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Why Waldo?
Friday, October 30, 2020
Monday, October 26, 2020
After the After
I was rereading this chapter that I wrote for Elizabeth Lesser's book, "Broken Open: How Difficult Times Help Us Grow".
Before and After
————————————
In our sleep, pain, which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair, against our will
comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
—Aeschylus
At the
end of a talk I gave on the subject of death and grief, a man and his wife
lingered behind to speak to me. Several hundred people had been in the
audience, but my attention had been drawn all during the talk to these two
people. They were listening intently, as if their lives depended on it.
Before
we said anything, the man handed me a laminated card. On the front was a
drawing of a young man being held by an angelic figure against a sky-blue
backdrop. On the other side was a copy of their son’s obituary. “He was 21,”
the man said, as I read the card. I caught my breath. One of my own sons had
just turned 21 a few days previously. Suddenly I could find no words. I put my
hands on the shoulders of the man and his wife, and we just stood there looking
at each other, nodding our heads as if we were speaking in some secret, silent
language.
I stayed
in touch with Glen and Connie. When Glen heard that I was writing a book of
stories that focused on being broken open by change and hardship, he asked if
he could send me his own story. Many people have done this, and I have been
touched by every story I received, and have woven strands of many of them into
the book. But Glen’s story needs to be shared in its entirety. It is the story
of a man who rose from the ashes of one of the most difficult Phoenix Processes
a person is asked to make. Glen divides the process he and his family went
through into two sections, “Before” and “After.” These are his words:
Before. . .
Eric and his
identical twin brother, Ryan, were born on New Years Eve. My wife, Connie, and
I were so busy and so happy. And when Katie, our beautiful little girl and
final child, was born 5 years later, our lives were complete. And life was very good. A well paying job for
me allowed Connie the opportunity to stay home with the kids and manage the
endless activities of a big family: sports and scouts and school and backyard
play. We lived life fully and happily.
As the years went
on our kids excelled. They were Eagle Scouts, state champions in sports, high
honorees in academics, accomplished musicians. So many blessings, so easily
taken for granted. Then Eric and Ryan went off to college, one to study
mechanical engineering, the other electrical engineering. Summers were spend
hard at work earning college tuition for the coming year, but we always found
time to enjoy each other and the Maine summers at the lake and coast.
Eric earned an
opportunity, through good grades and hard work, to apply for a semester abroad
and was accepted at Melbourne University in Australia. He flew off on his adventure
one beautiful summer morning. We communicated often over the next 5 months and
shared in the adventure he was having. He was recruited to play rugby for his
college team. He formed a jazz combo and
played the drums and the sax. Rock climbing in Brisbane; sheep herding in
Adelaide; dirt biking in the outback. Eric loved people and made wonderful
friends from around the world. And he kept a journal which—later, during the
“after” part of this story—was such a bittersweet blessing for our family. The
school semester ended in November and Eric took 3 weeks to travel in New
Zealand. He traveled as students do with a backpack, sleeping in youth hostels,
and reveling in the joys of being young and in some of the most beautiful
nature on God's earth. His letters were frequent and filled with awe at the
majesty of New Zealand's "Southern Alps" and ice blue glaciers.
Right before he
was to return home, Eric and two school friends did the longest bungee jump in
the world. We found a videotape of his jump in his belongings two weeks later.
He was tanned and muscular and smiling broadly as he faced the camera with arms
around the shoulders of his friends. He was filled with the joy of living. The
next day he got on his rented motorcycle to make his way back Christchurch to
catch a flight back to the states, back home to us.
The police officer
that attended the scene of the crash said, “He was traveling near Mount Cook,
on a dry, straight stretch of road, with an incredible view of the snowcapped
mountains. As near as we can determine, he must have had his eyes on the
distant view when he drifted into the ditch.” He was unconscious when a man who
saw the crash ran to his aid. And he died in that beautiful place.
After. . .
The agony of the
days that followed shocked me to the core. I had never dared to dream of such
darkness. I clung to my friends and family as we plummeted into the depths of
despair. The awful pain of having to tell my wife and children of Eric’s death
will live in my heart for the rest of my days.
