Holy the Firm
by Annie Dillard
One of the hardest parts of my work as a death midwife is watching the suffering that the dying process often entails. Though I can occasionally offer small comforts, for the most part my work asks me to stand firm and witness the holy, even if it appears messy, awkward or uncomfortable. But underneath the cloak of death midwifery, I am a human and one who contemplates all the requirements of my own humanity; watching others suffer begets the question why. I can’t help but wonder at the marvel of this word, “Why?” particularly in the swells of grief.
Annie Dillard closeted herself in a small room along Washington’s Puget Sound, alone with her cat Small, a spider and the carcasses of its moth food. In the quiet and the coastline, she wrote this tiny masterpiece: a metaphysical exploration into God, suffering, man’s existence and the nature that integrates it all into a whole.
Dillard spend 14-months crafting 68 pages and her exquisite thoughtfulness shows in every single word. Widely considered a work of Christian Metaphysics but with a poet’s fluidity and command of language, Dillard’s characteristic playfulness makes this book a beautiful bedside companion for the dying. It’s also an offering to those of us who witness suffering and beseech of God, “Why?”.
I’d heartily recommend this book for anyone who has wondered at why God would allow the suffering of the world and the relation between the two. I’d also suggest it for the death midwife’s bag to be read aloud or offered to caregivers who have little mental energy to sink into a storyline. It reads as poetry- pondering and personal inquiry, dynamic and captivating as you read it. But here’s my disclaimer: if you read this book, you must read it twice, once aloud.
Here are the first two lines to give you a taste:
"Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time. I worship each god, I praise each day splintered down and wrapped in time like a husk, a husk of many colors spreading, at dawn fast over the mountains split."