Happy New Year/ Blessed New Year

It is another January 1st.

On one of them, several years ago, I sat down and wrote my annual letter and it began "We are still alive..."  That was the day before Stefan died in an intersection that had not been sanded because nobody did work on January 1st.

We have not been the same since.  And if we have seemed serene and composed through it all, it belied a constant and fierce battle with grief.  We are a medical/dental family.  We know how to soothe people through painful treatments and get the job done, stay cool,calm and collected and help all the others.

So, we are facing another Anniversay, as we have done every Jan. 1st for six years now.  Its approach darkens the time right after Christmas every year.  There is a deepening gloom that begins to descend right after Boxing Day.  And still, we are not prepared when the day comes.  It is amazing what can be unleashed, even with the advance knowledge.  It is hard to communicate and most people don't want to know.  There is an isolation associated with it that hurts just as much.  This is the sort of thing, when people call out to God in anger, terror or search for comfort.  But even our pastors hardly know what to say or how to pray with us. How do you descend with someone and bring them up.  It really is something.  Jesus did it.

I have felt ostracized, at times. It is like you have been marked with a sign.  And you find new companions.  There are those, society would do away with, the grieving, yes, also the infirm, the lonely, the handicapped, the aged, the ugly...  It's quite amazing.  We have been maimed to fit into a new society.

The Lord be with us all and you.

"You heard me say, 'I am going away and I am coming back to you.' If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.

Jesus Comes

When Stefan died, one of his teachers gave us a card with this image, with the youth safe and sound in Jesus' arms.

Another youth we know, 17 years old, died this week.

It looks like he jumped off a bridge into a large and cold river.  His family, distraught about his where-abouts, posted, after the body was found, "He is safe in the arms of his Savior".

This could seem to some kitschy or wishful thinking.

But it is the only answer I have ever found:  "I love him even more than you."

There is nothing else.

Grief

How to talk about it.  Grief.
How to share, or not.
How to complain, fear,
want to live or die,
go on or not.

Jesus was deeply moved when he saw them grieve Lazarus.
He wept.  He came.  He was no stranger.
Even Job had advisers, albeit bad ones, to wail to.


Someone wrote this.  I think it applies in a way.

With unshaven face half concealed in the collar
of some deceased porcine philanthropist's
black cashmere rag of a coat,
I knew that I looked like a suicide
returning an overdue book to the library.
Almost everyone else did as well,
but I found no particular solace in this;
at best, the fact awakened some diverting speculations
on the comparative benefits
of waiting in front of a ditch to be shot
alone or in the company
of others, and then whether one would prefer
these last hypothetical others
to be friends, family, enemies, total
or relative strangers. Would you hold hands?
Or would you rather like a good Homo sapiens
monster employ them
to cover your genitals?
What percentage would lose bowel control?
And given time restrictions —
and assuming some still had the ability to move —
would ostracism result? Anyway,
I knew the rules on this bus.
No eye contact: the eyes of the terrified
terrify. Look
like you know where you're going,
possess ample change to get there,
and don't move your lips when you talk
to yourself: the destroyed
and sick, the poor, the hungry
and the disturbed estrange.
The badly dressed estrange, even,
and that is uncalled for. The degree
of one's power to estrange will increase
in direct proportion to the depth
of need for others. Do not cry.
This can only bring about, on the one hand,
an instant condition of banishment
from the sole available companionship or,
on the other, a near-
fatal beating (one more disappointment).
Just follow the simple instruction
if you ever come here.
It's easy to remember — any idiot can do it.
Don't cry,
the world has abandoned us.

~ Franz Wright

Summer 2014 / For James Foley and his Mother

A Modern Crucifixion.  Glory and Shame. 

Another son is dead.

It happens to be a high profile case,
a murder, almost broadcast world-wide,
but we all know about it,
a martyrdom, it turns out, some say.

A true humanitarian, a man
of prayer and photography,
beloved by scores
is gone

...his mother a saint,
of steadfast vigils and rosaries,
of community involvement and charity.

I heard her speak
and I recognized her.
She was strong.
She was loving.
She was graceful.
She was carried by an invisible force.
With it,
she comforted the whole world.
She turned evil to good.
The shame became glory. 