The days began and
ended with sounds of sorrow. The time between troubled bouts of sleep was
filled with previously unimagined tasks of sadness—arranging for Eric’s body to
be returned from the other side of the world; buying a casket and burial plot;
preparing his clothes and planning a service; receiving telephone calls and
visitors and flowers and food and books and cards. We walked as if in a
terrible dream, praying to be awakened from the reality of it all. In those
weeks and months, our minds reeled and recoiled from the horror.
And we awoke, each
of us, in our own time.
In hindsight, my
life “before” was about quantity and velocity. Bigger jobs, larger houses, more
things . . .quicker, sooner, now. I
justified my lifestyle as a way to be the best provider I could be for my
family. It came at a price and yet I paid it. As my family grew, I abandoned my
former career path in environmental biology and took a better paying position
with a paper manufacturing company. In that decade especially, the paper
industry had much work to do to clean up their operations and I told myself,
with some truth, that I was not “selling out” but rather working for change
from the inside. But then came the opportunity to climb the competitive career
ladder. Two years in Technical, five years in Production, two years in Sales
and a Masters degree from MIT. By the age of 38, I was so successful that I was
positioned to take the next step to the top. Even though I had grown to hate my
job, I worked long and frantic hours, accepting thankless tasks (as well as big
bucks). My thought process was a constant countdown: “Just 10 more years, and
if the stock market cooperates, then I will have my life back.” I had discussed
my dissatisfaction with my family and they all told me they supported me in
changing course. But I didn’t. I was controlling the universe, keeping my
family safe and prosperous, and if sacrificing my values and happiness was the
price I had to pay, then so be it. By the fateful summer of Eric’s death, I was
being courted to accept the president & CEO position at a newly acquired
manufacturing facility in Chicago.
My delusions of
control were destroyed on the day Eric died. My family fell apart. None of us
knew we had been living life on the surface of a bubble until it popped. Katie,
who had been a talented and happy sophomore in high school, found it impossible
to go back to life-as-usual. Ryan did not return to college. Connie, who had
always been active in school, church, and community stayed close to home. My
greatest agony was in having no ability to “fix” the despair of my family.
My colleagues at
work desperately wanted me to put the past behind me and “get back in the
saddle.” For most it had to do with their extreme discomfort in having to
confront my pain. Others were more concerned about my productivity and the
profitability of the company. I became furious as the attempt was made to
shoehorn me back into the mold. I was outraged that the world had not changed
for others as it had for us. I was stunned at the people who placed profit and
the status quo of the system above my family’s loss.
I began to devour
books searching for words of wisdom to face each day. I discovered there are
entire sections of bookstores and the Public Library dedicated to loss. As we
reached out, we began to understand that we were not alone in our pain. Many
others had walked this terrible path before us. A wise and sober understanding
came over me. Before Eric’s death I had suffered relatively little of life’s
losses. I had thought I was in control of my life; now I knew I most certainly
was not. I looked around at others now—those who were living the way we had before—and I knew that they too, in
their own time, would have to learn what we were learning.
We tried to learn
it from the books. They helped. But we learned that the lessons of grief, like
music or medicine or art or parenting or marriage, must be lived to be fully
understood. And so began our journey through the “awful grace of God.”
At one point in
history, mankind believed the world was a flat table, and that those foolhardy
enough to venture too near the edge would fall off into a terrible world of
fierce sea monsters and destruction upon the rocks. They were right. Eric's
death pitched us headlong off our daily plane of existence into the darkness to
be wrecked upon the rocks. For weeks and months, we roiled and thrashed in
pain, submerged in agony, not sensing the light or knowing in what direction to
turn. We fought to hang onto each other and the lifelines tossed to us from
above were not recognized or were purposefully ignored. Each of us prayed at
times to simply drown and be done with it. Were it not for friends and
family—who flung themselves into our brokenness, to hold our heads above the
water—we may well have drowned in our sorrow
This place of
hopelessness and fear is real, not a cute little allegory. Some people never
leave that place and are broken on the rocks. Some people stop fighting and
slip into the depths. We came to understand that although we do not have
control, we do have choice.
God or Spirit or Creator or
"Whatever" wants us to go down into the dark waters, but also wants
us to come up to the light. God will not force us to do so. We are free. We are made so and it is our great gift. We
can choose darkness, fear, addiction and despair. We can choose light, hope,
meaning, and joy.
