Honored Travelers

These days, I am escorting an honored traveler. I am escorting her as far as I can.

I’ve done this before. Decades ago, two honored travelers came into this world. but they came from the other direction. Through the membrane between death and life they burst, like magicians appearing in a cloud of smoke. Then, they were the honored ones.

First, my daughter; then, my son. They emerged completely helpless, and their mom and I did everything humanly possible to keep them alive and comfortable as they moved away from that membrane.

Now, some 30-plus years later I am escorting another honored traveler, my mother.

She is traveling through that same membrane, but this time in the opposite direction. As before, my job is to perform the nitty-gritty tasks on this side of the membrane. The feeding, the butt-cleaning, the consoling. This nitty-gritty work is strikingly similar to 30 years ago; so is its purpose, which is to keep the transition true for the traveler.

My kids needed that nitty-gritty work to start them down the path of the living. My mom needs it so that she can cleanly, gracefully, make the transition to the dead.

Obviously different, birth and death; but being the escort is striking similar in both cases. Somehow in both cases, there is a strong connection to what it means to be human. This is what we do, we humans. I find a palpable sense in both cases that the nasty thankless work I am doing is bigger than I am. I can’t really explain it. But I’ve been struck by the similarity of these transitions. When things start getting really out of control, you don’t say screw it I’m out of here. You say ok, I am going to do this. That’s all there is to it.

There just aren’t that many activities where that mind-set ascends so clearly. So, yes, the feeding, the cleaning, the changing; everything; is all ridiculously, amazingly, similar. But even more similar is the feeling I have while I’m actually doing these things. I think in both cases I feel a sense of awe to be escorting an honored traveler.