When Someone Who Holds the World Up For Us, a Pillar, Dies....

The people in your life are like the pillars on your porch. Sometimes they hold you up, and sometimes they lean on you. Sometimes it's enough to know they are standing by.--Merle Shain, Canadian author

She was always there. And then she wasn’t anymore.

This week our family was rocked by the sudden death of our beloved Aunt Donna: mom and grandmother, wife and friend, neighbor, and churchgoer. Just in her late seventies, her passing was so unexpected. Her death was like a blow to our familial solar plexus, like our collective breath was suddenly taken away, and we didn’t know what to do next or how to respond. Part of our shock was the quickness with which she left us, the awful surprise of her death.

But so too, what rocked us, what certainly rocked me and continues to, as her 61-year-old nephew, is the fact that she is really gone now. This relative who knew me from the moment I was born. Who always had a supply of eggnog in her house for me, even though I was no longer eight years old! Donna—who always showed me such gracious hospitality and care when I visited her and my Uncle Billy in Florida after Christmas, for the past nineteen Decembers. But now she is truly absent, at least on this side of existence. My beliefs tell me that some day when I die, I will absolutely see her again and that is a comfort and yet: for now, I won’t see her.

That makes me very sad.

Like many of the beloved older folks in my life, I guess I just took her being there, being here, being alive, for granted. That’s often how it is with the people we love in this life. We just trust the universe, or God, or fate to keep our loved ones around. We certainly do not want to spend any significant amount of time thinking about when they will leave us. Then they do leave us and then our hearts break. Yes, it is pretty human to just assume that people like my Aunt Donna will always be with us, still with us, when we wake up tomorrow.

Until they are not. Until they are gone.

My Aunt Donna and others like her, are the special people, I’d call pillars in this world. A pillar. When you look at a strong and true building that’s withstood the test of time, look for the pillars. It is these that hold up a structure and ensure it will endure and last. Pillars are designed to carry the weight for everyone. No pillars and things can fall apart. No pillars and life can be shaky.

As a pillar, Donna was someone whose strength helped bind us all together somehow as family. She was someone older whom I leaned upon at times for care and love. Someone who by sheer force of personality pushed us as family to be loving and loyal and true to each other.  

Pillars make for strong families. No pillars? No family. Not really.

And it is not just our relatives who claim this place in our world as pillars.  In the church I serve we could never be a vibrant and loving community without our church pillars, faithful women like Ruth and dependable men like Charlie who are always there. Always follow through. Always willing to lend a hand. Always generous, ready to brew a pot of coffee or shovel snow or make a casserole for a sick church member.

Or I think of Queen Elizabeth II and her recent death. What a pillar she has been and not just for England or the United Kingdom for more than 70 years, but for the world as a whole really. She lived with dignity, poise, and grace for more than two generations on the world stage, outlived so many presidents and prime ministers and despots too. I cannot fathom what the people of England must be feeling right now, the intense grief at losing someone who has been with them through so, so much, as their leader. Through war. Through peace. Through upheaval and tumult. Through everything.

But there’s the thing about pillars.  When one pillar goes down, another pillar is needed to step up and continue the support and work of life.  I suppose people like me in my family and community…. am I supposed to be a pillar now? Hard to fathom and yet: every generation gets to the stage in life when they become the pillar generation.  The ones with age and experience enough to bring a family together. Or a church. Or a nation.

Pillars.  Thank you, Aunt Donna. Thank you, Ruth. Thank you, Queen Elizabeth. You can all rest now. Job well done. Now it is time for us, for this generation, to be the pillars.

May God give us that strength.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.