One friend recently called to talk about it specifically because I had already gone through the experience and because our faiths are aligned along similar axes; we both believe in God, but neither of us believes in magic.
My dad's passing was sudden, whereas they discovered an astonishing number of tumors throughout his father's body at the beginning of treatment for something else, far too late to be treatable. The swiftness of my father's passing may have been a blessing, in a perverse reckoning of the term, and I certainly don't envy my friend having to witness his father going through this ordeal, but I also know that he is glad for the opportunity to be there for his dad, to lend him what strength and composure he can.
Something he has come back to time and time again, is the limits of preparedness and rationality. "You can tell yourself you're ready, but you aren't." How can one possibly prepare to journey alongside someone who looms so large in your life as they encounter the most trying circumstances of their existence?
During a visit, a well-intentioned but misguided person of faith kept telling his dad about the importance of faith, of how the very real possibility of a genuine miracle was not to be discounted. This was no doubt intended to be a comfort, but ended up having the opposite effect. My friend acknowledges that spontaneous remission, often under mysterious or unexplainable circumstances, can and has happened; his difficulty is in accepting a supreme being receiving endless submissions and petitions for mercy and selecting them based on some sort of piety scale. The offering left him angry and unsettled instead of hopeful and comforted.
Faith helps, but I think it is simplistic to call it a solution. The miracle I needed was to not lose myself in grief and confusion, and I did pray for it, and I got it, some of the time at least. That's a gift that reaffirms my faith without requiring magical intervention that circumvents the self-determination so critical to our humanity.
Faith helps. Faith in the knowledge, both rational and emotionally based, that our fathers went through this loss before us, and that our children are likely to do so afterwards. Faith that the end of our parents is not the end of all, much as we feared it was so when we were children. Faith that we will adapt to this loss as we adapt to so much else, and that even though we can't imagine it now, faith that we will laugh when recollecting them in the future.
Sadly, loss is the most natural thing in the world. This doesn't make it any easier to cope with, but can perhaps add some perspective, even if it comes after the fact.
Even though I consider myself a Christian, I have drawn tremendous comfort from faiths that are not my own, like the Buddhist stories found in collections like "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones". Here is the one I shared with my friend over the phone as we talked our way around the edges of the infinite and our inability to fully perceive it.
78. Real Prosperity
A rich man asked Sengai to write something for the continued prosperity of his family so that it might be treasured from generation to generation.
Sengai obtained a large sheet of paper and wrote: 'Father dies, son dies, grandson dies.'
The rich man became angry. 'I asked you to write something for the happiness of my family! Why do you make such a joke as this?' ‘
No joke is intended,' explained Sengai. 'If before you yourself die your son should die, this would grieve you greatly. If your grandson should pass away before your son, both of you would be broken hearted. If your family, generation after generation, passes away in the order I have named, it will be the natural course of life. I call this real prosperity.’
Retracing my feelings after my dad passed away six years ago hasn't been what I would call pleasant, but it's nowhere as tough as it was the last time I did so. That time was marginally easier than the time before that, and I expect that trend to continue. And I remember all the support I received from those around me, and recognize what a gift it is to be able to help others in that encounter. Whether talking, listening, or just being accessible, it doesn't feel like fulfilling a debt so much returning something borrowed, with appreciation rather than interest.
Wherever you draw it from: spirituality, philosophy, the love of friends or family or something else entirely, try to have faith as you face these challenges, and even as you help others to cope. The strength we draw from it, and from those around us, is real, and profound, and possibly as transfiguring as loss itself.
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