She, too, will never be the same.
When she stops bleeding,
and comforting,
eventually,
she will still bear the scars.
May the tormentors hide their faces,
and repent in dust and ashes.
Their glory is nothing but shame.

Psalm 130:4
"But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared."
Soli Deo Gloria

Malaysia, care of the aged

This is a video showing how, with all the changes in society in Malaysia, no provisions have been made for the care of the aged, as families are increasingly unable or unwilling to care for their geriatric members.  This video is in German language.  It really makes one think about many things more deeply.  It will make an impression even without the words.  Elderly have been abandoned to themselves, to hospitals, to the care of strangers who out of the goodness of their hearts put them all together in one big room to help each other best they can (which is not very good).

One thing that resonates with me is the parallel to grief.  In some ways, grief isolates you like these elderly are abandoned and isolated.  Who wants to talk with you about your loss, your loneliness, your pain? What happened to family and friends?  How did you get into this prison of abandonment or frozen incompetence?  -- I know all this, and still, I too, don't want to hear all about someone else's grief, the never-ending, old stories of those who have nothing else going on in their lives.  It is no joke that the commandments about loving people is at the first about honoring your parents before all the other commandments.

http://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/video/video1307670.html

"On the death of a child"

Here is a blog post about the death or suicide of a child written from first hand experience of Lutheran clergy.  This would come in the wake of the news of the suicide of Rick Warren's son, several days ago.

http://priestlyrant.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/on-the-death-of-a-child/

I think Wilken's post of the other day, is also well-taken and the Luther quote well selected.

http://thebarebulb.com/2013/04/07/murdered-in-the-woods/

Easter Women

Easter  Women

Who handles the dead body?

Who dares, who wants to?

The Mary’s do, and Joanna and Salome.

--The body, almost an afterthought after the trauma.

Where have they laid it?

What with it?

Call the funeral home, the police, the coroner.

--slow down.

Don’t pass it by. 

Don’t pass it up.

Have another look.

Take another prayer.

Take courage.

Stroke the hair,

The cheek,

The mouth,

Anoint it with aloe or with tears.

Fulfill this last task of love.

It will be your last chance,

To touch, to hold,

This precious body,

Warm or cold,

Ruddy or gray,

Limp or stiff...

This was your boy,

Your lover,

Your dear one.

The body goes to dust,

But you still have it a moment longer.

Linger with it.

Love it.

Don’t panic.

Fear not.

Peace be with you.

The Lord is with you.

The Lord of Life.

It may not seem it now. 

By me, yesterday.

Something on Motherhood

This came on my Facebook, yesterday.  There often come things about motherhood or grieving.  But this one was very true.


For all the mother's (including pregnant ones) in the world, this one is for you! - Author Unknown)

We are sitting at lunch one day when my daughter casually mentions that she and her husband are thinking of"starting a family.""We're taking a survey," she says half-joking."Do you think I should have a baby?"

"It will change your life," I say, carefully keeping my tone neutral.

"I know," she says,"no more sleeping in on weekends, no more spontaneous vacations."

But that is not what I meant at all. I look at my daughter, trying to decide what to tell her. I want her to know what she will never learn in childbirth classes.

I want to tell her that the physical wounds of child bearing will heal, but becoming a mother will leave her with an emotional wound so raw that she will forever be vulnerable.

I consider warning her that she will never again read a newspaper without asking,"What if that had been MY child?" That every plane crash, every house fire will haunt her.

That when she sees pictures of starving children, she will wonder if anything could be worse than watching your child die.

I look at her carefully manicured nails and stylish suit and think that no matter how sophisticated she is, becoming a mother will reduce her to the primitive level of a bear protecting her cub. That an urgent call of"Mom!" will cause her to drop a soufflé or her best crystal without a moments hesitation.

I feel that I should warn her that no matter how many years she has invested in her career, she will be professionally derailed by motherhood. She might arrange for childcare, but one day she will be going into an important business meeting and she will think of her
baby's sweet smell. She will have to use every ounce of discipline to keep from running home, just to make sure her baby is all right.

