The Pain of Others

Thanks for your helpful comments. Some of you have said that it is ok for me to be a little more honest, to "wrestle with God" a little.

Oh, don't worry: that's coming. In these records, I am basically proceeding in a sort of chronological order. Time for writing is scarce, but, in reality, the thoughts cycle continuously. And yet there are stages of predominant thoughts. And I am recording those stages in the approximate order that they happened, even though they are not the stage I am in now. The exercise, perhaps, could be what St. John of the Cross would call a purgation of memory, as much as it is anything else. I am, as Lewis said, recording "one thought in a hundred", one at a time.

Before the wrestling with God, and after the gratitude for the good that so many were doing for me, I would say what came next was an outward-turned sorrow. I felt sorry for other people. (My brother and my sister pointed this out to me).

I have already expressed how sorry I was and am for Heidi's family. This was definitely among my sentiments.

The same sorrow also extended to Heidi's friends. Many local friends visited her in the hospital. Many others came to Minnesota to be here for Heidi's visitation and funeral. Still others organized a Mass on her behalf at Christ the King in Ann Arbor. You have all lost something dear, too. I am sorry. Thank you for your words of support. She loved you all, you loved her, and I feel for you.

Then there is the sorrow for my own children. This takes the form you would expect: God, how could you let them lose their mother! Not them! They are so good.

We always talk about the sacrament and institution of marriage being good for the raising of the children; about the need for two parents to give each other mutual support in raising their own natural offspring. Why must my children be motherless? Why must they lose this experience that is the common, paradigmatic experience that they most confront when they encounter other children, when they read books, when they hear stories? Why must they go without their mother?

Why Margaret? Why must she go through life having no memories of her mother?

This, I am sure, everyone thought when they heard of Heidi's sickness and death. But there is a certain compounding of the problem. Why lose such a mother! She was a good mother, a wonderful mother. Why must Monica lose the person that she idly talked to almost every day while Heidi made dinner (and I watched Meg upstairs)? Why must my daughters lose that presence as they grow up to be young women? Why must Bastian be forced to tough it out and go forth without the mother from whom he was practically never detached as a baby? (There is also the wonderful role of educator that Heidi took with them. That will be the subject of a later post.)

And finally, why do this again!

In his own work, CS Lewis wrote this:

Sometimes, Lord, one is tempted to say that if you wanted us to behave like the lilies of the field you might have given us an organization more like theirs. But that, I suppose, is just your grand experiment. Or no; not an experiment, for you have no need to find things out. Rather your grand enterprise. To make an organism which is also a spirit; to make that terrible oxymoron, a ‘spiritual animal’. To take a poor primate, a beast with nerve-endings all over it, a creature with a stomach that wants to be filled, a breeding animal that wants its mate,and say, ‘Now get on with it. Become a god.’

Reading this as a Thomist, there is a slight rejoicing. Yes, Lewis, you got it! God is ipsum esse subsistens, the being who is the font of all being, the I AM. If that being decides to stretch out and cause finite beings to be, the only reason it can have for doing so is to manifest the powers and actualities of being as participated: the extrinsic glory of God. This is His "grand enterprise." And the potentialities of finite being are shown more by all kinds of beings: not one grand unsinning, unfailing pure spirit, but many varied beings: atoms, amoebas, armadillos, lilies, and angels. And, of course, humans. That awkward being at the border between spirit and animal: awkward, but glorious: for the universe would lack so much if this border-creature were not a part of it.

And what is true of the universe is true also of each species and of the human race. The strengths and trials, the tragedies and comedies (trying to refrain from quoting the beginning of Gaudium et Spes) that humans go through all show the wonderful range of potentiality that is in humanity. All the things we do show the universe our depths and our heights. We can be uglier than beasts; we can "become a god." Even our great sufferings show something about us.

But, if "power is made perfect in weakness" and gold is tested in fire, and the manifestation of the glories of humanity can be shown in great trials—hasn't this corner of humanity already done that?

If somehow, something beneficial is shown to the world—if something can be learned, by us or by others, by the construct: "a range of Keiser kids losing their mother"—have we not already seen this? Have we not already learned what we must? Must we see it again? What do You need?

My own mother passed away when six of us were between the ages of 13-2. Now my five kids have lost their mother. They range in age from 14-1. Why do we need Take Two? What was wrong with Take One? Hasn't the universe already seen what happens when this happens? These were my thoughts when I saw that my kids would have to go through my own experience.

I had to be the one to tell them that mom was not coming home. I had to be the one to tell them that Heidi died.

Now, in this, my kids had something I did not have. I told Monica and Bastian, "You can trust me when I tell you: I know what you are going through." And my own siblings, whose ages at the time matched closely with my own kids, were there when I told all the kids. And that was good. I told my children that they can talk to my siblings, get support from them. And they did so. Grace, in particular, has attached herself to "Funcle" ("fun uncle") Geoff. Truly, there are more resources this time around.

I also told my kids that the bonds between them would probably be stronger than ever. That was our experience.

And, due to my own experience, I have  clearer picture of what must be done to make this all work. I have clarity for the details: the importance of hugging my kids, of spending time with my kids, of mitigating stress in the home as much as possible, of making sure that the older ones do not feel that they must be the parent, and that the younger ones are only disciplined by me, their natural parent. All this I learned when we went through it.The details of what I must do at home are pretty clear. It is only our "big picture" future that still needs to come into focus.

And so, this is true: If my kids had to go through this, I am thankful that it is with this experience and these resources. Resources we did not have when it happened to us.

But that is a hypothetical syllogism: the consequent follows from the antecedent. But does the antecedent have to be true?

To put it laconically: "If."