the measure of an embrace

I’ve been reading a book written by some intrepid soul who crossed the wilds of Canada before this country was even given that name. There are all sorts of juicy little tidbits in the tale, from how they ate to the beautiful and vicious things they encountered to the indigenous people, some who tried to kill them, some who kept them alive. There’s one section in the book where the author describes the enormity of the cedar trees they came upon. He exclaims that they were at least six and a half embraces!

Of course, I immediately understood what that meant, but having not heard “embrace” as a measure before, I set out to investigate. I blew the dust off my trusty, leather-bound behemoth 1934 dictionary and began to poke around. What I found is that indeed “embrace” was used as a measure as was “fathom” - the two being used to describe length or diameter by the use of “the extended arms; of two or more, to encircle with arms extended from one to another”. My, isn’t that beautiful? 

I suppose that part of the story of the six embrace cedar tree really stuck with me because I’ve been thinking a lot about embraces over the last few weeks or so. I’m not sure what it is, maybe a smell in the air or a thought dropped into my heart from lands faraway, but I’ve been thinking about some of the most wonderful hugs I’ve shared with people in my life. And then that got me thinking about the hug itself. And next thing you know, I’m watching people in public or as they greet each other or in movies and I’m amazed that a thing like a hug ever survived in our culture at all. 

That dictionary of mine has a few definitions of an embrace, but this is the one I was looking for “A close encircling of the arms and pressure to the bosom, esp. in the intimacies of love.” Imagine this thing we call a “hug” getting introduced into our culture right now. Let’s say we’ve never done it before. It’s as foreign as greeting each other as would be flapping our eyelashes against one another’s. Okay, so it’s our culture in this day and I tell everyone that we’re going to show affection for one another and the way we’re going to do that is by busting through someone’s “personal space” and wrapping our arms around them while we press our soft underbellies against one another’s and then we’re going to squeeze them up real good. See?! How did that hug ever survive? It’s just that good. It’s the magic of the hug. It overpowers our reservations and breaks down our defences. It’s survived because we need it to.

One of the great gifts I received after our daughter’s death was a hug from one of her friends. I got many hugs then, many people, many strangers even, willing to hug me, willing to let me hold and be held by. This young man came to me and hugged me with his whole being. Have you had hugs like that? Ones that take your breath away by their enormous sweetness and vulnerability? I have and I remember each one. Later, that young man wrote to me and said, “Mila said her mom gave the best hugs and she was right.” My teenage daughter told one of her friends that her mom gave the best hugs. What a profound gift that was to hear at that time. 

I have had many life-changing embraces in my life, but there are those that will always stand out as treasured memories. I remember being in the military and driving in the training grounds in my truck when I came up close behind another army truck carrying troops in the back. The soldiers in the back were covered in dust and camouflage paint and looked exhausted. Then one leaned forward and looked into my truck and said something to another and then another and soon they were all yelling something at me. I put my hands in the air - the great “I don’t know what you’re saying signal” and then I saw a soldier take the dust scarf off his face. It was a dear friend I hadn’t seen in a year! They yelled at their driver to stop. He did and I did and I ran out of my truck while my friend jumped out of the back of his. We gave each other a big smooch and a joyous hug under the excited cacophony of hoots and claps of dozens of soldiers! It was like something out of a movie. All of us celebrating in one simple sweetness. I’ll never forget it.

I’ve had other embraces after long separations that lingered for eternity. I remember the hug I shared with someone that once meant a lot to me. He had been shot in the military and my relief to see him safe and whole was immeasurable. I remember my first embrace with my husband when, after separating for a time early in our dating days, he rode up to the military base I was stationed to on his motorcycle. He smelt like wind and motorcycle and wild things I wanted to climb through. We never parted again.

I can remember the round softness of my babies, held tight against my body as I inhaled the smell of their hair, their chubby fingers, their softly curved spines folded in my arms. And then those bodies as they elongated and leaned out. Those bodies that propelled them across the water and the ice. Those bodies that jumped into my arms when they were excited or crumpled against me in their heartbreak. I feel them still.

And I will always, of course, remember the last hug I shared with my youngest born child. My Mila. We were standing at the top of the steps and we hugged silently for a good long while. I got teary eyed because I was missing her. She told me she missed me, too. We made a date for later that week, but that date never came. 

But that wasn’t really our last hug. Our last hug came a few days later, after she had died. She came to me and we embraced. Not in a dream. Not in a fantastical imagining of a desperate, grieving mother. But in reality - as real as anything I’ve ever known. And I understood and I understand. It was the most extraordinary, sublime, beautiful and peaceful gift she could give me. 

Some people say that there’s a veil that is lifted when those we love so deeply cross over to the other side. I didn’t really know what that meant before our daughter died. I understand now.  It is exactly that - some impenetrable curtain that holds us from the spiritual realm simply dissipates and the physical world we live in becomes gauzy and less tangible. There was a day, shortly after our daughter’s death, where my sister and I were crying in each other’s arms. We stayed there a good, long while. I could feel her heart beating against mine and mine against hers until, at some point, I couldn’t pick out whose was whose. And then it wasn’t just us holding each other anymore. We both squeezed each other tighter, aware that there was a love and a healing grace flowing through us but not of us. Mila was in the room. Mila was around us. God was there, too, full and alive. It was one of the most beautiful moments I’ve ever shared with my little sister.

I’ve been thinking about these hugs again. Thinking that when I die, I would like these to be the images that flicker before my closing eyes. I think we can ask for, pray for, such things and so I do. But the reason I’ve been going through these moments in my heart is because I’ve just recently shared in a humbling and profoundly agonising embrace with another mother whose child just died. She is the mother of a young man our daughter dated for a time before she died. When our daughter died, he came to me and sat with me on our porch. He answered my questions and shared his pain. He had a good, kind heart and now he has died.

I stood in front of his casket and held his mother. She held me. We squeezed into each other, two strangers, deeply and intimately connected by our pain and our shared love for the children we will never see again in the flesh. We sobbed and whispered words into each other’s ears - a language unknown and imperceptible to logic. Hearts speaking in tongues.  I pulled her into me and she pulled me into her, both of us desperate to connect ourselves with one another. I’m here with you. I’m here with you.

If you want to know how powerful love is, witness grief without any shields or protection. Most cannot bear it.

I’m a devotee of the embrace done right. It might just be all that’s left of us that can so quickly and profoundly connect us to one another. It’s about as countercultural as you can get these days and that, too, I’m evermore loyal to. A shared intimate moment where two people can wrap themselves around one another, hold their beating hearts close, and welcome in the unknowable, illogical, unquantifiable mystery that alchemizes two bodies into one shared, transcendent moment. An intimacy and closeness to hold onto long after the person is gone. No shoulder side hugs, please. No quick pats on the back. Not if you can help it. Good hugs, filled with love. Your softness and your strength given and theirs received. Shared and held and remembered forever. Hugs are something you actually can bring with you when you’re gone.