Dear Francis

A desert letter to my dead friend

Friends, along with writing a post once a week, I have also been participating in writing intensives offered by

Jeannine Ouellette

, through her Substack, Writing In The Dark. The intensive exercises have not only improved my writing skills, but have given me the confidence to explore my storytelling ability by expanding my writing toolbox. When I first encountered Jeannine’s latest offering, The Letter Reimagined, I did not realize then, as I prepare my upcoming post now, that the container of a letter would be the perfect vehicle for this post.

Dear Francis,

It’s definitely an October morning in the desert. A chill bites the insides of my nostrils, my forehead aches, with each incoming breath. The approaching dawn is starting to give shape to the acacias, the juniper berries, the buckwheat, and agave that mark the mottled desert. No breeze, no sound, no movement as stillness, solitude, and silence prevail within the sandstone layers. 

Francis, every time I come here, I imagine that you felt it, too. It’s the unmistakable thinness of this place. Yesterday, today, tomorrow, could have existed eons ago. The unmoving, prevailing stillness just stops time, as if time doesn’t exist, as if time was never part of this equation we call living.

Andrea is with me on this run and we’re headed towards the geological formation called Devil’s Punchbowl. I laugh every single time I think about how we start from a monastery and our destination is named for the devil. I know you see the humor in that. Francis, I’m a prisoner of the ever changing present so I can only mark time in the past. Six months ago you led us silent retreatants on a journey, a journey of timeless oneness, that perhaps only a person I dubbed Father Labyrinth could lead.

My run is completed, breakfast and the first group meditation are also finished, so here I am with you, staring at your grave, where your body and time have seemingly stopped. Francis, I’m looking down at you and I realize that each breath, each heart beat, sing the cadence of the present, becoming the past, giving the future its moment of life. But your concrete cross gravestone, like all the others, is not keeping time with this rhythm of life I am locked in. Someone has fashioned the familiar P and X signifying the Chi Rho, the Greek name for Christ, out of dried twigs and placed the delicate plant sculpture on your grave. I think the Chi Rho on your grave will not survive the desert wind, but what is Jesus like on your side of eternity? 

There are so many stones piled upon the concrete cross giving it its dual identity as your grave marker and a Celtic cairn marking the path ahead and commemorating the path you have guided so many on, including me. There are still so many questions to ask you, Father Labyrinth. Dreams, wishes, fears, and reflections of death are all based on conjecture, the reality of guessing.

But you, Francis, you are on the other side of conjecture. You know how this story ends, you see the other side of the mountain, you live in the undiscovered, sitting squarely in the certainty of knowing. Thousands upon thousands of words have been written trying to manifest this truth we call death, all of them unverifiable.

But what is it really like to be on the side of no time, in that place of eternity? Can you enter and exit time, that guardrail for our existence? Or are you locked forever with no beginning, no end, just being?

Francis, every time I heard you speak it was an exquisite experience. There was no structured format, no numbered highlights, no clever catchiness to impress or to hold my attention. Rather, it was a journey outward, never circling back. It was substance, the substance of thoughts to be pondered, the ponderings becoming wonderings, like life—unscripted but sequential. Life, as it is, twists, turns, like the never ending labyrinth that it is. How is it now for you Francis? Are there twists, are there turns, ups and downs, or is it all one big knowing?

There is great irony here on my side of the fence, Francis, and I wonder if you can still see life from a mortal’s point of view. You exist in the realm of eternity, as if time does not exist, as if forever is reality, as if everything has purpose, has meaning, has being. Can you see me trying to peer through the opaqueness of the veil, trying to discern the boundaries of life, of death, through the thinness of this place in the desert, with a tethered imagination? Like everything ever imagined about death, I can only ponder and guess where you are, what it is you see. Do you reconcile the beginning, middle, and end all at once in the same moment?

As a contemplative, like you once were, seeing all sides of the story is an imperative. But as a human being, how can I see your side of the story when I have no real idea, no point of reference, no way of knowing the truth you live in? And you, on your side of the truth, cannot speak, cannot walk or touch, cannot embody my side of being.

In the Celtic tradition, I placed a stone on the expanding cairn at the top of your cross. It’s one of those glass translucent stones from the base of the Mary and Jesus statue. They watched me take it but I doubt they minded. When I gently lay the stone on its chosen spot, I felt the emotion make its way out of my throat as a subdued whimper. Tears fell because I miss you, Francis. Tears fell because time ended our interaction in this life. Tears fell because there was so much more to ask, to listen to, to ponder, to appreciate, to enjoy, to love.

This afternoon, we who are journeying this weekend on another silent retreat, came to visit you. Our dear friend, Reverend Care, did what she does so well, speaking wisdom, empathy, and love into the moment. When she had finished speaking, she grabbed a handful of dirt and tossed it on your grave, as you often foretold she would do one day, a sign of her membership (despite her gender) in the wider clergy. Then she stood at the foot of your plot with her iPhone and she allowed the tears to fall as she captured the digital moment. Andrea and I embraced her with the embrace of knowing, of comfort, of loss, hope, and love with our own tears. More stones were added to your cairn and I grabbed a handful of dirt also, and tossed it on your grave in keeping with Celtic tradition. You always spoke of oneness, Francis, and I believe in the oneness of the universe and all that exists and ever existed and I believe you are here in this place now. 

From my vantage point on St. Andrew’s Abbey’s cemetery hill, I can see the Joshua trees below, standing tall, extending their arms to the heavens as if they can call down heaven’s mercies to us below. I know my day will come when I will join you and the ranks of those who have passed on and someday I too, will be looking back, forward, and now. I wonder, Francis, will God let us walk a labyrinth together? I really hope so. For now the Joshua trees will guard your remains and the junipers will encircle your rest.

See you again, soon, my friend. 

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