Our Frenemy: Gravity

Life’s Fatal, Love’s Eternal

My biological father, the ninety-three-year-old dad whom I first met when I was in my forties, passed away the day after I wrote about him. He lived a nice long life. But a comment he made recently stands out. “Being this old is really hard,” he said. “I can’t count on my body anymore.”

I’m just starting to learn that part as I start to fall apart. That’s gravity for you.

I still get impatient while the older lady with purple hair counts out coins at the cash register, her arthritic fingers gnarled and slow—more and more like my own. I watch an older neighbor, shoulders hunching him forward, walking his two dachshunds and hope I don’t wind up with a dowager’s hump too. My body won’t let me count on it, though.

We all like to bitch about advancing age, our aches and pains, triumphs won and failures piling up. In better times, we laugh about our losses—hearing, eyesight, the ability to remember why we came into the room. In bleaker times, loss pummels us to the ground as we grieve the ones we love, the ones we miss, the ones we hoped would go on forever.

We fantasize that we’ll run marathons at age ninety-nine. Don’t think about the inevitable—inside, I’m still nineteen. A lot of us concentrate on who we were, instead of who we’re bound to become. For me, every new problem causes anxiety to grow like the enormous heap of household junk I’ve been meaning to donate.

At my weekly physical therapy appointment, I told my long-time therapist how much I hate the small scar on my right cheek. “Turns out it wasn’t cancer at all,” I said. “But the biopsy left this huge gouge in my face.”

The scar looks as if someone took a tiny spoon and scooped out a piece of flesh. Mostly because that’s exactly what happened. After a youth spent broiling under the Arizona desert sun, little damage spots have popped up on my blindingly white skin.

The dermatologist gave me an assortment of creams to eat through the milder spots, but my cheek had a stubborn bit of dry skin that no amount of moisturizer corrected.

Gravity is always terrible and beautiful—a frenemy force that nobody escapes.

The biopsy was painful but necessary. What I didn’t count on was a permanent mark the doctor’s surgical scooper left behind. My countenance is forever altered. But I have hair and so far, the reaper hasn’t given me something even worse.

I already do physical therapy to stave off further deterioration of my polio-weakened muscles. My spinal curvature is worsening and as the therapist loves to remind me, my containers aren’t stacking the way they should.

But what I keep rediscovering is that sorrows are a conduit to caring. Compassion. The God of gravity says, “In this world you’ll have way too many tribulations. But keep going—I’ve given you a heart that’s attracted to love.” All we have to do is accept it.

So yes, I’m moldering away in front of everyone. In two months, I’ll be a year older. And I’m so grateful to be such a hot mess. Because, well, gravity leads me to gratitude.

Without that gratitude it’s harder to appreciate the love all around me. The breath-taking beauty that awaits us every moment demands a foundation of love. The creator of love uses gravity to pull atoms and stars and galaxies together. With people, sometimes love has to pull a little harder, but like gravity, love wins in the end.

Without love’s insistent tide, I might miss the gravity of a situation—the heartbreak, the keening cries, the odor of death. In the shadows of catastrophes, love’s gravity awaits our attention. Bad stuff happens, giving us chance after chance to love and be loved. To demonstrate compassion in every situation the way Jesus did.

As we tack on years, we read obituaries, mourn the loss of parents, friends, that guy from high school everyone voted most likely to succeed. Just a day after my dad died, I learned of another dear friend that’s gone too soon.

I grieve for them and the growing list of those lost to me in the past few years. I hate that they’re not here. My soul feels gouged out like that pit on my cheek.

Yet as I beg God for solace, I face a choice. I could run out of God’s orbit like a rogue planet off its trajectory. Or I could surrender and let gravity suck me back to love.

Maybe that’s how the whole thing works. When crap barges into our world, there’s no denying its shittiness. In this life, loved ones croak, bodies malfunction and eventually everything stinks to high heaven. The cycle starts anew.

But that’s not the end of the story. For most of us, it takes really terrible stuff—from terminal diagnoses to my dumb little facial scar—to remind us to love. Loving fiercely and compassionately and with grace can break the bonds that keep us fretting over the small stuff.

Gravity is always terrible and beautiful—a frenemy force that nobody escapes. But gravity’s secret is also genuine love we can count on forever and always.

When I whined about that scar, my therapist said, “I think it gives you character.” She gazed at me with so much kindness that I forgot to worry if my containers weren’t stacking up right.