September 16, 2011

It has been almost ten years since Randy died.  And, yesterday my father and I made our first trip to Detroit to visit him.  I understand that we are the first of his family to visit his grave and sadly it took us ten years.  We flew to Detroit from Dallas and after landing drove straight to the cemetery.  We checked in at the office and quickly had to deal with many questions that we did not expect even if they are typical for a situation such as this.  And, it makes me sad that a situation like this can be typical for anyone.  Was his grave marked?   Where was he?    Among whom was he buried if not family?  It turned out that he had a nice grave marker and that he was buried as an indigent with many others charged to the county.  The only thing the others shared with Randy was that they lacked the family to claim their body or to be buried among.  He was alone through most of his life at burial and now at final resting.  And, he has remained alone since they laid him to rest.  Many of us share responsibility for that.  Trusting God, honoring Randy, grieving all require the same action…that we visit him and honor him and that we no longer speak silently on the questions and the pain.  Instead, we must talk about it and face it…together.

Finally, his family is here.  We brought flowers.  I chose an orchid, because I thought of the wild orchid and how Randy’s spirit was a wild and free one.  I also brought about ten pictures of Randy at different stages of life and we buried them with him.  They showed him as a young child with so much life and potential in front of him.  They showed him as a young man when he was tender and sensitive even if wounded.  They showed him as a young husband with his wife and child.  But, they did not show him in his later years of life for there would not have been anyone there to take the picture and there would not have been a willingness on his part to have his picture taken.  The pictures frame the peaks, but they missed the valleys for him…including the last valley he never made it out of.  We buried the pictures with him.  Hopefully, the pictures and the flowers remind him and us that he is not forgotten.  That is a message that the rest of our family would be well served to remember too.

I knelt and prayed for him keeping my eyes open and focused on the pictures that lay a foot over his body.  I saw his eyes that seemed to see me.  I remember the smell of his body and the sounds of his voice.  “Boy” as he would call me before smiling and laughing and playing rough with me.  After college, when we became closest, he told me “You are not my half brother you are my brother”.  We lived separate lives in many respects but had found ourselves connected at a level I don't think either of us understood.  We could affirm each other and see each other in a way that no one else could.  I remember his tenderness and his affection and I miss him.  To an outsider, we would seem opposites.  To us, we knew we were more alike than anyone could guess.  Brothers who chased the approval of the same father only to witness the appearance of it being given to the other.  Brothers who faced life, suffering and questions of similar faces.  We lived different lives, but we saw the same world.

I went back alone to see him at sunrise this morning.  It would be my private moment alone with Randy and the primary reason I had wanted to make the trip.  I decided to be there at sunrise and I thought about the meaning of how I would be there when the day began.  This time, I would be there.  Words and tears flowed.  So much that I wanted to say that had been bottled up for so long poured forth like spring’s first falls.  I wanted to freeze those words and the tenderness with which I saw him because there were so many days when I hadn’t seen him at all and I did not ever want that to happen again. 

Interesting that my thoughts and emotions were circling my loss and my grief.  And while that is important, this time it can not be only about me.  It is not about my honoring the wishes of my father and staying away.  It is not about my fear of a similar fate befalling me.  It is not about my thirst for comfort and approval.  It is not about my being anchored and bound to feelings of despair and loss.  It is about my loving Randy and honoring him.  It is about my letting go.  It is about my trusting God and trusting Randy into the hands of God as a creation of God.  It is about my being honest about the importance of him in my life and the tender even if difficult relationship we had.  It is not about chasing the elusion of closure or healing that does not come fully in this world, but it is about the dignity of his life and having the honesty and humility to carry it and to carry him.  Let us each celebrate the dignity of every life and let us celebrate it with each other with vulnerability and honestly.  Let us see those who have suffered loss.  Let us speak of the losses we have suffered.  Let us end the pretense and not be alone any longer.  And together, let us hope for the resurrection of our broken life after this broken world.

