Long Distance Empathy
My brother in law is dying. He has been in horrid, slow motion death for some time. His liver has shut down and now it is a matter of days or hours before the end comes. My wife went down there a week ago to help. She didn't know for sure then that this would be the end, but it is. I was thinking she would have a quiet time of helping and just being there. The first day she was gone I was home enjoying beautiful weather, taking a wonderful motorcycle ride with my good friend, and just generally having a fantastic time drinking in a great day. Then a phone call made me realize the living hell that was going on 700 miles away. The quiet caring time turned out to be around the clock, sleepless care of a human being in utter torment. Uncontrollable pain, screaming, putrid filth, and terror with no relief. I felt so bad for having been enjoying life while this was going on.
I've been keeping up with developments by way of snatches of phone calls, a minute or two stolen here or there between crises. I mostly listen as my weary wife attempts to process cataclysm with fragments of sleep deprived time and waning energy. Obviously, most of the processing will have to come later.
My brother in law is her little brother, seven years younger. He was frail and sickly during his youth. They grew up in a foreign country, an unusual childhood that threw them unusually close together. Their mother had her own health issues and my wife was probably as much a mother to her younger sibling as their mother was. It has been obvious to me through the years that big sister has been my brother in law's favorite person - the most important human being in his life. His has been a love I have seldom seen in a brother for his sister. And now she is mothering again. The most difficult kind; mothering through death. She has sounded astoundingly strong on the phone this week. But, as I suspected, she said it is a brave front. Yesterday she finally cried on the phone. A lot of crying has been going on in the next room when he sleeps.
I have been praying constantly. And some of my prayers have been answered specifically on the very day I thought to ask for something specific. Today that spurred me to pray about another idea I had. Some time ago I was a part of documenting the life a young man with a similar illness. At the very end it was much the same. And his father told the story of his last moments to my camera. Despite complete organ failure and extremely strong pain medication, as he took his last breath he tried to sit up, his eyes were wide open, and he exclaimed, "Wow!" There was not another breath. No one can be sure if it was an angel, the beauty of heaven, or a glimpse of the glory of God himself, but that young man saw something wonderful as he stepped through the veil of tears. I've heard plenty of other stories of people stepping through that veil in stark terror, the contortion locked onto their faces as death swallowed them up. I was thinking about how powerful it would be in the lives of my brother in law's friends and how comforting it would be to his sister and father and mother if such a thing as the former were witnessed in his last moments. I've been praying all morning that God would orchestrate such an event.
In any case, my wife is shedding the love of God right now in a dangerous place. A place where many hearts have never recognized one photon of God's light in their lives. This is a moment of destiny for some of them. And my wife is dramatically in the right place at the right time being the right person to touch their souls. I know she will. She is a choice servant of God, prepared and custom wired up by the Creator himself for this. I am reminded with symbolism that cannot be accidental, of a woman in the Old Testament who also found herself in a foreign and hostile element, but in spite of all found favor with those she was thrown in with. Her influence was so great and so significant in the lives of her own people, it was said of her that she was placed on this earth "for such a time as this."
My sweet wife. So fragile, yet so amazingly strong. So limited, yet so fantastically capable. You were indeed put here for such a time as this. I pray you will shine brilliantly with irresistible grace and beauty and will draw many to ultimate Truth.
And here I am, sitting here in a glorious midday bit of heaven on earth with peaceful solitude around me. In spite of all I can't help but thank God for a beautiful day and enjoy it. But I have another prayer. I want to help bear this awful burden my wife and her family are reeling under. I want to feel it. I want to connect and be with them. I know there is no way I can truly enter into it as they do. My personal relationships here have been strained for decades. There really is not a human way for me to suffer and grieve and weep as the sister and parents do. But for all of them I want to.
