Being There

Two young children sitting side by side, the elder child with an arm around the younger, featured image for "Being There," at The Third Eve.

surrounded by love at death

My young friend lost her 28-year-old husband to cancer yesterday. They had celebrated their three year wedding anniversary only four months ago. These kids spent almost half their marriage dealing with cancer. Imagine that.

My husband and I had officiated at Samantha and Jason’s wedding, and provided their pre-marital counseling. They were one of the most attentive couples we had ever counseled. They loved each other deeply and with the kind of love everyone wants. They never arrived at that mid-marriage, mid-life phase of hating the one you married, of having to work through that. All they ever experienced was that heady, indulgent, youthful love–and then his sickness. I feel so sorry.

I had planned to go up to the hospital after dropping my girls off at school, to sit with these friends. She and our children had grown up together, and her mother and I had been friends for over 20 years. I called her mom to say I’d be up shortly, but she tearfully told me that her son-in-law had just died. She told me about the process of his passing, and we cried.

“I’m so sorry I wasn’t there,” I apologized after a time. I know what it means to have loved ones nearby during hardship—being there is love. My friend reassured me, “It’s truly OK. Nobody expected him to pass as soon as he did. I know you planned to be here.” She told me that the hospital had been packed with people there to support the young couple. “You’ve never seen so many people there for one person—relatives, his fellow National Guardsmen, friends. It was incredible.”

I was glad that the young couple and their families hadn’t suffered from lack of support. What a way to go, I thought, surrounded by loved ones wishing you godspeed on your journey.

I thought about Sammy, newly widowed. Her husband’s death was completely out of time. She’ll be the only 27- or 28-year-old in her circle of friends and beyond to have lost so much at such a young age. She’s in that time of life when one is supposed to be young and naive, foolishly invulnerable and immortal. All this and more has been taken from her by a cruel fate.

surrounded by love at birth

Also this week, my friend Ruth had her second baby, a baby who arrived with flashing lights and EMTs. Ruth didn’t realize she was in labor until the baby decided to be born at home in the bathroom, as Daddy dialed 911 and tried to catch his new daughter with a free hand–exciting stuff. All turned out well.

Ruth’s parents, brothers, and in-laws crowded into their small house that night, so that when her darling toddler son woke up the next morning, he was greeted by his adoring fans. They whisked him up, fed him, and took him off to Granny and Grampa’s house to spoil him for the week, while Mom and Dad recovered and fell in love their new daughter.

I asked how she was doing, and Ruth gushed, “Oh, it’s been wonderful. I’m glorious! I am so enjoying this new baby. I feel so warm, cared-for, and loved. It’s been great. Everyone is helping, so all I have to do is nurse the baby.”

I’ve known Ruth since she was four years old, and she has always been surrounded by love. She has available, responsive, loving parents. Her siblings have been supportive. Though their family has survived some tough times, they’ve stuck together.

Ruth has always had good friends, too, because she’s a good friend and wonderful person. She looks for the best in others, and tries not to speak ill of anyone. She never meets a stranger. She’s enthusiastic about life and loves others. Out of an abundance of inner resources, she gives.

The worst that can be said about Ruth is that, every now and then, she admits to feeling cross. “I felt so cross!” she’ll exclaim.

She’s charming, really. Cross? Cross?! I can wax absolutely bitchy, but Ruth is merely “cross.” She’s a consistently good, warm, kind-hearted human being. Everyone she befriends has been enriched by knowing her. She’s that sort of person.

pioneers at love

These events have had me thinking about the different sorts of people in the world. There are those like my young widow friend, or Ruth, who have been surrounded by love, and communicate love to others through their words and deeds. There are those who have experienced the lack and hardship of being raised by parents who couldn’t be there for them.

People who have never had the “being there” sort of love in their lives survive by taking care of themselves. One day, they realize that their love for their children or partners, friends and family of choice is different from what they received growing up. They’re giving to others exactly what they didn’t experience, but knew they needed. They become pioneers in their families of origin.

Psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, recovery work, education, spirituality, and sometimes religion can change the course of a wounded person’s path. Dreams can become reality.

carrying ourselves with love

I visited Ruth and her new baby when the baby was a few days old. The baby was beautiful, perfect in every way. Ruth glowed with joy and contentment.

