I lost a childhood friend this week. She died from a broken heart. Ok, so maybe that was not how she officially died. Those are not the facts, but this is the truth. The rest is just “semantics”. Just like it was true when I told my daughter that her guinea pig, “Baby”, died because it was too sad to live without her sister whom I had spent all night trying to save from an ingested plastic bag. I try very hard not to lie to my kids. It was not a lie.
I did not tell her that it was probably a shared plastic bag and a heart attack when my 115 pound chow/shepherd mix had her in his mouth that actually caused her death. My daughter would not have understood it. But even at three, she understood the truth of a broken heart. Her heart was broken at that very moment. Had I told her the facts, she would not have understood. She would not have been able to forgive her dog for doing that to her “Baby”. She would not have forgiven me for putting Baby outside for some sunshine and grass cause it looked as if it too had eaten plastic bag and was not doing so well. She would not have forgiven her teenage brother for being too busy on the computer to keep his eye on the pen as instructed. She would not have understood any of these facts. She only understood dying from a broken heart.
The facts don’t give you understanding. They only give you jagged edges of “what if?” to keep poking at you. I was stunned to see the orange lifeless body of her guinea pig that day. After all I had done to save her sister pig I could not believe I had been so careless with this one. True, I was exhausted from a sleepless night nursing my son’s pig with pain meds hoping against hope to save it. But I was furious with myself (and my teenage son whom I seethed at in one of my more shameful parenting moments). I felt guilty over the careless death of Baby and thought of how I might have prevented it by being more careful when I put her outside (or maybe even prevented both pigs’ needless deaths if I had not had the recycling so close to the cage). I knew the facts and they were making me crazy. The facts seldom breed comfort or understanding. They just breed voyeurs and lots of CSI episodes.
No matter how old you are, nobody understands any better than my 3 year old daughter did when death comes unexpectedly and takes a cherished loved one away. Her tears were profuse. Out of this suffering came the gem of one of my children (sorry but they are only a year apart so I often don’t remember who said the cute thing but it sounds like my son, so for the sake of this blog let’s say it was my son who was 4 at the time). While carrying a shoebox full of dead pig to be buried in a solemn procession, he said, “I’ll know when my pig has gone up to heaven cause the box will be lighter”.
I am a person who sees signs in things. I am a person who has a vivid imagination. This is a dangerous combination. I miss traffic signs because I am wondering what the meaning of some other sign that nobody else would see as a sign means. I don’t “go there” as much as I might, but sometimes I do go there, especially when on pain meds like I was a few weeks ago for back pain.
We have had lovely doves all summer making nests in our front porch and have seen more than 4 hatchlings fly free. We recently had an odd sort of occurrence I still don’t understand scientifically. As far as we can tell, one of the babies hung around and shared the nest with the mother long after the other babies flew away. This teenage dove was skittish and we first noticed it cause it got scared when my husband opened the door and the poor thing flew itself silly bapping into walls and trees and roofs until he shut the door so she could calm down. She did calm down and flew back, all scuffed up.
So she shared a nest with her mother, “Lovey Dovey”. We called her “Scruffy Dovey” cause she was a mess. Last week or so, I wanted to get a closer look at what was happening up there cause they were taking shifts and sometimes it would be Scruffy and other times Lovey on the nest or sometimes both of them and frankly this was just odd and erratic behavior. SO, with my digital camera on zoom and from what I felt was far enough away, I raised my arms to get a closer look.
Big mistake. Scruffy went nuts and flew herself into a wall etc…then never came back. Two days later, flies appeared and a trip up a ladder confirmed my fear. This scruffy mess left behind an innocent baby whom I had to bury. I felt like crap all day, and even my 9 year old knew I was being ridiculous blaming myself. My husband however,came home and said when I had told him the story, "yeah, you probably should not have done that. We knew she was skittish". Nice words of wisdom Mr. Hindsight (or maybe "Hindend" would be better).
But that’s just one of the things we do when precious innocents die or babies are left behind because something or mother flew erratically into a wall for no good reason. We look for understanding. We usually find guilt and blame instead, wearing its clothes and wagging its sharp finger at us or someone else to make everything even more jagged in our broken heart. That’s happening to my friend’s family I am sure. When my friends and I first learned of her passing but before we knew all the facts, we all wanted to know, “Why her, why now?”
Like Princess Di, she was one of those gorgeous and delicate creatures that I always felt I could snap in half if I wanted to, but knew neither I nor anyone else ever would dream of such a thing. It would be like setting a puppy on fire. It was inconceivable when we learned that the puppy had set itself on fire.
I don’t know all the details but I know that this precious mother of 5 was a delicate and gentle petal of a person and the insensitive or maybe even cruel handling of the world in general, and a deep betrayal in specific, caused her to fly into the wall, so to speak. There is a lot of guilt and even anger when this happens. I have heard some of my friends call this act selfish, some call it sick, and many (especially me) have asked, “what if we had only… would she have then?”
All I have to say is that though I don’t see it written down somewhere that I can easily access, for whatever reason when someone eats a plastic bag or flies themselves into a wall and leaves the nest to the flies, it is not because they did not love their babies or anyone else to whom they were precious. I don’t know what the Big Book on such things says, though I think this is an issue in her faith community.
For me, I don’t care. My daughter at 3, with her buckets of tears and my son at 4 already expressed everything I am feeling and believe in my heart. Her soul is now in heaven and her box is lighter because of it. It’s a crying shame she could not have asked us to help her carry it while she was here cause we all would have liked that opportunity and now we are left with buckets of tears.
It is impossible for me to fathom that she did not know how precious she was to all of us. It is impossible for me to fathom how someone’s careless, curious, or selfish act caused her to lose it and fly herself against a wall. It is impossible for me to feel anything but grief for her family and deep pity for the feelings of isolation/anger/loneliness/fear/desperation/emptiness she must have been feeling at the time of her desperate departure.
I don’t know who reads these blogs anymore. But whoever you are, please know what my friend finally knows now I hope, safely in the lap of God having seen her church overflowing with people who would have been eager to help her a mere 48 hours earlier if she had just asked. Something I sure wish she could have known somehow before “eating the bag” so to speak; you are far more precious than you will ever know.
Hope is always there somewhere, help is always somewhere, and if the flames are too hot to bear then just wait and remember the verse: “Weeping may endure for a night but hope comes with the dawn” (that one IS in the Book, somewhere). I don’t know what her dawn would have looked like; or yours. I just know that faith sometimes means lowering the bar. If all you can do is breathe in and out long enough to find out what comes next, then you owe it to those who love you to do just that.
I think in trials I have endured that we are sometimes standing on rocks crossing a river. Just about the time you are certain there are no more stones to step to and the water is up to your nose, another stone appears. At least my experience has been like this. At times (metaphorically) I am sure I have breathed my last breath; but sure enough another stone appears and gets me to a new and better place. I believe when we are out of hope, we just have not turned over enough stones to find it or cried out enough to God or people to throw us a lifeline till that stone appears. And we have no choice but to do that and to be that for each other and breathe in and out as long as you possibly can.
I don’t know what I’m telling you this for. You’re obviously breathing (maybe really deeply now cause I have lulled you to sleep). I just wish I could have had a chance to tell my friend this. So I am making a point to tell everybody I know what I wish I could have told her. When I notice someone being a jerk I ask them how their day is going instead of jerking back at them. I don’t think any of us know who it is who has eaten a plastic bag, is in the jaws of the chow mix, or is ready to fly into a wall at any minute. But I suddenly take my responsibility to make people laugh a whole lot more seriously.
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