by Bo Caldwell
For a while her passing felt like a temporary absence, as though she had simply gone away for a few days. She had been my sounding board and confidante for so many years that I thought constantly of things I wanted to talk to her about—a news item or something that was bothering me—and again and again I thought, I must tell Katherine. Then I would remember she was gone, the realization new and painful each time.
The absence deepened, and for the first time in my life, I felt old. I had trouble paying attention to people, but being alone was no better, and I came to dread the emptiness and the quiet of our house. In the past there had never been enough time for all I wanted to do, but with Katherine gone I had no idea how to pass the hours in each day. I saw how much she had encouraged me and pushed me, how she had kept me on track. Now I wanted only one thing: for her to return. I wanted her to sit next to me and ask about my day, to walk with me after dinner, to be asleep next to me in our bed. But the more I longed for her, the more my ability to vividly recall her faded. I could picture her, but I could not recall her voice, and it tormented me.
As those first months passed, I began to question many of the decisions I had made in my life, and my prayer became a petulant litany of complaint; I spoke to God as though He were an incompetent employer, pointing out how things could have been better if Lily had lived, if Katherine and I had had more years together, if we had been able to grow old in China. I had read that many of the churches built by missionaries were being destroyed by the Communists or used for other purposes, and I began to feel we had labored in vain. None of our work seemed to count from so far away. With so little to show for it, what had it all been for? I had no answer, nor, it seemed, did He. My doubts shamed me and I chastised myself for what I saw as my lack of faith. What had been the point of all my years of believing if my trust faltered when I needed it most?
On an autumn morning nine months after Katherine’s death I received a call from Madeleine with news of her father. I knew Edward had suffered a fall several months earlier, and that his health had become such that he felt it necessary to return to the United States. Madeleine was calling to say that he would arrive on the President Madison at San Pedro Harbor the following Saturday; the family would meet the ship then welcome him at a party at her home in Sierra Madre, and she was hoping I would join them.
I had not seen Edward since before Katherine and I left China thirteen years earlier, and that Saturday I awoke early, filled with anticipation about the prospect of our reunion. As I sat at the window watching for my niece’s blue Packard, I became so immersed in thoughts of the past that when she greeted me I had to stare at her for a moment to reorient myself. Seeing my strange look, she asked, “Uncle Will, are you all right?”
“How old are you, Madeleine?”
She laughed, and in that moment she looked so much like her mother that I was stunned. She said, “Just between you and me, I’m forty-one.”
I shook my head, trying to put things together. It did not seem possible that the middle-aged woman standing in front of me was the baby Naomi had held on our first night in Ch’eng An Fu. “Don’t ever get old,” I said. “It can be most disconcerting.”
Madeleine’s husband and two children were in the car. We drove to the harbor and waited with her brother John and his family and dozens of other onlookers for the ship to appear on the horizon. When it came into sight and then docked, I felt a burst of hope. Passengers began to disembark, and although I knew it was irrational, I watched eagerly for the man I had known in China: the tall frame and long even stride, the straw hat, wide grin, and thick dark hair. We waited and then we waited some more as a line of excited passengers filed down the gangplank, but no Edward. Suddenly Madeleine, standing next to me, caught her breath and said softly, “Oh, Dad.” For a moment I was confused; I didn’t see him. Then I realized with a start that the elderly man being brought off the ship in a wheelchair was he. At the bottom of the gangplank he motioned for the steward to stop, then he carefully stood and waited for us to make our way to him.
The sight of him was a blow. Though he was only ten years older than I—seventy-two to my sixty-two—he looked far older, the result of a harder life. As he embraced his children and grandchildren, he leaned heavily on a cane, and I saw how frail he was. He was several inches shorter than I instead of taller, his blue eyes were clouded by cataracts, and his body was stooped, his hair thin and white.
But when the family made space for me and our eyes met and we embraced and exchanged a holy kiss, the younger man seemed to reappear. I saw the same zeal I’d seen in him when we met in Oklahoma, and I clasped his hand in mine, amazed he was really there. “Edward, my old friend!”
