Footprints in the Sand

It’s exhausting to wait. There is so much energy we expend in the waiting, the holding of breath, the not knowing, but yet knowing.  Simply the counting of the minutes until....

We have been waiting, my husband and I, with a dear friend who was dying.  Waiting with his wife and family and friends. Waiting through the nearly four years since his diagnosis; the waiting for treatment and news; the waiting for a worn-out body to respond. The waiting for diagnosis, prognosis, verdict, decision. It saps the strength, rendering one limp with the suppressed emotions and repressed fears of watching and waiting in a cloud of unknowing (to paraphrase an ancient, unknown author).

There are many who do not do well in such waiting; they are impatient for news; anxious for results; eager for movement forward - but sometimes? There is no news, no result, no movement worth noting. We are sometimes forced to sit and wait. Wait and see. Sometimes, we have no choice.

Sometimes the waiting fills you up so full, there’s no room within for anything else.  The routine of our days, the ordinary warp and woof of life’s fabric changes into spectral shapes that have no definition, yet somehow feel so large you can’t breathe. The waiting becomes bigger than the whole, larger than life, heavy, languid - as oppressive as a hot and humid summer’s day in August, suffocating and inescapable.

The waiting can be so hard.

And yet, there is joy in the waiting, if we but look beyond the brittle bones and jutting jaw of our beloved - beyond to the soul-light that still shines forth from their eyes with each breath. There is joy in the clasped hands that share comfort and strength. There is joy in the whispered words filled with tears and shared memories of sweet days that once flowed with sunshine and ice cream and laughter. There is joy in the giggles that bubble forth in the private humor shared by friends and family, stories weaving together the memories that will continue well beyond the waiting, into the eternal.

There is also honor in the waiting for those final moments to arrive. It’s not easy, but it is an honorable act of love and kindness to watch with that one who is getting ready to step into a new reality. I have shared that journey with many, as family member and friend. The waiting is hard, but there is so much joy to be found in taking the time to be present with the one who is moving into a new realm of reality. There is joy in having given that beloved one the best of who we are in those moments when they mean the most, in a time that shrinks ever more into a pinpoint of time, a sparkle of light.

And there is, without doubt, a shared joy in the waiting with the beloved one who will be left behind. No one can imagine what that journey is like until it is walked with bone and sinew through the miasma of that experience. No one can know the heartbreak of that loss. But even in the not knowing, the least we can do is watch and wait with them, holding their hands as well, weaving with them the memories that will have to suffice in the time that comes after the waiting. It is hard to be present, and say nothing, but simply sit still to share the painful truths that swirl about. Hard, yes. Bittersweet, yes. But oh! The wonder of that hard, bittersweet joy.

Waiting is hard, but it is not forever. Our friend ended his waiting, and passed a couple of days ago. He’s moved on in his journey to a place without pain or heartache. For those of us who believe that this life is but a stepping stone to a better reality, it is a mixed blessing; we rejoice with our friend that he is released from his pain and his own hell of waiting; and yet we mourn for what we’ve lost, for the shared times that will be no more. The waiting is over, and yet upon reflection, we see that it was better to have waited with them, than not to have been with them at all.

Waiting is like those footprints in the sand. They appear as deep and hard impressions when we walk the journey, cutting knife-like into our hearts; deep imprints of our walk, bearing up in the shifting sand of the waiting. But in the end, it is those memories of the joy in a shared experience of that love-waiting that remains, the joy of wave and sand and ocean breeze of a life well lived - and selflessly shared.