Fishing for Hope

This time, it was our turn to give.

Almost three years had passed since our lives were changed forever.  Eric, our twenty one year old son and brother to identical twin, Ryan, and younger sister Katie, had been killed in a motorcycle accident while touring on the South Island of New Zealand just before coming home for Christmas. He had spent the previous 6 months at Melbourne University in Australia working toward an electrical engineering degree. We were all so looking forward to being together again.

Hospice Volunteers were there for us in the weeks and months following Eric’s death. At first I thought the Hospice Volunteers odd, to come to my home and sit beside us, quietly; leaving books and meals and warm touches behind, only to come again later in the week. I did not know them, was not aware of their work, but they brought comfort especially to my wife, Connie, and for that I was very grateful as she suffered so deeply.

My own grief was beyond anything I had ever dared to imagine, but it soon came time to return to work. It was very difficult, an added layer to the nightmare. One day, Hospice Volunteers showed up at my place of work. There was someone new this time and after we were introduced, the others departed. This man was my age, worked in the same industry, lived in the next county and had suffered the loss of a son in an automobile accident three years earlier.

I didn’t have to tell him how much I hurt, how I raged inside at my ultimate failure to protect my family, how lost and alone and out of control I felt. He knew. He didn’t tell me that this was "God’s will" or that I would “get over it” or that I just had to “get back to work” as had others. He listened a lot and told his story. But mostly, it was the look in his eyes that let me know he understood. I became aware that others also walked this terrible path. It gave me courage.

He would call me from time to time and later, he told me about a Hospice Volunteers event called Camp Ray of Hope. Connie was also learning from her contacts about the weekend retreat at a church summer camp for people who were grieving the loss of a loved one. We decided to attend, though I didn’t think I wanted to spend a whole lot of time with “those people”.

It was a weekend filled with healing and sharing and miracles, a word I have learned not to doubt. “Those people” got “it”. None of them had asked for “it”, and we would have given anything not to be among them. But now we were.

 Following the weekend, Connie plugged into the volunteer training and eventually became a certified volunteer instructor. And I followed her brave example by accepting a seat on the Hospice Volunteers board.

Two years later our turn came to attend Camp Ray of Hope again, this time as support staff; doing dishes, helping with cleanup, providing child care so that a young mother who had lost her mate or the father who had lost his child, might have some quiet time. It had been one of my “lessons” when first attending this camp weekend to learn how commonplace grief is among us, and how skillfully those who had not yet had to face it, previously including myself, were at blocking it from the collective public consciousness. Not that we hid death. Death is ever around us in the media and in our day to day conversations. Rather we hid grief. Or hid from it.

But at Camp Ray of Hope there was no hiding from the shattered widows and widowers, the broken and grieving parents or the children, teens and young adults suffering the loss of a parent, a grandparent or a sibling: People of all ages, all situations, none “worse” than the other, each story so poignant and real in it’s own way.

And so it was for one so young and struggling family attending camp that year.

The young Korean family had come to the United States two years before. There were three young children. The oldest, Joseph, was eight and spoke English fluently though the mother and younger children did not. His mother was bravely struggling to relocate the family to a safe place following the sudden death of her young husband earlier that year. The younger children, Grace, 3, and Elizabeth, 18 months, were adorable little ones with large dark eyes and long black braids. They wandered happily among the 25 or 30 other children and seemed oblivious to the cruelty that life had served them.

The peak colors of the leaves seemed to explode in the glorious sunlight of that clear and perfect Maine autumn day. It was Saturday afternoon and I was assigned to take a couple kids canoeing on the lake. Joseph and his new friend Eli, 6, let me know immediately that they were tired of waiting  and wanted to catch fish. They bragged, as young boys do, of how large their fish would be and the conversation became louder and louder as I carried the canoe to the dock and helped them select paddles, fishing rods and life jackets. So when, as I paddled us out onto the lake, I asked the boys if they knew how to fish, neither was able to retreat from their boasts of being experienced fishermen. The truth soon presented itself when I handed Joseph a large, juicy night crawler and told him to “bait up”. He gingerly wrapped the worm “around” the hook and I began to understand that he may have never been fishing. He watched intently as I showed him how to put the worm on the hook and how to cast the rod.

