“Find a place inside where there is joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.” – Joseph Campbell
Life is full of rainbows, and life is full of storms. The first without the second wouldn’t be as sweet. — Photo by Pat Bean
You Can’t Escape
I’ve been reading books for a female memoir writing contest. Several of them deal with surviving the pain of losing loved ones – and most of these books left me feeling a bit cynical. Everyone who lives to a ripe age loses loved ones. It’s part of life’s journey.
If we’re lucky we get to smell the flowers along the way. — Photo by Pat Bean
Sure it hurts. I’m still hurting from the loss of my mother, and I can only imagine the pain I will have to live through if one of my children dies before I do. That’s not the order in which life is supposed to be lived.
But why, I asked myself, did some of these authors act like their suffering was the only loss in the world? Get over it, I wanted to tell them.
But one of the memoirs involving death got to me. It was written by a woman whose activities included research involving hospice patients nearing death. She spent time with these people, recording their feelings and coming to care for them.
The researcher became especially close to one woman on the verge of death. This was a woman who had lived a hard street life, and admitted stealing, lying and prostituting herself to get the drugs she craved. “I cared for nobody else but myself,” she related.
And occasionally simply have time to sit and let the world go by. — Photo by Pat Bean
Before this woman died, the researcher herself found herself with cancer, and facing possible death. The news upset the former drug addict so much that she bullied her hospice attendants into transporting her in a wheelchair to the researcher’s side in a hospital.
When the researcher apologized for causing the dying woman pain, the woman thanked her instead.
“For the first time, I know what it feels like to care about someone besides myself. It makes me feel alive in a way that I never did before,” she told the researcher
These words caused tears to flow from my eyes. I, too, in a moment of sorrow had once been grateful for pain. While it was a love that was rejected that had given me the pain, it was this same pain that let me know I still had the capacity to love.
In my book, that was treasured knowledge.
Bean’s Pat: Grateful for one more day http://tinyurl.com/kcnd7fa And hopeful for many more
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