Thoughts Around Easter

‘Are you the skiing nun from the Squamish Valley monastery who I saw in that mountain movie?’ I asked her.

‘Yes I am, I’m Sister Claire’, she replied.

‘I’m Melanie. It means darkness’, I said with a sardonic half-laugh.

I’d been pondering the accidental prescience that my mother had named me ‘darkness’, only to have had my life spin into years of profound darkness after an accident left me with serious chronic pain that resulted in significant losses in all aspects of my life. Yet here I was, in the waiting room, thinking that my life’s dark streak had finally turned around.  

Without missing a beat, Sister Claire replied, ‘How beautiful, the stars can only shine in the darkness!’ I wondered whether I’d perhaps started to identify with the meaning of my name too much during those dark years of grief.

‘Melanie?’

Just then my conversation with Sister Claire was interrupted as I was called in to the ultrasound clinic. I couldn’t wait to view on the screen what I’d been hoping for years would one day be growing inside of my womb.

Half an hour later, I emerged from the clinic, mind in a daze, thoughts in a washing machine, vision blurred, heart torn, Sister Claire gone. I’d learned that I would soon go throughhorrendous labour pains – for nothing. Nothing but yet another loss, which by this point felt like the universe toying with me by giving me the hope of a baby after so many years of loss, only to say, ‘Just kidding!’.

A few weeks later, I decided to visit Sister Claire and tell her why I’d been at the ultrasound clinic waiting room, and what had happened afterwards. She said, ‘I remember your name, darkness. A dark shadow implies the presence of a bright light. When things seem darkest, it is because God is wrapping you up so tightly in a loving embrace that you can’t see beyond it. Perhaps one day it will happen for you again’.

Of course she was right, and though I was overjoyed, I’d also for many, many years been absolutely petrified of the pain of childbirth. I’d already had enough intense physical pain for years, and it seemed that the chronic pain significantly lowered my pain tolerance. Fittingly, the last agonizing weeks of my pregnancy coincided with the season of Lent. Whereas some people may have engaged in fasting, penitence, or other Lenten practices, my Lenten journey was to reflect (mostly from the hospital IV bed due to ongoing pregnancy nausea and vomiting)on the parallels I drew between my looming pain, and Jesus’s horrendous suffering, both leading to miraculous new life. I considered my favourite words of Mary Oliver that I discovered scratched into a rusted metal spiral hanging hidden deep in a forest: I was ‘grappling with a luminous doom’. Through imagination, I journeyed with Jesus as he prayed, ‘[M]ay this cup be taken from me’. I took comfort in the fact that even Jesus asked if he could just skip the cross. I watched him transition into acceptance, saying, ‘My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done’, and attempted to follow suit. I listened to Rev. Cameron in hisPalm Sunday sermon, mere days before my expected labour, saythat we cannot skip the cross and go straight to the Easter Sunday celebration.

A few days later, I found myself in labour – exactly on the 12-year anniversary of the accident that had so drastically and suddenly changed my life. How paradoxical that the day that had destroyed my life, and had become a solemn day every year since, had now become a day where I was once again experiencing intense physical pain, but this time, for it to potentially turn into the best day of my life. (And of course in the end there was no comparison to Jesus’s suffering. After charging right past the emergency room security guard instructing me to put on a fresh facemask or some such trivial nonsense at four in the morning, barefoot and sopping wet from my tub with nothing but a towel around and screaming for the epidural, the Magic Man provided me with amazing relief!)Finally my baby was born, sure enough, on Good Friday.

I now no longer sardonically laugh at the name my mother gave me. I love that my name means darkness, and I love the initially not apparent radiance of that. I wanted to choose a name for my child that had connotations of resurrection or new life, but also didn’t ‘skip the cross’. In the spirit of Sister Claire’s wisdom, I wanted a name reflecting a ‘luminous doom’. So, I turned to nature.

During Holy Week, in the days before labour, I’d been watching and hearing the robins outside my window. Several of them visited my hospital window as well after the birth, signalling the return of Spring. I thought, ‘What a great symbol of resurrection that is’.

I’d also spent several months surviving pregnancy nausea in my favourite place: the Mojave desert. Upon first impression, the desert may appear to some as being desolate and void of life. For me, in the silence of the desert is where I have always been most filled with peace and healing. It is also where I was fortunate to witness a spectacular resurrection in nature. The “superbloom of the century” in 2019 set the desert on fire withblooming flowers so vibrant that it’s hard to imagine a place filled with more life (and resilient life, at that!).

Given that my name is Greek for darkness, a Greek name for ‘sun’ also occurred to me: ‘Elios’. His creation required an infinite perfect alignment of events, and together, darkness and sun, we are like the perfect alignment of a total solar eclipse.

So, Elios Mojave Robin Hackett was born. This makes his initials an acronym for electromagnetic radiation hazard – which of course comes from the sun, and gives us the aurora! It is a reminder that some things are both lethal, and necessary for life. If not for my past losses, for every single one of them, Elios wouldn’t exist.

‘The stars can only shine in the darkness’.

Thank you, Sister Claire.

Submitted by: Melanie Hackett

Photo: Sean Birch