Sunday's on the Way

Pre- Easter week didn’t go
According to plan
In fact
Up until 24 hours ago
I forgot about it completely

Harried and hurried and ill

What did resurrection have to do with me 

Conquering Death
And hell
And the Grave

When I have been so defeated

We returned from a fabulous weekend in Miami
Our first without any kids
SINCE WE HAD ATHENA

A weekend of love and bliss and sunshine

To frigid
Unforgiving
Gentrified
Nashville 

Waiting for our ride at BNA
I felt a scratch in my throat
A slow creeping ache all over

“I’m getting the fucking flu…right this minute.”
I thought to myself 

Baby Daddy went straight from the airport
 To a gig

By the time I picked up the girls
Got everyone home
Unloaded and unpacked
In bed and back to semi-normal

My temperature was such
That if I hadn’t been so exhausted
And had two sleeping children
I would’ve driven myself to the ER

When Leroy arrived home
I croaked at him from under fourteen blankets
“I’m sick. Really really sick.”
Then I think I cried and passed out

He brought me some hot tea
Which in my eagerness
I promptly inhaled and scalded my mouth so badly
I couldn’t  taste anything for three days
And my lips blistered

Throw in all the mucus on God’s earth
Night sweats that soaked through the sheets

And you have a fairly miserable excuse for a Kathryn

But Leroy

Leroy is so good

Good like the morning

Like in his heart
Down in the depths of his sternum somewhere
Goodness is written on his very bones

He took over with the girls
Gave me kisses
Made the breakfasts and changed the diapers
Took good care of me and the girls and let me sleep

In addition to working all his gigs
And hustling all his hustle

I’m the luckiest girl to have him

But for all my blessings

WHICH ARE MANY

Easter
Is when I miss my Mother the most
You would think it would be Christmas
But Easter wins

And I hide it a lot

But still
After all this time
It resonates through me
“Why is she gone? 
Why my Mother?
Why?
Why?
Why?”

I think in my fevered delirium
I may have even cried out for her

In my sleep

My Mother sang in church
A lot
Every Easter Sunday that I can remember
During my young life

High clear ethereal soprano
Ringing joyously through the crowd
Through the very walls around her

People would always stand 

While she repeated with irrepressible gladness

“It is finished! He has done it! Life conquers death. 
Jesus Christ, has won it!”

Or the Second Chapter of Acts version
Of a much beloved Keith Green song

“Hear the bells ringing, they’re singing, that we can be born again!
Hear the bells ringing they’re singing,
 Christ is risen from the dead!”

My Mother's life was
In so many ways
An Easter story

Until it wasn’t

 I was there when she died
She didn’t get back up
They zipped her body into a dark plastic bag
Carried her out the front door
Like furniture going to the Goodwill

And something small
Died in me
When I saw that

Something that didn’t live again
For a very long time

“We don’t always conquer”

Death stretched out it’s hand
And we were powerless

But what is it 

That the Bible says

Death has lost it's victory
It’s sting

If you believe in Eternity 

And I do

I really really do

I don’t know how you can’t

How you can you live in a world where some one
Takes another person’s daughter
Down into a submarine

And dismembers them
Like she meant nothing
Like she was no one’s

Like she was never some Mother’s
Reason for never sleeping
The reason their breath was snatched away
Whenever she smiled

Someone’s precious baby
That they nursed
Wiped their nose
Picked out Easter dresses for

Someone
Destroyed her
Took her apart and discarded her 

When in fact
She was something sacred

How can you live in a world like that 

Without eternity
Without any palpable hope
To make anything
Worth anything

At any rate
I guess my long awaited point is

Easter isn’t about just the resurrection
It’s about the Friday before
When everything went to shit

When things got really fucked up

When all hope was blotted out
The sky went black
And all your best friends
Don’t know you anymore

I only had the flu
A scalded mouth
And three days of sickness 

And tonight

Just when I was feeling stronger

A three year old who fought bedtime for a full two hours

If you’re a parent
You can understand
A bedtime gone awry
Is nothing to sneeze at

I’m supposed to be stuffing Easter baskets
I’m supposed to be folding clothes
Leaving a love note
Killing those goddamn ants
Brushing my teeth
Having five minutes to be alone
And tweeze my eyebrows 

Instead
My toddler
Athena
Resisted in every way she knew how

I threatened and I disciplined
I blustered and pleaded
Did everything short of
Setting her Easter basket on fire in front of her

Still

She resisted

Finally 

As I sat in the kitchen
With my head in my hands
Thinking of my Mother
And of another Mother
Another million Mothers and Fathers
Whose daughters have been butchered
Of all the inconceivable darkness
That has befallen this wretched world
Since the fall of man

Suddenly
While I am sinking

I hear my little girl speaking softly to me from her room

She is saying

“Mommy, give me a hug please.”

And she’s repeating it over and over again

Making sure to pronounce every syllable perfectly
So that I will hear
So that she get’s it just right
No chance of being misunderstood
So that I will come

With tears collecting in my eyelids
And a small amount of shame in my heart
I walk to her room

She stands on the bed and says

“Here Mommy, 
just hold me so tight.”

Her long limbs wrap around me
Her crazy ass disheveled hair
Falls into my face

For a few minutes
She is that tiny tiny stranger
Staring up at me in the hospital
After they said I would never have children

She is victory
She is everything
All the hope in darkness 

Life
Conquering
Death

Staring up at me
With impossibly wide eyes
While the monitors beep in the back ground
While I wonder what the hell I ever did right in my life
To deserve her
Or her glorious sister
That was to follow

I lay her down
She finally sleeps

I don’t cry

Get into the wine

Sit down to write this

Easter Morning
Means everything

IT MEANS EVERYTHING

It means we can keep going
When going seems impossible

It means when our friends sell us for silver
When our Fathers
Turn their backs

When the world says
Our sacrifice is a crock of shit
For fools and idiots 

When the stone closes over the only exit

Easter means

We can be sure

It will roll away again

What was left for death and sorrow and nothingness
Will be resurrected
Will be born again

Will march triumphantly from it’s grave
And startle the shit out of everyone 

It will rise like the sun on Easter Morning
Like an Iris
Out of the cold earth

Like a baby
They said would never be

“Oh grave, where is thy victory?
Oh death, where is thy sting?”

It’s conquered

By our Father’s Son
Who suffered
Literally everything

So that Friday’s crucifixion
Would be ever overcome
By the irreverent life
Of Sunday’s Resurrection

By the hope of eternity
By an unexpected savior
Saying

“Just hold me
 so tight.”

A soon to be
Glad Morning
On an everlasting shore

Where every tear
Will be wiped from our eyes

“ and the Lord himself,
will be our light.”