Ruth told me that her mother had tearfully expressed how beautiful she found her new grandgirl’s welcome. As a young mother, she hadn’t had the family support that she has been able to give Ruth. In many ways, when we carry babies and birth them, we carry ourselves. As we give our partners, kids, and loved ones what we should have gotten from our parents—but didn’t—we bring forth new things.

Eve

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30 responses to “Being There”

  1. Eve Avatar
    Eve

    Hind’s Feet, it makes me smile to know that you know and experience R. as I do. She’s a dear, dear person, isn’t she?

    She’s one of many people in my life who have showed me just how lovable I really am, by acting like a friend. Of course her parents are the same way; I know they would do anything for anyone, big-hearted, down-to-earth, practical lovers of human beings. It was her mother, in fact, who taught me how to get through my daughter’s illness as we stood in the middle of the canned vegetables aisle at a local grocery store. She taught me about not being so afraid by being full of joy in spite of the suffering she herself was going through at the time.

    Reply
  2. Hind's Feet in High Places Avatar
    Hind's Feet in High Places

    I know that it’s been a long time and I’ve only met your daughter once. I never got to tell you that I’m so sorry…

    The meaning of our friend’s name has never in my life escaped me. I named my son keeping meaning in mind because I believe a name is our representative and tells people who we are, even if they don’t know the meaning, it’s there in spirit. Our friend’s parents are very wise and I love them as my own. Our friend has been there for me through thick and thin, when I had no one to turn to and no one to lean on.

    Reply
  3. jadepark Avatar
    jadepark

    I am only just able to dissect/articulate how the stroke has changed me. And I’m not able to really articulate it artfully right now, as my understanding is very minimal. It’s very invisible in so many ways, but just witnessing my reaction to the layoffs I had to do–I realize that I’m way more emotional, more permeable.

    I was just talking about this to a friend. My brief foray into living a 100% present tense life those first few months after the stroke (having no short term memory and having an impaired left brain that could not piece together past and future) was an amazing experience.

    Reply
  4. thordora Avatar
    thordora

    Not that I’m a believer, but the bit about “and women shall be saved through the bearing of children.””-YES! YES from the roof top-I always say that children move a person from maiden to mother, from child to adult, to seeker in this world-another level we could never ever hope to see without that knowledge, that inherent knowledge of what you would do for your child.

    My grief is tempered, but the sweet love of my daughters, it helps stamp it down.

    My sympathies to that young woman. Too young, too soon, too much.

    Reply
  5. henitsirk Avatar
    henitsirk

    Ha! I always go back to see if you respond to my comments 🙂

    One lecturer at Steiner College once talked about the difference between judging and discrimination in just the same way that you do here. I had forgotten that.

    I just put a long comment on your most recent post, but it relates to what we’re discussing here, too. My cousin will always receive my love, but I sure do judge her, and rightly I think. She hasn’t really hurt me (a little bit financially, but that’s water under the bridge), but she is hurting her children through her bad decisions. And they are empirically bad.

    Right now I just have to pray, and realize that she and her children have their destinies.

    Reply
  6. Eve Avatar
    Eve

    Heni, this is a belated response so you may not even see it. But I’m going to answer anyway. You asked “do you think it’s possible to judge and forgive at the same time?”

    My short answer is, yes I do.

    I didn’t used to think so. But now that I’ve had plenty to forgive and judge, I’ve changed my mind. I was reminded one year of Jesus saying “be angry, but do not sin.” That interested me, because he was saying it’s OK to have your emotions, but as you have them, don’t go so far that you sin and miss your mark. I’ve read that the Hebrew and Greek meanings of the word for “sin” are similar, and mean to err or miss the mark, as in archery.

    One is hurt by another, and one judges the actions of the other, because there’s objective moral right and wrong in the universe. I think this is a basic philosophical stance we assume when we judge, otherwise our lives are meaningless and our actions also meaningless, if there is no morality in the universe.

    So we judge, because the other person missed the mark. They might have gone farther with us in relationship. They might have stretched themselves. But they chose not to, and we went on. I think that standing in my place and looking back at my friend and seeing them stuck is a judgment. It’s a judgment to think, “You might have done better than that.”