I want my daughter to know that every day decisions will no longer be routine. That a five year old boy's desire to go to the men's room rather than the women's at McDonald's will become a major dilemma. That right there, in the midst of clattering trays and screaming children, issues of independence and gender identity will be weighed against the prospect that a child molester may be lurking in that restroom.

However decisive she may be at the office, she will second-guess herself constantly as a mother.

Looking at my attractive daughter, I want to assure her that eventually she will shed the pounds of pregnancy, but she will never feel the same about herself.

That her life, now so important, will be of less value to her once she has a child. That she would give herself up in a moment to save her offspring, but will also begin to hope for more years, not to accomplish her own dreams, but to watch her child accomplish theirs.

I want her to know that a cesarean scar or shiny stretch marks will become badges of honor.

My daughter's relationship with her husband will change, but not in the way she thinks.

I wish she could understand how much more you can love a man who is careful to powder the baby or who never hesitates to play with his child.

I think she should know that she will fall in love with him again for reasons she would now find very unromantic.

I wish my daughter could sense the bond she will feel with women throughout history who have tried to stop war, prejudice and drunk driving.

I want to describe to my daughter the exhilaration of seeing your child learn to ride a bike.

I want to capture for her the belly laugh of a baby who is touching the soft fur of a dog or cat for the first time.

I want her to taste the joy that is so real it actually hurts.

My daughter's quizzical look makes me realize that tears have formed in my eyes."You'll never regret it," I finally say. Then I reached across the table, squeezed my daughter's hand and offered a silent prayer for her, and for me, and for all the mere mortal women who stumble their way into this most wonderful of callings.
Please share this with a Mom that you know or all of your girlfriends who may someday be Moms. May you always have in your arms the one who is in your heart.

Dead children / Kollwitz

With the death of a large number of deaths of Kindergarden and grade one students in another school schooting in the United States this week, and an entire world seemingly mourning these utterly senseless deaths with a great cry of "Why?",  a Kaethe Kollwitz drawing appeared in my Facebook newsfeed.

Many of Kaethe Kollwitz's pictures are on Google images here.

This is the one a friend shared on Facebook:





This is one I've shared before from my hymnbook, titled:  the parents.

This is just amazing art.  How much can  be captured in one simple black and white image.  Astounding.  What is left to say.  We didn't know what to say to begin with.  Now we can just look at this.

Her silent lines penetrate the marrow like a cry of pain; such a cry was never heard among the Greeks and Romans.

--We learn from Wikipedia. 

Interesting--the bringing in of the Greeks and Romans, all that beauty and nothing but beauty.   But to Kaethe Kollwitz it was also beauty.  This is what gets me:

"The motifs I was able to select from this milieu (the workers' lives) offered me, in a simple and forthright way, what I discovered to be beautiful.... People from the bourgeois sphere were altogether without appeal or interest. All middle-class life seemed pedantic to me. On the other hand, I felt the proletariat had guts. It was not until much later...when I got to know the women who would come to my husband for help, and incidentally also to me, that I was powerfully moved by the fate of the proletariat and everything connected with its way of life.... But what I would like to emphasize once more is that compassion and commiseration were at first of very little importance in attracting me to the representation of proletarian life; what mattered was simply that I found it beautiful."^[8]

She didn't say that she didn't care, but she was attracted by the beauty of "proletariat" life.  In fact, she was quite an ideologue with a socialist and anti-war posture.  But no doubt, never-minding the ideology, or the reasons for the art, the feelings and the problems depicted were genuine, human and compelling.  We all would like a just world without war and children or anyone else dying before their time.   She captured some of the pain.  This is good.  It is even "beautiful".  Just like Good Friday is good and Christ's glory is in the cross.  Like humanity is found in pain and loss and trial.  Like when I am weak that's when I'm strong. 

Saturday in Advent, 2012

Beautiful Saturday in Advent with great sunshine to do housework by.  Baking cookies and playing Handel's Messiah, thinking about our dear departed, including our children tragically lost.  We don't need just Santa Claus and merriment (that too), but the substance of Christian hope and comfort.  Singing mostly and crying just a little bit.