God, help me to be there for them. Help me to feel the agony. Help me to somehow take some of it off them and pull it onto myself. Help me to make them know my concern. Help me to know some way to provide even some modicum of comfort. Oh, God, give me tears. Give me tears to mix with theirs. Break my heart. Give me the gift of compassion and let it pour out of me all over my wife, my mother in law, and my father in law. I am inept at this. I am not wired for it. I am an oaf. But I am a willing oaf. Oh, God, show me a way of love I have not known heretofore. Crack something open in me and let it spill out. Thank You for what You have done, for what You are doing, and for what You are about to do. Amen.
I've been keeping up with developments by way of snatches of phone calls, a minute or two stolen here or there between crises. I mostly listen as my weary wife attempts to process cataclysm with fragments of sleep deprived time and waning energy. Obviously, most of the processing will have to come later.
My brother in law is her little brother, seven years younger. He was frail and sickly during his youth. They grew up in a foreign country, an unusual childhood that threw them unusually close together. Their mother had her own health issues and my wife was probably as much a mother to her younger sibling as their mother was. It has been obvious to me through the years that big sister has been my brother in law's favorite person - the most important human being in his life. His has been a love I have seldom seen in a brother for his sister. And now she is mothering again. The most difficult kind; mothering through death. She has sounded astoundingly strong on the phone this week. But, as I suspected, she said it is a brave front. Yesterday she finally cried on the phone. A lot of crying has been going on in the next room when he sleeps.
I have been praying constantly. And some of my prayers have been answered specifically on the very day I thought to ask for something specific. Today that spurred me to pray about another idea I had. Some time ago I was a part of documenting the life a young man with a similar illness. At the very end it was much the same. And his father told the story of his last moments to my camera. Despite complete organ failure and extremely strong pain medication, as he took his last breath he tried to sit up, his eyes were wide open, and he exclaimed, "Wow!" There was not another breath. No one can be sure if it was an angel, the beauty of heaven, or a glimpse of the glory of God himself, but that young man saw something wonderful as he stepped through the veil of tears. I've heard plenty of other stories of people stepping through that veil in stark terror, the contortion locked onto their faces as death swallowed them up. I was thinking about how powerful it would be in the lives of my brother in law's friends and how comforting it would be to his sister and father and mother if such a thing as the former were witnessed in his last moments. I've been praying all morning that God would orchestrate such an event.
In any case, my wife is shedding the love of God right now in a dangerous place. A place where many hearts have never recognized one photon of God's light in their lives. This is a moment of destiny for some of them. And my wife is dramatically in the right place at the right time being the right person to touch their souls. I know she will. She is a choice servant of God, prepared and custom wired up by the Creator himself for this. I am reminded with symbolism that cannot be accidental, of a woman in the Old Testament who also found herself in a foreign and hostile element, but in spite of all found favor with those she was thrown in with. Her influence was so great and so significant in the lives of her own people, it was said of her that she was placed on this earth "for such a time as this."
My sweet wife. So fragile, yet so amazingly strong. So limited, yet so fantastically capable. You were indeed put here for such a time as this. I pray you will shine brilliantly with irresistible grace and beauty and will draw many to ultimate Truth.
And here I am, sitting here in a glorious midday bit of heaven on earth with peaceful solitude around me. In spite of all I can't help but thank God for a beautiful day and enjoy it. But I have another prayer. I want to help bear this awful burden my wife and her family are reeling under. I want to feel it. I want to connect and be with them. I know there is no way I can truly enter into it as they do. My personal relationships here have been strained for decades. There really is not a human way for me to suffer and grieve and weep as the sister and parents do. But for all of them I want to.
God, help me to be there for them. Help me to feel the agony. Help me to somehow take some of it off them and pull it onto myself. Help me to make them know my concern. Help me to know some way to provide even some modicum of comfort. Oh, God, give me tears. Give me tears to mix with theirs. Break my heart. Give me the gift of compassion and let it pour out of me all over my wife, my mother in law, and my father in law. I am inept at this. I am not wired for it. I am an oaf. But I am a willing oaf. Oh, God, show me a way of love I have not known heretofore. Crack something open in me and let it spill out. Thank You for what You have done, for what You are doing, and for what You are about to do. Amen.
posted by wingman at 1:30 PM
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