Which Way to Look?

Photo by 1MoreCreative, iStock Photo

There are days when I think I could have titled this blog, "Getting Along with Death," as well as "Getting Along with Grief."  I spent  time yesterday afternoon with my friend whose son died July 23rd. We shared memories of him:  an Eagle Scout, a cellist, an author, and vanguard software developer with AMD and Microsoft. In fact, on the day of his upcoming service, Microsoft headquarters will fly all flags at half mast to honor him. He was also a husband, father, brother .... and a good one, in all cases. His parents are outstanding people:  kind, giving, intelligent, strong of soul, heart and mind; people who go way out of their way to help others, and often.

I'm not proud of what I feel today, after seeing them yesterday. I feel no shame over my sadness or the tears that come, unbidden and unrelenting.  What I am struggling with, however, is that death--a natural part of life--can feel to me like a colossal unfairness. Or, perhaps I should say, that its timing can appear to me to be an act of colossal unfairness. 

I struggle with this.  Not only in the case of this exemplary, 49-year-old man who still had much to give, but also in the case of children wounded in wars they have nothing to do with, peaceful protestors gunned down this week in Syria, the parents and children in Somalia dying from malnutrition .... 

Here's the core feeling I don't feel proud of: Why do these innocent ones, and good, suffer in this way? Why do they meet an early death, when a lot of mean, stingy, and downright evil people live so much longer?

I once talked to a man who confessed that he had loaded up on qualudes one night and gone on a very fast motorcycle ride--in the Rocky Mountains, and with no helmet. He stayed safe, even as he defied all odds not to.  

Years ago, I worked in a company owned by a multimillionaire, whom I watched humiliate his employees repeatedly, and who would insist that we listen to his n-word jokes. He said we had to listen to them, because we were his "underlings."  He has done so much damage to other people over such a long period of time. I know people who lost great sums of money due to his unethical business dealings. And yet, he continues to prosper and live into a ripe old age.

These thoughts are simplistic, even simple-minded. Life is not a quid-pro-quo system of any kind. Nature is a creation of balance and precision, yes, but fairness?  We invented fairness.  It's a necessary concept for society, for safety, for many situations of human coexistence, but it has nothing to do with the timing of life and death.  

In my defense, I do know that my thoughts are not an attempt on my part to wish any person, no matter how mean or ill-behaved, any kind of harm.  What they do represent is my struggle with the inscrutable cosmos and with my own personal pain. These thoughts give my mind somewhere to go, provide a diversion even as the tears come down my cheeks.

Death feels unfair to me today, as I mourn the passing of an extraordinary human being, as I share the pain of my friends who bid a final farewell to that most precious of gifts, a child.  

Yet, I must accept that death is both given and natural.  And from that point, I must learn to look forward in the largest sense. Look forward to the day of my own passing and how I live each day until then.  Look to the future and know that the one future we all share is that we will leave these human bodies, and that, as the proverb says, "The rain falls on the just and the unjust." 

Even as I am reminded to look forward, I also remember to look backward in gratitude, as my friend and I did yesterday as we looked through her son's childhood and high-school photos. Her son was a beautiful man who lived a beautiful life. This is no cause for mourning, but for gratitude and celebration. His death does not do away with that life, even though it ends it. Death represents an ending, yes, but not a destroying. Even as I mourn his passing, I can affirm his life as it was lived and as it will be remembered.

Which way to look?  Both ways. Look forward with awareness, for "we do not know the hour," and look backward in love and gratitude. May my looking both ways be an action that illuminates each present, passing hour.



Text Copyright, Ysabel de la Rosa, 2011

And now he has moved on ...

Saturn Letterpress Card. See below for resources.

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I wrote in an earlier post that the son of a very close friend of mine was struggling against death, and now he is not. His soul departed this plane yesterday, July 23rd. Since speaking with my friend yesterday, the phrase "whipped into silence" continues to come to my mind.  Not whipped as in punished or beaten, but whipped as in a cooking event, stirred, folded, whipped into a great white mass of very fresh whipping cream. Silence.  White silence is what I feel inside me. The event is so large. I am so powerless. 