The broken heart

http://life.nationalpost.com/2012/12/04/can-you-die-of-a-broken-heart-science-says-maybe-and-holiday-stress-doesnt-help/

Sweet Peas

My friend, Myrtle, has begun a new blog called "The Sweet Pea Society."  It deals with tough subjects such as grief, shame, abuse and how to help.  Some of the related comments are on Facebook.  She already published also a little poem I wrote last Christmas in my remembering Stefan, which I have not published here.

The picture of the sweet peas on her blog are my first crop of sweet peas which I grew for her.  Myrtle is also my "Sweet Pea."

Three Years

I used to not understand how people do not get over this. It must mean that there is an eternal life, because memories don't work and this present "extinction" does not work either. 

"If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world." 
― C.S. Lewis

"Grieving" interfered with by "fanatical belief in the afterlife"?

On a blog where I have lately been commenting frequently, the topic was this given by the blogowner:

I remember during my clinical pastoral education studies watching a short film about a man who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I remember he had a wife and some teenaged children. In the face of his certain death he became fanatical about his belief in the afterlife and insisted that his family not be sad because he wasn’t really dying but transferring to a better place. They weren’t allowed to be sad or cry, even after he died. He insisted. We were shown the film as students because it was obvious the man was coping with his suffering by adopting a posture of denial with belief for its engine. It was sad to watch him and his family unwilling or unable to process their grief. Tragic.

This is what I wrote:

I have thought about this all morning because grief is still very acute in our house.
Anyone who has lost a child, and ours was 18 years old, knows that this grief will never be entirely over. I did not understand this about people previously. There is an elderly couple in our congregations whose son dropped dead in gymn class at the school where the father was school principal. He was the couple’s only son (there are two daughters). This must be how many decades ago now? When all the special days come and anniversaries of this and that everything is as raw as ever. Before it happened to us I would watch this from the outside and wonder why they are still not over this. Why the hugging and crying with other members in similar situations? I truly thought that this should be over by now.
But when someone is missing every Christmas, Easter, Birthday, death anniversary, Mother’s day, etc. they are still missing again and again, each time. The only thing is to be with people and get some distraction and companionship.
Our dead have been burned into our heart and brain and body. Our feelings for them, the things they said and did, the cars they drove, the clothes they wore, the pleasures and pains they had, the hugs they gave, the way they smelled… It is wired into us now, somewhere in the neurons. It does not go away. It is part of us, and the pain will be there.
It’s good to talk it out and cry it out, but it can’t be programmed.
And at the time of death and funeral, it may not at all be the right time. Then we need every bit of strength we can muster. I refused to cry then because crying gives me headaches and a headache puts me into bed and I could not afford to be in bed. Plus, there were hundreds of mourners, many young and inexperienced people and you end up being there for them. There was no time for grieving then. And every bit of spare energy was called upon for other things.
People looked at this and thought it was unnatural. They wanted to talk me through Kuebler-Ross. Good grief! We have all heard this a thousand times.
When the pastor came over, we just did a liturgy from the hymn book, the Apostle’s creed, the Lord’s prayer. What a relief to just fall back on that. What a gift. That’s all that was needed. “The Lord be with you.” “And also with you.” Amen.
Please, don’t make me cry.
But on Monday, I cried. It was a really good cry. I was with a women I did not know well, but she also lost a child and we walked along the North Saskatchewan river and sat on a bench in the sunlight and looked at downtown Edmonton. And we shared our difficulties and I cried. There was a time and a place and person. And this also was a gift. It could not be planned.
Others benefit from other things. I am just telling how it goes for me.

We are not really discussing the belief in the afterlife and resurrection here, though my guess is that to the blogowner it is simply a myth.  But since he likely does not believe in the afterlife and even though he calls himself a pastor, he needs to have some kind of view on the subject.  And this is what comes out.

And what is the pastor's purpose?  To facilitate the grieving I don't need him.  To tell my psychological platitudes I don't need him.

Just wanted to hang on to this item.

The Valley still Echoes with his Laughter

In Canmore along the creek bed there is a bench dedicated to a boy who lived only to be five years old.  It gives his dates and finishes with:  "The valley still echoes with his laughter."