    However, forgiveness is to be able to go on without trying to drag the friend along and also without stopping our own progress along the way. Forgiveness is to say “I’m sorry that you aren’t going with me, and I’m sad.” Then we move on, trying to be unattached to outcomes for the other person. I think forgiveness also has an element of trust in it, trust that suggests the friend may get to where they are going in their own time.

    Judgment is discernment. It is to perceive truth and comment on it through comparison. Here is the standard, and here I am in relation to that standard. And there you are. See how we relate to the standard? How are we doing? That’s judgment. Don’t leave home without it, I say.

    Reply
  7. henitsirk Avatar
    henitsirk

    Actually the days after my son’s birth were marked by a serious lack of affect. I was kind of like a stunned bird that is lying next to the window it didn’t see coming. I laid in the hospital bed watching old Little House on the Prairie episodes, wondering where the baby was, but in an unemotional way. Evidently my husband spoke to the nurses and told them that I was likely to not ask for help and that I didn’t express discomfort overtly! How well he knows me. I stayed very unemotional until the day my son opened his eye for the first time (yes, just the one eye that time) — then suddenly, like a flood, I was full of love for him. I don’t really know what happened that day.

    As for the group of friends, I should add that it did not form entirely spontaneously. The core of the group was made up of members of my husband’s class at the anthroposophical college we were both attending. My class was not bonded in any deep way, but his class seemed truly karmically linked (and I was included in that even though I was not in their class). But the consciously created part came in our social gatherings that continued for several years after we finished the college program. We met regularly for parties and get-togethers, went camping, celebrated birthdays, etc. Some of us even were roommates and/or married each other!

    I wonder about your distinctions between judging and sorrow and forgiveness. With these friends, I do still judge them, and feel great sorrow, but I think I also forgive them in some sense because they are still in a protected space in my heart. If I saw them tomorrow, I would be so glad, and there would be no recrimination! But in the safety of distance, I do judge them. Do you think it’s possible to judge and forgive at the same time?

    Reply
  8. Mon Avatar
    Mon

    I see myself desperately yet naturally making up the spaces left by my emotionally distant parents by noting every single moment with my baby and filling them with love. I am consciously There, because I believe that there is all there really is. It’s tiring and fulfilling all at the same time.

    Reply
  9. giannakali Avatar
    giannakali

    This is an awesome book I bought after my brother died, Healing through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair, written by Miriam Greenspan.

    A brief excerpt from an interview with her:

    Fear, grief and despair are uncomfortable and are seen as signs of personal failure. In our culture we call them “negative” and think of them as “bad.” I prefer to call these emotions “dark,” because I like the image of a rich, fertile soil from which something unexpected can bloom. Also we keep them “in the dark” and tend not to speak about them. We privatize them and don’t see the ways in which they are connected to the world. But the dark emotions are inevitable. They are part of the universal human experience and are certainly worthy of our attention. They bring us important information about ourselves and the world and can be vehicles of profound transformation.

    I really liked the book.

    Here is to us all embracing the dark emotions…so that we can be like the Buddhists respecting life and nature…as Carmen said.

    Reply
  10. Carmen Avatar
    Carmen

    Yes! My grandfather survived the surgery. He is alive and wonderful! He is 77 and he volunteers now at a local churches group that supports gays. Perhaps you are aware of the Matthew Shephard case but this case started the Matthew Shepard Foundation and this church group is closely associated with the legislation Matthew’s death brought about. He also sits on the board for the counties health insurance coalition for the homeless. He is a great inspiration to me.

    I am glad you found comfort in the words I wrote. It’s funny you commented specifically on that being a Catholic blessing. I was raised Church of God and found my own path a few years ago (Unitarian). I have always been attracted to the Catholic faith. I have a candle of Guadalupe I light every night when I get home, I have a rosary in my car hanging from my rearview mirror and many other medallians on top of that. There is a church in St. Augustine called Mission of Nombre de Dios. I don’t know what any of that means but I find solace there when I walk the grounds by the ocean. It also If I lived a previous life…I was surely Catholic.

    Reply
  11. lalber Avatar
    lalber

    Funny, I loved this post but couldn’t quit relate, because don’t have a husband or children. I didn’t come from a lovey-dovey family either. We make family where and when we can, I suppose. But I wonder, do friends count as much as blood ties?

