Comfort to Spare (XVI--finis)

Oddly enough, the second to last meditation in Comfort to Spare sounds a bit like Martin Luther King. Van Baalen does not simply suggest biblical truth; he hammers it home in waves of affirmation determined to remember hope: We know. . .We know. . .We know. . .We know. . ." Four paragraphs in a row repeat the line before this one-sentence paragraph: "We know. We know. WE KNOW!" Relentless. Van Baalen simply will not abide fear or hesitation. Like God's love, he'd almost certainly say.

Does all of this consolation work? Did it help? It is possible this thoughtful gift from a shepherd to his suffering flock was a God-sent? Comfort to Spare has been out of print for years, I'm sure. Who can know? But what I've been thinking about is far more specific--whether the pastor's advice to grieving parents helped my grandparents, given what I know of them.  

Combined with the prayers he writes out in the meditations, then commands the grieving parents to read with him, I can't help but believe it was. From the cold shock of that first meditation ("If thou faint in the day of adversity, Thy strength is small') to the fierce determinations in later chapter, Van Baalen unloads God's love and his divine purpose into a reader's soul. Your mourning will turn to dancing, he tells them. We know that. Such are God's promises. WE KNOW. All this darkness notwithstanding, believers KNOW our Redeemer will not leave them outside the radiance of His love and grace. 

Among the Lakota, I'm told, traditional culture had its own way of dealing with grief. When a loved one died, demonstrations of grief, no matter how outlandish or outrageous, were tolerated. Grief had no limits or bounds. A grieving spouse was allowed to be inconsolable, to leave the band and wander through the trees or open prairie grasses, to cut herself, to chant and scream her grief. But when some set time period ended--maybe three or four days--the grief had to stop. The band needed its people to be well. Some few days of grace was perfectly fitting, but then, no more, none.

Van Baalen is not that abrupt, but his remedy--the unconditional love of God, is as absolute. Van Baalen does not enable. He won't allow excess. His faith insists precious children have already found themselves in bliss, enclosed in the arms of their Saviour's love. WE KNOW that, he says, time and time again. Now believe it.

That second-to-last meditation begins with Romans 8:28: "And we know that to them that love God all things work together for good, even to them that are called according to his purpose." And right there, in the book, there's a note penciled in: "Text used in Gertrude's funeral sermon." 

I'd love to believe the handwriting isn't the same as what I found inside the front cover because I'd like to believe the note is Grandpa's penmanship. I don't think Grandma Dirkse would refer to her daughter as "Gertrude." My mother referred to her as "Gert," and for some reason, to me she's "Aunt Gertie." Her father, in his own deep grief, would have more specifically reached for her baptized name.

But there's more. Rev. Van Baalen finishes the book with a familiar proverb: "Only one life 't'will soon be past, only what's done for Christ will last." And finally, "To me, to live is Christ."

I saw that line every day of my childhood, even when I wasn’t looking to read it or even glance its way. An old plaque in some baroque calligraphy featured that line and hung from the wall beside a library in a hallway upstairs.

What’s scribbled in beside those words on the final page of the book makes this thin, old volume of Van Baalen meds priceless. “Plaque on her wall selected by her.” Same handwriting as the line indicating the text of her funeral service. Same handwriting--Grandpa's handwriting.

I didn't want to like Comfort to Spare. I thought it would be syrupy. It is not. It doesn't countenance sentimentality. It pushes and argues and it creates prayers, one after another, for grief-stricken people who can't raise their head or hands to God. It's tough.

I want those two scribbled in notes to have been written by Grandpa Dirkse. I'd like to believe he found some of it aimed directly at dour believers like him, men and women given to fretting through bouts of anxiety down in the depth of their sins. I'd like to believe my grandma liked the book because she would have given silent approval to the almost bare-knuckled consolation.

I came heir to a ton of my parents’ things from their succession of slimdowns, sepia-toned pictures of great-grandparents no one else in the family have, I’m sure, old bills and receipts. I had my dad’s wedding ring, but gave it to my son when, at the wedding, his ring-bearer couldn’t find the one his wife had planned to put on his finger. A triangular box right in front of me holds the American flag given to us, his family, at his graveside.

I don't have the plaque Grandpa says Gertrude chose for her wall. I doubt my mother would have tossed it. Maybe one of my sisters has it. When I read what Grandpa scribbled on Comfort to Spare's last page, beside that old proverb, I couldn't help thinking the plaque upstairs in the house where I grew up may have been the very one Aunt Gertie chose for her very own.

I wish I had known all of that when I was a kid. It took me three-quarters of a century to identify what was all being said in those fancy raised lines on thick piece of plaster paris.

Maybe it’s gone, broken and tossed. My sisters tell me they don't have it. It broke maybe, but even if it didn't, it wouldn’t be worth a dime.

Still, today I can’t help wishing I had it. And that's silly of me really because I do. I've come heir to the faith that animated all of them--parents and grandparents. When I see plaques like the one once ours, I can't help but think I still own it, and that it still owns me.

Somewhere close, I can't help but believe, it will always be there.