It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to finish something. Anything really, but the thing I’m most concerned about is my inability to complete a piece of writing. I write brainless heartless articles for an addiction recovery network, and I finish those bits of writing and submit them on time, but I’ve decided that anything that can be done by a monkey doesn’t count. I can shower, blow my nose, and drive. I can’tread, write, or hold my thoughts captive. If I’m in a conversation with someone in person or over the phone, my brain is considering people and events and curiosities that wouldn’t even qualify as tangential. I’m not engaging well. People who know me, who know my eyes, ask me where I am. I had a girlfriend once who held my face in her hands and said, “Where are you? Please come back.” It's like that.
I’ve never been particularly clever, but I’m more dull than usual. The incoming calls far exceed the outgoing and I’m burdensome in circles of conversation. This is frustrating. I’ve tried to give up on the conversation or task that should at that time be focused upon in favor of following the random blips of thought inexplicably occurring in my head. No dice. I live on the wrong side of relationships—thinking too often of the other person’s story and perspective while neglecting the data that they're giving me in the moment. As soon as my cognition spotlights what was periphery, the line of thought scurries like a beetle into the dark.
Grief
January 29, 2012
Two nights ago Scott called to tell me that Andrew had taken his own life. I thought about how Andrew wouldn’t see the moon again and sat in my car until the sun came up. Scott didn’t know why Andrew was gone or how it happened. I called Andrew to ask him myself but he didn’t answer. I wondered if Andrew’s sister might know why, or maybe Andrew’s girlfriend, but I didn’t call them. I called people who should know that Andrew won’t hug them again so that they wouldn’t find out from the internet. They were quiet, they cried, they screamed, they didn’t believe me, and then they called the people that they missed, and they called the other people that should know about Andrew from people.
I listened to an album his band had recorded, listened to videos with snippets of his voice, and listened to the shutter and settle of my car.
I went inside and showered and changed my clothes. Someone who loved Andrew his whole life sent me a text that said, “Wilson, my dear, dear friend, I just hurt so bad.” Even though nobody was home, I was embarrassed when I realized that the screaming was coming from me. When would someone be home?
A person who believes in the Bible would probably read the Bible. I believe in the Bible.
So I read a verse in the bible that says, “When I am afraid I will trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I will not be afraid.” Nothing. I started another one that says, “I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go…I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you.” Nothing. I remembered one about how a “mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace, yet the sinful mind is death.” Nothing. They were supposed to help me but they only inspired questions.
If we get to make decisions that have not already been made for us, then that means this about Andrew and that about God, but if all of our decisions were decided for us before we were born, then that means this about Andrew and that about God. (Do you know what I mean? Every question about what we do to others and ourselves, what we endure, and what we are responsible for is a question of sovereignty. If Andrew’s sorrow and death were predetermined, how can we reconcile that tragedy with “God is love”? If his story was not predetermined, but a plot of his own making, then why was God’s Spirit within Andrew not victorious over the spirit of Andrew’s flesh? I am not able to imagine how often or fervently Andrew prayed that he would be delivered of his unbearable pain.) Andrew’s close friends and I called each other over and over again and spoke a lot but didn’t say anything. Other people, people I know, or rather, people that I knew, called and asked if I’d seen any “signs,” or if I knew “why,” and a feeling started to seep into me. It was the first I felt. I didn’t know that it was a feeling by any sort of sensation but by the wake of thought that it left behind.
“Something must be done about this. This is something happening in my brain that I don’t know about. I don’t feel cold, but it must be because my fingers aren’t working well. Do people ask me if I knew anything because they think that I should have? Did I know anything? Did I try to know anything? Something must be done about this. Do the people that I can’t see still exist? They must, because I’m talking to them on the phone.
Did He make us knowing that it would be like this?”
Did He make us knowing that it would be like this?”
I drove to Starbucks to see if anyone still existed. I brushed my arm against someone in line as an experiment. Nothing
I went home. I showered again and went to dinner with a family that thought that it was just Saturday. Mom, Dad, Three Young Daughters, and myself. Sometimes I smiled and sometimes they did. I tickled them and watched them do headstands. Heat bottlenecked around my brain and I started to feel outside of myself. The girls went downstairs to sing and dance. I went downstairs too and watched them for a while before I went home. Again, I tried to sleep.
