Reflections for Lent, April 13, 2014: Surprised by Tragedy
On Tuesday of this week, after a class, a student told me that one of her classmates, one of my students, had committed suicide.
I will not go into details because they are not my business and I don't want to post anything that might be painful to his dear family. The viewing was Thursday in a little town near here, a very closeknit community I know pretty well, and I went. The funeral home was packed. I stood in line an hour to speak to his mother. There was an open casket.
More than once I have thought since then at how hard, perhaps inhuman, these rituals are that we think we have to go through. Perhaps it does give closure. Perhaps that is just my horror and sadness at what has happened talking.
Just as joy surprises us, and I say "us" meaning "me," grief does. Everyone who dies in my life does it quickly; I have had no experiences in my family of long, slow deaths. Even my grandmother who died at 98 came to her end in a few days, from liver problems. My father, my brother, my brother-in-law, so many others died within hours, or a couple of days.
They who sow in tears shall reap in joy. At the funeral home, I can't claim that verse for this mother. I don't know how one would ever reap in joy from such tragedy.
I will not go into details because they are not my business and I don't want to post anything that might be painful to his dear family. The viewing was Thursday in a little town near here, a very closeknit community I know pretty well, and I went. The funeral home was packed. I stood in line an hour to speak to his mother. There was an open casket.
More than once I have thought since then at how hard, perhaps inhuman, these rituals are that we think we have to go through. Perhaps it does give closure. Perhaps that is just my horror and sadness at what has happened talking.
Just as joy surprises us, and I say "us" meaning "me," grief does. Everyone who dies in my life does it quickly; I have had no experiences in my family of long, slow deaths. Even my grandmother who died at 98 came to her end in a few days, from liver problems. My father, my brother, my brother-in-law, so many others died within hours, or a couple of days.
They who sow in tears shall reap in joy. At the funeral home, I can't claim that verse for this mother. I don't know how one would ever reap in joy from such tragedy.
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