Love & Grief: Two Sides of the Same Coin
One night as the on-call hospital chaplain, I witnessed the end of three marriages, each representing over 50 years of love and struggle, as death claimed the husbands. The depth of grief of each wife haunted me for days. Was this the price of great love? Such great pain? This is what I have to look forward to after years of joy with my beloved?
I found myself restlessly meditating, pacing and praying, trying to unpack the promise of pain. In a sudden flash of insight, I realized that grief and love are two sides of the same coin – AND this is not cause for despair.
Life is about spending that coin. Loving with all my heart, grieving what is lost along the way, and loving more.
I learned to find gifts in sorrow, learning in the bad times. Hope.
I do not grieve what I do not love. Great grief is a sign of great love – and great love is a gift beyond compare. When my parents die, if they die before I do, I will mourn deeply, painfully, for years. Just the thought of not being able to call my mom and dad is enough for tears to spring to my eyes some days. But I have stood with children who do not mourn the loss of their parents, who mourn more for the lack of love they felt as a child than for the grief of their parents’ death. So I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that love is the gift. I would far rather mourn the loss of a great love, than have no love to grieve.
This really is hope for me. Not that loss is inevitable, no – but that if I love with all my being, the grief will be sharp and deep and clean. The pain will be intense and there will ever be an ache – but an ache of life well loved, not the ache of regrets nor of despair. I look to the beautiful and the sweet, because it will always lift me towards hope. The price of love is steep, but it is nothing compared to the life sucking numbness of not loving, not caring, not trying.
The great deception is that there is safety – that we can protect ourselves or our loved ones from harm. The truth is that life is mystery, change is constant, control is a figment of the human imagination. When I can be present to the truth that nothing is promised – all life is gift, then despair has a harder time getting a grip in my psyche. Each involuntary and thoughtless breath is amazing, is unearned and unearnable. Grace, by another name.
Years ago, I read the words of Anne Lamott, “I do not understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.” “Ah,” said my soul. “Yes!” My source of hope lies in that mystery. I trust the universe to be endlessly creative, to be rife with paradox, to seek generativity. Life will! In the most inconceivable places and times and situations, life insists most creatively and assertively. And death will too. Two sides of the same coin, much like love and grief.
And so, I live holding all that I love lightly and tightly.
Lightly enough that it may take its own path, tightly enough that it never doubts my love.
It is a spiritual practice.
It is a daily struggle.
It is a daily joy.
The Day After Newtown: Finding Our Way
And so we wake up the morning after, and it wasn’t a dream. The children are still dead, the teachers beside them. It is another day, a gray one, where people and animals must be fed and life will go on no matter how we feel.
Many of us took the occasion, yesterday, to find one another and weep. The people of Newtown wept. The President wept. Many of us watched them online and wept along with them. Many of us gathered, with our families, or friends, or in churches, or online, to weep together.
And today the weeping will continue. But along with weeping, those of us who are not in the center of the tragedy will begin, together, to grope our way along in the darkness and imagine what we might do besides weep. Some will begin researching gun control organizations and join them. Some will call for a March on Washington. Some will argue endlessly on facebook about whether gun control would have helped. Some will call for us, instead or as well, to address the issues of mental illness more aggressively. Some will simply be with their own families, grief sharpening their gratitude for all they have.
Of everything that I heard yesterday, and of everything that was cited by others last night in the three hour online time of mourning that my congregation held on our Livestream channel, the #1 cited words of comfort came not from Scripture or Shakespeare, but from Mr. Rogers. These four words, people lifted up over and over: Look for the helpers. Look for the helpers.
The full context of Fred Rogers quote is this: When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
And so, yesterday, many of us were awed by the thousands of people who surrounded the scene of the tragedy to help. We spoke with reverence of the courageous teachers who never stopped helping through the whole event. We spoke of first responders and politicians and counselors who helped and will help.
Today, as we wrestle with complex emotions and struggle to imagine what we might do ourselves, how we might go on, I suggest that we use Fred Rogers’ words as our compass. As we are about to take an action, as we are choosing what to do or not do, say or not say, we can ask ourselves, “Does this help? Am I a helper? If someone is looking for the helpers, will they see this? Will my action give hope to children who are looking for it?”
We may have different ideas about what exactly will help. But we have some pretty good hunches. Some things we’ll all agree on. Listening to each other as we process the event will help. Giving a child the most precious gift of all: our full attention, floor or lap time, will help. Engaging in activities which strengthen our connection to our neighbors and our local community will help.
