When the Cracks on the Wall Become Beautiful…

Photo Credit: Montreal Museum of Fine Art

(Before I begin this post, I have to celebrate this blog which posted its 300^th publication last week. I forgot to mention it at that time. It’s been three hundred weeks, never missing a Monday morning, since ‘in-things-charity’ has appeared. I pray it continues, and I welcome your ideas for future subjects. God has blessed me with wonderful readers these past few years and I hope we continue and that we add more charity and reflection to our community.)

I have been at the bedside of a dear friend who is nearing the completion of her earthly life. A lifelong teacher and professor of future teachers, she is teaching us now. There is no panic, no protests, no determination not to go quietly “into that dark night” as Dylan Thomas once wrote. 

It made me ponder: There is no ‘dark night.’ There is good reason to believe what some theologians suggest and that is that even in the slow movement of the soul in earthly time to eternity, there is a presence of God, an environment of cosmic and infinite Beauty, and perhaps even the presence of loved ones who have gone before, all of this here in the very room where we watch and wait and pray. The closer the dying get to death, the more they become unable to articulate the visions unfolding. We have all seen this in the dying person’s arms and hands grasping for spirits in our midst, the opening of eyes emanating with an iridescence not seen by any of us before, the soft suggestion of a trembling smile moving like the shadow of the sun across the face. After years of witnessing these moments, two stories remain convincing to me that the dying enter another world toward the end of the transitioning, before the last breath is drawn. 

First, a priest I knew had lived a remarkable life of service to the poor; he was dying of a rapidly aggressive cancer too early in his life. He had put two parishes on their feet, one in the inner city, the other in a first ring suburb. He was at a halcyon point in his career. People came from all over just to take part in his Masses or to volunteer in his many social projects. He was a very happy man who played basketball with the kids and taught them to play the flute or take advantage of music lessons he somehow provided. He housed immigrants, got them jobs, taught them English, and the list goes on and on. To say he was crestfallen after his diagnosis is a very deep understatement. I observed his sudden change of personality but after a while he decided to emerge and give witness to what a good death might look like. He wanted to minister this way at this point. While he was conscious, he drew his people around his bedside; he gave particular instructions on drawing close to Jesus. A day or so before his final breath, Fr. Dan opened his eyes and slowly said, “If only you knew how beautiful dying is, you wouldn’t be afraid. It is so beautiful.”

The second story is that of an architect who became a good friend as he worked on a new building for us. We were having breakfast together one morning, along with my assistant, when somehow the conversation moved into God’s presence at the time of death. Peter got very serious and told us, almost in tears, of the time he died and was brought back. I had always been incredulous of such stories, but I respected Peter, an immensely gifted man and not one to draw attention to himself. He told the story of having a heart attack and dying in the emergency room of a nearby hospital, his grieving wife looking on. He said he was drawn to an irresistible Presence bathed or represented in Light. All that was ugly in the emergency room: cracks on the wall, scattered equipment, empty coffee cups, began to change visually for him. He wanted desperately to touch his wife and say, ‘don’t cry; I’m going to be fine.’ But he began to see her grief as beautiful. He was being lifted into another dimension as the doctors worked feverishly to bring him back to life. What struck me was when he said, “When I was dead, even the cracks on the wall became beautiful. Dying beautifies everything,” he added. For an architect, this was a different way of looking at mistakes or evil, the detritus and dishevelment of our earthly lives. Wherever the cracks were, there was beauty. 

A few days later I received a gift in the mail from Peter. He had carved an image of St. Peter holding the keys to heaven because he knew I admired St. Peter, and, after all, St. Peter was his patron saint. Inside the box was a short note: “Thanks for letting me tell you my experience. One of the keys to heaven is a peaceful death, at least for me.”

Carving of St. Peter by Peter Woyar.

Reflection

My friend continues to teach us as she is somewhere in that mist of the eternal world surrounding us with the souls she knows and a loving God taking her by the hand and welcoming her. There are so many stories in Scripture of death and dying, of being brought back to life, that I hope you will seek them out for meditation and prayer—more for life than death. Jesus’s life and resurrection are the joyful guarantees we have that death is beautiful.

Annie Dillard wrote, “I think that the dying pray at the last not, ‘please,’ but, ‘thank you,’ as a guest thanks his host at the door.”  And the poet Rumi wrote, “This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First, to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.”