ENDING IN LOVE 
Oscar Sermon Series: "Away from Her"

I John 4: 7-12, 19-21
I Corinthians 13

St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church

Rev. Gary Paterson

March 2, 2008

Now we see as through a mirror, dimly… indistinctly, puzzling reflections, mere riddles. We reconstruct our past, over and over, choosing and reshaping stories that become what we remember, helping us to enter a future where anything is possible. As Marion, one of the characters in the film "Away from Her", says, "You never know how things are going to turn out. You almost know, but you can never be quite sure." A mirror dimly, riddles… someone unexpected walks into your life; someone leaves. You never know… every action carries consequence, and changes how things will turn out. Marion knows this in spades… there she is, in conversation with Grant, telling him about how her husband became so ill, so lost. Grant says, "Bad luck." To which Marion replies, "That's life…. You can't beat life." And Grant says, "No." And what a world of grief is contained in those few words. "You can't beat life." -- it comes at us, every day sweeping each of us and all of us into new adventures of one sort or another. It's the contingency of the whole thing… joy or sorrow; good luck or bad; oh, sometimes predictable… don't smoke, eat well, exercise and live forever -- "you almost know, but you can never be quite sure." Sometimes the surprise is bad news; sometimes it's terrifying.

Well, take Alzheimer's, for instance. "She's young… isn't that unusual?" "Yes… but not always… you never know…." So there they are, Fiona and Grant, forty-five years married, and still going strong. They've weathered some rough patches in the middle… but who hasn't? Retired now, in old Ontario lakeside cottage, home… and as the film "Away from Her" opens, life seems good for these two. But then the surprise begins to unfold -- Fiona carefully and thoughtfully places the frying pan in the freezer. Grant watches… but says nothing. Soon, there are labels all over the kitchen cupboards and drawers… cutlery, glasses, pots.... "I think I'm losing my mind," Fiona jokes. Ha-ha! One evening friends are over for dinner; the evening is mellow, and Fiona picks up the bottle of wine, "Anyone care for another glass of…." But she cannot finish the sentence; the word is lost…. What is she holding? What was she planning to do. A silence; and then Fiona says, "I think I'm beginning to disappear." Yes, exactly.

And, of course, soon it becomes much more serious. Fiona is out skiing, in a flat, white world… no signposts; no landmarks, twilight… even the landscape cries out confusion. Eventually, Fiona, completely lost and bewildered, takes off her skis, and lies down in the snow, as if she were wanting to make a snow angel. The camera zooms upward, looking down upon this small human being, lost in a field of darkening white. What is to become of her!?

Soon after, she and Grant make the decision that she will move to a special residence, Meadowlake… which isn't all that bad as these things go. They arrive, and Fiona turns to Grant when they are in her room, "I want you to make love with me; and then I want you to leave"… "Please don't make this hard for me; if I start crying I don't know if I'll be able to stop."

Meadowlake has a special rule… new residents cannot receive visitors for the first thirty days… a settling in time, say the staff. But when Grant returns, a month later, his arms full of flowers, his heart full of eager anticipation… well, Fiona has forgotten who he is; when he arrives, she mistakes him for a new resident of the facility.

Who are we when we no longer have our stories? When we begin to lose memory, what happens to us? Who do we become? And what about those shared memories… parents, children… spouse, partner, lover… best friend…what happens when the one who carries them with you is no longer there? As Grant says, "It's like watching the lights in a large house be flipped off, one by one… until everything is dark." What happens to the light, the light that is you? Where does it go? And what remains?

The journey into Alzheimer's is a frightening one, and full of sadness. I know… Tim's mother, Edith-Mary, is developing vascular dementia, and we watch her losses; so many memories gone; apprehension and tiredness mingling together. And not much to do beyond visiting and trying to say in many ways, "I love you."

A friend of ours said, "You need to realize that your mother is dying; it's in slow motion, but that's what's happening. There are lots of different ways to die -- is it better if it's quick, like an accident, a heart attack? Is it worse if it's painful, perhaps with cancer? What about slowly disappearing, dying bit by bit, like your Mum?" How do you answer questions like that… none of the above?

Fiona with Alzheimer's… another way of dying. Which is what faces all of us, some way or other. This film takes all of us into a recognition of our ending… we are all going to end up dead; that's what happens to human beings. Nobody is getting out of this alive. Oh I know, you twenty year olds, you don't really believe it… but it's true. Memories will go… either slowly with dementia, or wiped instantly away by sudden death. This is a film of universal loss… how to go graciously into that good night, and how to say good bye as people leave…. a film full of winter spirituality.

