Easter Triduum (Part 1): Passion

Today is Good Friday, the day on which we remember the passion and death of Jesus Christ, and I’ve been thinking a lot about the use of this word “passion” to describe the suffering that Christ endured. It seems so archaic, given our colloquial use of the word “passion” as something about which we feel love, excitement or commitment. But is it really so strange to make that leap to understand that we, more often than not, will choose to work or to suffer for our passions?

Today, for example, I cannot stop thinking about Lizzy’s birth. Before ever I gave birth to her, I was passionate about motherhood, and it was this passion that carried me through the enormous work and suffering of a 24-hour, unmedicated, active labor after a week’s worth of mentally and physically exhausting prodromal labor. And it was this suffering that I encountered during her birth that eventually led me to the nightmare that made me afraid of death for the first time.

Nothing particularly special happened in this nightmare other than the fact that I knew I was going to die and the clock was inevitably ticking down on my life. I faced this realization at first with a weary acceptance and then with a blind panic born of terror of the unknown. When it finally occurred to me that death was the door to everything that was utterly and implacably unknown to my entire frame of knowledge and consciousness, my dreaming mind rebelled for everything I was worth and I fought fiercely to find a chance of living through my dream-death diagnosis.

Later, my waking self mentally resolved this fear by saying that I was only so afraid of death because I had just had a baby and still had so much of life left to live. I comforted myself by saying that when I was old and tired, I would no longer fear death in so crippling and nagging a way. Despite my mental gymnastics, this fear of death has remained with me.

I think it started because I came closer to death in Lizzy’s birth than I ever had before. There is a deep similarity between birth and death that is hard to explain because few, if any, of us can articulate memories of our births and none of us can return to recount our experiences of death. It makes sense, however, that the doors to life, both at the beginning and at the end, would share some likenesses. And those people who minister to the birthing as well as to the dying can testify to those similarities.

I was there through every second of Lizzy’s birth, and I held her still and swollen body through every second of her death. I can confirm that passion was present in both experiences. It was my passion for my daughter that first brought her into being, and that passion only strengthened and grew as her beautiful life began to unfold. And it was that passion, too, that became so strong and so pure upon the moment of her death that it took on the form of immortality.

And that’s the whole point, isn’t it? The point of Easter? Suffering, passion, and death carry something inside of them that is transformative and life-bearing. There are no ways in which I can measure how Lizzy’s death has transformed my passion for my daughters and for motherhood itself. They are truly too numerous to count.

This is not to say that Lizzy’s death was in any way “worth” any positive outcome that has occurred directly because of it. There will never be any “worth” or any choice as regards Lizzy’s death, because, to this day, if I could save her life by giving mine and not sacrificing Cecilia’s in the bargain, I would without thinking twice. There is next to nothing I would not do if I could go back and somehow save Lizzy’s life. Her death will never be “worth” any outcome. Instead, I can only stand back and watch in awe as flowers grow out of the wasteland of my grief.

Lizzy brought beauty, light, and life to everyone and everything around her. When you lose someone like that, it is hard to believe that the sun can still shine or grass can still grow or people can still be kind. But if you allow it to go deeper than this, you start to wonder if Lizzy’s death didn’t in fact destroy beauty, light, and life, but rather made beauty boundless, light blinding, and life undying? Isn’t there an argument to be made that Lizzy’s ability to love has just become unlimited? Hasn’t her capacity to radiate light just taken on a superhero’s dimensions?

I think the answer is yes. I see it play out in my life: in how I mother Cecilia, in how I treat my family, in how I now think about my own death. And thus the prayer with which Cecilia and I begin and end every day:

St. Elizabeth of the Springtime, pray for us. Stay with us always, and one day, lead us home to heaven with you. Lizzy, be our light. Teach us to be kind, generous, just, patient, and good. Show us how to live; show us how to die; show us how to be human. Never leave us.

I pray to make the days pass, to make Cecilia grow and to help fill the emptiness that will never leave me. In my weaker moments, I think I still fear my own death, but more often than not, I see my death now as a door to Lizzy. I think that when it finally comes down to it, there will be less to fear because my fear was predicated on the total unknowing-ness of death. But, now, death contains someone who I didn’t just know or love, but someone who is the source and center of my love, my passion, and my hope.

I think that when death’s door finally opens for me, I’ll see Lizzy dancing on the other side, spinning in circles of light and waiting to take my hand. All that is left between then and now is what I can manage to make of the life that remains for Cecilia and in memory of Lizzy. And I think that the more of this work that is accomplished–however long I live–the more ready I will be to walk through death’s door, fearless and passionate and willing to be blinded by Lizzy’s smile.