Our grief is such that we lose touch with that immediate spiritual resource that energizes our deepest core and identity. We are bereft not only of those whom we have loved and lost, but also an elemental part of ourselves. He said softly, “I have returned your guiding spirit to you.”
Years ago in seminary, as a final assignment, I had constructed a personal theology. In 1970, I was able to tell you who God is, what it means to be a Christian, how the Spirit moves in our lives, and how we come to know all this. Over the next forty-two years, as I continued to explore, understand and give voice to the sacredness of our journey as human beings, my spiritual understanding began to include more and more mystery. This earthly experience is a phase, a time of shaping a spiritual identity from the many moments of present relationships and occasions, and one way or another, this spiritual identity, who we are in our deepest relationships with each other, is imperishable.
Our relationships are part of a larger universe of infinite and eternal creating. We live by glimpses and glimmerings. We follow our own unique grievous ways. We find and are found, kindred in our unknowing and in the slow restoration of our souls. There is no single path forward.
Kelsey’s death ripped me open and accelerated my process of opening to mystery. She had always asked for honesty and integrity, no bullshit, real connection. She dove again and again into the depths of life, interviewing woman refugees about genital mutilation for a freshman high school history paper, living and learning with a squatter community on a Quito hillside in Ecuador, agreeing to be the physical education teacher at her East Harlem school, not because she had the expertise but on the basis of a profound belief in her students’ capacity to learn from one another. She was, said a young Nigerian, Jesuit priest in her graduate psychology program, “the most spiritual of companions” on their walks around campus together.
In our last conversation, Kels said on the phone, “Dad, you can always connect.”
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