The first year after someone dies is the absolute worst. I am not sure why this is, but it is most likely because the last reference point we have of the same day, they were there and/or it is the first time we get memories of that person and they are not here anymore. And, even though it gets better over time, it sucks.
A year ago, the downward spiral of my dear friend Theresa started via her diagnosis with cancer. Due to my experience in seeing people with this, I knew from the moment I got the text where she told me that cancer was in her bile, combined with the fact that they did a lung biopsy on her for reasons she did not know at the time, that this was going to be a hellish and fast run to the finish line.
In Lent we are supposed to confront the fact that we will all die, a recant of Ecclesiastes "Vanities of Vanities, oh Lord. All is vanity." etc. But, how does one try to help someone who is literally looking down the barrel of their own mortality and they are avoiding it at all costs? The only answer is to treat them with love, kindness and compassion.
I remember driving around with her just two weeks before her diagnosis. We were at a light in Manhattan Beach and she said, "Yeah, I just want to get through the next 12 years then retire, ya' know?" Without knowing a damn thing else, I remember looking over at her and thinking, "Sweetie, those are the most dangerous words I could ever hear you say. Why are you putting off living till THEN? Please be in the moment! You are an amazing woman, so why are you waiting to see that?!?!"
It is at times like this that one realizes that nobody can force anyone to do anything. Not even Jesus did it when He was around here. Free will is an amazing invention. We all try and struggle with that, to have people love us who don't, to have people stop drinking or doing drugs or having affairs or wasting their God given greatness on video games, sports, and/or porn. But we cannot forget that people can drown if they wish, or to be more precise, are permitted by the Universe to make those bad decisions.
But for those of us that remain here on this Earth, the questions that sit inside the mystery of loss, like birds forever circling in clouds across the highway, never allow us to be still. We have to keep going, keep walking, keep struggling every step of the way to hopefully make sense of all this when the fog of sorrow breaks and we can see colors again, taste food again, not cry in the middle of department stores or on trains and busses when we miss the other person so much we believe we will shatter from the inside out like a Faberge egg dropped from a skyscraper, when we will awake one day and not have to confront that pain of knowing that a silence was there that never was before, that finally, one day, we will lay our head down at night and not just black out from exhaustion, but find that sense of peace that was there before all this happened.
If Jesus cried at the death of His friend, then all of us have to realize that the loss of someone we love is able to make the creator of the Universe shake. Love is that strong....
No comments:
Post a Comment