Marriage and Other Acts of Charity

Being parted by death is what happens if a marriage works, writes Kate Braestrup in her new memoir, Marriage and Other Acts of Charity. This statement is received with awe by the young Maine State Warden and his fiancee as Braestrup councils them, pre-nuptials. This is part of her job as chaplain and she knows both marriage and death, as well as what it's like to be parted from marriage by death. Her last book was the excellent and moving Here if You Need Me, a reflection on the untimely death of her state trooper husband and her subsequent path towards ordained Unitarian Universalist minister and then Maine State Warden chaplain.
Marriage is a messier collection of thoughts on marriage and love, and yes, sex (here, as delivered to middle school students). It's perhaps easy to be maudlin with death if you've never experienced true grief, but I think love is even harder to pin down--your choice is to be sappy or depressingly realistic. Braestrup strikes an admirable balance, though I suppose it helps to focus on marriage to make her points. Marriages tend to be complicated and inscrutable.

There are some great observations, written elegantly, as when Braestrup writes, I bear witness to the ways in which love resurrects itself in the face of loss. Braestrup is, after all, a chaplain so that much of her thinking about love also encompasses love of God, but she's Unitarian, so the writing and reflections are of a more spiritual nature than they are of edicts found written in Biblical stone. When she meets a part-time pilot who fears more than anything the helplessness of a plane crash, the falling through the ether untethered, she suggests he could look on the experience with curiousity rather than one of fear and hopelessness. Perhaps this seems quaint or neat or religious, but I take the same comfort the pilot did when Braestrup says, If I ever fall out of an airplane, I hope I remember to be curious. Since it's my last adventure, I hope I actually pay attention.

There's no pretty way to have a loved one back after death. No matter how much we think we wish that, it can't and shouldn't happen. Just ask Stephen King and countless others (I'm thinking of an X-Files episode). Braestrup writes, We can't have our dear dead ones back, not as they were, not as we loved them. It isn't the beloved that resurrects. It's love itself. Instead, if we are able to love again, open our hearts to love, we keep that loved one close. It's like a little legacy from a lost one.

Braestrup has her eyes wide open about the difficulties of love and marriage and she's honest and harsh with herself about her first marriage and doesn't allow Drew's death to make him perfect either. That doesn't diminish the pain of her loss, but it sets her up for a new relationship. They'll always be messy. Just ask the porcupine. Apparently, porcupines mate for life and chaplain Braestrup and a warden contemplate the sadness of roadkill porcupines when they're out working one day. We sighed and were silent for a moment, imagining a porcupine grieving in some dim, bewildered way, beside a road-killed mate. Just don't try asking a game warden how a porcupine mates. You'll get the joke answer that particular question deserves. Maybe relationships are all prickly and dangerous. We just have to stay relaxed and keep our sharp fur lying low.