The 13th Warrior is a movie from 1999 that is pretty hokey but I love it anyway. In one scene a Viking hands Antonio Banderas a sword, and Antonio protests, "I cannot lift this!"
Herger the Joyous replies, "Get stronger."
Even when just working out you know if it is easy, you aren't getting stronger.
At the wake for my brother George, I looked at my brother Robert and said, "I don't think I can do this" and he nodded and said, "You will because you have to."
That was almost 17 years ago.
I have, indeed, gotten stronger.
Most of the people who will read this know that my dear friend, Hope, is in hospice. Every time I speak with her or visit her, the brain cancer has taken more of her away from us. Never in my nightmares would I have believed this vibrant, adventurous, joy-filled woman of God with her cheerful chatter and odd sense of humor and occasionally-irritating giggle would be trapped in a body that cannot do any of the things her heart longs to do. She has lost most of her sight, her language skills, and now, her hearing. The woman who climbed the Great Wall and the Pyramids moves slowly, with a walker.
Her faith is like a rock. She is at peace and more than ready to go Home. She is impatient.
Yet, even in the midst of her transition, she looks me in the eye and says, "I don't cry until I think of leaving all of you behind. I will miss you so."
So we talk about Heaven, and how all of her memories will be restored, and she will see all of the grand adventures she has had as if she were unwrapping Christmas gifts. And we agree that Heaven will smell like fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies and everything feels warm and cuddly.
And we talk about all of the people who love her who will be there to greet her, and how in the blink of an eye, we will all be together again -without heartache or pain or bad hair days. There is no chemo in Heaven, no Gamma knives, no insidious diseases.
And we will cry, because we always cry, and we always have cried, even at Hallmark movies and coffee commercials and when I graduated from law school and when she got married and when she sat with me at 5AM in Wesselman Park the day of my mom's funeral and somewhere in the middle of New Mexico when all the loss of that year hit me hard, and when the first doctor said Brain Cancer, and when the last one shook his head in sorrow.
And at every moment when I look at her and think, "I cannot do this" I know that lie for what it is -because I am NOT doing this. Hope is doing this, and God is giving every one of us the strength to walk with her, and the gratitude to be so very blessed by her, and the love which will carry our hearts with her forever.
