I was lucky to be born into a household which was not even remotely dogmatic and resolutely secular, but even so, as the child of a former seminarian and daughter of a priest, religion was a lens I could not help but see the world through. It was a kind of background noise such as people who live near train tracks must hear, and likewise largely unhear, after a while. I am going to tell you the story of Mary and her sister, Martha now, such as I remember it. If I have modified it from how it originally appears (scholars, please laugh at that) it hardly matters, because it is the version that I tell, as I am telling it, that is the frame for everything else I tell you after.

It came to pass that Christ had decided to pay the sisters of Lazarus, Mary and Martha, a visit. Both sisters were overjoyed that he should do so, and set about being hospitable such as they were inclined to: Martha in the kitchen busy, cooking and washing up as she went and Mary sat at Christ’s feet, listening to him speak. After enough rushing about, Martha was frustrated and possibly scolded Mary for not helping. Christ rebuked her gently saying that her sister had chosen the better part. O Martha, don’t you know? Even while I’m here, I’m leaving.

In the Orthodox church, in our tradition the funeral service is pure ritual and so there is nothing different from one to another, no matter who the departed. Thus by custom there are prayers the evening before, where the priest may speak about the very specific dead. At the prayers for my grandmother, the priest spoke of dvije sestre, Marija i Marta, and knowing my grandmother but in that time having hardly any of the language I intuited (or hoped I did) what he was saying. This is one of the great regrets I have, that the river of language flows in one direction only. I would understand this homily now, but I am so far upstream that I can never reach it, or for that matter my grandmother’s own stories which I smiled and squinted my ears at, willing myself to comprehend. But I am a very slow study, and there are some things it takes me nearly forever to learn.

My first instinct when my mother was diagnosed with dementia, and then cancer was to try and fix things, to take charge, to coordinate, to manage, to direct, to organize, to be busy. To be busy. Maybe you understand why; it took me almost forever but I think now I do, too.

Through a series of events I have come to learn that I can’t fix things, that I don’t need to organize anything, and the last thing she needs from me is that I should be busy. I had dinner with her tonight, it is Thanksgiving, which in my house growing up was always the most random of days — both parents interpreted what they saw as a bizarre and novel kind of holiday such as they were inclined to, and it was never the way it looked on tv: some years we had takeout, or a lasagna, and once, depressingly, sliced leftover turkey lunch meat from my father’s disastrous restaurant floating in a pot of gravy. This year we had lamb, which is what is traditional on feast days and what she will have eaten in her girlhood and youth. I was not busy and I held her hand after we ate and whatever language she spoke to me in I understood.