Help. Familiar Angels. The First Part.

Untitled, Angels; Brian Kershisnik

deposition, n. [OFr. deposition; LL. depositio, a laying or putting down, from L. depositus, pp. of deponere, to lay or put down.]
Webster's Twentieth Century Dictionary Unabridged

The Son of Man hath descended below them all.
Art thou greater than he?
D&C 122: 8

The painter is working on a large canvas. It consumes and absorbs him. He works on other things, too, he always does, but this large painting is the core, the nut, the meat, of where his thought and intent are right now.

Descent from the Cross

I'm thinking and thinking, these last days and weeks, about help. Given and received. How we ask for it, or ask to give it, why we sometimes refuse, whether we would know it, for sure for sure, if we fell over it.
Into it.
For ease of thinking I debate, decide, divine, and divide help into two types.

The painting splits between two crowds, one on our earth's ground and one in its air, which hinge at a central dead and bloody body, awkwardly reclining, extended, by the efforts of the crowd on the ground who are lifting it up from below so that the legs swing forward and the whole thing, the whole composition, folds, creases, at the hands still nailed to a cross. Everybody, in the air and on the ground, looks to be holding their breath, being as careful as they know how to be. Dissolving into sorrow or stepping forward to work, to the task. Still, it doesn't look good. It looks like it's just as well he was dead for this part.

From my memories I tease out one sort of help that anyone can give.
And would.
In Manhattan, across the street and kitty corner from us, a group of people wait for a bus, among them a man in a wheelchair. My focus, my gaze, will be on these events only because I'm interested in the building behind the people. Bus pulling toward the corner; as it does the wheelchair also pulls out of the crowd and turns toward the bus. Getting in position? Going on the bus first? I don't know enough of buses or wheelchairs to properly understand what I see but in less than an instant, quicker than I can organize the frames of this little movie I'm watching, the chair stumbles, sort of staggers, maybe the wheel goes off the curb, and the chair tips, falls into the path of the bus still moving forward, still heading to stop on top of a man suddenly separate from his wheelchair, suddenly lying in the street.
I have taken the step to run, dropped my small girl's hand, drawn a great breath and lifted my other foot for the first true running step to sprint across all those lanes through all those cars. That strange moment; foot jerks and hops back and forth between air and pavement while eyes and brain hold a conference. The cease and desist order nearly sprains my ankle. Never, never make it, I'll be dead, nothing, nothing I can do... and people are coming from everywhere. So many, so fast, I don't see them come, they are acting and thinking and helping while I am saving my own self from accidentally falling headlong into the traffic kitty corner and across the street. Stopping the bus (how?), re-directing traffic, helping the man up, checking him all over, righting the wheelchair, gathering up his scattered belongings, putting him and all the waiting people on the bus, directing the bus back into traffic, picking up their own discarded possessions, walking away, getting back to whatever. Not looking back. Don't thank me, anyone would do it. Done and over, just like that. Nothing like as long as a minute. The first sort of help. All it takes is being present and human.

There are crying people in the air and on the ground who turn to each other, touch and nuzzle, reach out to stroke hair even from air to earth. The women, especially? The crowd on the ground set their teeth, their hands, their shoulders, to a task that should have been an occasion, a job that should have been a ritual of lingering and loving, fond remembrances, shared comfort in a life well and fully spent. This body should have grown up and gown old through a lifetime of stories; there should have been laughter here, too. Not grim, not hurried, not like this, quick and brutal in the gathering darkness as the sun sinks and flames behind them. The crowd in the air press as close as they are able, torn between the agony and terror of this suffering, this grieving, this dying, and the solemn weight of witnessing history twisting on its axis. The mills of God grinding, unbelievably, to a stop, silent for this moment before they turn back, begin to rumble and grind the other way. This horror is the culmination of our most desperate, private, scathing hopes. A dead man birthing our souls' delight. It's the end of the world.

In the emergency room with my first miscarriage. It's an off time, no one needing assistance, the rooms are silent, sterile, no other hurting humans to bring pathogens even by breathing. My baby is dead. Word spreads. Nurses come to hold me, to stroke my hands and hair, make sure I have enough pain killers for my body, assure me my heart will not be always broken. They enclose me, they are intimate. These are my sisters because they know. Every one of them standing around me tells me about her lost babies. Every one. We are a clan. They stand by me for hours till it is all over and they practically carry me to the car. You will be ok. It will be ok.
Second miscarriage the nurse gives me morphine. She is busy, comes and goes. I hear through the drug haze another nurse asking, "Is she bad? Is she ok?" and the answer, quick and curt. "She's fine. A miscarriage."
Third miscarriage. I am alone in my house and this is a much later term baby, someone I knew from ultrasounds who has unaccountably fled, leaving a tiny ghost in my body. A poltergeist, wrecking havoc. I push my head against the wall and whisper to God. Feel myself known and safe and surrounded by sisters who know. Hands on mine. Keep my eyes closed because I don't want to know if I can't see them. You will be ok. It will be ok.
My last child's birth. "Oh," the nurse says, reading my chart,"you're three for six. Right?" She looks up, smiles, squeezes my hand. "Me too."
This is the other sort of help; giving this help requires experience, expertize. I aim to remember this whenever God lays before me a way of suffering. This is for study, so now I know. Now I can help. Sometimes in order to be of real help it is required that we study, know intimately.

