Internet, I'm sad over a friend who has inoperable brain cancer. Tomorrow there's a big party for him and his family, at which nearly 100 people are expected. He was diagnosed two years ago this coming August. The prognosis has become more bleak in recent days, and my heart has simply hurt for this family, over and over. .... Then also today I was e-mailing with a new friend whose son was killed tragically in a freak drowning accident almost a year ago. He was a teen-ager, about to go off to college. His whole life ahead of him and all that.
She and I were discussing how difficult it is to accept the mystery of it all. She wrote: "I am a person who practices and values fairness and this is so unfair. I keep trying to reconcile it but yet realize there is no reconcilliation to be found."
On some level, she will never be able to reconcile it. Nor my friend, after her husband dies. (And of course if you want to get all philosophical about it, we're all in the process of dying; and none of us is promised another day.) Living with, and into, that mystery, will be lifelong--which is why I become agitated with folks who say stupid things like, "The reason so-and-so died is because ..." Our Western culture leans too much on the parts that can be reconciled and explained away. How could anyone possibly know why my friend, not even 50, will likely die this year of a brain tumor? How can my other friend "get over" the death of her younger son?
The poet Rainer Maria Rilke (in photo) once wrote:
"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." (From Letters to a Young Poet).
Thoughts?
3 comments:
We can all just hope for strength to face whatever we and our loved ones have to face, and that is part of the reason we pray. I am so sorry your friend has an inoperable brain tumor. At least mine was benign. I remember meeting a delightful man while I was in the hospital rehab. He was only about 50. I looked like hell with a swollen face and nine inches of bloody staples on my head, but he looked great. The scar on top of his head was tiny, but the brain tumor they found there was malignant. He faced chemo and radiation and he said, "I probably won't be around as long as I planned to be." I knew I was blessed to be so lucky.
Speaking of religion, as I was, my adored aunt Sarah was one of the sweetest women I ever knew, and she was an atheist. not an unusual thing in my family. When her husband died, her children and I were in the kitchen with her when some friends of his came by. "Oh, dear," Sarah said, "they are such bible-thumpers." Sure enough, they came in to see her and started saying things like, "Jesus just wanted Frazier with him." Sarah looked around and we had left her there. She came looking for us later and we were all laughing. It helped.
One of the hard parts of life is recognizing that there are some things we just don't understand.
This I know...life isn't fair. No one ever said it was fair. But it can have meaning...The meaning in my life is found in Christ.
People who try to comfort those who grieve with trite "religious" talk do more harm than good. God doesn't dole out brain tumors that kill people because He's bored and needs company.
I'm sorry for your friend and their family.
Of course. ... I think there's a balance between having all the answers, and despair in having none. Even in our respective faith traditions, there ought to be room for mystery.
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