Jim Crocker-Lakness was a friend who made me feel as if I were his equal. Last summer we began to meet every Monday for lunch at one o’clock. We were planning to present a class on communication together by combining his many years of teaching about this subject at the college level with my several years of studying Nonviolent Communication with a practice group in Clifton. We were still ironing out how to do this when Jim took ill and ended up in the hospital for the last time. What we Quakers call Way seems to have closed, but I am hopeful it will open up again somehow.
Most everyone at Cincinnati Friends knew that Jim and his wife Jean had been struggling with declining health for the past few years. Besides having an incurable blood cancer, Jim suffered multiple aches and pains from many breaking and broken-down body parts. His increasingly difficult journey from the parking lot to just inside our Meetinghouse became a real chore for him and a concern for us as well. While his health was sliding down, Jim also had to find competent professional care for Jean. He sold their house and moved to various senior living facilities. Whenever he got settled in one place it seemed the situation would change and he had to move again.
During all of this, Jim kept moving, even as he struggled to move at all. This phase of Jim’s life speaks to me about living through every situation of brokenness as gracefully as possible, and the notion of grace reminds me of how much Jim loved folk dancing. He eventually had to let go of that part of his life along with so many other things. How awful that time strains and breaks apart the smoothness we had in our youth (or, rather, we took for granted in our youth!) “How to be alive in the midst of such brokenness?” This was a query Jim tackled for us by his living it out every day in such a matter-of-fact way.
The last time I talked to Jim was by phone and we decided to try to finish our conversation later because his phone kept cutting in and out. His final demise seemed like an interruption of a beautiful conversation. In my experience, however, nothing really good in life is ever interrupted forever. Our loves and friendships from the past can continue in us as we move forward. The hole in our heart can lead to wholeness and to an enlarged sense of being which is also known as holiness. I think my friend Jeff would agree that this lunch-for-two relationship still pervades and inspires. “That of God” keeps flowing out of such with new beauties that we can never predict. For this I am grateful.
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A friend of mine sent me this recently, and it is appropriate to share it in this context:
ReplyDelete"When the physical body stops healing the spiritual body can begin to expand. These days I find myself in an old body unable to do things I used to do, yet at the same time feeling more contentment, gratitude, and wisdom than ever before."