Asking the Right Questions

As the days have passed, I have continued to struggle, sinking back again and again into the viper filled pit.  I knew I was failing Jack, and if seen from what I believe would be his perspective, failing myself.  Then as a last resort I fell back on what I thought was a clichéd cop out – I asked myself what he would do with all this anger.  As I rolled my eyes at the thought of him in the midst of such a struggle in the first place, another question popped into my head.  

But why wouldn't he find himself in the midst of such a struggle?  Everyone has those moments when they’re so filled with anger over something they feel like they are going to explode.  Even if rare to the point of practical non-existence everyone knows on some level what that feels like.  Don’t they?  Though something I took for granted as just a part of the business of being human, I now began to wonder.  Was it really?

Lying back on my bed, I started thinking through all my memories of Jack, of the time we spent together.  I laughed and cried alternately, as one wonderful memory after another flooded through me until I realized what I was seeing.  Nothing but wonderful memories.  Happy memories.  Carefree memories even against the backdrop of an illness he was at the same time fighting against with all his might.  I suppose it’s natural to focus on the good times we had with someone when we’ve just lost them, yet some of the bad times, fights, flaws couldn’t help but sneak in.  Right?  So where were they? 

I don’t intend to suggest Jack was perfect.  He was simply a man who saw a need whether that of another or one within himself, and acted on it.   And that was where I began to find my answer, my remedy to the anger that had possessed me from the moment he left this world.  I was letting the experience take control of me, bend me anyway it chose.  I was viewing this whole thing as something that was happening to me. 

It was then I no longer saw my question as a cliché.  Because I suddenly knew what Jack would have done.  I knew why he wouldn’t have found himself in the abyss I couldn’t seem to climb out of.  When things happened to him, around him, to others he loved, he didn’t take the easy way out.  Instead of acting like a tantruming child, repeating “It’s not fair,” over and over, he would have responded. 

He would have found a way to make sense of it somehow, to learn something from it, then assimilated this new understanding into the way he lived his life.  The lesson incorporated, it would have become a subtle addition to that which he unknowingly taught the rest of us, modeled for us on a daily basis. It was all about how to construct a life in which just by living you made things better.   Better for someone else, a relative, a friend, a stranger, better for the world, better for yourself by changing something in need of changing or seeing something through different eyes.  And as simple as it sons defined through meaning no matter what circumstance we might find ourselves in.

As I reach this point in my writing I feel the fury I have allowed to violate my very being starting to give way.   While it may not be automatic to me as it was to him, as I reach for that place he so naturally existed in, striving to figure out how I might turn intention to learn from him into the act of change, I find the anger is letting go.  It’s not gone entirely, I won’t lie.  

But my breathing has eased and I see the fog beginning to lift.  Because I have realized it’s not about what happens to you.  It’s not even about the cerebral activity of reflecting on what you may have learned from a situation.  It’s about your response, what you do about it, how you use it to learn something about yourself and find some positive action that can result from even what may appear at first to be the ultimate tragedy.  It’s about making something even just a little better for someone else. 

I know even as I reread what I have written, I have stooped to more clichés, but they work.  The real question to answer was never “Why do bad things happen to good people?” because in this world at least, that question can never be truly answered.  It can only serve as a prompt for a philosophical debate.  


The real questions that we must answer as we go through this life when faced with situations that seem insurmountable are “What will I do about it?  How will I respond to this?”  For me, today, I will work to take all he gave me, showed me, taught me, and use it to try to figure out where change should begin.

A Tree Blocks the Road

I didn’t write another post immediately following the last, though I had intended to do so.  While I can make excuses, the bottom line is I was waiting for my reflections to demonstrate a step forward and not have to admit abject failure, landing myself somewhere in the soup instead of making progress towards an increased steadiness on terra firma.  And so I attempt to tread water to keep my head above the muck even as I continue to feel myself going under.

