To Everything there is a Season...

A dear friend of mine lost her mother on New Years day.

Now, when I read that statement over again, it somehow seems to trivialize the occurrence – as if putting it in words has, in some way, diminished the tragedy. Perhaps it’s because death is inevitable and when we talk (or write) about it honestly, openly and, to a certain extent I suppose, clinically, we can’t help but distance ourselves from the insidious way that death stalks all of us and, indefatigably, hunts down those we love.

But when I recall the look of abject bereavement on my friend’s face on the day of her mother’s funeral, when I remember the deep, timeless and abiding loss that I saw in her eyes, and when I consider that her bowed head and trembling shoulders simply meant that this middle child only wanted her mother back - nothing more but certainly nothing less – it stops being trivial and it stops being clinical and I can’t distance myself from it and it becomes very, very personal.

In my fifty years I have, from time to time, unflinchingly, placed myself in harm’s way to give aid others who were at risk. I have carried my share of the dead and the dying and I have listened to those who were waiting to die and, as we talked, I would not avert my eyes as they whispered to me of their fears and misgivings.

I am not a stranger to death. But I am, of late, unmanned by the grief of those whom I love when they are floundering in death’s wake.

I could not bring myself to speak with my friend on the day of her mother’s funeral. I was entirely unable to give voice to the words of solace and comfort that I so badly wanted to share. The best that I could do was to hold her in my arms and weep for her.

And that seems inadiquate...