    Reply
  12. Carmen Avatar
    Carmen

    Eve,

    I recently purchased a book and I know you are familiar with the author…Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. The book is titled On Grief and Grieving. I have been lucky to make it half way through the second chapter. I have cried while reading each page, even the Introduction. Why should I cry over her death? I didn’t even know her. Because, I surmise, death is a lesson I have yet to learn. I cringe at the thought of it and if I kept thinking about this blog I would cry on my keyboard to, like you.

    Death permanantly and inevitably effects eveyone around. Sometimes I wish I were brought up on a mountain somewhere in the Himalayas. A Buddhist, spiritual and living off the land…respecting life and nature. Not being here, stuck in this spinning carousel that never ends. Waiting to die.

    I wish our culture respected death more and wasn’t as scared of it. I wish I knew how to find Peace in death. My grandfather was having surgery once. He was chaplan at the hospital at the time and I stopped off to see him. He said to me, “Carmen, I am going to have surgery tomorrow. If I don’t wake up remember I will be rooting for you on the other side”. This made me cry then and now. I told him not to say that. He asked me why but I wasn’t really able to have that conversation then. Maybe I am now.

    Peace be with you Eve. The lessons you have learned you share with us daily and they are blessings streamed from something or someone other than you. This is another lesson we will all learn together.

    Eve replies:
    Yes, Kubler-Ross. What a pioneer. I haven’t read her book, but I may just order it on your recommendation.

    Why should you cry over her death? Well… because the deaths of others stir up all the losses we’ve experienced, that’s why. Yes, I’m very sad at the loss of our young friend. But I am sadder still because it brings up the suffering I know this causes, and I have such compassion for the wife who is left behind. So, while death is a lesson each of us will learn, we are no strangers to loss and to what feels like death. Whatever we lose permanently and can’t regain or resurrect feels like death. This is why I think these things stir us so.

    There’s a good book called “The American Way of Death” that explains a lot about the way we die and how to die another way. After reading it as my daughter died, I determined never to undergo a typical American burial because of the way they desecrate the body. The Jewish way of burial, yes. Even cremation, yes, fine. But not, for instance, having one’s eyes sewed shut. (For starters.)

    I love what your grandfather said. And did he survive the surgery? You don’t let us know!

    And thank you for saying “peace be with you.” This is a traditional Catholic blessing during every church service. I really love it. I can never look into another person’s eyes and shake their hand and say that without really meaning it. It was a real blessing for you to write this particular phrase to me, so thank you for this gift I just happened to receive on my blog. It isn’t mundane. I’ve felt so blue yesterday and today, that I truly needed that. Thank you so much.

    Reply
  13. jadepark Avatar
    jadepark

    It is interesting and tragic and sad and happy and joyful the ways in which we human beings are carved into the people we become. thank you for bringing some of that process into focus for me.

    Eve replies:
    Jade, trauma and loss change us forever, don’t they? It’s funny to me how I still can’t articulate all the ways how; I just know it does. What do you say to people who ask how your stroke changed you, now that some time has passed? Do people ask? I always wonder what you’ll say to that, speaking of suffering. (And the joys of survival and recovery!)

    Reply
  14. Frank_Rizzo Avatar
    Frank_Rizzo

    FYI, I meant through to be threw. I don’t know how that slipped in there. Maybe I’ll be using a lot as one word….alot…..nope will never happen. I sincerly apologize and wish to replace through with threw.

    Just FYI a lot is two words. If you use a lot as one word, unlike my wife I won’t become cross. I’ll get really f&#cking mad. 🙂

    Unless you wish to alot me a portion of your net worth. Then it’s OK.

    Eve replies:
    I fixed it for you. I do have some super powers, too, such as being able to edit comments and make people say whatever I want them to say. Wow, imagine how I could create my own little world here!

    If I allotted you a portion of my wealth, it would be allot. I think we should use allot alot.

    Reply
  15. Frank_Rizzo Avatar
    Frank_Rizzo

    Well, actually I was taking heavy enemy fire from 50 caliber guns on enemy choppers when I saw the baby entering the world. I threw a hand grenade with one hand and caught the baby with my other. I then jumped up and caught a bullet in my teeth just before it hit me. Wow, this is fun. Before I know it I’ll have been hiding in a refrigerator to avoid a nuclear bomb a la Indiana Jones. Wait, I actually want to forget the most recent Indiana Jones.