And I believe that strategic and focused action to limit the carrying and use of weapons will help. Better options and care for people with mental illness will help. Some of us, me included, will put some of our helping energy in this direction.
However we are called to help, may we be bold about it. May we allow our commitments, our action, to be visible. May we claim our power to act, to care, to change the world. As we move out into our day, our week, and 2013, may we be part of the healing.
Thoughts on Death and Lasagna
Last night, as I lay dozing on the couch, I awakened with a start at 10:30 and jumped up. It was time, I suddenly knew, to make a pan of lasagna for a family where a death was imminent. Right now. Not in the morning, as I had planned. Now.
As I went into the kitchen to layer the ingredients into the pan, a sense of peace and well being came over with me. I knew without a doubt that the dying woman, who had been in a coma for almost a week, had passed out of her body. And I felt clear, though I had no memory of a dream or any message from her, that she had instructed me to make this food as a symbol of my ongoing care for her twelve year old daughter.
This morning I learned that the woman had indeed died last night, at 10:31 PM.
When I took the lasagna over today, I told this child, who is still trying to absorb the fact that one of her parents is not on the planet anymore, about being instructed to make lasagna, and the sense of peace that I had felt as I made it. I told her that I thought as her Mom’s spirit left the earth, she visited people to tell them to be sure to care for her beloved daughter after she was gone. The twelve year old told me that she, too, had been awoken from a sound sleep, but not by her Mom’s spirit. It was the telephone, she said, looking a little embarrassed about how pedestrian that sounded.
Later, at home, when I was doing some mundane chores, it suddenly occurred to me that this child might be really angry about my experience. So I called and left a voice message and said,
“You know, it occurs to me that you could be really mad that your Mom’s spirit visited me to say goodbye, but didn’t visit you. I need to tell you that every time this has happened to me, and it has happened a number of times when people are dying, it has been someone telling me to care for their loved ones who are still alive. It has never been someone I am particularly close to. When my parents died, and when the two closest friends that I’ve lost died, they didn’t contact me in any way.
But what I do have with the ones close to me, who have died, is a clear sense that they are with me at particular times. I dream that we are together. I feel them around me. I have seen their spirits in birds or in butterflies. I think they didn’t say goodbye because they weren’t leaving me. I think they knew we would be in touch later.”
This experience last night made me think of the times I have experienced contact in the moment of death. At the graveside of one young man who died from AIDS in the early 90’s, a chain smoker, I learned that a number of people’s smoke alarms had gone off at the moment of his death. I didn’t actually have a smoke alarm at the time, but his death caused me to wake up as if someone had grabbed me by the throat—DEMANDING that I care for his partner, submerging me in the hellacious grief of his partner’s heart and mind and spirit for a moment so that I experienced a sense of complete freefall, no connective tissue, utter disorientation, as if it were my own. OK, OK, I sputtered. I get it, I get it! I will help your beloved go through the motions of life until he is alive again! And immediately that grip loosened and a sense of peace came over me.
When I’ve talked about these experiences with other ministers, they generally nod their heads matter-of-factly. Yes, they say, and tell me of their own experiences that mirror my own.
I know a lot of folks will dismiss all this as hogwash. I probably would too, if it hadn’t been my lived experience. Honestly, I don’t pretend to understand it a bit. But for me it’s a reminder that, as much as we try to act as if things make logical sense, we are surrounded by mysteries we can’t begin to comprehend.
And, ultimately, whether we feel connected to the dead or believe we walk only with the living, it all comes down to making lasagna for one another when the going gets tough.
A Grandson’s Rage
Politicians throw about plans for health care, Social Security, and Medicare as if they were stand-up comedians trying joke after joke to see what gets a rise out of their audience. To many of us, the effects of these plans are abstract and distant. We intellectually engage with them, thinking that our rational side is best when evaluating how our nation should take care of its old, poor, and vulnerable.
Perhaps instead, we should feel something. This week, I’m feeling anger—make that rage. Why? Allow me to introduce you to my grandpa.
My grandfather turned 87 last week, and I visited him to celebrate and take him out to dinner. Grandpa has an amazing history: Born in Marseille, France, he served in the French Merchant Marine, and then fought in the French Resistance until the liberation of France from Nazi rule in 1944. Soon after, he came to the United States, where he met and married my grandmother and became a U.S. citizen.
Grandpa worked on the docks in Brooklyn, unloading cargo ships, until his back was injured at work, forcing him to find less-physical labor. For years after that, he worked for an independent governmental agency. When he retired from that agency, he was promised a pension as well as health insurance for life (the same health care given to retirees from New York City employment).