By the grace God,
I chose life. I chose to find a way back up. It helped me to visualize myself
climbing out of the dark sea, and back up onto the table of daily life. I
actually began drawing pictures of tables as I attempted to communicate my
deepest emotions to my wife, son and daughter. I named each of the table’s four
legs: Faith, Courage, Growth, and Love.
The leg of faith was the weakest part of my table. And it continues to be the
primary focus of my path forward. My daily mantra is, “Surrender and relax…into
the mystery.” Before Eric’s death, my concept of reality had been that I was
responsible for everything that happened past, present and future. But
afterwards, I recognized this could not be true. Even though I had dedicated my entire life to
securing my family’s well being, I had been unable to do so. And so, I
dedicated myself now to having faith in life, no matter what happened. My
attempts to climb back onto the table were often met with silence and, at
times, with contempt especially from my son, Ryan, whose loss of an identical
twin brother was something none of us could truly comprehend. But my concepts
and sketches gave me a place to hang my thoughts.
One day I sketched
a table on a napkin in a restaurant while talking with a friend. I didn't
notice that he slipped it in his pocket as we left, but that next week, he
stopped by the house and gave me a watercolor painting of my "table". As I write these words, I look above my
computer screen at that painting. It is written upon and surrounded by
clippings of words and other pictures, pieces of my broken soul, pieced
together like an incomplete puzzle. Pieces missing, amputated, never to be replaced,
rough and tattered, but treasured, not for it's artistic beauty, but for what
it represents. It is a model of our faith, our courage, our growth, and our
love. Our survival.
Six months after
Eric’s death, after twenty three years with the company and following long
discussions with my family, I quit my job. It wasn’t any great act of courage.
My family was faltering. I chose family over career. It felt right. After so
many years of making decisions based upon my logical, cognitive mind, I felt an
incredible euphoria following my intuition, my heart.
We rented a
secluded cottage on the lake for the summer. As Eric Clapton said after the
death of his infant son, “For a while I just went off the edge of the world.”
At times we feared the grief would twist us up so badly that we could not hope
for healing. We chose to walk into the darkness and to trust that we would be
led back out. We read, we sailed, we rested. We ate well, took long walks and
canoe rides in the moonlight, we cried a million tears.
By September we
felt ready to begin again. Katie went back to school and a new soccer season.
Ryan enrolled at the University of Maine for another semester of Mechanical
Engineering. Connie enrolled in an intensive Hospice Volunteer training
program, and taught half-time as an elementary school reading specialist job.
We bought two wonderful little dogs. I painted the house.
In October I
started a consulting company out of the house to earn a little money and
because I had always wanted to experience being self-employed. It also allowed
me to set my own schedule and stick close to home most of the time. I started
to think about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. When I was ready,
I accepted a Vice President’s position with a small nonprofit 15 miles from my
home. It is a meaningful job and I have a real passion for the company’s
mission. It is so delightful to look forward to Monday morning after so many
years of dreading the arrival of a new week of work. I have also accepted board
positions on two local community organizations—one, for hospice volunteers, and
the other an agency that provides social services and transitional employment
opportunities for the mentally ill. I seem to possess life skills that these
groups value and I am pleased to be able to contribute where I can.
Ryan is entering
his last year of college and is coaching a 10-12 year old little league team.
He plays his saxophone at every opportunity and you can feel his beautiful soul
when he blows his horn. Katie went to Bolivia last summer to work with homeless
children and the poor. Since then she has been accepted at Boston College in
Nursing beginning this fall. Her excitement is boundless.
Connie is now a
Hospice Volunteer instructor and just completed teaching a 16-week program
preparing new volunteers to assist the dying and those left behind. She is
loved by her 5 and 6-year-old students and fellow teachers and adored by her
own children and husband.
Eric is always
near. We see him in nature; birds, butterflies, rainbows, and sunsets. But
mostly we feel him. We are, each of us, Spiritual Warriors. We are awake and
nothing can break our circle. Nothing will ever be the same again.
Tuesday, October 13, 2020
A Conundrum Wrapped in an Enigma
"He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God."
Aeschylus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khGoLQ3Z-dU
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