But I haven’t successfully turned myself around and I won’t put off writing any longer.  The ignoble truth is I am angry.  Furious in fact, and have been even before losing Jack as I watched the suffering he was forced to somehow tolerate as days stretched to weeks and weeks to months.  

Yes, I know that the question, “Why do bad things, terrible, awful, unfair, unwarranted, and totally undeserving things happen to good, amazing, one in a billion type of people,” has been asked and answered by so many people it may appear old hat.  But it doesn’t to me and not today. 

Yet at the same time, I know he is looking down at me with a frown on his face, unhappy that I am unhappy, why I can’t seem to figure out what’s actually important and lasting in this experience.  Why I’m letting all the chaff distract me from the beauty of the cornel within.  I can imagine him truly confused as to why I just don’t seem to get it. 

Knowing that his true suffering came from continuing to live while unable to give to others any longer in the manner he wanted to, I also know he'd suffer if all that resulted for me from his death was anger.  Because he knew the truth behind the power anger holds over us, a truth I am only just starting to give voice to.  Not fully formed into words yet the best I can do is thus.  The truth Jack knew was that anger supersedes all else, preventing the ability to appreciate anything of beauty within or without.

And so, I find the real work begins only now.  I must find the courage to turn over stones I may prefer to leave as they are, if I am to identify something significant that I can take away from this, a part of Jack that I can keep with me always.  Awareness descends and I suddenly know that if I cannot do this, it will be I whom suffering finds, overtaking all else as that will be the moment I will truly and completely lose him forever.  

I force my focus to light upon what lies in the opposite direction, though it takes great effort to do so.  For it is there the alternative can be found.  I feel suffused in warmth and it is only after I awaken from an unintended sleep that I am able to recognize the warmth still surrounding me.  I realize it is hope.

A Light Shining Through Tears

Last week the world lost one of the truly great individuals so often not fully recognized until too late and I lost someone with whom I’d shared the type of true friendship that if you are blessed to find once in your lifetime you are very, very lucky.  I was one of the lucky ones. 

When I state he was “great” I don’t refer to an obvious kind of greatness, but one that was so inherent it was easy to take for granted as it couldn’t be separated from who he was and so wasn’t obviously apparent on a day to day basis.  Every action he took was so automatic and so much a part of who he was it was like taking a breath.  You don’t constantly think about whether the person next to you is breathing nor consider it remarkable they are doing so. 

  

The difference between the greatness to which I am referring and the act of breathing is that for as long as we live we all breath, so there really is nothing remarkable about it.  Yet the qualities Jack possessed, though as natural to him as breathing, were nothing short of remarkable.  

Due to his humility and private nature, I won’t give much detail regarding these qualities, nor could I do him justice, truth be told, if I were to try.  I will simply say he was someone who saw the goodness, the positive in everyone and he reacted to only that.  For him, everyone with whom he came into contact was equally valuable, equally special, equally important and as such, of course anyone would help others as he did, couldn’t help but do so, as others were valuable, special and important. 

But we know not just anyone will help all those they see in need - in this he stood far above most of us.  Yet he never saw himself as unusual and if anything viewed himself as nothing extra ordinary, reserving that title for those around him.  

Yet there were so many people whose lives he touched, changed, improved and the manner in which he quietly modeled a life well lived served as an example anyone could benefit from emulating.  His was a life lived only within the positive, a life lived with unquestioned optimism, with joy elicited by even the most mundane.  Jack’s was a life lived fully every minute despite its ending too soon.

These are the fundamentals that testify to the person he was.  I will stop here as for those who knew him, no words need to be said and for those not blessed to have met him, no words will suffice. 

My reactions to his loss continue to speak to me at unexpected moments and I have the sense something waits to be revealed.  I will do my best to put this process into words inadequate though they may be, as I move through this journey.  Perhaps others will relate to the voyage in which I seem to have become swept up.  I welcome any remarks or reflections my posts may elicit from others who may find something in my words which feels familiar.