The ones we mourn

Commentary by ADAM TANOUS

The death of a child.

These, the words that choke in our throats, have the ability to paralyze lives indefinitely. We can feel no despair more profound than when a child dies. It shakes our very belief in life.

And it should, because a child is a sweet, shining promise.

Children are what we aspire to, the only ones who can save us from ourselves. When they leave us, we are suddenly lost like we have never been lost before.

My oldest, dearest friend lost his five-year-old daughter last week. Around the same time, a 14-year-old boy in this community died. There have been many others here and elsewhere, but no matter how many times the nightmare enters our lives, we will never truly know why it does.

Why do the young, innocent ones get cheated of life?

Maybe there are reasons behind such tragedies, but I don’t think it is a rationale we can comprehend. Perhaps all that lies beyond our reason must reside in faith. But even faith requires revelation every now and then.

Even the most faithful of us searches for meaning and revelation amongst the ruins of tragedy. We are, by nature, creatures who think casually. We expect events and meaning to be linked somehow. Sometimes they are, sometimes not. It is the challenge of our lives to survive the latter.

I have another dear friend from kindergarten whose father once said his life never really began until he had children. When I heard him say this, I was 24 or 25, in the flush of life (I thought). I was bewildered by his words.

All those years, experiences and fun dismissed as a mere preamble to something more vivid and powerful? How could it be? I didn’t know then, but I know now, he was right.

With the birth of a child, not one but three lives begin in earnest.

And if it is when one first knows life, it is also when one first knows true fear. It is a fear deeper, more awful than any other we’ve experienced before children. It is a fear of what happened last week.

When a child is born into your life, it is akin to suddenly being placed in a minefield, one that stretches as far as one can see. There is no map showing where the bombs lay hidden. One lives and dies mostly by his instincts. All a parent can do is improve the odds for his child. Skill, knowledge, love and attention will do this for you.

Still, there are blows that come from direction and at times we never anticipate. In these situations, only good luck or, if one is so inclined, the will of God can rescue the ones we love.

Men and women die everyday, but these losses do not hit us with the force that the death of a child does. We wonder why, but I think it is because, unlike adults, children ask so very little of the world. They ask only to be of it, to be beloved. They are all potential, all innocence, all joy.

They are also intimately related to our own fears of death. In a way, children soften the idea of our own passing. They give us a sense of the continuity of life. I think, deep down, most people yearn for some glimmer of immortality. Children can be that glimmer. They carry on our stories and memories, if only for a generation This takes the finality out of death and so is a comfort of sorts.

When children die, the continuity of life is disrupted. With that comes a sense of the brevity and insignificance of our own lives.

We all struggle with what to say to the families hit by these tragedies. Everything that comes to mind sounds like a cliché, impersonal and meaningless. Besides, it seems that tragedy of this sort needs to be dealt with on an emotional rather than a rational level.

Surviving such a tragedy has a lot to do with finding a safe place, a safe emotional place, where one can simply function day to day. So maybe listening to the afflicted is more helpful. Listening and guiding. As our friends wander though an emotional wilderness, we try to recognize where they might come to rest. We draw on all of those years of friendship to spot that one safe place that will work for them. Then we get them there, however we can.

Inevitably, guilt becomes the demon we all face. The parents of a lost child feel that there must have been something they could have done to protect their child. Friends of the family feel guilty that they have escaped heartbreak while their neighbor has not. But guilt is as pernicious as it is a misplaced emotion. More often than not, grief is visited upon us without our doing, but we don’t think that way.

Again, we think casually. Events, by our way of thinking, happen for a reason. When none is apparent, we look to ourselves for the reason. We assume the fault. Guilt, when misplaced, destroys us. It won’t just sit there inside us. It is more active than that. Our busy and creative minds are always working in collusion with guilt, finding new ways to tear up the soul.

The hole left by the death of a child will never go away. That takes some getting used to. But what we have to remember also is that the hole can get bigger. Guilt and anger eat away at the sides of that hole. More people can fall in without constant care and attention.

One thing we can do as friends is to shore up the walls of that hole, spend our energies trying to prevent the tragedy from enveloping more and more people.

In the end, it is my undying hope that my little friend Maura and Calvin Smith and all of the others know that we are forever changed by their lives and their deaths.

We spend the rest of our days groping for a way to see through the sadness, anger and guilt, and it may never happen. Nonetheless, we owe it to the ones we lose to keep looking, to keep fumbling in the dark for meaning, love, a little joy and all of the things that seem to be lost when the young, shining ones leave us.