How then shall we live? That's the question that wends its way through the film in the face of this devastating loss. And, of course, it becomes our question. Sure, most of us live with a lot of denial; and that's okay. But it takes a lot of energy to live in denial; and the older I get, the more energy it seems to take. So, how then shall we live, knowing we can't beat life?

Well, in the film, Marion says that there are two kinds of people - those who get angry; and those who accept what comes their way, what life brings them. Too much anger, and the future shrinks; but with acceptance, well, then, perhaps, the future opens up, although often in totally unexpected ways. I found myself wondering which kind of person I was.

I also know that whatever happens isn't just about me, and whether I can get my act together to accept whatever comes my way. There's something else happening, something beyond me, deeper, more alive. Perhaps a good word for it is grace…. as in, when Grant and Fiona are initially looking for a facility, Grant hopes to find "something we like"; Fiona turns to him and says, "Grant, we're not going to find something we like; I think what we can aspire to is a little bit of grace." A little bit of grace - our own openness… and then, whatever it is that helps us to choose the way of love in the midst of whatever it is that life brings us.

Fiona and Grant have to take their journey separately, as well as together; and that's the pain of it. But as Ty Burr from "The Boston Globe" wrote, "With a tranquil fearlessness [the film] goes beyond the death of memory, to see what might be found in the unexplored country beyond. The answer is both frightening and comforting: More love. Unspecified love. Universal love." As a preacher, I say "Amen." That's what we catch a glimpse of in "Away from Her" - unconditional love, really, told… well, revealed actually, in a story that rings true. "Away from Her" as parable.

You see, when Fiona went to Meadowlake, she formed an "attachment" - that's what the staff called it. She connected with a fellow resident, Aubrey (Marion's husband in fact)…and she offers love… care, conversation, practical assistance; Aubrey replaces Grant as the most important person in Fiona's life. In a strange way she falls in love… "Ah dear heart," she says, holding Aubrey in her arms as he weeps. And while it might break Grant's heart… and Marion's too, for that matter, -- is it not a little bit of grace?

Though not for Grant! He has to watch this, and figure out how to live with it. He has choices - he can get angry, hurt… jealous, indignant… puzzled, aloof… persistent, gentle, loving… all of the above. I read an interview with the director, Sarah Polley, where she said, "I felt like it was a coming of age story for a man in his seventies. Someone discovering themselves and what they were capable of and what unconditional love meant at the end of their marriage." Coming of age… how then shall we live? What are you capable of? And what is unconditional love… given… and received?

At one point in the film, one of the nurses mentions seeing the sign if front of the local United Church. I almost got up out of my seat and cheered! It was a sign with an eye-catching phrase: "It's never too late to become what you might have been." Doesn't sound very Biblical to me," says Grant. "Well, maybe there're getting all creative on us," says the nurse. I think it sounds like a sign that we should have in front of this Church! … "It's never too late to become what you might have been." Maybe not in the Bible in exactly those words, but it's sure there in spirit. In every moment God is calling out to each of us to become what we were meant to be; whatever life brings, the joy and the terror, we will always have choice… there is always some degree of freedom to choose what will bring more life, more love.

More love… listen to these words from the poem, "The Nearness That Is All" by Samuel Hazo:

        Love's what Shakespeare never

  said by saying, "You have

  bereft me of all words, lady."

Love is the man who siphoned

  phlegm from his ill wife's throat

  three times a day for seven

  years.

    Love's what the Arabs

  mean when they bless those

  with children: "May God keep them

  for you."

    Or why a mother

  whispers to her suckling, "May you

  bury me."

        Love's how the ten-year

  widow speaks of her buried

  husband in the present tense.

Love lets the man with one leg

  and seven children envy no man

  living and none dead.

             Love

  leaves no one alone but, oh,

  lonely, lonelier, loneliest

  at midnight in another country.

Love is jealousy's mother

  and father.

       Love's how death

  creates a different nearness

  but kills nothing.

             Love

  makes lovers rise from each

  loving wanting more.

                    Love

  says impossibility's possible

  always.

       Love saddens glad

  days for no bad reason.

Love gladdens sad days

  for no good reason.

                        Love

  mocks equivalence.

           Love is.