    Eve replies:

    I knew it! I knew you were just being modest!

    I didn’t care for the new Indiana Jones either.

    Reply
  16. Eve Avatar
    Eve

    Alida, I don’t feel eloquent either. I don’t even know if I was typing English tonight. I feel devastated over our friend’s death.

    Reply
  17. Elizabeth Avatar
    Elizabeth

    I was too weary to respond yesterday, but I have to tell you that this was a very moving and powerful post.

    My condolences to your friend’s son-in-law. How very tragic.

    Reply
  18. Donald Duckling Avatar
    Donald Duckling

    Just some words of encouragement. I wanted to tell you i really enjoy reading what you write and have been reading your blog whenever I find time. you have a great perspective on things and it has been very encouraging to read some of your thoughts /views.

    Reply
  19. Donald Duckling Avatar
    Donald Duckling

    Well I hope we are not neighbors. My neighbors go accross my lawn every other day to sell each other crack.

    Reply
  20. Donald duck Avatar
    Donald duck

    My condolences go out to you and the wife and family of the young man. I will be keeping you guys in my thoughts and prayers. On a good note I would like to congratulate Mr. Frank_Rizzo on your new born baby. That is quite a blessing!

    Eve replies:
    Donald Duck, hello there! Yes, gratz to Frank on the birth of his daughter. It was none other than Frank’s wife who’s the friend in the 2nd part of my article. I love talking with her. And Frank, too.

    Reply
  21. renaissanceguy Avatar
    renaissanceguy

    My heart is with you and with this family, Eve. May God comfort you and all who mourn.

    Eve replies:
    RG, thanks. I’ll pass on that many who hear about this are similarly touched. I know that you know what it is; you’ve had a year of loss, yourself.

    Reply
  22. Frank_Rizzo Avatar
    Frank_Rizzo

    Wow, 0ne hand…..That’s a bit of a stretch. I was actually holding the phone to my ear with my left shoulder. I needed both hands to catch the baby as they are kind of slippery at first.

    Eve replies: Allow me to make you out to be the superstar you really are. Don’t be so modest. I’ll bet you sent the 911 call telepathically and did laundry while you delivered the baby. You can’t kid me!

    Reply
  23. Eve Avatar
    Eve

    “Now that I think about it, I wonder if my parents did this on purpose, without realizing it.”

    Deb, I think they do it on purpose subconsciously. They aren’t conscious of it at all but they (we) all act it out anyway. We keep doing what was done to us, even if we say we aren’t, until we are fully conscious and able to choose another way. This is what I really, truly believe.

    It’s not easy to learn to just be with people. That’s why the title of this post was Being There.

    Sometimes I think it’s not so much the need for control, or an illusion of control, but something else. Maybe a fear of the unknown or a fear. Simple fear. Without a container, a mother (type) who can’t be leaned on, we are cast too soon from the womb/nest/hearth. And so we have to stand alone from an early age.

    But, as you wrote, we keep trying. Exactly so. You always give me something to think about. Thanks for that.

    Reply
  24. henitsirk Avatar
    henitsirk

    I never know what to say to express condolences and so I am not feeling eloquent either. I’m sorry that your young friend died so young.

    Yes, just being there means so much. I will never forget waking up in the hospital after my son was born after a traumatic emergency c-section and whisked away to another hospital without me seeing him. A friend was sitting there in the room, waiting for me to wake up, when even my husband was not there (I think he was at the hospital with my son, so no grudge there). She just cared and knew how to simply show up. And then the next day my parents and inlaws came, so they knew how to show up as well, even if we are lacking in other forms of closeness. And then other friends arranged for some meals for us. We were very much supported and loved, and to this day those friends and coworkers look on my son as one of their own sons.

    And on the contrary, I will also never forget the friends who were part of a consciously (and karmically, I believe) formed group of friends, who at some point just stopped showing up. It still hurts, many years later. That group was like a family, a social support created willingly and lovingly, and they just faded away. And the worst was that they seemed to be consciously choosing others to be with. It was a total rejection, from my perspective.