My brain told me:
“The average person has about 2 to 3 true friends at a time. In Andrew’s case, his number is higher. But let’s say that the people who were truly friends with Andrew had 7 bail-you-out-of-jail-friends. Let’s suppose that each person lives an average of 80 years, and has an average of 7 different true friends every 20 years. That’s 28 true friends in a lifetime. Now obviously it can be argued that one wouldn’t have so many different sets of true friends because true friends would last for more than 20 years. I concur with this argument. But for sake of my point I want to allow for the possibility of a person who through bizarre circumstances ends up with an extraordinary amount of true friends in their lifetime.
There are approximately 6,987,000,000 people on earth right now. Because of our country’s economic situation, and the news, such high numbers inspire muted significance--so I’ll fail in an attempt to attain perspective. 369 times NYC’s population equals less than the current world population...There have been 107,602,707,791 people to ever be born on this earth.
That is something like 5,300 generations. Out of around 5,300 generations, (a total of 107,602,707,791 people ever to be born), and 6,987,000,000 humans currently inhabiting our planet--how many have made you laugh? Hugged you? Told you a secret? Out of all of those generations of all of those people, how many have you lived with? Loved? How many sons of mothers in the history of man have made each day that you knew them a more bearable day because you knew them? How many have you sung songs with in the car? Played golf with a whiffle-ball golf ball with? Seen fall in love? Eaten breakfast in silence with?
The family and the girl had the most and lost the most. Does subtracting the loss from the gain equal a number greater than zero? I think so. I’m sorry for the 107,000,000,000-ish people that weren’t fortunate enough to know Andrew. I’d rather be me that them.”
Nothing.
I was supposed to write about more. I was supposed to explain how mourning Andrew’s absence reconciled a friendship that was lost. I was supposed to account each of the times that I told someone I love, that I love them. I was supposed to talk about Ecclesiastes and how it never made sense until Andrew was gone and I was supposed to reference the following quote and tell how it made me feel:
“It’s a shame that life is so precious. It makes us worry so much”.
I planned to tell that the quote sums my status. To talk about The Beauty, this is my name for our love of God and Man, and to explain that:
“The love of The Beauty cannot be withheld and yet we’re damned for it. Our guts are strings, hooked to people, places, and moments in strongly bound knots. We go to this school before that school and hold hands with this girl and then that one and love this person and then that one and all of these outreaching hooks, stemming from ourselves and remaining taught until they reach The Beauty, pull away from their origin and destination with equal force. We love too many people. We know more people than any other generation and polls say we are the loneliest generation. Can there be any explanation for our loneliness other than that of the pain of friendships parted?
I was supposed to talk about those things in depth but I don’t want anything to be gained from this. I don’t want to learn anything about myself from this. I don’t want to learn anything about life from this. Anything but misery resulting from Andrew’s absence seems like blood money. There isn’t a way to express what I would give to have Andrew back without sounding cliché or dramatic, but the first things that I would give are the things people might call “silver lining”.
Futility
April 2, 2012
We've all got pretty much the same amount of words in our heads. Of course some people know more words than others, but not as many more or less as you may imagine. Now let us suppose that each of those words is printed on a puzzle piece, and each puzzle piece, because of its’ unique shape, directly fits with only so many other words. There are some people who can fit these pieces, the pieces that we have scattered about, in a way that strikes us as extraordinary. These people, like C.S Lewis, Jonathan Safran Foer, and some others, connect the extending or concaving edges of each piece in ways that we’ve never considered—not only impressing us by connecting shapes in unique orders and ways, but by ultimately producing an image that we could not have guessed prior to its completion. Ironically, though we could not have guessed at their end aim, we somehow know that they could not have possibly made any other expression than the one they made. We recognize the picture despite never having seen it before. It’s something that we know, and something that we’ve always wanted to see, but something that we couldn’t see until it was shown to us.
For a couple of months I’ve wished that I was a painter. I’ve wished to be a painter because I’ve run into some things that are more rich and complex than anything that I could express through my limited ability to piece these pieces together. Grief. Futility. See? I can identify the puzzle pieces that seem appropriate, but I can’t manipulate and arrange them so that I will see the thing I must be shown. If I could paint I could stroke, slash, and glide a brush across a canvas and it would at least be honest. All of the word puzzles that I begin sound like lies from a salesman.