While in St. Paul recently, I visited an exquisite shop called Paper Patisserie, owned by Eileen Shapiro. Nestled in the ground floor of a 19th-century brick building, the shop offers very fine wrapping papers (beautiful enough to frame), meaningful and beautiful greeting cards of all varieties, affordable and excellent art by local artists, hand-milled soap, jewelry and Belgian chocolate. Don't go looking for the Paper Patisserie Website, though. The store does not have one. You have to experience this wonderful place the human, old-fashioned way: by going there!  To 366 Selby Avenue in St. Paul's Cathedral Hill neighborhood.  If you are anywhere near the Twin Cities area, you owe it to yourself to go to this shop.

I bring this up in this post, because I found sympathy cards like no others at Paper Patisserie. Some of them are created and printed by Saturn Press in Maine. If you cannot get to Paper Patisserie, you can find Saturn Letterpress cards at various sites online, including:  Cronin and Company, Northern Tides Gallery, and at Rikumo.

The card above is one I bought at Paper Patisserie and the one I will send to my friend. It's a good quote to be read on any day at any time, as well as at that uncompromising moment when we must look toward the horizon and bid farewell to someone we love with all our being--and then some.

A friend's child is fighting against death

BriArt of iStock Photo

I knew when I got the call last night that the news would not be something I wanted to hear. My friend's adult son has valiantly fought melanoma for nearly two years. In the last few weeks, though, the experimental chemo ceased to quell the cancer and, as so often happens, compromised his immune system. He is in the hospital now, and my friends, his mother and father, are with him.  To get there, they had to drive through a rainstorm in the Rocky mountains. It's both odd and amazing how natural events can intensify our grief and worry. I am sure that the storm outside matched the storms that each of them felt inside as they drove through the dying light, hurrying to the airport.

This experience, unfortunately, is not new to me. Six of my close friends have lost children. The circumstances and ages have all been different, but the loss of a child remains colossal, no matter the age or circumstances. Colossal, bigger than all things human, destroys all scale, all sense of logic, reason, and natural order. 

Were it in my power, I would "take this cup from" each of them. This, however, is not in my power. What is in my power is to drink from the cup with them and to choose to be present for my friends in this darkest hour. People who lose children often have the least support of anyone during grief. The knowledge that any parent can lose a child scares us all witless. If we just don't think about it, if we just don't let ourselves come in contact with this catastrophe in someone else's life, maybe we can be safe from this. We may not think these thoughts consciously, but thinking them is a natural, instinctive reaction.  

And a wrong one. The right thing to do is to show up.  Just stand there. Understand that you cannot make a dent in a bereaved parent's grief, but you can be there for them. You can show up and say, "This is horrible. I hate that you have to endure this loss. I will walk through the loss with you, though." Early in the loss, it's hard to know what to do. Bring food?  Help write thank you notes?  These help. As does offering to mow the lawn, run errands, or do laundry.  But I still think the biggest thing is just to show up, not run away, and be prepared to show up over a long period of time.

Research indicates that it takes four years to feel something of a return to normal after the loss of a child. (I think this is true for other losses, as well, depending on the relationship.) So, make it a point to check in with your friend over the next few years.  This does not have to be a big-deal commitment. Just promise that you will call them every four to eight weeks, and say, "How are you?" and then listen, really listen to how they are.  Remember you are not responsible for fixing their grief, but for walking through it with them. Right now, whether male or female, that parent is the elderly woman that you, the boy or girl scout, has agreed to help walk across a dangerous, high-traffic thoroughfare. Just hold their hand and walk with them.

I called my friend this morning. We talked for just five minutes. I assured her that my brother and I are praying for all of them, that we will call and check in with her to see how her son's condition either advances or deteriorates.  We are and will be HERE for them.

Do I wish it were different?  Yes, I would like to cure their son of his cancer, wind the clock back to the year before the diagnosis, recreate the happy family portrait of him, his wife and two daughters. Out of my power--oh, so far out of my power.  So, I must content myself with saying the prayer, "Lord, do not let what I can't do keep me from doing what I can do."  I can be with them.  Be with them, no matter what.

hronos 7 of iStock Photo

Do you know someone in grief to whom you can offer the gift of your presence?  For your presence is indeed a great gift. Never let the spectre of death convince you that your presence is not needed, not valuable. Send that email, make that phone call, knock on that door, and just say, "I'm here. I am thinking of you. I have not forgotten you, or your child, or your loss."

Speaking from experience, I can tell you that you will always be glad that you did, that you chose the sacred thing to do, that you helped a friend cross the uncrossable, bear the unbearable. May we all, in whatever loss comes our way, be helped by just such a friend.