I spent 25 years behind a desk, in a cubicle, at newspapers in Columbia and Charleston. I met some fascinating people. And I've lost some very dear souls to different kinds of cancer over the course of my career.
Melanoma took a good friend of mine when I was in my 20s and working at The State newspaper in Columbia, SC. Bill was a retail advertising sales representative with a dry wit. There was something pensive and incredibly sad about him, under the surface, that drew me to him. He thought about things. He understood me, and I understood him. He made me laugh. Just before Bill's diagnosis--a class 5 melanoma that was discovered by chance in the shower--he found the love of his life. Her name was Miss Wright. Bill found that to be wildly amusing, as did I. She found his illness to be too much for her to bear, and so, Bill died without her.
Ovarian cancer took the life of the Post and Courier party when she was barely in her 40s. Margaret (although few people ever knew her real name) was a six-foot-tall kinky-curly blonde-headed Li'l Orphan Annie type: indominable, always the optimist, always a smile, a joke. Tootie had a laugh that would make you smile contagiously. In her presence you always felt valued as a person. She never had a bad day (although she had many of them) because she never complained. I remember she came into my office one day to talk. I never not had time for Tootie. Never wanted to miss the blessing. After our brief conversation about whatever business-thing it was, (who can remember these inane things? And who really even wants to?) she said she had to be on her way because she had more "fellowshipping" to do. That was Tootie Margaret. She was fantastic at her job, and she had the heart of Christ. And now she's gone.
And then I read about Harper.
My last supervisor at The Post and Courier was a fine man: fair, professional, caring, competent, optimistic, inventive. The kind of person you might not always agree with, but could respect, you know? Someone who made you feel valued as an employee. Someone who treated everyone with dignity and compassion. Someone with a healthy balance of work and play, and who encouraged others to find the same. A man of faith.
Jamie's oldest daughter was diagnosed in 2009 with a rare soft-tissue cancer. But rather than become a victim, his daughter Harper chose to rally around her illness for other children, throwing all her efforts into toy drives for MUSC Children's Hospital patients, as well as fundraising campaigns for other cancer patients. "Hugs for Harper" became that little girl's way of reaching out beyond her despicable disease to others who were fighting too. She turned tragedy into triumph in her own sweet way, even though Harper died a few days ago. She was 11 years old.
My author friend Karen Zacharias asks in her book, "Where's Your Jesus Now?" and honestly, it is difficult for me not to wonder where God is, at times like these. Why was Bill struck down in the prime of his life, just after finding a woman with whom he hoped to share his life? Why was Tootie taken away--one of the brightest lights I've ever encountered? And Harper? Who can even form the question, in this case? The suffering. The emotional toll on family and friends. The grief.
Did He cause all this? Or did He just let it happen, refusing to intervene? It is impossible to offer answers, I've concluded. There is no rhyme or reason. There is no "making sense" of any of this. There is no lucky charm to keep God off your back, or to keep Him in your corner.
So what do we take forward? What do we take to the grieving loved ones? A casserole? And a trite platitude like "God needed another angel in heaven" or "It's for the best?" Or maybe "God doesn't give you more than you can handle?"
At times like these I fall back to my Stephen Ministry training. It is the only thing that has ever spoken real-life words of biblical encouragement to me about tragedy and loss. Stephen Ministry is a nondenominational ministry that pairs a trained lay caregiver with someone who needs a skilled listener and friend to walk alongside them for a period of time. Dr. Kenneth Haugk, founder of Stephen Ministry, relates the loss of his wife to ovarian cancer in his book Don't Sing Songs To A Heavy Heart. This book is the result of working through his grief with the help of his faith and formal training in psychology. It should be on everyone's bedside table, ready for that day when mind-numbing, debilitating grief strikes close to home.
In the book Dr. Haugk says the community of believers--the church--is called to be Christ's Easter body in a Good Friday world. That's a tough row to hoe. That means while everything seems to be falling apart, we must be the sentinel for ultimate victory. Darkest before the dawn. That sort of thing.
What does that mean, down here in the pits? What words would Christ's Easter mouth say to a Good Friday family whose baby just died?
It means, I think, that we do not offer "witness" so much as we offer "with-ness." We are present, in the pain. We do not fill up the void with simpy platitudes. We wait. We listen. We hold and hug. We weep right alongside. We stand in the family's kitchen and carve ham because we don't know what else to do. We do not try to "fix" it just to make ourselves feel better. When we don't know what to say, we keep our blathering traps shut.
And yes. We bring casseroles. That day, and two months later, when everyone else has returned to Life As Usual and the grieving person is just beginning to come to terms with their new reality.
Some say the Gospel can be boiled down to two commandments: Love God. And love people. Sometimes God is really hard to love. Sometimes people are too. Sometimes all we want are answers when, sometimes, there just aren't any. Not on this side of the veil anyway. But what we do have on our side is our common humanity, and we dare not lose sight of that. And we have on our side the humanity of God's son Jesus, Dr. Haugk reminds us, who was a man of sorrows, well acquainted with pain and suffering.
As my sweet friend Alex, a breast cancer survivor, said, "Weakness leads to dependency. Dependency leads to relationships. Relationships lead to community." The short version is Weakness leads to Community: communing with God, because even as we beat furiously against His chest, God is holding us in loving arms, and communing with people, because we need each other in this Good Friday world, if only to remind each other that Easter is on its way.
No comments:
Post a Comment