Shakespeare in South Dakota

It's been a strange week. Things have felt just unexpected and out of place. On Sunday my sister-in-law's grandmother had an aneurism, and it happened while her whole family was at the grandma's house for coffee. My brother came to join our family for dinner, and when he walked in he told us they had just airlifted her grandmother to the hospital. He'd taken my nephew's coat off, gone in to say hello, and by then the grandmother's face had all drooped on one side. On Tuesday, she died.

My parents and I went to the hospital Tuesday night to see my sister-in-law's family, but we didn't know that her grandma had passed on. We made our way to the ICU, and found another family from the small town we're from in the waiting room. There's a guy, younger than me, who has a rare blood disease and has been battling near death for days now.

I've never had anyone close to me die, I still have all four of my grandparents. I remember in grade school when my neighbor died in a car accident, but I didn't know her well enough to grieve. I just have gruesome memories of seeing some blond hair hanging on a shard of windshield when we saw her car. It's strange that I saw the car, as I was probably only four or so, but in a small town the grotesque can be normal.

So I don't really have anything to say about death, or what it feels like. I'm not really sure what I do want to say. It's something like I'm in awe of the profound connection the living find with one another in the midst of death, but that seems too detached. Saying something about beauty in pain is too cliche. So I don't know. It's been a strange week that way.

Somewhat unrelated, but perhaps a good sermon metaphor if I were a pastor, would be that I traveled for work today to a few tiny little towns in central South Dakota. One of them, population 1,100, had a Shakespeare Garden and an Anne Hathaway house with a thatched roof. I drove to it after visiting the high school, where when I left the kids were all dismissed to walk home for lunch since they don't have a hot lunch program.

Not surprisingly, the Anne Hathaway house is the only thatched roof dwelling in South Dakota. I don't know anything about thatch, but I would imagine it's hard to maintain in the winters here. I couldn't go inside, as it's staff by volunteers and only in the summer from 1-5pm, but I was invited by a sign to walk through the "Shakespeare Garden."

For those of you not familiar with gardens in SD in the winter, it was a winding path of brick, bordered on each side by frozen black soil, with some twigs scattered around. Today was also a very grey day, in anticipation of the (Lord willing) last snow of the season, so the Shakespeare Garden was none too compelling.

It's a great idea, but I cannot imagine why it still exists in this town. According to the website, it's main function is to serve as a site for English tea, a rarity in South Dakota to say the least.
So as odd as it was, it made an otherwise average day much more intriguing.