Love… that's what's being lived out in "Away from Her". Aubrey is taken out of Meadowlake by his wife, Marion … for financial reasons, and maybe because she wasn't all that keen on her husband falling in love with Fiona. Hard to know, exactly. But when Aubrey leaves, Fiona is heartbroken, and slips into depression. And here's where you see grace working with Grant. In order to restore wife's spirits, Grant is willing to find a way to a bring Aubrey back into her life. He talks to Marion, hoping to change her mind; convincing her to let him to at least take Aubrey for a visit. The spectacle of Grant's love, this beam of light emerging from a threatening darkness… this is healing to watch. Of course there are tears; this is not a sentimental film - but even as the tears bear witness to the pain of it all, they also announce that in the end, as in our beginning, there can still be love.

Remember what John said, in today's Scripture reading? - "Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love…. If we love one another, God lives in us, and God's love is perfected in us."

Now, the film, "Away from Her" does not directly raise the God question, but that's what's interesting about bringing the film into conversation with the Christian story. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to magically introduce a happy ever after ending; this is not an attempt to suddenly add "heaven" as an answer to the pain of it all. But it is to say that there is a greater reality within which this story can be experienced. Let me use another poem to get a handle on that -"Let Evening Come". It was written by Jane Kenyon, someone who's had to struggle with what life threw at her… frequent bouts of depression, her husband's cancer… and yet….

Let the light of late afternoon

shine through chinks in the barn, moving

up the bales as the sun moves down.

 

Let the cricket take up chafing

as a woman takes up her needles

and her yarn. Let evening come.

 

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned

in long grass. Let the stars appear

and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.

Let the wind die down. Let the shed

go black inside. Let evening come.

 

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop

in the oats, to air in the lung

let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't

be afraid. God does not leave us

comfortless, so let evening come.

"God does not leave us comfortless." I read an excerpt from interview with Jane Kenyon, where Bill Moyers asks her, "Do you still believe what that poem expresses, given Don's [your husband's] cancer and your own illness? "Yes," Kenyon replied. "There are things in this life we must endure which are all but unendurable and yet I feel there is a great goodness. Why, when there could have been nothing, is there something? This is a great mystery. How, where there could have been nothing, does it happen that there is love, kindness and beauty?"

A line from Paul's letter to the Christians in Rome captures for me a powerful sense of that comfort Kenyon is talking about : "…in all things God works for good…" Not that all things are good. Some of them are pretty terrible. Like Alzheimer's. Nevertheless, in every moment, in every situation, God is involved, working to bring about the best possibility … to bring about more love, kindness and beauty. It's a two part movement: our decisions and actions, absolutely; but also, I believe that in everything that life brings our way there is a holy invitation… a little bit of grace that asks for our response, that little bit of the Spirit, that strengthens and enlivens our ability to choose love. Every decision, every action carries consequences that ripple out in huge circles; and when our choices enable love, kindness and beauty to grow, then this brings pleasure to God. And when we choose to turn away for these possibilities, when we live only with anger and do not move beyond, when hurt, jealousy, fear and revenge prevent us from choosing love, then not only are we lessened, but the world is also diminished, and God suffers.

Further, I do not believe that the journey ends with death. And no, this is not a "beam me up Scotty" rescue moment. I mean, if we wanted to have Fiona in heaven, what moment would we choose… when her memories have been stolen by Alzheimers? before she met Grant? twenty years earlier, when Grant was having an affair with one of his students? So here's another image for you… what if our comfort comes from trusting that we are all held in the memory of God? Every moment… the good ones, and the hard ones, the joy and the terror, our anger and our loving… all of this is held in God's eternal memory.

The movie's final scene… surely God was present. Grant has wheeled Aubrey up to Fiona's room, and goes in to prepare her: "I have a surprise for you, Fiona." But she remains nonplussed, even when Grant asks, "Do you remember Aubrey?" "Names elude me," she replies, but she looks at Grant, and says, "I remember you reading to me… you were trying to make me feel better. You tried so hard. You are a very loving man, and I am a very lucky woman." And then she stands and faces him, and puts her hands gently upon his ears, and with eyes so wide open, she says softly, "Oh you could have driven away, without a care in the world; you could have forsook me." And then a brief pause… a halting recognition of the word chosen… "Forsooken me." Then finally, "Forsaken me." And as Grant embraces her, as her head slips to his shoulder, he says gently, "Not a chance." And that moment will be held forever in the memory of God.