Washed

 

On the night before he was arrested, Jesus washed the feet of his disciples.  It was an act of great humility, love and care.  In this tender act, he demonstrated to his disciples what it meant to be a teacher, one who guides others with deference, earthiness, mercy.  Jesus also allowed his own feet to be washed.  Six days before his death, he allowed Mary, Martha’s sister, to wash his feet with the most expensive of perfumed oils.  Judas had objected saying that all that money could have been used to feed the poor.  My understanding of what Jesus told him is that while the poor need our care, we also must take care of ourselves so that our work in the world, our love, care, social justice, is integrated with the innermostself, the soul.  With that intimacy with the soul our movements and actions in the world integration will embody both integrity and humility. 

As Mary prepared Jesus’ feet for his death, I imagine her tears flowing onto them giving him some love and strength for his arduous, impossible journey, the fragrance of the perfume lingering long after as a reminder.  Surely it would have been the case that some part of him remained with her through the portal opened between them in that exchange of love and care and that remained even after separation, even after death.  

When my father was dying, I massaged his feet with a fragrant cream.  After a major stroke, he could no longer speak, move on his own, focus his eyes. The doctors had just removed the breathing tube and the room had become quiet. My father seemed more relaxed but not completely.  His lips moved as if he had something to say but he made no words.  I wondered what he wanted to say to us.  Was it something about how he was feeling, to say goodbye, to tell us something about where he was going? When he opened his hazel eyes, they would look briefly into my hazel ones before they started to roam, around my face, his body, the room.  They wandered from object to object, face to face, without landing.  He would raise his hand like a gesture made in speech.  When it caught his wandering eye, he looked at it like it was something strange and novel. 

I wanted desperately to reach him, to know if he was in in pain or afraid. I wanted to comfort him, to let him know we were with him. I lay my hands over his heart, I stroked his hands. Then, I took up the cream, reached under the thin hospital sheets and began to rub his feet.  They were cold but soft. Their shape like a homecoming so familiar to me.  His long-crooked toes and strong smooth arches that made them look like a feet of a much younger man.  Those so familiar feet I had seen my whole life, pressing into the soft sand by the lake or the ocean, slipping into socks and polished shoes, making wet imprints on the floor after a shower. I had followed my father’s feet into the water when he taught me to swim, up the steep hill for sledding and skiing, across the tennis court and softball diamond.  I sat next to them on the sofa watching Saturday night TV and the hard church pews on Sunday morning. 

The strokes began in March the year my daughter turned 10.  They were so small that we did not know that anything had happen.  He might be confused for a moment, forget where he was suddenly, stop speaking midsentence. It was only after the larger one came and he passed out that my mother took him to the emergency room.  After a few days, he was moved to a rehabilitation center for a few weeks until he was able to move well enough to go home again.  

It was during the time he was in rehab that my parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.  They had a big celebration planned for friends and family.  Instead, my father gave my mother a gift card telling her he was sorry he ended up here and that they had to cancel the party. I sat beside them that day and felt the sadness of the moment.  I was overcome with a tenderness for them both that I had not felt so deeply before. Instead of a party on his anniversary, he did his occupational therapy reaching with one arm than another for a box on the shelf, walking done the corridor with an assistant holding a belt around his waist for support, standing up and sitting down into his wheelchair.  My mother and I tucked him into bed that evening for his dinner of roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans and chocolate pudding before heading back to their house. 

He was home only a week when he collapsed in the bathroom from another stroke.  My mother couldn’t lift him and called the ambulance.  They carried him down from the second floor in a narrow wheel chair and drove him back to the hospital.  His feet never carried him up the steps into that house again. The major stroke that would kill him came a few days later. 

I don’t remember the last conversation I had with my father.  I imagine it had been after he got home from the rehab center and before the final stroke.  I would have told him about what Evelyn was up to, how my job was going, what we were planning for the summer. Massaging his feet that afternoon in intensive care was my way of speaking to him in a different kind of way.  One last “Thank you”, “I will be okay”, “I love you”.  And also  “I am sorry for not being kinder and understanding you better.”   

I massaged the feet that would never walk the earth again, that were heading now for a different place where I would not be able to follow, my touch reaching for connection, comfort, that portal of love that does not leave us after death.