Leaving spaces for the light

Kate Gross died at 6.29am on Christmas Day 2014, ten minutes before her young twin boys woke and asked if it was time to open their presents. Some weeks earlier, quoting a poem by Raymond Carver, she had expressed gratitude that she was able ‘To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.’

Shortly before her death the 36-year-old former civil servant and CEO of the Africa Governance Initiative, had completed a wonderful book, Late fragments.

Kate Gross and her family

This isn’t a typical ‘cancer memoir’ but a brilliantly-written, self-aware, insightful review of her life and priorities in the light of imminent death.

We learn about her childhood, her teenage voyage of self-discovery, her career, her capacity to give and to cherish friendship, and about the deep, robust love she and her husband Billy shared.

She doesn’t conceal the exhausting pain and struggle of the roller-coaster journey as the medics battle her cancer with surgery and chemotherapy; she knows she is fortunate in the level of care she receives, and in being fundamentally ‘wired for happiness;’   but she is also real about the unexpected blessings the illness brings.

Having confronted the inevitability of her death, she found that at times she ‘experienced joy – perhaps even the sublime – in an unexpected and new way.’ She writes: ‘I am happy. I am really, truly happy.’

She assures us that there is wonder in the everyday if only we can see it. ‘Your daily bread,’ she tells us (and by this she means family meals and hugs and sunsets), ‘Your daily bread is my greatest pleasure.’

Kate Gross learned that that in her earlier, driven busyness she had neglected her inner self. Cancer gave her space to rediscover her true identity: ‘Finally, I knew who I was inside – I was one with me.’ What matters, she tells us, is how we choose to be, not what we choose to do. She encourages us to reach out in compassion to others. The fact that we have these fragile ties of compassion for our fellow human beings is ‘a reason for unconquerable gladness.’

At one point the words she has written in describing her illness make her feel desolate. But then she realises that this is because, unlike in real life, ‘I haven’t left space between my sentences to let the light in.’ Powerful stuff: may we, in all our living, take care to leave spaces for the light to reach us.

Late fragments is an outstanding book, full of wisdom. Kate Gross quotes Christian writers, and has (as she puts it) ‘godly’ friends, but she is not a Christian. If there is a God, he is no more in control than we are, she says. And of heaven, she says that this life is so very good, that she can’t believe that ‘anything, anywhere else could be better than what we have right here, right now.’

Her story prompts a comment and a question from Christians. The comment is this: we simply cannot say that because people don’t acknowledge the reality of God they will inevitably sense in their lives ‘a God-shaped gap.’ For this woman, agnostic when it comes to God, speaks of her almost miraculous discovery of joy and wholeness in the shadow of her dying.

The question is a serious and challenging one. Kate Gross had no clarity about God’s existence, and made no confession of Christ as Lord. In the light of our Christian understanding, what happened to this woman when her spirit was released from her body on Christmas morning last year?  Was she welcomed into the dimension beyond, or was the door closed to her?

In response to the comment and the question, I reflect on the bigness of God. The God who is present throughout the universe; present I believe in all true love and all true joy; present in all the promptings of our hearts towards goodness and truth. God is the light who shines through even when we don’t leave spaces.

It seems to me that as love, joy and compassion beckoned Kate Gross, God was in the beckoning, and when she welcomed the these gifts she unknowingly welcomed the Christ who is their true giver.

I believe that when Kate Gross died, she found herself in a place with all the glory and physicality of earth but an immeasurably better place, better not just in the absence of pain and suffering but in the presence of the Christ who is immeasurably more wonderful than our best wonderings.

But I also believe we can discover now something of the wonder of God behind the gifts, and  learn at a deeper level ‘to call myself beloved and know myself beloved on the earth.’

Late fragments is published by William Collins. ISBN 9780008103477

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 12th November 2015)