Deborah Goessling, the author of this blog died on Monday October 11th, 2010. Below is a transcript of a talk she gave at a religious retreat. Throughout her funeral services, this speech was always mentioned, so I thought it would be a wonderful way to share her kindness, love, and grace with all of you.
Do you remember what you were doing one month ago on a Saturday morning? Where were you on the last Saturday in February? What were you doing?
I, with my husband, Dan, was at Lakeview Cemetery in Wayland, picking out a burial plot. We were specifically looking at Plot 57 in the corner of the property overlooking the Town Beach. You may wonder why a relatively healthy 56-year-old woman was picking out her resting place. I guess you might call it grace.
How do I define grace? Grace comes from God and dwells in us, it is a gift from God, and grace allows us to be more courageous than we ever thought possible. Grace allows us to slow down and be appreciative; grace helps us be patient and cheerful. Grace guides us in our understanding of our weaknesses and our options for the future. Grace is both an optimist and a realist. Grace is a gift that I have been given in the past few years in abundance.
I have lived a blessed life. The oldest of six children, born into a loving, blue collar family in Hillsdale, New Jersey – my mom always said that we did not have much money, but we sure had a lot of fun!!! I attended St. John the Baptist elementary school and then Immaculate Heart Academy, an all girls’ school. I was the first person in my family to go to college, attending Boston College on a full scholarship. I went off to college with a strong faith nurtured by my high school nuns who no longer wore habits, and theology classes that analyzed song lyrics by the Beatles, including the Long and Winding Road. I took courses with Mary Daly at Boston College on feminist theology, which only served to deepen my faith and awe of God. I was passionate about being a special education major, and eager to work with children with disabilities. After all, I had a sister, Mary, two years younger than me with Down syndrome, and I found her fascinating.
So after getting a Master’s degree from Boston College in severe special needs education, I moved back to New Jersey for my first teaching job. I loved all ten students with physical disabilities, and learned to work with physical therapists and speech therapists, as we did range of motion exercise, put on AFOs or braces, repositioned children, and got the students talking and learning. It was fulfilling work.
During the next twelve years, I worked with children with multiple disabilities, married my sweetheart of four years, and had three wonderful sons – Sam now 28, Joe now 26, and Tim almost 24. In 1987, I set off to Boston University to earn a doctorate in special education. In the meantime, we attended the Paulist Center, a progressive Catholic church in Boston (which I had known from my BC days) for twenty-five years, where our children were baptized and made first Communion. They all came home to Wayland though, for confirmation at St. Zepherin’s.
Dan and I tried to develop good spiritual habits in our children. Our family had an individual personal grace at dinner each night, weekly Sunday mass in Boston and discussions of the homily on the way home, service work in shelters in Boston, a cluster religious education program with eight families for over fifteen years, advent wreaths, and special Lenten prayers. We all grew in our spiritual lives. Sam, Joe, and Tim graduated from Wayland High School and went away to college and work. Now Sam and Joe live in Texas and Tim, who has made movies since age seven, lives in Los Angeles.
Life as a professor at Providence College the past fifteen years has been beyond rewarding – educating young undergraduates to become teachers is a joy. Receiving letters and emails from my former students in their first year of teaching or their tenth year, always delights me. Spending time in schools with young people continues to be challenging, fun, and creative work. Trying to improve my teaching each year, develop new courses on autism and inclusion, have all been satisfying intellectually and creatively.
I am still married to the love of my life, for over thirty years now, and I feel blessed. Dan and I have had so much fun together - a cross country trip, overnight canoe camping trips, music festivals, and trips to England, Mexico, and Italy with our boys.. We have helped each other help our sons. It has been a very active, happy life!
So now grace has recently come for a visit. Grace first, noticeably, popped into my life in a significant way, when I made a decision to be with my mom as my dad was dying of lung cancer in Brewster on Cape Cod in 2001. I left my family and work for seven weeks to provide hospice care to my dad with my mom. How did I do that – how did I help him die, how was I strong and cheerful? I do not know how I came to do that, only that grace paid a visit and helped me through.
In January 2008, after a very bad fall when I broke my left arm in four places, I was diagnosed with ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. This is a powerful motor neuron disease that progressively destroys your muscles and robs you of the ability to walk, and later talk, eat, and breathe. The current life expectancy is two to five years, and there is no cure. I have leg onset ALS, which means most of my deterioration, is confined to my legs for now. I have gone from using a cane, to using a walker, to using a scooter, to needing an electric wheelchair, to being unable to stand and walk. In the past week, I can only get out of bed with Hoyer lift, a device that puts a sling around your body and then it lifts up the sling, with you riding along. Dan has become very competent in working this machine. So all this change has happened in two years.
So while, I have many sad days, I also have many days filled with grace. My life has changed in many ways! As my friend Susan, likes to say, ALS has worn off all the rough edges. I like to think it is the grace of God that has given me a new outlook on life. After years of fighting in the kitchen over how to cook with my husband, we now peacefully concoct dinners together. I cannot stand over the stove, so I am the sous chef now, making salads and chopping everything in sight. We laugh and talk and enjoy cooking together, that is the work of grace. I came of age during the women’s movement and I still have my own checking account, I am an independent woman. But grace has helped me ask for assistance, be grateful for help, and to better understand the world of dependency.
I have learned, as St. Francis tells us, to accept the things I cannot change. Yes, it is clear I will never paddle my ocean kayak again, nor see my grandchildren, nor travel to Africa where I always wanted to go, nor swim in the ocean, nor snowshoe at my friend’s house in Vermont, nor dance a slow dance with my husband, but grace reminds me each day what I can still do! I can still pray, I can still love and make love, I can still laugh, and read and write poetry and mediate on all I have been blessed with by God. His precious grace has given me the power to see the glass as half full rather than half empty.
Grace helps us treasure the time on earth we have. Grace helps us understand that preparation for death is really a way of learning to live well. Death is not to be feared, but a reminder to be the best we can be. Grace reminds me that now is not the time for weeping, now is the time for me to spend precious time with my sons and husband, to cherish the days with friends and family, to write advanced directives, and find a burial plot.
God ‘s grace is with me always, some days I have to look a little harder to find it. God’s grace was with me as we wandered around Lake view Cemetery last month and grace “ will lead me on”.
I would like to close with some words on death, and grace from Kahill Gibran. This passage on death is taken from his book, The Prophet.
“You know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life? The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life. For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honor. Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king? Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and melt into the sum? And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and see God unencumbered?
Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountaintop, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, shall you truly dance.”
Thanks for listening to me discuss God’s grace and how it is changing my life each day. I do hope to one-day wear the starry crown.