Knowing that this was assured, he worked a series of jobs with few benefits: he managed a McDonald’s, he drove a commuter van, he managed a boutique. Then, at the age of 65, he graduated from Police Academy, becoming a special forces policeman in Saddle Brook, New Jersey. There, he was a crossing guard and worked events like parades and school dances as extra security. When he finally retired from work altogether, he was 75 years old.
In late 2010, the governmental agency he worked for was closed down by the state and city. Legislators could not reach a deal to keep the agency, which was supposed to make money, solvent. When the agency was dissolved, retirees got a letter saying that the city and state would no longer be providing them with health insurance. The courts ruled that this was legal, despite the promises that were made by generations of politicians. My grandfather’s health care was left to the whims of Medicare.
No more dental insurance, either, apparently (it was part of the package he was promised for life). For a birthday gift, my parents, brothers and I paid for my grandfather’s dental bill. One of his teeth had become infected, and the extraction and subsequent false tooth cost some $2000. Grandpa otherwise couldn’t have afforded it, and he would have lived with a big gap in the side of his mouth.
Did I mention that my grandparents live only on Social Security checks and that small pension check (thankfully, it’s against the New York State Constitution to renege on the promise of a pension)? From their less-than-$2000 a month in income, they have to pay rent, utilities, food, car insurance, gas (thankfully, they don’t drive much), doctor’s bills and medicine.
Which brings us to Medicare. My grandfather has asthma. My grandmother has high blood pressure. It’s not like they take a raft of pills every day, but those conditions require constant medication. Here in September, they find themselves in the infamous Medicare “doughnut hole.” Apparently, the asthma medication costs $400 a month, and the blood pressure medication $200.
My grandparents don’t have $600 a month to spend on medicine, but because they would die without this medication, they find a way. They beg their doctors for free samples so that they don’t have to refill their prescriptions quite as often. Grandma is currently calling the drug companies to try to qualify for discount programs. Neither of them can wait until 2014, when the Affordable Health Care Act closes that hole.
Because every spare dollar is going to pay for asthma medication, they can’t afford the health care they need, either. My grandfather’s back hurts so much (from that injury 45 years ago) that he can hardly get in and out of a car. I watched him struggle to go out to dinner with us, and I could hardly believe it. His doctor thinks that regular physical therapy would help—but he can’t afford the three-times-a-week co-pays. I’m going to be paying them for him.
Thankfully, my grandfather has a family who can help. But at 87, he doesn’t want to have to ask for it, and he knows that we have other financial considerations. My parents are retired, too, and not exactly flush with cash. My next youngest brother supports his family of 4 on his income. My youngest brother is about to start graduate school. I’ll be paying for grandpa’s physical therapy.
Which makes me mad. Our society is failing our elders. It is utterly contemptuous that someone who worked hard all of his life could be reduced to having to decide whether to seek the medical care he needs or ask his grandson for money. It is beyond the pale that my similarly hard-working grandmother (none of whose jobs left her with retirement security either) has to call the doctor and beg for another free asthma inhaler.
So the next time a politician says something about the “doughnut hole,” I want you to think of my 87 year-old grandpa. The next time a politician mentions the promises that we make to our senior citizens, think of my grandpa. The next time someone decides that cutting Medicare spending is the only way to save our nation, think of grandpa. I know I will be.
In solidarity with our Sikh sisters and brothers
This past Sunday’s horrific shooting at the Oak Creek Sikh Temple just outside Milwaukee is more than just news headlines to Unitarian Universalists. It took place just a week after the four-year anniversary of an unnervingly similar crime, the killing of two and wounding of seven on July 27, 2008 at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church by a lone gunman whose perception of reality was warped by hate.
There is much we may never know about Wade Michael Page, the apparent gunman in the Oak Creek shootings, as he was among the dead in the violence he unleashed (apparently by his own hand after being wounded in a shootout with police). Why did he do what he did? Why did he choose that site for this awful deed? We do know that Page apparently participated for years in the so-called “hatecore” music scene, playing in a band called End Apathy that spouted a violent white-supremacist message. Like Adkisson, he imbibed a fearful message of suspicion and denigration of others; like Adkisson, Page’s life appeared to be spiraling into a frightening maelstrom of frustration, discouragement, and despair — none of which justifies their dreadful acts, of course, but once again we see a life unraveling into monstrous violence. Could any compassionate intervention have saved these deeply troubled men from themselves? We will probably never know, yet the question haunts.
