pull up a chair

every time i reach in my closet, there it is. often when i reach for one of the ones underneath, it falls on my head.
it’s the first thing i saw, draped over the back of the last chair he sat in, that cold snowy night when we walked back into the house. without him.
really without him.
forever without him.
and there it was, draped. flung. i could see–still can–the cock of his wrist as he flung it. he was just off to tennis the morning the pain came to his chest, to his heart.
my mama, a long-time knitter, of socks when he was off in the army, and blankets for each of her babies, and that sweater for him, for the love of her life, she’d made it. knit, purled, and cabled. i remember the cable was rather a triumph.
and i remember, that night when he died in the midst of a blizzard, the first thing i did when i walked in the house was i reached for the sweater. reached for its cables. its V-neck in red, cream and blue. i took it and wrapped it, and i dropped on the couch.
i had no interest in breathing. did not want, for a minute, to ever take in a breath from a world he wasn’t a part of. i sat there, wrapped in the yarns of my mother and father, for as long as i could. then finally i had to. had to take in a breath, fill my lungs with air that felt missing of something. something essential.
ever since, that sweater, the soft woolen yarns that wrapped me, that shielded, kept me warm as i shook in the wake of unstoppable grief, i’ve carried it with me. moved it from apartment to apartment, to house and to house and to house.
now it sits, at the back of my closet, just out of my reach. but not wholly. if i stand on my toes, and then on a shoebox as well, i can swipe. barely graze it. make it fall on my head.
mostly, it’s just there for the glance of my eye. i wouldn’t be home without it. but now, now that the grief has been washed like a stone at the cusp of a river, now that it isn’t so sharp, not so rough, not so riven with crags, i needn’t grab it and wrap it and rock under the warmth of it. the spell of it, really.
but i do need to know it’s there at the back of my closet.
it keeps the soul of my papa there in the thread of my everyday.
i keep bits of the people i’ve loved all over my house. there’s my grandma lucille in the very top drawer of my dresser. there are her black leather gloves. and maria, my landlady-sister-my teacher of so many things, she is flung over a chair right here by my side, in the old square of lace i always leave out. just because. because there’s no point to put it away.
i have a friend whose mother just recently died. she keeps all her letters right there in the drawer where she keeps all her bills. she needs them nearby. for now, at least.
it’s what we all do. we stitch our whole house with knots of our past, of our heart, of the communion of souls no longer among us.
today in the church i grew up in, today in the church a part of me loves while the other part of me is rather not so enchanted, today is all souls’ day, which really is back-up to the day just before, to the day of all saints.
the souls, apparently, are not yet of the same status. the saints get the first of november. the souls get the second. officially, the souls are defined as the faithful departed. they’ve not proven their sainthood.
oh, all right, then, i’m not going to argue. i am merely the messenger here, letting you in, on the way things are working.
the point is, today is the day for remembering. well, i remember all of the time. because i set up my house like some sort of history trap. it’s a minefield of memories. and i like it that way.
i like to be reaching for that old irish fisherman’s knit. and have my papa fall on my head. or at least the arms of the sweater he wore as he hollered and ran for the net. we can all hear it now, how he let out that shout that made you think someone had died. only it was just him, and the ball that he narrowly missed, before awaking the dead, had any been buried just underneath the court where he played.
i take one look at that sleeve, or the V-neck, and it all rushes back. the good and the bad. the times when my dad in that sweater made me squirm, roll my eyes, want to hide, slink out of my seat. and the time when that sweater, without my sweet papa, made me weep.
it’s all in a swirl. it’s the sweet and the sad.
that’s why the world comes in octaves. our hearts play the notes, low ones and high ones. but without the old knitted sweater, there at the back of the closet, i might not remember the song.
and that would be an unbearable silence.

do you lace your house with snippets of those you have loved? do you find yourself reaching in a drawer for a trinket, stumbling first on something you stop and hold onto, just for a minute, a something you cling to, a something from someone no longer? how do you honor the souls of the ones who you loved?