In the past I’ve been able to connect the pieces so that I could tell stories about myself. I’ve never arranged them in a particularly clever fashion, but I’ve been honest. Honesty was once enough. But I’ve learned more. Not about theory or arithmetic or history, but about being alive. It isn’t enough to say, “I miss him”, or that “I wish that he would have at least let me be with him while he left”. I know that my words are not enough because there haven’t been any words spoken or heard that gave profile to the thing that happened inside of me. If I stumbled across a tree without ever having seen one before, and did not know that we call that thing which I am seeing, “a tree”, I would not use words to share this discovery with friends or strangers…I would replicate it with lines and colors.
Since Andrew died words haven’t mattered. Nobody has been able to say or write anything to anyone about Andrew that is helpful. Understanding the futility of words made it impossible to write anything to completion. Why would I? All the words do nothing for the grief. They only do something for the time in the late nights—words rowing minutes behind until the shore of exhaustion is finally reached.
Easter Criminal
April 8, 2012
“When they got to the place called Skull Hill, they crucified him, along with the criminals, one on his right, the other on his left. One of the criminals hanging alongside cursed him: "Some Messiah you are! Save yourself! Save us!" But the other one made him shut up: "Have you no fear of God? You're getting the same as him. We deserve this, but not him—he did nothing to deserve this." Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you enter your kingdom."
Jesus said, "Don't worry, I will. Today you will join me in paradise."
I don’t know what the criminals had been up to before they were crucified, but I imagine that their stories are familiar ones. Their bodies, as well as the scars upon their insides were given to them by a mother and father. They made decisions every day that formed a personality. They did some things selfishly and some things selflessly. Maybe they loved someone maybe they didn’t. But they lived just like each of us. At some point each of them did something that the government of their time deemed to be impermissible. As a consequence of their crimes they were nailed by their hands and feet to crosses. I suggest that these spikes were not the first, nor the most painful for them to endure. I wager that they lived long enough to wish that life were better than it was. I bet they knew regret, rejection, and sorrow.
Who hasn’t?
I’ve heard teachers ask “Of the crucified convicts, which are you?” Of course we all want to be the dude who gets the golden ticket to Wonka’s factory, but aren’t we all both of them? Aren’t we all on crosses, enduring the spikes of a broken world that we did not apply for until we die? We’ve all done wrong and received it. Do you hear the words—“Some kind of Messiah you are! Save yourself! Save us!”
We want Him to save Himself because we want Him to be who He says that He is. We need Him to be. And we want Him to be who He says that He is so that He can save us. When I’m pacing in the yard or forgetting to get out of the car I’m asking God why He made all of it so poorly. If He is God then surely He could have come up with a better plan. I don’t know how people could desire Him without the imperfections of our reality, but I bet He could figure out how to make that happen if He wanted to.
My fear drives me to beg Him to, “Remember me”, as he did the Repentant Criminal. And I say it. And I mean it. I want Him to remember me. And even though I’m ruined by the pain of watching pain, the pain has proven the possibility of a dimension without it. Crooked lines are proof of the straight ones. And even crooked lines are momentarily straight before turning or bending. I went to a wedding a couple of weeks ago and realized that two different dying people were deciding to love the other dying person, and to at least go about dying together. That’s a miracle. I have a friend who’s having a baby soon and he said, “Babies are God’s opinion that the world should keep going.”
Okay fine.
Though my lips’ request that The Rabbi remember me seems less authentic than my heart’s desire for an explanation, I’ve got enough to go on for tonight. Tonight, it’s enough for me that a new daddy loves a once-abandoned kid named Caleb. It’s enough for me that a mom woke up early to iron her daughter’s church dresses. It’s enough for me that someone ran in a circle because they care about their health for sake of the loved ones who depend upon it. And it’s enough for me that the blue of an Easter sky is the bluest blue.
We place our feet on the floor, bathe ourselves, eat, work, eat, look at people’s eyes, eat, watch TV, and then pass out wishing that we’d had sex, hadn’t had sex, or would at least wake up the next day and be Don Draper. There are many lamentations accrued with living, but when we slide our feet out of bed, work, and look into the eyes of other immortal souls, we prove the contemporary existence of a Hope made possible by a God who I think could have done better.