I sat on it for a while and let the dog sniff around the bushes, admiring the majestic mountains, the creek bed with its huge boulders and the town below.

"He's got the whole world in his hands."  The simple song came to my mind.  If we believe--we know that he has the whole world in his hand and he even knows my thoughts now.  One can cradle oneself in this song.

But there are our dead.

There is this little boy, sorely missed with his memorial bench here.
It made me think that I might want to set up some kind of memorial somewhere also for myself.
Stefan has been gone for two and a half years.

There there is the family in Canmore who lost two children when a tree fell on them, killing them both.
There is the girl run over by a train when she walked on the tracks with her i-pod going.
There is someones grandson, who killed himself.  The parents are pregnant again with twins at a late age.
There is another boy who killed himself.  My niece dances with the sister.

I know some things about this town below.

He has got the whole world in his hands and he has also all our dead in his hands.

Will I ever be able to think about anything else?
Do I have to?

In Memory

Stefan would have been 21 years old today.

30 months.  

The county tried to fix the intersection again without actually moving it to a spot up the hill.  Who is in charge of these public works?

Company is gone/ 27 months

It was a great pleasure to host my sister's family.  Thankfully, it was warmer and we could enjoy a variety of activities and outings.  Just before the roads had been nothing but treacherous ice.

Often it had been hard on me to spend time with Stefan's cousins as I would miss him among them and interacting with them.  This was very poignant for me and I wonder if it was for them.  But two years does seem like a time where things appear not as acute.  Still there are always different things that remind you of him and which hurt. There is always something else, something new.

For example we watched a movie together last week:  A Knight's Tale with Heath Ledger.  We all know who Heath Ledger is and that he died at 28 in the midst of life.  So when I watch Heath Ledger swing up and down the horse and be daring and win all his matches, see his blond hair fly, court a girl, be romantic writing poems, dancing... I have to think of Stefan.  He was like that:  active, blond, energetic, strong, romantic, busy, soulful, heroic, vulnerable.

All of our men are heroic and vulnerable.  It's an amazing thing to love them.

While I was gone...

While I was gone a 19 year old male from the sister congregation died in a car accident.

This leads me back to the Elert on "Last Things" of recent reading.

To be sure, there is a death which we regard as premature.  The literatures of all nations are replete with lamentations over death in life's springtime.  Indeed, death often enough plays the role of the despoiler.  It shatters what was still incomplete.  It thwarts life's last great undertaking.  Like a mischievous young lad it wantonly decapitates the sunflower and keeps its seed from ripening.  However, we must ask whether this universal lament really understands--or purports to understand--death's meaning for the dead person himself.  Death which prematurely creates a gap in the family circle entails pain for the survivors.  A child's death is most painful for its mother, not for the child itself.  To speak plainly on the physical side, the stench of decomposition is nauseous not for the dead but for the living.  Particularly the Christian, who seeks to view death from the perspective of God, will hesitate to cite God's judgment in support of man's opinion about death's untimeliness.

For the Christian, physical death relates only partly to the question of God's providence, which is posed to him by his entire life.  But this question also places us inescapably into the antithesis of law and gospel.  the Law attests the judgment of god.  It reveals that our entire life is "judged" in a twofold sense:  It is subject to the erdict of God's judgment, and it pursues an irreversible course toward death.  Under the Law, death has teleological significance for all of our earthly life.  The earthly way is a way to death.  whatever it may be that constitutes life itself, it cannot prevent death, and it is simultaneously a disintegration of life because it consumes the time of life which is delimited in advance by death.  Under the Law the earthly way is the way of death and nothing else.  The apostle's statement that the law of God is inscribed also into the hearts of the heathen is confirmed by nothing so much as by the wisdom of the Greeks, which declares that the happiest man is he who was never born.  Since he does not live, he also need not die.  To live means to have to die.

