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thoughts on faith, mine and Anne Lamott’s

Posted on March 29, 2007
Filed Under kids, parenting | 18 Comments

I am a huge Anne Lamott fan. And you can only imagine my thrill when, as I was driving the kids home from tennis lessons on Friday, I caught a bit of an Anne Lamott interview on NPR. I immediately hushed the car. “Listen kids, this is Anne Lamott and she’s really great and Mommy WANTS to listen.” O and G must have sensed my urgency and miraculously the car fell into respectful silence.

After reading Crooked Little Heart and Operating Instructions and Hard Laughter and Bird by Bird and Blue Shoe, I have such a deep respect and hunger for all things Lamott that I will read Anne Lamott’s Manual on the Combustion Engine if that’s the subject she decides to tackle next. Though I am an intensely secular person and deeply uncomfortable with topics of spirituality, I’ve even read her Traveling Mercies; Some Thoughts on Faith and Plan B; Thoughts on Faith.

Apparently Lamott is still musing about spirituality and has written a new book, Grace (Eventually) Thoughts on Faith. She is making the requisite national book tour and stopped in to talk to On Point’s Tom Ashebrooke . As we tuned in, we were party to some pretty adult subject matter: politics, faith and whether or not Dick Cheney is going to Heaven. O and G were riveted, as if they knew they were hearing something that, on most occasions, I would be censoring. (Both O and G attended parochial preschool of the Methodist persuasion despite the fact that My Better Half and I are adamant agnostics. This enrollment was not a deliberate, “Let’s expose O and G to Jesus” kind of decision. It was more a “We are so lazy and O and G’s grandmother, who is a church member, can get them into this preschool without our having to sleep on the sidewalk the night before registration” kind of thought process. Jesus – take it or leave it. Easy registration – very compelling.)

O and G have vague memories of singing “Jesus Loves Me” and they fondly recall the Christ child’s Christmastime visits to their preschool class, but that’s the extent of their exposure to organized religion. (If you fear for their souls you may want to stop reading now because you’ll only be more uncomfortable when we get to the conversation about euthanasia.)

So their little God-starved ears really pricked up when the topic turned to the death of Lamott’s friend, Mel. In the essay “At Death’s Window” Lamott tells the story of helping her dear friend die by an overdose of barbiturates. Mel was suffering from late stage stomach cancer and Lamott gathered a bucketful of pills, crushed them up into a bowl of applesauce and fed Mel his death by the spoonful.

Before his death, Lamott remembers that Mel quoted Shakespeare, “Every person owes God a death.” That was the end of the topic but my children were atwitter.

First there was the question about the pills. G asked, “Why didn’t the medicine help him? Why did the medicine make him die?” I did my best to explain that all medicines when taken in Anna Nicole-like quantities can be toxic. “See kids, this is why you should NEVER take medicine without a doctor’s prescription because you could DIE. I figured this was a good opportunity to exploit the dangers of medicine cabinet spelunking. That seemed to appease them until…

G asked, “Was he sad to die, Mommy?” My eyes welled a little and I confirmed that I thought he was probably very sad to die but that sometimes a person is sooo sick and feels sooo terrible for sooo long that death is better than living.

And she was quiet for a second and I thought I’d dodged the bullet until…

“Did he go to Heaven, Mommy?”

And I hesitated and hemmed and hawed and wondered, “Do I lie? Do I tell my child the fairytale version of this death thing OR do I tell it straight, the way I see it, the version that has to do with soil and worms and the way a person’s memory lives on in the minds of those who knew him?”

I decided on the latter, minus the soil and the worms, but G adamantly disagreed.

“I think he went to Heaven because sick people always go to Heaven,” she said.

I asked her what she thought Heaven was like and she mentioned sleeping on clouds and sprouting wings. I smiled and decided not to disavow her of this quaint notion.

And then she said, “There are dogs in Heaven, Mommy. Christabel’s dog went there.” And I thought, “Should I tell her that there is absolutely no way that Heaven has dogs? Should I let her know that Heaven is, by definition, blissfully devoid of dog hair and dog shit and muddy dog prints on the back steps?”

I decided to allow that there might be dogs in Heaven because maybe, just maybe, (after all this is Heaven we’re talking about), each Heavenly Dog has it’s own attendant angel in charge of grooming and bodily functions and driving to the pet store to pick up the human-grade dog food that costs $45 a bag and is the only thing the damn dog can eat without breaking out in hives and itching its rear-end raw.

And if there is such a place, this Heaven with clouds and wings and dogs, then little G is SO going there one day. I know this because she is the kind of person who cries for a Mel she doesn’t know, who had to take pills because he didn’t want to live anymore.

And the mother who lets her listen to such a disturbing program? Well, we all know where she’s going someday. And I’m willing to bet that it’s oppressively hot there and I’ve heard there are many dogs; unattended dogs with diarrhea and food allergies and slobber.

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