Close the door

It’s one of those phrases that when I was a kid I never thought I’d say: In or out. Make up your mind. Close the door. Now it seems like something that I say to Teresa almost every day.

Apparently, it’s a universal trait among children. Or maybe just in my family.

I appeal to logic: You don’t like it when bugs get in the house. If you leave the door open, bugs can fly in.

We have the air conditioner (or the heater) on. You’re letting all the cold (or warm) air out.

Please move. If you stand in the doorway, no one else can get in or out.

I use parental prerogative. Get out of the doorway. Because I told you to. Another phrase I never thought I would say. Sometimes I get tired of explaining why.

Sometimes I want to ask what the appeal of the doorway is. Why have your face in the bedroom and your back in the hall? Your left shoulder in the dining room and your right shoulder in the kitchen? One foot in the living room and the other on your front porch?

When it comes to standing in the doorway, you can go either way. And really, most of the time, you can always change your mind — unless your mom has told you to make up your mind already. Walk into the living room and forget why you wanted to go in there? Go back to the kitchen and see if it comes back to you.

But in the larger scheme, backtracking isn’t always an option. Life is a journey, from birth to death, from this world to the eternal. Each step forward is a step away from where we’ve been, and sometimes, as we move one place to another, a door closes behind us. We can’t always go back.

Staying in the middle isn’t always a choice.

We tend to celebrate the big transitions: births and baptisms, graduations and weddings, because most of the time, we don’t want to go back.

The transition through death to eternal life is different, perhaps because none of us here has been through it. No one can accompany those we love as they move from one life to the next.

That’s where faith comes in. Faith that the communion of saints surrounds us, that our loved ones who have died will welcome us the same way our families welcomed us at birth. Teresa is pretty sure about it. She’s pointed out that I’m pretty old, that I’ll likely die before she will, and she’ll miss me until he sees me in heaven.

I hope so, I tell her.

Until then, I’ll keep reminding her to go in or out and close the door so the bugs don’t fly in. If she changes her mind, she can always go back and think again.