Joseph sat quietly holding the rod in the middle of the canoe as Eli splashed the water with his paddle in the bow. I noticed his line as it began to zig-zag in the water indicating that something had taken the bait and so reached out, grabbed the line and set the hook, pleased that Joseph had perhaps hooked up with a sunfish or a small perch.

“Reel in Joseph”, I called, “You’ve got a fish on!” He was shocked, but immediately began to crank on the reel as he had been instructed. Suddenly a very large fish exploded from the water about 20 feet from the canoe. Joseph froze at the sight, eyes wide and mouth open. I reached over and began to hand strip the line and the fish toward the boat. As I pulled the 3-pound bass into the canoe, the hook released from its mouth and giant fish flopped violently around the bottom of the canoe. Joseph appeared horrified so I quickly gilled the fish and held it up for all to see.

“Look what you caught Joseph”, I said excitedly!

He stared  at the fish for a long minute and finally looked into my face and said, “It is a very ugly thing…”. Never the less, the people on shore cheered loudly for Joseph as we released the fish back to the lake. It wasn’t long before Eli began kidding Joseph about being afraid of a fish and the two friends were again yelling and splashing each other with water. After 30 minutes with no more fish, they both asked to go in.

It was clear that Joseph was now a fishing enthusiast and he began to lecture Eli on how to cast. The boys ran from the dock to the shore where they began casting for “ugly monster fish” in the shallow water.  I thought my job was finished until I glanced down and saw little 3-year-old Grace looking up at me. She would not respond to my offer to help her to fish, but showed real interest when I began to pull worms from the can. She was fascinated to watch them wiggle and even ventured to touch one. It wasn’t long before she was standing with me on the dock dangling a line in the water.  Five minutes later she dropped the rod and wandered back to her mother who was sitting with a group of women on the shore.

Just kids and adults having fun, doing normal things though their lives no longer felt normal most of the time. Every now and then, you would see someone stop and gaze blankly into space as some memory flooded in. And when tears began to flow, no one asks “What’s wrong” or “Stop crying and have fun…”. A simple hand on the back or an arm around the shoulder was offered most often. People could be seen connecting in quiet conversations, giving each other the gift of listening, of sharing their stories and their sorrows. From a distance, one could not tell who was the giver and who was the receiver.

When dinner rolled around that evening, all 80 people gathered in the large, rustic dining hall to file through the chow line for some delicious hot food. The room was noisy with people talking and the young children were happily running around. My eyes fell upon Grace at about the same time that she noticed me and to my surprise and delight she ran to me smiling broadly and extended her arms, inviting me to pick her up. I felt the lump grow in my throat as I picked her up and experienced the giggling, tight hug around my neck. Here was so much courage and so much love.  This 3-year-old was giving me what I didn’t even know I needed. I was speechless and blinked back the dampness in the corners of my eyes. When I placed her back on her feet she jumped up to grab my hand and, curling her little hand around my index finger, like a dog on a lease, she began to pull me across the room.

I did not understand what game we were playing, but she definitely had something in mind. We approached her mother who watched with curious interest and spoke to her daughter in a language I didn’t understand. Grace said nothing and continued to pull me forward. And then with her other hand Grace grasped her mothers' hand and spoke to her in that foreign tongue. For a moment she stared at her mother and her mother at her. And then she placed my hand into the hand of her mother.

When we realized what this child was doing, we both fell awkwardly silent. The mother began an embarrassed, high-pitched laugh, which quickly turned to sobs. I met her gaze and saw her pain. There was nothing to say, nothing to do that would fix anything. I placed my hand on her shoulder and smiled. She dropped her stare, bowed her head and pulled her daughter to her. I moved away, flooded with emotions and wonder.

Giving and receiving. You don't do one or the other. When you choose to do one, the other comes with it.

I have often wondered what words Grace spoke when she gave me as a gift to her mother. Did she think I could help her mother in her grief? Did she tell her mother to have hope because life would go on and that we all had to stick together in this world? Did she understand that by thrusting me into giving that I would receive tenfold back? Perhaps.

But if truth be told, she probably said, "Mama, he knows how to fish…….".