Art is my saviour
I overheard a conversation last week that got me thinking.
It was at work. I don’t know the widow, but it was a situation where I had to listen because I couldn’t leave. She came to visit another woman there (the one who gives me rides to the train station every day). The visitor’s husband used to work where I do, and her husband died in an accident last year. She has three (I think - two, at least) small kids.
She was talking about how they were all getting on. She broke down a little bit when she told of how her son has repeatedly run out onto the road in hopes he’ll get hit by a car so he can be w/ his daddy.
A different woman who was also part of the conversation said, “Tell him when Jesus wants you, he’ll come get you.”
Gah. I found that sentiment saccharine and trite, but also creepy as hell.
After I’d banished the thought of a child-reaping Christ from my head, I thought about what an atheist would tell a child about death. Most things said are empty, concepts are hard enough for an adult - how’s a kid supposed to understand impermanance, change, etc.?
For those of you who’ve faced death - how have you coped? It’s something I’ve always been fixated on - mourning, grief, healing. Mostly because I want to arm myself. I think if I ever write a book, it’ll be on grief and the myriad ways people deal w/ it.
In Anderson Cooper’s book, Dispatches from the Edge (full review to come), he discusses his brother’s suicide. There’s no clear message of hope in the book. He is still struggling with the pain and confusion caused by the deaths of his brother and his father. He’s young yet, and he describes starting to deal with his feelings during his coverage of hurricane Katrina, so I don’t know how more time will leave him.
It seems sometimes the death of someone you love can fuck you up forever. You’ll never get over it, never heal, never move on. I’ve heard different things about this. It depends on the person, it depends how one defines healing. Some people make peace, some never do - they just learn to navigate around the pain.
I read a really interesting blog entry about grief. The author wrote about how she felt sorrow when thinking about her grandmother’s death, but when thinking about other things, or not focusing on the death, she felt fine, even peaceful. She’s a taoist. It’s an entry I’ve been thinking about for months, ever since I first read it. It makes me feel like maybe one can have power over one’s grief.
Today I remembered something I was supposed to send Devon. It’s from Michelle’s blog, and I think it’s brilliant. But, what else would one expect from Seasame Street?
No mysticism, no lies, no cold comfort. People die, just because.