Life changes fast.
Life changes in an instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
These are the opening words of Joan Didion’s book, The Year of Magical
Thinking.
The book chronicles her life in the year following the death of her husband,
John Gregory Dunne. She writes of the way her life changed in that moment and
of the ways she struggled to bring her life back into control in the minutes,
days, weeks and months that followed. She writes of the waves of grief that
overwhelmed her. She writes of the simultaneous event of her daughter’s
critical illness. She writes of the many ways she tried to turn back the clock—to
identify some way that the outcome could have been changed—to find some
way to bring her husband back to life. Above all, she writes of her struggle
to understand what was happening to her as she tried to cope with her grief.
Her search for understanding of her own reaction to her husband’s death and her daughter’s catastrophic illness led her to look deeply into the ways others have experienced grief. Her search led her to psychiatric and psychological textbooks and journal articles. It led her to interview specialists in cardiac medicine. It led her to seek out accounts of other people’s experience of the moment when life as they knew it ended.
She describes her moment of deep recognition when she read a New York Times article by Bob Herbert. The article quoted an HBO interview with the mother of a nineteen-year-old killed by a bomb in Kirkuk. The mother said, “I opened the door and I seen the man in the dress greens and I knew. I immediately knew. But I thought that if, as long as I didn’t let him in, he couldn’t tell me. And then it—none of that would’ve happened. So he kept saying, ‘Ma’am, I need to come in.’ And I kept telling him, ‘I’m sorry, but you can’t come in.’”
Each of us, in our own way, do whatever we can to shield ourselves from knowledge we cannot bear to know.
I read Didion’s book late last week as I traveled to Haiti to visit my
daughter and her husband.
On Monday, Jennifer and I sat in her living room, a quiet place in the middle
of a country that can’t seem to make a lasting peace, and watched the
news reports as the story of Virginia Tech unfolded. My thoughts went immediately
to the parents who would hear the news that life as they know it is ended. Then
I thought of the family of the killer and tried to imagine how it would be to
learn that one’s child had been responsible for the deaths of others.
Then I thought of the parents who were perhaps learning from the unanswered
ringing of the cell phones in their children’s pockets that life as they
knew it is ended.
As the week went on, there were more opportunities to reflect on the moments when other families learned that life as they know it is ended. Each day brought news of more deaths in Iraq, and I prayed for family members who would answer the door to see the news in the face of an officer. Yesterday we learned of the death of a Blue Angels pilot, and I wondered if the absence of a routine cell phone call at the end of the airshow might have been his wife’s first indication that life as she knows it is ended.
One of the things Didion learned from her research is that survivors of catastrophic events like the unexpected death of a loved one almost invariably begin their stories with a description of the normalcy of the day. “Everything was just like always,” we say, “and then...” And then. Didion’s attention was on the salad she was serving at the dinner table. Her husband was talking and then he wasn’t.
Didion also learned that survivors almost invariably look backward for clues that the unthinkable was going to happen. We look for ways that we might have been able to prevent tragedy if we had only been more alert.
She learned that the state of mourning is complicated by a change in our cognitive capacity. Simply put, we don’t think as well as we usually do. We have trouble sorting things out. We are less able to anticipate the consequences of our actions. We are less able to figure out which foot to put in front of the other. And all this is compounded by fatigue that is sometimes overwhelming.
Didion also learned that all these things continue to happen as we move through the days of mourning. The process doesn’t stop with the funeral or the end of the first month or at any other arbitrary point in time. It goes on until it’s over—until the work of taking in our loss is done.
Today’s gospel portion takes place during the time of the disciples’ mourning. We can imagine that they are experiencing the same kind of taking-in that happens when any of us have an unexpected loss. They are reviewing the days leading up to Jesus’ death—trying to determine where it all went wrong—trying to think of what they should have done differently. They are confused by seeing Jesus, and they have trouble recognizing him when he comes to them. They are doing their best to go about their daily work, but it’s difficult. Even the routine step of setting out for the normal work of fishing requires a conscious decision, and no one has real energy to give to the work that must be done.
Then Jesus appears. This is the third time he has appeared to the disciples, and he does three things. First, he alerts them to his presence. He makes himself known to the men who have been his companions. Second, he tells them to stop doing things that are not helpful. They have been fishing all night without catching a single fish. Jesus suggests that they try another way—that they throw the net from the other side of the boat. Then, as the men work, Jesus kindles a fire to warm them and cooks a meal for their hungry bodies.
The risen Christ does three things: He brings the disciples into awareness of his presence, he redirects their activity to better purpose, and he comforts and nurtures them. He does not pretend that their grief has no cause. He does not focus on what they have done or left undone. Instead, he shows them the way forward and strengthens them for their journey.
Today, in Lexington, Texas, Dennis and Pam Moore are taking another step in their journey. Today is the 4th Annual Climb Challenge. Their son Stuart loved to climb, and he wanted to build a climbing structure when he returned from the war. Stuart didn’t come home. He was killed on the road to Baghdad. The memorial gifts in his honor were used to build a climbing structure on the grounds of the family’s church, and every year, on the Sunday closest to Stuart’s birthday, his parents and his church family open the structure to the entire community. They serve hot dogs and hamburgers to everyone who shows up. Their hope is that the unchurched will see something of God’s glory in the life of this church community. Dennis and Pam are not alone today. The risen Christ is with them, just as he was with the disciples on the shore that morning so long ago.
And so it is with each of us. When the losses come to our own lives, we are not left to bear the burden alone. As we grieve for those who have died, for the families who mourn them, for ourselves in our own times of mourning, the love of Christ is with us. The risen Christ is with us, giving us strength to bear what must be borne, directing us into new ways of life, bringing us into the hope of new life through his resurrection.
Alleluia! The Lord is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed!. Alleluia!