Sikhism, not well known in the United States, in many ways embodies a polar opposite of the evil rage that assaulted our sisters and brothers in Oak Creek: it teaches compassion, the equality of women and men and indeed of all people, and emphasizes social justice and activism. Perhaps those of us who embrace Unitarian Universalism should reach out to the Sikh community not only with compassion for what they have endured, but because we might find ourselves allies with common goals.
It’s trite to point out how so many of the world’s religions point toward the universality of love and compassion; equally tiresome are the clichés about how religion divides us and creates enmity, from the Crusades of old to the conflicts of modern times: partition in south Asia following Indian independence, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Northern Ireland, et cetera, et al., ad nauseam. These observations are overused because they both contain truths, and they are wearisome because neither of these simplistic sets of perspectives really helps us identify the ways in which we can be authentically religious and also lead constructive lives dedicated to progress, fairness and decency. Likewise, though our love of justice demands that we condemn these deranged acts of violence, that is never enough. Indeed, everything feels inadequate in response to something like the horrors that unfolded at Oak Creek and Knoxville.
So what can we do?
We can form and sustain alliances with other religious peoples and work together toward common constructive goals.
If we know an individual whose life appears to be plummeting toward destruction and self-destruction, we can try to offer support and point him or her toward help.
In a world full of suspicion, meanness and violence, we can try to live each day with compassion, patience, knowledge and open-mindedness.
No, it won’t bring back those who died in Oak Creek or Knoxville, or anywhere else that hate has left its deadly mark. But it is something.
August: The Year’s Midlife Crisis
I think August is the midlife crisis month of every year. At least here in Minnesota, this is the time when things I haven’t done begin to loom around the edges, saying, “If not now, when!?” It’s hot and sticky here, but the days are getting shorter, and we all know where we’re heading. Mortality calls us by name.
I was driving down the street yesterday and saw a treehouse. Not a fancy treehouse, not an amazing treehouse, just a pretty basic backyard maple tree treehouse. To my shock, upon seeing it, I burst into tears. Happily, I was alone, and not in heavy traffic, so I could pull over and get my bearings.
As I cried, what was running through my head was that it was suddenly, inarguably, completely and utterly clear that I would never be building my own kid that treehouse she once wanted. She is 16 now, breezing by occasionally in between the events in her complex social calendar. If I built her the fanciest, most spectacular treehouse on the planet, she would glance out the window, say, “Thanks!” and continue on her own way.
It’s not that she begged for a treehouse when she was younger, or even particularly wanted one. It’s not that I didn’t give her other cool things, or experiences. It’s that the window has closed on that possibility, and on the whole Mom-as-center-of-desire-fulfillment stage of her life. Don’t get me wrong: It’s not that she doesn’t cozy up like a toddler when she wants something, usually money or permission to do something. But in her life’s soundtrack, I am mostly the background music now, not very often the plot or the dialogue.
I know that’s just as it should be, and still I sat by the side of the road and had a moment. A moment of grief and loss, a moment of clarity that it is time for me to redefine my own life, refocus my own days. Then, as I pulled myself together, a sense that there is some joy and excitement in that refocus. The regrets are real, but the pull of life’s new possibility is much stronger.
Regrets come to me in surprising way. One morning, stacking dishes into the dishwasher, I ached with regret that I had never spent time on Ebay searching for particular dinner plates that my father said once, in passing, he liked. I still regret that I didn’t give him a college sweatshirt—I know that he wanted one the Christmas that I was 19 and he admired the one I had one myself, but I told myself I couldn’t afford the twelve bucks to get him one of his own. For God’s sake, I think now, with all that money he shelled out!?!? I finally went back for a college reunion years later and sprang twenty bucks for a college t-shirt, which he received politely, but with no visible enthusiasm. I found it, clean and unworn, when I cleaned out his dresser after he died last year.
I don’t know if this is true for other people, but the regrets that I have are much more about things I didn’t do than things I did. I’ve done some really stupid things. Careless things, wreckless things, inappropriate things, occasionally something downright mean. I’ve made huge mistakes. But forgiving myself for those is somehow easier than forgiving myself for the things I never did. The trips I haven’t taken, the risks I looked away from, the conversations and relationships I avoided.
So, in this final stretch of summer, I am thinking, what will I regret if I don’t do it now? That lake down the street that I mostly just nodded to in June and July? I’m in it every day now. The garden, so easy to visit superficially? I’m diving into it now with my whole body, not caring a bit how filthy I get. My days have a mantra: grab summer now! This is your moment! Stop lamenting how hot it is and have some fun!