We unload and hang whatever we can’t remember on a “hook” that will hold it the way we anoint it.
With older parents in the family, one of my dear friends had come to know that anything could happen and that everything would. When she encountered the news of her mom’s diagnosis, it was not the way she wanted to be, but it was the way it was. Life became unmoored by sorrow. Each day became a crawling struggle as if she was looking up from the bottom of a deep, dark well to understand what was happening. Each day became an eternity; one forcibly piled up on the other, muddied in a dazed clarity inside a profound confusion. To sense that diseases move along a reasonable, navigable, negotiable path was a lost cause! My friend retreated into the terrible solitude of her broken heart. I could picture this from afar. Sometimes, she brought others – like me, briefly over a phone call – into her fierce battleground of coping. But before the sun took a dip into the horizon, it was always just her again and again. A merciless yank into the wreckage of her damaged psyche from the intense pull of unfathomable loneliness.
A few weeks ago, her mom died. Before my friend could bear the diagnosis, her house became desolate and empty – even with other family members identifying with the permanent loss. Life became impracticable, an orphan forevermore!
We pray to God, a God who perhaps would not answer our pleas – not for a miracle but to protect the little sanity we cling to in times of trauma. I know not enough to pray for recovery, to alter the course. But I know I am an extension of the soil I hold and will return to it just like my friend’s mom when my closing bell rings. Now, she naps six feet under like many loved ones who left me. I remember that as time ticked, my running slowed, and walking seemed more like dragging my feet on the ground. Soon, I, too, will slip into crawling to survive the last yards. But I am cultivating a faint but profound Āśā! I would meet her on the other side and find out my prayers hastened her suffering just a little. This image hinges comfortably on the hook-like bait in my reverie even when I slog through my last yards.