The Looking Glass
by Jennifer Johnston
Inconsolable Grief, 1884, painting by Ivan Kramskoy (1837-1887)
Today is Memorial Day ... surely a day for families and friends to come together in joy and love, in tacit acknowledgment that they are able to join once again, in sometimes unspoken appreciation of one another's company. But of course conceptually and intrinsically, this is a day to remember and honor those who served and those who paid the ultimate price to sustain our country and its ideals. Secondarily perhaps, I believe the day also fosters memories of all those we remember who have left this life and no longer grace us with their presence.
Some people feel that the death of a loved one is the worst tragedy that can befall them. While we each have our own views and beliefs of death, and of life, I must respectfully disagree, at least as far as I am concerned. To me, the worst that can happen is to witness the mental and/or physical deterioration of a dearly beloved friend or parent or partner without being able to alleviate or assuage, let alone halt, the terrible decline.
If you have not guessed by now, this is one of those serious posts; there is little humor to be found in an inherently somber subject. Indeed, some might call this post a "downer" ... and they would be correct to some extent in that assessment. But it also is an acknowledgment, an address and evocation if you will, of fears and questions and problems that some of us will face, or have already confronted and struggle to comprehend, as we age and continue this life's journey through what are often ironically referred to as "our golden years."
By this point in our traverse of time, we've all likely been touched by at least one person whose joy in life and living ... and speaking honestly, our own joy in knowing them ... has been crippled and/or crushed; someone whose light of the mind has been permanently diminished, if not completely extinguished, or whose repository of the soul no longer functions as it was intended. Many (most?) of us may prefer not to think of these things; yet in actuality, looking determinedly away, or looking frantically over or past or beyond, eventually becomes impossible ... and ultimately a denial of life.
IMHO, and notwithstanding my belief that our souls will go on when this life is ended, the diminution and decline of a life and all its many facets is indeed a demise worse than physical death. It is beyond terrible, almost unspeakable, to witness the extinction of a nimble, sometimes brilliant, loving mind ... or the dereliction of a body which refuses the commands of a still questing mind ... because the soul is incapable of leaving its devastated dwelling. In my mind, the destruction of an intimate, intense relationship which may (or may not) have lasted decades ... the death of the spirit which makes each of us unique, sui generis, which reduces those afflicted to quotidian (or less) lumps of clay, mere bits of hair and skin and bone without the spark of animation and coherent thought ... are horrors almost beyond apprehension, and yet we are sometimes left with no choice but to struggle for understanding and empathy and resolve.
The Scream, 1893, painting by Edward Munch (1863-1944)
What is left when a beloved friend or partner is no longer the person who was so dearly cherished? When nothing remains of the humor, and the courage, the love and caring, the loyalty, and the keen mind once possessed? How do we continue to love when the object of and inspiration for our love ceases to exist in any meaningful or relatable form? What must we do, how can we go on:
★ When bittersweet, ash-cold memory is all that is left of vibrant, glowing incandescent love?
★ When the voice that thrilled your soul and fired your senses inspires instead a dawning dread and an insidious, radiating, numbing chill?
★ When the promises and professions of love become querulous, accusatory, unanswerable and insatiable demands?
★ When one fears the approach of the person whose footsteps once sent our souls soaring in anticipation of ecstasy?
★ When eyes whose opening gave benediction to the rising sun now fix us with a confused, angry glare, or a stark unspoken supplication to lead them back to reason?
★ When no coherent or discernible speech passes a mouth that once "drew with one long kiss my whole soul thro' my lips, as sunlight drinketh dew," as Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote in Fatima?
Does something of love and memory remain in the ravaged recesses of a failing mind, faint and indistinct and without voice, yet incessantly calling calling calling in a boxed canyon where there will never again be an echo or an answer? Does the sight of a girl in a summer dress, or a child running over grass, cause an uncomprehending flicker of recognition? Do the notes of a song call forth visions of remembered rapture?
For those who are "left behind" ... in reality if not in finality ... duty and obligation, and compassion and empathy, and the memory of love and life and even brief moments of transcendent joy urge us to carry on ... to act well our parts for there all the honor lies, as the epitaph of Mrs. George Reece (referencing the poet Alexander Pope) in Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology adjured. Most of us will act as we should, as we must, in the reflection and remembrance of what once was. But what a terrible, soul-rending irretrievable loss to squander the blessings and fealty of love where nothing lovable or loving remains except perhaps vestigial memories of brighter days and better times.
And sometimes, eventually and ultimately, despite our better natures and best intentions, we may come to that fork in the road where we know we must go on alone; that we cannot in fact remain utterly selfless in our devotion; that time and life and others we love call us back to life and to living. That decision must surely be among the hardest we will ever make, yet we must finally realize the necessity for making it. I have known people who refused to give up even in the face of all the facts, all the evidence, who caused their own health and mental capacity to dwindle, who sometimes brought on their own deaths in their valiant but futile attempts to finesse the hand of aces and eights they have been dealt. In the end, they ended up helping no one ... particularly those they longed so desperately to succor.
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet and writer, wrote for his dying father: Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. But what happens when the mind no longer comprehends that its light is waning, indeed dying ... and one is left with only baseless, unfocused, incomprehensible and sometimes incoherent rage and confusion and pain?
Thomas' poem And Death Shall Have No Dominion posits:
And death shall have no dominion
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon; ...
Though they go mad they shall be sane ...
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
But in the ending of this life, in the termination of this existence before we pass to another plane, what a blessing to lie down to sleep while still healthy and with all one's faculties, and simply never awaken, as my Father did. Of course there is no time to settle old griefs, or reflect on magnificent, magical memories, or to once more tell someone dearly beloved how much they meant to you in this life. But there is also no dread, no fear of what is to come, no long, protracted tortuous speculation on trials which lie ahead; no complete and utter failure of a spent body encompassing a sharp but impotent mind; no mental tabula rasa on which nothing "written" will be recorded or retained again.
I do believe there are things worse than death, more bitter than the cessation of physical existence in this place and time. I wish for all of you that this is one experience which you may be spared ... or alternatively, that you find peace and wisdom and spiritual growth if you are not reprieved. And for all those I love, and you know who you are ... those of you whose light and spirit have lifted and enriched my life ... I do love you more than I can ever say. And finally, I write this, as Dylan Thomas wrote in My Craft or Sullen Art:
Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write ...
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages....
And I remember....
)O(
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