On 9/11…

Last week, our country celebrated the tenth anniversary of 9/11.  It was a great tribute to the lives lost and taken on that day.  We all remember where we were when that terrible event happened; and every year since we have all heard many stories from the survivors preserving the dignity and the memory of the ones they lost.  Grieving is not meant to be done alone and it is beautiful and healthy when we can mourn together.  It is equally ugly and unhealthy when we mourn alone.  It strikes me as unfortunate that so many die and so many mourn without ever being seen.  After all, what unified all the victims of 9/11 was not how they lived, but the commonality of how, when and where they died.  And why should such a commonality about how one dies determine if one’s life is remembered or forgotten?  If it is the life that is memorialized and not the quality of the life, then shouldn’t everyone get that chance to be remembered, to be honored, and to be consoled?

On closure…

What does this even mean?  It obviously does not mean that the questions stop or the pain goes away.  So, what then?  I think it must mean movement or progress.  And, I think we should just say it for what it is instead of calling it something it isn’t.  The pain eases and changes, but it does not go away.  So to, the questions change, but they do not cease surfacing and being asked.  I think closure is idolized by those who seek comfort in lieu of pain and answers in lieu of questions.  Neither comfort nor answers are inherently evil pursuits unless they are illusions for something else.  But “closure” is not closure any more than it is stagnancy.  We should stop using the word like that.  We aspire for movement and progress and those words are like faith in two ways.  First, they all take us forward toward a better place.  Second, they are all interdependent…and not one can live without the other.

November 12, 2011

It has been two months since I returned from Detroit.  Sadly, I have spent countless hours thinking and writing about the experience trying to get further down the road than I am.  Not sad that I have spent the time, but sad that I have spent it trying to get someplace that I can not go.  It is like a canyon is before me and I am trying to find a quick way to get across it other than the obvious way of climbing through it.  I want the finish line and not the angst of the race.  I want the meaning and closure; even when I know that full meaning and closure do not come here and do not happen now.  But, my appetite for control overpowers my ability to reason sometimes.  Paul says in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known”.  Mirrors in the day of Paul were most often polished metal distorting the image it held into something imperfect and dim.  So to, our eyes and our hearts have an imperfect view of what is before us and we can not possess the clarity that we long for.  But, this is exactly the place where faith is born.  Only from the lot of suffering and questions and mystery, can the seed of faith take root.  And where faith can not find soil, pretense and the illusion of control flourish. 

There are two principles that strike me even if I wrestle to understand them.  The first is that grief can be so indulgent and incomplete.  It is indulgent because it is consumed with feelings and emotions around personal loss.  It is incomplete, as everything indulgent is incomplete.  In the case of grief, it is only one side of the story; the first part where the wound is absorbed.  There is another side that we must get to.  It is where healing and restoration and perspective can happen.  It is where the rain stops and we can see again.  But, faith is required to heal us and lead us there.  And, the question “what is the object of our faith?” rings loud. 

The second is that we need to see the hearts of others and show them the hearts of ourselves.  Jesus saw the woman by the well who had been with many men and was ashamed.  Jesus saw the broken hearted woman even as she came to him in the house surrounded by Pharisees and judgment.  Jesus sees us all through the pretense we carry.  And, in love, He chose rejection, humiliation and crucifixion that we could be restored.  It is His seeing us that touches the deepest need we have...to be fully seen and there loved.  It is a very peculiar need we have, but one that when met changes everything and opens our eyes to the one place we have all dreamed of.  And, when it comes before us, will we react with tears, relief and worship as some, or will we react with defiance and resistance as others?  The implications for us as Believers are we need to also see and love others even if they don’t look like we do, and we need to show others who we are and where we are even if we sometimes don’t think they will understand.

I will always miss Randy.  And, I will always see dimly and imperfectly in this world.  But, I know life does not end in grief, but in a sense begins with it.  And, if we will have faith and risk being honest and vulnerable to God and each other, then our world can change and the desire that Paul alludes to “then, I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known”, can be tasted.