Farewell, B

When I woke up on the floor of the laundry room after my cardiac arrest, there were lots of things to feel. I felt a slight burn from the strange tube in my right arm. I felt the straps holding my legs to the stretcher on the floor. I felt confusion about the obnoxious mask over my face.

But I also felt something else—cold, wet, irregular—on my feet. I raised my head a bit to see our dog, Bailey, who was perched at the base of the stretcher, happily licking my toes.

That room was a frenzy of emotion—an aunt crying, paramedics organizing a plan, my dad negotiating with them and also talking to me. I had no idea what was happening, only that something major had developed in my health and that it was life-flight serious.

In the chaos, one creature treated me like he always did. One creature was incredibly, hilariously calm in that charged space. Bailey, with the nub of his tail wagging, licked away at my bare feet. He must have been so thrilled that, for the first time, a human did not pull away from his desire to bathe them.

Our family said goodbye to Bailey this week, a beloved husky dog who only moved fast to chase UPS trucks and who greeted every visitor’s car with a happy pee on the tires.

Dogs and cats so quickly transform from young children to adult size. They become constants in the ever-evolving life of a human child. Through adolescence and young adulthood, Bailey’s affection and friendship was a rock through high school breakups and strikeout-heavy baseball games and graduation parties and cardiac arrests.

In pastoral care classes, we are taught that when called into situations of major grief, it is best to simply sit in silent presence with another. Maybe we learn this from our dogs. Maybe that can be the hardest part of losing a canine family member—the one who always would be present with you through whatever is the one missing.

I will always remember Bailey’s bare feet kisses that morning. I hope heaven is a place where all living things can communicate. I’ll tell him thank you. And then I’ll wash his feet, too. 

Thank You Letter

I am holding a saw in my hands. I need to make a relatively small, rectangular cut, but the details must be perfect. If I miss my measurements, this ten week project will be ruined.

Others have already started, so I plug in to my power source and feel the hum of machinery in my hands. With gentle touch, I carve through this inconsistent material, guarding against sharp fragments left behind by the unforgiving blade. 

I turn the corner, and before long there is smoke: It is the smoke of a bone saw meeting the human sternum. 

This is cadaver lab, week 5. Today we open the chest cavity. Today I am asked to saw open the core of another human. 

We are not allowed to know our cadaver’s name. For the first week, I am not even allowed to see her face. To dare to seek this information is too personal. Surely if they hold back her name…surely if they hide her face, I will not wonder about her story. I will not wonder about her living. 

But from day one, I am helpless. I am too curious.

Who are you, stranger, who is laying before me? Can I really understand the physical human without knowing the story of her life? 

For five weeks now, this stranger is what I see when I close my eyes at night.

The images cannot leave me, when I am the very thing I am asked to slowly destroy. 

No one warns you that as you go deeper into this body, you must take parts of this human and throw them away. This is the most difficult thing for me.

But weakness is not acceptable. Not here. I have been warned – thousands of wait-listed predators are lurking in the shadows, seeking out the struggling first year medical students. I am being hunted. And so I blame my tears on the preservative fumes. I carve on.  

Amidst the smoke I surge through the sternum, completing my rectangle. I lift this mass of cartilage and tissue, being careful to avoid the sharply fractured ribs. 

The image below is very strange. Spongy, purple lungs. And a thin white tissue wrapped around a dark center. 

A few more swift moves of the scalpel, and now I am holding this heart in my two hands. Someone is yelling in the background about marking the openings for pulmonary arteries and other things; what they say is nothing to me. I have given in to the story; I cannot separate my emotional wonder of this anatomy in order to learn it.

Have you said thank you to your heart lately? Do you ever stop, rest, and feel your pulse thundering within you? 60 times this very minute, 100,000 times today, 35 million times this year, every single cell in your heart will courageously do its job, and you will live. 

Can you see what I see? This is the face that launched a thousand ships of poems, of songs, of romance. 

Every second, this bundle of fibers and electricity says yes: yes, I will work as hard as you ask. Yes, I will charge oxygen into even the tip of you hand. Yes, I will quicken at the footsteps of the one you love. And yes, when lightning strikes, I will come back to life for you. 

I hold this heart. I start praying. And I walk out the doors and never return. Let the predators attack, let the world tell me I’ve given up six figures and envious white coats. In the cadaver lab valley of dry bones, I have found life again. 

With liberation comes motivation. It’s time to move.

For I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

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This Sunday, 10/11, marks National Coming Out Day. It seems fitting that it falls on a Sunday this year, as my graduate school, Trinity Lutheran Seminary, is in discussion with Equality for Ohio and Reconciling Works to learn about how this community can be purposefully inclusive. As a seminarian who joined the Columbus Gay Men’s Chorus this fall (a mixed group of LGBTQ folks and straight allies), I’ve been having lots of conversation with those who hold both faith and inclusivity as core values of living. 

Many Lutheran churches have gained status as “RIC.” This stands for Reconciling in Christ, a label only given to those communities of faith that have public statements of welcome for those who identify as lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual, or queer. Columbus features a handful of these communities, yet our own seminary has remained voiceless. 

A few students met together to give speech to this silence a few weeks ago; in a small evening gathering, we each told our story of why this matters. Some seminarians identify themselves in these categories and have tasted the bitter rejection of the church, yet love the mission of God too much to abandon faith communities. Others told stories of their great grief that the Christian church started as perhaps the most inclusive community in history where all people were invited to the table; it was a movement for the vulnerable, to “bring good news to the poor and oppressed.” Instead, now many LGBTQ humans have experienced the church as the oppressor. Still others spoke about the need for a seminary to educate and prepare those who are working with youth and young adults who are in the critical process of understanding their sexual identity, as well as speaking about the need to be educated for communication with parents who are perhaps challenged with this intersection of faith and sexuality in their children or in themselves. 

When there are so many loud voices coming from religion that condemn humans based on sexuality, it is Trinity’s time to step up and make a different statement. I had a strange experience of this contrast of voices at this June’s Pride Parade in Columbus. I joined my Columbus church community in marching for inclusion and warm embrace of all people, but along our parade journey we encountered many other groups who proclaimed messages of hate in the name of Christianity. It was a vocal clash of followers of the same one Jesus; this is tragic, and this is reality. For all the extreme hate I heard that day, I also encountered many people who were shocked to see us, but then would enter the parade route to shake our hands and say thank you. 

Of course, the point is that we love everyone, because it’s God’s love, not ours. But on this National Coming Out Day, when a crowd of seminarians gather at my apartment to watch the film Pride and reflect on the role of church as a partner in the equality movement, I hope we can be examples of this love that is always reaching outward, always inviting, always redeeming—to all humanity and creation.