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…….".
