Beautiful and Terrible Things Will Happen

Do not be afraid.

What do you do when the unthinkable happens to a friend?

The slow death of a father. Eight months later, the death of a mother in a split-second. The day after that, your sister in law hears it’s cancer. Six children left to work out what to do next.

What do you say to that kind of turn of events? How do you attempt words for the grieving when the grief feels insurmountable? Well, out of your love, you must say something eventually, so you say what you’d want to hear. What you imagine you’d need to hear. Or you go very quiet. You let yourself weep. You hope it’ll be solace for them to hear the sound of tears that aren’t their own.

You remind them that sleep is sacred now. That it is holy and to be protected, at all costs. That food is life. That the basics for survival must now be put above everything else, because a trauma of this kind of loss will rob us of our most immediate instincts. We may forget how to take care of ourselves. We may question why. We may disassociate in ways that make the most primal behaviors foreign and seemingly without any purpose. 

These are the things you need most right now: Water. A hand, nestled into your own (if only to feel a pulse). To remember you are here and someone else is here too. You will need a song to return to. To feel safe. You will need the sound of footsteps. Nothing more and nothing less. You will need to laugh. About nothing. There is an absurdity to this much pain. The absurd will now be a friend. Callous and inappropriate, but it will help. The cruelty and the strangeness. A divine comedy.

Senses will dull for a while. That is normal. That is necessary. For to feel much more than this, well, that might just kill you. No. For now, the body will reject the stimulus of life (as you know it).

Life As You Know It. It will never be the same. This is the new Real. But nothing will feel real for a while. How would I know? Well, I don’t. But I sense it. And I know how life has felt at the edge. The edge of nothingness. The edge of every illusion. I sense You. And everyone senses you. They don’t know. Nobody knows. But we sense. Like shaky hands that extend into the darkness. They can only sense. Sense turns into a soft trust. Hesitant and fearing. But this is compassion. To sense another’s pain. To sense what one needs. Not to know. But to try to, sense. 

People talk about the sixth sense. I imagine there are many many more. 

I don’t know what you should do. Where do you put this pain? These memories as they now unfold under the harsh light of unavoidable examination. These unspoken truths that are being spoken for the first time in tongues that were locked into submission. What does one do with all that? What do I say as the witness to this dense ocean of pain?

I will remind you of your senses. The things that make you human and alive. Touch. Taste. Smell. See. Listen. And Sense, all that is beyond us, rallying for our freedom and sanity and eventual serenity. Ancestors, spirits, trees, animals and possibly the aliens too. What if they’re all helping you now? But, you must be very quiet. 

What do you do when the unthinkable happens to a friend? You do your best to sense them. Sense what they need. Sense through the silence. Sense your way through all that is nonsense. There is no sense to this. So we must reclaim our senses fiercely. Sensing the way forward when all has become abstraction. Yes, clarity is emerging in the midst of chaos but it cannot lessen the loss. Even answers can’t shut the greedy mouths of all these questions. They are relentless. So, live out the questions, like Rilke says. And sense your way through the next day. That is all that is required.

That is all you need to do.

‘Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.’-Frederich Buechner

Till next time,