The Accordion

 While you read this, listen to Five Variants of 'Dives and Lazarus' .



In our Relief Society meeting Amber plays her accordion: an Irish dance, “Swallow Tail Jig”, intermingled with the hymn melody Kingsfold. Ralph Vaughan Williams used Kingsfold in “Five Variants of ‘Dives and Lazarus’” and the same melody is used in the Latter-day Saint hymn “If You Could Hie to Kolob”. I bow my head and silently weep at the beauty of it, breathing carefully to keep from sobbing. I memorized “Kolob” years ago and studied it again in the months of David’s illness, arranging the words to the “Variants” and singing it through my tears as I prepared supper or washed and bleached the dishes.

“If you could hie to Kolob in the twinkling of an eye, and then continue onward with that same speed to fly, do you think that you could ever, through all eternity, find out the generation where Gods began to be?
“Or see the grand beginning, where space did not extend? Or view the last creation, where Gods and matter end? Methinks the Spirit whispers, “No man has found ‘pure space’, nor seen the outside curtains, where nothing has its place.”
“The works of God continue, and worlds and lives abound; improvement and progression are one eternal round. There is no end to matter; there is no end to space; there is no end to spirit; there is no end to race (the human race).
“There is no end to virtue; there is no end to might; there is no end to wisdom; there is no end to light. There is no end to union; there is no end to youth; there is no end to priesthood; there is no end to truth.
“There is no end to glory; there is no end to love; there is no end to being; there is no death above.

There is no end to glory; there is no end to love; there is no end to being; there is no death above.”

Annie, Jim, and I had a grief phone call on Sunday. I was still in southern California;, Jim had arrived home around noon Saturday after a red-eye flight. Several months ago Jim built a Google Drive spreadsheet based on ‘grief questions’ that Annie supplied from her bereavement group at college.
Here’s a sampling:
“What thoughts and feelings did you experience when you learned of the loss of David?”
“What are some of the positive things you miss about David?”
“What fond memories of David do you cherish?”

Jim and Annie had filled in their answers several months ago, but I had put it off. After our phone call I spent some time answering the questions. Of course I cried. And now for the last two days I’ve felt the grief more intensely.

“The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly one you can never have.”
                                                                     —Soren Kierkegaard