The painter talked to people who would know about how a dead body looks, how it would move if moved. He puts tools in the bottom half of the painting, among the crowd on the ground, scattered between feet, tools to use for getting large nails out of human hands and feet.

I saw a girl once, in the student health center, quiet and calm, holding one hand in the other with a napkin lying loose over the cradled hand. I was there for blood poisoning (not for the first time. It's a problem I have). When the nurse came to call me, the girl's companion stood up, nervous and fearing to be rude but worried and driven by unease. "Please, could you see my friend?" The other girl, hands lying one atop the other so oddly, demurred. "It's alright, she was here first--" but her friend cut her off, forcing assistance. "No, I think you need to look at this, first, she has a key in her hand," and lifted away the napkin. I barely had time to reflect with knee jerk irritation that blood poisoning isn't exactly a stroll through the flower show and to wonder, key in her hand? is that weird or just weird? before I saw that she did have a key in her hand. In the center. Right through. Sticking out above and below her palm. Some strange, detached, observant part of me said get a close look. Remember this, it's a central image, it will be important later. As the nurse took her quickly away, running almost while the odd girl with her odd predicament still demurred and protested the gravity of her situation, I thought what on earth are they going to do? Who helps somebody like that? I'll bet they've never seen just this thing. What tools do you use to rescue a hand in such a danger?
Not knowing keys, but knowing hands.

I saw a man in Kanosh working on his car just outside the general store, hood of the car up, head close to the engine, hand resting on the edge of the car. Saw the wind blow the hood closed, saw him jerk his head out in time, saw the hood close and the lock catch and bind through his hand, saw him trapped. Saw people coming from everywhere.
First sort of help. Be human.
Saw them trying to open the hood which stuck. Jammed.
Saw a man running to his truck parked on the next block, throwing himself around it to grab his large tool chest, saw him running, urgent and awkward, the tool chest slamming his legs and him running, gasping, back up the street past the store where we watched from the window.
What on earth, I wondered, is he going to do? Can he possibly know how to solve this? Does he have a plan? A tool for this use? This doesn't look good. I decided not to watch and walked home. I had no experience.
The second sort of help. Know what you're doing or stand out of the way.

For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities;
but was in all points tempted like as we are,
yet without sin.
Hebrews 4:15

The painter thought about it, talked about it. How do you get spikes out of a person and preserve the person at all? What would they have used, been thinking? Did someone start planning for this ending at the beginning? Did someone run to their shop, their shed?

Descent from the Cross.

I try to stage it in my mind. This is how I see things. Make it a play, make it concise, consistent. People are basically the same, world without end and time after time. How would they act? I push them around with my thoughts, rearrange them for maximum impact, suggest motivation. I am moving a painted figure in the foreground, rocked back into an arc, body tense with effort, his shoulder under the descending top crosspiece, bearing so much of its weight and of the man still fastened to it. There is a pry bar lying at his feet. Realization washes across me. Woman, over there. Man, here. Mother. Brother. Carpenter. Tools.
Family.

familiar, a. [ME. famylier; OFr. familier; L. familiaris, of or pertaining to a household, domestic, from familia, household, family.]
Webster

This would be a man familiar with tools. Father raised him to this work, to this task, shape, hammer, sand, cut, and maybe he's never done precisely this thing but he knows the wood, knows the nail.
Knows the man nailed to the wood.
Brother. Mother. Father. God. Family. Anyone near could lend a hand, anyone would try to help with the poor broken son. Anyone would gently support a leg, hold the weeping, stroke the hair, but hand over the pry bar to the one who knows.
It's your family who knows how to take apart wood, get the nails out of you; those who know this become family.
Anyone can call 911. We're primed, we've got this. The surgeon hands off his cell phone to take up his scalpel.
Two kinds of help.
I'm not going to think about people deciding not to be human.
I remember a neighbor, a nurse, working fiercely to save a life and never recognizing till the end the horribly sick man was his brother.
I think of a story, a friend standing between the living and dying, between fire and water, watching death make off with one of her family while the jaws of Hell stretched wide after the others. All the human people working desperately, hopelessly.
And the air around them filled with angels. Or so I have heard.
It's the end of the world, don't stand back, do what you know.
Be human.
While Walking; Brian Kershisnik

I have been aided by angels who happened on the scene, the closest people at hand when terror came.
I have been sustained by brothers and sisters, seen and unseen, who came because they had studied this pain, knew, from the inside.
I have seen people wracked by circumstance and blind chance.
I have seen people hammered by trials constructed, from the ground up, to fit them. Snug as a coffin.
I will tell you what I believe.
For succor in our most shattering, exquisite, personal trials, they don't send just anybody. Those who fly to our aid were chosen. Because they know. It is so on earth where they are seen. It is so where they are not seen.
We observe it in our lives lived on this earth's ground. Some help has to have labored, studied, suffered sufficiently that it knows what to do. This is a comfort, to me. Believe I'll take care of you like one of my own.
This is family.

And he looked round about
on them which sat about him,
and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!
For whosoever shall do the will of God,
the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.
Mark 3:34-35