His eyes brightened and he smiled broadly. “Kung P’ei Te,” he said, and the sound of my Chinese name nearly undid me, “Shao-chien shao-chien.” I have missed seeing you.
I did not hesitate. “Pi-tz’u pi-tz’u.” The feeling is mutual.
The afternoon was indeed a celebration. Madeleine’s home was decorated with balloons and streamers, and the house was filled with the easy conversation of family and the laughter and shouting of five grandchildren who until that day had not met their grandfather. Twenty years had passed since Edward’s last visit to the United States, and there was much for him to catch up on.
Late in the afternoon the children escaped to a nearby park, and when the adults withdrew to the kitchen to clean up from the meal, Edward and I were left alone. He was sitting in a yellow wing chair next to an arbor window and seemed fatigued but peaceful. I glanced at his plate and saw he had eaten less than half of what he had been served: turkey and gravy, mashed potatoes and green beans, fruit salad and a roll, probably three times as much as he was accustomed to eating at one meal. I knew Madeleine had put a great deal of thought into the day’s menu; she had so wanted to please her father and had quizzed me several times about what sort of American food he liked. I did not tell her that while I knew her father well, there was no reason for me to know what he liked to eat in the United States and my suggestions had been guesses.
He motioned to his uneaten food and laughed softly. “I believe my appetite is still crossing the Pacific. We’ll see how long it takes to catch up.” Then he breathed in the fresh air from the open window and said, “It smells like China.”
I nodded. “Someone has a fire in their fireplace.”
He breathed in again. “The air always smelled of smoke in Ch’eng An Fu. When I was returning home from some village or faraway town, it told me I was getting close to the city again.”
“Smoke meant home,” I said.
“Exactly so, mu shih.” He paused for a moment, then said, “May we continue in the standard language? My old mind is more comfortable there.”
I was delighted. “Nothing could please me more,” I said.
We fell easily into Mandarin. Edward talked of his time in the remote northwest of China and I of the church in Los Angeles, and when we finished with the present we began working backward, reminiscing about our early years in the Middle Kingdom. We talked of Katherine and Naomi and of Christmases we had spent together, of our successes and failures. We recalled the particulars of that time and place: the loud squeak of a cart’s wheels on a rutted road, the clean scent of wheat fields after the rain, the sound of townspeople bargaining excitedly at the market, the taste of steaming noodles with vinegar and cayenne bought from a street vendor on a cold day. My dear China came to life, and I missed her deeply.
I thought Edward was feeling similarly, but when I looked at him I saw not sadness in his expression but wonder. He said, “To love a place. To hold it so dearly that one aches at the memory of it. Are we not most fortunate?” Then his countenance darkened. “But my Lord’s largesse troubles me at times; I am at a loss as to how to return His love. I have given Him my all, yet it seems I have done so little.” He looked at me with tears in his eyes. “There was so much more yet to do.”
I was at first shocked by his words; I knew
of no one who had given himself more completely to God. I started to say this but found myself unable to speak, for I realized he had uncovered a secret I had not voiced to Katherine or anyone else: my regret in leaving so much unfinished in Kuang P’ing Ch’eng. I was suddenly overcome with losing China and Katherine and our work there, and I blurted out in English what I had never intended to. “Edward, I am in such pain,” I said. “I am so angry, and this desolation seems to have no end.”
I was immediately ashamed, but Edward nodded matter-of-factly. “This part of the journey is not so easy,” he said quietly. “This forging ahead alone after the years together.”
I stared hard at my hands. I could not meet his eyes and keep the little composure I had. “No,” I said. “It is not easy.”
Edward gazed through the window at the orderly suburban street outside. “When Naomi passed, I asked God to take away the pain. I believed He could, and I pointed out to Him that doing so made sense. Spare me this grief so I can get back to work, I told Him. But He didn’t; He saw me through the pain, but He didn’t take it away.” Edward turned to me. “He honors our sorrow by allowing us to experience it. How else to deepen us? How else to increase our trust? Instead of fighting the pain, He asks us to surrender to it. Only then can it begin to heal us.” Edward looked at me then with great compassion. “Thank Him for the emptiness. He will fill it when He sees fit.”
