stego
When the time comes to travel home, Riley throws her arms around Opa’s waist, presses her cheek against his chest and sobs. She comes at him from the side, which turns the whole thing into a wonky lean, especially as she tries to shrink her body down to match her vulnerable feelings.
“I think this is the first time anyone has cried over the prospect of leaving me,” he says, with a slight smile.
“I just don’t like leaving you,” she says. Tears roll down her cheeks and wet the front of his shirt. “I wish I could stay here with you, but I can’t.” She keeps saying, “Bye,” weeping as though the word itself stings like a terrible, painful slap, as though the grief of leaving is a thundering wave that knocks her flat and steals her breath, and I keep thinking that if this were to be the last day we get to see each other, at least the blunt, open way she tells him now leaves absolutely no doubt about how she feels.
Opa tells her she has inherited this from Kevin’s mom’s side of the family, that her great grandmother, who hailed from Hungary, always wished all her people lived on the same street the way they did in the old country. I never met that grandmother, but I remember that Kevin’s grandpa on that side used to weep this way when we left him too. I remember the way his wrinkled hands looked, wet with the tears he wiped from his cheeks. He had big eyes, cold blue, like melting floes. Grandpa had survived atrocities I can scarcely imagine. As a young man during the war, he had been taken from his family and nearly died in a Russian work camp. But he never lamented those days out loud, never complained in my hearing about having little or the pains of immigrating or even the way his body failed him as he aged. But he numbered his days, and what he grieved in front of us was being apart.
Teach us to number our days carefully, the Psalmist wrote, so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts (Psalm 90:12). I think that lesson comes later for some of us than maybe it should, but Riley seems to have gotten it in early adulthood, and with it a generous wealth of compassion. Upstairs, in her room at Opa’s, she told me it made her sad to think of Opa there without us; she worried he’d be lonely in the quiet rooms. Immediately I heard an echo of salvific grief, of Jesus articulating his longing to gather the children of Israel “as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings (Luke 13:34).” But they were unwilling, as so often are we, all of us too broken to receive the love that longs to gather and shelter us. Riley longs to gather her people together and keep them with her, and that touches me. It would be easy to argue that she struggles enough just to manage her own challenges, but humble love is also self-forgetful, and in 1 Corinthians, Paul wrote in his famous passage on love that love “bears all things (13:7),” using the Greek word stego, which literally means to place things under a roof. And it was the apostle Peter who urged us to love each other constantly, because “love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8).” Sheltering love buried its roots at creation, when God demonstrated His great love by carefully creating the perfect dwelling place for humanity. God created Eve because “it’s not good for [Adam] to be alone,” and then, covering love came in at the Fall, when God covered Adam and Eve’s nakedness with fig-leaf garments. The most noble of Noah’s sons would one day literally cover Noah’s nakedness and sin by walking into his tent backwards with an animal skin blanket stretched across their shoulders. This love Riley feels—the longing to gather and shelter, to literally to cover us with herself, it’s not naïve or weak, it’s Godly, a reflection of the heart of the Creator.
I reached for her while she wiped away tears, thinking that I have the same longings but not the same transparency, not the same courage in expressing them.
We got to share our Thanksgiving meal with Kevin’s paternal grandparents, who have reached their mid-nineties with clear understanding of what it means to waste away outwardly while experiencing inward renewal. Riley mentioned them too while we were upstairs, saying she wished she could keep them with her, how it hurt her to leave them, articulating the exact longing I felt as I washed dishes in Grandma and Grandpa’s kitchen and as we huddled for a family picture around the hospital bed that now dominates their living room.
Before we left their home, Grandpa gripped my arm, making careful eye contact. “You know our time here is coming to an end,” he said. “I love all of my granddaughters, but I want you to know you’re special.” He was numbering his days; I knew that. “Since the very first day we met, we’ve had a special connection, and I want you to know that I’m proud of that. I’m thankful.”
I nodded, biting my lip against the swell of grief. “I am too, so thankful,” I said. I hugged him, told him that I loved him, that I knew there would never really ever be a goodbye for us. “One day,” I said significantly. “There will always be another time to be together.”
Grandpa has lived through the Great Depression and World War Two. Vietnam happened when he was entering middle age. He grew up in poverty, working hard with the rest of his farming family. Lately, all of his limited energy goes to taking care of Grandma, even though he has his own health problems. “I know this had been a hard season for you,” I told him.
He just smiled, said, “Life is hard, but I am a very blessed man. I signed up for this; this is what we do. We love.” Then he looked at me with eyes that see me, that see where I am, and said, “You’re strong, like an oak.”
Oaks of righteousness, he meant, Isaiah’s “planting to display the Lord’s splendor (61:3).” He wanted to leave me with no doubt.
He wanted to talk about the mistreatment of Middle Eastern women deprived of an education. “That’s something terrible,” he said, shifting the conversation away from himself. We had asked him what’s hard about being so old, what he misses, and his answer had come as a surprise. What he longs for isn’t the energy or activity of his youth; it isn’t relatively pain free days; it isn’t enjoying good food. “Seeing people, being with people,” he’d said, “that’s what I miss.” The ancient Israelites referred to dying as “being gathered to your people,” and Grandpa wants to gather his people, to remain together. I want to shelter him and Grandma, want to go back in their bedroom and pack a suitcase and take them home with me.
I left them desperately wanting to do otherwise, wanting to wet Grandpa’s shirt with my tears as Riley does her Opa now. I watch them, watch Opa stroke Riley’s exposed cheek with his thumb, recognizing these as the gut-wrenching longings with which Christ left heaven in pursuit of us, as the grief of God when sin tore us away from Him. These things we feel, they’re part of God’s story. Stego love, that longing to gather and shelter and bare all things, found its ultimate demonstration on the cross of Christ, in the conquering of death, in the hope of resurrection and eternity. Stego love is the come-quickly longing of Advent, too. It is the love of God, longing to gather up His children and bring us home, longing just always to be with us.
