Liminal space

Liminal space is a space between spaces.  Perhaps liminal spaces have borders; if they do, we might imagine the liminal as a border, then a space, then another border. 

For example: life, border, liminal space, border, death.  

I don't know--that feels like too many borders, because of course, borders conjure up gates and walls, and even, these days, border patrols and children caged.

I imagine these borders between life and death are porous, the moonlight leaking through.  

My dear friend Robin is in a liminal space right now.  She has been in hospice care for some time.  I visited her--really my family visited her, on different occasions.  Zoe brought her doodle puppy to meet Robin--Robin's daughter Jenny has a doodle puppy too, and then Robin has a stately older doodle, who had a dignified presence the puppies had not grown into.  The dogs tumbled and barked and peed on the floor, and Robin held court.  Avery and Angelo came another time, and Robin plied them with food. She showed up on zoom calls.  Her family surrounded her, with small plates of toast and jam, with other offerings of love.  

And then she quieted.  And then quieted some more.

She is in repose, in her bed, never to get up again, quiet, breathing, being held by her loved ones in grace and light.  I miss her--its a kind of anticipatory grieving and grieving all at once. She is not gone. But she is also gone. I have been told that many dying people begin to see their beloved dead relatives and friends inhabiting their rooms, sitting on their beds, ready to accompany and welcome the dying person across that liminal space, across that border.  Dying people often talk about suitcases and tickets and catching the train.

My friend Alice recently gave me a gift.  She was musing about the fifth anniversary of her cancer diagnosis, how she is taking this auspicious (inauspicious?) occasion to think about what she will do in the next five years of her life.  She had this expectant clarity about the next five years, which is not to say that she is a fortune teller, but that she is fully in this life, not occupying a liminal space at all, and she has plans.  She is going to start by unpacking some boxes that have been lurking around--we all have them, literally or metaphorically.

I just passed my four year anniversary of my diagnosis this summer--quelle joie.  As you know, I don't have a bucket list, but an anti-bucket list, which was tested sorely last week when Elijah asked to go to Chuck E. Cheese several times, after seeing an old photo of him playing in the arcade with some friends (to be clear, I did not take him that time, either).  Elijah has been so intensely nervous about returning to school that I almost gave in, wanting to give him something good.  

Alice did turn an intentionality switch on in me. Or reminded me of the power of intentionality.  It's not so much as stop to smell the roses. [That phrase has been emptied out of meaning through overuse, but think instead of stopping to notice the specificity of your surroundings--for me, the green is so lush these days, a statement about climate change, an antonym to the fiery, dehydrated West.] It's something about building in a pause before I begin to knead the bread, knit the sweater, walk the dog, do mathematics with the twins, call my daughters, buy the gift for my son's thirtieth birthday (the mind trembles), text my second son to ask him to play Roblox with anxious Eli, read the letter from Zoe, water the plants Avery and Angelo planted, feed the beta fish who come expectantly to the edge of the tank, hold Kyle's hand tightly in the night when my legs and arms and hands cramp up from the medicine, feed my father pie, talk about books with my mother, curl up next to Asher on the couch in the morning, sink into the hot bath--steaming with eucalyptus soaking salts, listen to the distant thunder, comfort the dog through the close thunder, talk to my sister about the children, and again, about the children, as they build their versions of the world, embrace my brother's wife in the kitchen, eat the grapenut ice cream, you get it, you get it, you get it.

I suppose that pause is a liminal space too.  Mindfulness has become corporatized.  You can be something like a mindfulness manager.  But that pause, that mindfulness before the plunge, that liminal space between doing and knowing you are doing, is what I hope to dwell in during the next four years.  Or four months.  Or four minutes.  

Elijah had a dark night of the soul for a nine-year-old recently.  He was asking about the meaning of life, and what happens after you die.  Scientists have looked at every organ in our bodies and there is no place where the soul is.  Scientists have looked at every inch of the universe and there is no heaven.  I tried to comfort him, but he will have to answer these questions for himself if he is to find abiding comfort.  

I did tell him that I know that scientists (who were getting all the fanfare in our conversation) have determined there are many, many more colors in the universe to be seen, but we are able to only see certain colors because of the physical limitations of the human eye.  The next morning, Asher was walking around looking at things in his swim goggles as one does.  He noticed that the surface of our refrigerator (which is deluxe, because Kyle, and displays the time and the weather and your grocery list and an array of photos and Spotify and who knows what else, but suffice it to say it's not an ordinary fridge surface with a magnet with the phone number for pizza on it) showed an array of colors when you looked at it through swim goggles.  I looked too and it was kind of like the colors at the edge of an oil slick.  Elijah inspected it and said, with joy, "I can see a new color!"

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The boys got off the bus today after their first day of school, full of talk of lava lamps and seven frogs the size of boulders, skimpy hamburgers, and foursquare.  Did you know the kids these days play a version of tag called "Infection"? Go figure.

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There is a traditional Ojibwe belief that supposes that when someone dies, they spend four days walking westward to the place where the soul dwells after death.  During that time, if that spirit becomes lonely, she may take someone along with her.  Small children and babies are especially vulnerable to this taking--this makes sense to me because are they not us at our most fragile--tradition holds that to smudge charcoal on children's foreheads protects them from these wandering spirits because the charcoal blurs the face and the spirit does not recognize the person.

Three summers ago, Robin and I went to Kimball Farms in Carlisle and sat at a picnic table in the shade and shared grapenut sundaes with hot fudge and stories.  We made a pact that neither of us would leave the other behind by dying.  We knew the promise was nonsense and logically impossible to keep, but we made it.  I want nothing more than this life--I am greedy for it--but the idea of paddling down the river with Robin in the same canoe is powerful.  I won't smudge my forehead.  Robin, I am just behind you, beyond the river's curve. In the space between, I will look for new colors in my swim goggles.