The adults started to drift back into the room then, and soon the children came spilling in, and the festivities began to draw to a close. Madeleine said she would drive me home if I was ready and I accepted; I was suddenly very weary.
Although I was tired, the afternoon had cheered me. I felt a comfort in Edward’s presence that I’d not found anywhere since Katherine’s death, and the prospect of seeing him regularly encouraged me. But when I said goodbye to Madeleine in front of my home and went inside and closed the door behind me, a despair unlike anything I had ever known descended upon me. Every other time I had traveled—in China, in Los Angeles, whenever I left home—I had always returned to Katherine; she was always there to greet me. That afternoon I understood for the first time what her passing meant: I would not see her again on this earth. The enormity of that fact seemed to drop to the bottom of my soul, and after I had let myself into the house and walked from room to room for a while, I sat down at our small kitchen table. In my anguish I asked my absent wife, “Surely you cannot have deserted me?” The only answer was silence, and I voiced the heavier question in my heart: “Surely You cannot have deserted me?”
I sat in the late-afternoon quiet for some time, listening to the even sound of my own breathing, and my eyes fell upon Katherine’s Bible. It had been a gift from her father before she left for China, and I had found her reading it most mornings of our lives together when I arose, whether in Kuang P’ing Ch’eng or in Los Angeles. Its spine and cover were worn, its pages thin. I took it from the kitchen shelf where Katherine had kept it with her medical books, and when I opened it, my eyes found a handwritten note on the inside back cover:
We often wait for God with hope. But sometimes we must wait for hope. We may feel nothing, but we do not rely on our feelings. When we don’t feel hope, we wait for it, and it always comes.
The date next to these words was October 11, 1917—six months after our daughter’s death.
I read these words several times, for they soothed me. The idea of waiting for hope was one I could grasp, and I began to see that I would not feel this way forever. I felt something give way inside, and despite the deep sadness there was also relief.
From that night on I yielded to my sadness. I began to speak to God more forthrightly than I ever had in my life before, unburdening myself to Him, confiding in Him, questioning Him, even railing against Him. Doing so often made me ill at ease; a part of me feared my outbursts might cause God to distance Himself. But I continued to reveal myself to Him, and His Presence became imbued with a fierceness I had never known, as though He were clinging to me as much as I was to Him. When the pain was great, I thanked Him for it. Not always sincerely, but I said the words and trusted that that was enough.
A month passed, and one night I slept for nearly twelve hours and woke feeling more rested than I had for a long time. I was in no hurry to get up, and as I lay there not really thinking of anything in particular I suddenly remembered Katherine so vividly that it was as if she were lying there beside me. All at once I could see her expression, hear her voice and her laugh, feel her hand on my shoulder, even smell the soap she used. I realized I was not merely remembering her; she was somehow truly present, and though unseen, her presence was as real as anything else in my bedroom. It seemed I could feel the weight of her in the bed next to me, and I was as surprised and joyful as if I had met her unexpectedly on the street. She was as real as I was and I knew—I knew—she was there.
On my walk that morning, I breathed in the cool air that precedes rain, and at breakfast the strawberry jam on my wheat toast was sweet and good, and I thanked Him for it. In the afternoon a neighbor whose husband had recently passed on hailed me from her driveway. This woman liked to talk, and although I usually didn’t enjoy hearing her detailed stories of their lives together in the Philippines—the stories alternated between too long and too intimate—I always listened anyway, for it seemed she needed to tell them to someone. But that day I listened to her in a way I hadn’t before, and as she spoke of her husband and of places they’d traveled and lived, I heard how much she had loved him and how blessed she had felt when he was near, and I heard her grief and sorrow. Later, when I asked God to give her comfort and healing, I found I was the one who had been comforted.