    It is so hard to forgive people who don’t seem to have enough love to share with us.

    Eve replies:
    Heni, thank you for sharing this. It must have been terrifying and devastating, having a baby under those conditions. I know it all turned out well afterward, but to wake up without your husband or new baby, to be separated… wow. Blessings on your friend for being a friend.

    Also interesting about your consciously formed group of friends. I like that label. I’ve had that, too, and our group went apart also and apparently consciously. And it hurt. Rejection seems to always have some hurt to it, doesn’t it?

    I don’t find it as hard to forgive as I find it impossible to not feel pained when I think about such things. I still grieve the losses and the what-might-have-been. I accept it, I forgive them (for I don’t want to be in the place of judge, jury, or executioner at all); and yet I still feel that twinge of sorrow, whether it’s toward my own parents or to old friends. And, yes, sometimes I have been the one who has made the conscious decision to reject a friendship after a long time. And even that seems so false… rejecting “friendship” rather than rejecting “friend.” Oy.

    Reply
  25. Irene Avatar
    Irene

    I find myself lately worrying in a quiet sort of way about dying alone, because I have no children. That makes me very sad. But then I tell myself that not all children stay close to their parents, even go half way around the world to make space for themselves. There’s no guarantee that having children, a family, may also keep you supported, is there? (depending on how you’ve been brought up, I know)

    I do have friends though, and only time and love will tell if they stay close, or if I stay close ( how courageous will I be?). Being a bit of a loner who dislikes too much socialising doesn’t help. Having a husband who is worse than me, who happily disappears into his cave (our home) and sees no one, doesn’t help. Neither did I learn about being close to friends whilst growing up, as my parents themselves were more or less loners, most of the time. No social parties, rarely a dinner at all. Mostly family at Christmas – that was the main gathering of people, more habit that meaningful. That bothers me a bit now too.

    But I have my garden, and my paint, which when in the midst, I am completely content.

    I think a lot now about ‘being there’ – for those I care about especially, like my mum with all her health worries – heart operation, aches and pains, and doctors appointments. I worry for those that are vulnerable. Last night my husband and I were leaving home in the car for end of year drinks at my studio complex, and we saw a neighbour sitting on the ground, with her friend nearby (both old but always walking every day). I heard in my head ‘what happens when we don’t stop and ask if someone needs help?’. We pulled up, and asked. The lady on the ground had fallen, had become dizzy, and couldn’t get up. So Rob and I helped her up and walked with her arm in arm to her home a little way down the street. She felt so light, I could have carried her. I was overwhelmed with affection, as if she were my own mother. She promised she would go see a specialist the next day, as her doctor had found nothing wrong previously.

    Did she have a child to help her and her also frail looking husband? Her friend looked so worried, I knew she’d be there. So many people we don’t know, alone and frail.

    I’m so sorry about your friend who died, so glad he had so many to love him. I hope his death was peaceful and not too painful.

    And to be near a birth, too. How lucky, how amazing – such a beautiful story for me to hear. You’re so right about all those things you said, about the importance of people around you. And I do think there is something else loving around us, and I do feel it at times. I feel very grateful when that happens. I don’t feel that we die and thats all, the end.

    Being there for others is something I’m still learning about, especially for others who are not so close. I don’t know if I’m intruding, and I don’t know what to say, especially if they have other people around them to whom they are closer. I feel rather inept in those circumstances. But I will live and learn.

    Eve replies:
    I truly believe that God gives us everything we need for every journey and that we will have what we need. I’ve sat with a dying woman whose three children didn’t trouble themselves to come and be with her until after she died, and she was a decent woman. Having children doesn’t really guarantee anything (I feel I ought to say that again: having children doesn’t guarantee anything). Whatever people think they will get from having children and the real cost and blessing of children can be very different. Which has been on my mind lately.

    So yes, you’re right. No guarantees. How nice it would be if life came with them, though: “If you do this, thus-and-so is guaranteed to occur, or your money, time, effort and investment returned, no questions asked!” Hah.

    The story about your neighbor touched me. How we stop and help; and yet wonder, should I? Am I interfering? Is everything OK? Not wanting to intrude, but wanting to extend compassion; in the end, we have to ask, don’t we?

