Raw and Real
Tuesday 25 September 2007
by Margaret K. Nuzzolese
Mark,
As I said the book has had an incredible impact on my life, so it has really been a gift to hear back from you. “Something you feel will take it’s own form”… I really thought you would write back. I felt like I would really meet you. I feel like I have a bit. Now I will just have to visit the Midwest, to experience the wonder and awe, and to take you up on the meal and conversation!
What a chapter you shared with me. When I saw the title of your email, my heart leaped through the roof—I think if you sent 30 chapters more, I would still read them all. And the picture is gorgeous. What a beautiful woman. I hope that that one of your former students had such a fulfilled life as it sounds like Mev did. And still, I am moved by your words, in the constant, frustrating and tiring search to see God’s face. James [Meinert] and I just spent about an hour and a half talking about whether or not God gets upset, makes mistakes, and whether or not God can learn from us humans. Who even knows for sure?? I hugged him for you. The second he walked in the door and listened to me delight endlessly in the joy that was hearing back from you.
A “for instance or two” of your awesome vulnerability… the honesty with which you described Mev’s dying and what it was like in all of the ugliness. While I recall vividly the slow deaths of my grandparents, I can’t imagine experiencing the same with my most intimate companion. I can’t imagine it was easy to recount those moments. The sickness, the decay, the words the conversations when she could barely talk any more. Your very last moment with her when you read her the Song of Songs. Your thoughts at the funeral. And then in the joyous times – to be blunt, that you’d miss her playfulness in sex! Or in your arguments, through the counseling as you traced your families’ histories. The nicknames… that you would call her “your loveliness!” I don’t think it gets much rawer than that. Just so real, all of it. I am amazed that you could remember it all. Then again, I wonder how one could forget.
The Book… your lives, really… have touched my life so profoundly. Sometimes here when I get down or discouraged, I actually just pick up the Book and read a bit. We now have your fall syllabus in the house so I am looking forward to reviewing that.
Thank you so much for writing back, Mark. I hope you are filled with peace and love in these days.
Margaret