That night as I knelt in prayer to give thanks for my day, something under the bed caught my eye. When I investigated I was at first puzzled then amazed to find the silver hair clasp given to Katherine by Mo Yun in Kuang P’ing Ch’eng, the very thing I had hunted for like a madman after Katherine’s death. I have no idea how it came to be there, or how I had missed it when I’d searched high and low after her death. I know only that it was there, and I clutched it gratefully throughout that night, fully convinced it was a tangible gift from my intangible Lord, evidence of His loving and unpredictable crazy-quilt ways.
A few weeks later I awoke with a feeling I had not had for some time: a sense of anticipation, of wondering what the day might hold and how I might be useful. My sturdy old heart began to beat faster at the idea that I might still be of service to my Lord and at the possibilities of what might yet lay ahead in this life. From that time on I began to heal, and to wind my way back to a good and joyful life.
Think and Want, Family and Home
1966
It has been twenty years since my wife’s passing and, although there are days where I still miss her deeply, I have not felt the darkness and despair of that time again. I dream of her often, good dreams that are like brief visits with her, and I feel in some strange way that we are still married. I find myself wanting to be a good husband. I turn to her often in gladness, I speak to her as though she is beside me, and I give thanks for her; and when I do these things, I feel her near. Chung Hao once told me that the dead are sensitive to our thoughts and do not wish for us to be sorrowful; he said our grieving worries them and prevents them from living the new life they are to live. I have come to agree with this.
Though still the man my wife loved, I am old now, eighty-one last month. I continued as pastor of First Chinese Church for nine years after Katherine’s death, good years that were filled with purpose and hard work and with frequent visits with Edward until his death in 1951. When I reached the age of seventy I felt it time to retire, less because I wanted to than because I believed the church would benefit from a younger pastor. Also, around that time I began experiencing a few health problems of my own—occasional shortness of breath, increasing aches and pains—and because I did not want to worry my congregation or my nephew or niece, I chose to leave the house I had shared with Katherine and
move into the retirement home where I now live. While it’s true that I am assured of everything I need here, including the built-in companionship of other residents and hospital care if and when I require it, coming here has not been easy. It is odd to know that this is where I will most likely live out my days, and I do not think of it as home. But moving here seemed to be the right decision, and I have made peace with it.
Although I still do not understand the death of my daughter, I have made something approaching peace with that as well, and each year on the day of her birth I think of her with love and joy and I give thanks for her brief life. I have no idea why Lily was taken from us; perhaps each soul has its time. To search for a reason more than that seems futile. I have come to accept that at present I have only a partial view of reality; there are answers I will not be given until I leave this life. I know that my Lord is the God of wheat fields and oak trees, of mountains and valleys, and that His answers, like His works, often require time.
My days and nights are uncomplicated now. I rise early and follow a schedule of prayer, for I believe that is how I am best able to serve at this time in my life. On Sunday mornings, Thomas and Rebecca Kung come for me and we attend the ten o’clock service at First Chinese Church, which now holds five services each Sunday, three in Mandarin and two in Cantonese. After church, the three of us walk to a nearby Chinese restaurant for lunch, where our conversation continues in Mandarin, and when I return here in the late afternoon, I feel nourished in every way. In the afternoons I read, although at this point in my life I have given most of my books away, for I realize that one of these days I will go to sleep and not wake again, and I do not want someone else to be burdened with the task of sorting through my belongings. The books I’ve kept have been part of my life: Katherine’s journal and her worn copy of The Home Physician, which she was never without in China; her Bible; my Chinese Bible, which I could not read when Edward gave it to me in 1906 and which is now the only Bible I read. I also have some classics of Chinese philosophy—The Analects, The Great Learning, and The Doctrine of the Mean by Confucius, The Works of Mencius, and the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu—given to me when I arrived in China by Li Lao Shih, who said these books were found in nearly every Chinese home. They have become my respected and beloved old friends. There is also the book about China that I checked out so frequently from the public library when we first returned to the United States. After borrowing it for ten years I saw my worn and dog-eared copy at the library book sale, so I own it now and have the luxury of reading it whenever I want.