But all of this is not the evangelical faith.  Faith derived from the Gospel is faith against the Law, against appearances, against the God of wrath and of judgment, because it is faith in God's freedom in the God of life, in the God who keeps His promises.  This faith breaks every earthly hold and casts itself unreservedly into the arms of God.  Faith can exempt nothing from this surrender to God, neither the biological nor the ethical content of its earthly existence.  Nor can it differentiate here between temporal and eternal life.  Nor can it exempt from it the necessity to die a physical death.  If I believe that God has created me, that He preserves my earthly life "out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, " as the catechism states, how could I then believe that this fatherly, divine goodness and mercy suddenly ceases to operate when He lets me die?  If physical death signified God's judgment to faith, it would also be His judgment on faith.  If the apostle had conceived of it thus, how then could he have a veritable desire "to depart" (analysai, Phil. 1:23)?  No, physical death has lost its terrors for faith.  Faith receives death from the hands of a merciful God exacly as it receives life.  As has been said, "Death has become my sleep." pp. 14,15.

I have not written here about the pain, and I don't think I ever will.   The gap is not just in the family circle either.  This pain and this helplessness over and against such death calls forth a huge response, either deep anger or faith. 

The pain continues, even if it may abate.  Again and again, faith is needed, faith to the very end.

I sometimes "cite God's judgment in support of man's opinion about death's untimeliness."  But this is completely beyond our knowing.  I will worry about myself, and today, and my own repentance and faith.





"Yet, in my flesh, I will see God."
Job.

P.S.  In looking at the Google images on burial of a child, one finds that most of them are of non-caucasians.  This denies the reality of death of children in the developed world, even at peace.   We lose multitudes to accidents, drug overdoses, suicide and abortion.  There are many, many mothers out there.  There is death and there is pain--even in suburbia.  Life is never so neat, that it is not lived at the edge of death.  We just often think that it is not.

Atheists and Anger with God

Interesting article I need to save.

We learn that atheists are frequently "angry" with "God".  There is an irony here because how can you be angry with someone who you say does not exist.  But it sounds true to life.  Human being engage in this oxymoronic thought-process not infrequently.  Homosexuals, of all people, want to be "married", is the other thing that comes to mind.

People who have lost a child doubt God at a rate of 33% in the first year.  Mother's who give birth to a severely retarded child doubt God at a rate of 90%, says the article.

It is understandable.  When Stefan died people asked me:  "How could this happen to you?"  implying that as people well know to be committed to  faith in God we should not be suffering this kind of tragedy.  They are angry at God for us and doubting him also.  Tragedy brings everyone to face the God-question, or as someone else puts it "makes theologians" of us all.  So also does and joy and gratitude.  Somehow you have to deal with it all.  And somehow suddenly God has to be there, whether you believe in him or not.

Stefan's death was not the first tragedy in my life, though the worst, so I think I had some practice bearing such set backs, though his loss and the pain is something that goes on and on, and is distinct from other losses.  Still, we have never been promised that such things won't happen to us.  We have the example of Job.  I am not even going to waste so much breath as he did and not ask for a reason.  What we have is not an explanation but the hope for the future.  Such said even Job already.  (When I see him, I will thank him for that.)

I can't be angry with God.  I have been angry with people; but anger is not a normal response for me.  Maybe it is the lack of testosterone or maybe something else.  I've grown up singing Paul Gerhardt songs, taught to fit myself into situations with a Christian equanimity, to sing through tears and mean it, and I've been mostly given the strength to do so.  I have even found deep joy and grace in trusting while being so needy.  This is really quite supernatural.

The other day on CBC television, in a documentary on the anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti, a doctor spoke about all the amputations that had to be performed in a hurry, on the street.  He spoke of women who were holding hands while they were both being amputated and the doctor exclaimed even now a year later:  they were singing.  They were singing while being amputated.  After he said that several times, he added-- they were singing songs of faith.

I thought so.

What else is there to sing?

There are not that many choices.  Being mad at a God who does not exist in your mind does not make sense.  Being mad a God who lets this happen makes more sense but does not comfort or help you through it. So be mad, get it out of your system, but only faith will keep you together.

One can be mad at others, and I've done that, but it does not help either.  Only faith will heal those relationships, because each one of us needs forgiveness and God is indeed in charge and has the overview and long-term view.  We can look up and need  not take it out on each other.

There is an amazing photo essay on Haiti here.

24 months

"Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?"

Gospel for today.