A Euology For Shannon

“The labouring through what is still undone,
as though, legs bound, we hobbled along the way,
is like the awkward walking of the swan.

And dying - to let go, no longer feel
the solid ground we stand on every day -
is like his anxious letting himself fall
into the water, which receives him gently
and which, as though with reverence and joy,
draws back past him in streams on either side;
while, infinitely silent and aware,
in his full majesty and ever more
indifferent, he condescends to glide.”

The Swan, by Rainer Maria Rilke

Rilke’s poem, The Swan, likens the transition from life to death with a swan lowering himself into water. Life is seen as the awkwardness of a swan walking, where death is the gentle stream that carries the swan in all his majesty.

The awkward hobbling of the swan is a graphic image that helps capture the awkwardness of the disease which bound Shannon’s legs in the latter years of his life. As the waters gently receive the swan and restore its grace, so God gently receives Shannon and relieves him of the burdens of his broken body.

Some people may think of illness as a punishment as they try to make sense of senseless evils that can ravage the body. But those of us who were closest to Shannon never saw his illness that way, perhaps because Shannon never saw it that way. Shannon loved life as it was, and never hankered for “what might have been”. Even when crippled with arthritis, almost blind, with one infection on top of another, he took joy in the simplest offerings of life. He had a gentle wisdom that touched the heart of all who knew him. His death comes to us as a bittersweet pill, for we rejoice that death brought an end to Shannon’s physical suffering, but the gap that his departure leaves is a weeping wound in our souls.

As with Rilke’s swan, Shannon’s death was not his destruction; rather, in God, it becomes his salvation. Death rescued him from physical torment and delivered him into the hand of God.

Not many people knew Shannon well. We, his family, a few close friends, his doctors and a few of his teachers. But everyone who took the time to know him was touched by his spirit. He was not religious in the sense of a regular church goer. He had no sophisticated understanding of Christianity or God. But for those of us who had the privilege of caring for him, I doubt we will meet ever anyone with greater love or greater faith than he.

As his body literally disintegrated, it was Shannon’s great faith in those he loved that lent him the courage to continue. And for those of us who nursed him, we drew our strength from that same pool of love and faith. God was encountered in Shannon and through him. In every struggle Shannon faced, and in every struggle his carers faced, God struggled too.

Shannon was two months short of his fifteenth birthday when he died, but his death was not untimely. He lived for eight years after doctors had given him just weeks to live. Every day, every month, every year was a miracle in our lives. And those final months, although the most difficult, were also the most precious. Shannon taught us to live each moment, hold on to hope, and walk in faith with courage. Lessons that continue to shape our lives, even in his absence. In his very weakness, Shannon gave us strength.

Just as surely as the waters restore grace to the swan, so God will restore wholeness to Shannon. When, where, how, are questions we cannot answer. But with God so evident through Shannon’s struggles in life, we need not doubt God’s commitment to Shannon in death. For “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate him from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The blessings and promises Jesus proclaims in the Beatitudes are not conditional on subscription to any particular theological doctrines, nor are they conditional on any formal practices. Jesus did not say, “Blessed are those who hold a trinitarian theology.” He said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

Amen

Addendum

I chose to write this homily for Shannon for two reasons. Firstly for my own healing as I struggle to come to terms with Shannon’s death, and secondly, but perhaps more importantly, because of what I perceive as a pastoral failing prevalent in the Church.

The church recognises the need for pastoral care when one loses a parent or grandparent, a spouse, a child or a sibling, but day in, day out, I hear from people around the world expressing anguish because their grief has been trivialised. Most recently was from a policewoman in Los Angeles who just lost her police partner to the same disease that struck Shannon, Degenerative Myelopathy. Julia described Bolo as her closest friend; they had been working partners for many years and she owed her life to him several times over, but many in the world and the church have met her grief with derision, because her partner, Bolo, like Shannon, was a German Shepherd.

Any theology which rejects the policewoman’s partner, the blind man’s guide, and ‘mere’ companions like Shannon also rejects the policewoman, the blind man and me. We cannot presume to exclude non-human animals from God’s kingdom, for “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table” (Mt 15:27) and when Tobit set out with the angel Raphael, “the dog came out with him and went along with them.” (Tob 6:2)