Learning the meaning of Easter

The Easters of my childhood were, I believe, a pretty typical middle class, American experience. The Easter bunny delivered baskets of goodies while we slept. Hidden in the house, we searched for them when we woke. Occasionally we attended an egg hunt and Easter morning always meant your best dress and an early Sunday church service. Easter dinner was almost always at Mimi and Pop Pops house – ham, pot-luck sides, a cross-shaped cake for my religious family’s celebration of the resurrection and continued candy consumption by the kids as the cousins all ran around on sugar highs.

Holidays were always a good time. They were a distraction from the every day stressors and a reason for the family to gather. The food was always good, the company relaxed and enjoyable and the amount of childhood mirth created a pleasant chaos. I come from a huge Catholic family and each generation has done a good job creating as large and fabulous a generation as their own. When the cousins get together… they’re unstoppable! It’s truly impressive.

Mimi and Pop pop, my father’s parents, were the patriarchs of this empire. So it would only be appropriate that many of my childhood holiday memories occurred in that home. And it would only be appropriate that Mimi would breathe her last breath in the same fashion.

We knew it was coming. Her body had been revealing it’s secret a year before the diagnosis was finally made … stage 4 ovarian cancer. Her 100lb weight loss and weakness now had an explanation and we were given weeks to say good-bye. Weeks turned into months. She made it through Christmas, the birth of a great grand baby, and New year’s. Winter turned into spring. Spring brought with it the rebirth, the reawakening. Easter was approaching. As we prepared for the holiday, it became clear that Mimi’s season was rapidly coming to an end.

Now, as a nurse I can tell you, the most painful experience to witness is death … and when it occurs on a holiday…the bite carries extra venom it seems. For many, the holiday is forever stained and the once joyous traditions are smothered by the painful reminder of loss. Tragic and unexpected losses are of course more earth shattering but even the expected ones hurt.

So what do you do when you, as a mother, are obligated to give your children an Easter but as a granddaughter and a family member your presence is needed at the bedside? How can you save your children from the ruined holiday phenomenon and still honor your ailing grandmother? I’ll tell you what you do, because my family did it …. and they nailed it!

You pack up the baskets and the plastic eggs, the ham and the cross cake pan, the dresses and the mounds of candy…. and then you pack a weekend bag. And you spend your holiday weekend at your Mimi’s house along with everyone else.

The baskets were still hidden. The plastic eggs still stuffed and waiting to be found. The ham was still baked and the pot luck sides prepared with the same love as always, in Mimi’s kitchen. The cross-shaped cake was iced and decorated just as beautifully as before and everyone wore their spring dresses and pastel dress shirts. While the kids searched for plastic eggs, Mimi gasped in the back bedroom. While some explored their baskets, others held their mother’s hand. While some cooked, others served. While some ministered, others rested. While a new baby nursed, an old mother closed her eyes.

Easter flowed through the house all weekend, as did the traffic through Mimi’s bedroom. Like the flow of water over a bed of rocks so was the flow of family and friends at her bedside. A slow and almost chaotic pattern of loved ones, ever-changing, always returning-some brief, others for hours. We sat vigil, told stories, prayed, begged, confessed, laughed and cried. We gathered to sing. We gathered to pray…. always at her bedside, she was never alone. She took her last breath as her son, a priest, performed the daily mass in her room on Easter Monday.

It was a merciful end to a year of suffering. Yet the potential for a stained Easter was still there. There could have been regrets, conflict and fear. It could have been my worst Easter ever. Instead, it has become one of my favorites. No one made an excuse not to come to dinner that year. No one missed the opportunity to say good-bye. A life was celebrated and dignified and loved. The older members of the family got closure and sibling support. And the youngest members learned through observation what it was to rally, to minister, and to love. They learned that holidays are always about the people you love and that being there for those in need doesn’t mean a loss of the things you enjoy. And we were ALL reminded what Easter is really about.

Whether you subscribe to the Christian resurrection of Jesus Christ or the pagan rituals of the Spring Reawakening and Fertility. Easter reminds us that every season has it’s beginning and its end and there is beauty that follows death. May you search even the empty tombs til you find your savior. May you find yourself singing in the presence of death. And when life seems to be handing you a royally shitty hand, I hope you don’t forget that there are still colored eggs stuffed with treats hiding in the tall grasses …. it’s up to you to find them.

I said before, that as a nurse, I can tell you that the most painful experiences in life are those that involve death … but they can also be the most powerful, the most fulfilling and the most healing. When families run and hide from death, when they fight it … it is horrendously painful for everyone present and not present. But when they embrace it and they gather and they celebrate and support … it is so beautiful you can only hope and pray that your own end is met with equal love.