I love some of the lines my youngest son comes up with....I plan to steal some of them. Like, the one about his brother - "I'd rather have him Jewish than a junkie." Priceless. A truism.
Late last night he sent me a text. He was aching through another layer of pain - grieving the loss of Parker, his four year old son, my grandson; wrestling with a new tumult - a baby girl, possibly his daughter, my granddaughter, due in February. My dear boy, I have been troubled too. Submerged feelings, that had been trickling up and were once manageable, containable, will not stay put. For some powerful reason, they've started rolling in, through memory triggers - smells; the way light falls; a laugh; watching a child walk down the street. And time and again, irrational as it seems, what erupts with the raw loss and confusing hope, is guilt. Right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate, it's there. It demands a hearing, insists upon examination. It has something to say - it's an emotion attached to some kind of truth.
Kind, meaningful platitudes and scriptural proof-texts do not help, not really. They are a temporary comfort, but can easily become anesthetize-ors, like wine, work, food, or altruism. The temptation to ease the agony, rather than face the irrationality, the insanity, only postpones the process toward truth. I believe the truth does set us free, but here's the rub. What is the truth for me, in this? What is the guilt trying to tell me? What is it I don't see that enslaves me, that keeps me from being?
My son's text reaffirmed the necessity of this process, of this journey into the messiness of self. He expressed the conflicting nature of his struggle with loss, hope, pain, absurdity - that he wasn't sure if he was cracking up, or finding himself. And there it was......a truism.
Maybe it takes a little cracking up, to find yourself.
It was too late to text him back. So hugging my pillow, I rolled over and prayed for my boy. And me. Let us not get stuck here; may we become.
3 comments:
I hurt for you both. Words feel so sterile and useless. My hope is that truth will accomplish its work and peace will replace the pain much like the colorful rays of a sunset escape around the receding clouds of a tumultuous storm. I love you both. Jen
I continue to pray for my friend and her family.
Tu Nov 17 2009
For what it's worth, even in the middle of "normal" trying to figure out why things are happening and how to make them meaningful is a struggle. Even when things are relatively "happy" and "whole", the questions are there. I got to spend a recent weekend with my younger son, Paul, bow hunting in northern Wisconsin. He'd traveled from his new home in Portland, to take in one of his greatest passions. Strangely enough, the second day of our weekend his most recent girlfriend called him on his cell phone. She was bow hunting just north of us (Paul taught her the archery, and the passion for bow hunting for whitetail deer). Could she come join us for our Sunday afternoon till dark "hunt"? Angela did join us, for the hunt, for dinner after, for the discussion of how to best track "my" deer the next morning. It was great fun sharing some time with her again. But it was hard thinking of all of the what if's, with her and Paul, with her six-year old son, Rex. It was hard knowing that what could have been, won't. It was hard sharing the smiles, and stories, and closeness; knowing it is now just something that could have been. It feels like a hole. It's from the middle of normal.
- Michael
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