    I didn’t say so in my post, here, but being there for others is a lot of work. I imagine that most of us who have been there for others would agree that it takes a lot of time and effort, involves heartache and emotion, and that all too often we may feel it’s not returned. It’s not easy, being there. It’s not easy for our friends or whoever happens to be there, to be there for us; and vice-versa. I don’t take it lightly. I’ve wanted to be a hermit for the past several years. Daily I breathe the word “vacation,” too, as I feel I am on a fast ride with no getting off. This isn’t good, and so I try to control the spinning by not being there for others, sometimes. I can see why older women, in particular, tend to cut themselves off and isolate. You can get so tired of always being there. I wonder how we’re supposed to do it?

    Reply
  26. davidrochester Avatar
    davidrochester

    So many things struck me about this post. I am so sorry about your loss. It’s one of those terrible paradoxes that the more deep the love, the greater the loss. And so while it is tragic that this young couple was parted so soon, it would have been more tragic if they hadn’t loved each other at all … if he’d never known that kind of love before he died.

    I have a friend whose wife died in her early twenties, a year after they were married. It was unbearable, and yet I saw how he was raised by suffering in a way that few people ever have the chance to be. It was humbling and inspiring to witness how he took that chance and wrestled with it until it conquered him and made him a better version of himself.

    Eve replies:
    David, you’re right; these two knew what love was and they had that. So many people don’t get that much, so it’s a good thing to keep in mind.

    “Raised by suffering.” What an interesting thought. I have more thoughts on that and hope to get them written down sometime soon.

    Reply
  27. deb Avatar
    deb

    I grew up in a small family, cut off from aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents. Now that I think about it, I wonder if my parents did this on purpose, without realizing it. But in our small family I did learn that family is what comes first, you take care of your family, you help one another, even if that person pisses you off, they are your family. So I do for my family but not with much love sadly. My sisters are so distant, emotionally and physically, my brother too really. I have my mum whom I care for but I can’t lean on her, I never really could. She can cook and clean like nobody’s business but she can’t listen, can’t just be there for me when things get bad, she makes things worse with her constant worrying.

    And I wonder how much I have been there for my own kids. I know I love them but they are too much for me often. I think I have a perfect family somewhere in my mind, where parents lovely fully and unconditionally, I want that from my parents and I want to be able to give it as well but I don’t know how. I try but I am easily irritated and have such a hard time shutting up and listening or just being quiet with my children. I have this need to fill up the space. I want to learn to be with people, to allow the space between me and others to ebb and flow, to let go of my need of control, to let go of my illusion that I have any control:)

    But you’re right, we need other people in our lives, to share, to love, to witness our lives and I think that’s why we all keep trying.

    Reply
  28. Eve Avatar
    Eve

    Gianna, I think it always means something when we hold someone’s hand. I would imagine especially as we die. I plan to die some day, and I hope someone is holding my hand, if not in that moment at least in their heart. I think if I have lived a worthwhile life, that’s what will happen. And if I haven’t, then God have mercy on me.

    But I think I have.

    And I’m sorry you lost your brother and for what you’ve gone through. Death is the hardest thing. I have a lot of respect for it.

    Reply
  29. giannakali Avatar
    giannakali

    my brother died….and in a family where no one knows how to love each other, somehow he did know how and in his loving us we all loved him. And so he like your friend’s son-in-law, had lots and lots of people surrounding him the last 72 hours we all sat vigil. And though excruciatingly painful it was beautiful too.

    Oddly enough, after literally 3 days of sitting around the clock with him, everyone went home but me and my husband. He died with me alone, holding his hand. I want that to mean something but I don’t know if it does.

    I loved this post too and I share the sentiments at the end. The only reason I wish stay alive is for the people I love. And the reason I wish to heal is so that I can love even more people.

    thank you Eve, once again, for a moving and beautiful message of love.

    Reply
  30. Alida Avatar
    Alida

    Lately, I feel so…not eloquent 🙂 Bear with me as I muddle through my comment. This post was beautiful. Such a timely reminder during this season that best you can give someone is of your time and yourself.

    I’m sorry for the loss of your friend and happy that there is a new baby that is loved.

    Reply

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