O Taste and See

From blossoms comes

this brown paper bag of peaches

we bought from the boy

at the bend in the road where we turned toward

signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,

from sweet fellowship in the bins,

comes nectar at the roadside, succulent

peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,

comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,

to carry within us an orchard, to eat

not only the skin, but the shade,

not only the sugar, but the days, to hold

the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into

the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live

as if death were nowhere

in the background; from joy

to joy to joy, from wing to wing,

from blossom to blossom to

impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom. 

"From Blossoms" by Li-Young Lee

Mr. Flores and I sat at a wooden kitchen table on a hot, dusty summer day in the East Bay. Mr. Flores' wife, Maria, is a home Hospice patient. She has advanced dementia and is bed-bound. She is very thin, contracted into a fetal position, and appears quite childlike. She does not speak but for an occasional “coo.” Mr. Flores has cared for his wife for three years, and she has not spoken coherently to anyone for at least that long. He feeds her three times a day, carefully, slowly, compassionately. He tucks pillows around her body. He offers each small spoonful of food with words of gentle encouragement and love. 

 

Mr. Flores and I spent an hour together talking about his faith and doing what we call "life review" - a steady recollection of their early life in the Philippines, his time serving in the Navy, their first home. Mr. Flores proudly described his adventures and comic misadventures with their three children and several grandchildren. The conversation was tinged with an air of sadness; the longer he spoke of his life with Maria, the more tearful his eyes grew. 
 

Mr. Flores punctuated his marriage anecdotes with occasional questions about my life: whether I was married (not yet), whether I had a “suitor” (yes), and whether I wanted children (yes). He hoped that I would understand just how much of a blessing his marriage was, and how being married is one of many ways to grow closer to God. His Catholic faith was a source of steadfast comfort, and it taught him to "take the good with the bad, and to know that God is present with us - not just you and your wife, but you three: God, wife, husband." His eyes brimmed with tears as he spoke of his wife's eventual demise.  Even though he did “know that she cannot stay like this forever, I want to keep her here with me, touch her, kiss her, hold her hand, so that she knows I love her.” 

His grief became palpable, and the conversation trailed off. He jumped up from the table. “Here! I have plums from my daughter's tree up north. Have one.” I accepted a plum from a huge paper bag. Quietly we stood together in his kitchen; together, we bit into perfectly ripe, juicy plums. My plum was delicious, fragrant. “O taste and see that the Lord is good,” I said to Mr. Flores, quoting Psalm 34. He laughed, aglow in the beam of his kitchen skylight. 

"There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background," as it says in Lee's poem. There are days when we stand, plums in hand, in the midst of storytelling, quiet loss, abundant gratitude.  There are days when the plums are ripe, and we must take and eat, taste and see.

Last week, the Church celebrated the Feast of Transfiguration.  We brought baskets of fruit to the sanctuary, and at the conclusion of the service, the bountiful pile of plums, peaches, grapes and berries were blessed and shared.  The blessing of fruit on this day is a reminder of the final transfiguration of all things. It signifies the ultimate flowering and fruitfulness of all creation in Paradise where all will be transformed by the glory of God. It teaches us to "taste and see" these sacred moments as they are presented to us. It teaches us to remember that we always "carry within us an orchard." It teaches us to share plums in a quiet, sunny house, in sweet and sacred fellowship.