The Light of God

Herself speaks.
Quite serious today. 

Today, we bear witness to a grief that is not our own. It is a grief that is as terrible as grief can be.

May the God of all consolation and compassion,
have mercy on His child;
Mary, Mother of Sorrows, who knows a mother's anguish,
into your arms we place this child,
Please hold him close and comfort him.
This I pray, Amen.
-- adapted prayer of Fr. Brian Cavanaugh

Yesterday morning, we learned that a young man of our acquaintance took his own life.

I don't really have any words to express the pain that radiates outward from the gaping hole that has been rent in the fabric of the world.

In between the shock and the grief, there are questions. So many questions, and yet so few answers.

His parents: what do they do? How do they move forward? How do they even breathe, eat, continue to live? And what of his siblings? His extended family? His friends?

Do they blame themselves? Of course they do. Who would not? Yet it is not their fault -- no one truly knows what despair lives in another's heart.

Still, there will be those who will be cruel and question: how did you not know? Yet sometimes, the greater the inner pain, the more effort a person puts into hiding it from others. We each live within the fortresses of our own minds, and our walls can be unassailable.

There will be anger. Anger unsatisfied, for there is no relief in blaming those around the young man, or even blaming the young man himself. It is a blind, white hot rage, that ravages every thing and yet feeds the pain rather than burning it clean. When will it cease? 

There are unthinkable details to address: How to plan a funeral for someone we thought would outlive us? What to tell other people? Here in this Catholic community, there will be old-school whispers of mortal sin. God, in His infinite mercy, will surely reach out to the anguished soul who found this to be the only choice. Will humankind be as loving?
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Yesterday, I went grocery shopping. As I picked up a few special items for the Offspring, I thought about the mother of this young man, who will never again go into a store without seeing her son's preferred foods and feeling the pang of his loss. These are the mundane aspects of life that are now forever altered. Echoes of loss, everywhere, always.

We spoke with the Offspring briefly about what had happened -- the young man was their age, and it is important not only that they understand such pain happens to people we know, but also that they are reminded we are here for them, no matter how hopeless things seem. As if we could, somehow, protect them with words against the Darkness.

Darkness can be strong. The relief of Nothingness must be alluring. We cannot judge those who have chosen that path -- nor ourselves, for failing to notice as their steps along that path took them beyond our reach. People are mysteries, sometimes even to themselves.

How do we help those left behind in the wake of this terrible loss?

We can be present for those who grieve him. And we can speak his name, both now and in the future, and talk of him kindly and gently. For his ghost is here among us, and perhaps, by remembering him with love, he will finally be surrounded by the peace that eluded him in life.