growing up as i did, putting head to my pillow night after night, plotting the ways i too might stretch a fist toward the heavens, palm a star, take it home in my pocket, i’ve been a student, for a very long time, of this saint thing.
over the years, and there’s now been nearly half a whole century (i’m excluding the year before 1 in my counting, thinking i’d not yet started my saint watch, certainly not before i escaped from my old maple crib), i have scanned not only the heavens but also the earth.
i have looked in the unlikeliest spots. picked through crowds motley and noisy. spotted the sole possessor of what could only be called saintly demeanor.
the one soul in the room who walked with the grace of an angel, who did immeasurable good with nary a flurry. just wafted through life, sprinkling a dust that might be called golden. only really it’s the dust of a kindness that’s quiet, that’s real and that changes the course of the day and the week and year after year.
or perhaps it’s the radical loudmouth. the one who will not be still, not till justice is done. hallelujah, i say, to the one not afraid to ruffle the feathers.
either, or. in between. there are those who inspire, who stir, who dig deep inside, and rise up triumphant.
i am a student of all.
yes, it’s true, and i’m saying it now, i have, all my life, looked for and collected stories of saints the way some might collect maybe a shell on the beach. or a small metal race car.
only the saints that i’ve sought, the ones who i’ve watched and i’ve studied, are not off in some dusty old tomes. no. they’re right here among us.
in my brand of religion, in my excursion through living, i am drawn to the study of decency down in the ditches.
i am not so caught up in the tales of the medieval saints (though i do find the story, say of christina the astonishing, she who pinned herself to a windmill, to escape the stench of human sin, well, rather astonishing).
nor do i get too bogged down–not at all really, vehemently not–in the twists and the tangles of tape that declare, in white puffy smoke, so-and-so is a saint.
blkkh. a saint is a saint is a saint. i know one when i see one. and i don’t need a committee to tell me.
i know, when in the presence of someone who’s saintly, that some sort of peace settles the waves of the room. or sets the waters to rocking.
either way, soft or loud, hushed or blasted through megaphone, it is as if some fine inner core is tapped, is let loose, and everyone breathing the air–everyone with a nose for these things–suddenly is filled with a rarefied mix of poison-free breath.
there is, in the saintly, an eye on the prize that is wisely removed of personal gain. it is as if she or he is operating purely for good. no strings attached.
take, for instance, one of the saintly i’ve gathered in just the last week: the soccer coach who started out substitute teaching in one of the toughest schools in chicago, realized the kids had no gym class, started early morning soccer. then realized kids, first to fourth graders, were coming to school with no breakfast. so he started to feed them. he’s not even 30, and he says he feels like he has a family of 50. the kids call him at all hours of the day and the night. and he always answers.
or maybe it’s merely the friend who came and who got me, took me away. took me out to the country. took me away from the things that had been filling my head, weighing down my heart.
or the lady i know, who week after week, brings dinner to this friend or that. to friends who are old, who never get out. and she’s able, so she cooks and she drives and she fills their saturday nights. with small talk and deep talk. whatever they want. she tidies their kitchens, and then she drives home.
you might say, well your bar is not high. certainly any one of those souls had a good day, followed by a bad day. yes indeed that’s the point, now that we’re moving along here. i don’t know anyone flawless. don’t expect it.
but i do know that each of us has what it takes, to reach down inside, to pull out a turnip of goodness. of bigger than bigness. we each, all of us, possess sparks of divine.
the point then is to kindle the light. touch one flame to another. to get this ball burning. before it gets dark.
if we each spend one minute, one spark of the day, living beyond our small little selves, well then fairly soon we’ve gone and we’ve ignited a bonfire. a fire that will not be stopped.
so in the end we seek not to become enrobed in all white, wafting perfumes of the heavens. heck, no. we aim to become big in small little moments.
we put down the long list of things we must do, and instead we call on a friend. a friend who is hurting. we don’t call, we just come. we sit where their sorrow is spilling. in a hospital waiting room. or there on the stoop of their house.
we lift their load. we make them a big pot of soup. we make their beds. we take off with their children, just to give them the peace of an hour.
or maybe we’re saintly with even a stranger. maybe we look in the eyes of the man who is begging for dollars. maybe for a minute we imagine what it is to be cold and alone, to have been a young child, of 7, who woke to a place where no one was home. who walked down a stairwell that reeked of bad smells. and getting to school was a matter of life and possible death. who knew any minute furor could strike.
or maybe the stranger is there in some fancy shop. but you find out from listening that really her life was as sad and as empty as the guy up above. how she grew up in a house so huge she could be lost for hours on end. and no one, not the mother who drank, or the father who worked till late in the night, ever came looking, to feed her or hug her. how she doesn’t remember one single hug from her mother. and her mother just died.
today is the day called all saints. every year, growing up, we stopped and we honored the saints.
i honor them now. but not usually the dead ones. i study, i watch and i learn from the very alive ones. i take mental notes. i scribble on paper.
there are saints all around. and if you collect them, your world will be shiny. and so will your heart.
it’s a soft gentle glow that you seek. or maybe a bold one that blinds you. either way, you’ll know when you find it.
and who knows, there might be a scent in the air. it might be that of the heavens.
might as well reach for the stars, pluck one and carry it home.
imagine the scrap book of saints. those are pages i do want to keep. want to turn. want to soak into my heart.

here at the chair i often go out on a limb. take today, for instance. might as well launch a campaign. a saintly one. canonization begins here. feel free to scribble your thoughts on the saintly among us. nominations are welcome. or just keen observations on those all around you who make you more than you were before they criss-crossed your path. may your all saints day be blessed.
and bless those of you, who in very big ways, teach me, day after day, what it is to be saintly on earth.