do what we can, the best that we can...

“Life holds beauty, magic and anguish.” – Anne Lamott

 

Christmas Eve is a week away and in a few days we’ll celebrate the Winter Solstice, at least I will, because it’s easier to be hopeful once the days begin to be longer again. I had been clicking along, shopping, wrapping, writing cards and decorating - getting ready for the fun the holidays bring when I was stopped in my tracks. 

 

A young couple I know welcomed their second child, a little girl, last week and a few days later she was gone – suddenly and unexpectedly due to some complications they are still not sure of. As if this is not devastating enough, this same couple lost their first child, a little boy, a few hours after his birth last December. There are no words to speak of this…    

 

My heart is so heavy for them. I can’t imagine…No one can imagine…What the &#* and why? But this, as in the case of so many tragedies, has no “why” and, as Anne Lamott, my favorite author, says, “Why is rarely a useful question.” 

 

I was reading Lamott’s recent book, Stiches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair before hearing this sad news and it’s clear why the book is a New York Times bestseller. It offers page after page of hard- earned and gentle wisdom, different ways of looking bad things when they happen, plus guidance towards the healing that we hope will follow.  

 

Lamott says, “There can be meaning without things making sense.” She then talks about what we can do in times of tragedy, sorrow and chaos – we can “stick together and do what we can.”

 

“What good people can do in the face of great sorrow,” Lamott writes, “We help some time pass for those suffering. We sit with them in their hopeless pain and feel terrible with them, without trying to fix them with platitudes. Doing this with them is just about the most gracious gift we have to offer.”

 

And, what a difficult gift that can be to give. I was an emergency room social worker for years and one of my jobs was to sit with the dying and with the families of the dying or dead. I quickly learned there was, indeed, nothing I could say…All I could do was sit, hold a hand or offer a hug, pray, offer cold water or hot coffee and hand out Kleenex.  

 

Death is a strange thing that comes in many forms. Some deaths are sudden and horrific, complete and absolutely devastating surprises that leave people scarred for life. Other deaths, while no less sad or difficult, are (while perhaps never truly expected) much less shocking. A “good death” is gentle; it takes the soul with dignity. A “bad death” wrenches the guts out of everyone involved, especially the soul and its family.

 

I sometimes felt angels in the room…A calming presence, a lightness of being, a sense of love and quickening peace. Those were the easiest deaths for me. Sometimes the family shared my awareness, other times they did not. But knowing that the soul had a guide always comforted me.

I know there were angels to guide those two poor tiny infants when they died. I also know there were and are angels comforting their brave parents, ever present if sometimes barely felt. That couple doesn’t speak of angel wings, but they do speak humbly and ever thankfully about their friends and family, who draw close to them and do what they can, the best they can.

 

“This is who I think we are supposed to be,” Lamott writes. “People who help call forth human beings from deep inside hopelessness…We help them to bear being in time and space during unbearable times and spaces.” 

 

Christmas, as bright as it is, is also a time of darkness and contrast. That bright star shimmering against the cold of the night…The Wise Men bringing riches to a baby born in poverty… The humbleness and promise of that birth… Glory and miracles juxtaposed against a newborn’s frailty.  

 

Christmas reminds us that we blessed with such bounty, yet, there is great need…I can’t imagine what Mary felt, holding her tiny boy and knowing his destiny…And, I can’t imagine how that young couple felt, giving up their child, not once, but twice…Life is beautiful, yet fragile and fleeting…Light and dark, cold and warmth…We are the shadow and the light.

 

And, so, Lamott writes, “We work hard, we enjoy life as we can, we endure.”  

 

“Keep our little girl in your thoughts,” the young father wrote. “Keep your loved ones close and take nothing and no one for granted”…Wise and powerful advice, not only for the holidays, but for all year long.